Death at the Dance: An addictive historical cozy mystery (A Lady Eleanor Swift Mystery Book 2)

by Verity Bright

  Eleanor stiffened. ‘His… his plane?’

  Johnny nodded. ‘I thought the police said the fool had gone and hidden the loot in his plane.’ A shadow of doubt passed over his face. ‘Maybe I was wrong.’

  Think, Ellie! She forced herself to sit back. She took a sip of her drink, her mind whirling. She nodded at his empty glass. ‘You might need another.’

  He stood up. ‘You?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’m fine, thanks.’

  He turned to the bar, mixed himself another drink and sat down. The sound of slow clapping interrupted them. They both looked up to see Coco descending the spiral staircase.

  ‘Congratulations, Eleanor. You’re really quite the master at this.’

  ‘Coco!’ Johnny rose and looked between the two women.

  Eleanor stared at Coco, her mind now racing even faster. Somehow she kept her voice level. ‘Gosh, Coco, I didn’t have you pegged as one of those peculiar girls who likes to spy on others.’

  Coco laughed drily. ‘No, I guess you didn’t. That’s because you might be able to fool a man, especially one with an over-inflated libido.’ She shot Johnny a hard look. ‘But you can’t fool me. You’re obviously used to using your charms to get what you want. Maybe that’s how you made it round the world, batting your lashes and flashing your thighs?’

  Eleanor smiled, desperately improvising, trying to gain time. ‘Whatever it takes, Coco. You’d understand that, I’m sure.’

  ‘Oh yes. And you’ll understand this then.’ Coco pulled a gun from beneath the folds of her dress. Eleanor swallowed hard as Johnny joined Coco’s side.

  ‘So sorry, Eleanor old thing,’ Johnny said. ‘But as you can see, I’m already taken.’ He slung his arm around Coco’s shoulder. ‘Shame though, it would have been awfully fun to compare notes on the two of you.’

  Coco kept the gun trained on Eleanor. ‘You see, there’re some advantages to everyone thinking you’re just a vacuous bright young thing, good for nothing but partying.’

  Johnny nodded. ‘In reality, my dear Eleanor, Coco’s quite the brains. She’s the mastermind behind the whole operation. I’m simply the handsome executor of her daring and delicious plans.’

  Coco waved the gun at Eleanor. ‘Of which, this is by far the most delicious. Lancelot will swing for all our previous little acts of mischief and we’ll simply change our “modus operandi”, as your dreary butler would no doubt call it, and carry on. It will take the police years to connect the two sets of thefts, if they ever do, and realise they hung poor old Lancelot by mistake. Oh, Eleanor, we owe you a huge thank you.’

  Eleanor’s voice was cool. ‘For what?’

  Coco laughed. ‘Don’t be so modest. You made the whole thing not only possible, but downright child’s play. You antagonised that handsome detective so much that he didn’t believe a word you said. He even threatened to arrest you. Oh, you’re too much.’

  Eleanor cast her eyes down, muttering, ‘Yes, I suppose I did.’

  ‘And all your interfering has done is help put a noose around your lover boy’s neck. A frightful bish, wouldn’t you say?’

  Eleanor looked up, her eyes glinting. ‘So tell me, what’s your terrible habit, that you need so much more money than your doting parents already throw at you? What happened to the sweet girl with a bright future?’

  Coco grimaced. ‘Oh don’t try and play the psychological game with me, I’m not Johnny.’

  At his confused look, she shook her head. ‘She tricked you into revealing that you knew where the jewels had been found.’

  Johnny’s face lit up in understanding. ‘Well, I’ll be blowed!’ He stared at Eleanor. ‘So… so no one knew?’

  Eleanor shrugged. ‘The police never told anyone. I only knew because I have a… source who passed the information on. But I was sure it wasn’t you…’

  ‘And only the thief and killer would have known.’ Johnny bowed to Eleanor. ‘Very impressive.’ He looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘I get it… you’d narrowed the jewel thief and murderer down to Lucas or me, so you worked out all you needed to do was find out which of us knew about the jewels being planted in Lancelot’s plane.’ He whistled softly. ‘Impressive.’

  Eleanor said nothing. It would have been impressive if that had been the case. As it was, she’d simply got the wrong man.

  ‘Impressive?’ Coco held her arm straighter as she trained the gun on Eleanor’s forehead. ‘I think the hole in her skull the bullet from this Webley Revolver is going to make will be a lot more impressive.’

