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A Quarter Past Dead

Page 23

by TP Fielden

‘It turned her inside-out. She went from hating him to idolising him – having monuments created in his name, swearing that he would never be forgotten. She wore black for the year before she disappeared, she almost never left the house, even made the servants wear black for a time. It seemed to have driven her even crazier.’

  Miss Dimont thought very carefully before putting the next question. ‘Do you remember your uncle’s murder?’

  ‘Of course. We were living on the other side of the Heath.’

  ‘Do you remember there was a burglary?’

  ‘It was the burglar who killed uncle Stavros.’

  ‘Maybe. Or maybe not. But did you know that it was Helen who paid the burglar to break in and crack open the safe?’

  ‘What?’ Elektra was stunned into silence. Judy nodded.

  ‘You know,’ said Elektra after a moment’s thought, ‘that sounds just like her. She wanted the money. Couldn’t get it any other way, so she employed a burglar.’

  ‘It seems so.’

  ‘Who then decided to kill my uncle?’

  ‘Yes. Or no. It may have been someone else, I don’t know.’

  Elektra swallowed the last of her drink. ‘I hate being in that place. The Glen. Thinking of uncle Stav being killed there.’

  ‘Elektra,’ said Miss Dimont, ‘please look me in the eye and tell me what your heart says.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘What I say may hurt.’

  ‘If it does, it does.’

  ‘Do you think Helen murdered her father?’

  There was a silence.

  ‘Elektra?’

  ‘I don’t know why I never thought of it,’ came the reply. ‘But, since you ask it, yes.

  ‘Yes, I think she murdered her father.’

  Then who, wondered Miss Dimont, murdered Helen?

  TWENTY-FIVE

  So press day for the Riviera Express had arrived without the identity of the body on the bed being revealed. Miss Dimont, having cooked an invigorating breakfast for her guest and given out directions to local beauty-spots (‘The charm of Shaldon’s streets… the view of Slapton Sands as you come over the hill from Dartmouth… a sandwich lunch on the pontoon at Dittisham… the sea-tractor across to Burgh Island…’) took herself off to the office.

  Betty was at her desk, typing furiously. For once she’d commanded all the main stories in the paper and there was little for the chief reporter to do beyond checking proofs and writing some last-minute fillers. By lunchtime the presses would be rolling and the edition under way.

  ‘Just popping out for an hour or so,’ said Judy to Betty, ‘I’ll telephone in case there’s anything needed. Going over to the Marine.’

  Betty’s head did not rise from the typewriter. She was struggling with the front-page splash, furiously hammering away in order to meet her deadline while the pear-shaped chief sub marched up and down behind her.

  ‘Come on, come on!’ growled John Ross, as if to himself – but Betty could hear him well enough and started to make mistakes. The letters in her Imperial Standard were getting stuck together, at the same time gouging holes in the copy-paper and making a terrible mess. Miss Dimont backed out of the combat zone and went in search of Herbert.

  As they made the familiar descent into Ruggleswick, she wondered what was going to happen in the heavyweight contest between Hugh Radipole and Bobby Bunton. One of them had to be the murderer of Helen Patrikis and his arrest would inevitably bring about the collapse of his business.

  Would it be Buntorama that prevailed in this ugly class war? Or the superior Marine Hotel? Which would be putting up the shutters?

  The first thing she noticed as she switched off Herbert’s little engine and pulled out his stand was the Devil’s Dodgems – or the lack of them. An eerie silence had taken the place of the barrage of sound, and once again people were sitting on the terrace drinking their cocktails and making small talk.

  ‘“Peace, perfect peace, in this dark world of sin,”’ she trilled to the girl behind the reception desk.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘“No more sorrows surging round? Naught but calm is found?”’

  ‘I don’t quite…’

  Miss Dimont smiled. ‘You’ve silenced the devil and his dodgems. How did you manage it?’

  The girl laughed. ‘Oh! Isn’t it wonderful? All we need now is for the guests to come back.’

  ‘There are a few out on the terrace.’

  ‘They’re all we’ve got,’ confided the girl. ‘Those dodgems emptied the hotel.’

