Dance of Death

by Edward Marston

  ‘In the end, I had to send for a locksmith. He’ll be there this afternoon so I’ll go back then. All in all,’ he added, ‘it was rather disappointing. I expected to get some kind of lead.’

  ‘But the cupboard was bare.’

  ‘And I had Nathan Clissold breathing down my neck. He was worse than Chat. The result is that we still have no suspects.’

  ‘Yes, we do,’ said Keedy with a grin. ‘In fact, we have two.’

  ‘Where did they come from?’

  ‘I had a visit from a helpful member of the public – Miss Thompson, though she asked me to call her by her first name.’

  ‘Be careful, Joe. You’ve been warned about that. Keep her at a distance.’

  ‘I will, I promise you.’

  ‘What did she have to say for herself?’

  Keedy gave him a brief account of the conversation with Odele Thompson, omitting any mention of the pleasure he’d taken in her company. He was confident that she might have opened up a productive new avenue in the investigation. Marmion was more sceptical.

  ‘I’m not convinced, Joe.’

  ‘It all sounded very plausible to me.’

  ‘Why kill a man when he could easily have been disabled in some way? The level of violence was quite unnecessary.’

  ‘Both of the men hold grudges against Wilder, apparently.’

  ‘You and I hold grudges against our dear superintendent. Does that mean we feel impelled to stab him repeatedly?’

  ‘I have been tempted, Harv.’

  ‘Seriously, you have to remember the nature of the injuries. They were put there by someone with more than a desire to win a dance competition.’

  ‘It’s the British Championship.’

  ‘I never even knew that such a thing exists.’

  ‘According to Odele – Miss Thompson, that is – dancers would kill to win it.’

  ‘She was speaking metaphorically.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Keedy. ‘These men are worth talking to, especially Allan Redmond. He and Miss Thompson obviously knew each other at one time and she regrets it.’

  ‘So she’s getting her own back by naming him as a murder suspect.’

  ‘There’s more to it than that.’

  Marmion sat back in his chair and thought about the new development. It aroused his curiosity more than his suspicion. Talking to the two men would at least give them insight into the world of dance and that would be helpful.

  ‘Very well,’ he decided. ‘Speak to them.’

  ‘Who will man the barricades here?’

  ‘One of our lads can do that. They’d much rather be sitting in here, meeting exotic dancers like Miss Thompson – Odele to you – than pounding the pavements and knocking on doors. You talk to Redmond and this other chap. What’s his name?’

  ‘Tom Atterbury.’

  ‘See if there’s any substance in what she told you.’

  ‘Meanwhile,’ said Keedy, ‘you could do something for me.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘When you go back to Wilder’s house this afternoon, mention those two names to his wife. She’s bound to know them. I’d be interested in her reaction.’

  ‘Prepare to be disappointed.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Mrs Wilder has had time to absorb the shock of her husband’s death by now. If she thought for one moment that Redmond or Atterbury had anything to do with it, don’t you think she’d have been urging us to go after them? I’m sorry, Joe,’ he went on. ‘When two suspects pop up out of nowhere, then it’s usually too good to be true. I fancy that Odele may be leading you up the garden path.’

  Keedy came dangerously close to blushing.

  Seated on the sofa, Catherine Wilder looked down the list of things that had to be done in preparation for the funeral. It had been prepared by her brother and typed out carefully by his secretary. Since her husband had died an unnatural death, there would be a post-mortem and an inquest. She had no idea when the body would be released to her. Meanwhile, there were lots of people who had to be informed of the tragedy. Some might find out about it reading the newspapers, but others would not. Catherine and her brother had never been close but she valued his presence now, even though he’d disapproved of her marriage to Wilder.

  He watched her intently and saw more resignation in her face than evidence of bereavement. She had always been a strong-willed woman with a tendency to ignore the advice of others. Nathan Clissold was pleased that she was now in a position where she was prepared to rely on his counsel.