  Eleanor swallowed hard. She noted that her hands were shaking. Forcing herself to remain sitting she tried to keep Coco talking.

  ‘So why come to me and ask for my help when it seemed you’d got away with everything?’

  Coco laughed. ‘So you didn’t suspect me, of course. I knew you’d stick your nose in to try and save your precious Lancelot. And because you trusted me, I was able to find out what you knew.’

  ‘So why did you need to send Johnny to follow me after we met at the Blind Pig? It was you Johnny, wasn’t it?’

  Johnny nodded. ‘Not really my type of thing, I’m more of a slow shoe shuffle type of guy.’

  Coco grimaced. ‘You were useless, Johnny. She rumbled someone was following her straight away.’ She turned back to Eleanor. ‘I wanted to keep tabs on you and make sure you weren’t smarter than we thought. Unnecessary really, as you obviously weren’t.’

  Johnny laughed. ‘Well, certainly Lancelot wasn’t. The minute we found out he’d escaped we knew he’d try and rendezvous with you, Eleanor, and then skip the country. By plane, of course.’

  Coco nodded. ‘Even he wasn’t stupid enough to go near his own plane because the police would have been all over it.’

  Johnny nodded back. ‘Which meant he needed another. So, I just rang round. There’s only a couple of chaps who have that sort of pocket money within a reasonable distance of here. And bingo! The Right Honourable Hugo Fotherington told me he was lending Lancelot his plane and I told him I was helping Lancelot escape, so he told me where the plane was.’

  Eleanor frowned. ‘But why set the barn on fire? Why not let Lancelot go? His fleeing would have made him look doubly guilty.’

  Coco yawned. ‘Maybe, but I hate loose ends. And besides, Lancelot wasn’t the threat. You were.’

  Eleanor flinched.

  Coco continued. ‘You just don’t know when to stop, do you? You’d have persuaded him to return at some point with some stupid plan to prove his innocence and we couldn’t have that, could we?’

  Eleanor shook her head. ‘But why, Coco? Why all this stealing in the first place?’

  Coco laughed drily. ‘You disappoint me, Lady Swift. You think you’re the embodiment of the modern woman, but frankly you’re a total parody. I, on the other hand, am a truly liberated woman. Why should I rely on my parents for money, when I can go and get my own?’

  ‘By stealing other people’s jewels?’

  Coco shrugged. ‘Why not? Stealing from the privileged classes isn’t stealing. Most of them have so many trinkets that they don’t even notice when one or two go missing.’ She cocked her head on one side. ‘You know, your morals are as quaint and outdated as your fashion sense.’

  Eleanor shrugged back. ‘I quite like some old-fashioned values… especially ones about not committing murder.’

  Coco rolled her eyes. ‘Really, you are so Victorian. That old fool, the colonel, brought it on himself. Meddling in stuff that had nothing to do with him. He saw himself as some kind of vigilante hero, the idiot. He was simply a casualty of war.’

  The hairs on the back of Eleanor’s neck stood up. ‘I wasn’t talking about the colonel. I meant Lancelot. If he… hangs, you’ll be as responsible for his death as much as if you’d put the rope round his neck yourself.’

  Coco’s eyes darkened. ‘I wish I was the one putting the rope round his neck! Who the hell does he think he is? He broke Millie’s heart when he rejected her.’

&
nbsp; A wave of anger washed over Eleanor. ‘You’re wrong, Coco. You can’t break something that’s not there.’

  Coco stepped towards her, fury on her face.

  Well done, Ellie, she’s only the one with the gun! She held Coco’s gaze, finally understanding. ‘So this whole thing really had nothing to do with stealing jewels and everything to do with getting revenge on Lancelot?’

  Johnny nodded. ‘Quite right. The original plan was just to have Lancelot arrested for stealing his mother’s necklace. Of course, we soon worked out that that plan wouldn’t work as his doting parents would simply refuse to press charges.’

  Eleanor frowned. ‘So you came up with the idea of planting the jewels in Lancelot’s plane?’

  Johnny nodded. ‘Yes, but Coco decided it wasn’t enough to have poor Lancelot done for something as minor as theft, even on a grand scale.’

  Coco kept her eyes, and gun, fixed on Eleanor. ‘And then fate played into our hands…’

  Johnny lit two cigarettes and passed one to Coco. ‘The colonel suspected that someone in our group was the jewel thief. The old fool started making a nuisance of himself. It was only a matter of time before he went to the police.’

