Tweetie spread a smile of monstrous insincerity upon her beautiful face and raised her arms, waiting for Bert to step into them. Then on a loudly played note they were off. They looked rather wooden, truth be told, holding one another at arm’s length and jabbing at the floor with their pointed feet as though they were stamping on ants. I saw a few of the spectators exchange doubtful looks. Then slowly, although it is hard to say which happened first, Miss Thwaite began to change from her percussive practising music to a more melodic rendition of the tune. Perhaps it was a favourite of hers and she could not help it or perhaps she felt for Tweetie and Bert displaying their halting first attempt to dance together in front of such a knowledgeable crowd. Perhaps it was that, but I noticed that she was watching Tweetie and Bert very closely and so perhaps she began to play differently because she was so caught up in the slow budding and blossoming of their dance.
For their dance was certainly changing: they held one another closer and Tweetie's smile was dream-like and secret instead of frozen on to her face like a mask. They began to sway from side to side in perfect harmony as though the same breeze were gently blowing both of them and they rose to their tiptoes and down on to the flats of their feet again as though dancing on a rolling hilltop instead of a flat wooden floor. But it was more than that. All these points were technicalities, as I knew after an interminable day of listening to Victor Silvester instructing Grant and Barrow. Rise and fall, heel and toe, and sway were part of the esoteric rule-bound ways of the ballroom. What Tweetie and Bert were beginning to display was something that could not be taught. The elderly couple from Saturday had had it despite their creaky joints and their hesitancy; the bouncing young couple had not a whisker of it. Here, whatever it was, they had it to spare, and as they swept around, Tweetie’s practice frock hugging the front of her slender body and streaming out behind her and Bert’s simple shirt and slim trousers doing nothing to conceal the willowy strength beneath them, I was not the only one to forget all else and simply drink them in.
‘Simpatico,’ someone behind me said. Perhaps the oddness of the word in a Glasgow accent brought me to my senses.
‘It’s a miracle,’ breathed another.
I did not believe in miracles. As easily as that I was out from under their spell and memories began to assail me. Roly had said there was no time to break in a new partner and look like a couple, no matter how talented the girl. Foxy had said she had not the heart to dance again now that her true partner was gone. And then Beryl’s voice echoed in my mind, laughing with Bert, saying she didn’t understand how he could forget a step they had been dancing for years and asking what had muddled him. What had muddled him was his new partner and their preparations to begin dancing as a couple once the loose ends had been tidied away.
The music subsided and the room around me broke into spontaneous applause. I alone did not join in with it; even Alec put his pipe in his mouth to free both hands and clapped heartily.
‘They’re jolly good, Dandy,’ he said, then, catching my expression, he lowered his voice. ‘What is it?’
‘They’re too jolly good,’ I murmured. ‘Look at Tweetie. She knows she’s given away her secret.’
Indeed, Tweetie’s expression of romantic bliss had curdled into something ugly and she was glowering at Bert, who flashed his eyes at her and nodded to the audience, still clapping.
‘What’s wrong with them?’ said Alec. ‘They might have made a mistake in their footwork, but if they’re going to be so grumpy with one another after a measly little practice session they shan’t do very well in competitions when the pressure’s on. Where are you going?’
I had stood and now made my way towards the door across the yards of empty dance floor, aware but uncaring that Tweetie was watching me. I knew I was raising her suspicions but I could not help the feeling that there was not a moment to spare. Besides, if I had stayed my face would have betrayed me.
‘We’ve had it all wrong,’ I said, hurrying downstairs with Alec close behind me. ‘It was Tweetie.’ I stopped in the foyer and laid it all out as quickly and plainly as I could. ‘She sent the threats herself, just as Foxy did. And Foxy said, didn’t she, that Jeanne came along with Tweetie. With her. Meaning that Tweetie was just as well placed to see the headdress under construction.’
‘But why would Beryl help Tweetie?’ Alec said.
I shook my head. ‘We’ve had it all wrong. Not just the villain but the victim too. All that rot about Bert following and Beryl roaring at him. I don’t believe a word of it. We need to try to find Simon Bonnar, Alec. I think Beryl’s dead.’
