Stop Press Murder

by Peter Bartram

  I said: “Spare a minute, Sidney.”

  He gave me the kind of lingering look that made me feel I needed to wash my hands and said: “For you, a whole hour. But not just now, dear boy. Busy, busy, busy.”

  I said: “It’s urgent – just one question. Do you know anything about a silent-movie actress called Marie Richmond?”

  The cat’s eyes shot me a sly glance. He grinned, gave me a playful chuck under the chin and said: “Who’s a naughty boy then?”

  I said: “Save the Gay Hussar act for your fan club. I’m on two deadlines and need some information.”

  Sidney pursed his lips. “Trade for trade,” he said.

  Pinker had a reputation for never giving a little unless he got a little.

  So I said: “What is it?”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a couple of tickets. “Hippodrome tomorrow night. Another variety music hall. How I hate them. Those speciality acts bore me rigid. If I have to watch another young man in tights juggling with his balls… I think I’d rather die.”

  He did that eyebrow thing again.

  “And you want me to see the show and write a crit?” I said.

  “I prefer the term ‘notice’, dear boy. But, yes. Seven pars should do it.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “We always get two tickets. You can take a friend. If you have one.”

  I shrugged. I needed Pinker’s help and he knew I’d have to pay the price. “I’ll write your notice,” I said. “So what can you tell me about Marie Richmond?”

  “Not more than you could find in a brief history of Britain’s silent-movie industry. But an old friend of mine acted with Miss Richmond. He’s also something of a walking encyclopaedia on the days of the silver screen. Toupée Terry. That is to say, Terry Montague. A former thespian himself. Although it’s been many a long year since he last trod the boards. Laid on them – well, that’s altogether another story.”

  “Does he live in Brighton?” I asked.

  “Near Fiveways. Although I can only think of four.” Pinker winked.

  I ignored it and said: “And you can get me in to see this Toupée?”

  Pinker held up his hands in mock horror. “You must never call him that, dear boy. Not unless you want to witness the hissiest little hissy fit in theatre-land. Artistic temperament, you know. But, yes, I can persuade him to see you – as long as I don’t have to sit through another soprano murdering I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls at the Hippodrome.”

  I took the tickets. “And, Sidney, this is urgent. I need to see Terry today.”

  “Consider it done, dear boy.”

  Back at my desk, I pulled the battered Remington towards me and hammered out the story about the pier murder.

  I used the intro I’d shown to Figgis. I had little hard information to go on, so it was a question of planting the few known facts among some artful speculation and colourful background. The piece made 14 pars, enough for a splash in the Afternoon Extra, which would please Figgis. I called for Cedric, the copy boy, and gave him the folios to take to the subs.

  “Another of your scoops, Mr Crampton?” he said. Cedric was an 18-year-old who’d been copy boy for three years. In the office, he was as respectful as a Buckingham Palace flunky. Out of it, I’d heard, he was a Jack-the-Lad with a reputation as a bird puller at Sherry’s on a Saturday night. I couldn’t see it, myself. He had an untidy mop of brown hair, freckles on his cheeks and a gap between his two front teeth that Terry Thomas would envy. He’d been angling for promotion to junior reporter for months, but Figgis wouldn’t hear of it.

  “This is a big one,” I said.

  “Anything I can do to help, Mr Crampton, just let me know.”

  For a moment, I thought about asking him to write the Profumo backgrounder, but Figgis would be mad if he found out. And he’d sack Cedric rather than me.

  So I said: “I’ll bear it in mind, Cedric.”

  He bustled off and I turned to the backgrounder. I rifled through the file on Birch Grove I’d retrieved from the morgue. There were plenty of cuttings about Macmillan entertaining distinguished guests at the house, but no mention of Profumo. It looked as though the former war minister had never been near the place. Certainly not on a visit that was recorded in the public prints. So my backgrounder was going to have to be written from the wrists.

  I rolled copy paper into the Remington and typed: “Prime Minister Harold Macmillan will return to his Birch Grove home this weekend to consider the fall-out from the political crisis caused by the disgrace of former war minister John Profumo.

