Beau Death

9

Clenching and unclenching his fists, Diamond remained in the lecture theatre with Dr. Waghorn. All the audience had left and so had the technicians.

‘Is it some kind of student hoax?’

‘The pants?’ Waghorn said. ‘I don’t see how it can be. They were under the breeches, in position around the pelvis when I separated the clothing from the bones — and must have been when the skeleton was first revealed in the loft.’

‘You don’t think they could have been put on afterwards?’

A shake of the head. ‘Impossible. Haven’t I made clear already that a skeleton without flesh is disarticulated? This one was only held in place by what remained of the clothes. Any idiot trying to dress it in pants would need to strip off the breeches first and the whole structure would disintegrate.’

‘All right. What would an eighteenth-century man be wearing? Some kind of drawers?’

‘For pity’s sake, superintendent. I’m a forensic anthropologist.’

‘The clothes don’t interest you?’

‘That’s an impertinence. Didn’t I make a point of bringing them all to the autopsy and showing everyone the bloodstaining?’

‘You just said you’re an anthropologist. Let’s say ninety-five percent of your attention was on the bones. What the victim was wearing was secondary. I’m not blaming you.’

‘It sounds suspiciously like it.’

‘You took off the pants and put them aside.’ Picturing the scene, Diamond had a new thought. ‘Did you have an assistant working with you?’

‘I did. It’s normal.’

‘The young woman with the clothes rack?’

‘Becky. But I trust her absolutely. She wouldn’t stoop to the sort of trick you’re suggesting.’

‘She put the clothes in evidence bags and hung them on the rack? Yes? And where was the rack kept overnight?’

‘This is absurd.’

‘I’m serious. The pants must have been introduced by some joker.’

For that, Diamond was given a look as if he’d messed the floor. ‘The lab is kept locked. I am scrupulous about security.’

‘I need to speak to Becky.’

‘She’s worked with me for three years.’

‘I don’t care how long. I must get to the bottom of this.’

Waghorn smirked. ‘The bottom decomposed a long time ago.’

‘Where can I speak to Becky?’

‘She’s at her break now. I don’t want her interrogated.’

‘It’s got to be done. You’ve uncovered a murder and it’s going to be investigated whether it took place fifty years ago or two hundred and fifty.’

He sighed like a slashed tyre. ‘Very well, but I hope you’ll treat her with more civility than you’re treating me.’

‘You haven’t gone out of your way to be helpful.’

‘It’s not my job to come up with an explanation.’ The smug little man had no idea how close he was to being thumped.

‘You must have known days ago about the Marks and Spencer label and you said bugger all about it until it was forced from you by that student asking a question.’

‘Today I was conducting an autopsy, superintendent, a serious procedure. Can you imagine the reaction from a roomful of students if I showed them the pants at the beginning?’

‘I’m not talking about today. It was bloody obvious something was wrong, yet you didn’t pick up the phone.’

Waghorn shrugged as if such obligations were beneath him. ‘I was preparing the skeleton for the autopsy table. You have no idea how demanding that is.’

Diamond shook his head. ‘The press are going to make us look like clowns. Right now your students are spreading it about on social media.’

‘I can’t help that. It’s public knowledge now.’

An alarming possibility had hammered Diamond’s brain ever since the autopsy ended. ‘Suppose this isn’t a stunt. We’ve all assumed up to now — or at least I did and so did my team — that the skeleton is a piece of history from 1760 or thereabouts. Could we be mistaken?’

‘Of course.’ Waghorn gave a sniff that was the nearest thing to an apology he would concede.

‘Not good enough,’ Diamond told him. ‘I need your advice here. How old are these bones? Is this a modern man?’

‘By modern, you mean since Y-fronts were invented? When was that?’ Waghorn took out his smartphone and worked it rapidly with his latex-covered thumb. ‘Chicago, 1935. I don’t know when they got into M&S, but it wouldn’t have been long after. We could be speaking of sometime in the last eighty years, then.’

‘This is ludicrous,’ Diamond said. ‘Can’t you tell?’

‘It’s not easy determining the time since death. I can’t say merely from looking at bones whether they go back twenty years or two hundred.’

‘There are tests, aren’t there? Carbon dating?’

‘That’s an archaeological measure in thousands of years. It wouldn’t help us. The best hope would be to look at the levels of nitrogen and amino acids remaining. This would be an indication of how far the bones have deteriorated. They lose proteins as time passes.’

‘Are we talking decades, hundreds of years, or what?’

