Dandy Gilver and the Unpleasantness in the Ballroom

by Catriona McPherson

  A memory was bubbling up inside me of sitting in the library at home leafing through a book, while Donald and Teddy played draughts with Hugh’s chess set. Hugh thoroughly disapproves, for when Teddy was tiny he had once snapped off the ivory spear of one of the knights and it had to be sent to London to be mended. On the day I was remembering, though, I wanted them quietly occupied, so engrossed that they would not come to pester me and see what I was seeing, which was the pictorial section of Gray’s Anatomy, dreadful enough to make me light-headed and sure to terrify them, unless it riveted them as did dead animals and skinned orphan lambs and every other grisly truth about life.

  In my memory, I was staring at a page which alone of all the black and white photographs in the book had been tinted, like the pictures of Tweetie and Beryl in the windows downstairs. ‘The effects perdure for up to an hour after death,’ I had read, ‘before slowly fading.’

  ‘It’s cyanide,’ I said to Alec over Roly’s body.

  Tweetie shrieked and clapped both her hands to her face in the same gesture she had used the first time we had met her.

  ‘She killed him!’ she said. ‘Beryl killed him! And she got away. Bert? Bert?’

  Bert and Lorrison came pounding back through the office passage doorway.

  ‘Is Beryl in here?’ Bert said. ‘She’s disappeared.’

  ‘I’ll just bet she has,’ said Tweetie. ‘She’s done it again. She’s killed Roly and run away.’

  20

  It made no sense but I would have sworn that Tweetie’s ringing accusation caused more of a stir in that crowded room than had the moment of Roland’s death itself. All eyes were fixed on the ringleader of the three policemen, all breaths held. He frowned, pulled at the ends of his moustache and then glowered around at everyone.

  ‘Beryl Bonnar?’ he said. ‘You’re seriously telling me that Beryl Bonnar did this?’

  No one spoke. It seemed possible that no one would ever speak again and so I cleared my throat and began.

  ‘I wouldn’t jump to conclusions,’ I said. ‘But it certainly doesn’t look good. If she really didn’t ring you then she must have had some other reason to flee.’ I was struck by the curious stillness that crept over the audience as I spoke. Hardly any of them were looking at me or at Alec and Roly, even at Tweetie who was putting on such a show. They were all looking down into their laps, like schoolchildren avoiding a scolding. It was Grant’s eye I caught as I cast mine around the room and when I did she gave a tiny, almost imperceptible shake of her head.

  ‘Right,’ said a policeman. They were all three of them constables as far as I could tell from their uniforms but he was definitely the boss. ‘You all in the seats can go. Form an orderly queue and give your names and addresses to Constable Watson on your way out the door. Findlay? Go into the office there and ring the sergeant. We need a mortuary van and maybe an inspector.’ The spectators nearest the door immediately began to shuffle out of their seats towards the main doors. ‘You lot,’ he went on, looking at the dancers still marooned on the floor in singles and pairs. ‘You’ll have to wait, but go and put some different clothes on, will you?’

  ‘Er,’ said Alec. ‘Constable? I wonder if that’s a good idea. The cloakroom is surely where the poison was given, you know. I wonder if perhaps we should all stay out of there until after it’s been examined. Perhaps the inspector would—’

  I had seen it before and could not mistake the signs of it happening again. The policeman drew himself up and stared Alec into silence.

  ‘And who might you be?’ he said.

  ‘Alec Osborne,’ said Alec, standing and stepping over to shake hands. He spoke softly, hoping to keep his words from the ears of the spectators who were passing close to him on their way to the end of the queue. ‘I’m a private detective, working in association with Mrs Gilver here. And Miss Grant and Mr Barrow are our assistants. We have a great deal to tell you.’

  ‘Private detectives, eh?’ said the policeman. ‘And no doubt you think we can’t get by without your help. I’ve met your sort before.’

  Alec thought very hard before he spoke again, searching for a way to impart the deluge of information we held without causing a loss of face which would set the policeman against him and us for ever. He made a valiant effort and failed.

  ‘Shall we just wait with the dancers until the inspector gets here?’ he said, as meekly as anyone could say anything.

