by TP Fielden
‘I wonder what you would like me to do,’ said Miss Dimont, kindly. Certainly, there was a story here – why were the bailiffs knocking at her door? Was there, perhaps another story hidden behind this apparent tragedy?
‘Does your husband gamble?’
‘No, and he doesn’t drink either, apart from the gin. And before you ask, he doesn’t look at other women. I can see what you’re thinking – how can this nice middle-class family find themselves washed up on the rocks when everything should be going right for them?’
‘I must say I’m finding it quite hard to grasp,’ admitted Miss Dimont. ‘I can see that some might feel Freemasonry’s cloaked in secrecy and mumbo-jumbo, but there can be no denying it does good.’
The woman looked at her. Her blue eyes, which had seemed so dull at the start of this encounter, were now sharp, piercing. ‘Who told you that?’ she said.
‘Well… ’ started Miss D, not sure how to answer, ‘it’s a commonly held belief, isn’t it?’ She didn’t like to confess that her newspaper’s proprietor and, worse, her editor, were both high-ups in the Craft. Or that a story which challenged their fundamental beliefs and prejudices was never likely to get into the Riviera Express.
‘Well, can you write something about it?’
‘I’d love to. But’ – oh dear, here comes the evasion! – ‘without adding your full name to the story – without mentioning your husband, his job, his rank in the worshipful brethren – there’s not much to write.’
The woman stood up. Her shoes needed repairing and the handle on her handbag was threadbare, but she had a nobility and grace which made Miss Dimont feel ashamed of what she’d just said.
‘The bailiffs…’ she said, looking away towards the sea. ‘When Graham was born I thought he might go to Cambridge, like his father. Now I see that will never happen. I live in crushing, awful, middle-class poverty. All too soon we will have to leave beautiful Temple Regis which I adore more than anything, and find somewhere horrible and cheap to live.
‘And all because my husband has this deep-seated yearning for ceremonial, and mystery, and clannishness, just like all the other so-called worshipful brothers.
‘And we, the wives, let them go on and do it. Now why, do you suppose, do we allow that to happen?’
The back end of Temple Regis was not quite the same as the glorious scenes you saw on the postcards. The city fathers had done their best but Mount Regis Square, its name a forelock’s tug to the local squire, was no more than a collection of irregular bungalows sandwiched between shops which had long since given up the ghost.
Terry mooched along the broken pavement past the Temple Rock Shop (closed), This ’n’ Hat (no titfers today), and Sand & Sea Shoes & Beachwear (too far from the beach) in search of the police station’s outpost in Lydford Lane.
Sir Robert Peel House, a shed behind the square, was where the Temple Regis police force kept their excess baggage. Sergeant Gull was waiting for him with an eager smile on his face.
‘We’re just a couple of streets away,’ he said brightly. ‘The missus’ll have the kettle on.’
Terry blinked, then remembered the sweetener mentioned by Miss Dimont – ‘you get an exclusive on the album as long as you do some snaps of Gladys Gull and her wretched flowers’. This was the curse of being a photographer – everyone wanted their picture taken, but nobody wanted to pay. The Riviera Express ran on a tight budget and explaining away half a roll of film and a few sheets of 10 × 8 was no easy matter, even when you were chief photographer.
When it was taken out of its box it seemed so small, so pitiful – a leather folder with maybe half-a-dozen photos pasted within. All were black-and-white, most with a fancy scalloped edge which showed they’d been printed up by a professional outfit, not by the photographer.
At a glance Terry could tell they were not recent – it wasn’t so much the clothes, more the quality of the reproduction. The pictures themselves consisted of a group of individuals who looked related to each other – both by their looks but also the way they posed together. On the other hand they could just have been close friends, it was hard to tell.
‘Look foreign to me,’ said Terry to Gull, but the sergeant had his nose in a gardening magazine and not really listening.
‘Ur.’
