by TP Fielden
Here in Temple Regis, the press corps was at its ease. Very little would come out at the open-and-adjourn procedure, especially under the spartan reign of Dr Rudkin, the coroner, but the opening of proceedings would allow room for considerable speculation about the mystery beauty with the bullet through her heart.
Further down the corridor in the private bar, Detective Inspector Topham sat alone with his pint of Portlemouth, staring into its auburn depths and considering his future. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been here before – why, when that noisy lot were last down here, after the murder of Bengt Larsson the inventor, it was just the same. There they were next door, just waiting to trample on the reputation of Temple Regis, while he sat like King Canute helplessly watching the incoming tide wash his toes.
‘Time to go,’ he said to himself.
‘OK?’ said Sid the barman, a man with an energetic elbow when it came to pint-pulling and glass-polishing but one always alert to the joys and sadnesses magnified by the drinks he served.
‘Yes, Sid,’ said Frank Topham, looking down at the hat beside him. It seemed to be telling him to quit. He got up and wandered over to the bar. ‘When you were in the desert’ – he and Sid had this in common – ‘did you ever think of the future?’
‘I thought of the missus. Don’t know why I bothered, she buggered off with the next-door neighbour.’
‘I mean,’ said the policeman, ‘where you’d be ten, twenty, years later?’
‘The Grand’s been good to me. I was a porter when I got called up, look at me now!’
Topham looked about the small room. This was the limit of Sid’s ambitions, and it made him happy. Why did he, a detective inspector – highly respected and not badly paid – why did he feel only a sense of failure?
‘I can’t stop it, Sid,’ he said. ‘Can’t stop the wretched advance. People who won the war seem to be turning their backs on what they won it for. It looks like we live in a golden age – the nation recovering, families back together, but it ain’t so. That lot down the hall, they seem determined make their living showing how rotten people are these days – want to show life in all its grimy, grubby awfulness. I despair, Sid, I really do.’
‘They here for the inquest?’
‘Yes.’
‘Going to have a pop at the local police for not identifying the body?’
Topham sighed. ‘I expect so, Sid, I expect so.’
‘Hardly your fault, Frank.’
‘Whether it is or it isn’t, funny enough it’s not the Chief Constable I mind – though I’ll be on the carpet again, I expect – or the Mayor, and he’ll be sure to have his say, it’s what the people in the street think of me. People in Temple Regis know who I am, and they think I can’t do my job. And that makes me feel I can’t do it either.’
‘Think of the medals you won, Frank, the men you saved – the regiment’s proud of you, boy. You’re looked up to at the British Legion. Not many like you.’
‘That was then. I don’t know – you’ve got people in Downing Street saying we’ve never had it so good, but I feel as if the sand is shifting under my feet, giving way. People caring less about the niceties.’
Sid polished the counter in front of him. If the nation had reached its high point and was now on the slippery slope, it made little difference in here – people would still celebrate, or drown their sorrows, in his bar. They loved coming here. Not for Sid to dwell on the prospect of a people in moral retreat.
‘Another, Frank?’
‘Yes please.’ He handed over his tankard. ‘I can’t let them win.’
‘No.’
‘I can’t.’
He took the Portlemouth back to the table and sat it down beside his hat.
The headlines a couple of days later were no less than might be expected.
SLAIN IN SEASIDE PARADISE
said the News Chronicle.
BRUNETTE AND A BULLET
was the way the Daily Herald saw it.
WHO ON EARTH IS SHE?
screamed the Daily Mirror.
MYSTERY DEEPENS ON HOLIDAY CAMP VICTIM
was the Daily Express’ version.
Miss Dimont read the headlines with a mixture of amusement and concern as she waited by the bandstand to meet Elektra Patrikis. Technically, she’d committed an offence punishable by a jail term – the courts don’t look kindly on those who withhold information about murder victims. On the other hand, it was on the express instructions of a family member that she’d held her tongue.
