“It’s in the office. Did the library throw up anything useful?”
“There was one thing.” Maltravers took out a notebook and began flicking over pages. “I half remembered it, but the details had gone … here it is … About a month before she vanished, Jenni Hilton was a witness at the inquest of some character called Barry Kershaw. He was mixed up in the pop music business as a fixer or agent or something like that. Threw himself off the top floor of a block of flats. Suicide. Ring any bells?”
Fraser shook his head. “Never heard of him. Was he famous?”
“There were some big names at the inquest. He certainly knew a lot of famous people.”
“And what are you thinking? About Jenni Hilton?” Maltravers shrugged as he put the notebook away. “Nothing specific. But his death and her disappearance were close together. I smell a possible angle, but I’d like some more information before I see her.”
“From that far back?” Fraser looked thoughtful for a moment. “Most of the people from those days are dead or gaga now … Unless … What the hell was his name? News editor on the old Daily Sketch. Everybody knew him … Tom Wilkie.”
“Tom Wilkie?” Maltravers repeated in disbelief. “He must be a hundred and eight! Where is he?”
“Newspaper Press Fund retirement home in Dorking. I was talking to someone the other week who’d been down to see him. Still has whisky with his cornflakes every morning — and still has a mind like a steel trap apparently. He was giving chapter and verse on the Profumo affair and how he scooped everyone with some exclusive on the Great Train Robbery. If you want to know about anything that made news between the end of the war and 1980 when he retired, he’ll tell you. You do remember him, don’t you?”
“Who could forget?” said Maltravers. “He once tried to poach me from the Daily Mail. In the back bar of the Harrow, just opposite the office it was. Christ, he could have given Bacchus drinking lessons. Damned good operator as well.”
“Then he’s your man. If this Kershaw was news, Tom will probably be able to tell you everything including his shoe size. Try calling him when we get back.”
Their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of two other members of The Chronicle staff. Maltravers had never met either of them, but within minutes they discovered mutual acquaintances in the remarkably small village in which journalists live. For the next hour, Maltravers let himself be absorbed again in the world of legendary cock-ups, unforgettable — often unforgivable — characters, gruesome misprints and incidents like the weekly newspaper in Yorkshire which put out a billboard in 1912 reading, “Titanic Disaster: No one from Cleckheaton drowned”. Journalists are finally story-tellers and very good at a little polishing to improve the facts where necessary. It makes them excellent company — and keeps libel lawyers off the streets.
*
Things were busier when they returned to the office, a couple of hours nearer deadline prompting the thought that there seemed to be more work to do than there was time left for its completion. Fortified with four pints, Fraser went back to his unfunny funny columnist and Maltravers rang the Newspaper Press Fund, the charity founded by Charles Dickens which looks after journalists who have not prepared for the day when their monthly pay packets stop; this includes virtually all of them and most do not even have the foresight to join the fund. A life lived in daily or weekly bites does not lend itself to long-term planning. It was likely that Tom Wilkie had signed the membership forms when he was out of his tree one night and forgotten all about it, so he had never cancelled. So, probably by mere chance, he was now being fed and watered in the company of his own kind. Maltravers was given the number of the Dorking home and called it. Yes, Mr Wilkie was there. If he would just hold for a moment …
“Wilkie.” Glaswegian Gorbals toned down to be comprehensible to English ears still had the snap of a Black Watch sergeant major.
“Hello, Tom. Gus Maltravers.”
There was a short silence, then, “Daily Mail about 1975. Tall, brown hair, blue eyes, thin face. Kept using long words in your copy but could crack a story all right. Turned down a job I offered you on the Sketch. Married Fiona West from the Sunday Mirror. Right?”
“What was my mother’s maiden name?”
“Piss off,” Wilkie said. “How’s the business?”
“Much the same. No new stories, they just happen to different people. I’m only on the edges these days, anyway. I quit to be a writer.”
