‘We’ve looked at both the headdresses now, you see,’ I said. ‘Miss Thwaite has kept yours all this time. And they are identical except for the decoration.’
‘Well, mine lay about the cloakroom for anyone to see,’ said Foxy.
‘But for someone to make such a close copy she would have needed a reason to look,’ I said. ‘Might Beryl or another of the dancers have witnessed your actions on the day of the competition?’
‘I’ll never forgive myself,’ Foxy said. ‘I should have gone and put myself off a bridge into the Clyde the very next day, only I didn’t want to shame my family.’
She was showing a great deal of consideration for a family which, almost in its entirety, scorned her.
‘Where did you go to carry out the procedure?’ Alec asked, perhaps thinking that speaking plainly was best. ‘Did you do it at home before arriving?’
Foxy shook her head. ‘One of the cubicles in the cloakroom,’ she whispered. ‘With a syringe.’
‘But no one saw you?’ I said.
It was hard to imagine how someone might and she shook her head as I had expected her to.
‘Well, I can’t make sense of it,’ I said. ‘You didn’t make Tweetie’s headdress and she didn’t make yours and yet they are strikingly similar to one another.’
‘I suppose Jeanne might have noticed mine lying round while I was so busy with costumes in the run-up to the Champs,’ she said. ‘She was with Tweetie a lot, acting as a chaperone, and so she spent some time in my sewing room through there.’ She nodded towards the front of the flat.
‘Jeanne,’ I said.
‘And it was probably Jeanne who made Tweetie’s band too,’ said Foxy.
It was hard to credit that an aunt, and hardly a beloved aunt at that, would have such unshakable faith in a niece as not to feel the slightest suspicion when she related this. She must have been witness to at least a little of Jeanne’s envy. We were strangers and we had seen plenty of it.
We sat in silence for a while, each of us thinking. My thoughts led nowhere. Only Jeanne could have made the second bandeau to match the first but Beryl had run away. There was nothing to connect them. Yet they must be connected. After a while Foxy sighed and began speaking again.
‘Jeanne was kind to me when Leo died,’ she said. ‘She stayed with me those first few weeks after the funeral and I couldn’t have got through it without her. In fact, I went as far as to ask her if she’d care to stay here permanently.’ She laughed, shaking her head. ‘Daft of me. Who’d want to stay here in my room and kitchen instead of at Puddy’s with all that splendour.’
I did not say that that bare little sewing room upstairs at Balmoral where Jeanne spent her days was a good deal more spartan than either of the rooms which made up Foxy’s abode.
‘But as I say,’ Foxy went on, ‘she was very good to me. I was beside myself that first month. Couldn’t sleep and then the powders the doctor gave me were worse than not sleeping at all. Nightmares and terrors, and Jeanne sat with me, so patient, calming me and quieting me, and never complained.’
‘What a blessing,’ said Alec in his soupiest voice. ‘Does she often visit you now?’
‘She looks in,’ said Foxy. ‘Just to see that I’m doing away.’
‘A blessing indeed,’ I echoed. I would have put a sovereign on it that Alec and I were thinking exactly the same thing. Jeanne had noticed the peculiar headband while she was poking around her aunt’s house over a year ago. And then in those early days of new widowhood, while she shushed and comforted and sat in the night listening to whatever ramblings the sleeping powders had produced, she heard a story – disordered and fragmented perhaps, but revisited often enough to be pieced together eventually – which interested her greatly.
We still could not say why she might have conspired with Beryl, or what either of them had against poor Roly, but we now had a clear indication that Jeanne had made that horrid silver pincushion, sitting there in her little room, and that Beryl, on the spot on the day, had soaked it in cyanide and, between them, they had murdered him.
‘But why did Beryl leave and Jeanne stay?’ I asked Alec when we were on our way back downstairs again.
‘I have no idea,’ Alec said. ‘Perhaps one of them had to stay behind to see that the plan worked. Perhaps Jeanne was supposed to snatch the headdress back when Tweetie brought it home. She must be going crazy, trying to work out where it’s got to.’
I clutched him, causing him to take an extra step on the steep stone stairs and clutch me back to save himself from falling.
