by John Gardner
Jewell, Baccus & Dance inhabited the entire second floor of a lovely Georgian house just off Albemarle Street in the heart of London’s West End. The building’s ground floor was a select-looking dining club called Sur la Table. Later, Shirley checked the club’s details and said it was one of those places where men could take women for lunch or dinner and feel safe from the wrath of their wives — ‘And so they should at fifty pounds a year membership and ten pounds for lunch or dinner — men-only membership of course.’ It was pretty steep because you could get dinner at the Savoy for around a fiver, give or take a couple of quid. But maybe the dinner at Sur la Table was better than the one you’d get at the Savoy. Some people would say that wouldn’t be difficult.
Suzie had telephoned Dance from Piccadilly Underground to make certain he could see them, and they found him waiting for them outside on the pavement, as though he wanted to be certain they didn’t go astray: into Sur la Table or up to the third floor, the offices of Grayling Green Associates — whoever they were.
At first glance, Dance seemed to be a slightly effete though pleasant enough young man. Suzie had been with him for a while before she realized, good looks apart, there was a self-possessed hardness about him, from the cold blue eyes to his highly polished shoes, shades of the Galloping Major. His neat light hair was worn a little longer than the fashionable short back and sides and he had an attractive stutter that manifested itself in occasional hesitations before words he found difficult. Suzie guessed that he was in his early thirties. But what do I know? she reflected.
‘We’re not usually very busy just before ...’ his lips framed the word, opening and straining: pause, stumble, continue, ‘... Christmas.’ He smiled. Charming. A girl could get used to being smiled at like that. He seemed to envelop her with his smile. Suzie was quite smitten. Shirley had been sent to interview the secretaries, Miss Burrage and Miss Holroyd, so Suzie and Dance were alone.
‘But you did rent five Coram Cross Road to Miss Benton just before Christmas last year, Christmas ’39.’
‘Not me personally.’ The smile again. Ought to come with a warning. ‘People don’t normally buy or rent property just before ...’ pause, control it, continue, ‘... Christmas. Business usually picks up after the holiday. Old Mr Baccus used to allow everybody in the office to take a whole week off at ...’ hesitation, ‘... Christmas.’
‘Old Mr Baccus?’
‘Founder of the firm. Alas no longer with us.’ He indicated a deep leather chair, inviting her to sit, as he limped — not so marked on the flat — to his desk. The desk was the size of an aircraft carrier. What was it they said about men with big desks? There was another smaller desk directly behind her, diagonally across from Dance’s. With a quick sweep her eyes took in the telephones, student lamp with the deep green shade, the big wireless set, the long mirror, the comfortable leather chairs and the copy of a Breugel on the wall directly behind him. If he turned his back, standing behind the desk, Suzie reasoned, a glance in the long mirror would give him a clear view of the other desk and the area surrounding it. It was a matter of angles, she thought, and the setting up of the mirror was not a question of chance.
‘Old Mr Baccus?’ she prompted.
‘Old Paul Baccus. Founder, originally a Greek family, came to London in 1901, I believe. Had a great talent with property. Knew what to buy and what to leave alone. What would sell and what was good for development. A natural in this business.’
‘So Emily’d be his daughter?’ she asked.
‘Emily?’ he looked up, his eyes widening and an expression of surprise flitting across his face: there and gone so fast you had to be equally quick to spot it.
Whoa, she thought, what’s that all about? ‘She was mentioned somewhere; by someone.’ Suitably vague. ‘Isn’t she part of this firm, Emily Baccus?’
He took his time. ‘Yes. Yes, Emily’s the only Baccus left with the firm.’ Pause, teeth together, stumbling, and over, ‘She has a few properties of her own. Deals with them on her own as well. The finance goes through the business, but we really don’t see her very often. I hardly ...’ hesitation, ‘... see her at all. A tough young woman.’
‘A lot of properties?’
‘Who? The firm?’
‘No, Miss Baccus.’
‘She has two very good ones. Right on the edge of Soho. Close to Rupert Street. They’re converted into flats.’ A low single laugh. ‘A very tough lady, our Miss Baccus. She goes round the flats and collects the rent herself. Usually the second Wednesday in the month, but she’s in and out of those properties at all hours. I personally wouldn’t like to do that.’
