Diamond wasn’t expecting the shout from inside that followed. Apprehensive of what he would be asked to do next, he opened the door a fraction.
‘A certain item is missing in here.’
The emergency could have been worse, but couldn’t be ignored. The head of CID had faced many situations in his long experience. Stopping all comers to ask where the spare toilet rolls were kept was a first, made all the more odd with everyone in costume. Eventually he was directed to a bathroom upstairs.
‘You’re a credit to the force,’ Algy said from inside when Diamond returned with two spare rolls and handed them discreetly round the door. ‘I’m on the police authority for Avon and Somerset and I shall make a point of mentioning this at our next meeting.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ Diamond said.
‘Perhaps you’re right. It would take some explaining.’
‘Give me a shout when you’re ready to move again.’
‘You don’t mind waiting?’
After all this effort, Diamond wasn’t going away. The spark of consolation from the episode was that Algy appeared to have his wits about him. But was he savvy enough to remember events from twenty years back?
‘We can talk out here,’ Diamond said when he’d eventually tugged the chair and its occupant into the hallway.
‘Are you tired of lugging me about?’
‘It’s not that. We’ll hear each other better.’
‘Generally it takes two to haul me into the meeting in this contraption. I read somewhere that they used donkeys or ponies originally.’
Diamond didn’t want to know about the history of the bath chair. A far more urgent bit of history needed to be discussed.
‘You’ve been a member for many years, I was told.’
‘At least a quarter of a century.’
‘So you’ve seen several presidents come and go.’
‘Not as many as you might imagine. Sir Edward has been Beau for most of my time in the society.’
‘And before him?’
‘Professor Orville Duff, who was quite an expert on eighteenth-century Bath. A different character altogether than Ed, much more reserved. He died, unfortunately. He was about the age I am now, so I suppose he’d had a good innings. His health hadn’t been good for some time. He wasn’t our Beau for long. About eighteen months, no longer.’
This checked with earlier information. Algy’s memory seemed to be dependable.
Encouraged, Diamond asked, ‘Do you recall any earlier presidents?’
‘Only one other. Before Orville we had Lord David Deganwy.’
‘Is that Welsh?’
‘I suppose it might have been. I didn’t know David well. He was another generation, well into his eighties when I joined and he’d lived in Bath most of his life and had been Beau for a number of years. Kindly as they come — too kind, as it turned out.’
‘Why?’
‘Someone took advantage — and none of us saw it coming.’
‘What happened?’
‘A fellow called Sidney Harrod came to one of our meetings out of the blue and announced he was keen to join, so we welcomed him on spec as we always do when a new person arrives. We don’t ask for a subscription right away. A few spare costumes are kept in a wardrobe upstairs and Sidney borrowed one and settled into the society as if he’d been a member all his life. Extremely sociable, charming with the ladies and passably knowledgeable about Nash.’
They were interrupted by a limping woman in a hoop dress looking for the disabled toilet, but too timid to ask. Algy turned in his chair and pointed. She nodded her thanks and scuttled in.
Diamond got back to business. ‘Do you remember what year this was?’
‘Funnily enough, I do, because I had a special birthday that year: 1996. Sidney hadn’t been coming long when he offered to teach us eighteenth-century dancing. Someone told me he was a former chorus boy. I don’t know if it was true — or if anything he claimed was true — but he was supposed to have been in some of the big West End musicals in his youth. The King and I, Half a Sixpence. The dancing was his route into the society. He offered to teach us the minuet, which was by far the most popular dance in its day and quite terrifying because it was supposed to be performed by one couple in front of the entire company. Sidney did the research and taught us in a tumbledown community centre in Walcot. The idea was that we should become proficient enough to introduce dancing to the annual ball — and that’s become a tradition now — so we can thank him for that, I suppose.’
‘Something went wrong?’
‘Not at the start. Between ourselves, the society had become rather dull as David Deganwy got older. Up to that time we’d been mainly sedentary, with talks by experts on this and that, but no participation except for the dressing up. Sidney Harrod came in with new ideas that revitalised us. We learned posture and bowing and curtseying and some of the games they played in Nash’s day. We had music. We went on visits. And the dancing lessons really took off when we progressed to country dancing. Very saucy, some of those country dances,’ Algy reminisced from his bath chair. ‘Johnny Cock Thy Beaver, Cuckolds All in a Row, Rub Her Down with Straw.’
Privately, Diamond was thinking he wouldn’t have wanted to come within a mile of Sidney’s dancing lessons, but then he would never have joined the society in the first place. ‘He knew his stuff, then?’
‘We believed so. He must have had some background in dancing to carry it off as he did. Looking back, he may not have been the expert he claimed to be. I rather think he clued himself up on the dances and convinced us all by force of personality. He was extremely plausible.’
A waiter with a silver tray loaded with sweetmeats came rushing towards the main reception room and almost tripped over the end of the bath chair. Algy put out a hand to steady him.
Diamond ignored the interruption. ‘What age would this Sidney have been?’
‘Difficult to tell. Sixty to seventy, I’d say. He made a big thing out of being one of the Harrod family, as if he had some link with the department store, but his day clothes certainly weren’t from Harrods. He was slightly shabby, in fact. But, oh boy, he talked like a millionaire, claimed to have gone through Harrow School and Oxford and was a member of several London clubs. A great name-dropper. Anyway, he was a dynamo compared to most of us. I don’t think anyone would have objected if he’d become the next Beau.’
Diamond was galvanised. ‘Was that ever a possibility?’
‘It damned nearly happened. He befriended David.’
‘This is Lord David Deganwy?’
Algy nodded. ‘We should have seen it coming, but the blighter was so persuasive he took us all in and most of all he took in David.’
‘How?’
‘We only learned about this later. He used to visit him in Widcombe Hall and take away items of antique furniture supposedly to get them cleaned or repaired. Of course, David never saw them again. The poor old lad was losing his memory as well as his furniture and Sidney took full advantage.’
Diamond had come across parasites like Sidney Harrod many times before. People are so easily taken in.
‘When did you find this out?’
‘Too late, I’m sorry to say. At a meeting one evening — this would have been early in 1997 — David announced to us all that he planned to hand over the presidency of the society at the end of the year because it was becoming a burden to him rather than a pleasure. He said he would be putting forward Sidney’s name as the next Beau.’