by TP Fielden
‘What’s it got to do with…?’ Rhys was simultaneously trying to light his pipe and avoid the puddles. He wasn’t particularly successful with either.
‘I know you know Hugh Radipole – Judy told me.’
‘He comes to our lunches at the Con Club on Fridays, yes.’
‘She told me Radipole is gunning for Bobby Bunton.’
‘That’s right. You might say they’re at each other’s throats. Bunton thinks Radipole is snooty beyond belief, Radipole thinks Bunton is scum – and he may well be right. Did you know he keeps a cut-throat razor in his top pocket at all times?’
‘From what I’ve heard of Radipole, he probably keeps his sewn into the lining of those Savile Row suits.’
‘I wouldn’t say that to anyone else,’ said Rhys, a trifle importantly. ‘Hugh’s a gentleman.’
‘Hm.’
‘Of course, quite naturally he made strong objections to Bunton setting up a holiday camp next to his hotel. He’s worked hard on the Marine for ten years and more – it’s the jewel in the crown of Temple Regis.’
‘Are you invited often?’ quizzed Auriol, turning to face Rhys and halting him in his tracks.
‘Well, I’ve dined there a few… he’s a good fellow, Radipole.’
‘Who tried to blow Bunton and his holiday camp out of the water, and no doubt offered hefty inducements to various councillors to get their veto.’
‘If he did, it didn’t succeed. Buntorama’s here to stay,’ came the reply. It didn’t sound like a ringing endorsement.
‘So it’s all-out war, then. Bunton bringing in the funfair and planting it right beside the perimeter fence so as to cause maximum disruption. Fights in the Primrose Bar, Bunton being kicked out, turning up the loudspeakers on the dodgems – good Lord, Richard, I can hear them all the way over in Bedlington!’
‘I thought nothing could disturb the expensive peace of that part of town.’
‘Oh, shut up. Tell me about Bunton and his race for respectability.’
‘Simple. There were too many stories about loose goings-on in his holiday camps – not so much here in Temple Regis, but those ones in Essex – according to Radipole, he has been fearing a police raid for some time now. He can’t stop his punters from doing what comes naturally, and actually he doesn’t want to. If it’s an unspoken secret that illicit encounters go on on the premises, it makes his camps all the more attractive to certain kinds of people. The war’s over, Auriol, everybody wants a bit of fun.’
‘So he’s got the Archbishop of York to come down and give his blessing to the fornicating hordes.’
‘I believe His Grace’s wife and children will be coming too, for a short stay. Bunton has one or two VIP chalets tucked away.’
‘Well, I don’t know whether it’ll keep the police at bay but it might calm a few fevered brows – the man’s a real old Bible-thumper.’
From above the whisper of the surf they could just hear the words of another such thumper: ‘To know Christ and to make him known…’ but the rest blew away in a small but welcome gust.
‘Is that all?’
‘What I’m telling you next goes no further, Richard, and is the reason why I got you out here. Among the new names on the board of Buntorama is that of Admiral Sir Cedric Minsell. Apparently they met on some television show and Bunton persuaded Minsell to join the board. He’s retiring as Flag Officer, Hampshire, shortly and I expect we’ll be seeing something of him down here soon.’
Rhys just looked at her.
‘So what I want to know…’
The journalist started to walk away, very quickly. ‘Don’t want anything to do with it,’ he called angrily over his shoulder. Auriol had to scamper to catch up. ‘Just keep away from me and do what you have to do. I won’t have anything to do with it!’
‘You remember him, then.’
‘Of course I remember him! I got put on his case after Judy left the Service. He has some very ugly friends and I really am not going to get involved.’
Auriol struggled to maintain her superiority, a difficult task when a man is walking away from you.
‘I want you to invite him to lunch,’ she called. ‘Get to know him. Write something nice about his joining the Buntorama board! It’s not beyond you, Richard – you used to do this sort of thing all the time.’
‘Not on your life.’
‘Richard!’ she appealed to the journalist’s disappearing back, ‘Richard! I need your help!’
‘Not on your life.’
‘Help me!’
