The Picture House by the Sea

by Holly Hepburn

  ‘It really doesn’t,’ Gina said. She handed Carrie a plastic cigarette holder. ‘You look like a femme fatale, totally capable of murder.’

  Carrie’s expression lifted. ‘And you look like you’ve just stepped off the set of The Great Gatsby. That fascinator is so perfectly Daisy Buchanan.’

  Gina raised a hand to touch the silver headband Carrie had found for her on Etsy. ‘It’s amazing. I’m looking forward to Friday.’

  ‘Me too,’ Carrie said, jiggling around to make her tassels dance. ‘It’s a shame Davey can’t make it – I hope you don’t mind me tagging along with you and Ben.’

  ‘Mind?’ Gina repeated. ‘Why would I mind?’

  Carrie avoided her gaze. ‘Oh, you know – obviously, he’s going to be all Leonardo DiCaprio to your Carey Mulligan. I’m going to feel like a gooseberry.’

  Feeling the beginnings of a blush creep up her neck, Gina shook her head. ‘We’re just three friends hanging on a steam train and investigating a murder,’ she said firmly. ‘No gooseberries in sight.’

  The other woman sighed. ‘I suppose so. You know Rose is going, don’t you? She and her mother came in last weekend, asking me to find costumes for them.’

  ‘It’s a free country,’ Gina replied, fighting to keep her voice even; Ben’s ex never missed an opportunity to put her down. Rose’s presence at the murder mystery evening would lessen Gina’s enjoyment of the event considerably.

  ‘I – er – might have refused to source costumes for them,’ Carrie went on, sending a small conspiratorial grin Gina’s way. ‘Good 1920s outfits are so hard to find at the moment.’

  ‘Really?’ Gina’s heart lifted. ‘You shouldn’t be turning customers away, though. Especially since I’ll be back in London soon and they’ll still be here.’

  Carrie shrugged. ‘I can afford not to do business with the Arundells,’ she said. ‘Your events at the Palace are bringing me more customers than I can handle, anyway. The Some Like it Hot tickets must be selling like gold dust, judging from the costume requests I’ve had.’

  A quiet sense of pride settled over Gina as she thought about the screening – over seventy-five per cent of the seats had sold already, with more than two weeks left to go. And this time, all she’d had to do was send an email to the Palace’s mailing list – word-of-mouth buzz had done the rest. ‘They’re flying out of the door,’ she told Gina. ‘Gorran might have to think about putting on more than one screening in the future.’

  Her friend gave her a strange look. ‘You don’t seriously think he’s going to attempt to put on events like this once you’ve left, do you? I mean, I love Gorran to bits but the man couldn’t organise a picnic in a pasty factory.’

  ‘I hope he will,’ Gina said, suppressing a sigh. ‘It would be a shame to throw away everything we’ve worked for. And I’ve already told him I’ll only be a phone call away.’

  Carrie seemed unconvinced. ‘I think he’s getting twitchy already – I ran into him outside the cinema this morning and I had to call his name three times before he heard me. And Manda reckons there’s something going on too – she says his drinking is really getting out of hand.’

  Gina shifted uneasily, thinking back to her meeting with Gorran earlier in the week. He had seemed distracted and she’d noticed his eyes were bleary and bloodshot.

  ‘Just a touch of hay fever,’ he’d explained, when she’d asked if he was okay. ‘I suffer every year.’

  But now she was wondering whether Manda was right and Gorran’s drinking was getting worse. Maybe she’d have a quiet word with Jory, the landlord of the Mermaid’s Tail, and see if she could find out just how much time Gorran was spending in the pub.

  ‘You could be right,’ Gina said to Carrie. ‘I’ll try to reassure him next time I speak to him.’

  ‘Do,’ Carrie urged. She reached for a decadent feather boa and wrapped it around her neck. ‘Because all of this is too much fun to give up. Polwhipple needs cosplay!’

  Gorran wasn’t there when Gina called in the next morning. Manda had insisted on her own set of keys and was busy setting out her wares for the day’s trade. She waved at Gina and pulled a face. ‘No sign of his lordship yet.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Gina called back. ‘I’ve got some paperwork to go through – I’ll wait in his office.’

