Death of a Dancer

by Caro Peacock

  Still concentrating on slotting her treasure on to a vacant corner of the page, Mrs Martley said, ‘The landlord came round yesterday when you were out. You know Old Slippers is going?’ Old Slippers was the tenant of the attic rooms above our parlour, so called because nobody had ever seen him in any other sort of footwear. ‘When he goes, the landlord wants to do this whole place up and let it out to a gentleman. Mr Grindley says he wants fifty pounds for a deposit.’

  My heart sank even further. I’d known my hold on Abel Yard was precarious, but had hoped to keep it for a little longer. Setting up house is an expensive business, even second hand, and with only nineteen pounds and a few shillings of my original capital left our options would be severely limited.

  With thoughts of an uncertain future weighing heavily on me, Sunday was a long day; it came as a relief at half past six on Monday morning to let myself out of the small door in the double carriage gates of Abel Yard and see the red glow of Amos Legge’s pipe in the dark. Cupping his hands for me to put my foot in, he threw me up to Rancie’s back as if my eight stone were no more than a wisp of straw. As we crossed into the park I asked him if he’d heard of a man named Rodney Hardcastle. He laughed out loud.

  ‘Heard of him? He owes me money.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘Me and half London besides. Last week, his hat blew off when he was driving in the Ring and I chased it and brought it back for him. “I owe you half a sovereign, my man,” he says, feeling in his pockets, though everybody knows they’re as empty as a pauper’s belly. “I’ll look forward to that, sir,” I says politely. The other grooms were laughing fit to bust. Twenty thousand, he owes, so I shan’t see my half-sovereign this side of Judgement Day’

  ‘How can a man owe twenty thousand pounds?’

  ‘Quite easy, in this town. His father’s Lord Silverdale and he’s rolling in money, see, so they all thought he’d pick up the son’s debts. Only he says he won’t, so they can all whistle for their money.’

  The name Silverdale was vaguely familiar. I had an idea that he’d been a government minister at one time.

  ‘But some people get locked up in the Marshalsea for owing twenty pounds,’ I said.

  ‘That’s how it works, look. If you owe enough, nobody can afford to let you go down, because if you do, they sink with you.’

  Amos, who’d probably never owed a man sixpence in his life, explained it like a lesson in political economy.

  ‘But it has to end somewhere, doesn’t it?’ I said.

  ‘In tears, probably. They do say he’s coming near the end of his rope now.’

  ‘He’s friendly with a dancer called Columbine. Do you know her?’

  But Amos wasn’t a theatre-goer and Columbine did not strike me as a woman likely to go horse riding, so her name meant nothing to him.

  I wished that Mr Disraeli would come riding up, now I had more questions to ask him. He’d wanted me to find out about Columbine’s gentlemen friends, but from the way Rodney Hardcastle had been behaving, half of London already knew about his affairs, financial and otherwise. So was Hardcastle a friend of his? I was disappointed in Mr Disraeli’s taste, if that was the case. But my questions remained unanswered because Disraeli didn’t appear.

  When I arrived home, Mrs Martley was even more disapproving than usual.

  ‘You’ve missed poor Mr Suter. He waited half an hour or more.’

  It was just past eight o’clock, hardly light yet.

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘He looked as if he’d been up all night. I made him a cup of chocolate, but he only drank the half of it. That poor gentleman needs somebody to look after him.’

  Another dig at me. I ignored it and asked her again what Daniel had wanted.

  ‘He left a note for you.’

  She produced it.

  My Dear Libby,

  I am sorry I can’t wait. I have a favour to ask. Would you very kindly attend the performance at the Augustus tonight and see if anybody there has the slightest idea where Jenny might be. As you know, Blake has forbidden me to set foot in the place. Also, I sense that the dancers might be more ready to talk to another woman than to a man. Surrey’s wife (who plays Desdemona) is a decent sort of woman. I know Jenny talked to her sometimes. She might help.

