The Prime Minister's Secret Agent (12 page)

She walked through the streets past soot-stained buildings with fan windows and glossy black-painted doors to the Royal Lyceum Theatre on Grindlay Street. She was just in time for the curtain, sliding into her velvet seat just before the cleft-chinned conductor made his entrance, bowed to the audience, and raised his baton. Herman Severin Løvenskiold’s delicate, wistful overture began.

The Vic-Wells, Britain’s fledgling ballet company under the direction of Ninette de Valois, was dancing
La Sylphide
. A Romantic ballet in two acts, choreographed by August Bournonville, it was, fittingly, set in the Scottish Highlands. There was polite applause, and then the heavy curtains parted.

The spotlight centered on the dancer playing James Ruben, in traditional Highland dress, sleeping in an oversized velvet wing chair in a Scottish great house. A sylph entered, lit in blue, dancing in an unearthly, weightless way. She wasn’t Sarah.
Wait, I thought she was dancing the lead?

Maggie looked down at her program, squinting to read it in the dim light. The role of the lead sylph was being danced by Estelle Crawford, a new company member, who looked every inch a fairy
queen.
Still
, Maggie thought,
if the idiots in charge of casting had any sense, Sarah would dance it
.

The blond ballerina danced with delicate flourishes of phrasing, costumed as the ideal fairy: gossamer wings, a long white tutu, and a crown of pale pink roses. She kissed James. When he woke, she magically disappeared.

In the next scene, Maggie watched raven-haired Sarah, radiant as ever, enter as one of the friends of James’s fiancée Effie. Sarah jumped and twirled in her red velvet bodice and tartan skirt, as beautiful as the woman playing the sylph, but stronger, and glowing with passion.

The crone, Old Madge, entered the farmhouse, with more than a touch of the sinister about her. She pantomimed to James:
Let’s see if you’re
truly
in love
. Maggie looked down at her program again. Madge was being played by a dancer named Mildred Petrie. Maggie remembered meeting Mildred, back in London. Sarah had always loathed her, and Maggie could see why. Mildred was an aging dancer—still in the corps, left behind as generation after generation of dancers had been promoted over her. And as she’d aged, she’d grown increasingly bitter.

Nature gives you the face you have at twenty. Life shapes the face you have at thirty. But at fifty you get the face you deserve
. Mildred, who must have been close to fifty, certainly had the face she deserved: pale and puffy, with small eyes like tiny black currants in white batter, her thin lips pursed and cynical. Or it might just have been her facial expression, a perpetual sneer of disgust at life for daring to pass her by.
Although
, Maggie noted,
she
does
make a decent witch. Perhaps it’s her true calling?

During intermission, Maggie went to use the ladies’ loo. The lounge’s walls were covered in ivory silk. There, the grande dames of Edinburgh touched up their vibrant lipstick at the mirrors. Most were older ballet aficionados and society matrons. As Maggie
washed her hands, she studied her reflection, then shook her head. She seemed more wax figure than flesh and blood.

Next to her, a fat woman drew a matte red bow on her lips. “Mildred Petrie would have done anything to play the Sylph, you know. It must be
killing
her to dance character roles now.”

“Well, darling, I heard she has even more reason to hate Estelle,” a tall thin woman said, smoothing flyaway hairs from her gray chignon. “
I
heard that Mildred’s been in love with the company’s orchestra conductor for years, and he’s never paid her any attention. But when Estelle joined the company, she and the conductor began a mad love affair. People say his wife is devastated. And Mildred is, too.”

“I remember when dear Diana was still Diana Angius. Such a beauty she was, back in the day. And from a respected family in Whitshire.”

Hmmm
, Maggie thought as she returned to her seat.
Mr. Cleft Chin’s quite popular
. After living with Sarah in London, and hearing daily reports, she knew quite well how the goings-on in a dance company could sometimes be far more dramatic than anything onstage.

The lights dimmed and the conductor once again strode out. He was indeed handsome in his black tie and jacket, she had to admit, with his winning smile and shaggy hair. An electricity crackled from him, and Maggie could see how the dancers would fall under his spell. Idly, she wondered if he really was having an affair with Estelle, and if he’d really broken Mildred’s heart.
Oh stop it, Hope
, she chided herself.
No gossip! Don’t let yourself be dragged in, too
. She looked down at the program—the conductor’s name was Richard Atholl.

