Death of a Dancer

by Anthony Litton

  ‘Two houses? They were lucky then,’ he observed.

  ‘Possibly, sir, although if the family’s subsequent career is anything to go by, luck had little to do with it. There’s a persistent thread, undercurrent, if you like, in many of the references, that they weren’t above using pressure to get what they wanted. Anyway, they lived well, but quietly, for a few years then, for some reason, decided to build a theatre – The Dolphin. Despite some local opposition, a lot actually, they did so and it opened in 1861. Here’s a picture of the grand opening,’ she added, passing over a printout of a sepia-toned photograph.

  Six figures, all in either frock coats and stove-pipe hats or wide-spreading dresses draped over crinolines, looked out at them from the photograph. Most had the rigid, almost frozen, look of pictures of the era. One, however, was looking at the camera with a look of almost impatient arrogance, a knowing look in his eyes, which drew everyone’s gaze and made them all feel a little uneasy.

  ‘There’s Joseph, and Mara’s the woman standing next to him,’ Cerian said, standing and leaning over the desk, identifying the various figures. ‘Victor’s on her left and that’s Isabel and that’s Edmund to his left. That youth,’ she said, pointing to the edge of the group and to the image that had drawn all their eyes, ‘is Benjamin, Joseph’s oldest son and Gerald’s grandfather. Throughout the rest of the 19th century and well into the 20th,’ she continued, resuming her seat, ‘first Joseph, and then Benjamin, followed by Erik, his eldest son, ran the theatre with a fair bit of success. The family not only had a knack of discovering local talent, but had enough clout, and money, to attract some of the top acts in the country. Many onlookers had thought they’d fail, as the theatre, with only around 220 seats, was much smaller than many that were running successfully at the time. Despite this, and the fact that its smaller size meant that each seat needed to be correspondingly more expensive, they turned in healthy, though modest, profits in virtually every year the family ran it; as far as we can discover, anyway. Even so, the occasional year that it did lose money, didn’t bother them much, as they had more than enough family cash to plug any shortfall, which they did and, apparently, quite happily too.’

  She paused briefly as she scanned her notes, then continued. ‘Control, though not ownership, of the theatre, eventually passed to Gerald, Erik’s son and Benjamin’s oldest grandson and also Joseph’s eldest great grandson, on his twenty-first birthday in the late 1940s. He, incidentally, was married to Marian DeLancy, who was some sort of cousin. Anyway, the theatre was still profitable, though at a much lower level than in its heyday as, like many theatres and music halls, it had progressively lost audiences to the cinemas. Gerald did manage to revive its fortunes to some extent, by bringing in different types of acts and continued to keep it in profit, though only marginally, throughout the rest of the forties and right up into the 1960s. He at least managed to save it from the fate of many theatres and cinemas, of being closed down, demolished, or turned into bingo halls.’

  ‘So, after all that dedication, all that hard graft, why did he chuck it all up and run off with this young dancer? If that’s what he did. How’d he meet her, anyway?’ asked Bulmer. ‘Was she local?’

  Cerian shook her head. ‘No, and there was some mystery about her exact origins or even what her full name was. She danced only as Ariana, which, of course, heightened the mystery surrounding her! Later, after the apparent elopement, it became known, it’s unclear how, that she’d come to Estwich from London and her surname was Kujenikov. Using those links we dug further and found quite a bit about her family. They were, still are, come to that, quite prominent in certain London circles, but they were originally Russian, White Russian, who’d managed to get out during the 1917 revolution and then settled in Austria. Her parents had survived the chaos after the second world war and came to England. They were lucky; they were a Cossack family, and we know what happened to them,’ she added.

  Bulmer didn’t, but Calderwood did. It was regarded by many as one of the most shameful British acts at the end of the second world war. Though well aware of what would happen to them when they were returned to Russia and a vengeful Stalin, the British government shipped trainload after trainload back. Despite their frantic requests for asylum, Cossack men, women and children were forcibly repatriated, with the inevitable result that many thousands died later under the harsh persecution of that harshest of tyrants. It was a double betrayal, as many of those forced into trains, often with brutal force, had never been Soviet citizens in the first place.