28
Of course our urchins, once they got used to the idea, were simply thrilled.
‘The big car you were looking after on Friday,’ I said to them, crouching down and taking a hand of each of them in each of mine. The girl looked delighted by the caress and I could feel her rubbing the soft leather of my glove appreciatively. The little boy, a couple of years more canny, instinctively pulled away from an adult laying hands on him. Probably he had had too many hidings from the adults in his life to be confident that one would grab hold of him for any other reason.
‘What about it?’ he said, crossing his arms across his grubby little jersey and staring me down.
‘It was Simon Bonnar’s motorcar, wasn’t it?’ I said.
He stuck his chin in the air to look brave and tough but his sister sidled in closer to me, scared even by the sound of the name.
‘Aye,’ said the boy. ‘How?’
‘We need to see him,’ I said. ‘Do you know where he lives?’
‘Everybody knows where Mr Bonnar lives,’ said the girl.
‘And where is that?’ I asked.
‘The Gorbals, of course,’ said her brother. ‘Our bit.’
‘Could you show us?’ I said. ‘Would you come for a drive in my motorcar and point it out?’
Now the boy stepped closer again. ‘A hurl in your car?’ he said. ‘Can I drive it?’
‘Certainly not,’ I told him. ‘But you can toot the horn.’
‘I’m feart,’ said the girl.
‘You don’t need to come into the house,’ I assured her. ‘You just need to point it out to us.’
‘Naw, I’m feart for the car,’ she said. ‘Can I sit on your knee?’
So it was that Alec drove, ably assisted by a great many tootings and honkings of the horn from the passenger seat, while I sat in the back with a lapful of rather grubby little girl, breathing in the sharp scent of her long-unwashed hair and yet not quite able to despise the experience, for it had been many years since either of my sons submitted to such a thing and even then they were wont to squirm and kick their heels against my legs and usually had some boat or pop gun in their hands with which to jab me. This little one simply sat cuddled close with her head tucked under my chin and stroked the fur collar of my coat with her free hand, while she sucked her other thumb.
‘Do you know, my dear,’ I said to her presently, ‘I don’t know what your name is.’
‘Elsie,’ she said. ‘What’s yours?’
‘Mrs Gilver,’ I told her but, finding that rather ridiculous since she was attached to me like a baby koala bear, I amended it according to the custom common amongst the Scotch working people regarding how children address adults who were not parents, teachers or clergy. ‘Auntie Dandy,’ I said. ‘And Uncle Alec.’
I had thought the boy was not listening, but after another few minutes he gave a particularly strenuous blast of the horn and cried, ‘We’re here, Uncle Alec! And look at all they weans. Gonny drive right up the street and back again and I’ll wave.’
We did the lap of honour as requested but we had not missed the door halfway along the street where, instead of the usual clutch of housewives or lounging group of unemployed men, we could see a pair of brawny lads standing to attention, one on each side. They turned and called up the close as they saw us and a window halfway up the tenement face was opened, although we could not see by w
hom.
It was not at all what I should have expected, I thought, stepping down, for it was meaner by far than Foxy’s street, meaner even than Miss Thwaite’s, a place of broken kerbstones and missing cobbles, the tenements not the red sandstone which can lend a kind of grandeur nor even the plain yellow stone, quick to blacken in the city’s smoke it is true but still solid; these were brick, faced with a skim of stone on one side only, hastily built for the last great expansion, left behind now that the shipyards were beginning to close again and, from the look of them, given over to the slum lords who did not trouble themselves with paint and nails. Above the very close door where the two heavies stood on sentry duty there was even a window tacked over with cloth where the glass had been broken and not replaced. Judging by the way the cloth had bleached in the daylight it had been like that for some time too.