As she watched act two, Madge and the witches danced around a cauldron as the witch plotted the Sylph’s demise, creating a magic
veil that would kill her. Mildred as Madge gave it to James, who was delighted, believing that it would bind the Sylph to him forever. In the forest, James and his Sylph danced. Maggie watched Sarah, now in the corps of sylphs, her technique flawless as always.

When James caught the Sylph around her waist and bound her hands as Madge showed him, the Sylph died, wilting in his arms like the last white rose of autumn, delicate and impossibly fragile. Madge had her victory, and James was heartbroken.

The curtain closed.

Really?
Maggie thought as she applauded with all her heart. She’d loved seeing Sarah dance, but found it all too sad to bear.
Really, in the midst of war, can’t we please have a happy ending? If only on the stage? Curse the witches of the world …

The curtain reopened and the corps took their curtseys. Maggie applauded so hard for Sarah her gloved palms stung. The lead dancers all took their turn. Finally, it was Estelle’s time in the spotlight. Smiling, she floated to the front of the stage. The dancer playing James presented her with a bouquet of red roses, which she took in her arms, plucking out one and giving it back to him.

Then she pulled out another blossom. She threw it at Richard Atholl, down in the orchestra pit. The crowd went wild as the conductor caught the rose and blew her a kiss. Estelle stood completely still in the center of the stage as the applause continued to thunder, and a few voices in the first ring cried,
“Brava! Bravissima!”

As Maggie watched, a shadow passed over Atholl’s face. He spun around on the conductor’s podium and held out the flower. A stocky older woman with a round face in a black silk dress took it, unsmiling. Maggie guessed she was his wife.

And then, as the applause continued to build and the roars of
Brava!
began in earnest, Estelle crumpled to the stage floor in a heap of satin and tulle.

As the theater’s curtain closed with a billow of red velvet, the audience erupted:
My goodness, what happened? Do you think she’s ill? Poor thing—much too thin, you know …

Maggie grabbed her pocketbook and made her way to a door at the side of the stage. She walked up a flight of stairs to the backstage area, dark and cramped, filled with ballet barres covered in hastily thrown-off sweaters and leg warmers, a broken mirror, and a box of rosin in the corner. The air was pungent with sweat and perfume.

When she reached the stage, it was clear the company was in complete chaos. Estelle was still lying on the floor. A tall man in tweeds, who seemed to be a doctor, was taking her pulse and shouting, “She needs an ambulance! An ambulance, damn you!” Burly stagehands in black hung back awkwardly in the wings, glancing at one another, unsure what to do. The atmosphere, charged with adrenaline from the performance, was now tinged with fear.

Atholl had also made his way backstage. The conductor went to Estelle and knelt beside her, pressing her limp white hand to his cheek, oblivious to the dancers and stagehands swirling around them.

Maggie tried to find Sarah among the throng of sylphs.
Throng of sylphs? Exaltation of sylphs? Murder of sylphs?
she wondered, scanning the dancers. They were all slim, graceful, and wearing
white tulle and gossamer fairy wings, their faces painted in Kabuki-like exaggerated makeup. Maggie couldn’t tell one from the other.

Then one called her name, in a low voice of whiskey and honey. “Maggie!”

She knew the voice. Only it was lower and huskier than usual, followed by a deep, rattling cough. Yes! That sylph was Sarah—Maggie recognized her dark eyes immediately. But while they were lovely as always, they were also strained and frightened. Maggie ran to her and they embraced. Sarah smelled of her usual clove cigarettes and L’Heure Bleue.

“My goodness,” Maggie exclaimed. “I do hope she’s all right.”

“I’m so glad you’re here, kitten.” Sarah was thinner, even thinner than the last time they had seen each other, in London. While the outline of the delicate bones of Sarah’s sternum were visible up close, her arms were still wiry with visible tendons and strong muscles.

“For heaven’s sake, when is the ambulance going to arrive?” Sarah muttered, starting to unpin her flowered headpiece. Estelle still had not moved. “Our stage manager said he’d called for one!”

“Has she been sick?”

“Yes,” Sarah answered, putting one graceful hand to her bony chest and coughing softly. “But then again, it’s late autumn in Scotland—with the cold and damp in the theater and the hotel, who isn’t sick these days? I never thought she’d dance tonight. Which is why I invited you.”