“Better than ending up on The Guardian like you wanted to.”
“Cynic. Look, Tom, I need some help with a piece I’m working on. Do you remember someone called Barry Kershaw?”
“Full back with Aston Villa who turned out to be queer?” Wilkie had always considered “gay” a prissy euphemism. “Great story, that.”
“No, another one. Mixed up with the pop business in the Sixties. Committed suicide by — ”
“Killer Kershaw?” Wilkie interrupted. “What’s brought him up again?”
Maltravers scribbled down “Killer” and underlined it several times. “It’s just a possible line on a feature I’m doing. Why killer?”
“He had a habit of wrecking people’s careers if they stepped out of line. I’ll give you a quote I got once which never made it into print. The stench of Barry Kershaw makes vomit smell like roses.’”
“Who said that?”
“Jenni Hilton. Remember her? There were a couple of pars in today’s Express about … Hey, what are you on to?” Imperishable news editor instincts surfaced again.
“Possibly nothing,” Maltravers replied. “I’m just kicking around some ideas. Why did she say that?”
“Because he was a shit,” Wilkie told him bluntly. “Everybody said the same sort of thing, but hers was the best quote. We were working on an expose at one time, but the lawyers put the mockers on it and the next thing he was dead.”
“Suicide,” Maltravers repeated.
“You don’t question coroner’s verdicts.”
“And what am I supposed to understand by that?”
“You’re on the story and I’m an old man,” Wilkie said. “Nobody remembers Kershaw now, except burnt out buggers like me. But I’ll give you a contact. Louella Sinclair. She’ll know as much as anyone.”
“Where do I find her?”
“Shop on the King’s Road called Syllabub. Can’t remember the number, but it’s towards the Sloane Square end. I know it was still there about six months back, because I was driven past it.”
“What were you doing in town?”
“They wheeled me out for another bloody memorial service at St Bride’s.” There was a faint Scottish melancholy which Maltravers had never heard before in Wilkie’s voice. “I have to look in the deaths column in The Times every morning to make sure I’m still alive. Nearly all my generation’s gone now. About time I did as well.”
“You’ll live for ever, Tom,” Maltravers assured him. “Now I know where you are, I’ll come down sometime. Promise. And I’ll bring a bottle. Glenmorangie, twelve years old, isn’t it?”
“When I moved in here, the doctor said it would kill me.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Nearly ten years.” Wilkie chuckled wickedly. “Mind you, the doctor’s dead. That was one funeral I didn’t mind going to.”
Chapter Three
Jenni Hilton knew that the interview with Maltravers was the first bridge she had to cross. As Russell had grown older, she had found it harder to dismiss the constant comments from friends regretting she was not using her talents. Now he was at university and she was a free agent again. She had needed the years of fiercely-protected privacy, but the idea of a comeback had become increasingly insistent. Her career had mattered, the demands it had imposed stretching her and giving a sense of being her own person, unique and separate from the child she had been. Part of her personality had become under-nourished, not by lack of fame which was meaningless, but by an intangible feeling of dissatisfaction, almost waste. It
had nothing to do with money. She had made a great deal during more than five years of success — even now royalties trickled in — and it had been intelligently invested. Her father had been a successful career diplomat and Jenni and her sister had jointly inherited nearly half a million pounds on his death. Money had never been important — it was just there — but the intellectual challenge of everything she had run away from was missing and she began to want it back.
She had spent a long time thinking about how she might accomplish a carefully controlled return. Publicity would be part of the price, a loss of safe anonymity. Agreeing to talk to The Chronicle — a newspaper far removed from the hysterics of the tabloids which had once pursued her like hungry wolves — was the first step. But she was still meeting a journalist again and was out of practice at evading the apparently innocent but loaded question, cautious of everything she said in case some phrase could be maliciously extracted out of context and distorted into a different meaning. In the Sixties, she had rapidly learned how to play the game, now she was only accustomed to being with people she could trust who did not lay traps for her unguarded tongue.