‘Go away.’
Oh hell, thought Auriol furiously, coming to a halt in a chilly rockpool.
I suppose I’ll have to go and seduce the ruddy Admiral after all.
For a cat of no known pedigree, Mulligatawny had lordly pretensions. Imperious in his shouts for food and love, he could just as easily walk away from both without so much as a backward glance.
In winter he could be gratifyingly cosy, snuggling up to Miss Dimont as they gazed at the fire together in her pretty cottage, listening to a concert on the radio, but come summer he did a disappearing act, preferring the company of his friends in the wild – whether they be delicious mice or voles or rabbits.
This evening, though, his lordship had decided to have an evening in, and had taken up residence in his mistress’s favourite chair. Judy entered the room juggling a whisky glass, extra spectacles, a new novel and a magazine she’d been meaning to read for a fortnight, only to discover the usurper looking up at her with a smug look on his face.
This made her quite cross – it’d been a long day and with little to show for it – and though Mulligatawny’s presence was a bonus, his choice of seating was not.
The options were limited. Either she sat in the lumpy armchair which constantly needed the cushions adjusting, or else she’d have to move the pile of recipes she’d spread out on the sofa ready to be folded into her recipe book. There seemed little point in moving Mull from her favourite place – there was always a scramble to see who got there first – because if she did, he’d be off for a night out on the tiles. And she did love his company, the brute.
‘Oh, Mull,’ she sighed, plonking down into the lumpy seat. The whisky-and-water was a consolation at least and actually, when she looked, his lordship did look particularly handsome sitting there, since the evening light shone through the windows onto his big fat head and made him even lovelier than usual.
She was waiting for Ray’s A Laugh on the wireless. Ted Ray and his stage wife Kitty Bluett made a huge comedy out of working on a newspaper, the Daily Bugle, which came as something of a consolation when you worked for Rudyard Rhys where there was no comedy at all. She laughed at Ray’s ridiculousness and Mulligatawny stretched out his paws.
The telephone rang as the audience was still applauding Ted and Kitty. ‘People do not ring after eight o’clock at night,’ she huffed to Mull, but he was busy investigating a burr lodged in the fur of his leg. Apparently it was the devil of a job to shift it.
‘Arthur here, Hugue. Sorry it’s late.’
‘Not at all, Arthur, lovely to hear your voice.’
‘You were asking about that man Ramensky. You know, the safecracker.’
‘The one who taught Eric.’ Her eyes flickered for a moment to the photograph on the mantelpiece.
‘Well,’ said uncle Arthur, ‘it’s a very curious thing. You know you were talking the other day about the man Radipole – you know, the rotter who sold me that ghastly Lagonda – well, apparently he and Gentleman Johnny knew each other. I told you Radipole was a stinker!’
‘I thought you said you liked Ramensky.’
‘Well, he’s an out-and-out criminal, you see. Easy to admire the type when you bump into them. No, it’s cardsharps and double-flushers like Radipole you’ve got to watch out for. Why, the cylinder head gasket on that Lagonda…’
‘Ramensky, uncle. Back to the point.’
‘Mm? Ah, yes, well… I was talking to an old police contact i
n the club earlier and Johnny’s name came up. Johnny’s what you’d call a white-collar criminal – steals a lot of diamonds but nobody gets hurt. But one day he was involved in a burglary somewhere in north London where a chap got stabbed and died. Not his modus operandi – far from it – but he was the only suspect.’
Miss Dimont was polishing her glasses on the sleeve of her dress. ‘Yes?’
‘Police made a cat’s-cradle of the case. They just couldn’t prove Ramensky had killed the man, even though he’d gellied the safe. But it was a nasty job, apparently – many knife wounds to the throat, heart, even the wrists.’
‘Who was the victim?’
‘Mm? Oh, some Greek chap, Patrikis, I think he said. Very rich, can’t remember what from, but a pillar of the Greek community in London. Widower, only had one child who was so distraught by his murder she ran away and has never been seen again. Ramensky got a spell in the cooler for the safebreak but there was no evidence offered at the trial as to the murder. I don’t think he can have done it.’