  ‘Here’s a photo of Gerald when he took over the theatre,’ the young DC continued, passing over copies showing a handsome young couple. ‘The girl by his side is his cousin, Marian, whom he’d married a few months earlier and they had three children. We’ve managed to trace one of them – the elder boy, but yet to track down the younger one and the daughter.’ Cerian paused to looking briefly down at her notes and then continued.

  ‘Not surprisingly, because she was still so young, there’s little about Ariana herself, before she joined The Dolphin. From what we can gather, she was only just seventeen when she first appeared there, some ten months before she and Gerald ran off together; if that’s what they did,’ she added sombrely. She’d yet to see the actual ‘sculpture’ and was not looking forward to the experience. Like them all, when she’d seen the photographs taken earlier, she’d been immediately affected by the figure’s youth and beauty and dreaded their finding out that the sculpted tear-drop was, in fact, the dancer’s coffin.

  ‘Besides the stuff you’ve pulled together with Cerian, have you managed to turn up anything on either or both, after they were thought to have eloped together, John?’ Calderwood asked the other junior officer with them.

  The Harry Potter look-alike, his round face pale and his eyes framed by glasses, looked downcast, as he shook his head. ‘No sir, nothing. It’s early days yet, but so far we’ve turned up blanks on every avenue we’ve so far tried. Other than the very clear notion, held by everyone who knew them at the time, and a number of references in the local paper, that they had run off together, no one seems to know exactly when or to where, or even how.’ Having said what he had to say, the young DC subsided as quickly as he’d began.

  Calderwood nodded. ‘Hopefully, the family may know a lot more when we speak to them.’

  ‘There’s one other thing, sir,’ Cerian said, before he could continue. ‘It seems generally to have been a bit of a rough time for the family. Around three weeks or so before Gerald’s and Ariana’s elopement, if that was what it was, another family member, his nephew, Daniel, ran off with a week’s takings and a chunk of his uncle’s bank account, over 5,000 quid’s worth, apparently. The family tried to hush it up, of course, but word leaked out and it was gossiped about all over the town,’ she finished, closing her notebook.

  ‘OK. You’ve got together a lot to start us off, between you. Good work, in such a short time. We’re stuck for going much further until we know if the figure is only a statue or sculpture of some sort, or, God help her, the poor girl herself. I’ve asked for a priority tag on this one,’ Calderwood said. What he didn’t say was that it was a difficult one to push on. If it was a sculpture they’d have passed over more important cases to be told just that. If it was the girl, she’d been dead fifty years and, though it would be fully investigated, it would, again, be difficult to give a fifty-year-old murder, and, apparently, a one-off, precedence over any present day killing.

  ‘Thanks for all the background you’ve dug out. Other than trying to track down the daughter and other son, hold fire on anything else until we know for sure one way or the other,’ Calderwood said.

  ‘How’s Jack, by the way?’ he asked Cerian, as the two junior officers got up to leave.

  ‘Pretty much as usual, sir, unfortunately,’ she replied, pursing her lips.

  The two senior officers smiled. The diminutive Welsh girl’s first day at the county HQ in the previous year had gone into police lege
nd. She’d been introduced to her new colleagues during a major briefing session involving all the officers on the county force, with distinctly mixed results.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ They’re sending us Welsh dwarfs now,’ murmured the young DS Jack Balatyne, in what he thought was a whisper. Unfortunately it wasn’t. Cerian heard and flashed back her response ‘Pisho bant pen pidyn!’ which, being in Welsh, meant there was a good chance no one understood, Unfortunately, she also gave him the finger, for which no translation was needed.

  ‘Not wise, love. He’s one of your superiors,’ murmured a colleague, helpfully.