‘Decades, possibly, but the test is still far from accurate. Other factors come into play.’

‘It’s a skeleton, for God’s sake. How long does it take for a corpse to be reduced to bones?’

Waghorn lifted his shoulders and pulled a face. He didn’t like being pinned down. ‘In our climate, and if it isn’t buried or in water, as little as one to two years. But let’s not forget where it was. A loft space can get exceedingly hot in the summer months and that would accelerate the process. The clothing may delay it a bit.’

‘So we could even be dealing with a twenty-first century murder?’

‘Except for the style of clothes.’

‘He could have liked dressing up in eighteenth-century gear. I’ve heard of stranger things.’

‘This is getting beyond me,’ Waghorn said.

‘Me, too,’ Diamond said. ‘But it can’t be ignored. Those tests you were talking about. We’d better get them under way.’

‘They’re not cheap.’

‘My gaffer will have to worry about that.’

‘There is one test we can run quite soon, using ultraviolet light. Fresh bones fluoresce. Under UV a cross-cut of one of the long bones will glow pale blue around the hollow part and the thickness of the ring of colour is a good indication of the timespan. The fresher the bone, the thicker the band of light.’

‘Go for it, then,’ Diamond said. ‘How soon can we get results?’

‘That isn’t up to me.’

‘Somehow, I thought that was what you’d say.’

‘And did you interview the technician?’ Georgina asked Diamond when he reported back. She’d come in late to work after taking an early taxi to Bannerdown to collect the car and drive it to the Mercedes garage to get the lamp bulb replaced. Needing a trouble-free, quiet morning today of all days, she’d walked into a hornets’ nest in CID.

‘Becky?’ The big detective was mired in gloom. All his theories were shafted. The failure was the most galling in his long career.

He forced himself to speak about Becky. ‘I was impressed with her. Waghorn was so taken up with his damned bones that he failed to see there was anything wrong with the clothing. Becky knew straight away that they were Y-fronts and found the Marks and Spencer label.’

‘This was when they were preparing the skeleton for the autopsy table?’

‘Yes.’

‘And she drew the label to his attention?’

‘She did. Takes her job seriously. I can’t see her as the weak link. She’s well drilled in continuity of evidence.’

‘You said Dr. Waghorn was preoccupied with the bones?’

‘He doesn’t see the pants as his problem.’

‘He’s right. The problem is ours, God help us,’ Georgina said. ‘It’s been mayhem here. The press have been demanding a statement since the autopsy finished this morning. Some mischief maker tipped them off.’

‘That’s no surprise,’ he said. ‘The autopsy room was full of students with their smartphones.’

She wasn’t listening. ‘So I’ve called a press conference for five this afternoon for you to update our media friends.’

Just when he was thinking his life couldn’t get any worse. ‘A press conference? Today?’

‘Give them the facts, Peter. Better than having them make things up — which they’re well capable of doing. And they want a picture of the pants. It’ll be all over the newspapers tomorrow and it won’t be pretty.’

He’d never thought of Y-fronts as pretty.

‘I see the look on your face,’ Georgina went on. ‘We can’t duck this. Long experience has taught me not to make enemies of that lot. They’re already annoyed that they weren’t allowed on site when the skeleton was hoisted from the loft.’

‘They still got their pictures.’

‘Once they get a sniff of a story they don’t go away. Prepare a statement. I don’t want you doing this off the cuff.’

‘The problem with a statement is knowing what to state,’ he said. ‘My first thought was that the pants were a stunt.’

‘University students?’

‘Highly likely. But Dr. Waghorn won’t have it. He insists the skeleton would have fallen to bits if anyone tried putting the pants on it. If he’s right, we’ve got a totally different case on our hands.’

‘He can’t be right, or the whole thing is nonsense.’

‘That was my first thought, ma’am.’

She eyed him warily. ‘But you’ve had a second one?’

‘I have.’

‘Go on, then.’

‘I’m now regarding it as a case of murder.’

‘That’s no surprise. The stab marks and the bloodstains.’

‘The pants could make it much more recent than we were led to believe. A twenty-first-century job.’

Georgina took a sharp breath and said nothing.

‘Waghorn says he can’t tell from the state of the bones how long it is since the victim died.’

‘It’s a skeleton, for God’s sake. It can’t be all that recent.’

‘Above ground, the soft flesh breaks down quite quickly. Even in our climate we could be talking about as little as two years. Hot air trapped in the loft.’