‘What?’ he said.
‘She must have worked out that we’ve got it,’ I said. ‘How else could we know how the thing was done? I think we need to go to the police now, Alec. Bonnars be damned.’
27
We failed. Seldom can two detectives have failed so summarily to interest the members of a constabulary in such clear evidence of a crime. Seldom, even in our chequered history of dealings with the police, have we come away so convinced of the stupidity and venality of a body of men.
We even had the foresight to leave Beryl’s name out of it and simply tell the inspector that Jeanne McNab was guilty. Much good it did us too.
‘Ah yes, the unfortunate accident at the ballroom,’ said the inspector to whom we spoke. We had deliberately made a beeline for a police station at some distance from the Locarno, hoping not to run into the particular bobbies we had met on Friday or any of their friends. It seemed, though, that the death of Ronald Watt had gained notoriety across the city.
‘The second unfortunate accident in a row,’ I said crisply. ‘Following the one last year.’
‘Has a post-mortem been completed yet?’ said Alec. ‘Cyanide poisoning must surely be a fairly unusual happening.’
‘You seem to know a great deal about it,’ said the inspector. He patted his breast pocket, where he was carrying a fountain pen and looked about his desk as though for a pad of paper to begin taking notes.
‘We were there,’ I said. ‘And we are detectives. We tried to tell your colleague that but, shall we say, there was little interest.’
‘Look,’ Alec said, sitting forward, man-to-man. ‘We understand your predicament, sir. But we are not here to talk about Miss Bonnar.’ The inspector pursed his lips as though to shush Alec and looked swiftly around, although we were in his private office with the door closed and quite safe from overhearing. ‘We are convinced that Miss McNab, a niece who lives with the Stott family at Balmoral in Bearsden, is guilty of the murder.’
At these words the inspector looked somewhat mollified. At least he sat back in his chair.
‘A member of Sir Percy Stott’s family murdered the dancing partner of the daughter of the house?’ he said, betraying an extraordinary familiarity with the cast of characters, if anyone was asking me. ‘Why?’
‘We don’t know,’ said Alec. ‘Jealousy perhaps.’ I noticed that he looked troubled as he said this and I understood perfectly, for jealousy as a motive made admirable sense if Jeanne could be accused of working alone. It was the matter of collusion between her and Beryl that muddled things. And yet we needed Beryl as a puzzle piece because she had been there on the day to do the deed and, more to the point, because she had fled the scene.
‘Jealousy,’ said the inspector. ‘Is this Miss McNab another dancer?’
He was not, I surmised, a man of great imagination. I was hardly the most imaginative woman born but I could see that Jeanne would hardly have to be a dancer to feel that she was living in Tweetie’s shade.
‘Motive aside,’ Alec said, ‘she sent threats. A card, a book and a dead bird, all very cleverly chosen to unsettle and frighten a young woman for whom a bird was a kind of mascot. And then, on Friday, she added cyanide to a part of Miss Stott’s costume and poisoned her dancing partner.’
The inspector frowned, then shook his head and sat forward again. ‘A part of her costume?’ he said. ‘What do you mean? How can he have eaten part of her costume?’<
br />
‘He didn’t eat it,’ said Alec. ‘It was in her headdress and he inhaled it. That’s why it’s of the utmost urgency that the post-mortem should be carried out. There will be no cyanide in his stomach and if you know how long the effects of it might last in his lungs then you know a great deal more about it than I do.’
‘A poisoned hat,’ said the inspector and I could tell that we were losing him. Of course we were. Foxy had never meant the chloroform to be a murder weapon and Jeanne had only copied it – with the nasty added twist of using cyanide instead – to cover her tracks. No one in his right mind would have set out to murder someone that way. ‘And it wasn’t even on the victim’s own head,’ he added.