  ‘Oho!’ said the constable. ‘You want to go over my head, eh? Straight to the inspector? Sure you wouldn’t rather speak to the Chief Constable?’

  Alec gaped. ‘I had no intent—’

  ‘Leave your names and addresses with Watson like the others and get on your way,’ he said, with a dismissive flick of his wrist.

  ‘But, sir,’ I protested since we appeared to have nothing to lose, ‘we have a great many very important clues. Surely we should tell you. There’s been a campaign of threats and it’s not the first time.’

  The look that ricocheted back and forth between the two policemen who heard this reminded me of nothing so much as the crazed flight of a bluebottle stuck inside a jar. Neither of the men said anything.

  ‘And I think I have some new evidence to share,’ said Grant, stepping forward rather awkwardly. I wondered if some part of the foundation of her extraordinary frock had let her down and she was worried about the whole thing falling to the floor.

  ‘You can share it when we get as far as interviewing you,’ said the policeman. ‘It might be later today and it might not be till tomorrow.’

  There was simply no talking to the man. All four of us together realised as much and decided to take him at his word and reap the benefit. We were about to get out of the ballroom with a chance to leap straight into solving a murder case instead of sitting around while the trails went cold and the perpetrator got away.

  ‘Very well,’ I said. I turned to Tweetie. ‘Miss Stott, you can’t drive in such a state of shock. When you are released, please telephone home and we shall come back and fetch you. Meanwhile we shall talk to your parents and let them know you are well, in case they see a line in the late edition before your return.’

  Grant limped off to the cloakroom and returned, still in the extraordinary frock, but walking normally again and carrying her little case of outdoor clothes. Barrow too joined us in his tails, looking even more dashing with his white tie undone and his collar stud open, like a gigolo after hours at a casino. I could see a few of the dance enthusiasts giving him an appreciative eye as we passed them but he affected indifference.

  ‘Idiots,’ Alec muttered, as we descended the stairs to the street. ‘Of all the putty-headed nincompoops. You just handed them a cause of death apart from anything else.’

  ‘I rather think the police surgeon would have done that anyway as soon as he took a squint at the corpse,’ I said. ‘Cyanide. He must have drunk coffee, mustn’t he? It’s too bitter to pass in a cup of tea or chocolate. Barrow? Did anyone hand a flask of coffee around in the men’s cloakroom before the start of the show?’

  ‘Not that I can think of,’ Barrow said. ‘There were bottles of beer and Alonzo had a flask of whisky but he didn’t share it that I saw.’

  ‘And I don’t suppose there were any deliveries,’ Alec said. ‘Chocolates or what have you?’

  ‘Hardly, darling,’ I said. ‘It’s not Covent Garden, with presents in the dressing room. What are you thinking?’

  ‘How about visitors?’ said Alec. ‘Any young men with no business there who dropped in anyway?’

  I stopped dead on the stairs, causing a pair of women to walk into the back of me. I apologised and started moving again.

  ‘Of course!’ I said. ‘You saw him too. He slipped out the door and with all that happened afterwards I forgot.’ I half turned and looked back up towards the ballroom. ‘We should go and tell them, shouldn’t we?’

  ‘They had their chance,’ said Alec, going as far as to put his hand in the small of my back to keep me moving.r />
  ‘No visitors,’ said Barrow, very properly waiting for silence before he answered, since a good servant would never do anything that smacked of interruption or interference.

  ‘Who was it?’ said Grant, with no such qualms.

  ‘Julian Armour,’ said Alec and I in chorus.

  ‘The Stotts assured us repeatedly that he knew nothing of her hobby,’ I said, ‘and yet there he was, watching.’

  ‘And slipping out as soon as things got sticky,’ Alec said. ‘We shall have to pay a visit to Mr Armour.’

  We emerged blinking on to the street and, just as when one goes to watch a particularly melodramatic matinee at the cinema, it was shocking to see the daylight of an ordinary Friday afternoon and hear snippets of conversation from the passers-by.

