“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.