‘Well, obviously not,’ I put in. ‘One doesn’t breathe the air from above one’s own head. His partner was shorter than him and her head was close to his face. But actually she was affected to some extent. She was extremely woozy and …’ I was seeing the scene passing in front of my eyes again. Tweetie had plucked Roly’s handkerchief out of his breast pocket and inhaled its folds deeply. I remember shrieking at her not to be so reckless and after a minute she did assume a look of horror and throw the thing away from her. In all the commotion and distress I had only had time to thank God it was not poisoned and that she did not grow worse from breathing through it, but now another thought struck me. She had not only not worsened; she had improved. She was anything but woozy when I spoke to her; she was feverish and jangled with nerves. I had taken it to be the result of the shock and yet now, thinking it over calmly, I had never seen shock affect someone that way. A theory was forming in my mind.
‘Dandy?’ said Alec, shaking my arm. ‘You’re wool-gathering.’
The inspector was now regarding me with more than a little scorn.
‘As I was saying,’ he resumed. ‘Didn’t she find it strange that her head was dripping wet?’
‘It was lined with oilcloth,’ I told him.
‘And didn’t she find that strange?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘She didn’t. She can’t have noticed.’ I was aware of a creak as Alec shifted sharply round in his seat to look at me, finding this notion suddenly as odd as did I.
‘Well, it’s an interesting tale, I must admit,’ the inspector said. ‘But I don’t think I shall take it to the Fiscal just yet. It was my understanding, you see, that the unfortunate young man had a heart condition. And—’ He broke off and once again looked over his shoulder, checking for spies. ‘Since we are men of the world’ – here he inclined his head to show me that I was most graciously included in the scope of his words – ‘if I was going to go poking around where Beryl Bonnar lives, it wouldn’t be with a story of poisoned hats and wee girls all upset because they don’t get to go dancing.’
Alec looked ready to argue but I sent him a silent signal, hardly even a signal, actually, but these days I merely have to think something hard enough and Alec seems to hear me. He closed his mouth without a word, stood, put his hat on after tipping it and bade the inspector good day.
‘What is it?’ he asked as we trooped back outside again.
‘Roly’s handkerchief,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t soaked in cyanide. It was soaked in something else. Is there an antidote?’
‘There certainly is,’ said Alec. ‘A kind of smelling salt, I believe.’
‘Does it have any peculiar side effects?’
‘I have no idea,’ said Alec. ‘Where are we going, Dandy?’
‘The Locarno,’ I said. ‘To ask who swept up and tidied yesterday. Tweetie threw the handkerchief away from her and it was caught in the stampeding feet.’
After that we drove in silence, each of us trying desperately to make sense of the thing. I got nowhere. Jeanne alone, Jeanne and Beryl, Beryl alone; no matter how I shuffled them I could not get the means and opportunity and motive divided between the two.
‘Now what on earth are you doing here today?’ I said to our friends the urchins when we arrived. ‘There’ll be no business for you, surely.’
‘How d’you mean, missus?’ said the little girl. ‘They’re all in there. It’s busier than ever ’cos there’s a vacancy and everyone’s trying to get the job before anybody else comes along and swipes it.’
Alec stared at the two of them open-mouthed. ‘In there right now?’ he said. ‘Vying to take Beryl’s place and Roly’s?’
‘Aye,’ said her brother. ‘How not?’
There were the arguments of a decent interval and a period of mourning, let alone the small matter of becoming a third couple to dance at the Locarno where two couples’ careers had been cut short by sudden death. Glasgow was, really and truly, dance-mad. I saw it then more clearly than ever before: a nicely brought-up girl like Tweetie risking her position to dance; a strangely brought-up girl like Beryl turning her back on all her illicit privileges to dance; and now, apparently, hordes of hopefuls flocking to the scene of a murder, not from the usual ghoulishness, but with utter indifference to everything except dancing.
It was a horde too; one could hear them – a veritable babble – as soon as one opened the door. The ballroom was almost as full as it had been when the spectators had been gathered to watch the show.
I even thought I recognised some of them. Indeed, I knew for a fact that I recognised two of them. Tweetie and Bert were there in the front row, in the very spot where Mr Bonnar and his associates had been sitting, smoking cigarettes and watching a pair of youngsters going through their paces, while Miss Thwaite, evidently forgiven, pounded out a waltz on the upright piano. Alec did not hesitate; he walked straight across the dance floor towards them, causing the whirling couples to change direction or halt to keep out of his way. I scurried after him, smiling my apologies.
