Beau Death

11

Dr. Walsh ceased to be a serious candidate when further enquiries revealed he had died on a precise date in 1949 at an address in Okehampton, Devonshire, and probate had been granted to a firm of solicitors.

Halliwell looked like the goalkeeper who’d dived the wrong way and lost the penalty shoot-out in the World Cup.

‘Don’t take it to heart, Keith,’ Diamond told him. ‘You did well to find him. In my career I’ve wandered up more blind alleys than I care to remember. I don’t know who writes my script but if I ever find out, he’s mincemeat.’

‘I even told Paul Gilbert to put the name on his incident board.’

‘It can stay there for a bit. Keep the lad happy. Nobody looks at the bloody board anyway. I was thinking of pinning a pair of Y-fronts on it to get some attention.’

Halliwell didn’t want his mistake on public exhibition for a moment longer. ‘I’m going to speak to him now.’

Diamond returned to his office. Truth to tell, he was as disappointed as his deputy. To progress in any investigation you need suspects and they were unlikely to emerge until the victim was named. He sat in his chair and pondered what it was that people liked about dressing up. Personally, he’d made strenuous efforts all his life to avoid wearing fancy dress. As a kid he’d once been persuaded by his parents to go to a friend’s birthday party dressed as a chicken, but through some misunderstanding the party wasn’t fancy dress. Every other kid had been in everyday clothes. The mockery still rankled. He was a plain clothes man, through and through. He’d been only too happy to get out of police uniform when the chance came to join CID.

Yet the Twerton victim had chosen to put on the Beau Nash outfit. Why?

If nothing else, Halliwell’s theory about Dr. Leslie Walsh had provided a possible answer. The handsome medic was supposed to have got a taste for strutting about and being the centre of attention. If he’d kept the clothes and the wig for years, the theory went, he must have had a reason and his secret fix was recapturing his triumph of July, 1909. Too bad it was another blind alley.

What other reason could there be for dressing the part?

The theatre, obviously. Parts were written for people of all ages so it was not impossible that the victim had been cast in one of those Restoration comedies Paloma had talked about. If so, it seemed likely that the actor had been a professional. Amateurs tended to go for ‘safe’ plays. When they did comedy it was usually farce.

Suppose a professional actor was deeply serious about getting into his role as a Restoration beau and made a thing of dressing in a genuine eighteenth-century frock coat and breeches. Far-fetched? Method actors went to extraordinary lengths to immerse themselves in the parts they were playing. If one really wanted to inhabit the role he might go to the trouble of kitting himself in clothes from the 1760s.

The house in Twerton wasn’t known locally as a theatrical boarding house, but so what? An elderly method actor playing a minor role, and still doggedly trying to ‘become’ the character couldn’t be ruled out.

The only other reason Diamond could think of for dressing up was the need to conform. If you attended some event where everyone wore the gear, you’d do it, however stupid you looked.

A re-enactment?

Or the Beau Nash Society?

He arranged to meet Estella again, this time at the Podium, the oddly named place that isn’t a platform in a concert hall but two floors of shops he’d never used and, upstairs, the Central Library. Estella had said on the phone she was doing research there.

They met at the top of the escalator inside the glazed atrium. She was in purple and red today, still making a fashion statement. Platform heels, trailing scarf, plenty of bling. She must have stood out in the library reference section.

‘Will it take long?’ she asked at once. ‘I bagged a place at a table in there and I don’t want to lose it.’

‘Everyone needs a break at some point,’ he said without answering the question. ‘Let me get you a coffee.’

They settled for one of the covered tables in the street outside, set back far enough from the noise of traffic. ‘I’m hoping you’ve got something even more sensational to tell me,’ she said when they both had cappuccinos in front of them.

‘About what?’

‘The Beau, of course.’

‘I don’t know about sensational,’ he said. ‘Where did we leave him?’

‘In the roof of an eighteenth-century house in Twerton. The revelation that’s going to turn my book into a bestseller.’

Gulp.

He felt an uprush of guilt. He’d been so preoccupied with this maddening mystery that he’d failed until this minute to inform Estella about the latest findings. He lowered his eyes and found himself staring at the image overlaid on his coffee. The outline of a heart had turned into the letter Y.

She would be devastated.

‘I’m afraid there’s a problem.’

She started to laugh, but the amusement soon went out of it. Her eyes narrowed and her fingertips drummed the edge of the table. ‘Tell me.’

‘We believe the skeleton can’t be Richard Nash after all.’ Without interruption he explained about the autopsy and the Y-fronts and the bone that had fluoresced blue. Deciding it was more merciful to release the full force of this bombshell as one impact, he added Leaman’s discovery in the London Intelligencer that Beau Nash had been buried in the Abbey.

Her first reaction was denial. ‘It can’t be true. Can’t be. We all know what newspapers are like.’