  ‘Mr Radipole around?’

  ‘Is he expecting you?’

  ‘Judy Dimont, Riviera Express. We were having a chat the other day – just a couple of things I wanted to clear up.’

  ‘Oh, OK. You’ll find him in the Primrose Bar.’

  As she made her way down the corridor she could hear in the ballroom a piano making so plaintive a noise she popped her head round the door to see what was going on. At the far end on the small bandstand Moomie Etta-Shaw was playing ‘Every Time We Say Goodbye’ while in the half-dark a glitterball in the ceiling slowly spangled her shoulders with shards of light. Judy waved, Moomie gave back a graceful nod.

  In the bar Radipole sat awkwardly and alone, the wine glass in front of him untouched. His busy world had come to a halt.

  ‘Hello,’ said Judy in friendly fashion, ‘may I join you?’

  ‘Be my guest,’ he replied with heavy irony, ‘there’s nobody else.’

  ‘Blissfully quiet now,’ she went on encouragingly. ‘How lovely you managed to see off that Mr Bunton.’

  ‘We came to an agreement,’ Radipole said, tight-lipped. ‘Don’t ask.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to – I’ve come to talk to you about something else.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Helen Patrikis. The woman who was murdered next door.’

  The hotelier reached forward slowly, lifted the glass, and inspected its contents. He held it up to the light for several moments before saying, very slowly, ‘How did you discover her name?’ His voice had dropped several semitones and was almost a whisper.

  ‘You implied you hardly knew her, you had no idea about her identity. But in fact you were her protector.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You loved her.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Even though – even though she was mentally unbalanced.’

  ‘Because of it.’

  ‘Well, I wonder about that,’ said Miss Dimont, her voice hardening. ‘I don’t suppose the money had anything to do with it?’

  Radipole moved his head slightly in her direction. ‘You don’t know anything about it,’ he said. ‘You have no idea.’

  ‘It was Helen’s money that bought this hotel. Her money.’

  ‘Correction. It was Stavros Patrikis’ money that bought the hotel. Helen had no say in it.’

  ‘But when her father died, it became her hotel.’

  ‘Again you’re wrong. Stavros gave me the money in return for looking after her.’ It was almost as if he was talking in his sleep, the words came slowly.

  ‘Really?’

  Radipole looked up sharply. ‘What’s this all about? You’re a reporter on the local rag, Miss, er, what is your name?’

  ‘Judy Dimont.’

  ‘You’ll forgive me, this doesn’t sound like the sort of thing your paper could possibly be interested in. Are you hoping to sell something to one of the Sundays? If so, you can beetle off right now!’

  Judy glanced around the room. A barman was counting bottles, a waitress folding napkins. There were witnesses and she was not alone. Safety in numbers.

  ‘It’s about the killing of Helen, but it’s also about the killing of Stavros,’ she said firmly. ‘Two members of the same family murdered, four years apart.’

  ‘What?’ said Radipole, half-rising from his chair.

  ‘You knew them both – one was your lover, the other gave you money to take care of her. You ran a moderately successful motor-c
ar company in north London, now you’re the owner of this very grand hotel. That’s quite a leap.’

  ‘What are you trying to say?’

  ‘Despite what your hotel guests may think, you’re not quite the gentleman you appear. You employed a burglar called Johnny Ramensky to crack the safe of somebody up in Scotland who owed you money, then you passed Ramensky on to Helen who paid him to burgle her father’s safe.’

  Radipole took a sip of his wine. ‘You seem to know a lot. On your reporter’s salary? How d’you do it?’

  ‘Luck,’ replied Judy with a touch of sarcasm.

  ‘I think I’ve heard enough.’

  ‘I haven’t finished. When Ramensky burgled the Patrikis’ safe, he made the mistake of leaving the garden door open when he left The Glen. Somebody came in after him and knifed Stavros to death.’

  ‘He said that, did he?’

  ‘As a matter of fact he did.’

  ‘What else would you expect from a crook like that? “Somebody else did it” – it sounds like something from the schoolroom – “Wasn’t me, teacher!” Ridiculous – of course he did it! They charged him with murder, didn’t they?’

