Dandy Gilver and the Unpleasantness in the Ballroom

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘Alec!’ I said. ‘That was a black van with gold writing on the side. I’m sure it was. I saw it gleaming.’

  ‘Dandy, there must be a hundred black vans with gold livery in Glasgow,’ Alec said.

  ‘And it had Prince of Wales feathers painted on it too.’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘Fancies!’ I cried, but Alec only shook his head and puffed out his cheeks. ‘Well, why did he slow down and then hare off like that?’

  ‘Because he’s not a very good driver,’ said Alec. ‘No one was hurt.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Beryl disappeared hours and hours ago, Dandy. You’re tilting at windmills. Now face the front before you kill us both.’

  ‘But why would a tradesman’s van be out and about at this time of night?’ I said. ‘I’m going to turn around at the next gate and follow it.’

  ‘It was an undertaker’s van, darling,’ Alec said. ‘And they do tend to keep odd hours.’

  At that, even I had to admit that I was clutching at straws and, since I was more exhausted than I can often remember being in my life, I agreed to call this dreadful day over and go back to the Grand Central to hope for sweet sleep and illumination, or at least a clear sign of the way forward, in the morning.

  24

  Grant met me at the door to my room, her eyes as round as buttons and her mouth as round as her eyes.

  ‘You’re back, madam!’ she said, her voice a shriek which was somehow both suppressed and still wild around the edges. ‘And Mr Osborne too! Come in! Come inside, both of you!’

  ‘Thank you, Grant,’ I said. ‘That was the general idea.’

  She shook her head furiously at me as we brushed past her to enter the room.

  ‘There’s someone here to see you,’ she hissed, then she plastered an entirely unconvincing smile on to her face and turned back into the room. ‘Here they are!’ she said, again in the tamped-down shriek. ‘I told you they would be!’ With that, she withdrew and fairly trotted along the corridor and around a corner.

  The room was dim, just one lamp lit by the fireplace, so that the figure in the armchair was silhouetted and I might not have recognised him despite squinting, since he was so very unassuming. The figure behind the chair, however, could not be mistaken. It was one of the henchmen, the larger of the two, and he stood with his arms folded and his feet planted wide apart, glaring at us.

  ‘Mr Bonnar,’ I said. ‘You should have rung to let us know you were coming and you wouldn’t have had such a wait. Still, we’re here now. What can we do for you?’

  ‘I’ll ring down for a little something, shall I?’ said Alec, crossing to the telephone. ‘Whisky perhaps. Or cocoa, Dan?’

  The henchman stirred himself and took a step towards Alec, unfolding his arms as he did so.

  ‘There’s no need to go lifting the phone,’ said his boss, in a quiet voice with some amusement in it. ‘Whoever you had thought to call. Billy here can go down and order whatever it is you fancy.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Alec, changing direction smoothly. As he approached Billy, fishing in his jacket for his wallet, I was astonished and perturbed to see the man take a half-step away and to one side, slipping his own hand into his pocket as he did so.

  ‘Good grief,’ said Alec, visibly rattled. ‘No need to box shy of me, old chap. I’m only getting a spot of cash for the barman. You are our guests, after all, and the drinks are therefore on me.’

  Mr Bonnar gave a soft laugh and re-crossed his legs.

  ‘Nobody in this hotel’s going to let Simon Bonnar pay for a drink,’ he said. ‘I could see my way to a dram, Billy. So two large whiskies and something for the lady?’

  I had sat myself opposite him and was behaving with the greatest composure. But something in me baulked at the idea of extorted cocoa and I shook my head, murmuring that I needed no refreshment. When Billy had left the room, Alec brought over the upright chair from the writing desk and sat down between us.

  ‘Beryl is missing,’ said Mr Bonnar after a short pause. The amusement in his voice was quite gone, replaced by a cold anger which made the back of my neck prickle.

  ‘You were unconcerned at first,’ I said, remembering his calmness at the Locarno. ‘What’s changed?’

  ‘I thought she’d stepped away,’ said Bonnar. ‘Away out of trouble like I always told her to. But I’ve scoured the city for her and she’s nowhere to be found.’

  ‘It’s rather a large city,’ Alec said. Mr Bonnar made a sudden movement, small but very quick, and Alec stopped talking immediately.