  ‘We’ve tooken good care of your motor,’ said our little barefoot friend, standing up from where he had been playing jacks with a collection of pebbles. His sister gathered the stones and put them in her dress pocket. The Phantom was gone and it seemed that our watchmen had switched mid-shift to the Cowley, hoping for double pay.

  I smiled and crouched down to talk to them but all their attention, at least that of the girl, was fixed on Barrow and Grant, and especially Grant, in her costume.

  ‘Wait in the motorcar,’ I said to the glamorous pair and turned back to the children, kneeling right down on the ground beside them. Alec joined me, pulling his coat closed over the bloodstain on his shirt front.

  ‘What’s going on?’ said the girl. ‘We saw three polis go running in. Why’s everybody leaving?’

  ‘There’s been an accident,’ I said. ‘Nothing for you to worry about but you might be able to help us.’

  She nodded solemnly but her brother got a sharp look in his eye. ‘Worth a lot, is it? Our help?’

  I shook my head in a mixture of disgust and awe. He was starting from nowhere but I imagined that if it depended on cheek alone he would go far.

  ‘Worth a shilling each,’ said Alec, rummaging in a pocket. ‘Now, before the police came, what did you see?’

  ‘We saw a gent come running out,’ said the little girl.

  Julian Armour, I thought, nodding at Alec.

  ‘Which way did he go?’ I said.

  ‘He went to the telephone box,’ said her brother, pointing at a kiosk nearby.

  ‘And was he …’ Alec said. ‘Did he seem scared or upset in any way? Could you tell?’

  ‘He was shaking like a jelly and as white as a ghost,’ said the boy.

  ‘He must have telephoned to the police station,’ Alec said.

  ‘Then what?’ I said.

  Both children shuffled their feet a little, coughing and looking down. Eventually the boy spoke up.

  ‘Then them in the big car came out and drived away,’ he said.

  The four odd men in the front row, I thought. Of course. And these children did not want to remind us of them and of the fact that they were turning such a profit today, in case we saw fit to reduce our contribution in light of it.

  ‘Anyone else?’ I said, smiling at the girl.

  She thought hard and shook her head.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I asked her. ‘You didn’t see a pretty lady in a pink dress?’

  She looked interested in this possibility, but once again she shook her head. ‘Naw,’ she said. ‘No women come out till you two. Her in the goldie frock with the necklace. That’s lovely.’

  I frowned at her. Beryl was certainly not inside the Locarno if one believed Bert.

  ‘Is there another way out?’ I said to Alec.

  He shrugged.

  ‘There’s the side lane,’ said the little boy, pointing. ‘And a back door.’

  ‘But no one came out that way?’ I asked.

  ‘The pretty lady in a pink dress?’ said the girl.

  ‘Did she?’ said Alec.

  ‘No,’ said the child. ‘Just a van.’

  ‘Can you describe it?’ said Alec. She looked rather panicked so he tried again. ‘What sort of van, my dear?’

  ‘A black one with gold writing on the side,’ she said. ‘And fancies.’

  ‘Fancies?’ I asked, but my frown of puzzlement upset her and she grew truculent.

  ‘I can’t read,’ she said, ‘and Wullie was looking at the big car.’

  ‘Did you see who was driving it?’ I said. I turned to Alec. ‘No reason Beryl Bonnar couldn’t drive a van, is there?’ When I turned back to face the children their eyes were wide and their mouths were open.

  ‘Beryl Bonnar?’ said the girl. ‘Her?’ She pointed between the bodies of the dispersing crowd to the photograph in the foyer. ‘It wasn’t her. It was a mannie.’

  ‘In a uniform?’ I asked, hoping to hear that the child recognised the livery if not the writing.

  She shook her head. ‘Just a mannie in a cap and a jersey.’

  ‘And we never saw Beryl Bonnar at all,’ said the boy. ‘We never saw nothing.’

  ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘Don’t upset yourselves. Now you’ve been a tremendous help to us and so here is a little something for you to take home to your mother. Promise you’ll take this straight home and hand it over. No stopping at the sweetie shop.’

  From the looks on their faces I do not think they had ever seen a half-crown before, much less held one in their hands.

