by Clara Benson
‘And you saw nothing that evening that gave you the slightest suspicion of what was about to happen?’
‘Not at all,’ she said.
It seemed that Sarah Rowland had merely succeeded in confirming that her fiancé Robert Kenrick was the most likely person to have killed Dorothy Dacres—if, indeed, anybody had done it—although there was also the question of where Augusta Laing and Seymour Cosgrove had been during the time in question. Sergeant Bird prepared to go.
‘You’re—you’re not going to arrest him, are you?’ said Sarah Rowland. Her eyes were wide and fearful. Bird took pity on her.
‘Quite frankly, there’s nothing we could possibly pin on him at the moment,’ he said. ‘We don’t know how Dorothy Dacres met her death, and even if we were certain it was murder, we couldn’t arrest him on the strength of what little we have.’
‘He didn’t do it,’ she said.
‘I hope for your sake you’re right,’ was all he said, and took his leave.
For the next few days, Freddy was kept busy covering a story about a scandalous society divorce, and had little time to think about Dorothy Dacres. On Thursday evening, however, he had just arrived home when the telephone rang. It was Gussie.
‘How are you fixed for this evening?’ she said. ‘A bunch of us are going to the Maypole, as it’s Basil and Birdie’s last night at the Starlight Follies. Why don’t you come along? One can always rely on the Kibbles for fireworks, so it ought to be a decent night. You can pick me up at nine if you like.’
Freddy readily accepted the invitation. He strongly suspected that Gussie’s interest in him was due mainly to his press connections, but he had no objection to getting exclusive stories in this fashion—besides, she was good company, and certainly pleasing to the eye, and so he was happy enough to go along with whatever she suggested.
They arrived at the Maypole at around ten and were shown to their table, where the rest of the party were already waiting. Freddy recognized Kenneth and Patience Neale, as well as Robert Kenrick and Sarah Rowland—who had made it up, it seemed, to judge by the sentimental glances that passed between them at frequent intervals.
‘Have you heard anything more about Dorothy?’ said Gussie, once they were fairly seated and the cocktails had been served.
‘Ah yes, you’re press, aren’t you?’ said Patience, who was sitting next to Gussie. ‘I do hope you don’t come from one of the lower publications. Some of the stories that have emerged since that dreadful night have been quite outrageous.’
Freddy could not in all honesty deny the first charge, since he worked for the Clarion, but he could truthfully say for once that all his pieces about Dorothy Dacres’ death had been perfectly inoffensive, in conformity with Sir Aldridge Featherstone’s instructions on the matter.
‘I note that one paper in particular seems to have a bee in its bonnet about drugs,’ she went on. ‘We had a visit from a most extraordinary young man in a very loud suit, who button-holed me and my daughter outside our front door, and suggested that the doll she happened to be carrying with her at the time would be the perfect receptacle in which to smuggle “dope,” as he called it. Naturally I sent him about his business immediately, but then I had to spend the morning answering awkward questions from Ada about what he meant.’
‘I think I know the chap you mean,’ said Freddy. ‘He works for the Herald. He’s a sad case, and to be pitied rather than blamed.’
‘Oh?’ said Patience.
‘Yes. He’s the nephew of the paper’s owner. His mother was the wayward, ungovernable type, and ran away from home to join the circus as a young girl. If she’d proved tractable the family would have welcomed her back and said no more about it, but she wouldn’t hear of returning home, as she’d taken up with the lion tamer and was making a modest living by putting her head into a lion’s mouth twice a day. The lion tamer died tragically when he accidentally locked himself in the lion’s cage at feeding time while wearing a zebra-striped fur hat, and after a suitable period of mourning she then married the elephant trainer. Things went well for a year or two, and the lady and her husband were looking forward to a happy event, when she went into the elephants’ enclosure one day and rattled the gate too loudly. The oldest bull elephant—a great big bad-tempered beast—got a terrible fright, thought she was attacking him, and turned on her.’
‘Goodness!’ exclaimed Patience. ‘What happened?’
