‘He could have fallen on hard times. Too fond of the bottle. Or the horses.’
Now Diamond shook his head. ‘We haven’t mentioned the biggest problem of all, Keith. You said he died in 1949, right?’
‘What’s wrong with that? He was old, like our skeleton. He could have kept the costume all those years and dressed up in it for old time’s sake. Maybe took the trouble to get himself a more authentic wig. I reckon the pageant had been the biggest moment in his life.’
‘It’s not that.’
‘What is it, then?’
‘How could anyone know he died in 1949 when his body wasn’t found until now?’
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.’