Mercifully Betty had been in court to witness the skeletal Dr Rudkin deal with that insolent rabble from London, and Judy had taken the day off to spend in her garden with Mulligatawny. Recently she’d been experimenting with various different species of aquilegia to see which would cover the ancient wash-house most prettily, and the roses needed trimming. Mull watched it all through slitted eyes and outstretched paws which made him look like a sphinx. He was storing up the energy to go mousing later.
Then there were the preparations for her house-guest: though Miss Dimont was unconcerned by the riches of others, some inner voice – probably that of Mme Dimont – told her to get out the best bed-linen from the airing-cupboard and to polish up the table silver. The cottage, as always, smelt of wax polish and lavender, and the roses on the dining-room table shouted their presence out, even into the hall.
Her preparations made, she hastened to the seafront to sit by the bandstand, listening to the Temple Regis Silver Band and awaiting the arrival of Elektra Patrikis. As she listened she considered whether any actual damage had been done by her decision to stay silent – on balance, it seemed not.
While it was by no means certain that Hugh Radipole was the murderer, probably of both Helen and her father Stavros, it was looking increasingly likely. And if he was finally to be apprehended, she needed more time to be certain.
Then again, she couldn’t entirely dismiss the theory that it was Bobby Bunton – or his man Baggs – who’d fired the fatal shot. Bunton was a man of uneven temperament, had taken grave exception to Helen Patrikis’ contemptuous attitude to him, and had a very nasty piece of work, Baggs, ready and willing to do almost anything for his master. Had he invented that business about Radipole – saying he’d stick the murder on Bunton, simply as a double-bluff in order to point the finger at his rival?
Of the two, her instincts leaned towards Radipole, simply because he’d known both Helen and her father, and was closely involved with both. Easier to suppose one person killed them, and easy in the first case to see why – rejected by Helen, angered and humiliated by her behaviour with Bunton who was already his enemy.
But why would Radipole kill Stavros? To free Helen from her father’s iron control, only to find her rejecting him? That didn’t quite work, because Stavros’ murder was four years ago. Why, if she’d run away from Radipole, would she come back to him now? It didn’t add up.
Judy was deep in thought as the silver-grey Rolls-Royce whispered to a halt a few feet away.
Elektra opened the window and called out, ‘This is lovely!’
Judy walked over and issued directions to Stevens before climbing in the back. ‘I can’t believe it!’ said her companion. ‘How wonderful this place is! My only experience of the English seaside was when I was at school, and I can assure you the coast of Essex bears no resemblance to this paradise!’
She seems much happier away from that house, thought Miss Dimont. The Rolls slid silently through the streets towards home, its spacious leather-bound interior littered with magazines, books, a fur wrap – what a way to travel!
‘Stevens will stay at the Fortescue,’ said Elektra, ‘I am so looking forward to seeing your cottage!’
Looking forward, perhaps, to seeing how the other half lives, thought Miss Dimont, not unkindly. My home has three bedrooms, while the house you’ve come from could have ten times that number for all I know.
But Elektra fitted in immediately. Once Stevens had deposited the bags and the grea
t limousine had lumbered away – that’ll have the neighbours twitching their curtains, thought Miss Dimont – they sat in the garden and drank tea.
‘This is just divine,’ said the young woman. ‘Your house is perfect, the setting perfect – I so envy you!’
‘Do you really?’
‘Don’t be misled by appearances. We’re a rich family, very rich, but with that goes the loss of certain things that you would take for granted, Miss Dimont. My father likes to surround himself by staff, and so you’re never quite sure who’s on the other side of the door. There’s no such thing as being alone in that house – or the one on the other side of the Heath. Look,’ she said, changing the subject, ‘I’ve brought you something!’
Elektra handed over a parcel whose contents contained a boxed set of Jane Austen’s seven published novels. ‘Edwardian,’ she explained, ‘forerunners of the paperback – look, the covers are a sort of oilskin. I found them in the antiquarian bookshop on Haverstock Hill – when we met I could tell immediately you were a Jane enthusiast.’