‘Oh, she was all right in the end,’ said Freddy. ‘There aren’t many people who can claim to have survived being sat on by an elephant, but Corky’s mother was one of them. Unfortunately, Corky himself didn’t fare quite so well. He was born with a terrible dent in his head, and as he grew older they found that he was unable to speak anything other than complete gibberish or write any word of more than two syllables. His mother gave him up in desperation when he was four, and his uncle and aunt took him in out of pity, and eventually gave him a job at the Herald, where his handicap would never be noticed.’
Patience exclaimed, then the band struck up and Gussie took advantage of the noise to lean closer to Freddy and murmur:
‘What bilge you do talk. You haven’t changed one bit, have you?’
‘I have no idea what you mean,’ said Freddy blandly.
She laughed, and ordered another cocktail.
‘I’m of a mind to have fun tonight,’ she said. ‘We’ve had too much misery lately, and I can’t go on forever pretending to be devastated about last week.’
‘Any news about the film?’ said Freddy.
‘No. I expect it will be put back again. It’s not as though they can simply fling me in as a replacement and carry on as though nothing had happened, is it? But I refuse to be downcast. I shall play Helen Harper one day.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ said Freddy. He wanted to ask Gussie where she had disappeared to after Dorothy Dacres had made her announcement, but could not think of a way to introduce the subject without causing unpleasantness. Indeed, looking about him, he could not see anyone who seemed to be upset about Dorothy, for as a result of her death a number of people were now rid of an inconvenient obstacle. Kenneth Neale would not be forced to work with an actress he had not wanted in his film, while his wife need no longer worry that her daughter would be made unhappy by cruel remarks. Gussie had been given a second chance to win the rôle that was so important to her, while Robert Kenrick was free to marry his fiancée without hindrance or interference from a woman who had been nothing but a bother to him. And what about Seymour Cosgrove? Had he been pleased at Dorothy’s death? After all, she had cost him his job. How much of a grudge did he bear her? Enough to have resorted to murder?
Just as this thought passed through Freddy’s head, Seymour Cosgrove himself arrived. He had evidently been invited to be one of the party, for he headed straight for their table and was greeted with enthusiasm by all except Gussie, who stiffened slightly and acknowledged him coolly. He in turn addressed her with a few words and nodded unsmilingly at Freddy. It looked as though the atmosphere were about to turn uncomfortable, but fortunately Basil and Birdie came on just then and began their act, to great applause from the crowd, and the attention of the party was necessarily occupied with them for the next twenty minutes or so. After that a troupe of dancers came on, and the Kibbles came to sit with the party. Basil sat by Freddy and fell easily into conversation with him. This was to be their last night in the show, he said. They were waiting to find out whether the production of For Every Yesterday was to go ahead. If not, then they had the offer of a long engagement at another night-club starting from January, but in the meantime, it would do them no harm to take a little holiday, since they had worked hard for the last few years, and Basil could not remember when they had last taken more than a day off.
While they were talking, Gussie had seen a couple she knew at another table, and she went to talk to them. Freddy looked across to see who they we
re, but his attention was just then arrested by the unwelcome sight of Corky Beckwith, who was sitting at a table by himself, wearing a dinner-jacket that was too short in the sleeves. Freddy got up and went across to him.
‘What are you doing here?’ he said without preamble.
Corky beamed at him with every appearance of pleasure.
‘Freddy, old chap!’ he said. ‘We do seem to keep bumping into one another, don’t we? How are you enjoying the cabaret? I think it’s rather good. It puts me quite in mind of a little show I saw in Paris a year or two ago. Naturally, the French are much more grown-up and sensible about these things than we are, and don’t require their female performers to wear clothes, or any of that nonsense. No, indeed.’ He paused in happy reminiscence. ‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘as you can see, I’m here to enjoy the show.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Freddy. ‘Of course you’re not here to enjoy the show. You’re here to spy on us—that’s it, isn’t it?’