Her misgivings were alleviated when Maltravers telephoned from The Chronicle offices and they talked for nearly half an hour, although his initial inquiry had been nothing more than to arrange a suitable time to see her. He had self-mockingly confessed his teenage infatuation before perceptively discussing her film performances. His knowledge of acting techniques led to the revelation that he had written plays and had an actress girlfriend.
“You don’t sound like a journalist,” she had commented at one point. “At least, not the ones I’ve known.”
“There are some tame animals in the zoo,” he had replied. “One of the reasons I quit it full time was that I wasn’t prepared to bite people hard enough.”
She felt less uneasy about it after agreeing to see him in a couple of days. A call to Richard Tomlinson, the playwright Maltravers had also interviewed for The Chronicle, gave further reassurance. Tomlinson told her about Maltravers’s reputation — far from a best-selling writer, but admired by those who knew his work — and said he had respected the confidentiality of certain things he had been told. Jenni Hilton accepted that he could be something she had not believed existed; a journalist who did not threaten. In that he was rare rather than unique, but her experience had been almost exclusively restricted to those who would never let the facts get in the way of a good story. It did not occur to her that he might not be prepared to let anything get in the way of the facts.
*
As Maltravers opened the front door in Coppersmith Street, a high, squeaky voice greeted him from the direction of the front room.
“Hello. I’m Bubbles. Shall I show you what I can do to all those horrid dirty dishes? Just watch this.”
He stepped across the hall and stood in the doorway. Tess was holding a very large Scotch — it was only four o’clock — and had a glazed look of total insanity on her face.
“See?” she squeaked hysterically. “They’re so shiny and sparkling you can see your face in them.”
“Come on, you’re making it up.”
Tess shook her head. “I couldn’t make it up. Nobody could. When I read the script I nearly walked out. But I’d signed the sodding contract and was stuck with it. I did it in five different voices and I’m just praying to God they don’t decide to use my real one.”
“Think of the money.”
“Think of the shame.” She swallowed half the whisky. “Anyway, never again, unless I get to read the script first. I found your note incidentally. The Chronicle’s asked you to do an interview?”
“Yes, but not any old interview,” Maltravers told her. “Jenni Hilton, no less.”
“Jenni Hilton?” Tess sounded intrigued. “The love of your life?”
“You are the love of my life … Bubbles,” he replied. “And don’t start taking the piss again or I’ll make sure everyone knows your secret.”
Tess grinned and kissed him. “I’m not taking the piss. It’s marvellous. How did it happen?”
She stretched out on the settee as he told her about the afternoon, including the line on Barry Kershaw that he wanted to investigate, and his call to Tom Wilkie.
“You’re going to see Louella?” Tess sounded unexpectedly delighted. “I’ll come with you.”
“Do you know her?”
“I haven’t seen her for ages, but I must have spent a fortune in Syllabub. I may spend another while you’re talking to her.”
“What’s she like?”
“She’s … ” Tess paused and gazed at the ceiling. “Incredible. If you put her in a book nobody would believe you. When are you seeing her?”
“I was going to try ringing her now and fix it up for the morning.”
“Tell her you know me and that I’ll be with you.” Tess stood up. “Now I’m going for a shower … with no bloody bubbles.”
Ten minutes later Maltravers put the phone down and went through to the bathroom.
“We’re seeing her at about half-past ten,” he said to the outline of Tess’s body behind the shower curtain. “Odd call, though.”
“In what way?” Tess asked above the splash of the water.
“Can’t quite explain it. It was as though she was startled at being asked about Kershaw. Frankly, I think if I hadn’t mentioned you she’d have said no. She sends her love, by the way.”
The water stopped and Tess pulled the curtain back. “It must have surprised her being asked about someone who died that far back. Pass the towel.”