  If you find out anything, please get word to me at any time of the night or day.

  Thank you. I’m sorry to bring you into this.

  Daniel

  Mrs Martley was watching me as I read.

  ‘Bad news?’

  I thought that the true answer was probably yes. Instead I told her I’d be late back and she shouldn’t wait up for me.

  I had a pupil in Piccadilly who’d demanded some last-minute coaching, having been persuaded by friends to sing ‘impromptu’ at an evening reception. She needed so much fussing and reassurance that I didn’t get to the Augustus until it was almost time for the interval. I lingered outside for a while, with the loiterers who hoped to slip into the gallery free of charge for the second half of the evening. A chanter was strolling up and down, singing ballads and selling copies of the words for a penny. Chanters are almost as good as the newspapers in their way, and often nearly as accurate. It had always amazed me that these ballads were on sale on the streets, sometimes only a few hours after the events they described. Then I caught the name ‘Columbine’ and stopped to listen.

  O come all you sportsmen who like a good fight Take seats at the ballet on Saturday night When fair Columbine is defending her crown Against young Copper-knob, the new battler in town.

  Obviously the writer of the ballad hadn’t known Jenny by name, but the detail suggested he’d been there in person.

  Queen Columbine deals her a whack to the shin But game Copper-knob swears the title she’ll win. ‘To spoil her coiffure, I’ll my talons engage.’ In the blink of an eye there are wigs on the stage.

  I paid my penny and bought the word sheet. The chanter went on singing.

  Says young Mr H: ‘I will back Columbine To lay out this upstart in round eight or nine

  I put the ballad in my pocket, hoping Daniel hadn’t heard it.

  After waiting at the side door until some of the musicians came out at the start of the interval, I slipped along the corridor to the orchestra pit. Toby Kennedy had taken over from Daniel as director of the orchestra and was there with a few of the other musicians. Immediately, we both asked, ‘Have you seen Daniel?’

  ‘I met him in the Haymarket around seven,’ Kennedy said. ‘He’s still looking for her. I told him if the poor lass has the sense she was born with, she’ll have taken herself back home to the country until the fuss dies down.’

  ‘I saw him after that,’ a trombone player said.

  He’d obviously been eavesdropping unashamedly. I supposed that a lot of the musicians were gossiping about Daniel.

  ‘Where?’ I said.

  ‘Just outside the stage door here, when I came in. I said good evening to him, but I don’t think he noticed.’

  Kennedy looked at me and pulled a wry face. He guessed, as I did, that although Daniel was forbidden the theatre, he’d hoped against hope to see somebody who knew Jenny’s whereabouts. I asked Kennedy if the ballets were being performed in Columbine’s absence, wondering about my chances of talking to the other dancers.

  ‘They’re still being performed in her presence, God help us.’

  ‘But I heard her telling Blake she wouldn’t set foot on stage again,’ I said.

  ‘He knew the remedy for that.’ He mimed the passing over of money. ‘A hundred pounds per performance.’

  ‘What! I doubt if even Taglioni gets that much.’

  ‘No, but then, as far as I know, Taglioni has never picked a fight with another dancer on stage.’

  An ordinary dancer, like Jenny, might get four shillings a performance if she was lucky, with no pay for all those hours of rehearsals. I recalled Columbine’s conversation with Blake; whatever her failings as a dancer, she was certainly
astute when it came to business matters.

  ‘Blake must think she’s worth it, just for the buzz,’ Kennedy said. ‘He’s even found another red-headed dancer in Jenny’s place to keep the audience hoping.’

  I asked Kennedy how Columbine had performed in the first ballet.

  ‘As badly as ever. Clumsier, if anything.’

  I decided to leave any attempt at questioning the dancers about Jenny until after the second ballet, because there wasn’t much time left before they’d be on stage again. The players who had left during the interval were returning now and the audience were taking their seats, Rodney Hardcastle and his friends trailing in after the rest, as usual.