Committing the album to film took a matter of minutes – once he’d set up the lighting, which needed to be powerful, he just turned the pages and clicked the shutter. The fact there were so few photographs in an album which had quite obviously contained many more was a puzzle, but when he came to the last page he stopped. The print in front of him had been torn into four pieces, then reassembled and roughly glued back onto the page.
He leaned closer and asked himself what could have prompted someone to do such a thing, photo albums being such an important part of family history. The empty pages offered no response.
Finally Terry took a shot of the torn picture, and as an afterthought carefully lifted the four separate parts away from the page to photograph each one separately before replacing them carefully, pressing down hard so that the adhesive would work. He kept his back to Gull as he did this – tampering with evidence, especially in a murder case, could get your collar felt.
The job done, he had time to consider what he’d just committed to film: there were no obvious answers to the woman’s background here – no names, no indications of anybody’s identity. He scratched his head and thought about the ridiculousness of the situation.
‘We wouldn’t have to go to any of this ruddy trouble if we just took a picture of the dead woman’s face and published that,’ he said to Sergeant Gull.
Gull lifted his head from the magazine and shook it from side to side. ‘Chief Constable won’t have it. He’s up for a knighthood. You wouldn’t want it yourself – the expression on her face.’
‘What sort of expression?’
‘I got a quick shufty of the official snaps o’ course, but she looked horrible – sort of shock, sort of pleading, sort of resigned. Quite put me off my dinner.’
‘Death’s never lovely.’
‘They’m gorgeous blooms this yar, though,’ Gull said, energetically motioning the photographer towards the door. Gladys would be getting impatient.
But it was Terry’s turn not to be listening. The images he’d taken were burning themselves into his brain, fixing themselves there, gradually developing.
FOURTEEN
Betty hopped into the office through the side door. She’d noticed Perce, the Post Office lad, hovering around the front entrance and though he was a sweet fellow the tidings he brought – especially to Betty – were not always of the best. Boyfriends had developed the habit of using the telegram system as a means of saying goodbye, a less confrontational way of slipping Betty’s manacle grasp.
Up till now she’d been feeling quite perky. Though the green hadn’t quite disappeared she had discovered a new way of doing her hair so it didn’t show, except if you looked at her from the back.
Furthermore, unless Perce had brought greetings from Dud (fingers crossed) things were back on again with a promise to take her to the pictures on Friday.
She still hadn’t finished the early pages, and then there were the wedding reports to wade through, so that was her morning taken care of. She dropped her bag on Judy’s desk and with relief picked up the dead cat and stuffed it in her bottom drawer.
Yesterday’s teacups hadn’t been washed up but surely Judy would be in soon – her turn to make the tea! She pulled the hefty old Imperial Standard towards her, folded a sandwich of copy-paper and…
Then she took out her make-up bag and got to work beautifying her countenance, a lengthy and mysterious process.
‘Early’s late,’ barked John Ross, cryptically; his convex belly sliding into view in her hand-mirror.
‘Ye don’ need lipstick to tell the worrld what’s new in Temple Regis, girrly, just get on with it! Need it finished by ten o’clock!’
Betty winced a
nd turned to the task in hand. First, joy of joys, was to sort out the winners of the sandcastle competition. Temple Regis’ annual regatta was always a headache because so many people expected to see their names in the paper – woe betide if one went missing! But the way the results came in, scribbled on bits of paper, was haphazard and confusing. She found she’d muddled the crab-catching competition (needs the tide in) with the Mud Race (needs tide out) and had to tear the copy-paper from the Imperial and start again.
She’d allowed herself a moment of purple prose – the flotilla of rowing boats progressed through the estuary with lit lanterns, creating an outstanding display of twinkling lights slowly disappearing into the night – and was just getting to grips with the Swimming Gala when the phone rang.
‘Betty?’ It was Joyce, the new girl on reception who never seemed to get her clothes wrong and irritated Betty, especially because her hair always looked effortless.
‘Mm,’ said Betty offhandedly.