  She couldn’t have been in the cluttered room for more than fifteen minutes when Manda’s head appeared around the door. ‘Gina? There’s a man downstairs insisting on speaking to Gorran. I’ve told him he’s not here but he won’t leave.’

  Frowning, Gina got to her feet. ‘Did he say what he wants?’

  ‘Nope. He refuses to say.’

  ‘Okay, I’m coming.’

  Gina’s misgivings increased when she saw the man. He was big, with an ill-fitting suit and the air of a boxer who’d gone to seed. His nose looked as though it had been broken more than once; Gina thought he wouldn’t have looked out of place standing outside a club, managing the queue.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she called, allowing the door that led to the non-public areas of the cinema to close behind her.

  The man looked her up and down. ‘Not unless you’re Mr Gorran Dew.’

  ‘He’s not here,’ she replied, moving nearer. ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘I need to speak to Mr Dew,’ the man repeated, eyeing the door Gina had come through as though he didn’t believe Gorran wasn’t somewhere behind it. ‘What time are you expecting him?’

  ‘Honestly?’ Gina said, raising her hands. ‘I have no idea. He should be here by now.’

  The man looked slowly around, taking in the bar, the ticket office and the chandelier over their heads. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a card. ‘When he does turn up, tell him to contact me. I’ve tried to catch him at home but he never seems to be there, either.’

  Gina took the card without looking at it. ‘I’ll be sure to pass the message on.’

  ‘Do,’ the man said, and turned on his heel. ‘And tell him it’s his last chance.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound good,’ Manda said, from her vantage point in the doorway of Ferrelli’s. ‘What sort of mess has that idiot Gorran got himself into this time?’

  Curling her fingers around the card, Gina shook her head. ‘I don’t know. But I think it’s high time I found out.’

  She waited until she was safely inside Gorran’s office before she examined the card. Pendower Collection Services, it read, and Gina’s heart sank. She pulled out her phone and tapped the name into Google; a second later, her worst suspicions were confirmed. The man had been a debt collector.

  She sat there seething for several long minutes. How had Gorran got himself into this situation? And how bad was it? Was this just the tip of the iceberg? She glanced around at the untidy piles of paperwork; Gorran was so disorganised that it was just about possible this was simply a case of an unpaid invoice. But then she thought about his erratic behaviour over the last few weeks, and Manda’s insistence that he was drinking more. They were classic symptoms of a man who was buckling under pressure.

  Reaching a decision, Gina picked up the nearest pile of letters and started to sift through them. One way or another, she was going to get to the bottom of this.

  She was sitting amid a sea of letters, ashen-faced and shaking, when Gorran arrived almost an hour later. He froze guiltily in the doorway when he saw her and for a moment she thought he might bolt.

  Instead, he hung his head. ‘So now you know.’

  Gina flashed him a look of furious disbelief. ‘Now I know? Bloody hell, Gorran, I should have known months ago, long before the town council invested so much money in refurbishing this place. You owe thousands and thousands of pounds – I’m amazed you haven’t been declared bankrupt and the Palace seized.’

  ‘I thought I could fix it, especially now that takings are up. Maybe sort out some repayment schedules before it was too late.’ He stepped into the office and closed the door. ‘No one else knows.’

  ‘T
hey will soon,’ Gina fired back. ‘You had a visit from a debt collector this morning and he didn’t look like the type to discuss repayment schedules. He looked like the type to break fingers.’

  Gorran sank onto the small sofa and put his head into his hands. ‘I know – I’ve been dodging him at home for weeks – that’s why I’ve been late a few times. But you’re right, I should have been honest with you.’ He looked up, his eyes damp with tears. ‘But I really did think I could sort everything out. I – I suppose I just stuck my head in the sand so that I wouldn’t have to see how bad things had got.’

  He looked so miserable and scared that Gina felt a tiny glimmer of sympathy for him. ‘You stuck your head in a bottle from what I’m hearing.’ She flicked through the sheaf of letters in her hand. ‘Okay, as far as I can tell, these are the most urgent. You need to ring every single one and offer to pay a little bit of each. And then you need to agree a monthly repayment that you have to stick to. How much money have you got in the bank?’

  He told her. It was a pitifully low figure.