  The head of the stagehands tapped the boards to signify to Kennedy that the scene change was complete, and the musicians launched into the introductory music. The curtain should have begun rising at the beginning of the last repeat. It stayed down and immobile, not even twitching. Accustomed to these little hitches, Kennedy signalled to play the repeat again. At the end of it, with the curtain still stubbornly down, they played the whole introduction again. By now, the gallery were getting restive. When at last Barnaby Blake, looking hot and worried, came out in front of the curtains he was greeted with catcalls and booing. He raised his hand for silence. The musicians put down their instruments.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we regret that we have had to cancel the second ballet. Madame Columbine is indisposed.’

  ‘Oh, that confounded woman,’ Kennedy whispered.

  There was more booing. Under cover of it, Blake hissed down to the pit: ‘Acrobats’ music. Loud.’

  He disappeared behind the curtain. Minutes later it rose on the Two Peas, hastily spinning themselves into an extra routine. The gallery went on shouting and booing for a while, then gradually decided it wasn’t worth rioting over.

  It seemed to me a useful opportunity. As the dancers were not needed for the second ballet, they should have time on their hands and be ready to talk. I slipped quietly up the stairs from the pit, into the dressing-room corridor. It was blocked by a huddle of fluttering gauze and goose-pimpled flesh, as the dancers gathered to stare at something I couldn’t see. A cold draught blew along the corridor. Beyond them, a woman was screaming, a continuous high-pitched sound. I touched the shoulder of the nearest dancer.

  ‘Who’s that screaming?’

  ‘Her maid. She won’t stop.’

  It was the small dark-haired dancer who’d remembered Jenny’s basket. She was shaking from cold or fear. Over her shoulder, I saw that they were all looking at the closed door of Columbine’s dressing room.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘She’s dead. There’s a policeman in there.’

  ‘Who’s dead?’

  The dark-haired girl stared at me as if I should have known.

  ‘Columbine.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  The yellow-haired dancer, Pauline, was at the front of the huddle. She looked more self-possessed than the other girls and had taken time to wrap a shawl round her shoulders. When she turned to look at me there was a glint in her eyes, as if she were enjoying the excitement.

  ‘She’s been poisoned,’ she said.

  ‘Who said so?’

  ‘The doctor’s in there, with the policeman. I heard him asking Mr Blake if anybody knew what she’d been eating and drinking.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean she was poisoned,’ one of the girls said.

  ‘She was raving before she died,’ said Pauline, annoyed at being doubted. ‘Going on about bleeding and people not seeing.’

  ‘How do you know?’ I said.

  Silence, then one of the other girls said, maliciously, ‘Pauline was looking in at the door.’

  Pauline turned on her.

  ‘Somebody had to do it, didn’t they? We’d heard she’d been taken ill, so there we all were, wondering whether the ballet was on or off. Of course nobody thinks to tell us anything. So I said I’d go and ask Mr Blake if everybody else was too scared to. But when I got to her room the door was open and Marie was crying and Mr Blake was inside and Mr Surrey with his face all covered in black make-up. Columbine was stretched out on her couch in her under things. Her eyes were black, black as burnt chestnuts, and she was babbling away in this odd voice, but not making any sense.’

  ‘Did anybody say then that she’d been poisoned?’ I said.

  ‘No. I thought she’d had a fit. I asked could I do anything and Mr Surrey said to go and get some strong coffee …’

  ‘Coffee? Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. Anyway, the nearest coffee stall’s half a mile away, but then the doctor came in anyway so we forgot about the coffee and the doctor said everybody was to go out except her maid. Mr Blake told me to go back to the dressing room and tell the other girls that Madame was very ill and there’d be no ballet. So I did.’

  The maid Marie had stopped screaming. In the calm that followed I heard the whisper for the first time, ‘Jenny’. It came from one of the other girls, I didn’t know which, and at the sound the whole group of them went still and quiet.

  ‘Has Jenny been here tonight?’ I asked.

  Only the dark-haired girl spoke.