‘I need a paracetamol,’ she said, reaching for her handbag. ‘I’ve had a headache all morning and you’ve made it a whole lot worse.’ She dipped her hand in and came out with the packet of painkillers and the visiting card she’d been given by Sally Paris. She’d dismissed the card from her mind because she had no intention of following up the chance meeting of the evening before. She hoped Diamond hadn’t noticed.

‘The speed of decomposition came as a shock to me,’ he was saying.

‘Do you honestly believe this?’

‘I’m trying to keep an open mind. He’s arranging tests.’

‘At our expense, no doubt.’ Georgina took a bottle of water from her desk drawer and poured some into a cup. No one should see the ACC drinking from a bottle. She swallowed two tablets and washed them down.

‘The tests will tell us,’ Diamond said. ‘We need to know.’

‘But if they prove the bones are modern we have to explain why a modern man was wearing old-fashioned clothes.’

‘It’s a mystery.’

‘What’s happening with the clothes? Are they still up at the university?’

‘I’ve arranged for them to be collected.’

‘Good.’

‘We can run our own tests.’

‘Peter, you keep talking about tests.’

He could almost hear the calculator working in Georgina’s head. ‘We need answers.’

‘Surely if this is a modern crime there’s a more cost-effective way of dating it.’

‘What’s that?’

‘The Y-fronts. I can’t say I have much experience of men’s undergarments,’ she said. ‘Are they worn much these days?’

He’d rather be walking on red-hot coals than talking underwear to the assistant chief constable. ‘They may not be as popular as they once were, but they’ve never gone away. It’s the support.’

‘I’ll take your word for that. Will it help the case if we show them to the media?’

His eyes doubled in size. ‘Help the case? How?’

‘Somebody may see a picture in the paper and recognise them.’

‘With respect, ma’am, I don’t think this is a good idea. Everyone knows what Y-fronts look like.’

‘Not everyone,’ she said in a pious tone.

‘These are in poor condition,’ he said. ‘Holes and stains.’

‘I see.’ She thought about that for a while before saying, ‘What we do is show the press a similar pair.’

This was catastrophic. ‘You want me to appear at a press conference and hold up a pair of pants? Don’t you think I’ve suffered enough?’

She was indifferent to his pain. ‘What’s your problem, Peter?’

‘This whole damned case has been a gift to the gutter press from the start,’ he said. ‘They won’t treat it seriously.’

She raised her forefinger as if she’d seen the light. ‘Well, why don’t we get hold of one of those mannequins? I don’t mean a person. The fibreglass things they use in the underwear department in Jolly’s.’

She’d got this idea and she had to be dissuaded — fast.

Desperation was driving him now. ‘I suggest we offer them a press kit with some official photos.’

‘Will that be enough?’

‘Photos of the real pants. Much better.’

‘As you wish,’ she said. ‘Just get it done as soon as possible and make sure I get a copy.’

She wanted her own picture of the pants. Wisely he passed no comment.

John Wigfull, the civilian press officer, had been tasked with notifying everyone that a statement about the Twerton skeleton would be made at 5 p.m., reasonable timing for the morning papers and the late evening newscasts.

Diamond gave Leaman the job of putting together the press kit including photos.

‘Have we given up on Beau Nash?’ Leaman asked.

Diamond wasn’t giving him the satisfaction of saying, I told you so.

‘Not entirely.’

‘But you definitely want a picture of the actual Y-fronts in the press kit?’

A tight-lipped, ‘Yes.’

‘With respect—’

‘When anyone uses that phrase to me, John, I know they mean the opposite. Just get it done.’

‘No problem.’

Thanks to the paracetamol, Georgina’s headache was gone. Surely it hadn’t been a hangover? She preferred to think the stress of the past twenty-four hours was responsible. Dealing with Diamond on a daily basis was stressful enough and the added worry of leaving the car on a public road overnight had been too much. Thank goodness no one here at Bath Central knew what had happened.

She picked the visiting card from her desk and was about to bin it when she saw something that made her hesitate.

The name on the card was Lady Sally Paris.

Lady?

How easy it is to make assumptions. In her wildest dreams she wouldn’t have supposed the Good Samaritan of the night before had been a titled person. She’d introduced herself as Sally, which had sounded friendly and informal. But she had said something about the chauffeur having the night off. Georgina wasn’t used to mingling with the aristocracy, but now it had happened she was already having second thoughts about throwing away the card. People like that can be helpful contacts. Networking was the way to get on these days.