  ‘What did you think of Inspector Marmion?’ he asked.

  ‘He seems very competent.’

  ‘It’s not his competence that’s in question, Catherine. I took exception to his manner. He came within inches of being sarcastic.’

  ‘Did you provoke him in some way?’

  ‘Of course I didn’t. You know better than to ask such a thing.’ He sat forward in his armchair, corrugating his jacket and waistcoat. ‘Why didn’t Simon give you the combination to that safe?’

  ‘It was his. Why would I need to look in it?’

  ‘Didn’t you keep your jewellery in there?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I have an even larger safe in the bedroom. It needs a key as well as a combination. Simon wasn’t able to unlock it. We guarded our privacy, you see.’

  ‘I find that strange in a married couple who always showed a front of mutual dependence to the general public. What they saw were two people who appeared to live in each other’s pockets.’

  ‘They saw what we wanted them to see, Nathan.’

  ‘You mean that you were both playing a part?’

  ‘Isn’t that what we all do to some extent?’

  ‘Not in my case,’ he said, frostily. ‘I don’t take on any role. I am exactly what you see – a highly successful solicitor with a wonderful wife and family.’

  ‘Children were out of the question for us. Dancing always came first.’

  ‘Those days are past,’ he said.

  There was a long silence until she was nudged by a memory.

  ‘I had a visitor last night,’ she said.

  ‘Was it that lady from next-door?’

  ‘No, Grace had already given me far too much of her time. I sent her home. To be honest, her sympathy was a trifle oppressive.’

  ‘So who was this visitor?’

  ‘It was Audrey Pattinson, our accompanist. I was just about to go to bed when she turned up.’

  ‘What did she want?’

  ‘Comfort, that’s all. She just wanted to be with someone.’

  ‘Isn’t she married?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Her husband is a retired estate agent. After a career in the army, he turned his hand to selling property.’

  ‘Why couldn’t he provide the comfort?’

  ‘Martin Pattinson is not that kind of husband, Nathan. As a matter of fact, he wasn’t even there. It was his night for going to his club. He doesn’t come back until after midnight, apparently.’

  ‘He left his wife alone when she was in need of sympathy?’

  ‘That’s what she said.’

  Martin Pattinson returned to find that the house was empty. Since his wife had not spoken about going out that morning, he wondered where she was. It did not take him long to work out where she might be. As a result, he lifted the lid of the piano stool and saw that several sheets of music were missing. It was decisive proof. Pattinson went straight out and walked the short distance to the dance studio. The door was closed but unlocked. As he eased it open, he could hear the sound of the piano playing a slow waltz. At the far end of the hall, filling it with lilting music, was his wife, seated at the piano up on the stage. Oblivious to the fact that he was there, she played beautifully and imagined couples circling the floor at a dance. She took immense pleasure from her work, striking the keys hard to produce more volume than she usually achieved. Tears were streaming down her face as she played a melodious requiem for a lost friend. When she finish
ed the waltz, she needed a handkerchief to dab at her face. Only then did she become aware of her husband’s presence.

  He strolled meaningfully down the hall.

  ‘You never told me that you were coming here,’ he said, quietly.

  ‘I felt the need to play the piano, Martin.’

  ‘You could have done that at home on a much better instrument.’

  ‘It’s not the same.’

  ‘I think you should finish now.’

  Audrey was given no choice in the matter. With great reluctance, she gathered up the music she’d brought and put it into her satchel. After closing the lid of the piano, she caressed it with her hand as if bidding farewell to a favourite pet. When she came down the steps from the stage, Pattinson was waiting for her with hand outstretched.

  ‘I’ll have the key, please,’ he said. ‘You won’t be coming here again.’