‘Chap down here wanting to see you. Name of…’ Joyce was hopeless with names and Betty could hear her asking whoever it was to repeat it. ‘Karra Knickers sounds like.’
With her free hand Betty quickly grabbed the make-up mirror. ‘Down in a jiffy!’
Even though it only took seconds to reach the front hall, Joyce was already hard at work on the drummer. Short he may have been, with a receding hairline and, to be frank, not half so attractive when he wasn’t beating all hell out of his tomtoms, but nonetheless he had trousers. And a way about him to which a more worldly woman would have warned ‘Beware – musician!’ But this was Temple Regis, and jazzers were a cultural rarity.
Despite the fact he was here to see Betty, Sticks seemed in no hurry to tear himself away from present company. Joyce may be obliged to wear glasses, but the way she took them off and put them on again – well, it didn’t leave much to the imagination.
‘Why, St – i – i – cks!’ yodelled Betty to grab his attention while at the same time signalling to Joyce they’d known each other for months if not years or a lifetime, whichever was longer. The drummer turned to the reporter, then back to the receptionist, while a foolish grin slowly spread over his face. Musicians!
‘Betty,’ he said, finally. ‘You said to get in touch if I heard anything.’
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ said Betty proprietorially, ‘a cup of coffee! Come along!’ The vanquished Joyce put her specs back on with a sad movement which acknowledged defeat.
‘Are you working? Should I come back at lunchtime?’
Betty thought of the paragraph she’d left behind, about the Orbridge Mothers’ Union’s visit to Exeter Cathedral, After climbing a hundred and seventy-two narrow turret stone steps, they were able to feast their eyes on the glorious views of the city and its surrounds… and decided John Ross would have to wait a bit longer for his late early pages.
She steered Sticks into the steamy comforts of the Signal Box café, having learned on the way there that he’d played on thirty-seven records, was divorced, lived in a converted Methodist chapel under the flight-path to London Airport, and had had a childhood ambition to join the circus. Soon she was able to add to this store of knowledge the fact he drank his coffee black with no sugar, and had no qualms about puffing cigarette smoke into a lady’s face.
‘So, does everyone call you Sticks?’
‘Nah, but the name’s a mouthful.’
‘Try me.’ Betty leaned forward.
‘Theoclymenus. It’s a pain having to repeat it, then spell it. Stick to Sticks.’
‘OK. So what can you tell me about the murdered woman?’ This was a breakthrough moment for Betty – so far Fleet Street hadn’t done more than report a line or two about the shooting, simply because without a name the story remained without focus. If only she could identify the murder victim! What a scoop!
Betty Featherstone – of the Daily Mail! Featherstone of the Herald! The Sunday Pictorial! It only takes one big story – how many times had she been told this? – to make it into Fleet Street, to get away at last from boring old Temple Regis. And one name, one identity would do it!
‘So who was she?’
‘Dunno,’ said Sticks.
‘But you’ve brought me all this way to…!’
‘What I found out,’ said Sticks, stubbornly, ‘is that she went missing from the party circuit about three or four years ago – disappeared completely. I talked to my cousin. He’s a caterer for those parties I told you about and he remembered her, too. A strange woman, she was, liked older and very rich men. Mind you, she was one of the rich lot herself – I only ever saw her at the big houses in Kensington and north London and my cousin says the same.
‘He thinks she could be a woman called –’ and there the drummer paused a beat –‘can’t remember.’
Betty could have screamed. He was hopeless. However there was more to come.
‘If it’s her, the one I think it is, it’s a terrible story. My cousin says her father was murdered a few years ago – stabbed to death – and now here she is, shot through the heart. I mean, she wasn’t the nicest person out – I never spoke to her, but you see an awful lot when you’re playing drums at a party. You can tell what a person’s like, especially one with a face like that. With her, it was always about me, me, me. She was just that type.
‘But then again,’ he added unhelpfully, ‘it mayn’t be who my cousin thinks it is. But it’s a start, isn’t it?’