“There was more to it than that.” Maltravers took the towel from the wooden rack and handed it to her. “It was almost as though she was frightened.”
“Nobody frightens Louella Sinclair,” Tess said firmly as she began to dry herself. “She frightens them. You’ll see what I mean.”
*
“I simply refuse to let you walk out of here with that, madam! The colour’s not you, the style is out of the question on forty-inch hips and we’re not eighteen any more are we? In fact, I think we’ve passed it twice and the second time’s fading into memory isn’t it? If there’s nothing on the rail over there, there’s a little place down the road doing a very bijou line in tents. The colour range is limited, but the dimensions are generous.”
Tess raised an amused eyebrow as Maltravers stared at her in silent disbelief. Fighting time and weight, the customer did not appear in the least offended, but was obviously appalled at the prospect of being forced to leave empty-handed. Bitchy insults from the proprietor were clearly part of the price one paid for patronising Syllabub, on top of labels that started in the low hundreds. The wait had also been an opportunity for him to observe Louella Sinclair; high heels, close-fitting grey skirt and white frilly blouse with a cameo brooch at the throat. Mustard-gold hair, long and expensively tousled around a square and determined face, could have been a wig, but it was impossible to be certain. Poised, sleek and confident among pastel watercolours, William Morris wallpaper and subtle lighting, she worked on the principle that the customer was invariably wrong and had to be told so. It was an approach which very few retailers could get away with. The woman obediently moved to the rail which might enable her to purchase something from Syllabub — two others had already been bluntly turned down as unsuitable — and Louella Sinclair was free to talk.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, but one of my regular girls is off and the stand-in staff simply don’t know how to handle some of these women.” Dark brown voice was edged with masculine notes. “They’d sell to anyone who walked in waving a Coutts chequebook around. Tess, you’re looking marvellous.”
She kissed her then stepped back holding both her hands, expertly assessing the combination of Jacques Vert skirt and blouse. “Not absolutely right with your hair colouring, but infinitely better than some of the horrors I see.”
Tess bowed slightly in acknowledgement and Louella Sinclair turned penetrating slate-blue eyes towards Ma
ltravers. “And this is the man who wants to talk to me about Barry Kershaw, is it? Can I trust him?”
“Yes you can, Louella,” Tess told her. “Completely.”
Louella Sinclair held out her hand and Maltravers felt the grasp of strong fingers capped with ox-blood nails. “We’ll talk in private.”
She led them through the shop and into a small room at the back. Such unseen facilities were usually tatty and undecorated, but here the chairs and the table on which freshly made coffee was waiting were quality Georgian reproductions and two Hockney prints hung on the wall.
“Please sit down.” She picked up the silver pot. “It’s Cuban, but surprisingly good. And do try one of these.” They accepted Fortnum and Mason truffles and she began to pour the coffee. “Before I say anything at all, I want to know something. What’s brought Barry Kershaw up again?”
“Chance,” said Maltravers. “His name cropped up when I was doing some research into Jenni Hilton.”
“And why were you doing that?”
“I’m going to interview her for The Chronicle. Did you know her?”
“At the London première of The Stuart Queen she borrowed my lip gloss in the ladies room. That was as close as we ever got, although I often met her casually here and there. But I thought she took a vow of silence donkey’s years ago.”
“She’s about to break it. She’s moved back to London again as well.”
“I’d heard.” Louella handed them their cups then sat on a shield-back armchair. For a moment she sipped her coffee in silence.
“I need an assurance from you right from the start,” she said finally. “Nothing is to be written down and I want your word that you haven’t got a tape recorder hidden in that jacket. Agreed?”
“I haven’t,” Maltravers assured her. “Tess will confirm that I don’t cheat.”
“If you hadn’t told me you knew Tess, I don’t think I’d have agreed to see you at all,” she replied. “Incidentally, how did you find me?”
Murder in Waiting (Augustus Maltravers Mystery Book 5) Page 3