The embarrassment of last night needed to be put in a new context. Nobody of Lady Sally’s status in society was going to think a couple of G&Ts were grounds for dismissal from the police. Lords and ladies were knocking them back all the time. What had seemed a potential scandal a few hours ago was laughable now. After all, Georgina reflected, elevating herself to the level these people operated from, one had done the responsible thing and stopped driving. Any alcohol was out of one’s system by now.

One would take up Sally’s invitation and arrange to visit her at Charlcombe.

Shortly after 4 p.m. came a call from Dr. Waghorn.

‘Something new?’ Diamond said, trying not to sound too eager. He’d learned to play his cards cannily with this smart alec.

‘I think you’ll be interested. We discussed PMI tests on the skeleton in the hope of learning the time since his death.’

‘PMI?’

‘Postmortem interval. Well, here at the university we have the facilities to run one of the tests straight away. Did I say? I got it under way shortly after you left.’

‘The ultraviolet?’

‘Yes, but a word of caution here. UV isn’t much more than a crude indication of bone age. The test should be used in conjunction with the other tests I mentioned and they take longer.’

‘What did you find?’

‘If these had been old bones — say two hundred years — I would have expected them to show yellow. They fluoresced blue.’

He felt himself fluorescing bright pink. ‘Meaning they’re fresh?’

‘Relatively so. All I can say at this stage is that they are not more than a hundred years old. For your purposes, the age of the bones doesn’t match the style of clothes the subject was wearing.’

‘Apart from the pants?’

‘That’s true. The Y-fronts may well be his own.’

‘You’ll let me know the minute the other tests come back?’

‘That is a promise, but don’t call me. I hate being pestered.’

Diamond wasn’t listening. His brain was in overdrive. He’d just been handed a twentieth-century murder case, if not a twenty-first. All the theorising about Beau Nash and how he had ended up could safely be forgotten. This was a new mystery with challenges of its own.

He didn’t make any new friends at the press conference, but he wasn’t feeling sociable. This duty had been foisted on him at a time when he wanted to be up and running. With Keith Halliwell at his side — all the friction between them forgotten — he went through the motions in front of a batch of microphones, some TV cameras and a smallish gathering of reporters and photographers who had come at short notice.

‘You all have a press kit and I won’t waste time telling you what you can read yourselves. The newsworthy bit is that this man appears to be a murder victim and the stabbing could have taken place more recently than anyone at first supposed. We’re just at the start of our enquiries. We haven’t identified the victim yet and this is where you can help. We’re interested in hearing from the public about any elderly male without teeth who went missing in the past seventy years.’

‘And had a thing about dressing in old-fashioned clothes?’ the man from the Sun asked.

‘Possibly.’

‘An actor?’

‘We’re not ruling anything out.’

‘Are the clothes authentic eighteenth-century — apart from the Y-fronts?’

‘Tests are being done on them. We don’t know yet.’

‘How long had he been in the loft?’ the Bath Chronicle woman wanted to know.

‘We can’t say with any accuracy yet.’

‘A long time, surely, to have turned into a skeleton?’

‘Could be as short as two years according to the experts, but the likelihood is longer.’

‘How much longer, do you reckon?’

‘I’m not reckoning.’

‘As long as Y-fronts have been available?’ someone from the back put in.

‘That would be the absolute beginning of the timespan. Which I’m told is just before the Second World War.’

‘Can’t they be dated from the style?’

‘Good point. We’ve taken that up with the manufacturers.’

‘Some of us keep our underwear going until the elastic goes.’

Diamond took that as a joke, not a question. It got a few laughs and somebody at the back made a remark he didn’t catch that sparked another bout of laughter. Most of these press people knew each other well.

The big-mouth continued with the backchat and there was an edge to the amusement — more like forced laughter — that Diamond didn’t care for. Difficult to see who this troublemaker was because his view was blocked by two TV cameramen. The glimpse he got when one of them moved was of shoulder-length dark hair and a fancy jacket, but the voice was definitely a man’s. A hippy with a grudge against the police? It would be worth checking whether this person actually had a press pass.

The questioning from the others was rapid-fire, so Diamond soon got distracted and when he next looked, the joker had changed position, or vanished.

He was relieved when the focus moved away from the Y-fronts. ‘How will you handle the murder element of this case?’

His answer came almost automatically. He wanted to get this over and start on the real work. ‘We have an experienced team in Bath CID and no effort will be spared in establishing the facts.’

