A Quarter Past Dead

by TP Fielden

  ‘I told her I could help her, make her better. But it was no good, she had reached the end. “I want to die a nobody,” she said, “without a name. And I want to die now. If you love me, Aristide, shoot me now.”’

  He looked at Miss Dimont, his eyes unseeing.

  ‘And so I shot her. Dead.’

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  ‘The person I feel sorriest for,’ said Athene as she brought round a pot of her special tea, ‘is that poor old inspector. I saw him only last week in the street – the spring had gone out of his step, his shoulders were hunched, he looked as though he was completely lost. Outside the Home & Colonial, too!’

  ‘He’s back on top,’ said Judy. ‘No need to worry about him. He got the confession, he made the arrest. And all here in Temple Regis – he’ll be a hero all over again!’

  ‘Typical,’ said Terry, with a sniff. They were all sitting round the conference table in the editor’s office only, it being Saturday, Mr Rhys was not there to conduct proceedings. ‘I uncover the clue that solves the whole thing – the foot – but old Topham gets the kudos!’

  ‘I suppose you’ll have next week’s Page One then,’ said Betty, who was supposed to be at her desk writing up the wedding reports but had wandered in – anything to get away from the wretched bridesmaids, the guipure lace and the stephanotis.

  ‘It won’t last,’ said Judy, without the slightest regret. ‘We know that it’s our scoop, but the Sunday newspapers will have it tomorrow.’

  ‘That Sergeant Gull.’

  ‘He needs to make a bob or two on the side to support that allotment of his.’

  ‘Have we got any biscuits?’

  Peter Pomeroy nipped out and got some from his desk drawer. ‘I want to give you a really strong headline next Thursday,’ he said as he walked back with a tin in his hand. ‘Just give the story to me now as you’ll be writing it.’

  ‘Well, it was simple really, once all the pieces were in place,’ said Judy. ‘Helen Patrikis was a very damaged person – damaged from early childhood because her father made her think she’d killed her mother.

  ‘Like his brother Aristide, Stavros Patrikis was proud, powerful, manipulative and rich. With all that money he could do what he liked. He played with his daughter’s emotions in the cruellest possible fashion and, as a defence mechanism, she built a wall around herself. She was diagnosed with a mental illness – narcissism – but maybe the doctors got it wrong. Maybe she behaved in that outrageous manner just to keep her father at bay, who knows. Certainly she was a very troubled person.’

  ‘You can understand why she wanted to kill him,’ said Auriol, who’d come into the office to congratulate her friend. ‘Money or no money.’

  ‘In the end,’ said Judy, nodding, ‘she despised him. She despised the fact that he’d given her – his supposedly prize possession – away to a car salesman. It was when she discovered that she was no more than a commodity to him – like one of his ships – that I think she hatched the plan.

  ‘Hugh Radipole introduced Helen to Johnny Ramensky, and she seduced Johnny into burgling the family home. While he was emptying the safe downstairs, she was in Stavros’ bedroom stabbing him to death and photographing his corpse.’

  ‘Twenty-seven knife wounds,’ murmured Auriol, shaking her head. ‘Unbelievable.’

  ‘My foot!’ said Terry.

  ‘Oh shut up about your foot!’ said Judy cheerily. ‘And anyway it was his, not yours.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘She always went for the older man. She threw herself at Radipole just as she threw herself at Johnny Ramensky. Even Bobby Bunton, for heaven’s sake! It got more dangerous when she started making up to uncle Aristide.’

  ‘She made him love her?’ asked Betty, intrigued. It was a trick she had yet to master herself.

  ‘I think so. It was all part of the anger she felt for her father. The two brothers hated each other – they were jealous of each other’s success in their separate parts of the business. Instead of being in competition with other ship owners, they were in competition with each other. One was constantly trying to outdo the other.’

  ‘Even so,’ said Betty, shaking her head. ‘Her uncle. Disgusting!’

  ‘Who knows why he allowed himself to fall for her. And in any case,’ said Judy, ‘we only have his word for it that he did love her. Maybe he was after his brother’s money all along, and the girl was neither here nor there. We may never know what drove him to fire that final shot, but he’s confessed to killing her and Inspector Topham’s got the gun as evidence. That’s enough to convict him.’