  ‘Didn’t pursue the charges. The police know his modus operandi – he wouldn’t hurt a fly. Gentleman Johnny, he’s called, everybody calls him that. No, there was the opportunity for you to sneak in and kill Stavros, and you took it.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ shouted Radipole. ‘Why on earth should I do that?’

  ‘You’d got the money, you’d got the hotel. The daughter had deserted you – you were worried Stavros would call in the debt since you weren’t keeping to the bargain by looking after her.’

  ‘Sheer fantasy! You can’t possibly have the first notion of what went on between us back in those days. I don’t know where you got this from, but you’ve got it all wrong!’

  ‘I’ll come back to that. Let’s talk about Helen. She came down here to Temple Regis – why?’

  ‘Somebody was after her.’

  ‘Who? Why?’

  ‘That’s for you to find out,’ said Radipole, rallying. ‘She felt threatened, in danger. I’d always looked after her, I always would.’

  ‘Despite the fact she looked down her nose at you? Despite the fact she knew it was her money that bought this place?’

  ‘I loved her,’ said the hotelier, passionately. ‘I would love her still, if she were alive!’

  ‘Even though she spent the night with Bobby Bunton, the man who’s determined to ruin your business?’

  ‘It wasn’t the first time,’ he said wearily, ‘it wouldn’t have been the last. Look, I loved her but I knew her frailties – for heaven’s sake, I knew them better than anyone. I was her protector!’

  ‘A serious personality disorder, I heard – narcissism. Is that what it was?’

  ‘She had to prove she was irresistible to all men. No matter their age, their class, or their colour. But she always came back to me.’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Well,’ conceded Radipole, ‘not always, let’s say.’ He stared sadly into his wine.

  ‘But you hated Bunton. Look what you did to him the other day – you took him out of here, beat him up, kicked him when he fell. That’s not normal behaviour! That’s revenge for him and Helen.’

  ‘I may have got a bit enthusiastic. But no, that was more about those ruddy dodgems and the fact he was determined to drive me out of business. The man’s no more than a thug – an ape! – he had it coming.’

  ‘So you’re saying you weren’t upset by Helen and Bobby Bunton.’

  ‘Look, she came down here. She was being pursued. She asked for sanctuary. She said we could make it up. I didn’t believe it – she ran away three years ago, changed her identity, disappeared off the face of the earth. I tried to find her but she was determined. She was a little bit mad, you know that, but she was also extremely cunning. A year after her father was killed she did a bunk and I didn’t hear from her until she showed up here a month or so ago.’

  Miss Dimont sat up. ‘A month? She’d been in Temple Regis for a month?’

  ‘She was living with me in the annexe out the back. It was lovely, almost like old times. She didn’t want to go out so I took care of whatever she needed. Then when that thug Bunton started upping the ante, making life difficult for me, I asked her if she’d check into Buntorama, incognito, and try to find out what was going on.’

  The waitress came over and Radipole ordered another glass of wine. He thought for a moment, then said, ‘You?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  Miss Dimont related Bunton’s account of his encounter with Helen. ‘She took him back to her chalet. Did she bring back any useful information to you after that meeting?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Were you jealous of her being with him? Enough to want to kill her?’

  ‘Kill her? You can’t have been listening. I loved her!’

  ‘You loved her so much that out of revenge for her deserting you, you seduced her cousin. Elektra. Is that love?’

  ‘How do you know that!’ Radipole looked worried, frightened even. How old had she been?

  ‘I’ll be frank, Mr Radipole.’ She looked round to make sure there was still someone close by – where in heaven’s name was Terry when she needed him? – ‘I think you shot Helen Patrikis. I can understand why – she was unable to commit to a life with you, and you couldn’t bear to be without her. Maybe she was going to run away with this person who was pursuing her, maybe not, but you knew you only had her for a fleeting moment and then she’d be gone.

  ‘You weren’t upset about her night with Bobby Bunton, but you were upset when she told you how much she admired Bobby being a self-made man, not relying on handouts from rich Greek families.’ Miss Dimont was making this up – but maybe her invention was not so wrong because Radipole did not challenge it.