‘Well, very interesting, Arthur.’
‘I say, old thing, is that a help?’
‘Don’t know yet, uncle. But as they say, knowledge is power.’
‘I’m still at the club, actually. Chap I know has promised me a game of billiards.’
‘Don’t stay too late. Keep off the brandy.’
‘Ha, ha. Bye bye, darling, I’ll let you know about your mother.’
Miss Dimont sharply put down the phone wishing he hadn’t said that last thing, and reached for the whisky decanter. A stiff drink always helped when the prospect of Madame Dimont loomed.
Mulligatawny had vacated his place of repose and was currently draped over the brass fender in front of the fire – no telling with cats – so Miss Dimont bagged her place back before he could change his mind, and put the whisky to her lips.
She peered at the photo of Eric, looking down with his mildly sardonic smile as if to say, ‘why are you involving yourself in this murder game?’
‘I don’t know,’ sighed Judy back at him. ‘But nobody gets shot in Temple Regis – nobody! And here we have a woman who apparently welcomed in her murderer, sat on the bed quite comfortably, as if inviting him to kill her. No sign of a struggle, no sign of forced entry, no clue as to why someone would want to do that. And on top of it all a woman who has very deliberately, and very successfully concealed her identity. What can it mean?’
Eric looked down but said nothing.
‘Then again,’ she went on, ‘this business about Johnny Ramensky – does that have anything to do with anything? We’ve got Radipole, who must have been a war profiteer to have made all that money to buy and do up the Marine. And we’ve got Bobby Bunton, a crook in a suit, peddling his questionable holiday camps – both men knew the woman, they’ve admitted as much. Did one of them kill her to somehow score off the other? They hate each other so much, I wouldn’t put it past either of them.
‘Come to that, was the reason Radipole threw Bunton out of the Marine not about that silly woman Fluffles – but about the dead woman Patsy Rouchos?’ She took a swig of whisky. ‘If that’s what her name was – which it wasn’t… I really must, tomorrow, look into that drummer chap Betty mentioned, see what he has to say. Not that you can ever trust a jazzer to tell the truth…’
The thought-processes were beginning to unravel, perhaps with the mention of her mother she’d poured too stiff a measure of whisky into her glass. She decided to stop talking to Eric and take up the conversation with Mulligatawny instead.
‘Eric was such a fool,’ she said. He closed his eyes as if in agreement. ‘When that man Ramensky turned up to give a master-class on safebreaking and sabotage at Eric’s commando establishment, it was as if all his birthdays had come at once. In no time at all he decided he wanted to be Gentleman Johnny – buying him drinks, hanging on his every word. He even tried to copy his Scottish accent.
‘But Eric couldn’t possibly be him. Johnny had grown up the Gorbals, spent his time down the mines, lived and breathed the criminal life from childhood – that’s what made him so brilliant at safecracking. Eric was a sweet and adventurous boy who’d had a sheltered upbringing but who so desperately wanted to break away from it.
‘After that course he was ready for anything, and I suppose who could resist that man Ewen Montagu and his madcap ways of kicking the enemy? Parachuting him into Germany to blow open a safe when he’d only just learned the rudiments – really!
‘Oh Mull,’ said Judy, ‘he was such a darling. But despite all that bravery, so innocent…’
Mulligatawny might, or might not, have agreed with this character analysis but it was late, and by now he was fast asleep, paws stretched out in front in an elegant salaam.
TWELVE
‘And her tears flowed like wine
Yes, her tears flowed like wine
She’s a real sad tomato
A busted Valentine
Knows her momma done told her
The man is darn unkind…’
Terry was in particularly infuriating form. He could never sing in key, his whistling was worse, the tunes he picked to murder had no merit in the first place. Why make things worse by torturing innocent bystanders?
They were in the Minor on their way to cover some routine announcement by the Chamber of Trade.
Light rain was falling, a grey mist crept like a ghost up the estuary, and Miss Dimont had stayed on for one more glass of whisky with Mulligatawny last night.
‘Oh do shut up!’
