Echoes of Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon(47)
“Hey!” Mr. Brett groused. He stopped mid-step, retreated a pace, and glared at me. I’d stumbled, on purpose, to derail his sales pitch.
“Oh, sorry.” I twinkled at him. “Happens to all of us, right? The sign of a happy dancer is simply to continue.” I raised my arms, returning to partner stance. “The show must go on, right? And a-one.”
As the last notes of the Hoagy Carmichael faded away, the six dancers in the room patted soft applause. Anthony Selwyn Harrison was eyeing me, assessing, and I gave him a little half-curtsy.
“Last dance,” Harrison announced. “Are we ready to waltz?”
He switched the vinyl record on the turntable, dropped the needle, and after a hiss and a moment of staticky hesitation, the music began.
Irene, someone sang, good night. I tossed my head, embracing the irony, and stepped my partner into the one-two-three.
Goodnight Irene? Not quite yet. Not for this Irene, at least. It was almost seven o’clock. Would Penelope Moran come through the door?
Watson, gone continental in a perky beret and clear-glassed spectacles, had arrived as we’d planned, just prior to seven. As the six o’clock students departed, she related, sotto voce, how she’d told the receptionist she was new in town, reciting the story we’d concocted—that she’d been invited to a holiday gala some weeks away and hoped to discover a dance school that might help her feel comfortable at the event. And, she’d asked, could she possibly do a trial class?
Della had accepted Watson’s one-class-only thirty dollars in cash without further inquiry.
“I’m new around here, too,” she reported that Della had said.
Did Della send emoticons?
As the seven o’clock class began, Anthony Selwyn Harrison vanished, likely because no other students arrived. Watson, in her role as trial student, danced with Mr. Daley, and I hovered, a wallflower, pretending to observe. Della had delegated record player duties to me, so for now, the three of us were quite alone—me standing beside the capacious armoire that housed the records, the others dancing. Della or Harrison might return any second, so our pretense had to continue. That is what pretense requires.
At my signal, Watson dashed off, pretending she needed the “ladies’ room.” I began the Lindy music, as instructed, and stepped into Mr. Daley’s arms. If the others came in, he could always explain he was testing me. We were in the process of touch-step touch-step when he confessed he’d just returned from Stoke Moran.
“Her car was there,” he reported. “And I think I saw her silhouette through the bay window.”
“Did she see you?” I asked. “Did you see anything untoward?”
He shook his head, a tiny bead of perspiration lining one cheek, perhaps not only from the bounce of the Lindy but the stress of his concern. “I don’t think she saw me, I stayed in my car. Her car was parked in the driveway. I took a photo.”
He ducked us into a two-handed flip turn, and as we settled into the closed position, he held the phone screen so I could see. Stoke Moran was not the British manor house I’d somehow imagined, but a rambling white painted wood farmhouse with an expanse of front porch and winding cobblestone front walkway, flanked by rows of slimly elegant poplars. The lines of the house were not quite architecturally perfect, as if someone had built new additions in haste or frugality, but the patchwork quality of the exterior had a certain charm.
A car was parked in the driveway. Attempting to dance and look simultaneously, I could just make out the license plate. Not that I could run it, since the local police were only begrudgingly helpful to us. Though first-year Officer Jake Lester could be a reliable connection, his veteran colleague, Lieutenant R.T. Moore, was downright obstructionist. But that may be another tale.
“I texted, and emailed, and called,” Daley went on as we danced, and he tucked his phone away. “I pretended I was here at the studio, but she didn’t answer. I finally texted ‘see you in class,’ hoping, you know, she’d show up.”
But Penelope Moran did not appear.
By the time the class ended, my brain was on overload, my powers of deduction exhausted, and my throbbing feet would never be the same.
Daley left. Watson and I, by previous arrangement in case we had to calculate some action before our departure, met in the bathroom, a tiny white-walled cubicle meant for one. Far as I could tell, no one noticed her going in and me following quickly after.
“Anything?” she asked.
“Possibly,” I said. I described how the car salesman had urged me, possibly double entendre, to come ‘see a car.’ The bride-to-be, who’d been the last person to use the loo following the previous class, had dropped a crumpled wad of mascara-streaked tissues as she hurried away. And I wondered if ‘Ginger Rogers’ had clung a bit too closely to her suave instructor. There was much afoot at Harrison’s, but none of it instantly shed any light on Ms. Moran.
“So we know nothing more than when we started.” Watson frowned, tilting her beret in the bathroom’s lighted mirror. “Arthur Daley is freaking out, and couldn’t even make it through our whole dance without texting and emailing. But Penelope didn’t answer.”
I twisted my dress into place at the hips, wishing I could trade this unforgiving fabric for the comfort of my usual black trousers.
“So a once social and enthusiastic woman decides to forgo her beloved dance class,” I said. I leaned against the white wall, slick tile chilling my bare shoulders. “A once-gregarious heiress decides to keep secrets from her sweetheart.”