Dance of Death (28 page)

‘Fair enough – I won’t stay either.’

‘Where will you go?’

‘Back to the friends I told you about in Brighton. All I have to do is to walk out of here, take a taxi to Waterloo and hop onto a train.’ He pulled her close and kissed her. ‘We haven’t talked about the funeral.’

‘I didn’t come here for that,’ she said, reprovingly.

‘Do you want me there or don’t you?’

‘I’d love you to be there, Allan,’ she said, stroking his cheek, ‘but I don’t think it would be very wise. People would think you were gloating and the last thing you must do is to draw attention to yourself. Keep your head down in Brighton.’

‘When can we see each other again?’

‘When this is all over – and when the police stop pestering the life out of me. They’ll give up, eventually. All that we have to do is to wait. Meanwhile …’

‘Meanwhile,’ he said, stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray on the bedside table, ‘I have a tempting proposition to put to you, Mrs Wilder.’

Back at the police station, they were able to describe their respective visits. Harvey Marmion’s account provoked an immediate protest from Keedy.

‘Allan Redmond and Mrs Wilder?’ he asked in disbelief. ‘They’re like chalk and cheese. I can’t see them ever getting together.’

‘It was Miss Thompson’s suggestion.’

‘Then why didn’t she mention it earlier?’

‘I don’t think her mind was properly focussed then, Joe. The main reason for naming Redmond as a suspect was that she wanted to give him a fright. Until today, she’d never linked him with Catherine Wilder.’

‘Odele is wrong.’

‘What about these regular Friday trips to the West End?’

‘There are all sorts of explanations for that,’ argued Keedy. ‘Mrs Wilder goes to Harrods or visits an art gallery or attends a concert or simply goes to see friends.’

‘What if it’s one particular friend?’

‘Then his name is not Allan Redmond. He hasn’t even bothered to stay in London. When I caught him outside his cottage, he seemed to be making a run for it. Left to me, he’d be cooling his heels behind bars.’

‘That reminds me, Joe. You still have to apologise to Chat.’

‘I’ll do so through gritted teeth.’

‘Get it done this evening before he takes you off this case.’

Keedy was horrified. ‘He’d never do that, surely.’

‘It depends how much you upset him. Anyway,’ said Marmion, settling back in his chair. ‘How did you find Colette Orme?’

‘I liked her a lot and I liked that brother of hers. He’s one of those people who have the most amazing resilience. Nothing is allowed to get him down.’

‘If only I could say that of Paul. Sorry … do go on.’

Keedy told him about his interview with Colette and how her manner had changed towards the end of it. Certain that she knew more than she was prepared to tell him, he’d drawn back from being more forceful in his questioning.

‘She’s such a delicate creature,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Marmion, ‘and she’s in a very fragile state. From her point of view, it must look as if her whole world has collapsed. Wilder was a second father to her.’

‘He certainly didn’t take advantage of her. Hey, wait,’ he went on, snapping his fingers, ‘maybe
that’s
the answer. The women whose names he ticked are the ones he
didn’t
try to seduce. They had protected status.’

‘That’s a bit far-fetched, Joe.’

‘It’s no more far-fetched than putting Redmond into bed with Mrs Wilder.’

‘They both had a viable motive.’

‘Independently, they did,’ said Keedy. ‘It’s just such an unlikely pairing.’

‘We know that she treated her husband badly.’

‘We only have his first wife’s word for that, and you said that she was less convincing when you dropped in at that flat of theirs.’

‘Gillian Hogg had an axe to grind, that’s true.’

‘So did the killer.’

‘Well, it wasn’t her, I know that. So who are we left with – Atterbury, Pattinson, Noonan, Redmond and Catherine Wilder. In other words, we’ve ticked five names, Joe. That’s exactly what Wilder did in his appointments book – five significant names.’

‘He rubbed out the names. Which ones do
we
rub out?’

‘I think we should keep all of them under suspicion. We still don’t
know if we’re dealing with someone acting on his own or with one or more accomplices.’

‘Atterbury and Pattinson would act together.’

‘What about Noonan and Atterbury?’

‘You met the agent,’ said Keedy, ‘so you’re the best judge. The two people I refuse to believe planned and executed the crime together are Redmond and Mrs Wilder. I’d keep
him
top of my list but I’d be tempted to cross her off it altogether.’

‘Nobody gets crossed off until this murder is solved,’ said Marmion, firmly. ‘The one thing we may have to do, of course, is to add other names to the list.’