‘It’s in several. Even if they all got it wrong, the Y-fronts and the forensic tests tell us the Twerton victim is someone modern.’

The traffic noise provided its own grating soundtrack whilst Estella struggled to come to terms with the loss of the sensational story that would have transformed her book and her career. Finally she said in a voice devoid of vitality, ‘I feel such a fool.’

Anything he said would sound like empty words.

‘I should have checked for myself,’ she added. ‘So much is online now that it’s a blessing and a curse. No disrespect, but when some policeman finds out more than someone like me who has invested years of study, it’s humiliating.’

‘My team catch me out on a regular basis.’

‘I’ve been doing my research chronologically, leaving the death until last. I’m still plodding through primary sources about his earlier life.’

‘You would have got to the funeral eventually.’

‘Yes, and the discovery would have been even more heartbreaking. I can’t in all honesty say I feel grateful for this, but I should be.’

‘It staggered me, too.’

‘You still don’t know who the skeleton is?’

‘From a police point of view it’s vital that we find out. The autopsy suggested he died from a stabbing.’

‘In the Beau Nash clothes?’

‘They were bloodstained.’

‘How ghastly.’

He took her concern for the victim as encouragement to move on to the real reason for contacting her. ‘So we’re trying to find an explanation for the clothes, working through several lines of inquiry.’

She didn’t seem to have listened.

He tried a more direct approach. ‘I’m told the Beau Nash Society dress up in period costume and you’re a member.’

‘A very junior member,’ she said from a million miles away.

‘Do you mind talking about it?’

‘I made my promises sometime last year.’

‘Promises?’

‘First you attend as a novice to see if you like it and if the members approve of you. If all goes well, you’re invited to an initiation ceremony when you promise to abide by the rules.’

‘Like a nun taking her vows?’

‘No,’ she said with a click of her tongue. She was getting her confidence back with this change of topic. ‘Not a bit like that. There’s nothing quasi-religious about the society. We have a mutual interest in the Beau, that’s all. He drew up a list of rules for the proper conduct of people using the Assembly Rooms, and the society did the same. Simple as that.’

‘Dressing up for meetings and suchlike?’

‘That’s in the rules, yes.’

‘But you don’t dance and gamble like the Beau?’

‘Sometimes at the annual ball we do. Mostly we invite speakers to address us on aspects of eighteenth-century life in Bath and Tunbridge Wells, where the Beau was MC. And we do all we can to safeguard his reputation.’

His eyebrows shot up. ‘Is that at risk?’

She raised a faint smile. ‘Between ourselves, it wasn’t all that good in his lifetime. We stand firm against anyone who takes liberties. His name is a brand in Bath. There used to be a Beau Nash cinema in Westgate Street and a Beau Nash pub at the top of Milsom Street. They both have new identities now.’

‘Did your society have something to do with that?’

‘They like to think they did. The Beau would have hated his name being used to sell things.’

‘Difficult to control.’

‘Of course.’

‘In the eighties there was a Beau Nash nightclub behind the Abbey in Kingston Parade.’ He realised as he spoke that she wasn’t even born in the eighties. ‘Long before I arrived here. But I was treated once to a Beau Nash brunch in the Pump Room.’

‘In the Pump Room?’

‘He wouldn’t have known what a brunch is.’

‘How ridiculous. Are you kidding?’

‘No. It struck me as funny at the time.’

‘I think you’ll find it’s no longer advertised,’ she said. ‘Those Pump Room people should be ashamed of themselves. Anyway, the Pump Room didn’t exist in his day.’

‘What about the Beau Nash bedroom in the Royal Crescent Hotel?’

‘The society knows about that. I don’t think anyone is so misguided as to believe he ever slept there. Like the Pump Room, the Royal Crescent wasn’t built until after his death.’

‘A bedroom isn’t so stupid-sounding as a brunch. Would he have objected? I thought he was in his element in bedrooms.’

She didn’t comment.

‘Is that your main activity?’ Immediately he turned the colour of a ripe Worcester apple. ‘Stop. I’d better rephrase that. Is that the society’s main object, suppressing the use of his name?’

‘Not at all. It’s not even in the rules. Simply something we keep an eye on.’

‘Your members must have some clout.’

‘Some of them do. It’s regarded as an honour to be invited to join.’

‘Councillors, local gentry, peers of the realm?’

‘All of those.’

‘How many altogether?’

‘I’m not sure. They aren’t all active.’

‘This is what interests me. One of them may be not active. Inactive, in fact.’

‘The skeleton?’ she said, eyes enormous. ‘One of our members?’

‘I have to ask.’

‘You’re seriously suggesting the skeleton could have been one of us?’

‘It’s a man in a frock coat and breeches with a Beau Nash hat and wig. We have to explore every possibility. Do the men all dress like that for the meetings?’