‘Freddy, Freddy,’ said Corky. ‘I am hurt, nay, distressed, that you should suspect such a thing of me. Have I not the right to disport myself in London’s palaces of public entertainment just as you have? Do I not toil as arduously as the next man? Might I not pass my few hours of leisure in seeking such small enjoyment as our city affords?’
‘I don’t know what you think you’re going to find out,’ said Freddy, ignoring this. ‘There’s nothing funny going on.’
‘Then you have nothing to worry about,’ said Corky. ‘I am an honest man, and seek only to unearth and conquer malfeasance and wickedness wherever it may lurk.’
‘Well, there’s nothing of that sort here, as you can see, so why must you keep hanging around?’
‘Because it annoys you,’ said Corky simply, then, as Freddy glared at him, went on: ‘If you’d only done as I asked and given me an “in” with these people, then I shouldn’t need to do it.’
‘But you’re a blister and a pestilence,’ said Freddy. ‘And even supposing you weren’t—even supposing you were virtue and goodness personified, kind to your ageing mother and generous to friends in need—nothing on this earth would induce me to admit an acquaintance with someone who is prepared to go out in public in that quite frankly horrific jacket.’
Corky merely displayed his teeth and gestured for a waiter.
‘I suggest you go back to your girl-friend,’ he said. ‘She looks as though she needs attention. It won’t do to keep a lady waiting, now, will it?’
Freddy saw that Gussie had returned to her seat and was looking across at him curiously, and went to join her.
‘Isn’t that that horrid journalist?’ she said as he sat down again. ‘Is he a friend of yours?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Freddy truthfully. ‘He’s here chasing a story, I’m afraid. He thinks one of you is dealing in cocaine.’
‘Does he?’ said Gussie, regarding Corky with interest. ‘Which of us is it?’
‘He doesn’t know, but he hopes that if he follows you all about for long enough, then he’ll find out.’
‘I see,’ said Gussie. She paused for a second. ‘Do you really think Dorothy was killed deliberately? I should never have thought her the type to get mixed up with all that sort of thing, but the newspapers have been hinting that either she took the stuff and fell off the balcony while she was high, or she was murdered because of what she knew.’
‘It doesn’t convince you?’ said Freddy.
‘Not especially,’ she replied. ‘Somehow I can’t imagine Dorothy taking dope. She was far too much the calculating type, and not at all inclined to get herself into something she couldn’t get out of. I can’t see her risking her career for something of that sort. Anyway, let’s forget all that. I don’t know anything about the cocaine, so if your friend wants a story then he’ll have to make do with the one about Augusta Laing drinking far too much on a Thursday night. Will you have another?’
Never one to refuse an opportunity to make merry, Freddy readily acceded, and the next hour was spent most agreeably in the company of his new friends. True, he was permanently conscious that Corky Beckwith was watching them all through narrowed eyes, and was only looking for an opportunity to create any sort of scandal he could. And Seymour Cosgrove, too, was something of a dampener to his enjoyment, as he downed several glasses of whisky in quick succession and glowered across the table at the two of them. However, Gussie was evidently determined that nothing should spoil her fun, and encouraged Freddy enthusiastically to match her drink for drink. Soon the dancing began, and she took his hand and dragged him onto the floor. Freddy’s thoughts were a little indistinct by this time, but he was aware of a certain purpose in Gussie’s conduct towards him—and his suspicions were confirmed after the dance finished, and he found himself unaccountably standing in a dim corner of the room with his arms around her. He had no idea how they had got there, but it had not been his own doing, he was quite convinced of it.
‘Do you like me?’ she said, gazing sweetly up at him. Her voice was slightly slurred.
‘I should say so,’ he replied.
‘Good. Then you’d better kiss me,’ she said.
Freddy was an amenable sort, and not at all the type to resist the advances of a pretty girl—one, who, moreover, seemed wholly capable of asking for what she wanted without prevaricating or skipping coyly around the subject—and so he was only too happy to oblige. It was all very pleasant for a minute or two, but then he gradually became aware that somebody was standing before them, and reluctantly disengaged in order to identify the newcomer. It was Seymour Cosgrove, who fixed them both with a glare that could have melted granite.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he growled.