How adroit, thought Miss Dimont – a gift that was full of thought but had not cost very much.
‘They’re delightful!’ she exclaimed, taking out Sense and Sensibility and turning its pages. ‘And look, the original owner has signed her name in pencil – always so fascinating to know who old books once belonged to!’
Elektra got up and walked over to the wash-house, looking about her as she went. ‘Aquilegia – and quite a few different varieties, too!’
We’re going to get on very well, thought Miss Dimont. ‘More tea?’
‘Nearly time for a drink?’
‘Ah yes,’ said Judy, ‘you’ve had a long journey.’
She made two gin-and-tonics with mint instead of the customary lemon and they went to sit in a patch of sunlight by the garden wall. Judy paid her guest a calculated compliment about the diamond ring on her right hand.
‘Asscher cut? Around three carats?’
‘Good lord!’ said Elektra. ‘How do you know that? Even I don’t know what it is, and I’ve been wearing it ever since my mother died.’
‘I used to be in the diamond trade, before the war. My father was a dealer in Antwerp. We came to Britain during the First War.’
‘What a coincidence, we came from Greece in the Second. What did you do? In diamonds, I mean?’
‘I used to travel round the various brokers in Paris, Madrid, Berlin, Vienna. My father became unwell and I more or less took over the business.’
‘How exciting! You must have been well-off, then.’
Meaning, thought Miss Dimont, what are you doing living in a small cottage so very far from civilisation with no chauffeur at your beck and call?
‘By most people’s standards, yes. It’s a complicated story.’
Curiously, establishing the fact that Miss Dimont understood the ways of the rich made things easier for Elektra. She smiled and stretched her legs.
‘Why don’t we talk about Helen? Have you seen the papers today?’
‘I purposely didn’t look. Stevens puts them all in the back of the car when we go on a long journey but I thought it would be too upsetting.’
‘Probably just as well. I’ve got them here for you to have a look at if you wish, but it’s pretty much as you’d suspect. All a bit torrid.’
‘Was the family name mentioned?’
‘No, but I’m afraid it will be eventually. It’s an offence to conceal the identity of a dead person if you know who it is.’
‘Papa will be here on Friday, we had a wire from Crete. He will make the identification.’
‘What will you do meanwhile?’
‘Oh,’ said Elektra with a lazy smile, ‘live the life of a normal human being. Go and have an ice-cream, maybe a donkey ride – I haven’t done that since I was at school.’
‘Come into the kitchen then,’ said Judy, ‘and tell me about Helen.’
‘For your newspaper?’
‘I ought to explain,’ said Miss Dimont, ‘that I have skills other than shorthand and typing.’
‘And sizing up diamonds.’
While she prepared the supper Judy told her guest some of the murders she’d been involved in investigating.2 It was a gentle way of introducing Elektra to the idea she was part of solving the mystery, and an important one at that.
‘I think Helen was not quite a normal person?’
‘Far from it. Very destructive, very divisive, very selfcentred and opinionated. Her mother died in childbirth and as you know she was the only one. I think Stavros took his wife’s death very badly indeed and my father used to tell me – I was too young – that he would say to Helen, “You killed your mother.”’
‘What a terrible thing to do. To a small child.’
‘Yes, but somehow it was worse than that. They were very close, Stavros and Helen, and when I was older I’d sometimes hear him say it to her, only in a loving sort of way. As if it was a good thing she had done, killing her mother, so that he and his daughter could be together alone. I’d say she grew up loving him and hating him in equal measure.’
‘That seems to exactly describe her relationship with Hugh Radipole,’ said Miss Dimont. ‘Love and hate.’
‘Yes.’ Elektra wrinkled her face. ‘I don’t really want to talk about him.’
Miss Dimont put down the mixing bowl she’d just picked up. ‘I think you have to,’ she said slowly, ‘if we’re to get to the bottom of who killed Helen.’
‘Why?’
