Death Comes to the Ballets Russes Read Online Free PDF Page B

in
pointe
shoes. Smoothly done in some versions, a quick little leap up in other schools.
    ‘The buildings in the City of London are pygmies, just pygmies,’ Powerscourt said to himself as he made his way up Lombard Street. The capital’s skyline was still dominated by the same landmark buildings that had been there for centuries, St Paul’s Cathedral, the Monument, Big Ben. In New York, as his son Thomas continually told him (as part of Thomas’s campaign to be taken there on holiday), there was a race towards the stars. The 1890 World Building, at over 300-feet high, had been overtaken by the Singer Building in 1908, which had forty-seven storeys and rose to612 feet. Its reign as New York City’s tallest building didn’t last long. It was surpassed by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Building, measuring 700 feet, a year later.
    The London Building Act, Powerscourt remembered, prohibited buildings over eighty-feet high; that became law as a direct result of Queen Anne’s Mansions, a block of flats in Westminster that were over 100-feet tall, which prompted many complaints – including from Queen Victoria herself, who objected to the new building blocking her view of her Parliament from Buckingham Palace.
    Powerscourt was going to talk to his financier brother-in-law William Burke, who had risen to become very powerful in the world of money. Burke was sitting in a comfortable chair close to his marble fireplace. Powerscourt noticed that the portrait of Burke’s wife – Powerscourt’s sister – by the American artist John Singer Sargent, had now been joined by two further Sargents depicting the two eldest Burke daughters. The man’s family is now growing on the walls of his office, Powerscourt said to himself, just as it did in real life when they lived in Chelsea all those years before.
    ‘Francis,’ said the financier, taking off his spectacles and putting down a great folder, ‘how nice to see you. You’ve rescued me just in time.’
    ‘Rescued you from what, William? Bankruptcy? Debtors’ prison? The Marshalsea?’
    ‘Sometimes, you know, from where I sit, those places can seem very attractive. I’ve got to decide whether to buy another bank or not. I’ve got to make a recommendation to the Board in two days’ time. Do you know, Francis, I can’t make up my mind.’
    ‘I thought that you swallowed banks like other people might swallow a strawberry, William. You’ve been doing it for years.’
    Burke laughed. ‘It’ll do me good to take my mind off it for a while. What can I do for you this morning? I sometimes think you only come to see me when you want information.’
    ‘Richard Wagstaff Gilbert,’ said Powerscourt. ‘What do you know of the fellow?’
    ‘Is he about to be recommended for a place on the Court of the Bank of England, Francis? A knighthood, perhaps?’
    Powerscourt told him about the murder at the Ballets Russes and the fact that the victim had been staying with his uncle in a large house in Barnes guarded by two stone lions.
    ‘I see,’ said Burke, ‘but before I tell you about Gilbert, does this mean that those bloody ballet dancers are back in town? The ones who were here last year? Ballets Russes, did you say? I was nearly bankrupted last summer with the wife and daughters going to see them over and over again. And for some reason, they had to have the most expensive seats in the house so they could see everything properly. I got so sick of hearing about Nijinsky every morning that I took myself off to a hotel for breakfast.’
    ‘You’d better make a block booking at the Savoy for the fried eggs and bacon, William. They’re back. They’re here for about five weeks, I think. I’m surprised your women haven’t begun pestering you already.’
    Burke sighed. ‘It could be worse, I suppose. Thank God they’re not interested in racehorses. Now then, Richard Wagstaff Gilbert. I don’t know a great dealabout him. I know he’s very rich. Some wag once said