She nodded, thinking that she wouldn’t be happy going in and out of some of those places at odd hours. ‘I presume you’re the Dance.’
He inclined his head in an affirmative movement.
‘So, who’s the Jewell?’ she asked.
‘Morecome,’ he said, then repeated it. ‘Morecombe Jewell. A sleeping partner. To be honest, Miss Mountford, I’m the reality of Jewell, Baccus & Dance. The two ladies assist me: Miss Burrage keeps the books, sometimes does the lettings, follows up if rents aren’t paid, and Miss Holroyd does the letters. Grayling Green do the legal stuff when we deal with a leasing contract.’ The S again. Teeth, tongue, lips and over, ‘Solicitors, Commissioners for Oaths. We don’t have to go far.’
She glanced around her. ‘Looks as though you haven’t got to go very far for anything.’ The door to his left was half-ajar and she could see the back of a sumptuously covered armchair on a thick carpet and a picture hanging just inside the door. Nice. Looked like a view of Venice: a painting of the Salute from St Mark’s, she thought. She was an expert on Venice, because in 1932 they had all gone to Venice for a week. A real treat. Charlotte was fifteen and she was fourteen. One day, on a vaporetto they both had their bottoms pinched, which upset Charlotte, but was a reasonably pleasurable experience for Suzie.
‘No, not far to go for anything.’ He smiled his sweet embraceable smile again. ‘I’ve one room through there —’ nodding at the door — ‘and there’s a staircase to the rest of the apartment at the top of the building. What used to be the attics. Handy for the firewatching now. Would you like to see?’
The offer was so unexpected that Suzie found herself grinning and nodding. Like a monkey, she thought. Grinning like an ape. Is Mr Dance flirting with me? Maybe? Her hand came up automatically to tidy away an imagined unruly strand of hair.
‘Come.’ Rising, he gestured with one hand (long rather beautiful fingers, she thought) showing her through into a large room with wide bay windows looking down on to the street. There was a deep-pile cream carpet and a silk wallcovering: a watery blue with lozenge-shaped flecks of gold that matched the coverings of two button-backed easy chairs and a long Chesterfield. The picture inside the door was, as she’d thought, Venice and two other paintings — one of the Mall with members of the Household Cavalry passing towards Buckingham Palace; the other of the Champs-Élysées looking towards the Arc de Triomphe — hung on adjacent walls. All three were framed in gilt with light grey mountings.
‘My father was an artist,’ he said as though that explained everything.
‘He did these?’ she asked.
‘Yes, these and many others. I only have these three originals.’ He hesitated and then suggested that she might like to see upstairs. ‘This is my drawing room. It is an unconventional arrangement. Above here I have a dining room, kitchen and bedroom.’ He led her along a passage punctuated by a cloakroom door, and from there up a wide staircase, carpeted, like the passage and the drawing room, in the same deep cream pile. The stairs turned acutely, doubling back on themselves, so that eventually they led to the room directly above the drawing room. Three windows up here, originally dormer windows now framed with heavy, dark green curtains. The smell was of wood and polish and money. A long, heavy oak table with six high-backed matching chairs occupied a central position while an equally heavy oak sideboard held silver chaffing dishe
s, a tall engraved slightly bulbous tea pot, two trays and other dishes, all in silver. On the table candelabra winked, the candles pristine and loaded into the holders: seven to each set — Georgian, she thought, but that was a guess. What she knew about silver could be written on a postage stamp.
His bedroom was directly above the firm’s office. The door stood open and Suzie saw right in to the wide, large bed covered in scarlet, dotted with gold fleurs-de-lis, the scarlet echoed in the bedside lampshades. She glimpsed books on a table and a small oil painting of a large country house — sixteenth century, she’d say — in golden Cotswold stone with a clutch of chimneys at one end, mullion windows, leaded lights and an elaborate iron-bound door, the whole place glowing at dusk on a summer’s evening. In the distance, behind the house, cornfields rose to meet a stand of trees and she half recognized the view, there was the tip of a church tower showing above the corn on the left. Through the rest of the day she kept trying to place it, just over the lip of her memory.
