Shroud for a Nightingale (33 page)

“I can’t see you now. I’m just going out. I thought you were my dancing partner. You said you’d come early in the evening.”

A shrill nagging voice made sharper by disappointment. She looked as if she might close the door in his face. Quickly he slid one foot across the threshold.

“I was unavoidably detained. I’m sorry.”

Unavoidably detained. Too right, he had been. That frantic but ultimately satisfying interlude in the back of the car had occupied more of the evening than he had anticipated. It had taken longer, too, to find a sufficiently secluded spot even on a dark winter’s evening. The Guildford Road had offered few promising turnings into open country with its prospect of grass verges and unfrequented lanes. Julia Pardoe had been fussy too. Every time he slowed the car at a likely spot he had been met with her quiet, “not here”. He had first seen her as she was about to step off the pavement on to the pedestrian crossing which led to the. entrance of Heatheringfield station. He had slowed the car for her but, instead of waving her on, had leaned over and opened the passenger door. She had paused for only a second before walking over to him, coat swinging above the knee-length boots, and had slipped into the seat beside him without a word or glance. He had said:

“Coming up to town?”

She had nodded and had smiled secretively, eyes fixed on the windscreen. It had been as simple as that. She had hardly spoken a dozen words throughout the drive. The tentative or more overt preliminaries which he felt the game demanded of him had met with no response. He might have been a chauffeur with whom she was driving in unwelcome proximity. In the end, pricked by anger and humiliation, he had begun to wonder whether he could have been mistaken. But there had been the reassurance of that concentrated stillness, the eyes which, for minutes at a time, had watched with blue intensity his hands stroking the wheel or busy with the gears. She had wanted it all right. She had wanted it as much as he. But you could hardly call it a quick lay. One thing, surprisingly, she had told him. She was on her way to meet Hilda Rolfe; they were going to a theatre together after an early dinner. Well, either they would have to go without dinner or miss the first act; she was apparently unconcerned either way.

Amused and only slightly curious he had asked:

“How are you going to explain your lateness to Sister Rolfe? Or won’t you bother now to turn up?”

She had shrugged.

“I shall tell her the truth. It might be good for her.” Seeing his sudden frown she had added with contempt:

“Oh, don’t worry! She won’t sneak to Mr. Dalgliesh. Hilda isn’t like that.”

Masterson hoped she was right This was something Dalgliesh wouldn’t forgive.

“What will she do?” he had asked.

“If I tell? Chuck in her job I imagine; leave the John Carpendar. She’s pretty fed up with the place. She only stays on because of me.”

Wrenching his mind from the memory of that high, merciless voice into the present, Masterson forced himself to smile at the very different woman now confronting him and said in a propitiatory tone:

“The traffic you know… I had to drive from Hampshire. But I shan’t keep you long.”

Holding out his warrant card with that slightly furtive air inseparable from the gesture he edged himself into the flat She didn’t try to stop him. But her eyes were blank, her mind obviously elsewhere. As she closed the door, the telephone rang. Without a murmur she left him standing in the hall and almost ran into a room to the left He could hear her voice rising in protest. It seemed to be expostulating, then pleading. Then there was a silence. He moved quietly up the hall and strained his ears to hear. He thought he detected the clicking of the dial. Then she was speaking again. He couldn’t hear the words. This time the conversation was over in seconds. Then came another click of the dial. Another wail. In all she rang four numbers before she reappeared in the hall.

“Is anything wrong?” he asked. “Can I help?”

She screwed up her eyes and regarded him intently for a second like a housewife assessing the quality and price of a piece of beef. Her reply when it came was peremptory and astonishing.

“Can you dance?”

“I was the Met. police champion for three years running,” he lied. The Force, not surprisingly, held no dancing championships but he thought it unlikely that she would know this and the lie, like most of his lies, came easily and spontaneously.

Again that speculative, intent gaze.

“You’ll need a dinner-jacket I’ve still got Martin’s things here. I’m going to sell them but the man hasn’t come yet He promised he’d come this afternoon but he didn’t You cant rely on anyone these days. You look about the same size. He was quite broad before his illness.”