  ‘What made her disappear?’ asked Peter Pomeroy. ‘I mean, when she inherited her father’s wealth she could have just moved away from Hampstead – bought a castle in Scotland, anything, just to get away.’

  ‘Aristide knew she’d killed him. He hinted as much last night. When you’re that rich you have no need to go to the police, you can exact your own form of retribution on those who are inside your magic circle. When she got her hands on Stavros’ money, he really truly believed it should come to him.’

  ‘So was it money, or love?’ asked Betty.

  ‘The Greeks are a fierce and proud race,’ said Judy. ‘They are conscious of their history – events of two thousand years ago are as if they’d happened yesterday. Aristide Patrikis convinced himself the law of epikleros or patrouchos was as valid today as it was in the year dot. It may not exist in the statute-book, but to him it made sense – no woman should be allowed to inherit vast wealth. What, for heaven’s sake, could she possibly know about what to do with it?’

  ‘The colossal arrogance,’ said Auriol, not with anger but with familiarity. She’d spent the best years of her life working for powerful men.

  ‘Helen knew she had to get away. Uncle Aristide knew she’d killed her father. That gave him enough right, in his eyes at least, to claim the fortune – a murderer, she no longer deserved it. She went on the run, leaving clues here and there which suggested she’d gone to Australia or the Bahamas. Instead she rented a small house halfway up a mountain and decided to sit it out.’

  ‘She must have been bored,’ said Peter. ‘After that fancy life in Hampstead.’

  ‘That’s, I think, when things went really wrong,’ replied Judy. ‘Hugh Radipole told me that when she came back to him she confessed some of the things she’d done to keep herself amused. She would buy people, and make them do things.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘Let’s just say that after a time she realised she had lost all sense of what is right and what is wrong. Instead of using her money to do good things, she used it to make mischief in other people’s lives – buying them, then tossing them away.’

  Betty was trying to imagine being bought. ‘It was her money to do with as she wished,’ she said.

  ‘Aristide didn’t think so. But even though he spent a small fortune trying to find her, he never did – because he was looking in the wrong place. It was only when she came back to Britain that he caught up with her.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Auriol, ‘that’s the one thing I couldn’t fathom. If she’d been so successful at disappearing herself, why come back – and how did Aristide find her?’

  ‘Well. She came home for two reasons. First, I think the dissolute life she lived in Switzerland had left her confused and frightened and rudderless. And in her weakened state she began to believe she could see signs that Aristide was finally catching up with her. The very people she’d bought, she thought, were betraying her.’

  ‘She was taking drugs, by the sound of it.’

  ‘Quite possibly. She came back to Britain to be with Radipole, to seek his protection – he was the one person she thought she could rely on. After all it was her money, or her father’s, which had set him up in the Marine and had turned him into a successful hotelier. Plus, though she hated and despised him, she also still loved him – a characteristic of all her relationships with men. Including her father.’

&nbs
p; ‘So who gave her away?’

  ‘Radipole did.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘He told me. He was paid by Aristide to blab the moment she surfaced, which he shrewdly reckoned she would. Though Radipole couldn’t have known Aristide would come down to Temple Regis and shoot dead his own niece.’

  ‘People!’ said Athene, somehow capturing in a single word the iniquity of everyone involved in this extraordinary tale.

  ‘As you say,’ said Judy, shaking her head, ‘people.’

  Peter pushed round the biscuit tin and Athene got up to make more tea.

  ‘I think she’d reached the end of her tether,’ went on Judy. ‘I honestly believe she wanted to die. Radipole said she was in a terrible state while she was living with him in the annexe at the back of the hotel.’

  ‘Yet he still got her to go and spy on Bobby Bunton.’

  ‘Naturally. Not a man with a great deal of heart, even if he did claim to love her.’

  ‘Extraordinary when you think about it,’ said Auriol. ‘Everyone loved her – her father, even though he blamed her for her mother’s death. Radipole, though he betrayed her. Aristide, even though he shot her.’