Next door, the kitchen was professional and businesslike, a modern gas oven and hob, stainless-steel sink and brushed steel fronts to the cupboards below a marble work surface. ‘You cook, Mr Dance?’ she asked and he smiled, nodding, muttering something about it being his hobby, his passion in life.
On their way back he slid an arm around Suzie, pausing for a second, resting a hand on her waist allowing it to remain there for a count of five sending a little shock through her, a sparkle in her loins. There, standing at the top of the stairs.
To the left there was another door that he opened to show it led on to the roof, giving a staggering view of London to the west.
‘You can walk right around the block and it’s perfectly safe,’ pointing to the balustrade that came up to her thighs. ‘Right round,’ he repeated and she turned back looking up the sharp slope of the roof, slick and grey tiled. There was a space of a good two and a half feet between the rise of the roof slates and the balustrade: enough room to walk with some comfort in spite of the shallow runnel to carry rain water down to the gutters below. ‘Builds up when it’s raining,’ he said.
‘This is where you firewatch?’ she asked.
‘The post’s two buildings along.’ He nodded up the street towards the corner with Piccadilly. ‘Best view in London and I’ve got a personal entrance to it.’
They went back, and down through the drawing room and into the office. Suzie felt her cheeks red from the short time on the roof; excited by being shown the rooms of his apartment; impressed by the veneer of wealth that hung over the decor and furnishings.
Now it was rather tame to be back asking questions when she would much rather be frittering time away with Josh Dance.
‘Where were we?’ she asked, and he said something about the Coram Cross Road lease.
‘Yes, if you didn’t do the lease, who did?’
‘I’d have to look,’ he replied. ‘Emily possibly. She was here full-time while I was away.’
‘Away?’
‘Yes.’ He looked at her with the same smile, hands slightly apart as if he would embrace her if she came close enough.
‘Away where?’
‘At the war. I came back on a st—stretcher, via Dunkirk.’ He tapped his leg significantly as if to say that’s where I collected the limp.
Her heart all but went out to him. Like everyone, she’d seen the newsreel film at the cinema: the defeated army wading out from the beaches, and along the Mole, being taken aboard the fleet of small ships. Men lining up in disciplined rows; the Stukas howling down and thick oily smoke pumping in the background.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I was a territorial soldier. Went as soon as war ...’ He trailed off. Enough said.
‘You’ve been invalided out?’
‘Not much use as a soldier if you can’t run.’
‘No, I suppose not.’
‘I’m on indefinite leave.’ Pause, then a puzzled look. ‘Is this something new?’ He frowned, perplexed.
‘New?’
‘You’re a girl. A lady. Do ladies investigate murders nowadays? Is it the war?’
‘Something like that. Shortage of coppers.’ Dunkirk, she thought.
Eventually, she asked. ‘You knew Josephine Benton though?’
‘Hardly.’
‘Your name and number’re in her address book.’
‘Well, I’d met her, dealt with a query she had about decorating. I even went to a Sunday lunchtime drinks party.’
‘And Emily? She had Emily Baccus’s address and phone number.’
‘Oh yes. Yes Emily knew her, of course. A good name to drop.’
Suzie raised an eyebrow.
‘Emily likes names she can drop,’ he said with a slanted smile.
‘Like her friend, Barry Forbes?’
Dance’s face conveyed that he was searching a long way back in his memory. ‘I expect so. That went on for quite a long time I believe.’
‘Went on? Miss Baccus isn’t seeing Mr Forbes any more?’
‘It was always a bit on and off. One was never quite certain. May I ask what this is really all about? You can hardly think that her leasing agents had anything to do with her death.’
She smiled, nodding, a deprecating movement of hand and head. ‘Background, Mr Dance. Looking at her friends and acquaintances. But you say you hardly knew her, Jo Benton?’
‘I really didn’t know her at all. Let me see if we can find out who dealt with her lease.’ He picked up one of the telephones and spoke briefly — ‘Miss Burrage, do you know who handled the lease for the Coram Cross St—Street property ... Yes, yes Miss Benton, that’s what it’s all about ... Oh, really? One minute.’ Covering the mouthpiece with his hand he spoke to Suzie. ‘Sh—Should Miss Burrage bring the details up here? She’s just been over them with your colleague.’