Betty had her notebook in her lap, but so far he’d given her very little to jot down – and certainly not the name he’d more or less promised.
‘If it is her, might someone have got it in for the family?’ This was worth a try. ‘Murdered both of them? Father and daughter?’
‘Dunno. The Greeks can be a bit hot-tempered, like – I should know! But my cousin, he thinks the story is that the father died after a burglary went wrong.’
Betty was torn. Sticks was a very attractive man, and she’d love to linger in his company. On the other hand there were the late early pages to complete and this thin scraping of information didn’t really take the story forward very much.
‘Sticks, er, Theocl… Got to get back to the office now.’
‘I was thinking – come up to London with me at the weekend. Moomie’s taking a couple of days off for a funeral so we won’t be playing till Tuesday – Cornish and the Manifold and me are driving up. Why don’t you come and see what you can dig out, I’ll introduce you to my cousin.’
‘Well, that would be…’
‘You can always come and stay at my place.’ Sticks smiled a slow smile.
‘Oh!’ Betty was shocked. ‘Um… er, I have a date! I mean,’ she stammered, because despite his lack of height Sticks did have a certain something, perhaps something too precious to let go, ‘I mean, I’d love to, but…
‘Might make your name, if you crack this case,’ said Sticks, easily. He’d listened at their previous meeting at the Marine to Betty’s oft-repeated ambition to make the big time, to be in London.
‘Ohh!’ said Betty. He was ten times better-looking than Dud.
‘Come on, then,’ urged Sticks, ‘come up with us to the old Smoke. Get yourself a – what do they call it? – a scoop?’
‘Ohhhh!!’ said Betty.
When she got back to the office, there was Judy hammering away at the Remington Quiet-Riter. As a machine it did not live up to its name, clanging loudly as she reached the end of each line, making noises as if from a mediaeval torture chamber each time the return lever was operated. The space bar sounded like the thundering of hooves.
Judy was in full flow, writing up her report of the Ban the Bomb rally, notebook by her side but so far unconsulted – when you return from a gripping story, people’s words are fixed in your brain, no need to be reminded by the squiggles on a page. Old professionals always say, let the story tell itself, and so it does – if you write it straight away. Try to recreate the mood a couple of hours later, or next day, and the magic has gone.
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nbsp; Miss Dimont had seized the moment and was pouring in the quotes from Jacquetta Hawkes before they evaporated. Her head was down, her fingers drumming away, puffs of smoke as if from an Indian reservation coming from a rare cigarette jammed between her lips.
Betty knew better than to interrupt the flow and sat down quietly at the desk opposite. Of course, what she should really be doing was consulting her chief reporter on the murder story, informing her of the tentative progress made in her meeting with Sticks, but newspapers don’t work like that.
Journalists guard their information and their sources with an almost pathological jealousy. Betty might tell a clergyman her wonderful discovery, or the lady on the cheese counter at Lipton’s, or even Athene, but not another journalist. And certainly not Judy Dimont!
She sat and weighed the options, which had only partially to do with the story. Should she go to London for the weekend with Sticks and dump Dud, or play safe and keep her date at the Picturedrome? It was difficult to concentrate with Judy rattling away – always so irritating when someone else is in full flood on a story – so she got up and wandered off with her unfinished early page copy to John Ross.
The chief sub was sitting with a sardonic look on his face as he watched his underlings rummage their way through the interminable cricket results it was the Express’s duty to publish.
‘Earlies all done,’ Betty lied.
‘Aboot time too,’ growled Ross. ‘We’ve got an extra advert on the page now, so you can chuck half of that lot away.’
Phew, thought Betty, they’ll never know I didn’t finish them. ‘Got a few more items written up in case things change,’ she said, her smile as false as the colour of her hair.
‘Spike ’em,’ snapped Ross, and Betty wandered away again. He really wasn’t that short, she argued with herself, and the way he did those rim-shots in My Melancholy Baby was really very stimulating.