Dancing with Death Read online

  EIGHT

  Mr Charles as blackmailer? Nell tossed this theory around in her mind overnight like a salad, wondering whether the dressing would take to it. Increasingly, it might, as it could have been linked to his dope-dealing activities. Once a client, always a client. Would he have extended his blackmailing beyond his clients, however? Why not, she reasoned, if interesting stories came his way? At the clubs he frequented he could have listened to non-stop gossip and pounced on it if he thought it worthwhile. Perhaps Miss Harlington had provided him with information in exchange for the dope she obtained from him. She would be able to share women’s confidences as well as sniff out men’s weaknesses, and could have passed the results either innocently or not so innocently to Mr Charles.

  That led her to another avenue: Inspector Melbray’s two ‘baskets’ – the main house and the servants’ hall. It was highly possible that Mr Charles could have dipped a blackmailing toe into both wherever he was invited, including Wychbourne. Perhaps his attentions to its chambermaids had not been his only excursions into the servants’ hall. Servants’ gossip could be just as rewarding as that from his own circles.

  With Arthur away, Nell had no means of discovering whether her blackmailing theory held water as regards the Ansley family or the guests, but what she could do was tread gently along the path of discovering if there had been other links between Mr Charles and the Wychbourne servants’ hall. Miss Checkam and Mr Peters, much as she liked them, had been far from forthcoming.

  Nell enjoyed lunching in the servants’ hall. It was a comfortable, relaxed room that bore little resemblance to the bleak one in her previous job. At Wychbourne it was officially Mrs Squires’s domain but Mrs Fielding took an overclose interest in it. The carpets were old but good, the furniture all made on the estate in years gone by. To Nell it was as much a privilege to enter it as the great hall. Servants, like Ansleys, might come and go, but this room went on for ever.

  Today there were about twenty people there when Nell arrived, including Kitty and Michel. There was no sign of Mr Peters or Miss Checkam, but Mrs Fielding, unfortunately, was very much present. No Mr Briggs, but he seldom attended the servants’ hall meals because he could not bear too many people around him. Mrs Squires’s mutton stew was already occupying most of the diners so Nell held her peace until appetite had been largely satisfied.

  ‘I don’t know about all of you but I’ve had enough of the police breathing down my neck this week,’ she observed conversationally when she judged the moment right. ‘They keep wanting to know what we thought of Mr Charles.’

  Everyone’s attention was on her but no one spoke. ‘Someone,’ she continued, ‘must have wanted him out of the way. Obvious, isn’t it? And yet the coppers had to postpone the inquest. I ask you, a dagger in the guts and they don’t know what killed him.’

  Silence, but they were listening.

  ‘What beats me is why anyone would want to kill him,’ Nell continued. ‘We all know he was a rotter but killing him is a different matter. Anyone any ideas?’

  No one had, it seemed.

  ‘Anyone see him after the dinner?’ she asked in desperation.

  Silence, but then: ‘He was chuckling when I saw him, Miss Drury.’

  Good for Jimmy, Nell thought, relieved. He at least could have nothing to hide – except her arrangement with Arthur. ‘When was that?’

  ‘When I was in the hall getting the lamps ready and Mr Peters was in and out helping Lord Richard with the stuff to catch the ghosts. I was doing the lamps by the door to the corridor and there he was by the foot of the gallery stairs. He was laughing and he’d been talking to some woman because I heard a lot of crying and stuff. I had to get on with the lamps and the next time I looked he’d gone.’

  That must have been about eleven forty, Nell calculated. ‘You could be an important witness, Jimmy. Have you told the police this?’

  He looked terrified. ‘No, Miss Drury. I didn’t kill him.’

  ‘Of course not, but you might provide them with a vital clue. Any of you might,’ she added hopefully.

  ‘I saw him in the supper room,’ Robert volunteered. ‘I was taking coffee over and there he was talking to Miss Harlington. She had a face like she’d lost the Derby, so he went over to the bandleader. Don’t know what they were talking about but the band chap didn’t like it. Not happy at all. That was about ten because the music started then, but all this was a couple of hours before Charlie boy was done in.’

  Guy? Nell thought uneasily. What was that about? ‘Anyone else see Mr Charles?’

