Beau Death

7

Late the same evening Georgina was at the wheel of her silver Mercedes coming over Bannerdown, returning to Bath on the Fosse Way northeast of the city. How clever of her sister, Jelly, to have bought a cottage at South Wraxall right beside the arrow-straight Roman road that runs from Exeter to Lincoln — Georgina’s favourite road in all of the southwest. The journey home felt like a private drive on evenings such as this.

Or should have done. Tonight her nerves were playing havoc.

Jelly (silly name, but she was stuck with it, being christened Angelica and unable to get her tongue round all the syllables as a child) was seven years younger than Georgina and couldn’t be more different in personality. She’d been married three times and the weddings had got more and more extravagant. For the latest, to Wallace, who was ‘something in the film world,’ all the guests had been flown out to Bermuda and the ceremony had taken place on a beach. Unfortunately Wallace hadn’t lasted any longer than Damian or Jules. Worse, the settlement was taking far too long because of the lawyers. Jelly now said the rest of her life would consist of casual relationships. She was currently using the internet to see what was available.

Georgina had never mentioned Jelly to any of her police colleagues.

Despite the different paths their lives had taken, the sisters got on well and Georgina regularly helped Jelly over her emotional crises. Truth to tell, she enjoyed hearing what some of these oversexed men seemed to think was natural and normal. She didn’t even blink, acting the experienced older sister who knew it all, unshockable, sympathetic and never short of advice. Jelly’s action-packed private life made a welcome change from reading crushingly dull screeds from the Home Office and trying to apply them at police-station level.

Jelly’s latest escapade had been related tearfully over a gin and tonic. She had arranged online to meet a man with an MG Midget. Yesterday he had turned up on time in this dinky red sports car from the 1960s and taken her for a ‘spin.’ He hadn’t looked anything like his picture and was probably twenty years her senior, but Jelly was willing to compromise, assuming that any owner of a valuable vintage car knew how to treat a lady. Sadly this wasn’t the case. Somewhere north of Bristol, Cedric had said he could feel a touch of cramp in his leg. Jelly decided the reason was obvious: he was about six foot six and quite the wrong shape to fit into a car that size. A mile or two further along the road he’d started groaning, so Jelly had suggested they pulled into a layby. Conveniently one appeared almost straight away.

Jelly had expected Cedric to get out and have a stretch, but he’d made even more alarming noises and said he couldn’t move and would she massage the muscle, which had seemed to have gone rigid. Tentatively Jelly had put her hand on his thigh only to be told the cramping was lower down, in the calf, and in the other leg. She couldn’t bear seeing anyone suffer, so she’d leaned over, reached down and got to work with both hands. For a first date, this Cedric was asking a lot, because Jelly was now face down in his lap. The position wasn’t dignified or comfortable. When the muscle seemed to be responding, she’d asked if he was okay and he’d said there was a definite improvement and asked her to keep going. The groaning had given way to a kind of moan that sounded — even to the tender-hearted Jelly — suspiciously like sounds of pleasure.

This was the moment she’d been shocked to hear another voice join in. Someone had said, ‘So it’s you, Cedric. I thought I recognised the car. What’s going on here, then?’

Cedric, calm as a horse whisperer, had answered, ‘No problem, officer. A touch of cramp. The lady is massaging my leg.’

Officer? Jelly had caught her breath.

The second voice had said, ‘Same old game, then? The cramp attack? Does the lady know you’re famous for it?’

Jelly, mortified, angry and embarrassed, had stayed face down, not wanting to be recognised, hoping the policeman would go away. He must have driven silently into the layby and turned off his lights and parked and crept up on the car.

Then she’d heard Cedric say, ‘It’s not illegal between consenting adults.’

This was too much. Jelly had sat up and said, ‘I haven’t consented to anything. This man got me here under false pretences.’ After a short, bad-tempered exchange, she’d insisted on being driven home in the police car demanding to know why Cedric hadn’t been charged with deception and a whole lot of other things.

Georgina had heard all this with a mixture of outrage and alarm. She could see it mushrooming into a ruinous situation, and not just for Jelly. She could imagine what the media would make of the assistant chief constable’s own sister being led astray by this sex pest. Cedric had to be stopped from preying on gullible women. It was a dilemma. You don’t want one of your own family put through the ordeal of a court case, yet the man couldn’t be allowed to get away with it.

She’d told Jelly firmly to put the whole incident down to experience and take it as a warning about dating men online.