  Cerian, despite being appalled at her insubordination, was more incensed at being called ‘love’ and was about to tell him to do something physically impossible, in English this time, when Bob Anderson, the stocky, grey-haired senior officer doing the briefing, called everyone to order. Nothing more was said about the incident. At the end of the briefing every one dispersed, with him asking DS Balatyne to stay behind.

  Later when the office was empty, the young DS came over. ‘I think we need to have a word, don’t you?’

  Cerian, who’d been expecting the rollicking, nodded, miserably. She was just glad that he didn’t speak Welsh.

  He didn’t, but a mate did.

  ‘Piss off, Dickhead,’ he murmured, ‘and the finger – a bit overdoing it, don’t you think? My mate, John Williams, speaks Welsh. We call him Taffy,’ he added; a little unnecessarily she thought, as she gritted her teeth. She knew she’d over-reacted and that she should apologise. Her fiery spirit made her almost choke on the words even as she struggled to articulate them.

  Seeing her struggle, Jack interrupted. ‘There’s no need to apologise,’ he said, though by no means certain the words she was struggling with were an apology rather than more blistering invective. ‘It’s me who should be doing that. I’ve come to apologise, to you,’ he said, quietly.

  Her jaw dropped. Whatever she was expecting, it certainly wasn’t this!

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ she responded formally after a moment. ‘I hadn’t realised Superintendent Anderson had said anything to you.’

  Now it was Jack’s turn to look surprised. ‘Old Bob? Oh, I see! You think he tore me off a strip, you mean? No way!’ he laughed. ‘He thinks all that politically correct stuff’s a load of boll... I mean he comes from an earlier time,’ he amended hastily. ‘It’s just...’ he hesitated, now being the one almost gritting his teeth, ‘just that I was out of place.’

  Stunned, she could only stare at him

  ‘I mean, you are small and you are Welsh. And it’s the sort of ribbing we give each other, but, well, you’re new and it was in front of everyone, so, as I say, I was way out of line,’ he ended quietly. Christ, she’s a looker! he thought. Pity my gob’s cost me the chance of a screw.

  Which, in fact, it had; for three or four days, anyway. Cerian herself had realised that she fancied the big, shambling idiot like mad and was herself cursing her own big mouth. He, with unusual hesitancy, asked her out for a drink when she was next free, which happened to be the very next evening. To ensure he didn’t win too easy a victory, though, she refused to sleep with him for the next four dates. After which, her own self-control was in overload, so she graciously allowed him to seduce her.

  That was some twelve months previously. They’d moved in together after three, and were closer than ever. He’d had some influence on her temper, she little or none on his entirely good-natured, and equally entirely unthinking, political in-correctness. This was despite having a mother easily capable of running her house in tandem with a full-time job and having a husband and three rumbustious sons to control, which, in large measure she did, even after they’d left home.

  The phone on Calderwood’s desk rang just as the young officers left his office. He listened quietly, then hung up with a pleased smile. ‘That was Bill Edwards, from the labs. He’s confirmed they will do the analysis as a priority. Having seen the figure, he agrees that it’s looking too life-like to be shrugged off.’

  ‘Great! How’ll they do it, though?’ queried Bulmer, his round, fair features showing his puzzlement. ‘They can’t bust it open without being sure, can they?’

  ‘No. The risk of it being an actual sculpture is too great. If we broke it open and find it was just that, we’ll have destroyed an artwork of obvious value, but as yet unknown ownership. Fortunately, they’ve decided they can use a very fine drill and bore through into one of the feet from the back, so there’ll be no obvious mark and we can at least discover if the figure is human,’ his superior ended.

  Bulmer nodded. Though any sample they got would be contaminated by whatever the material was from the sheathing, that wouldn’t matter. All they needed at this stage was to know if the figure was human or not. The drill would provide enough of a sample to determine if human DNA was present. If there was, they could break into it and extricate the body, owner or no owner. One way or another, they’d know if they did, in fact, have a murder on their hands within the next day or two.

  As it happened, they didn’t need to wait beyond the next few hours.