  ‘I did,’ Mrs Fielding’s still-room maid Mary piped up. ‘I went to the drawing room with the coffeepot just before nine. There was Mr Charles looking very jolly and talking to Mr Peters. Mr Peters wasn’t laughing, though.’

  ‘It’s not his place to laugh,’ Mrs Fielding interjected immediately. ‘And how would you know who Mr Charles was anyway?’

  The maid looked frightened. ‘Polly pointed him out to me, Mrs Fielding.’

  The housekeeper turned her ire on Polly. ‘And how do you know him, miss?’

  Quick intervention needed. ‘I expect you see him coming out of his room sometimes, don’t you, Polly?’ Nell suggested.

  ‘Yes, miss,’ Polly said gratefully.

  Time enough to sort that one out later and, judging by Mrs Fielding’s expression, it would be laid at Nell’s door – a battle she would take up with pleasure in due course. It was Mrs Fielding’s responsibility to look after the safety of her staff. So Mr Charles had been busy between about nine o’clock and ten. Was that significant or was it just idle chat? Whichever it was, about two or three hours later he was dead.

  ‘Did you see anyone other than Mr Charles going up to the gallery while you were busy with the lamps, Jimmy?’ Nell asked.

  ‘No, Miss Drury. Just did the lamps and then I went off.’

  ‘You were there too, Miss Drury,’ Mrs Fielding pointed out sweetly.

  ‘From a quarter to twelve because Lady Clarice had asked me to lead the group. Do you think I wanted to walk around in the dark when I might meet a ghost wielding an axe?’ Nell joked.

  ‘Are there really ghosts at Wychbourne?’ Kitty asked nervously.

  ‘Depends whether you see one or not,’ Nell said gravely.

  That raised a laugh. ‘Perhaps one of them killed that gentleman,’ Michel said.

  ‘Death by ghost?’ Nell managed a laugh. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘No, the rozzers will try and put the blame on us one way or another. That’s why they came round here – the inspector and his sergeant,’ Robert said heavily and discussions promptly broke out among them.

  She was aware she was losing her audience. ‘Great babbling barbels,’ she cried, ‘do you think the coppers are daft enough to believe that one of us here would go prancing into the main house in the dark to bump off a guest? Stand out a bit, wouldn’t we? None of us would be dressed up like the Duke of Wellington or Cleopatra, or wearing diamonds and Patou dresses.’

  The atmosphere grew more friendly. ‘The inspector asked a lot about that band,’ Mrs Squires said. ‘Seven of them there were, all gobbling food like turkeys. It could have been one of them.’

  The band … Nell groaned to herself. Charlie Chaplin would make a better detective than she was turning out to be. She’d forgotten that not only Guy but his entire band weren’t playing during the ghost hunt. But why would any of them want to kill Mr Charles? Were they his dope clients? That was possible in theory. Nell couldn’t believe that Guy would be so stupid but one of his bandsmen might be. Was that why Inspector Melbray came to the servants’ hall as well as his sergeant? Because he was interested in the band? But surely not Guy, though, even if he had been talking to Mr Charles before the dancing began?

  Getting all her fellow upper servants involved in a discussion posed another problem. Nell felt torn between knowing she had to pursue her fear that two of them might be holding information back and feeling like a traitor for even
considering that they might have something to do with Mr Charles’s death. When she joined them in the butler’s room for lunch the next day it seemed to her guilty conscience that they were looking at her with deep suspicion, and so perhaps the inspector’s visit to her after the inquest had not gone unnoticed.

  At least they were all present, not only Mr Peters, Miss Checkam and Mrs Fielding, but Mr Briggs too. A doubtful asset, she thought, as he looked most unhappy.

  She braced herself. ‘I’m glad we’re all here together today,’ she said. ‘After Wednesday’s fiasco at the inquest we’re being left simmering like a stew wondering what’s happening.’

  ‘I can’t see how we can simmer over anything,’ Mrs Fielding sniffed. ‘It’s nothing to do with us.’

  ‘Anything to do with Wychbourne Court is to do with us,’ Nell replied. ‘We live and work here.’ She was treading on quicksand, hampered by the fact that the drugs issue was not yet public. ‘This murder must have been because of the kind of person Charlie was, and though it doesn’t seem right to think ill of him—’

  ‘Bad man,’ Mr Briggs amazingly interrupted, carefully rearranging his knife and fork on his plate.