  With a wave at Grant and Barrow who were sitting back in the motorcar looking quite worn out, Alec and I dutifully trotted up the lane a few doors along from the Locarno and into a gloomy yard full of dustbins and coal bunkers.

  Alec shook his head. ‘A van parked here must have been connected to some other place,’ he said. ‘We’re nowhere near the back of the ballroom.’

  ‘Well, let’s see if we can get there,’ I said, scanning the roofline. ‘Since we’ve come this far.’

  We slipped through a gateway into a second yard, this one cluttered with barrels and orange boxes, and then along a narrow path between high brick walls until we came to what was unmistakably the side of the Locarno, soaring and featureless except for one blue-painted metal door, very chipped and with no handle on the outside. A further short path opened on to the next street to the north, which was a bustling thoroughfare to rival Sauchiehall Street.

  ‘She must have gone off this way,’ I said. ‘But surely not on foot. That dress would have caused a sensation. She must have been picked up.’

  ‘A get-away car they call them in the penny dreadfuls from America,’ said Alec, as we made our way back again, along the path to the side door of the Locarno, through the yard of barrels and along the path to the yard of dustbins.

  ‘Pennies dreadful,’ I said automatically, for it is one of Hugh’s bugbears along with procurators fiscal and mothers-in-law.

  ‘Undoubtedly,’ Alec said. Then he stopped and crouched down. ‘Look at this, Dandy.’ He took his pipe out of his mouth and pointed to the ground with the stem.

  I bent down beside him and peered.

  In the weeds growing up along the side of the yard, there was a scrap of sugar-pink fabric about three inches long and an inch wide with long threads trailing from either end where it had been wrenched off the frock it had been stitched to. Staring at it, I could feel my heart begin to beat a little faster inside me.

  ‘She was in the van,’ Alec said. ‘Look – the tyre marks stop right here and look at that!’

  Sure enough, the dust was scuffled and the weeds flattened just where the tyre prints ended and one could easily imagine a van, parked here waiting, and people shifting their feet as they opened and closed its doors.

  ‘She must have been in the back,’ Alec said, ‘or the little one would have seen her.’

  I thought it over and then nodded. ‘She was driven away by the mannie.’

  Alec was patting his pockets in the way which usually signals that he is looking for his pipe tobacco, but in this instance he took an envelope out of his coat instead of his baccy pouch, gingerly picked up the scrap of pink frill with his fingertips and dr
opped it inside.

  ‘To take to the policemen and be bawled out for disturbing the evidence?’ I asked him.

  ‘The same policemen who let half the witnesses go and the chief witnesses go back to the scene of the crime to change?’ said Alec. ‘No fear.’

  ‘I can’t say I don’t agree,’ I said. ‘But I am surprised at you. I’ve never known you quite so determined to take over from policemen before, Alec.’

  ‘I shall tell all later,’ he said. ‘Suffice to say for now that I sense they wouldn’t do their best for Roly any more than they did for Leo before him. Now let’s get out of here before the inspector arrives and catches us.’

  The stream of spectators leaving the Locarno had thinned to a trickle and no one paid us any attention as we emerged from the mouth of the lane and headed for the Cowley.

  Certainly not our servants. I was surprised that Barrow did not leap out of his place in the front seat to open the door for me and, although I was not surprised exactly – for she had been getting rather spoiled ever since she first began to help with cases – still it was annoying to see Grant leaning back with her head lolling, taking her ease, paying no heed to my approach. A wave of missing Bunty washed over me as I drew near. At least, with a dog, one is always assured of a welcome.

  It was not until I had the motorcar door open that I realised something was wrong.

  21

  Grant blinked slowly and regarded me with heavy-lidded eyes. Barrow in the front seat did not even do that much. His head nodded twice and then fell forward until his chin was resting on his chest. I gasped and it was as I breathed in that gasp that the full horror of what had happened grew clear. I met Alec’s eyes, as terrified as mine, on the other side of the motorcar and then leapt in and started the engine.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Alec cried, only just getting into his seat and closing the door before the pavement whipped away from under his feet.

  ‘Hospital,’ I said. ‘Open the windows, Alec, and let’s see if we can’t get them round with some fresh air on the way.’