They took great care not to be seen together. Catherine Wilder left first, making her way to the ground floor before leaving the hotel. She only had to wait a few minutes before she was able to get into a taxi. Allan Redmond, meanwhile, had a bath before dressing, taking the lift downstairs and settling the bill. He took a taxi to Waterloo station and wallowed in frothy memories all the way to his destination.

Audrey Pattinson was disturbed. While she was glad that Colette Orme felt able to come to her with her problem, she wished that she had not heard what the girl had to say. It troubled her at a deep level. Yet there was nothing she could do beyond expressing her sympathy. Audrey was still going repetitively through the details of her conversation with Colette when her husband came into the living room. His arrival broke her concentration. Pattinson held up a large notebook.

‘I had a feeling that you’d mislaid this somewhere,’ he said.

She got up at once. ‘Where did you find it?’

‘Never you mind – the fact is that you can have it back.’ Audrey
almost seized it from his grasp. ‘Don’t snatch it, woman. It’s not as if it’s any use to you now.’

‘It’s a souvenir, Martin, a cherished souvenir.’

‘Then you ought to take more care of it.’ He clicked his tongue in disapproval. ‘You’re slipping, Audrey, and it’s not the first time. I think you need to buck yourself up. Don’t make me have to say that to you again.’

He went out abruptly and left her clutching the book as if it was a missing baby that had somehow been found alive and returned to its mother.

Ellen Marmion’s contribution to the war effort consisted of knitting socks and gloves for the soldiers at the front. While it was something she could do equally well at home, she preferred to be part of a circle. It enabled her to stave off loneliness and to enjoy the company of other women. Some of them had sons or husbands in the army and one of them had lost a brother at the battle of the Somme. All of them had felt the impact of the war and it forged a bond between them. After a morning with her knitting needles, Ellen had a snack with a couple of the other women then made her way home. Minutes after she got there, her son let himself into the house with his key.

‘How did you get on?’ she asked.

‘He said there was a slight improvement.’

‘That’s encouraging.’

‘What he couldn’t tell me was when I’d be able to see properly again.’

‘It may never happen, Paul,’ she said with a philosophical sigh.

‘It’s
got
to happen,’ he said, trying to convince himself. ‘I want to be normal again. I want to live a normal life.’

‘You have a normal life and you should be grateful. You were spared when others died or came back with terrible wounds.’

He almost sneered. ‘The hospital chaplain used to say that.’

‘He was right.’

‘It didn’t feel right at the time. I was in pain all over and I was completely blind. I had to rely on other people for just about everything.’

‘That’s all in the past now, Paul. You’re getting better. At least, your eyesight is,’ she added, meaningfully.

He bridled. ‘Don’t start all that again.’

‘It’s your attitude, Paul. You seem to go out of your way to be disagreeable.’

‘I said I was sorry about last night.’

‘What use is that to your sister? She was still shaking when she left here.’

‘Then I’ll apologise next time I see her,’ he said without enthusiasm. ‘Will that do?’

‘No, it won’t,’ returned his mother. ‘You obviously won’t mean what you say and, in any case, can you imagine that Alice will want to come anywhere near this house after the way you attacked her?’

‘I just gave her some advice, that’s all.’

‘It was unwanted advice.’

‘Aren’t I allowed to have an opinion of my own?’ he whined. ‘When I was younger, you and Dad always encouraged me to speak out. Now you want to shut me up because I don’t agree with you.’

‘You’re entitled to have your own opinions, Paul. That’s your right. But you ought to have the sense to see when you’re upsetting someone very much.’

‘Alice should be able to cope with criticism.’

‘I’m not only talking about your sister,’ said Ellen, reasonably. ‘You upset me as well. And you’ve said odd things to some of our neighbours. They’ve stopped me in the street and asked if … well, if there’s anything wrong with you.’

‘I got wounded on the battlefield,’ he shouted, ‘that’s what’s wrong with me!’

‘You don’t have to yell.’

‘People ought to be told what’s going on over there.’

‘They
have
been told,’ she reminded him. ‘Millions went to see that film about the battle of the Somme. We went and you came with us. It told the truth about the war for the first time. We
saw
what you had to go through, Paul. To be honest, it made me shudder but it also made me proud that you had the courage to fight for your country.’

His head drooped. ‘I don’t feel very courageous at the moment.’

‘What
do
you feel?’

He shook his head in puzzlement. For a moment, he seemed much younger than he really was and suddenly vulnerable. All the latent anger had drained out of him. He even let his mother put a gentle arm around his shoulder.