‘Isn’t there something in the law about outraging public decency?’ Jelly had asked her.

‘Leave it,’ Georgina had warned in the strongest terms. ‘You could find yourself being charged.’

‘Me? I’m the victim. I was innocent. He’s obviously a predator.’

‘Yes, and equally obviously known to the police. Leave it to us to deal with him.’

It had taken ten minutes and another G&T to make her sister understand what going to court would entail and what damage a clever counsel would do to her reputation. She had finally seen sense.

Georgina had promised — and half meant what she said, because she had to think of a way of keeping Jelly’s name out of it — to report the incident to Operation Bluestone, the dedicated rape and sexual offences unit. And now she was trying to put all that out of her mind and concentrate on her driving.

She shouldn’t really have been at the wheel. The two drinks were definitely over the limit. At the time, they’d been necessary, as much to control her own emotions as Jelly’s. But she’d been unwise to have them. Although she didn’t feel the slightest bit drunk, the law allowed no excuses. If she were stopped and breathalysed, her career would be over.

So she kept checking her speed and making sure her steering was faultless. Even on a quiet, safe road like this you could be stopped by some patrol keen to make an arrest. Give nothing away, she told herself. Keep the wheel steady and drive as if you have the lord chief justice in the passenger seat. Twenty minutes and you’ll be home.

Two minutes later something new appeared on the display.

A malfunction.

The bulb in her right taillight wasn’t working.

Damnation.

Her mouth went dry and her stomach clenched. However carefully she drove, she would now be pulled over by the first police car that came up behind her. She looked in the mirror and saw headlights not far behind.

What next? She could put her foot down and make sure they didn’t get close. The temptation was strong. No, no, no. Likely as not, they’d get her for speeding as well.

She saw a space in front of a farm gate and pulled off the road. You had to be careful in the dark. In some places along here there was almost no verge and a sheer drop.

She switched everything off and waited.

The car flashed by. Not a police vehicle.

Could she take the risk of driving down into Bath through built-up streets? It was the only route home. She should have stayed the night at Jelly’s. She could easily make a turn and go back, but by now she wasn’t far from Batheaston, a lot closer to home than South Wraxall.

For some minutes she agonised over what to do next. She wasn’t usually indecisive. Perhaps she’d taken in more alcohol than she thought. Jelly sometimes tipped in as much gin as tonic.

Needing to calm herself, she started going through earlier events, the humdrum routine of work. But of course it hadn’t been humdrum today. Anything but, with the Twerton skeleton and the suggestion that it was Beau Nash. When the media caught up with the latest theory there would be mayhem.

Beau Nash.

Ridiculous.

She blamed Peter Diamond, the cuckoo in her nest. Something about that bumptious, exasperating man acted as an attractant to bizarre and sensational cases. He’d deny it, of course. He’d argue that any detective working in a city with Bath’s colourful history would find himself investigating extraordinary events, but Beau Nash in a loft was the most extreme example yet.

No doubt there was an explanation. Sanity would prevail.

All Georgina had ever wanted was a low-key existence, free of sensation. Other people achieved it. She knew of assistant chief constables who complained of boredom. Ten minutes in Bath police would cure them of that.

Nothing more had come past. It was after midnight and Bath should be reasonably quiet. She made the decision to drive on.

In the last few minutes a mist had come down — or so she thought until she realised her own hot breath had steamed up the windows.

For God’s sake, woman, she told herself, get a grip.

She wiped a space in the windscreen, turned up the air conditioning and got the car back on the road to start the long descent into Batheaston.

Take it slowly. At a sedate speed in low gear she flicked the headlights to full beam. Maybe more power in the electrics would cure the taillight problem.

It didn’t. The malfunction notice hadn’t gone away.

Again she checked the rearview mirror for headlights. She was alone, thank God.

Not quite.

Ahead, on a stretch with tall trees on either side, her headlights on full beam picked out a figure at the side of the road with one hand raised, maybe to shield his eyes from the glare.

Some optical illusion? A tree stripped of its bark can stand out from the rest and look amazingly lifelike. But she thought she’d seen it move and there wasn’t much breeze tonight. It was possible someone was trying to wave her down.

She couldn’t stop for anyone.

Anyone.

She dipped her lights.

You never offer a lift at night, she thought. I must drive by.

The few seconds this troubling image had been caught in the glare of the lights had given the impression of a sizeable male with dark, shoulder-length hair. His clothes were strange. The word that popped into Georgina’s head was eccentric. Some kind of white jacket or coat and a large white hat. He was either bare-legged or wearing tights.