  “Mr Macmillan has used the house, near Horsted Keynes, to entertain political figures such as President John F. Kennedy and General de Gaulle. But Mr Profumo can expect no welcome there in the future following his lies to the House of Commons about his liaison with call girls.

  “As the Prime Minister breathes the clean Sussex air, he will be hoping no more government ministers embarrass the government with sex scandals.”

  I pounded on in the same vein for ten more paragraphs. As I rolled the last folio out of the typewriter, Pinker slid alongside my desk.

  He leant over and whispered: “Terry will see you this afternoon at three.” He handed me a slip of paper with an address on it.

  “Remember,” he said, “no mention of hairpieces.”

  The man with the flame-red toupée opened the door on the chain, peered nervously up and down the street, and whispered: “Did Sidney send you?”

  I leaned closer and said: “Codename Pinker.”

  He nodded: “You can’t be too careful.”

  I pointed at the door chain and said: “Do I need a password to gain entry?”

  He said: “No, just common civility.”

  To emphasise his point, he shut the door. I stood on the doorstep, suitably contrite, promising myself that I would mend my manners while I listened to him wrestling the chain free from the clasp.

  I was outside a two-storey terraced house. A short path of black and white chequered tiles led up to the front door. It had peeling scarlet paint and a brass door knocker with a polished lion’s head.

  The chain stopped rattling and the door opened again. Terry was backlit by the dim light of the hallway. He was tall and slim and stood in a teapot pose with an elbow sticking out and a hand resting on his left hip. At a guess, I put him at seventy, but he looked like the kind of man who took pride in his appearance so he could have been older. He was wearing a blue-velvet smoking jacket over a pink shirt with fawn slacks. He had tied a red cravat with white polka dots around his neck. He smelt of Eau de Cologne.

  He asked: “Are you Colin Crampton?”

  I said: “That’s what my Chronicle byline says – so it must be true.”

  He said: “Can you prove it?”

  I pulled out my press card and handed it to him. He held it up close to his nose. I guessed that old age had made him shortsighted but he was too vain to wear glasses.

  He said: “You’re a newspaperman, like dear Sidney Pinker.”

  I said: “A newspaperman, yes, but not like Sidney Pinker. I’m crime correspondent of the Evening Chronicle. Is that a problem?”

  He said: “Not for me. Although it’s the theatre critics I usually dealt with in the old days.”

  “So I gather.”

  He said: “Sorry about the secret-service performance. People like me get a lot of attention. Not all of it welcome.”

  He stood aside and waved me in.

  I said: “Pleased to meet you, Mr Montague.” We shook hands. His skin felt dry and fragile like old parchment.

  “Call me, Terry,” he said. “But only Terry.”

  I couldn’t resist a brief glance at the peruke. It was made of thick hair dyed a red so brilliant it would make a pillar box look dowdy. It was combed into a centre parting and perched on his head, barely reaching his ears.

  Minding my manners, I forced myself not to stare and lowered my eyes to his face which was lined but still ha
ndsome. He had blue-grey eyes and the kind of chiselled profile that used to look good on theatre playbills. It wasn’t difficult to imagine him as one of the leading matinee idols of his time, strutting and fretting his hour upon the stage. From his fussy manner, I had the impression he’d have been particularly good at the fretting bit.

  He turned, sashayed off down the hall and said: “Walk this way. If you can do that without descending into obvious tomfoolery.”

  He led me into a small sitting room furnished with a sofa covered with a deep-red velvet material that matched his wig – he’d be neatly colour co-ordinated when he sat down – and a couple of basket chairs. The walls were covered with photographs of him in character roles he’d played. I spotted one of him as Hamlet, holding Yorick’s skull, and another wearing a crown and brandishing a sword – perhaps urging his followers “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead”.

  Montague saw me studying the pictures. “The glories of my past.” He shrugged. “Actors have an irresistible urge to surround themselves with their former triumphs. Especially when the applause has died away.”

  Before he became too maudlin, I asked: “Have you really trodden the boards for the last time?”

  “I won’t be making a comeback.” He made it sound like a death sentence. Then he brightened: “But it’s another actor you want to talk about.”

  I said: “Marie Richmond.”

  He glanced around the room at his pictures and pointed at a faded photo in sepia tints just above the sofa. It showed a perfectly groomed couple – he with slicked back hair, she with a kiss curl on her forehead – staring into each other’s eyes.