‘I don’t know,’ he confessed. ‘I really don’t know
how
I feel.’

Starting at the point where the victim’s body had been found, they walked in the direction of the road where one of the witnesses claimed to have seen Simon Wilder on the night of the murder. There were serried ranks of houses on either side of them. When they reached a side street off Old Church Road, they stopped.

‘This is where Wainwright remembers spotting him,’ said Keedy, ‘though we’ve no guarantee that it was Wilder, of course. It was just a guess, really.’

‘He’s the best witness we have so far, Joe.’

‘One man and his dog are not going to solve this crime.’

‘But they might help us to do it,’ said Marmion. ‘As you pointed
out, an engine driver would need good eyesight and that camera was a telling clue.’

‘He only said that it
looked
like a camera.’

‘Then it probably was. Don’t forget his hobby. Wainwright likes watching couples enjoying a private moment in the park. He’s an owl, Joe. He can see in the dark. In other words,’ he went on, turning around, ‘Wilder was probably going to a house between this point and the murder scene.’

‘That’s a hell of a lot of houses and our officers visited each one of them. Nobody admits to seeing or letting Wilder in that night.’

‘They’d hardly do so if they were actually involved in the murder.’

‘None of our five suspects lives in this part of Chingford.’

‘His wife would be the closest.’

‘No,’ said Keedy, forcefully, ‘I think we should forget her altogether. I can’t say that I took to the woman but that might be because of the situation she was in. We’ve seen it before. When someone is told that their nearest and dearest has been murdered, they behave in peculiar ways.’

‘I’d rather keep Catherine Wilder on our list. There’s just something about her that rings bells. Gillian Hogg said that she had a heart of stone.’

‘You can’t expect an ex-wife to like the woman who replaced her.’

They walked back in the direction from which they’d just come. There was plenty of traffic and a number of pedestrians were about. Marmion became pensive.

‘That camera interests me,’ he said.

‘We can’t be certain that that’s what Wilder was carrying.’

‘He was a photographer as well as a dancer. That clinches it for me, Joe. But why would he be carrying a camera in the dead of night?’

‘We may never know.’

‘The last time I went to the house,’ recalled Marmion, ‘I asked Mrs Wilder if I could look at the darkroom. You’ve seen how big the place was. I was expecting a sizeable room but it wasn’t much more than a boot cupboard. When I asked her why a professional photographer didn’t have better facilities, she said that her husband found it perfectly adequate. Then she and her brother more or less hustled me out of there.’

Keedy grinned. ‘They’d be useful as bouncers at a sleazy nightclub.’

‘Oh, I don’t think that either of them would deign to go near a nightclub, Joe. Clissold is something of a toff and his sister would find it infra dig.’

‘I don’t agree. I reckon that she and Wilder used to perform at nightclubs in the old days. In that game, you go wherever you can find an audience. She may turn up her nose at such places now but she couldn’t do that when she and her husband first started dancing together.’ He looked across at Marmion. ‘Have you ever been much of a dancer?’

‘Ellen and I used to go to church socials when we first married.’

‘It’s something Alice and I have never done. She’s always talked about it but, when we actually have some leisure time together, there’s never been a dance on.’

‘That’s a pity. You’d be good at it.’

‘I’d be hopeless, Harv. I’ve got two left feet.’

‘You could always get Odele Thompson to give you lessons,’ said Marmion with a wicked grin.

Keedy almost choked. ‘Lessons in
what
, though?’

Colette Orme spent the afternoon working in a haberdashery shop. It was one of the many jobs she’d taken in order to save up
money to buy the dresses and the dancing shoes she’d need for her career. During a quiet period, she was left alone to reflect that her professional career had disappeared before she’d even embarked on it. Without the support and instruction of Simon Wilder, she’d lost her confidence. In his arms, she’d compete with anyone on a dance floor. It was unthinkable that she’d ever find another partner. When she’d first joined the studio, she’d been given a lot of help by Catherine Wilder and she was inspired when she saw husband and wife dancing together. Since she’d effectively retired, however, Catherine had been less helpful and more critical of her. As Colette had found to her dismay, she was more or less exiled from the house now. The expected closure of the studio was the death blow to her high expectations.

Concern about her future was matched by apprehension about her past. While she kept telling herself that she’d done nothing wrong, Colette was dogged by guilt. She’d sought advice from Audrey Pattinson and achieved a measure of calm while she was with her. Once she was on her own, however, the old anxieties splashed over her like a waterfall. Added to them was the fear that she might have lost a good friend in Audrey. The older woman had listened to her plea but she’d also been startled by what she’d heard. Colette was starting to regret that she’d turned to her.

