Beau Death

by Peter Lovesey

  The first of the team to report back was Ingeborg. “I went to see the wardrobe mistress at the Theatre Royal, guv, and you were right about The Beaux’ Stratagem.”

  “Of course I was right. Did you doubt me?”

  “The National Theatre brought it here on tour in 1989, with Brenda Blethyn playing Mrs. Sullen.”

  “Never mind Mrs. Sullen. Is there a character called Beau Nash?”

  She gave him a suspicious look. “I thought you’d seen it. There was another production in 2015.”

  “Did I say I’d seen it?”

  “You gave that impression. Obviously I got the wrong end of the stick. To answer your question, he’s not in it. The play was written in 1707, before he got famous.”

  He’d already skated over any mild embarrassment. “Another production in 2015, you said?”

  “The National again. This is the problem. They provide their own costumes.”

  “They count them out and they count them in again?”

  She nodded. “They would have noticed if one went missing.”

  He wasn’t troubled. The “problem” wasn’t a problem any longer. The case had moved on in the short time since he’d asked Ingeborg to contact the theatre. Now that Paloma had decided the clothes on the skeleton were eighteenth-century originals, the theatre wardrobe had ceased to be of interest. He didn’t like disappointing his most dedicated detective, but she had to be told.

  She took it well.

  After he’d explained, she said, “The wardrobe mistress was telling me there’s a big demand in Bath for historical costumes.”

  “When you say ‘historical,’ you mean old-style, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Not originals?”

  “They’d be too valuable to wear to Regency balls and things. Someone spills a glass of red wine and it’s goodbye to a piece of history.”

  “And several thousand quid.”

  “You might get away with it at some more serious function where food and drink don’t come into it. I expect it’s more sober at the Beau Nash Society.”

  Alert to every possibility as always, Ingeborg spoke of the society as if they both knew all about it. In reality they hadn’t discussed it. The only information Diamond had got had come from Paloma’s friend Estella.

  “Funny you should mention this. Are you thinking of joining?”

  Ingeborg laughed nervously. “No way. Not my scene at all.”

  “You’re well qualified with all your knowledge about Nash.”

  “You’re joking, I hope. If you’re talking about my potted biography the other day, that was a cyber rush, in my head and out of it.”

  “You don’t retain that stuff?”

  “No chance. I was summarising from various websites.”

  “I met one of the members. Her name is Estella and she’s writing a book about Nash. She’s your age or younger.”

  After a moment’s thought her eyes widened in alarm. “I don’t know if I’m reading you right, guv, but they’d know I was a stoolie in the first two minutes.”

  He smiled. Putting her forward as a member wasn’t part of his planning. “Pity. I’d like to see you in a wig and long frock.”

  “Can we be serious?”

  “Fair enough. What else do you know about this society?”

  “It’s for plugged-in people like your friend,” Ingeborg said. “They have rules. Everyone dresses the part, even for regular meetings when they have speakers or listen to music. They’re mostly members of the glitterati, so they prefer to buy their outfits rather than hire and they don’t like to wear the same thing too often, which makes good business for anyone who deals in period costumes.”

  “The glitterati? Here in Bath?”

  “Fat cats. Call them what you like.”

  He couldn’t see Estella as a fat cat, but the glitterati tag might apply.

  “How long has this society been in existence?”

  “Couldn’t tell you, guv.”

  “Worth finding out, isn’t it? Don’t panic, I’ll do it myself. However . . . someone must have made those alterations to the original costume and I expect they were local. They let the breeches out and sewed pearl buttons on the collar. It was done to a high standard, Paloma says.”

  “A long time ago.”

  “They could still be around. If we could trace them, they’d be a key witness.”

  “I’m with you. It’s worth a try.”

  John Leaman was the next to enter the office, back from several hours of doorstepping in Twerton. One look told Diamond all he needed to know.

  “Look on the bright side, man. You got out of the office for a change, didn’t you?”

  “Much good it did me,” Leaman said as if the whole thing had been devised to frustrate him. “The terrace has been a slum for years. It’s hopeless trying to get the names of people who lived there before the squatters moved in. Tenants came and went: students, illegals, street musicians, runaway spouses.”

  “Who was the landlord?”

  “Some letting agency called Up Your Street had it last, known locally as Up Yours.”

  “Where did it operate from?”

  “Oldfield Park. They charged fees upfront, over and above the rent. This is standard practice and it’s out of control because of the demand for cheap housing. Anyone can set up as a letting agency and there’s hardly any regulation.”

  “I know it’s tough out there.”

  “Horrendous. With the housing shortage any number of scams have grown up. You find your tenancy agreement was only for six months and they demand another fee to renew. This lot got reported and did a runner overnight.”

  “For keeps?”

  Leaman nodded. “I feel sorry for these people scraping a fee together and being ripped off. I’ve had bad experiences myself renting in Bath. Right now I’ve got a landlord I can rely on, I think, but you can never be certain.”

  “Tell me about it,” Diamond said. “I rented in London in the eighties. Got suckered more than once. It’s a minefield.”