  ‘It was a miserable life but now it’s over,’ said Judy. ‘Perhaps we should go round to the Fort or the Jawbones and raise a glass to her. Come on, everybody!’

  ‘Would love to,’ said Betty, ‘only I’ve still got half-a-dozen wedding reports to finish. Then I’m going to have lunch with somebody you know, Leila Davidson.’

  ‘Good Lord,’ said Judy, ‘how do you know her?’

  ‘Well,’ said Betty, ‘while you were off chasing after murderers, she rang up hoping to speak to you. She just wanted someone to chat to. We got talking and I ended up mentioning Dud – well, she knows him! Said her husband was a member of the same Masonic lodge, and then it all came tumbling out. We had a good old chinwag, I can tell you – honestly, those men!

  ‘Anyway,’ said Betty proudly, ‘we made some decisions between us.’

  ‘Really?’ said Judy. It was a relief not to be talking about murderers any more. ‘I told her about Dud and my hair. Said he was always pottering off with that stupid little leather case of his, smarming up to people, doing secret handshakes. So then she told me about her hubby – spending all the housekeeping money on those ridiculous aprons and medals and so forth, and how he was always busy learning pages of gobbledegook so he can advance to the next stage in the Craft.’

  ‘Really,’ said Judy, ‘I’m so glad. I wanted to write something in support of her but I know Mr Rhys would never let it in the paper.’

  ‘We must have talked for an hour. Then we had a drink and by the end we’d come to some very important decisions. I saw how it would be for me if I carried on with Dud – the same kind of existence as Leila, playing second fiddle to a bunch of men who want to lock themselves away in a room and play secret societies.

  ‘So I thought, right Leila, that’s it. I’m dropping Dud.’

  Good heavens, thought Miss Dimont, that’s a first. You’ve never dumped a man in your life, it’s always been the other way round.

  ‘Well done, Betty! Finally I’m free to say Dud Fensome is frightful and you can do much better for yourself.’

  ‘And Leila – well! She went home and said to her husband, “I have met this woman who has dumped the man she loved because he put the Freemasons first. Well, I’m going to do the same. Either you dump them, or I dump you.”’

  ‘I would never have thought it. She seemed so put-upon.’

  ‘I gave her the courage! And guess what, she won! Hubby has resigned from the Lodge and he actually said it was a weight off his mind. They’re all lovey-dovey again, and I’m free of Dud! So we’re having lunch to celebrate!’

  ‘Well, Auriol, let’s us go and have lunch to celebrate. Not often I solve a double murder!’

  ‘Ah, well. Um,’ said Auriol, patting her hair and rising from the table. ‘Unfortunately I have some things to do.’

  ‘Dressed like that?’ said Judy suspiciously. ‘Not the Admiral!’

  ‘Which Admiral?’ snapped Betty, suddenly alert. Auriol’s eyes swivelled dangerously.

  Crikey, thought Judy, I’ve put my foot in it. The beastly traitor is a double dealer even when it comes to women! ‘Er, Admiral Bentinck,’ she said quickly to Betty before Auriol could reply. ‘Do you know him?’

  Betty subsided. ‘Everybody seems to have an admiral round here,’ she said with a self-satisfied smirk.

  ‘Come on, then, Athene, you’ll come and have a drink?’

  ‘No, precious, I can’t. Got to go home and make up the spare room. I’ve got a new lodger.’

  It had never occurred to Miss Dimont that Athene, so ethereal, so much a part of the celestial pantheon, could do anything quite so practical as be a landlady – after all, look at the way she dressed, haphazard wasn’t the word!

  ‘Oh,’ she said feigning interest, ‘anybody interesting?’

  ‘Greville Charles. From the Riverbridge office – lovely man!’

  ‘Well!’ said Judy. ‘But won’t that make it difficult for his work? So far to travel every day?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Athene. ‘Didn’t you hear? Oh no, you wouldn’t have done – you were dealing with the murder – he’s resigned. He went to see the doctor after you popped in to see him, and then handed in his resignation. He said how nice Mr Rhys had been about it and agreed it was probably better if he didn’t have the stress and strain.