  ‘This is my city,’ he said, with dreadful emphasis. ‘It’s no size at all when you know every ward of it, every pub and backroom, every corner shop and games hall. I’ve had all my boys out asking anyone who’s ever crossed our path and no one has seen her.’

  ‘Did you try the station?’ I said.

  He stared at me for a moment before answering, a glazed look upon his face. ‘You think she ran away?’ he said. ‘Why would my Beryl run away?’

  I thought it best to fiddle with my gloves rather than answer him, but even though I made heavy work of undoing the buttons and then pulled them off finger by finger without turning the cuffs, just the way Grant is always telling me to, still no one had spoken by the time I was done.

  ‘We seem to be at cross-purposes, Mr Bonnar,’ I said at last. ‘Although I’m not sure I understand why. Haven’t you just been telling us as much?’

  ‘I said she was missing,’ he replied. ‘I think she’s been kidnapped. I pray to God that she hasn’t been harmed, but if she has then someone is going to pay.’

  It was quite extraordinary. There had been a murder and one of those present had slipped out, and yet this man seemed not even to entertain the obvious connection.

  ‘Kidnapped,’ I said, deciding that nothing would be lost by taking his words at face value. ‘Has someone been in touch with you?’

  He made that curious sudden movement again, a sweeping away of some imaginary object before him, and again it struck me that I could not account for how violent it seemed. I did not want to cause him to do it a third time.

  ‘I don’t suppose Beryl gave any sign of being worried about anything in the last few days, did she?’ said Alec.

  Bonnar shook his head. ‘She was excited for the Champs but not worried, no. It’s just the two of us, has been for years since her dear mother died and she would have turned to me first if anything was troubling her.’

  Not, I thought, if what was troubling her were the inevitable trials of planning a second murder. The man had an absolute blind spot as far as his daughter was concerned.

  ‘Have you spoken to Bert, Mr Bonnar?’ I said. ‘He might know if something were amiss.’

  Bonnar turned slightly in his seat and regarded me with another of the cold stares.

  ‘He better not know anything,’ he said.

  I caught my lip in my teeth, dreading to plant an idea in this man’s mind for which he might decide to exact revenge. As I thought this, though, I did remember Bert briefly chasing after Beryl and then slipping back into the ballroom as Lorrison’s man went to the telephone. It was surely worth trying to find out whether she had spoken to him as she scurried away.

  ‘He seems like a nice chap,’ I said, backpedalling desperately. ‘And fond of your daughter.’

  ‘Fond!’ said Bonnar. ‘If that left-footer’s got “fond” of Beryl he’ll feel my boot. I only put up with them dancing because I can’t tell her no when she smiles at me.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure that Bert can’t help you,’ said Alec, ‘and none of your usual associates have turned anything up, there’s only one thing for it. You must go to the police.’

  It was at that moment that Billy reappeared, with a tray bearing a whole bottle of rather good malt whisky, a soda siphon and a plate of biscuits. He shot a sharp look at his boss and Bonnar replied with an almost imperceptible nod. One wondered what the man might have done if i
t had been a shake instead, but as it was he simply put the tray down within Alec’s reach and went back to his sentry duty behind Bonnar’s chair.

  ‘Well, now, me and the polis have a wee agreement,’ Bonnar said. ‘They keep out my way and I keep out theirs. That’s why I’ve come to you two.’

  ‘But surely when you are so very worried, they are the obvious port of call,’ I said. ‘They can pound on doors and demand admittance. We can only ask politely and leave if refused.’

  ‘The Glasgow police wouldn’t pound on doors to help me,’ Bonnar said. ‘I wish you’d take my word for it, Mrs Gilver. I’ve lived by the sword and nothing would give Inspector Todd greater satisfaction than watching me die by the sword too. But I must find her. I can’t stand thinking of her out there somewhere, alone and friendless. I must find her and I’ll pay you handsomely to help me.’

  Once again, I did not know what to say. I imagined Hugh’s face if he heard that I was in the pay of a mobster and it was not a comfortable notion. Alec, thankfully, saved me from having to reply.

  ‘We shall certainly do our best to find her, Mr Bonnar,’ he said. ‘But we cannot take your money. Our clients are the Stotts and we cannot allow ourselves to serve two masters.’