  ‘That’s what some people believe and with reason,’ Nell said.

  ‘I hope you’re not going to cast aspersions on him merely on the word of a chambermaid,’ Mrs Fielding said threateningly.

  ‘He was most pleasant to me,’ Miss Checkam said supportively.

  Mr Peters added his endorsement too. ‘A most sociable gentleman.’

  ‘Then you don’t think he could have been blackmailing anyone in the family or any of the guests?’ Nell threw at them casually.

  An appalled silence. Mrs Fielding recovered first. ‘What a thing to say.’

  ‘And I said it,’ Nell shot back. ‘Somebody killed him. The kind of life he led in London might open a path to his profitably blackmailing others.’

  ‘It’s possible,’ Mr Peters said suddenly after yet another silence. ‘Those giddy young things who came down from London with him. Not family, though.’

  ‘Of course not,’ Miss Checkam supported him. ‘Blackmail, indeed.’

  ‘We can’t be sure but we do hear a lot of what the family and guests talk about as though we weren’t present,’ Nell persevered.

  ‘That’s confidential,’ Miss Checkam snapped.

  ‘Of course, but if as a result of our keeping everything confidential the murderer isn’t found, that would not be right.’

  They seemed to be thinking this over. ‘We couldn’t have done it anyway,’ Mr Peters concluded.

  ‘Certainly not,’ Mrs Fielding snorted. ‘I was in the still-room all the evening until I heard all the commotion and screaming, Miss Drury. You know that, don’t you, Mr Peters?’

  ‘I do, Mrs Fielding.’

  That was an odd exchange, Nell thought.

  ‘I do recall,’ Mrs Fielding added, ‘that I did pop out for a moment to see everyone set off for the ghost hunt and there you were at your post, Mr Peters.’

  ‘Where I remained,’ he beamed, ‘until I heard Mr Arthur shouting, Miss Drury.’

  ‘And I,’ Miss Checkam said quickly, ‘went to the dance in the servants’ room and then went up to my room until I realized something was going on.’

  Her turn. ‘I went to the great hall,’ Nell contributed, ‘at about a quarter to twelve to be ready for my job of leading the group. Before that I’d been at the dance in the servants’ hall and then went to the supper room for a quick check before leaving for the ghost hunt. When I reached the hall the lamps were already low and people were beginning to gather to collect their equipment.’

  ‘Did you see Mr Charles there?’ Miss Checkam asked abruptly.

  ‘No. He must already have gone up to the gallery to hide.’

  ‘You’d have heard him if he was still in the hall. Mr Charles wasn’t the quietest of gentlemen in a crowd,’ Mr Peters said drily. ‘He liked to be noticed. So there we are, Miss Drury. We all had our duties to perform.’

  ‘And you do yours so splendidly,’ Mrs Fielding purred. ‘Miss Drury, I do agree that it’s nice for us all to be together.’

  To Nell all three of them looked as guilty as Kitty or Michel trying to cover up a peccadillo in the kitchen. Only Mr Briggs still looked his normal, somewhat puzzled self. What peccadillos Mrs Fielding might have to hide remained a mystery, however. A nocturnal embrace?

  ‘No!’ Mr Briggs suddenly roared. ‘G/26420 Corporal Briggs, sir.’ He was on his feet now and accustomed as they were to this outburst from him at times of stress, it was startling because of his long silence.

  ‘Didn’t you see any nightingales that night?’ Nell asked gently.

  ‘No!’ he shouted again.

  Tears filled his eyes; he rose to his feet and hurried from the room.

  ‘Well,’ Mr Peters said after a moment, ‘what upset him? The sooner we get this business of the murder cleared up the better, if you ask me.’

  ‘I do agree, Mr Peters,’ Mrs Fielding gushed. ‘I’m quite sure the murderer is that bandleader.’

  ‘Why on earth do you think that?’ Nell asked crossly.

  ‘Too big for his boots,’ Mrs Fielding sniffed. ‘Far too superior to eat servants’ food. Asked whether there were any leftovers from the house dinner.’