Come on, be sensible, she told herself. It was only some large item of rubbish caught on a bush and looking lifelike. Paper or plastic sheeting that had fallen off a passing vehicle.

She was tempted to flick to full beam again for a longer look, but she didn’t. She drove on until the dipped lights briefly caught the figure again.

Definitely a man. He was standing at the end of a driveway to some private house. And definitely waving.

She raced past.

The real shock was the clothes. He’d been dressed in a tricorne hat and frock coat, breeches and buckled shoes. The long hair must have been a wig. It was as if he’d stepped out of the eighteenth century. Or Georgina had travelled back there.

A ghost?

I know who he was, she thought.

The gin has gone to my head and I’m hallucinating. Beau Nash was in my thoughts and my intoxicated brain created this image. He can’t have been real.

Whatever the explanation, in this state of panic she wasn’t fit to be at the wheel of a car. Half a mile further on she flicked the main beam on again and looked for somewhere to stop. No laybys on this narrow road. But a short way on was a verge wide enough to take most of the car. She slowed, edged the front wheels on to the grass, braked and switched off. A pulse was thumping in her head.

‘Please, God,’ she said. ‘Please, God, help me.’

She’d got the shakes.

DTs?

Surely not.

For some minutes she did nothing. Couldn’t even think straight.

Finally she got a measure of control and succeeded in putting some sensible thoughts together. She would drive no more tonight. She’d phone for a taxi, leave the car here at the side of the road and collect it tomorrow when she was sober.

The decision came as a massive relief.

She took out her phone and got through straight away. And what a comfort it was to hear a human voice. It was difficult explaining the section of road where she was, but the woman at the taxi office said they’d find her if she waited by her car with the hazard lights on. ‘Have you broken down, dear?’

Comprehensively.

‘Yes,’ Georgina said.

‘Don’t worry. Your driver will be on his way directly.’

Profoundly thankful, she sat in the car and for the next few minutes waited for her jangled nerves to calm. Hearing those few words of reassurance had been a comfort and now she needed to restore her equilibrium. She didn’t want the driver to see her in the state she was in. She closed her eyes and took some deep breaths. The shaking had almost stopped.

It would take the taxi ten to fifteen minutes.

The pulsing of her hazard lights was making the nearest bushes flash pink. Thinking more like the high-ranking police officer she was, she picked her bag off the passenger seat, stepped out and checked that nothing of value was in the back. Abandoned cars were an easy target for thieves. Then she locked up and stood in a safe position on the verge a short distance away from the car.

The cool night air was helping. She checked her watch a couple of times, but stayed calm. A couple of cars went past. It was too soon for the taxi.

When the arc of light high above the road told her another car was approaching, she didn’t get excited. The vehicle was coming from the wrong direction, the way she herself had travelled. She was expecting her taxi to come up from Bath.

The twin beams were too dazzling to stare at, but as they approached, she had the thought that this could, after all, be the taxi. The nearest cab might have been north of the city on another call and got a radio message to pick up a stranded passenger on Bannerdown. It seemed to be slowing. The lights dipped. But it wasn’t a taxi.

Or it didn’t look like a taxi. You can’t always be certain.

It was a four-by-four and it pulled up beside the winking Mercedes.

The nearest window slid down and a woman’s voice called out, ‘Need a lift?’

‘Thank you, but I’ve called a taxi,’ Georgina said.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Only into Bath.’

‘Jump in. I’ll take you. You can phone and cancel the taxi.’

‘I’d better not.’

But this was a persuasive lady. ‘Listen, my darling. They’re really busy at this time, after the pubs and clubs close. They tell you they’ll take ten minutes and they could be an hour. You never know who’s going to drive up and mug you while you’re standing here in the open with your handbag.’

Put like that, it was a winning argument. Georgina didn’t want to be kept waiting and mugged. ‘Well, thank you.’

‘Not a problem. I’d never forgive myself if I drove past and read about you in the paper tomorrow.’

Georgina opened the door and got into the passenger seat.

‘Makes sense.’ In the darkness of the car the woman was difficult to see apart from a severe blonde fringe, but the voice was friendly and hearty in the way well-heeled Bathonians often are. ‘I’m Sally Paris.’

‘Georgina Dallymore.’

‘Call the taxi people, Georgie, and we’ll have you home in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.’

No one ever called her Georgie, but she was in no position to complain. She made the call and they were okay about it.