Estella shook her head. ‘The president. Only the president wears the white tricorne and black wig. We call him the Beau. It’s like a badge of office.’

‘Passed down from one president to the next?’

‘I couldn’t tell you that. I’ve never asked. The rest of us all supply our own costumes, so I would imagine they do the same.’

‘Must be expensive.’

‘It is. I had to get a gown made specially. Fortunately my parents helped out with the cost. Some of the ladies wear something different each time. I can’t possibly keep up with that, so I change the accessories — the hat and wig and necklaces. It’s a challenge. As the only black woman I stand out.’

‘Do the men change their costumes?’

‘Those who can afford to.’

‘How long has the society been in existence?’

‘I don’t know. Like I said, I’m one of the newest members.’

‘Who’s the current president?’

‘Sir Edward Paris, who built half of modern Bath as far as I can make out.’

‘I met him only this week.’ Tempted to add ‘pompous ass,’ Diamond chose for once to be tactful.

‘Funnily enough,’ Estella said, ‘he looks rather like the real Beau when he was about the same age.’

‘Is that a factor in choosing the president?’

‘No. He can be anyone approved by the members.’

‘Anyone who owns half of Bath?’

‘I guess that helps.’

‘How is he chosen? By election?’

‘I’m not sure. Ed was already in office when I joined.’

He noted the ‘Ed’ and was pleased he’d been discreet. ‘It’s a bit sexist, isn’t it, just having men for president? Aren’t the lady members eligible?’

She smiled. ‘I don’t think the society is ready for a cross-dressing Beau. But let’s give them credit. They’re not racists. They welcomed me to their ranks.’

‘I’m sure you know more about the real Beau than the rest of them put together.’

‘I thought I did. I’m so glad I didn’t speak to anyone about this nonsense.’ She finished her coffee. ‘I’d better get back.’

‘I’m truly sorry for the disappointment,’ he said.

‘I needed to know. If the skeleton had gone into the book, illustrations and all, that would have screwed up my reputation as a scholar. And I have learned something every other biographer has missed — the reports of his burial inside the Abbey. No one has nailed that before.’

For some minutes after Estella had left, Diamond remained at the table reflecting on what he’d heard. Then the call signal on his mobile jerked him back to the here and now.

He fumbled with the thing and almost dropped it. ‘Yes?’

‘Am I speaking to Mr. Diamond of the Bath police?’

‘You are.’

‘Janice Bale.’

He was usually good with voices and hopeless with names. He couldn’t place this lady.

‘Marks in Time.’

He still didn’t get it, but he said, ‘Right,’ in the expectation that she would fill him in and she did.

‘The Marks and Spencer company archive at Leeds. Your undergarment.’

‘The Y-fronts? Do you have a date for me?’

‘We studied all the pictures you sent and we can confirm that this particular design in pure white cotton with the elasticised leg opening has been widely retailed for a very long time, since at least 1952.’

‘As early as that?’

‘It was always popular. However, the selvedge is more modern, no earlier than 1970.’

‘That helps.’

‘And the St. Michael label in that particular design wasn’t introduced until 1989.’

‘Excellent. Was this line of pants replaced at some point?’

‘No, but the label changed in 1995.’

‘Brilliant. We’re looking at a six-year interval, then.’

‘You are and you aren’t. That’s when they were on sale. This particular variety was hard-wearing and would survive many washes. Our product research tells us that some gentlemen keep the same underwear until the elastic goes and they’re forced to buy more.’

‘Deplorable,’ he said, trying not to think about his own.

‘Our briefs are bought in sets of three usually.’

‘I know.’

‘So the same pair won’t be worn daily. You can multiply the average life of one garment by three. Or by six if he bought two sets. If it doesn’t get washed every day a garment has a longer life, obviously.’

‘I’m with you.’

‘And the method of washing and drying makes a difference. Tumble dryers have improved, but the earlier machines could overheat and damage the fabric. I don’t suppose you know if your man dried his on a washing line?’

‘I don’t know who my man is, let alone how he did his laundry.’

‘The label says he wore the large size, if that’s any help.’

Diamond wore XL, which he’d always considered normal. ‘It’s not large really, is it? What are we talking about here — 36 to 39 inches?’

‘Not necessarily. Our block sizes have got tweaked over the years to fit the average physique. The tendency is for waist sizes to increase. In 1989, large could have been more like a 35 to 38.’

‘Not large in the sense of a sumo wrestler, then? Getting back to that timespan when they were on sale in your branches...’

‘1989 to 1995.’

‘You were saying that should be elastic, also?’

‘I don’t follow you.’

‘I’m talking about the timespan, ma’am. The average life of a pair of pants. You were saying it needs to be stretched.’

‘For the reasons I mentioned, yes. I suggest you spread the six-year interval to at least fifteen.’