  “These days it’s a whole lot worse because of internet scams,” Leaman said. “You’d think it would be easier making a search for a place online than flogging around from agency to agency, but there are crooks who pose as landlords and ask you to pay a fee in advance for a property that doesn’t exist or is already rented. They catch a lot of overseas applicants that way.”

  “Any idea who the actual owner of the terrace was?”

  “Lived abroad is all anyone seems to know. I’m not sure if there was one owner or a string of them.”

  “The council must have dealt with someone when they condemned the place. You can’t knock down a whole terrace without consultation.”

  “I’ve been concentrating on the tenants.”

  “Get the name of the owner and we might get a handle on it. We might also do well to talk to some of the local housing charities. They may have dealt with some of the people who rented.”

  “When you say ‘we’ . . . ?”

  “I mean you, John.”

  “Thought so. I’m going to need help. This is a pig of a job you’ve handed me.”

  “It ain’t all glamour. I’ll see if I can spare another plod.”

  “What do you mean, another plod? It’s me working on this.”

  “Sorry. Another super-sleuth.”

  Leaman muttered something inaudible.

  “Speaking of plods, was the fingertip search in progress out at Twerton?” Diamond asked.

  “Waste of time. They don’t know what they’re looking for.”

  “Anything, tell them anything, but best of all would be the murder weapon,” Diamond said. “What Dr. Waghorn insists on describing as a sharp implement. Could be some sort of dagger or a kitchen knife or a chisel, I suppose.
”

  “Sword?”

  “That was suggested at the autopsy, but not by Waghorn.”

  “By you?”

  “One of the students. There’s always one.”

  “Is it so far-fetched?”

  “In a poky loft in Twerton? You couldn’t draw a sword, let alone use it.”

  “Doesn’t Waghorn have an opinion about what was used?”

  Diamond shook his head slowly. “He’s leaving it to us to find out. And he’s right.”

  “Well, nothing sharp has surfaced at the building site yet, not even a cocktail stick.”

  “I doubt if the good people of Twerton are into cocktails.”

  They were joined by Keith Halliwell looking as if he’d won the lottery. “Significant dates, guv.”

  “What about them?”

  “Those years you and I were talking about—1974, 2000 and 2002. There’s another one: 1909.”

  “Too far back for us.”

  “Hold on. I’ve been checking the papers. 1909 was huge in Bath. Don’t ask me why, but they put on a pageant, and not just a few people dressing up, but three thousand of them, with acting, music and dancing, all in costume. It went on for a week and was the biggest blast the city has ever seen.”

  “Where did you find this?”

  “It was all over the papers at the time. There are books, postcards, lantern-slides. Visitors came from across the world. Every city called Bath wanted to be there. That’s twelve in the US and two in Canada. The Lord Mayor of London in his coach. The king couldn’t be there because his health was failing by then, but he sent his brother, the Duke of Connaught. Every building along the procession route was decorated.”

  “Was Beau Nash part of this shindig?”

  “As a main character, yes. They covered the entire history of Bath from Prince Bladud and his pigs to the modern age of tourism, and Nash was the star performer in one big scene depicting a royal visit that really took place in the 1750s. A big procession, a gun salute, music, singing and dancing. Nash comes on and greets the princess.”

  “Are there pictures of this?”

  “I can show you some online. Better still, I can tell you the name of the guy who played Nash.”

  “Really? A name at last.”

  “A local doctor, Leslie Herbert Walsh. I’m sure he’s our man.” Halliwell had taken out his phone. Up came a shot of a good-looking man in frock coat, brocade breeches, white silk stockings and black buckled shoes and holding a white tricorne.

  “Are you sure?” Diamond said. “The wig’s wrong. This is white. Beau Nash wore black.”

  Halliwell shifted the picture a fraction and some writing came into view: Beau Nash, Episode VII. “So they got the wig wrong. Doesn’t matter, does it?”

  “It matters to us. The skeleton was wearing a black wig. And I’m not sure the coat is right, either.”

  John Leaman was still in the room and now he joined in. “There’s a bigger problem with this.”

  “What’s that?” Halliwell asked, irritated.

  “Like the boss said, he can’t be our man because 1909 is too far back. Nobody in your pageant could have been wearing Y-fronts.”

  “Not my pageant.”

  “Y-fronts weren’t invented.”

  Halliwell refused to be downed. “Ingeborg just did an internet search on Dr. Walsh.”

  “Ingeborg is supposed to be working on something else.”

  “She was at her desk so I told her what I found and she was excited and got the facts straight away. Leslie Walsh was born in Croydon in 1867 and came to Bath after he qualified as a doctor, a single man living first in Walcot, then Gay Street, and later Great Pulteney Street. At the time of the pageant he was 42, but—here’s the bottom line—he didn’t die until 1949, when he was 82 and Y-fronts definitely were around.” He didn’t actually push Leaman in the chest and say, “So there,” but the message was clear.

  Leaman said with barely disguised sarcasm, “And he didn’t have a tooth in his head. Is that on the internet as well?”

  Halliwell snapped back, “It’s perfectly possible at his age.”