‘Puncture, was it?’ Sally Paris asked as she started up and got the Range Rover in motion.

Georgina didn’t want to tell a lie, but neither did she want to admit she was over the limit. ‘Actually my vision started playing tricks. I knew I shouldn’t be driving.’

‘Responsible of you. I hope I’d do the same.’ Sally then added in the same amiable tone, ‘Had a few drinks, have you? I thought I smelt gin on your breath. Where exactly do you live?’

‘Bennett Street, if it isn’t too far out of your way.’

‘Top of the town. I know it. Lovely area.’

Sociable conversations among people like this well-bred lady tend to follow a script. Any moment it would be ‘Tell me about yourself. Are you in business?’ unless the lines were rewritten, so Georgina asked, ‘Have you driven far tonight?’

‘No distance at all. I was collecting my husband. The chauffeur’s night off.’

‘Oh yes?’ Georgina tried to sound as if she, too, had given her chauffeur the evening off.

Sally raised her voice. ‘Are you awake, Ed?’

There was a grunt from the back, no more.

Georgina hadn’t realised there was another passenger.

‘Out to the world,’ Sally said. ‘One of his cronies invites them to an “at home” and they all get plastered and the wives and significant others pick up the pieces at the end of the evening.’

‘Invites them to a what?’

‘It’s an old-fashioned term for a booze-up. He’s the top banana, known as the Beau, so he has to be there. No excuses.’

‘The Beau?’

‘Heard of the Beau Nash Society?’

‘I believe I have, but—’

‘Fruitcakes, every one. Mostly men, of course. Isn’t that right, Ed?’

There was no reply from the fruitcake on the back seat, but Georgina turned her head and caught sight of a pair of chunky knees in white tights and, perched on even chunkier thighs, a three-cornered hat.

A light bulb turned on in her head. The roadside apparition must have been Ed dressed as Beau Nash waiting for his lift home.

‘Is he awake?’ Sally asked.

‘Difficult to see,’ Georgina said after turning her head as well as she could. The top banana seemed to have got overripe, gone soft and sunk in the seat.

‘Try giving him a prod.’

Georgina had no desire to prod a strange man. ‘They dress up for this?’

‘It’s the committee. Serious stuff,’ Sally said. ‘They have rules and rituals and God knows what else. If Ed were awake he’d tell you. He’s been the Beau for the best part of twenty years. We get invited to all manner of functions that I try to avoid mostly. I’m forced to put in an appearance at the annual ball as the Belle. Silly, isn’t it? I’m sure it all sounds a hoot to anyone who isn’t caught up in it.’

‘Can anyone join?’

‘You need to be nominated and vetted. And you have to be well up on the Beau’s life story. Some of them write books about him. Between ourselves, I get bored to the back teeth with it all. Like tonight, waiting until after midnight for the phone call. Would I meet him at the roadside at the end of Crispin’s driveway? Just when I’m ready for sleep. Have you got one, Georgie?’

‘One what?’

‘A man.’

‘Em, no. I live alone.’

‘Good for you. What do you do — devote yourself to work?’

The topic she was desperate to avoid. ‘Not entirely. Tonight I was with my sister in South Wraxall.’

‘Family matters to sort out?’

‘Sort of.’

‘And you both had a few. I don’t blame you.’

Georgina didn’t deny it. As long as Sally didn’t learn that her tipsy passenger was the assistant chief constable, the evening wouldn’t end in total humiliation. Not far to go now. They were through Walcot and level with the long sweep of the Paragon. ‘If you’d like to put me down at the Hay Hill turn I can walk the last bit.’

‘Nonsense. I’ll take you all the way. Bennett Street. You must be a high-flyer to be living there.’

Georgina fired a fast question. ‘Where do you and Ed live?’

‘Out Charlcombe way, a modern house we had built, a frightful let-down when we entertain because everyone expects the Beau to be housed in Georgian splendour.’

‘I expect it’s more comfortable than an old building.’

‘It has a few redeeming features. You must come and visit and we’ll get to know each other better. Do you have a business card?’

‘Not with me,’ Georgina lied.

‘Look in the side pocket. We always have a few of ours in the car.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Found one? Give me a call next week. I’d like you to meet Ed when his eyes are open. Hey-ho. This looks like Bennett Street. Which end, Georgie?’

‘This end will do.’

The Range Rover came to a halt. ‘He’s not even capable of saying goodnight,’ Sally said. ‘He could be dead for all I know.’