‘I’ll be frank. There are two suspects, and he’s number one. He knew both Stavros and Helen. He had business dealings with Stavros and a love affair with Helen. I need to know what you know about him.’
Elektra walked over to the kitchen window, then sat down. ‘There’s something I have to say. I was asking myself all the way down here whether I would tell you this, but it seems unavoidable.’
Miss Dimont picked up a tea-towel to dry her hands and came to sit next to her guest. ‘I think I know,’ she said gently.
‘You do?’
‘It was when you said to me in your house, “He took her for a drive in one of his fancy cars – she was just a schoolgirl.” And the way you looked at that photograph of the two of them together.’
‘Oh.’
‘You, too, Elektra?’ asked Miss Dimont quietly.
‘Helen was seventeen. I wasn’t.’
‘Does your father know?’
‘No.’
‘Did Helen know?’
‘Yes, he told her. It drove her mad – well, I have to be brutally honest and say she was pretty unbalanced anyway. When she was about thirteen or fourteen, I only discovered this later, her father sent her to a psychiatrist. She was behaving as though she was Princess Margaret – impossibly grand, demanding admiration from everybody from her father all the way down to the cleaning ladies. No sympathy or interest in anyone else, demanding only the best.
‘It got so bad she had to be taken away from school. She was a very, very clever child but had no friends, and the teachers couldn’t handle her. Eventually the psychiatrist confirmed she was really quite unwell – narcissistic personality disorder, he called it.
‘She was beautiful, in a sort of way, and very wayward. I don’t suppose it was Hugh who made the running when they got in that car together.’
‘Poor girl.’
‘Yes, poor girl – the doctor reckoned her problem was exacerbated by the way uncle Stavros had treated her when she was little. Hot and cold, hot and cold, all the time.’
‘Can you tell me about Stavros and Hugh Radipole? It seems a very odd friendship, if that’s what it was.’
‘Uncle Stavros was like my father – remote, autocratic, no friends. In the shipping business, everybody is your friend and everybody is your enemy – you learn pretty soon to trust nobody, and that isolates you from the rest of the world.
‘One day Stavros bought a car off Hugh and they hit it off. Hugh used to bring him oddities – everything f
rom handmade sedans to things that had been made in Weimar Germany out of pressed cardboard.
‘Gradually, but it must have been later, my uncle awoke to the fact that Hugh and Helen were having an affair, but instead of shooting him or having him arrested, I think he was relieved. Hugely relieved! I think he thought, someone is going to take care of her, she’s too much of a handful for me and even though I love her I want to be rid of the responsibility of her.’
Miss Dimont poured them both another drink.
‘So Stavros gave Hugh the money to buy the Marine Hotel.’
Elektra stared into her glass. ‘The plan was that he would take Helen away from London and away from all the problems she’d created by her weird behaviour – my uncle was a proud man, very proud of his family name, and she had become an embarrassment.’
‘So what happened? When Radipole turned up here in Temple Regis he was on his own.’
‘She ran away. She came back later, but preferred to go and live with her father at The Glen.’
‘Hugh’s reaction?’
‘Very angry, very vengeful. That’s when he came after me. Just to get at her.’
‘So by this stage Hugh was here in Devon and Helen was in London – doing what?’
‘Some very, very bad things. I’d really rather not say. She got into a lot of trouble and always uncle Stavros had to bail her out, shut people up, threaten them, bribe them. Buy them! She couldn’t be trusted with money – when she had it, she’d find some gullible person or other and make them do things they shouldn’t, simply for the money. It fed her narcissism.’
‘What sort of things?’
‘I couldn’t possibly tell you, they were – horrid. She loved the excitement of manipulating people.’
‘And so he starved her of cash.’
‘In the end she couldn’t even buy her own clothes – somebody did it for her. She didn’t have a car, she wasn’t allowed to take holidays alone. Yet her family was colossally wealthy – she couldn’t bear it.’
‘And then her father was murdered.’