‘Can you hear me, young lady?’ asked a sharp voice. ‘I’d like some of that ribbon. Do you think you can stop daydreaming and serve a customer?’

Colette hadn’t even heard the woman come into the shop. Completely flustered, she mouthed an apology and vowed to keep her mind on her job from now on. It was too painful to think about anything else.

The dance studio had been much more than a place of work to Audrey Pattinson. It was her sanctuary. She could escape from the tensions of her domestic life, play the piano to her heart’s content and watch those who came for instruction improve and blossom. It had given her life a validity she’d never experienced before. At a stroke, she’d lost her escape route, her chance to play dance music and her contact with almost all the people who came to the studio. She’d been part of a community that had now fractured irreparably. It was time to look elsewhere.

Meanwhile, she fled to another place of sanctuary. Since she was on the organists’ rota at the parish church, she was entitled to practise there whenever she wished. Audrey therefore sat in front of the instrument and played a succession of her favourite hymns, reaching every corner of the church with booming chords. Since she knew the music by heart, she played with her eyes closed, vexed by a thought that lanced through her mind. Efficient, well-organised and fastidious, she never mislaid things. There was no way that she had let her notebook go astray. After the last time she’d been the accompanist at the studio, she remembered distinctly that she’d put it into her satchel with the sheet music. Yet it had unaccountably disappeared.

It was her husband who’d found and returned it, taking the opportunity to administer a verbal reprimand. Where had he discovered it? How had it got there? When did it actually vanish from her bag?

‘Who took it?’

In addition to that of Colette Orme, there were four other names ticked by Simon Wilder. Taking two each, the detectives split up and tracked down the young dancers. When they later met up again at the police station, Keedy announced that he’d drawn a blank. Neither of the women he’d interviewed had the slightest idea why they had
been singled out. One of them, in fact, had made such little progress that she’d abandoned her dance lessons altogether. Marmion had also returned empty-handed. The first person on whom he called was so distraught at Wilder’s death that she could barely speak. His second call produced a different result.

‘Her name was Grenda Hayward,’ he explained.

‘I remember that name. It’s so unusual.’

‘She thought it was Anglo-Saxon but she wasn’t certain. Anyway, I got her chatting about her sessions with Wilder before I sprung the question on her and her manner changed in a flash. She went from being quite open with me to the very opposite. Grenda guessed what that tick was for, Joe. The problem was that she refused to tell me what it was.’

‘That’s more or less the reaction I got from Colette Orme.’

‘Why did Wilder rub out those ticks, I wonder?’

‘It’s too late to ask him now,’ said Keedy.

There was a tap on the door and Gibbs entered to tell them that they had a visitor. When he heard that it was Gillian Hogg, Marmion asked for her to be shown straight in. She soon appeared.

‘Perhaps you can enlighten us, Mrs Hogg,’ said Marmion after he’d introduced Keedy to her. ‘I have Mr Wilder’s appointments book in front of me. He ticked five names, all of them young female dancers. Why do you think he’d do that?’

‘Perhaps they showed exceptional promise.’

‘That’s not the answer,’ said Keedy. ‘I talked to a girl named Rosie Hilton and she admitted straight away that she’d been hopeless on the dance floor. All five ticks were rubbed out, by the way.’

‘Whatever Simon had in mind,’ she suggested, ‘he decided against it. That’s the only thing I can think of.’

‘That had occurred to us.’

‘Was he a person who tended to change his mind?’ asked Marmion.

‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘Simon made instant decisions and stood by them. That’s how we came to get married, after all. However,’ she continued, ‘that’s not what I came here to discuss. I’ve been wondering how you got on with God, Inspector.’

‘I’m glad I came to you beforehand. It prepared me.’

‘Was he as crafty as ever?’

‘I wouldn’t like to share that office with him, I know that. Mr Noonan is an ebullient character and doesn’t let you get a word in. I’d hate to talk business with him. People must offer his clients work just to shut him up.’

‘Did you mention my name to him?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘You must have said something that made him think of me, Inspector.’

‘Why do you think that?’

‘He paid me a courtesy visit at the flat.’

Marmion was staggered. ‘Mr Noonan walked all the way up those stairs?’

‘He sent a messenger to tell me that a man wanted to speak to me. When I got to the bottom of the stairs, the man turned out to be God, as in Godfrey. He grabbed me by the throat and demanded to know what I’d told you.’