  Mavis Tandy never tired of asking questions and Paul Marmion never tired of answering them. Though they were ostensibly talking about Colin Fryatt, they were also getting to know each other. Paul was finding out things about her that his friend had not bothered to tell him. A vicar’s daughter, she’d had a better schooling than Paul and spoke with an educated voice. When she first met Fryatt, Mavis had only been helping out in a tea shop because a friend who normally worked there had been taken ill. Since she’d got to know a soldier, she’d felt an even stronger urge to go to the front as a nurse. Hoping it would bring her closer to him, Fryatt had encouraged her to go to France.

  She kept repeating one question as if she’d forgotten his answer to it.

  ‘Did Colin ever talk about me?’

  ‘He never stopped, Mavis.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said that you meant everything to him.’ Her face lit up. ‘In fact, he said it so often that some of the other lads teased him.’

  ‘Did you tell him about your girlfriend, Paul?’

  ‘Ah, well …’

  She was immediately apologetic. ‘Oh, have I said the wrong thing? I’m sorry. I thought that every soldier had someone back home. That’s what Colin told me, anyway. Until he met me, he claimed he was the odd man out.’

  ‘Yes, he was.’

  ‘So …’

  If their friendship was going to develop into something more serious, Paul decided that he had to let her know that he was available. He therefore admitted that he’d had a girlfriend when he went off to war but that she was terrified that he would either die or come home with horrific wounds. Unable to cope with the prospect, she’d stopped writing to him. When he came home on leave, she told him that they were better apart. The picture he painted was very different from the truth. In fact, it was he who’d driven away a loyal, loving young woman by his fits of anger, his drinking and the coarse language he’d picked up in the trenches.

  ‘That’s dreadful, Paul. She should have stood by you.’

  ‘I was banking on that, but it never happened.’

  ‘Are you still in touch with her?’

  ‘No, Mavis, we’ve drifted apart completely.’

  ‘So you’re on your own.’

  ‘I can manage.’

  ‘It’s so unfair to let you down like that.’

  ‘I’m not complaining. The past is past.’

  He smiled bravely in the hope that she would say something affectionate to him. In the event, there was a long silence. A waitress came to clear away the things on their table in order to remind them how long they’d been sitting there over a pot of tea and a couple of scones. Minutes later, Mavis revived the conversation.

  ‘Did Colin ever talk about me?’

  It took the locksmith a considerable time to open the safe in the study but he eventually managed it. Marmion thanked him and moved forward to inspect the contents. As before, he was accompanied by Nathan Clissold, who peered over his shoulder as if expecting some dark secret to emerge. In the event, the only surprise was that a substantial amount of cash had built up in the safe. For the rest, they found Simon Wilder’s will and a series of legal documents. While Clissold went through the latter, Marmion counted the money then called Catherine into the study.

  ‘There are hundreds of pounds here, Mrs Wilder.’

  She was taken aback. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Count it for yourself, if you wish.’

  ‘No, no, I’ll take your word for it, Inspector.’

  ‘You obviously didn’t anticipate an amount as large as this.’

  ‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘Since you have the appointments book, you can see that money came in on a daily basis. I checked it carefully. Simon always kept it in his safe until the end of the week then took it to the bank.’

  ‘How do you explain the fact that so much money is still here?’

  ‘To be honest, I’m at a loss to do so.’

  ‘Did he have another source of income?’ asked her brother.

  ‘No, he didn’t, Nathan.’

  ‘Then he was obviously not banking the income from the dance studio.’

  ‘But he was,’ she insisted, ‘because he gave me the bank statements at the end of each month to file away.’ She turned to Marmion. ‘In case you don’t know, Inspector, the dance studio is in my name. When Simon and I first married, he had some difficulty raising a loan to buy the hall. I stepped in to provide the funding.’

  ‘My advice was that she shouldn’t risk her own money,’ said Clissold, firmly. ‘I couldn’t see that the studio was commercially viable. As it happens, I was wrong about that and I admit it freely. It actually flourished. On one thing, however, I was right,’ he continued. ‘I urged Catherine to retain sole ownership of the place. That annoyed Simon intensely but it was the sensible thing to do. In the event of a divorce, I wanted Catherine to have a property that was hers by right.’