  ‘That doesn’t make him a murderer,’ Nell said stoutly.

  ‘You would know, of course, as he’s an old and close friend of yours.’

  Nell froze. ‘I’ve met him before, certainly.’

  ‘Well then,’ Mrs Fielding said in triumph.

  ‘Anyone in the band could have done it,’ Nell contended.

  ‘Were they all old friends?’ Mrs Fielding enquired.

  Miss Checkam sat primly upright, and even Mr Peters blushed at the innuendo.

  ‘All of them, intimately,’ Nell assured her solemnly. ‘And all the king’s soldiers and all the queen’s guards. Every single one of them, every night.’

  Mrs Fielding she could cope with, but Nell remained shaken by Mr Briggs’s outburst. What had upset him? Did he think that one of them was not telling the truth as he saw it? Whether that truth would have led to murder, however, was as foggy as a London Particular. And then there was Guy and Mrs Fielding’s wild allegation. Trust no one, believe no one. Easy advice for the inspector to give but so hard to accept. The next step loomed before her. The police had now left their morning-room base at Wychbourne Court and presumably would not be returning until the inquest. Which meant if she wanted to see the mighty inspector she’d have to beard the lion in his den.

  Nell felt like a stranger when she stepped off the train at Charing Cross on Monday morning, even though she had been born within the sound of Bow Bells in east London and she had worked only a short walk away from here at the Carlton Hotel on the corner of Haymarket and Pall Mall. She no longer felt a part of London, though, and in some ways she missed it. Covent Garden, a brief walk away in the opposite direction, had been familiar territory. Those early mornings when London was quiet and still. Early workers made little noise and nor did the occasional van or bus, mostly horse-drawn when she was very young. She could still conjure up the smells and colours of the vegetables and flowers in the market, although the walled vegetable garden at Wychbourne was a beguiling substitute. Mr Fairweather mixed flowers with produce, so sunflowers bloomed there side by side with cabbages, nasturtiums and sweet peas climbed the walls, and spring daffodils heralded the first of the spring vegetables.

  What lay ahead of her today? It hadn’t been an easy decision to come to London. Inspector Melbray might refuse to see her or he might throw her out when he heard what she had to say, if he listened at all. Only the thought that she might help lift a little of the cloud over Wychbourne Court drove her on. That was surely a battle worth fighting.

  Who was she to fancy she had anything to offer Scotland Yard, though? Well, she comforted herself, even Scotland Yard had made a few mistakes in its history. Look at Jack the R
ipper, who had got clean away, and the terrible mistakes in the Constance Kent case.

  Suffering stockfish, Nell, give it your best shot, she ordered herself as she made her way along the Embankment towards Westminster Pier. You can walk in with your head held high even if he does throw you out like a bag of old bones. When she reached the main entrance to New Scotland Yard, however, she almost turned back at the formidable number of people milling around the entrance, many in uniform. She had to remind herself that she had come here on a mission and that she had to see it through.

  Her first struggle was to be taken seriously. Not only two uniformed policemen tried to deflect her from seeing the great Inspector Melbray but a woman officer too. ‘He’s an inspector first class,’ the latter pointed out in awe. Should she try chaining herself to the railings like the suffragettes, Nell wondered, in order to get taken seriously? She’d have one more shot at it.

  ‘Tell him,’ she told the next duty sergeant who came to tower over her, ‘that it’s Nell Drury, come about the Wychbourne Court murder.’ That must have had some effect because a minion was promptly despatched.

  She waited until eventually she was told that the inspector was with the assistant commissioner but could she wait, please. She wasn’t too sure who the assistant commissioner might be but he sounded important, which meant she was going to be waiting a long time. Still, at least she had been asked to wait – like all these other people sitting here so patiently. She passed the time by fantasising as to what their missions were as they awaited their turn for the photographic department, the Flying Squad, Special Branch, the Fingerprint Bureau or any other of the mesmerizing array of departments to which they could be despatched, perhaps never to be seen again.

  And then suddenly there he was. That nice Inspector Melbray.

  ‘My apologies, Miss Drury.’ No smile, just those eyes on her again, obviously appraising why she might be here and whether it was worth his while to see her.