‘Have you found anything else at the site?’

‘Nothing I haven’t told you already.’

‘The house is demolished, isn’t it? Will you be searching through the debris?’

‘Most of it has gone to landfill. If necessary we’ll do a fingertip search.’

‘“If necessary”? Don’t you think it’s worth doing?’

‘Identifying the victim is our priority. The few details we have about height and so on are in the press kit.’

‘It was a fatal stabbing?’

‘So it appears.’

‘Did you find the weapon?’

‘No.’

‘Have you traced the owner of the house in Twerton?’

‘That’s a separate line of enquiry. For some years the house has been condemned and occupied only by squatters.’

‘Haven’t you forgotten someone?’

‘Who’s that?’

‘The skeleton — or does he count as a squatter?’

More laughter that Diamond didn’t join in. He sensed the unwelcome presence had moved to the opposite side. Those with cameras didn’t stay long in one place. He wasn’t giving the barracker the satisfaction of a proper look.

‘Was the loft sealed off from the rest of the house?’

‘We don’t know. The demolition took place before we could check.’

‘Presumably it was, or someone would have looked in there at some point and had a nasty surprise.’

More amusement and laughter that lingered too long. And this time Diamond did catch a glimpse of someone he didn’t know to be a journalist and the long hair looked uncannily like a wig. The face was old, the figure portly and the clothing... well, it was old-fashioned in style. But then in the blink of an eye it was gone. The trick of an overactive brain, obviously. The demands of this case weren’t good for his mental well-being.

Getting a grip on himself, he issued a warning. ‘I hope none of you make the mistake of reporting this in a light-hearted way. We’re dealing with the apparent murder of an elderly man.’ He stopped himself from adding, ‘It could come back to haunt you,’ but the cliché almost tumbled out. The presence at the back of the room must have brought the words to mind.

He continued. ‘Whatever his story is, it had a tragic outcome that will have affected several lives, people who may not even know it yet. He could be someone’s husband, father or grandfather.’ And now despite his best intentions the homily got personal. ‘Believe me, the moment of learning about a violent death is hell. Anyone unfortunate enough to have known a murder victim will tell you about the pain, the grief, the black despair that won’t go away. You people are the message bringers. Don’t forget the living when you report on the dead.’ At risk of being overwhelmed by his own memories, he took refuge in another cliché: ‘We’ll be pursuing every line of enquiry and as always we look to you to pass on any new information that may come your way.’

When they were well away from all the microphones, he put on a show of bravado for Halliwell. ‘Buggers. They’ll take no notice. They’ll play it for laughs, some of them, anyway, giving the skeleton a stupid nickname, Bony, or some such.’

‘If it catches people’s interest, does it matter?’ Halliwell said. ‘We want all the publicity we can get.’

‘Publicity is double-edged. The public gave us Beau Nash’s name. We spent the best part of a week on a wild goose chase thanks to that useless tip-off.’

‘He was dressed like Nash,’ Halliwell said. ‘The stuff we learned could still come in useful.’

‘Yeah? Convince me.’ He thought about asking Halliwell if he’d noticed anyone unusual at the back, but he couldn’t be sure how much of it he’d imagined.

‘Pity,’ Paloma said.

‘Why?’

‘I was thinking this was a case I could help with, something we could work on together. I even had visions of getting you into a frock coat and breeches and going to one of those costume balls they put on at the Assembly Rooms.’

He almost choked on his coffee. ‘Give me a break.’

‘I’ll have to, won’t I?’

They were in his front room in Weston after a meal at his local. These days the Old Crown called itself a gastro pub and had a chef and served dauphinoise potato with some of the dishes, but you could still get the classic fish and chips he always ordered there. Paloma had settled for the Cornish hake fillet with wild mushrooms, wild garlic and Jersey royals, so both of them had been catered for.

Raffles padded into the room and tried jumping on to Paloma’s lap, but needed scooping up. His rear legs weren’t as strong as they’d once been. Once in place, he started purring — as if he knew who had provided the gourmet salmon and whole shrimps he had just enjoyed. Normally he subsisted on a diet of Whiskas and dry food.

‘You spoil him,’ Diamond told her.

‘He needed fussing up.’ She smoothed her hand gently over the warm fur. ‘He’s rather thin these days.’

‘It’s his age.’

‘How old is he now?’

‘I don’t speak of it in his presence. All I know is he costs me a fortune at the vet’s.’

‘He was Steph’s cat, wasn’t he?’