After a nod from one of the men, who showed no surprise at our arrival nor curiosity about who we might be, we passed through into the darkness and began to climb the stairs. I was forced to put my hand up to my face and try to breathe through my glove, because the acrid smell of unswept chimneys over cooking ranges did not quite choke out the engulfing smell of ‘inadequate plumbing’, as the planners describe this sort of close-pressed humanity. It was the smell of poverty and urban poverty at that, as far from the cottages of Gilverton with their wells and gardens as a hansom cab from a hay cart.
On the second storey there was another young man standing guard outside the middle of three doors on the landing. He too nodded, and reaching back over his shoulder with his fist, he rapped hard on the door then stepped aside and opened it for us to enter.
I had not prepared my expression, expecting to be able to do so in the hall before joining our host, but the Bonnar residence, we discovered, was what is known as a single-end: one room, comprising living room, dining room, kitchen and bedroom, right behind the front door. There was a box bed with the door open, a table with four chairs, two low chairs by the range and a couple of chests, one with drawers and one just a box with a hinged lid. This, along with some shelves above the sink and a cupboard set into the wall beyond the range, was the whole of Simon Bonnar’s home.
He sat alone at the table while his inner cabinet, one assumed, or at least the three men who had come with him to the Locarno on Friday, stood leaning against the walls and windowsill.
He looked up at us out of a haggard face and when he spoke, his voice had a tremor in it. ‘Have you found her?’
‘We haven’t, sir,’ said Alec.
Simon Bonnar sat back and let his shoulders drop.
‘We need to speak to you,’ I said and, at a flick of his head, all three men filed out and closed the door behind them.
Then there was silence. Neither Alec nor I knew how to broach the news without revealing our earlier suspicions and neither of us knew how angered he might be by them, even now they were behind us. As we sat quietly, I became aware of a curious sound coming from the open door of the box bed. It sounded as though there were a flock of little birds in there, chirping and peeping, and I could not help glancing that way.
‘Puppies, Mrs Gilver,’ said Simon Bonnar. ‘I run Glasgow but a bitch pups where she chooses. So I’ve been in Beryl’s wee hurly bed there for two nights.’
At that Alec could not prevent his thoughts from showing on his face and Simon Bonnar not only saw them but answered them, unspoken as they were.
‘There’s nothing unusual about it, Mr Osborne,’ he said. ‘There’s plenty a family bigger than mine lives decently in a single-end, even though it wouldn’t suit you.’
‘Of course,’ said Alec, quite sincerely, for it was not overcrowding that concerned him. It was the matter of a widowed father and his grown daughter which struck him as strange.
‘Of course, he says!’ Simon Bonnar scoffed. ‘I know what you’re thinking. But listen to me. These are my people and I get a sight more loyalty living in among them than if I was out and away to some swanky villa in a suburb somewhere and pretending I was born last week at the golf club.’
‘Do you mean Sir Percy?’ I said. ‘Are you saying that Percy Stott used to be a—’
‘Him!’ said Simon Bonnar. ‘Not him. He was born with a rubber spoon in his mouth, didn’t you hear? But those McNabs never had two ha’pennies to rub when we were all bairns together. And their faither worked with my faither more than once to get a bit of business done.’
I took this in as quickly as I could, but still it left me reeling. We had thought Sir Percy’s disdain for his wife’s family sprang from Foxy’s dancing. Now, it appeared that all three siblings had done rather well, starting somewhere similar to the circumstances surrounding us now: one snaring an industrialist, one a church-leaning printer, and one ending up in a comfortable flat with happy memories and enough to live on.
‘But never mind Eunice McNab,’ Bonnar went on. ‘What is it you need to say to me?’
Again we faltered, just as the chirping from inside the box bed grew in volume. Bonnar looked over towards the source of the sound and I was astonished to see his eyes filling with tears.
‘She was that excited about the pups,’ he said thickly. ‘Getting ready for them. Getting homes lined up for them. I told her it was her job to look after them all, but here if she hasn’t got me doing it after all. Eh? Eh? She’s pulled a fast one, hasn’t she? She’ll come swanning back once all the work and trouble’s done – the besom.’
I could not bear it any longer and spoke over him. ‘Mr Bonnar, we greatly fear that Beryl has come to harm.’