‘Why not? Yes.’ And as he hung the earpiece of the tall telephone back on to its Y-shaped rest she added, ‘Could you also give me Miss Baccus’s address so that I can cheek it against the one I’ve already ...’
‘Yes, of co—course.’ He rattled off a flat number in a service block off Marylebone High Street. ‘Three-twenty Derbyshire Mansions. Sounds grand doesn’t it?’
‘And is it?’
‘In a rather vulgar sort of way. All art deco and such. There’s a big cubist picture in the foyer and a laminated pink mirror in the lift. Not my kind of place.’
Suzie reached into her mind realizing that the address was the same as the one she had copied from Jo Benton’s book. ‘And she rarely comes in to work here these days, Emily Baccus? Any reason for that?’
‘I hardly think,’ Josh Dance began, then, ‘Well, there’s not much for her to do. As long as she keeps her own properties ticking over.’
Suzie thought she wasn’t getting very far. Not with the case anyway. There was little that either Dance or Miss Baccus could contribute, though it had been nice to meet Dance ... Josh. He started talking again.
Then Shirley arrived with the two remaining employees. Miss Burrage was a plump, fussy woman with thick spectacles and the manner of a gossip. Next to her, Miss Holroyd looked positively slender and alert, a girl of around eighteen or nineteen. They were both agog about the murder, eager to assist in any way. But in effect Suzie had lost interest: there was little they could add. She simply went through the motions, getting the details of how Miss Benton had come to take out a lease on the property.
‘Josephine Benton actually came into the office?’ she asked.
‘Oh, yes, with a nice Raff officer. A squadron leader with a host of gongs — that’s what they call medals in the Raff.’ Miss Barrage supplied. ‘I have a nephew in the Raff, in Norfolk, only we’re not supposed to know where he is. We write to this number, but we know. I believe he’s engaged in something hush-hush.’
Engaged, Suzie thought; something hush-hush. ‘A senior officer is he, your nephew?’ she asked.
‘Oh, no. A pilot officer. But he’s highly thought of, I gather fr
om his mother, my sister.’
‘That bloody woman.’ Shirley wanted to let off steam as they walked away, back to Piccadilly Underground Station. ‘She maundered on and on; gave you the far end of a fart.’
‘Shirley!’ Pretending to be shocked, but with a smile.
‘Well. Middle-aged, chatty spinster.’ Then, as they were going down the steps, hurrying through the tunnel past the Gents convenience, the reek of urine like a wall, ‘That Dance seemed a gent.’
‘Asked me if I’d like to have dinner with him sometime, actually.’ Suzie was like the proverbial cat who’d had the cream. Before Shirley had brought in Burrage and Holroyd, Josh Dance had apologized for not being able to be of more assistance. Then, ‘If you’re ever free, perhaps you’d care to have dinner one evening — when we haven’t got the Luftwaffe in of course. You’ve seen where I live; uncovered my secret passion. Cooking. I’d give you dinner any time. Just ring me.’
‘He didn’t?’ Shirley drew in a hiss of breath. ‘There you are interviewing him and he asks for a date? Cheeky beggar. I thought he was a bit chummy, even with Misses Burrage and Holroyd there — all that stuff about hoping you had a good Christmas, and were you going somewhere nice? And oh yes, he has friends near Overchurch. I noticed that.’
Suzie told her about the apartment. ‘Got the guided tour,’ she said, and described the luxuries, the table and sideboard, the silver, his father’s paintings, ‘Only I’m not sure he’s telling the truth about his father. The signature looked like Charles Slau— something to me.’
‘They get things in that business. Perks,’ Shirley said. ‘My mum’s brother works in an hotel out near Esher. He gets perks. Mr Joshua Dance could get good furniture, pictures and that on the q.t. Perks.’
They took the Tube out to Marylebone where workmen were adding more metal bunk beds to those ranged along the Underground platforms. More and more people were sleeping down there every night, and there were even men who would queue for tickets from early in the afternoon. The line was popular because they were good stations, with nearby toilets. If you didn’t have male and female toilets you had to make do with piss buckets which became pretty toxic after a few hours.