‘Thought you were a music fan.’
‘That’s not music, Terry, if you really want music switch on the Third Programme. Look – there’s the radio button – press it!’
‘He’d spend it on the pony
He’d spend it on the girl
Buy his mother gin and roses
For her poor old henna’d curls
But when his wife said ‘Hey now! What you got for me?’
He socked her in the chopper
Such a sweet, sweet guy was he…’
Terry was now deliberately singing off-key. ‘You should have heard her last night, Judy, just sensational!’ he yodelled. ‘The way she fills the room with that voice – the way she fills that big blue dress…’
‘Put a lid on it!’
They pulled up outside the Corn Exchange but neither felt the urge to rush in. The Chamber of Trade was the dreariest job in the diary, and why the Express’s chief reporter and chief photographer had been sent to cover its tedious, selfcongratulatory annual announcement and not some brand-new junior, eager to please and ready to impress… it rankled.
‘’Oo put this in the diary?’ asked Terry grumpily, voicing the thoughts of both.
‘Mr Rhys. Either he’s punishing us for something, or he wants us out of the office.’
‘’Ave you done somethin’ wrong, Judy? Not another Conservative Ball disaster, I hope?’ Terry could be quite nasty when he liked, which wasn’t often, but Judy was in prickly form this morning and he wasn’t having it.
‘Oh pipe down – that was ages ago and anyway, it wasn’t the disaster people always make it out to be.’
‘Everybody seems to remember it, though,’ said Terry. ‘Especially the bit where you…’
‘Pipe down!’
Terry went back to humming the Ella Fitzgerald tune but the rain was drumming down on the car roof so hard it did a good job of drowning him out. They both watched a lone holidaymaker make a dash for cover with a newspaper covering her perm – who said the Riviera Express wasn’t a useful purchase? – while Miss D thought the best way to stop the awful racket was to engage her snapper in conversation, though she didn’t particularly want to. Her head!
‘So Moomie gave a good performance last night?’
‘Blimmin’ marvellous. She gave Betty and me front-row seats,’ said Terry, and she looked sideways at him at the mention of her fellow-reporter. He had a habit of looking up to the heavens when relating some en
joyable occurrence which really got on her nerves.
‘Betty? What was Betty doing there?’ Hard to tell, with the rain lashing down, whether the note in her voice was laced with anger, contempt or jealousy, but it certainly didn’t sound very sweet.
‘Well,’ said Terry in lordly fashion, ‘she was the reporter who did the story, you know. I was given two tickets and Betty’s name was on one of them. Simple.’
‘She doesn’t know anything about jazz!’
‘Neither do you. You’re always going on about Mozart and… people… you never listen to anything modern.’
‘I do! I love Michael Holliday!’
‘That old square? Listen, Judy, if you’d just get away for once from your choir practice and those ruddy concerts at the Guildhall, I could take you somewhere where you might hear something worth listening to.’ Usually, Terry was immune to his reporter’s snits but the rain was making his knee ache.
Miss D was in no better shape. ‘I don’t know, Terry, are you walking out with Betty or something?’
The photographer turned his head and held her in a steady gaze. ‘You know,’ he said, slowly, ‘it really was a surprise when you came to join us at the Express. We’d never had anybody like you. But for all you’re such a smartypants, sometimes you just don’t get it, do you…?’ His sentence trailed off in exasperation and he reached over to the back seat for his camera-bag.
Whatever his problem was, Miss Dimont flew straight past it. ‘You promised to tell me about the drummer chap. Dick somebody.’
‘Sticks,’ said Terry sharply. ‘Sticks Karanikis. They call him Sticks because of his drumsticks, in case you don’t get it. You want to talk about music? I thought you were only interested in this murder!’
‘Of course I am!’ If only the headache would go away!
‘Well, here it is. Sticks is a jobbing percussionist, does the West End, small shows, longer gigs like this Moomie Etta-Shaw season, and private parties which pay well. Because he’s a London Greek boy he gets invited to lots of functions among the richer set – the shipping people, the petrol people, restaurant owners, that kind of thing. Those Greeks love a party.