‘Auditioning for a replacement already, Miss Stott?’ said Alec, as he sat down in an empty seat beside Tweetie. There was a ring of empty seats all around them as though the young hopefuls did not dare to encroach too closely upon the great ones.
‘My replacement?’ said Tweetie. ‘I’m not going anywhere. Why should I look for a replacement?’
‘I meant a replacement partner,’ Alec said.
My attention was taken as Jamesie and Alicia wheeled past where we were sitting. They had clearly overcome their worries about the Locarno since bowing out of the competition.
‘Bert is my new partner,’ said Tweetie blithely. ‘We don’t need to replace Roly or Beryl with any of these.’
I turned to Bert to see what he thought of this rather imperious young woman talking for him and I was shocked to see what a change had come over him in just a day. He was as cleanly shaven and as slickly pomaded as ever but his complexion was grey and he had dark purple shadows under his red-rimmed eyes. He was smoking determinedly too, with a small scattering of cigarette ends at his feet, suggesting he had been doing so all the time he had been sitting there. When he noticed me looking at him, he turned slightly and stared miserably back at me, causing the light social smile I had been wearing to die upon my lips.
‘Isn’t it rather soon?’ I said.
‘For what?’ said Tweetie. ‘The ballroom must be back up and running properly by tomorrow no matter what fiasco has been made of the Champs. In fact, this rigmarole is wasting time that we could make use of. But Lorrison is so stubborn.’
‘What do you mean?’ Alec said. His voice was cold; clearly he was disgusted with her and I could hardly blame him. Roland had died in her arms not twenty-four hours before and yet she called it not a ‘tragedy’ nor even an ‘ordeal’ but a ‘fiasco’.
‘This silly audition is solely to punish Jamesie and Alicia by making them wonder if they’ll get the job of the other professional pair,’ said Tweetie. ‘And of course they will. I’ve told Lorrison that I insist upon it, but he wanted to make them squirm a little first for their desertion the other day and so here we sit.’
‘You insist,’ I said.
She turned to me with a smile. ‘I am the senior dancer now,’ she said.
‘But what
if Beryl comes back?’ I asked her. ‘Or if the investigation disrupts things so much that—’
‘There will be no investigation,’ said Tweetie. ‘Simon Bonnar won’t allow it.’
‘Simon Bonnar isn’t here,’ said Alec, and I have never heard him sound grimmer. He turned away from Tweetie and fixed Bert with a hard stare. ‘Mr Bunyan,’ he said. ‘When you followed Beryl yesterday, I presume you spoke to her.’
‘What?’ said Bert.
‘Did she answer you?’ Alec went on. ‘Surely she did. What did she say?’
‘What are youse on about?’ said Bert. ‘She went banging out and I went after her. I asked her where she was going and …’ He shrugged.
‘And what?’ I said. ‘What did she say to make you give up and return to the ballroom?’
Bert looked at the floor and was silent.
‘Didn’t you think it very odd?’ I asked. ‘It’s not what one expects in the midst of such a scene: that one of the principals would rush off without a word and then vanish.’
‘Is that why you followed her, Bert?’ said Tweetie. She spoke quite kindly to him and was watching him closely.
‘I don’t know why I followed her,’ Bert said. ‘I was too het up to know what I was doing.’ Tweetie nodded and even gave him a small smile. ‘And I came back because she shouted at me to leave her alone. I’m surprised you didn’t hear her. Screaming like a fishwife.’
Tweetie nodded again. Then she stood suddenly and waved to Miss Thwaite. ‘Enough of this,’ she said. ‘Foxtrot please, Effie.’
Bert stubbed out his latest cigarette on the sole of his dancing shoe and got to his feet.
‘Peppermint, Bert,’ said Tweetie. ‘Until you give up those filthy things like I told you.’
I had expected the auditioning couples to be disgruntled at her sudden interruption of their efforts, but quite the reverse. There was a flutter of excitement amongst them as it became clear that Tweetie Bird was about to take to the floor. They all backed away to the edges as Miss Thwaite struck up a different tune.
Dandy Gilver and the Unpleasantness in the Ballroom Page 26