  Diamond was weighing the hard information. “Do we know where this doctor was living at the time of his death? Twerton is quite a comedown.”

  “He must have retired there.”

  “Pure supposition,” Leaman said.

  Halliwell wasn’t quitting now. “Private doctors have always had rooms in Great Pulteney Street, but they don’t live there after they stop working. They move out.”

  “To a two-up, two-down in Twerton? A doctor? Give me a break.”

  “He could have fallen on hard times. Too fond of the bottle. Or the horses.”

  Now Diamond shook his head. “We haven’t mentioned the biggest problem of all, Keith. You said he died in 1949, right?”

  “What’s wrong with that? He was old, like our skeleton. He could have kept the costume all those years and dressed up in it for old time’s sake. Maybe took the trouble to get himself a more authentic wig. I reckon the pageant had been the biggest moment in his life.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “How could anyone know he died in 1949 when his body wasn’t found until now?”

  11

  Dr. Walsh ceased to be a serious candidate when further enquiries revealed he had died on a precise date in 1949 at an address in Okehampton, Devonshire, and probate had been granted to a firm of solicitors.

  Halliwell looked like the goalkeeper who’d dived the wrong way and lost the penalty shoot-out in the World Cup.

  “Don’t take it to heart, Keith,” Diamond told him. “You did well to find him. In my career I’ve wandered up more blind alleys than I care to remember. I don’t know who writes my script but if I ever find out, he’s mincemeat.”

  “I even told Paul Gilbert to put the name on his incident board.”

  “It can stay there for a bit. Keep the lad happy. Nobody looks at the bloody board anyway. I was thinking of pinning a pair of Y-fronts on it to get some attention.”

  Halliwell didn’t want his mistake on public exhibition for a moment longer. “I’m going to speak to him now.”

  Diamond returned to his office. Truth to tell, he was as disappointed as his deputy. To progress in any investigation you need suspects and they were unlikely to emerge until the victim was named. He sat in his chair and pondered what it was that people liked about dressing up. Personally, he’d made strenuous efforts all his life to avoid wearing fancy dress. As a kid he’d once been persuaded by his parents to go to a friend’s birthday party dressed as a chicken, but through some misunderstanding the party wasn’t fancy dress. Every other kid had been in everyday clothes. The mockery still rankled. He was a plain clothes man, through and through. He’d been only too happy to get out of police uniform when the chance came to join CID.

  Yet the Twerton victim had chosen to put on the Beau Nash outfit. Why?

  If nothing else, Halliwell’s theory about Dr. Leslie Walsh had provided a possible answer. The handsome medic was supposed to have got a taste for strutting about and being the centre of attention. If he’d kept the clothes and the wig for years, the theory went, he must have had a reason and his secret fix was recapturing his triumph of July, 1909. Too bad it was another blind alley.

  What other reason could there be for dressing the part?

  The theatre, obviously. Parts were written for people of all ages so it was not impossible that the victim had been cast in one of those Restoration comedies Paloma had talked about. If so, it seemed likely that the actor had been a professional. Amateurs tended to go for “safe” plays. When they did comedy it was usually farce.

  Suppose a professional actor was deeply serious about getting into his role as a Restoration beau and made a thing of dressing in a genuin
e eighteenth-century frock coat and breeches. Far-fetched? Method actors went to extraordinary lengths to immerse themselves in the parts they were playing. If one really wanted to inhabit the role he might go to the trouble of kitting himself in clothes from the 1760s.

  The house in Twerton wasn’t known locally as a theatrical boarding house, but so what? An elderly method actor playing a minor role, and still doggedly trying to “become” the character couldn’t be ruled out.

  The only other reason Diamond could think of for dressing up was the need to conform. If you attended some event where everyone wore the gear, you’d do it, however stupid you looked.

  A re-enactment?

  Or the Beau Nash Society?

  He arranged to meet Estella again, this time at the Podium, the oddly named place that isn’t a platform in a concert hall but two floors of shops he’d never used and, upstairs, the Central Library. Estella had said on the phone she was doing research there.

  They met at the top of the escalator inside the glazed atrium. She was in purple and red today, still making a fashion statement. Platform heels, trailing scarf, plenty of bling. She must have stood out in the library reference section.

  “Will it take long?” she asked at once. “I bagged a place at a table in there and I don’t want to lose it.”

  “Everyone needs a break at some point,” he said without answering the question. “Let me get you a coffee.”

  They settled for one of the covered tables in the street outside, set back far enough from the noise of traffic. “I’m hoping you’ve got something even more sensational to tell me,” she said when they both had cappuccinos in front of them.

  “About what?”

  “The Beau, of course.”

  “I don’t know about sensational,” he said. “Where did we leave him?”

  “In the roof of an eighteenth-century house in Twerton. The revelation that’s going to turn my book into a bestseller.”

  Gulp.

  He felt an uprush of guilt. He’d been so preoccupied with this maddening mystery that he’d failed until this minute to inform Estella about the latest findings. He lowered his eyes and found himself staring at the image overlaid on his coffee. The outline of a heart had turned into the letter Y.