  ‘I never even considered the possibility of divorce,’ she protested.

  ‘I did.’

  ‘That was an irrelevance to me, Nathan. I just wanted what I actually paid for.’

  As the two of them bickered away for a couple of minutes, Marmion could see that there were similarities between them, after all. Both had independent wealth and a determination to safeguard it. Each of them was upset to discover that Wilder had an apparent source of income about which they knew nothing. Clissold chided his sister for not being vigilant enough and she countered by saying that he was happy to keep his own wife in the dark about family financial affairs.

  Marmion cut the argument short by changing the subject completely.

  ‘I’m sorry to interrupt,’ he said, ‘but I have a question for Mrs Wilder.’

  ‘My apologies, Inspector,’ she returned. ‘Our differences of opinion should have been kept to ourselves.’

  ‘I’ll leave you alone,’ said Clissold, peevishly.

  Still seething about the reference to his wife, he went out of the room.

  ‘You must excuse my brother,’ she said. ‘He hates to be challenged. More to the point, he and Simon did not see eye to eye. It caused … complications. However,’ she went on, ‘you said that you have a question for me.’

  ‘What can you tell me about a man named Allan Redmond?’

  She blinked in surprise. ‘Why do you ask that?’

  ‘You do know him, I assume.’

  ‘Everyone in the dance world knows Allan. He’s a brilliant dancer.’

  ‘And I believe he’s a leading contender in the British Dance Championships.’

  ‘He’s a leading contender in any competition.’

  ‘So he and your husband were fierce rivals.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, shaking her head, ‘I can see what you’re getting at and you’re quite wrong, Inspector. Allan Redmond is a ferocious competitor but he’d never stoop to murder.’

  ‘I gather that he’s unlikely to mourn Mr Wilder’s death.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘Did they ever lock horns?’

  ‘They did so many times. They were natural adversari
es. You must know what it’s like to have an adversary, Inspector.’

  Marmion thought of Claude Chatfield. ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘It’s just a fact of life. You can forget about Allan Redmond.’

  ‘We’ll have a word with him, that’s all.’

  ‘Then you’ll be wasting your time.’

  ‘What about Tom Atterbury?’

  Catherine tensed. ‘I never thought of him,’ she said. ‘Now that I do, I can see that he would be well worth looking at closely. He’s the person to go after, Inspector. Tom Atterbury is a sly, calculating man. More to the point, he has a few scores to settle with Simon – and he’s quite capable of doing it in a dark alley.’

  Since the house was much closer to Chingford than the one in which Allan Redmond lived, Keedy decided to interview Tom Atterbury first. When he set out from the police station, he had no idea what to expect but he was quite undaunted by Marmion’s opinion that he was being misled by Odele Thompson. He had more faith in her instincts. Atterbury, he discovered, lived in a large but crumbling house in Islington, overlooking Regent’s Canal. The property had been divided up into flats and Atterbury occupied the ground floor. The rooms were spacious and filled with tasteful decoration. There was a piano in the bay window. Arranged on top of it was an array of silver cups and other trophies from dance contests.

  Atterbury was a tall, lean, slightly sinister individual in his early forties with prominent cheekbones and watchful eyes. When Keedy explained the reason for his visit, the other man pretended that he was hearing the news for the first time.

  ‘Simon was murdered?’ he gasped. ‘That’s incredible.’

  ‘I assumed that you’d already know, sir.’

  ‘How could I, Sergeant? I rarely read the newspapers. They’re always full of such dispiriting news. When and where did it happen?’

  ‘Mr Wilder was stabbed to death two nights ago in Chingford.’

  ‘Poor Catherine – I must write to express my condolences.’

  ‘How well do you know Mrs Wilder?’

  ‘I admire her as a dancer but we were never really on visiting terms.’

  Keedy saw an opportunity to learn something about Odele Thompson.

  ‘How did she compare to Mr Wilder’s other dancing partner?’