  ‘And have you covered Tash and Bruno’s wages for this month?’ she asked. The last thing they needed was for the Palace’s projectionist or box office manager to walk out.

  Gorran nodded, looking as though he wanted to dive beneath the sea of paper.

  ‘Good,’ Gina said. ‘I’ll transfer some money over to you from my own account, to help cover some of the repayments – you can pay me back out of the takings for the next screening, okay?’

  Again, he nodded and this time Gina thought he would actually cry. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I don’t know where I’d be without you.’

  ‘Out on the street,’ Gina said, with a severe shake of her head. She held up the Pendower Collection Services business card. ‘Sort this one out first. I don’t want to see his ugly mug hanging around here again, unless he wants to buy a ticket for Some Like it Hot. He’d make an especially convincing gangster.’

  ‘I will. Thanks.’

  ‘Stop thanking me and get on with it,’ she said, passing him the phone. ‘The sooner you start, the happier we’ll both feel.’

  Chapter Five

  ‘Seriously?’ Ben hissed when Gina told him what she’d uncovered in Gorran’s office.

  They were standing outside the café at Bodmin Parkway station, both in their Roaring Twenties finery. Ben looked every inch the dapper millionaire in his cream suit and wing-tip shoes and Gina felt like a perfect society darling in her dusty pink dress. Inside the café, the murder mystery guests were assembled, sipping champagne and chatting as they waited for the event to begin. It looked like a cross between Poirot and The Great Gatsby.

  ‘Seriously,’ Gina replied, her tone grim. ‘Max said a few weeks ago that we should start looking around for investors to bail Gorran out but I’d be embarrassed to approach anyone the way things are.’

  Ben looked thoughtful. ‘It’s not the worst idea I’ve ever heard. And having someone to answer to might help to keep Gorran on the straight and narrow. He’s obviously no good at managing on his own.’

  Gina sighed. ‘I don’t understand why he didn’t tell us what was going on. I mean, we knew something was wrong before the Dirty Dancing event but I thought that was an isolated incident, brought on by the drop of income when the cinema closed for the refurbishment.’

  ‘This must have been going on for ages,’ Ben agreed. ‘What a mess.’

  Carrie appeared in the doorway, her cigarette holder held aloft. ‘There you are! What are you two whispering about out here? Things are about to kick off inside.’

  ‘Sorry, just coming,’ Gina called. She glanced at Ben. ‘Don’t breathe a word about this to anyone, okay? If the town council find out there’ll be hell to pay.’

  ‘My lips are sealed,’ Ben promised. ‘The funding they gave us for the refurbishment was also tied into the steam train restoration, remember? And we haven’t been paid the money for that yet.’

  Even more reason to help Gorran to find a way out of his situation, Gina thought as she followed Ben into the café. If Gorran lost the Palace, they would all lose out.

  She touched his arm. ‘One last thing – did you manage to speak to Davey? About Carrie, I mean.’

  ‘Nope,’ Ben said, sighing. ‘But I suppose that’s a good thing – it means it’s not Carrie that’s the problem. I’ll try again next week.’

  Inside the café, Gina spotted Rose Arundell and her mother, Valeria, immediately. This was the first time she’d seen them together and she was struck by how alike they were, especially dressed as upper-class ladies of the 1920s. If she didn’t know better, she might think they were sisters; they shared the same cool English beauty. It was a shame they were so unpleasant underneath, she thought just as Rose noticed her. She whispered to Valeria, who turned to stare at Gina and Ben before raising her champagne flute in a mocking toast.

  ‘Ugh,’ Carrie murmured as Gina returned the toast. ‘I suppose it’s too much to hope that one of those two might be the victim, right?’

  Gina laughed. ‘Probably. Let’s hope we’re not on the same table for dinner or it’s going to be a very long evening indeed.’

  Suddenly, there was a blood-curdling scream. Gina was gratified to see Valeria almost spill her champagne as a woman dressed as a maid appeared in the doorway that led to the kitchen. ‘Murder! Gawd bless my ’eart, there’s been a murder!’

  One of the other guests hurried over to her, gripping her shoulders tightly. ‘What are you babbling about, woman? Who’s been murdered?’

  The maid turned a horrified face towards the crowd. ‘It’s Lord Finch – ’e’s lying in the parlour with a carving knife in ’is back!’