Masterson resisted the temptation to laugh aloud. He said gravely:

“I’d like to help you out if you’re in a difficulty. But I’m a policeman. I’m here to get information not to spend the night dancing.”

“It isn’t the whole night. The ball stops at eleven thirty. It’s the Delaroux Dancing Medal Ball at the Athenaeum Ballroom off the Strand. We could talk there.”

“It would be easier to talk here.” Her sullen face set in obstinacy.

“I don’t want to talk here.”

She spoke with the peevish insistence of a whining child. Then her voice hardened for the ultimatum.

“It’s the ball or nothing.”

They faced one another in silence. Masterson considered. The idea was grotesque, of course, but he wasn’t going to get anything out of her tonight unless he agreed. Dalgliesh had sent him to London for information and his pride wouldn’t let him return to Nightingale House without it But would his pride permit him to spend the rest of the evening escorting this painted hag in public? There was no difficulty about the dancing. That was one of the skills, although not the most important, that Sylvia had taught him. She had been a randy blonde, ten years older than himself, with a dull bank manager husband whom it had been a positive duty to cuckold. Sylvia had been crazy on ballroom dancing and they had progressed together through a series of bronze, silver and gold medal competitions before the husband had become inconveniently menacing, Sylvia had begun to hint about divorce, and Masterson had prudently decided that the relationship had outlasted its usefulness, not to say his capacity for indoor exercise, and that the police service offered a reasonable career for an ambitious man who was looking for an excuse for a period of comparative rectitude. Now his taste in women and dancing had changed and he had less time for either. But Sylvia had had her uses. As they told you at Detective Training School, no skill is ever wasted in police work.

No, there would be no difficulty about the dancing. Whether she was equally expert was another matter. The evening would probably be a fiasco and whether he went with her or not she would probably talk in time. But when would that be? Dalgliesh liked to work fast This was one of those cases where the number of suspects was limited to a small, closed community and he didn’t normally expect to spend more than a week on them. He wouldn’t exactly thank his subordinate for a wasted evening. And then there was that time in the car to be accounted for somehow. It wouldn’t be a good night to return empty-handed. And what the hell! It would make a good story for the boys. And if the evening became too impossible he could always ditch her. He’d better remember to take his own clothes in the car in case he needed to make a quick escape.

“All right,” he said. “But it’s got to be worth my while.”

“It will be.”

Martin Dettinger’s dinner-jacket fitted him better than he had feared. It was strange, this ritual of dressing up in another man’s clothes. He found himself searching in the pockets as if they too could hold some kind of clue. But he found nothing. The shoes were too small and he made no effort to force them on his feet. Luckily he was wearing black shoes with leather soles. They were too heavy for dancing and looked incongruous with the dinner-jacket but they would have to do. He bundled his own suit in a cardboard box reluctantly provided by Mrs. Dettinger and they set off.

He knew that there would be little chance of finding a space for the car in or near the Strand so drove over the South Bank and parked next to County Hall. Then they walked to Waterloo Station and hired a taxi. That part of the evening wasn’t too bad. She had wrapped herself in a voluminous, old-fashioned fur coat It smelt strong and sour as if a cat had got at it, but at least it was concealing. For the whole of the journey neither of them spoke a word.

The dance had already started when they arrived shortly after eight and the great hall was unpleasantly ML They made their way to one of the few remaining empty tables under the balcony. Masterson noticed that each of the male instructors sported a red carnation; the women a white one. There was a great deal of promiscuous kissing and caressing pats of shoulders and arms. One of the men minced up to Mrs. Dettinger with little bleats of welcome and congratulation.

“You’re looking marvelous Mrs. D. Sorry to hear that Tony’s ill. But I’m glad you found a partner.”

The glance at Masterson was perfunctorily curious. Mrs. Dettinger received this greeting with a clumsy jerk of the head and a slight leer of gratification. She made no attempt to introduce Masterson.