  ‘But how can you be working for me, looking for Beryl, if Eunice and her man are paying you?’ Bonnar said, showing a nicety about financial matters that one would not have suspected, not to mention a familiarity with Lady Stott which would have raised eyebrows in Sir Percy’s clubhouse and laid his origins quite bare, despite Balmoral and the paintings and his daughter’s rise.

  ‘Nothing we do to find Beryl will work against solving Roly’s murder,’ Alec said. ‘It can’t possibly be a coincidence that he was killed and she disappeared on the same day. It’s the same case, no doubt of that at all.’

  If Simon Bonnar had been still before, now he looked like a waxwork of himself, especially because his face paled, the late-night shadow on his jaw showing up suddenly. I shot a fearful look at Billy and was thankful that he was behind his master and could not see what Bonnar made of this, the merest suggestion that Beryl might be guilty of more than upsetting her beloved papa.

  There followed a long and intensely uncomfortable moment during which Alec and I held our breaths expecting an explosion and Bonnar stared at each of us in turn. At its end he rose to leave, without another word.

  ‘How shall we contact you, Mr Bonnar?’ I asked as he was on his way to the door Billy was holding open.

  ‘No need,’ he said. ‘I’ll be watching you.’

  When we closed the door behind him Alec headed straight back to the whisky bottle.

  ‘I’ll join you this time,’ I said. ‘Good grief, Alec. What have we got ourselves into?’

  Alec knocked back a stiff drink, poured another for each of us and then settled himself with a soothing pipe.

  ‘Do you think there’s any chance she really was kidnapped?’ he said.

  ‘From under the nose of her father and all his men? Hardly. Who would dare?’

  ‘Anyone who knew Bonnar had trained her to leave a scene at the first hint of trouble.’

  ‘That would be taking audacity a little too far,’ I persisted.

  ‘Not if it worked,’ Alec said. ‘I was glad you didn’t mention the pink lace and the black van by the way. I was having kittens in case you piped up in that way of yours.’

  ‘I’m not quite as ingenuous as all that,’ I said. ‘Why did you want it kept quiet?’

  Alec coughed in surprise at an inopportune moment and spluttered a little on a sudden lungful of pipe smoke.

  ‘How can you ask? Because that man would have set his “boys” on every tradesman with a black van in the whole of the city. He’d have gone chasing after that undertaker on the country road and had Billy go to wakes to crack heads and search the very coffins for Beryl.’

  ‘Not wakes,’ I said mildly. ‘Far too popish for a man who talks of “left-footers” that way. Such a nasty expression. And golly, who’d be Bert, eh? With a man like that breathing down your neck and you knowing all the time you were on sufferance.’

  ‘Talk about dedication to one’s art,’ Alec agreed.

  ‘And to one’s job!’ I said. ‘You were very impressive, the way you assured him that you would solve a murder and find his daughter. Are you really so confident?’

  Alec took his time and three long puffs before he answered.

  ‘I think so,’ he said. ‘I’m far from sure about how all the pieces fit together but there are enough pieces that I can hardly help believing I’ll be able to make something of them.’

  ‘How very mysterious,’ I said, gently mocking him. ‘It’s usually me who waxes metaphorical when we’re deep in a case. It must be rubbing off on you.’

  Alec clicked his fingers and sat up straight. ‘That reminds me,’ he said, ‘and it’s worth the teasing. I meant to ask you to go back through your little notebook and read out all the names.’

  ‘All what names?’ I said. I was already rummaging, for the occasion of Alec honouring my notebook and pencil this way was just about unique.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he said, ‘but I think we’ve heard something that we should have remarked upon but missed.’

  ‘Is that how I sound to you when I go off on one of my flights of fancy?’ I said, flipping through the pages. ‘If so, I can only apologise and promise not to in the future. Here we are: dramatis personae.’ And I proceeded to list them, the plain workaday names and the ballroom affectations. He sat up when I got to Foxy Trotter and Leo Mayne, Mr and Mrs Len Munn, but then he sank back again and by the time I was listing the names of the also-ran dancers from that day’s competition he was barely listening.