  Chapter 7

  Very early the next morning found them both back at the theatre, watching as a small team started to go carefully through the old building. Not yet a full strength murder team, they were nevertheless the core of one should it become necessary. The whole building was, therefore, being treated as a potential crime scene with all the usual protocols being followed. The entire theatre was now brightly lit. Unwilling to risk using the ancient electrics of the building itself, even if they could get them re-connected to the mains, Bulmer had scrounged bright arc lights and a generator from Eddy. New air coming into the building had, to everyone’s relief, started to freshen the atmosphere, clearing it of its old stale and faintly unpleasant smells.

  The figure had been taken down and sent to the County laboratories and the stage curtains, already scrutinised for anything relevant to the happenings of five decades previously, were now being carefully drawn back. With their slow opening and the flare of a number of bright lights behind them, on the stage itself, Calderwood felt a frisson of anticipation, almost expecting dancers to race on from the wings to open yet another successful DeLancy show. Nothing happened, of course, and the opening curtains merely revealed a space entirely empty; empty, perhaps, for the first time in half a century.

  Shaking his head to clear it of the unsettling imagery, Calderwood heard his and Colin’s names being called by one of the temporary SOCO team. He climbed onto the stage and moved behind the blackout curtaining, once used to shield the sides of the stage from the audience, and saw the young PC pointing to a black-painted door set a little way in from the side of the stage.

  ‘And where does it lead us to, I wonder?’ the DI murmured. Turning the rounded knob between his gloved finger and thumb, he carefully opened the door, making to enter the small space – and stopped dead in his tracks.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ murmured Bulmer, appearing behind him and standing on tiptoe to see over his taller superior’s shoulder, and stared, equally transfixed. Though obviously an office, every wall was covered in photographs. Faded and peeling though many were, their subject was still instantly recognisable.

  Each and every one was of the little dancer.

  In some, she was sitting looking out pensively onto the stage. In others, she was smiling at someone just out of shot; in yet others, her smile, heartbreakingly child-like and sweet, beamed straight at the camera, her almond-shaped eyes, trusting and happy. In many more, she was dancing, and in a wide variety of roles, judging by what she was wearing; in one, her vibrant costume suggested that she was dancing a folk dance; in another, she was dressed in the rags of a destitute child, maybe dancing a long-forgotten Cinderella. Most, though, showed her in the costume of classical ballet, the tutu, and her hair in the traditional bun resting at the nape of her long neck. In one she was poised in a perfect arabesque, in another she was en pointe; in yet another, she was ha
lf-lying on the floor, her whole body expressing desolation and loss; all beautiful, all clearly showing both her talent and her innocence.

  Two, however, were quite different.

  She was dressed in the simplest of white shifts, shot through with just a hint of silver and her hair was loose and so long that it reached almost to her waist. Both images had none of the peace or serenity, or indeed, the innocence, of many of the others plastering the walls. In both, the effect was far more sensual, far more intimate. Her eyes were wide open and she was staring into the camera with a defenceless look of pure adoration. They were so intimate that it made both men uncomfortable, almost as though they were intruding into some very private moment; their viewing them suddenly seeming almost a violation.

  It didn’t lessen their unease that both of them had been slashed violently across with two savage, diagonal cuts.

  Chapter 8

  With difficulty, they both tore their eyes away from the two shockingly mutilated photographs and took in the rest of the room. Taking up most of the floor space under one of the walls of photographs was a small wooden desk that, apart from three or four pictures which had fallen down onto it, was remarkably neat. Bulmer’s eye caught something half hidden by two of the larger prints. ‘Well, well,’ he murmured, his interest sharpening, as he moved them carefully aside. Lying now in full view, was an old circular tin of the type once used to hold film. On it, written in large, faded, black capital letters was the single word:

  ARIANA.

  Both officers exchanged a look of excitement. Even the chance that the old tin box actually contained the film that its shape and title implied was enough to add yet another dimension to a case already becoming one of the most intriguing they’d ever handled.