It was perfectly obvious what they had been doing, but Freddy sensed that this was not the moment to state facts baldly.
‘Oh—ah,’ he managed at last. He let go of Gussie, and saw that she was looking a little shame-faced.
‘Rather disgusting on your part, don’t you think, to take advantage of a girl when she’s been drinking?’ said Seymour. His brow was knitted in a look of concentrated fury.
‘I didn’t—’ began Freddy.
But Seymour was not listening.
‘Get out of the way, Gussie,’ he said. ‘I’m going to knock his teeth out.’
‘What? I say, that’s—’ said Freddy, but got no further before Seymour swept Gussie aside, grasped him by the lapels and pushed him against the wall. ‘Look here, this wasn’t my idea.’
‘Oh, so now you’re trying to throw the blame on to her, are you?’ said Seymour. ‘I knew you were a contemptible blighter from the moment I first saw you, but that’s beyond the pale.’
‘Leave him alone!’ said Gussie. ‘Seymour, you’re being an idiot.’
Seymour gave her a withering look.
‘I thought you had better taste than to fasten onto this pathetic specimen,’ he said. ‘Why, I’ll bet his mother still brings him breakfast in bed every morning.’
‘I say,’ said Freddy, stung.
‘Be quiet!’ said Seymour. ‘Now listen, my girl. I’m taking you home this minute. I won’t stand here and watch you making a fool of yourself in front of everybody.’
‘But we weren’t doing it in front of everybody,’ Freddy pointed out, as Gussie protested. ‘We picked a nice, quiet corner so as not to offend anyone.’
If this remark was intended to restore calm, it failed miserably. Seymour gave a roar, grabbed Freddy again and shook him hard.
‘Ow! Get off me, won’t you?’ said Freddy through gritted teeth. ‘It’s not my fault you can’t hold onto a girl without clubbing her over the head and chaining her up.’
Again, this was perhaps not the best thing to say to an already enraged Seymour Cosgrove. Freddy realized this fact as soon as he had uttered the words, and decided to make himself scarce. However, Seymour was too q
uick for him: as Freddy made a dash for it, Seymour launched himself at his legs and tackled him to the ground. They rolled on the floor, knocking over a chair as they did so, and causing several ladies to scream. Freddy clutched desperately at his neck and went purple as Seymour did his best to throttle him, while Gussie pulled ineffectually at Seymour’s jacket in an attempt to drag him off. At last, Freddy lifted a hand and grabbed Seymour’s face in desperation, squeezing it hard until he let go suddenly with a yell of pain.
‘You nearly poked my eye out!’ he said in outrage. ‘That’s cheating.’ He stood up and hauled Freddy to his feet. ‘Let’s do this properly. Fists or nothing.’
‘What?’ panted Freddy in disbelief. ‘I’m not going to fight you.’
‘Oh, yes you are,’ said Seymour, and swung a punch, which connected with Freddy’s jaw and almost laid him out. He fell back against a table, causing more screams, then rose unsteadily, and was testing his jaw to see whether it was broken when Seymour swung at him again. Freddy ducked just in time, and turned to run, but his way was impeded by people, so he did the only thing he could think of and dived under a table. He emerged on the other side, hoping he was safe, but Seymour was not giving up. He threw himself across the table at Freddy and brought him down again next to their party. From his position on the floor, Freddy could see the upside-down faces of Robert Kenrick and Sarah Rowland, but he had no time to register anything more than their expressions of consternation before Seymour began pummelling him hard, leaving Freddy no option but to put his arms over his face and curl up as small as he could, in order to avoid being beaten to a pulp. Fortunately for him, Seymour was too drunk to hit effectively, although he made up for his inefficiency with a great energy and devotion to his task, and so it looked as though the result might be much the same anyway if somebody did not come to the rescue soon.
‘Help him!’ cried Gussie.
‘Now, then,’ came the voice of Kenneth Neale. ‘Seymour, old chap, you’d better get off.’