They sat out the next two dances and Masterson contented himself with looking round the hall. The whole atmosphere was drearily respectable. A huge bunch of balloons hung from the ceiling, ready no doubt to descend for some orgiastic climax to tonight’s festivities. The band wore red jackets with gold epaulettes and had the gloomily resigned look of men who have seen it all before. Masterson looked forward to an evening of cynical uninvolvement, the gratification of observing the folly of others, the insidious pleasure of disgust He recalled the description of a French diplomat of the English dancing “avec les visages si tristes, les derrieres si gais”. Here the bottoms were positively staid, but the faces were fixed in grins of stimulated delight so unnatural that he wondered whether the school had taught the approved facial expression with the correct steps. Away from the dance floor all the women looked worried, their expressions ranging from slight apprehension to almost frantic anxiety. They greatly outnumbered the men and some of them were dancing together. The majority were middle-aged or older and the style of dress was uniformly old-fashioned, the bodices tight and low cut, the immense circular skirts studded with sequins.

The third dance was a quick step. She turned to him suddenly and said, “We’ll dance this.” Unprotesting, he led her on to the floor and clasped her rigid body with his left arm. He resigned himself to a long and exhausting evening. If this old harpy had anything useful to tell—and the old man seemed to think she had—then, by God, she would tell it even if he had to jangle her round this bloody floor until she dropped. The notion was pleasing and he indulged it He could picture her, disjointed as a puppet loosed from its cords, the brittle legs sprawled awkwardly, the arms swinging into the final exhaustion. Except that he would probably drop first That half-hour with Julia Pardee hadn’t been the best possible preparation for a night on the dance floor. But the old bitch had plenty of life in her. He could taste and feel the beads of sweat tickling the corners of his mouth, but she was hardly breathing faster and her hands were cool and dry. The face close to his was intent the eyes glazed, the lower lip sagging open. It was like dancing with an animated bag of bones.

The music crashed to a stop. The conductor swung round and flashed his artificial smile over the floor. The players relaxed, permitting themselves a brief smile. The kaleidoscope of color in the middle of the floor coalesced men flowed into new patterns as the dancers disengaged and minced back to their tables. A waiter was hovering for orders. Masterson crooked his finger.

“What will you have?”

He sounded as ungracious as a miser forced into standing his round. She asked for a gin and tonic and when it came accepted it without thanks or apparent gratification. He settled for a double whisky. It was to be the first of many. Spreading the flame-colored skirt around her chair, she began to survey the hall with that look of disagreeable intensity which he was beginning to know so well. He might not have been there. Careful, he thought, don’t get impatient She wants to keep you here. Let her.

“Tell me about your son,” he said quietly, careful to keep his voice even and unemphatic.

“Not now. Some other evening. There’s no hurry.” He nearly shouted aloud with exasperation. Did she really think that he planned to see her again? Did she expect him to dance with her for ever on the half promise of a tidbit of information? He pictured them, capering grotesquely through the years, involuntary participants in a surrealist charade. He put down his glass.

“There won’t be another time. Not unless you can help me. The Superintendent isn’t keen on spending public money when there’s nothing to be learned. I have to justify every minute of my time.”

He instilled into his voice the right degrees of resentment and self-righteousness. She looked at him for the first time since they had sat down.

“There might be something to be learned. I never said there wasn’t What about the drinks?”

“The drinks?” He was momentarily nonplussed. “Who pays for the drinks?”

“Well, normally they are on expenses. But when it’s a question of entertaining friends, like tonight for example, naturally I pay myself.”

He lied easily. It was one of the talents which he thought helped most in his job.

She nodded as if satisfied. But she didn’t speak. He was wondering whether to try again when the band crashed into a cha-cha. Without a word she rose and turned towards him. They took the floor again.

The cha-cha was succeeded by a mamba, the mamba by a waltz, the waltz by a slow fox-trot And still he had learned nothing. Then there was a change in the evening’s program. The lights suddenly dimmed and a sleek man, glistening from head to toe as if he had bathed in hair oil, appeared in front of the microphone and adjusted it for his height He was accompanied by a languid blonde, her hair elaborately dressed in a style already five years out of date. The spotlight played upon them. She dangled a chiffon scarf negligently from her right hand and surveyed the emptying dance floor with a proprietorial air. There was an anticipatory hush. The man consulted a list in his hand.