“I wouldn’t have missed seeing you for the world,” Maggie said, squeezing her friend’s waist. “Lead or corps.” She knew it wasn’t her friend. She knew it was none of her business. And yet, she just couldn’t stay away. “Wait here,” she told Sarah.

Maggie made her way over to the ballerina’s body. “How is she?” she asked the man in tweed kneeling beside her. Atholl was
holding vigil next to him. Maggie could see the woman in black—the wife—looming over his shoulder.

“Thready pulse, weak heartbeat, I’m afraid,” the doctor said. “Everyone thinks of these girls as sprites and sylphs, but they’re athletes. They push just as hard as Jesse Owens did in the Olympics.”

Estelle’s already-pale skin was covered in white pancake makeup. But Maggie noticed some black spots, blister-like sores that had come through on Estelle’s collarbones, where the makeup had sweated off. Her eyes narrowed. “What are those?”

“I’ve been a pediatrician for nearly forty years,” the doctor said, looking up at Maggie, “and I’ve never seen anything like them in my life.”

He put his fingers to the carotid artery at the ballerina’s throat and listened for breath. His eyes met Maggie’s; he shook his head.

The conductor stood. He shrugged off his wife’s concern, heading out to one of the fire doors and opening it with a reverberating echo. “Richard,” his wife called, her heels clattering, “you’re making a spectacle of yourself!”

The doctor gently closed Estelle’s eyelids, then rose. “Cancel the ambulance. Someone will need to call the police, too.” He cleared his throat and lowered his head. “I’m afraid she’s dead.”

Oh, dear God
. Maggie looked at Sarah. Her eyes were blank with shock. One of the other sylphs staggered and nearly fell, but was held up by her fellow dancers.

Madame de Valois emerged from the wings and clapped her hands together. Everyone stopped and turned to her, a vision in violet. Madame walked forward from the shadows of the wings to Estelle’s body. She bent to her knees and kissed the dead girl’s cheek. Then, slowly, she stood.

“Girls and boys of the ballet,” she began in a plummy voice. “Of course all of our prayers are with Estelle and her family at this
time. Estelle died doing what she loved to do most—dance. Let us have a moment of silence.”

Her dark eyes scanned the lines of dancers. “Where is Sarah Sanderson?”

Sarah took a small step forward. “Yes, Madame?”

“As understudy, you will be performing the role of the Sylph until further notice.” Madame clapped her hands again. “That is all.” And she strode off the stage.

The dancers erupted into fits of whispers. The officials arrived with a stretcher for Estelle’s body, looking even tinier and more delicate in death than it had in motion on the stage. The dancers stood wide-eyed and mute now, unable to comprehend what had just happened.

Sarah put her hand on Maggie’s arm. “I need to get out of here.”

Together they climbed the back stairs to the corps dressing room. It was narrow and windowless, lined with lighted mirrors, the counters littered with pans of eye shadow and tubes of lipstick. There was a pincushion on the counter, a porcelain Hitler, bent over, with straight pins bristling in his fabric bottom. And in the corner, an enormous bouquet—white roses, yellow laburnum, and purple carnations. It was arranged in the Victorian tussy-mussy style, petals just beginning to fall, water turning brackish.

Maggie had learned the symbolism of flowers in literature from an English class at Wellesley. She had even written a paper on flower imagery in Oscar Wilde’s
Picture of Dorian Gray
. She’d never liked writing papers, but was enthralled by the idea of sending coded messages through flowers, called floriography. The New England college classroom seemed very long ago and far away—certainly a world away from Edinburgh at war.

“These are—were—Estelle’s,” Sarah said, walking to the flowers and bending down to sniff. “Ouch!” she cried.

“Are you all right?”

“Damn thorns,” Sarah mumbled, sucking at her finger.

“ ‘But he who dares not grasp the thorn, should never crave the rose,’ ”
Maggie quoted. It was easier to quote from novels than think about Estelle.

“Honestly, I have no idea what you’re talking about half the time.” Sarah gave a crooked smile and sat down to wipe off her makeup. “I wish I’d gone to university, like you, kitten.”

“It’s a quote from Anne Brontë—and I wish I could go
en pointe
, like you. I’m so clumsy most of the time.” Maggie remembered seeing John in Berlin and almost falling before they could embrace. She wished that she could tell Sarah all about Berlin, and John, and even the Black Dog—but she couldn’t.