  ‘You shot her. You shot her in Bunton’s holiday camp, and then you rang him up and told him you were going to pin the murder on him.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Yes,’ said Radipole. ‘I did do that.

  ‘I didn’t shoot her, but I did say I could fix it so it looked like Bunton had done it. I don’t know if I could have managed that, but it certainly rattled him.’

  ‘Which is why he brought in the Devil’s Dodgems. Fighting fire with fire.’

  ‘You might say that, yes.’

  The ammunition in Miss Dimont’s locker was running out. She’d come to the Primrose Bar convinced of Radipole’s guilt, sure that he was a ruthless killer ready to slay a father and a daughter. Now in the space of a few moments she’d changed her mind. That Radipole was a criminal there could be no doubt, but it was the sort of criminality that Uncle Arthur so often complained about – low-level cheating, wily dealing. He was the sort of man who’d move the chess pieces to his advantage while your back was turned. Nothing more.

  ‘Why didn’t you go to the police and tell them who Helen was?’

  ‘I loved her. She told me more than anything in the world she wanted to disappear. I let her do just that. She passed out of this world without a single soul knowing she’d died. She died a nobody.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like someone with acute narcissism to me.’

  ‘You know nothing!’ replied Radipole, angrily. ‘That’s exactly what it is – the thought that people are searching for you all over the world, always hoping you will make an appearance again. But that you’ve taken yourself to a place where you’ll never be found, and the longing and waiting will go on for ever.’

  ‘Do you think she wanted to die, then?’

  ‘Quite probably.’

  ‘Who killed her?’

  ‘It hardly matters. She’s dead. She wanted to be dead, and now she is dead.’

  Miss Dimont looked at him. ‘You don’t mean that. It’s a natural instinct in mankind to look for revenge when misdeeds occur. Our whole justice system is based on retribution. You would like, wouldn’t you, to
see the person responsible for Helen’s murder brought to justice?’

  Radipole got up. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes, I would. But if it’s who I think it is, you’ll never get them.’

  Good Lord, thought Miss Dimont, here finally is the chink of light I have been looking for. Thank heavens!

  ‘So, Mr Radipole,’ she said, holding her breath as she did so, ‘who did kill Helen?’

  He looked down at her. ‘Loath as I am to say this,’ was his response, ‘it was not that thug Bobby Bunton. I wish to God it was, but it wasn’t.’

  Drat it, thought Miss Dimont, that’s both my suspects gone in an afternoon. I’m going home to Mulligatawny!

  TWENTY-SIX

  Elektra was in the garden, pinning back the clematis on the wash-house wall.

  ‘It’s getting a bit over-run,’ she said, smiling, though she appeared rather nervy and the smile seemed forced. ‘Have you got some secateurs?’

  ‘I’ll fetch them,’ said Judy, ‘did you have a nice day?’

  ‘Heavenly. This part of the world is so beautiful – I see why you decided to settle here. Shall I make tea?’

  ‘Straight to the drinks, Elektra, and leave the pruning. I need to talk to you.’

  They settled on the old wooden bench by the apple tree and swirled their gin-and-tonics round their glasses. Elektra seemed to be finding it hard to settle despite the warm embrace of the fading sun.

  ‘Do you mind me talking about Helen? An awful lot seems to have happened quite quickly, and I would very much appreciate your opinion.’

  Elektra pushed back her thick black hair and nodded.

  ‘For some time,’ said Judy, ‘I’ve been convinced it was Hugh Radipole who killed your cousin. He had motive enough, and the opportunity. I don’t know if he owns a gun, but types like that always have one in their desk drawer somewhere.

  ‘He’s clever, and ruthless – look at what he did to you just to hurt Helen, to try to win her back.

  ‘But in the end he’s only some of the things we think he is. Behind that facade of upper-crust sophistication is a lad who left school at twelve and worked in a garage. Whose entrée to the sophisticated world he came to inhabit was through buying and selling cars. Who climbed his way out of mediocrity by seducing the daughter of a very rich man.

 

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