He nodded. ‘A stray kitten who just walked in when we first moved into this place. That was the year I was dealing with a bunch of oddballs who met in the crypt at St. Michael’s to discuss crime stories. Crime experts — the Bloodhounds, they called themselves — and would you believe they didn’t know a real murderer was among them? Anyway, Steph was here holding the fort as usual, trying to unpack cardboard boxes and suddenly became aware of this little tabby exploring them. She was captivated but did the decent thing and asked around and eventually took him up to the place for strays at Claverton.’

‘I think I know the rest.’

‘Yes, she kept asking if anyone had claimed him and they hadn’t. He settled in here as if it was meant to be.’

‘He’s smart.’

‘He helped me through the worst time of my life. I’ll be gutted when he goes.’

‘Don’t think about it. Enjoy him while you’ve got him.’

‘We’re all going to go sometime.’

‘Snap out of it, Peter. You’re getting morbid.’

‘One of those newspapers called me a veteran. “Veteran detective Peter Diamond.” That was a first.’

She laughed. ‘Did you take that to heart? Treat it as a compliment. They might as well have called you a safe pair of hands or a mastermind.’

‘Not if they’d seen me flipflopping over this damned case. Even my own team are losing patience.’

‘There’s always a low point, isn’t there? You’ve passed it now. Onwards and upwards.’

In truth, it felt to him like backwards and downwards. The Beau Nash enquiry had been progressing nicely, with a named victim, a place and time of death and a potential suspect. Now he was back to an anonymous set of bones. ‘I still need your help.’

‘How exactly?’

‘With the clothes. We’ve got them at the police office now. Would you come and give an expert opinion?’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Please.’

‘There you are, then,’ Paloma said. ‘Already moving on.’

‘The things the victim was wearing look authentic, being in such a bad state, but I wonder if it’s fancy dress. I’ve got to assume he liked dressing up.’

‘In which case the garments are unlikely to be genuine eighteenth-century. The real things are museum pieces. We don’t let anyone try them on.’

‘You’re talking about the Fashion Museum?’

‘Of course.’ The collection in the Assembly Rooms in Bennett Street was almost Paloma’s second home.

‘Where would anyone go if they wanted to hire an outfit for one of those balls you mentioned? A fancy-dress shop?’

‘There are three or four in the area, but I’m not sure if that’s what you mean. Those places stock a whole range of things for hen and stag parties and the like. Gorilla suits, Frankenstein outfits.’

‘Cheap and vulgar.’

‘Not all of it. They have some better-made clothes. But the class of people who attend the balls tend to go to theatrical costumiers or specialist suppliers. You can hire some gorgeous things and if what you want is not in stock you get it handmade.’

‘Probably in the Far East.’

She smiled.

‘Wigs?’

‘They supply those, too. All the gear. Where’s your laptop? I’ll show you.’

‘You won’t. It’s not here.’

‘You’re incorrigible. How do you manage your life, paying bills and checking bank statements?’

‘The post mostly.’

‘Take my word for it, then. For well-made clothes you’d go to one of the firms I’m talking about. Tomorrow I’ll look at the stitching and see if I can tell you some more.’

‘There’s quite a bit of this dressing-up going on, is there?’

‘More than you’d think. I’ve heard of several annual balls at the Assembly Rooms and the Guildhall with more than three hundred guests immaculately dressed. Admittedly there’s some licence over which period is represented. An early Georgian gown might be seen at a Regency ball.’

‘Is that a sin?’

‘It’s about a hundred years different. Fashion is always changing. As well as the balls there are private parties going on all the time and charity dos and civic occasions when the town lashes out and goes all Jane Austen.’

‘The costume firms do good business, then?’

‘Their stock would amaze you.’

‘It would depress me. But it’s an obvious line of enquiry. Nobody has yet explained how an old guy in eighteenth-century clothes ends up in a loft in Twerton. Do you get old men attending these affairs at the Assembly Rooms?’

‘Certainly. They’re often the ones who can afford to be there. It’s not just dancing. There’s usually supper and card games. Gambling.’

‘Have you been?’

‘No, but I wouldn’t mind,’ Paloma said. ‘Would you?’

‘Not my scene.’

‘There’s drinking.’

‘Not beer-drinking, I bet. And I don’t suppose the dancing is jive.’

‘It’s all in period, as it should be. Before a ball they offer classes for people to learn the steps. You’d be all right.’

‘I didn’t think we were talking about me.’