  Coco smiled sweetly at Eleanor. ‘We knew that he would be at the ball, so it was the perfect opportunity to get rid of the interfering old fool and pin the crime on you know who.’

  Johnny took a long drag on his cigarette. ‘It was easy to set Lancelot up as the fall guy, he was made for the job. Only trouble was’ – he took another drag – ‘the plan seemed dead in the water when Lancelot got cold feet after hearing the police would be there.’

  Coco interrupted. ‘Or it would have been if Lancelot wasn’t as gullible a fool as the colonel. I told Johnny to wait until he was alone with Lance, then offer to create a diversion to distract the police so Lancelot could steal the jewels safely.’

  Eleanor frowned. ‘But you didn’t create a diversion, did you Johnny? I did. You lured the colonel into the upstairs study after stealing the jewels. Then you bashed him on the head with a candlestick.’

  Johnny chuckled. ‘I couldn’t believe our luck when I heard Lancelot had picked the thing up.’

  Eleanor swallowed her anger again, forcing herself to keep calm. ‘And the clever part was winding the colonel’s broken wristwatch forward, what, fifteen minutes?’

  Johnny grinned. ‘Ten, old girl, couldn’t afford to leave the old duffer’s body lying around too long. Too much chance of someone else like you stumbling across it.’

  Eleanor smiled grimly. ‘True. And after he was arrested, one of you planted Lady Fenwick-Langham’s jewels in Lancelot’s plane.’

  Coco applauded, even more slowly this time. ‘You’ve got it all worked out. Such a shame it won’t do you any good.’

  Eleanor held Coco’s gaze. ‘And you’ll sleep tonight, will you, knowing you put a bullet in my brain?’

  ‘Perfectly.’ Coco licked her lips and raised the gun to Eleanor’s head.

  ‘Coco, we don’t have time,’ Johnny said. ‘We’ve only got a few minutes before it takes effect.’

  Coco shrugged. ‘If you’re a good girl, Lady Swift, it won’t come down to a bullet. Johnny is a stickler for his pad being just so and bloody bits of Eleanor all over the soft furnishings would spoil the refined ambience, wouldn’t you say?’

  Eleanor frowned. ‘So how are you going to kill me? A fatal blow to the head like the colonel?’

  Johnny smirked. ‘No, that was altogether too boorish for my liking. I am, as you so shrewdly noticed, far more sophisticated than that as a rule.’

  Her eyes shot to her glass. ‘A few minutes? You’ve… you’ve spiked my drink, just like poor old Albie!’

  Johnny tutted. ‘Poor old Albie? He brought it on himself. He really shouldn’t have tried to blackmail us. All his life he was out of his depth, socially, criminally and’ – he laughed – ‘literally, in the canal.’

  Eleanor shook her head. ‘So Millie was telling the truth when she said she overheard Albie trying to blackmail you?’

  Coco winked at Eleanor. ‘Yes. And now, angel face, it’s time to go to heaven.’

  ‘What have you given me?’ Eleanor’s heart was pounding.

  ‘Phenobarbital,’ Coco said. ‘I can see the headline: Lady Swift’s tragic suicide over inability to save her lover from the gallows.’

  Eleanor was aware of Johnny having moved round behind her. He yanked her arms down and bound her hands behind her back. She went limp as Johnny tied her hands, making sure she kept her hands as far apart as possible. ‘Whoa, Eleanor, old girl! You really can’t hold your drugs, can you?’ He swung her up over one shoulder, her head lolling against his back.

  She heard Coco’s voice. ‘Right, it’s all clear out by the car. Shove her in the back seat. And get a move on.’

  The back of the car felt icy and damp. Coco shuffled in next to her, bracing herself against the passenger seat, the gun still held tightly in her hand. Johnny slammed the door and roared the engine into life. Unable to steady herself, Eleanor’s head hit the front seat as the car lurched forward. The car lurched again as Johnny changed gear, pushing her back into the rear seat. The car’s tyres sprayed gravel as it barrelled towards the gates.