  ‘It was what he’s been waiting and praying for, Judy. And you did it! Up till your visit he felt it was his duty to soldier on, but honestly, it would have killed him if he’d gone on much longer. He’ll come and be with me and I’ll look after him, and I’ve got him a nice part-time job at the Kardomah, crushing the coffee beans.’

  ‘How happy that makes me to hear that!’ exclaimed Judy. And how sad, she thought.

  She turned to the one person she could always rely on. ‘So then, Terry, last of the Mohicans! Let’s be off – which shall it be, the Fort, or the Jawbones? You choose!’

  ‘Er,’ said Terry.

  Judy looked at him sharply. ‘Come along now, don’t tell me you’ve got to go off and polish your Leica. Not on a Saturday! Not after our great triumph!’

  Terry looked sheepish. ‘Got a date,’ he said.

  ‘Who?’ snapped Judy.

  ‘Fluffles. She decided she’s had it with Bobby Bunton – I think it was the business with the murdered girl that finally did it. He won’t marry her – said he can’t afford to, but that’s a lie.’

  ‘You can’t possibly be serious, Terry! Why she must be…’

  ‘Looked nice in her fur bikini,’ said Terry smugly. ‘Very nice. Especially after I put a filter on the…’ and his voice burbled off into an indecipherable drone.

  ‘Well,’ said Miss Dimont, with more than a touch of pepper dusting her voice, ‘I have things to do, can’t sit here any longer. I have to go home and write to my mother.’

  The whole room looked at her.

  ‘I sincerely hope she won’t drop dead from the shock,’ said Auriol.

  If you enjoyed this Miss Dimont mystery, then read on for an extract from her first adventure, The Riviera Express…

  ONE

  When Miss Dimont smiled, which she did a lot, she was beautiful. There was something mystical about the arrangement of her face-furniture – the grey eyes, the broad forehead, the thin lips wide spread, her dainty perfect teeth. In that smile was a joie de vivre which encouraged people to believe that good must be just around the corner.

  But there were two faces to Miss Dimont. When hunched over her typewriter, rattling out the latest episode of life in Temple Regis, she seemed not so sunny. Her corkscrew hair fell out of its makeshift pinnings, her glasses slipped down the convex nose, those self-same lips pinched themselves into a tight little knot and a general air of mild chaos and discontent emanated like puffs of smoke from her desk.

  Life on the Riviera Expre
ss was no party. The newspaper’s offices, situated at the bottom of the hill next door to the brewery, maintained their dreary pre-war combination of uprightness and formality. The front hall, the only area of access permitted to townsfolk, spoke with its oak panelling and heavy desks of decorum, gentility, continuity.

  But the most momentous events in Temple Regis in 1958

  – its births, marriages and deaths, its council ordinances, its police court and its occasional encounters with celebrity

  – were channelled through a less august set of rooms, inadequately lit and peopled by journalism’s flotsam and jetsam, up a back corridor and far from the public gaze.

  Lately there’d been a number of black-and-white ‘B’ features at the Picturedrome, but these always portrayed the heady excitements of Fleet Street. Behind the green baize door, beyond the stout oak panelling, the making of this particular local journal was decidedly less ritzy.

  Far from Miss Dimont lifting an ivory telephone to her ear while partaking of a genteel breakfast in her silk-sheeted bed, the real-life reporter started her day with an apple and ‘The Calls’ – humdrum visits to Temple’s police station, its council offices, fire station, and sundry other sources of bread-and-butter material whose everyday occurrences would, next Friday, fill the heart of the Express.

  Like a laden beachcomber she would return mid-morning to her desk to write up her gleanings before leaving for the Magistrates’ Court where the bulk of her work, from that bottomless well of human misdeeds and misfortunes, daily bubbled up.

  After luncheon, usually taken alone with her crossword in the Signal Box Café, she would return briefly to court before preparing for an evening meeting of the Town Council, the Townswomen’s Guild, or – light relief – a performance by the Temple Regis Amateur Operatic Society.

  Then it would be home on her moped, corkscrew hair blowing in the wind, to Mulligatawny, whose sleek head would be staring out of the mullioned window awaiting his supper and her pithy account of the day’s events.