  ‘If she has, we didn’t see her.’

  I asked the girls to let me through and started to walk along the corridor. Pauline asked where I was going, but I didn’t answer. The door to Columbine’s room opened and the actor who played Othello, Robert Surrey, came out in costume. His face was covered in black cork makeup, with lips showing pinkly through. He had an arm round Marie and she was curled up against him, her face contorted with shock and grief, as if she wanted to burrow into his padded doublet for safety. He led her past me, into another room. Almost at once, Barnaby Blake appeared from the direction of the stage, with Rodney Hardcastle walking behind him. Hardcastle seemed angry and confused.

  ‘She was all right this afternoon. Are you sure it’s not some kind of game she’s playing with us?’

  Blake, grim-faced, simply answered by opening Columbine’s door to let Hardcastle see inside. I took a few steps forward and looked too. Columbine was lying on a couch. Somebody had covered her with a silk shawl, but it wasn’t quite long enough and her feet and ankles in their white silk stockings stuck out. Hardcastle said nothing at first, then he suddenly retched and sprayed a fountain of claret-pink vomit all over the walls and corridor so violently that it spattered my shoes. There was a nervous-looking police officer standing by the couch and a thin, grey-haired man dressed in dark clothes sitting quietly on a chair. The grey-haired man got up when he heard Hardcastle retching and came out, carrying a black bag and closing the door carefully behind him. The doctor, staying piously by the corpse of the patient he’d failed to save. Was it piety, or simply as good a place as any to wait for the arrival of a more senior police officer? He took a disapproving look at Hardcastle, now leaning on his elbow against the wall.

  ‘Who’s this?’

  Blake explained to him in a whisper and the doctor looked even more disapproving.

  ‘He’d better be taken somewhere quiet.’

  Blake seemed ready enough to let the doctor take charge and suggested they should all go into his office. Kennedy had arrived by now, and I could tell from the expression on his face that the news had reached the musicians.

  ‘I’m going for a look outside,’ he said. ‘Go back and wait for me in the pit.’

  I knew he was going to see if Daniel might be waiting there, as he had been earlier in the evening. Instead of heading for the pit, I followed him along the corridor. Billy the doorkeeper came in from the street, followed by two more police officers. They pushed past us and went into Columbine’s room.

  Kennedy and I looked up and down the street but there was no sign of Daniel or anybody but a few loiterers, wondering why the police had arrived in a hurry. We’d closed the door and turned back into the corridor when a sob sounded from inside Billy’s shadowy cubicle by the door.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Kennedy sai
d.

  A pale face looked up at us, then a plump boy of about ten years old got up from the floor and came out, cuddling a tabby cat and crying. I recognised the cat as Billy’s but couldn’t place the boy. He was clutching the cat close to his chest for comfort, tears running down on to its fur. I asked him what was the matter.

  ‘The girls say the poison was in her syllabub,’ he said. ‘Is that true?’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘David Surrey.’

  That placed him: the son of Othello and Desdemona. It was a surprise that he should be grieving so much for Columbine, or perhaps it was simply shock.

  ‘Is there anybody to look after you?’

  ‘My mother’s in our dressing room, but…’

  I put a hand on his shoulder, and guided him to the door he indicated. It was the room where Robert Surrey had taken the maid Marie. When I knocked and opened the door I had a glimpse of Marie sitting on a chair and a woman in bodice and petticoats kneeling beside her with an arm round her shoulders. I pushed the boy gently into the room, complete with cat, but before I could close the door on him, a police officer came pounding along the corridor and shoved me aside. He went up to Marie, took her wrist and pulled her to her feet. The other woman cried out and Surrey asked what he was doing, but the policeman took no notice. He dragged Marie into the corridor and towards the outside door. Marie was too shocked to cry now, almost past walking. The door to Columbine’s dressing room opened and another policeman came out, carrying a glass bowl with a silver cover. Blake followed, face grim.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Kennedy asked him.