  Coco was leaning forward, over the front seat, talking to Johnny. Seizing her chance, in one fluid motion Eleanor pulled her knees up to her chest, slid her bound hands under herself and over her feet. With a deft flick of the rope, she whipped it round Johnny’s neck, pulling him back against the front seat. Instinctively he let go of the wheel with both hands and grabbed the rope. Before Coco could react, the car swerved violently, knocking her away from Eleanor and into the door. Looking ahead, Eleanor quickly jerked the rope off Johnny’s neck. Released, he swore and reached for the wheel. Too late to stop the car ploughing into the corner of the gatehouse and coming to a sickening stop.

  The crash had lifted the front wheels off the road and caved in the bonnet. Johnny was slumped unconscious over the steering wheel, the windscreen cracked and bloody. Coco, swearing violently, was already half out of the car.

  But Eleanor was quicker. Catching Coco’s trailing leg with the rope, she sent her sprawling onto the gravel drive, the gun flying from her hand. Eleanor was right behind her. By the time Coco had struggled to her feet, knees bleeding, Eleanor had kicked the gun out of her reach. Coco glared at Eleanor, disbelief in her eyes. ‘But, you—’

  Eleanor smiled pityingly and shook her head. ‘Did you really think I’d drink anything put in front of me? How many times do you think people have tried to spike my drink? Really!’

  With a howl of pure hatred, Coco lunged at Eleanor. Eleanor easily sidestepped her, revealing an ornamental pond, which Coco fell headlong into. She emerged a few seconds later, spitting water, weed plastered over her face and clothes. She lost her footing on the algae covered bottom. As she disappeared under the water again, a voice shouted out, ‘I say!’

  Blocking the gates was the Rolls, Clifford sitting impassively at the wheel, Lancelot standing behind the open passenger door, shouldering an enormous elephant gun. ‘This thing is dashedly heavy you know, I think I’ve lost all feeling in my arms!’

  Eleanor stared for a moment and then a smile spread across her face. Clifford and Lancelot were supposed to be chasing down Lucas while she warned Johnny. Clifford had obviously worked out after they’d dropped her off that they’d got the wrong man and dashed back.

  She called out, ‘I don’t think we’ll be needing it just now, thanks, but maybe keep it handy.’ She indicated Coco, who had given up trying to stand and was crawling up the opposite bank onto the lawn. ‘In case she has any more fight left in her.’

  Thirty-Three

  Eleanor stared out of the window of the Rolls, surprised at how light-hearted she felt as she lifted the veil from her face.

  ‘Clifford, I’ve never been to such an uplifting service. What a wonderful celebration of a life that was.’

  ‘Indeed, my lady
. Your presence was greatly appreciated.’

  ‘What? Me? But I only said a few words.’

  ‘The perfect words. Mr Appleby’s parents were greatly moved by your reading of his poem.’

  ‘A wonderful poem, and turn out too. I believe the families he tutored were all there.’

  ‘Plus several childhood friends and two of his professors from Oxford, my lady.’

  ‘How strange that we form an image of someone in the narrow snippet of life we meet them in. Albie was obviously much loved in his own world.’ She tickled Gladstone’s ears as he sprawled half on her lap and half in the footwell. ‘The colonel’s funeral was also very uplifting. I was really glad for the chance to hear all the good things people said about him, especially Lord Langham, as I never really got to see the colonel’s better side. However, that’s enough funerals for me for a while.’ In between trying to avoid Gladstone’s many slobbery kisses, she looked around at the passing scenery. ‘It really is beautiful here, Clifford, but you know I was born without any patience at all. I’m desperate to know where we are going.’

  ‘Not going, my lady.’ Clifford swung the Rolls to the right and turned down a neatly gravelled track, lined with horse chestnut trees in full bloom. ‘Arrived.’

  ‘There she is!’ Lord Langham’s hearty voice boomed across a swathe of immaculate grass that ran up to the side of an ornamental lake. On the central island stood a magnificent white stone folly, its six central columns supporting an ornate domed roof. Lady Langham gave an enthusiastic wave as Eleanor stepped from the Rolls.

  Before Eleanor could speak, Lady Langham engulfed her in a loving hug. Lord Langham stood behind his wife, patting Eleanor’s shoulders. Finally, stepping back, Lady Langham clutched her handkerchief to her chest. ‘My dear, dear girl, we haven’t had a chance, what with Lancelot coming home and all these funerals to attend, to really thank you for saving our boy! We will always be in your debt.’

  Eleanor felt quite overwhelmed. ‘Well, with Clifford’s help. And yours, of course. Speaking of Clifford.’ She spun round. ‘Ah, there you are.’