  A glamorous, forty-something woman wearing an extravagant fur coat beside Gina dropped her glass with a gasp. ‘No! It can’t be true. Not Arthur?’

  ‘Well, well, well,’ a male voice drawled. ‘It looks as though Great-uncle Arthur finally met his match.’

  Every head whipped around to see who had spoken. A devilishly good-looking young man, dressed in plus fours and a tweed jacket, was pushing his way through the crowd. He stopped in front of the woman in the fur coat. ‘You can stop pretending to be upset, Grace. We all know you only married him for the money.’

  Grace slapped him hard across the cheek. ‘How dare you? I love my husband very much.’ Her face crumpled and she spun around to bury her face in an astonished Ben’s chest. ‘Loved. Oh, I can’t believe he’s dead!’

  ‘There, there,’ Ben said, patting her awkwardly on the back and causing Carrie to break out into giggles. ‘It’ll all be okay.’

  A portly man dressed in chef whites pushed past the maid to point a quivering finger at Lord Finch’s great-nephew. ‘You did this, Basil! I saw you running along the servants’ corridor only moments ago.’

  Basil gave a cool smile. ‘My dear Claude, you must be mistaken.’ He slipped his arm through Gina’s. ‘I’ve been chatting to my charming friend here the whole time. Isn’t that right, darling?’

  ‘Uh—’ Gina said, unsure how to answer.

  ‘Put the poor girl down, Basil,’ Grace said, her voice dripping with derision as she leaned into Ben. ‘I doubt very much whether she has a fortune large enough to pay off your gambling debts.’

  Titters broke out among the guests as Basil instantly dropped Gina’s arm with a growl of disappointment.

  ‘Enough of this!’ A red-faced vicar stepped forwards, mopping at his face with a large white handkerchief. ‘A man is dead, by fair means or foul. Shouldn’t we call the police?’

  The door of the café opened and a smartly dressed man in a trilby came in, followed by two uniformed officers. ‘No need for that, Reverend Cooper. We’re already here.’

  Carrie leaned towards Gina. ‘If this was any hammier, it would oink.’

  Gina grinned. ‘Oh, shush. It’s all good fun.’

  ‘Ben seems to have made a friend,’ Carrie went on, glancing back to where Grace was clinging onto Ben as though he w
as her knight in shining armour. ‘Although I wouldn’t turn my back on her if I was him, especially not if there’s a knife nearby – there’s more to her than meets the eye.’

  ‘My name is Inspector Barnet, of the Cornwall County Constabulary, and I’m afraid I shall have to detain everyone in this room on suspicion of murder. I know you must all be hungry so my colleagues will escort you to a place where you can have a bite to eat while you wait to be questioned.’ He stared beadily around the room, making eye contact with as many guests as he could. ‘For your own safety, please do not try to leave. And try not to be alone at any time. One of you is a murderer – who knows who the next victim might be?’

  One of the uniformed policemen stepped back and held open the door. ‘This way, ladies and gentlemen. All aboard the Cornish Express, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Form an orderly queue,’ the other officer intoned. ‘Keep your hands where I can see them – no sudden movements.’

  Grace reached up to touch Ben’s cheek. ‘I hope to see you later, sweetie,’ she breathed, before heading towards the door.

  Ben met Gina’s quizzical look with wide-eyed innocence. ‘What? I hope you don’t think I had anything to do with Lord Finch’s murder.’

  Gina narrowed her eyes theatrically as she peered around the room. ‘At this point, I’m not ruling anyone out. Not even myself.’

  The train carriages were very different to the ones Gina had travelled in before on the Bodmin line. Gone were the faded seats and sooty smell, replaced by dining carriages with pristine white tablecloths and shining silver cutlery. They found their seats quickly; much to Gina’s relief, they weren’t in the same carriage as Rose and Valeria.

  ‘We’ve got an empty seat,’ Carrie noted, nodding at the fourth place that had been laid on their table. ‘Do you think anyone will sit there?’

  Her question was answered almost as soon as the whistle blew and the train jolted into movement. The Reverend Cooper appeared in the doorway, mopping his forehead and looking even more florid than before, and swayed his way between the tables until he reached the empty seat.