It took no more than that for his false cheer to crumble. ‘Aye, well I know it,’ he said. ‘But that can’t be what you needed to tell me. I told you that much.’
‘We didn’t believe you,’ said Alec. ‘We thought if a murder had been done and someone had disappeared then that person was the murderer.’
‘She’d never—’ he began hotly.
‘We know that now,’ I said, much relieved that his mind was running to the goodness of his daughter and not just the temerity of her accusers. ‘We believe now that Beryl has been got out of the way, just as Roly was. We don’t understand why, but we have reason to believe that is what happened.’
‘Got out of the way of what?’ said Simon Bonnar.
We fell silent again then, for to tell him was surely to sign a death warrant for Bert and Tweetie.
‘Rivals,’ said Alec at last, and rather ingeniously.
‘Dancers?’ said Bonnar. ‘Who was it?’
‘We can’t tell you that,’ said Alec, which was also very nicely judged. ‘But three of the Locarno’s professional couples have been broken up now, you see. And Roly’s dying in such a dramatic way allowed Beryl to be bundled away with no one noticing.’
When he put it like that it was so obvious that I blushed to think how long it had taken us to see it.
‘But you don’t know who took her?’ said Bonnar.
It was no more than the truth when Alec answered him. ‘We do not, sir,’ he said. ‘We have no idea. But we mean to find out. Of that you can be sure.’
He nodded, accepting our vow and even smiling faintly. Then, without any warning at all, he took the baccy tin he was clutching and threw it against the wall with such force that it broke open and showered flakes of tobacco all over the floor.
‘Three years!’ he bellowed. ‘Three years I’ve being playing nice to that dirty tink, watching him pawing her, watching her walk out of this house knowing she’s going to meet him, talk and laugh and have her picture taken with him, six feet tall and right in the window in Sauchiehall Street for all the world to see. And I never said a word about it. A bloody Fenian bastard and I put up with it. And now some black-hearted devil that wanted the couples broke up has passed him over and killed her! Killed my Beryl! Why in the name of Christ could he not have killed Herbert bloody Bunyan and left my Beryl alone. Eh? Eh?’
We had no answer.
‘I tell you this, it can’t be a Glasgow m
an,’ Bonnar went on, calming down a little, at least enough to notice the squealing and whining coming from the box bed where the bitch and pups were registering their displeasure at his outburst. ‘No Glasgow man would go after my daughter – my daughter – when he could just as easy get what he wanted from killing that useless article that no one would miss and leaving my girl alone.’ He had gone over to the opening and now reached in and pulled out one of the puppies, a wriggling greyish-pink little grub, almost hairless and still with its ears flattened in folds against its head.
‘Shush, shush now,’ he said, taking another one in his other hand and walking across the room towards us. ‘Beryl wasn’t a week old when her mother died,’ he said. ‘And there was me, Big Man Bonnar, boiling milk and washing bottles. Beryl in her cradle in one corner and her mother in her coffin in the other. Looks like I’ll be doing the same again now, doesn’t it? Weaning pups and burying my girl. If you’ll just find her and bring her home to me.’
The squealing of the other puppies rose to a frenzy and all three of us turned to see why. Their mother had got to her feet and looked out of the opening into the room worried for the missing two. I gasped when I saw the long white snout, the quivering black nose and the dappled ears.
‘A Dalmatian?’ I said. It is far from a common breed in Perthshire and I had not seen one since Bunty died.
‘Beryl’s choice,’ said Bonnar. ‘Daft kind of dog.’
‘We shall find her, Mr Bonnar,’ I said to him. ‘I feel it in my bones that we shall. We shall bring her home.’
29
‘Here’s what I don’t understand,’ said Alec, when we were back at the Grand Central, making a very late luncheon out of two bowls of soup and a round each of ham sandwiches.
Grant and Barrow were nowhere to be seen and I rather thought she must be leading him astray, for that young man was normally just beyond a guardsman for correctness and rigidity.
Dandy Gilver and the Unpleasantness in the Ballroom Page 27