  ‘It’s gone,’ he said at last, when I was done. ‘I don’t know what it was I thought I had noticed but it’s gone now.’

  ‘In my experience,’ I said, ‘if you stop trying to think of it, it will come back to you. Sleep on it, Alec dear. In fact, let’s sleep on all of it.’

  ‘And start afresh in the morning,’ he agreed. ‘Can we start at Balmoral? I’d like to know why Tweetie broke it off with Julian Armour. And I’d very much like to have another crack at cousin Jeanne. She’s in this somehow, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘But she had no motive to kill poor Leo,’ I said. ‘And anyway, Beryl Bonnar’s guilt is surely unarguable. She left by the back door and sped off in a van parked in the alley. How much more suspicious could someone be?’

  Alec nodded, but it was more resigned than anything.

  ‘If that’s what happened,’ he said at last. ‘Something went wrong, didn’t it?’

  ‘I should say it did,’ I said. ‘Especially for Roly.’

  ‘No,’ said Alec, ‘you misunderstand me. If it was Beryl – and I agree, it certainly looks that way – then surely she meant to do the same as last year. Do away with the competition and carry on to glory. But instead she ran off. The question we must ask ourselves is, why? What happened to change her plan?’

  ‘But if she didn’t mean to run off, then what was the van doing there?’ I said. ‘It would have been rather convenient for her to rush out into the alley and just happen to find a helpful van driver to get her out of hot water.’

  ‘The only thing I can think of that was unexpected,’ said Alec, ‘was that you and I were present.’

  ‘But she knew that for days beforehand,’ I said.

  ‘And Grant and Barrow,’ said Alec. ‘If they saw something …’

  ‘But they didn’t,’ I reminded him. ‘Or they would have told us about it.’

  ‘Grant picked up the headdress,’ Alec said. ‘Perhaps Beryl saw it in Grant’s possession and panicked.’

  ‘And ran off in a van she couldn’t have arranged for?’

  Alec gave a sigh that might have blown the fire out if he had been facing the chimneypiece head-on.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Let’s sleep on it.’ He stood, stretched, gave me a peck on the cheek and made h
is way to the door, stopping to pour himself a fourth whisky on the way.

  ‘I suppose she knew her father was coming,’ I said.

  ‘If they’re as close as Bonnar thinks they are, I suppose so too,’ Alec said. ‘You think he might have surprised her by turning up when she didn’t expect him t—’ He stopped, stared at me and we spoke in chorus.

  ‘Julian Armour!’ we said. For of course that was who was where no one expected him to be.

  ‘But what might his connection be to Beryl?’ I said.

  ‘No more mysterious than Len Munn’s,’ said Alec. ‘We should go back and see Mr Armour anyway, for the sake of common humanity. And now let’s really try to sleep on it, shall we? There’s plenty to be sleeping on. One feather bed and twenty peas.’

  25

  It is unsurprising that, after such a day, my sleep was torrid with nightmares. Countless times, I fell deep into a pit of sleep with such steep sides that I could not climb out and with such horrors at its bottom that I could not bear being there. I woke over and over again, damply hot and twisted up in my bedding, with the last of the monsters still reaching out for me. Beryl was there, her pink frills sloughing off like a mummy’s wrappings, and the black van with the gold writing and feathers was always there somewhere too, nosing around the corner of some dim street of tenements as I drove faster and ever faster, trying to get away. Tweetie was there, glittering and twinkling and quite dead, lying on the sofa as her parents wailed and rent their garments and Jeanne and Miss Thwaite stitched and smirked in a corner. Upstairs someone was dancing; I could hear them through the floor. Downstairs Mr Bonnar and his men waited for me to do something unstated and impossible. The only one missing, and the one who could have saved me, nudging me awake with her cold nose in the crook of my neck when I started tossing, was Bunty. I missed her with as sharp a pang and as dull a weight as on the first night she was gone. I turned my pillow, fanned my sheets and blankets into place and closed my eyes yet again.

  It was Foxy Trotter who was waiting for me now; Foxy wheeling round a dance floor all alone with a fox upon her head. I tried to call out to her but my voice was a puny thing struggling and failing in my throat and I could only watch as the creature opened its impossibly red and gleaming jaw and ran its tongue over its rough yellow teeth.