  “We knew each other well in the old days,” he said. “She was Gwendolen Fairfax to my Jack Worthing when we played The Importance of Being Earnest at the Theatre Royal. But the part was a little too prim for her liking. Not wild enough.” He sniggered at his joke and flapped his hand in a self-deprecating way as though expecting a round of applause. “Besides, she soon found her metier was the silent movies. Especially the risqué ones. She was known in Edwardian times as the Femme Fatale of Fulham, you know. Although in those days she actually lived in a small villa on the smart side of Turnham Green.”

  I said: “I suppose the Temptress of Turnham Green doesn’t have such a ring, does it?”

  “Not as bill matter,” he said. “Anyway, Sidney didn’t explain why you wanted to talk about Miss Richmond, but I presume this sudden interest is in connection with her obituary.”

  “Why should I want to write her obituary?”

  “Because Marie Richmond died six days ago.”

  Toupée Terry said: “Mr Crampton, you look as though you need a stiff sherry and a chair. And not necessarily in that order.”

  I slumped into one of the basket chairs.

  Terry bustled over to the sideboard and poured the drinks. He handed me a glass.

  “Under the circumstances, I hardly think it would be appropriate to propose cheers,” he said.

  I took the glass and emptied it in a couple of gulps. I hadn’t realised that, until six days ago, Marie had been alive. I’d broken one of the golden rules of journalism: never make assumptions. Because she was a figure from the past, I’d thought she must’ve been dead. But now that I considered it, there was no reason why she should have died. If she’d been in her twenties in the Edwardian years, she’d have been in her sixties now. There was certainly no reason why she should have dropped off her perch. But, until now, nobody had said that Marie was dead. Not Tom Belcher in the amusement arcade. Not Sidney Pinker. Not even Frank Figgis.

  Presumably, they didn’t know. And if they didn’t know, neither did Jim Houghton. Especially as he’d not heard about the theft of Milady’s Bath Night.

  But I was now more certain than ever that the theft and Fred Snout’s killing were connected. It couldn’t just be a coincidence that Marie died, her film was stolen, and the man supposed to keep it safe was murdered.

  I just didn’t believe in coincidences – random events seemingly unconnected. When you dig deeper, you find the logical links. And it’s the journalists who find those connections first who land the scoops.

  Terry was sitting on the sofa sipping his sherry through pursed lips.

  I asked: “How did Marie Richmond die?”

  Terry placed his glass carefully on a lace doily on a side table. “Tragically. As befitted her career.”

  “How tragically?”

  “She was hit by a van while crossing the road.”

  “And died in the street?”

  “No, she was gravely injured. She was rushed to the Royal Sussex County hospital and lingered for a couple of hours. Semiconscious, I understand. But the injuries were too serious. She was gathered.”

  His gaze drifted up to the ceiling as if expecting to see her attended by a couple of angels.

  My thoughts were closer to earth. I couldn’t understand why we hadn’t picked up Marie’s death on the paper.

  I said: “Every day we collect names of people who’ve died in local hospitals and check them against names held in our press-clippings files. We’re looking to see if anyone is sufficiently well known to warrant an obituary in the paper. We obviously haven’t seen the name Marie Richmond.”

  “You wouldn’t have done. You see, Marie Richmond was her stage name. But she reverted to her birth name many years ago.”

  “Which was?”

  “Sybil Clackett.”

  “I can see why she’d want to change it,” I said. “But not why she’d want to go back to it.”

  Terry stood up, moved to the sideboard, collected the sherry bottle and poured me a refill.

  “I can see this is going to take a little time,” he said.

  I pulled out my notebook.

  Terry returned to the sofa, took another sip of sherry and said: “Marie was born in 1885. It seems an age ago. Queen Victoria on the throne. Mr Gladstone Prime Minister. The first motor car frightening horses on the streets of London. Marie was one of twins. Identical twins. The other was called Venetia. It must have been a difficult birth. The mother died. Tragic, of course, but not unusual in those days. Especially with twins. In any event, the infants were left in their father’s untender care.”

  “Untender? He was violent towards them.”

  “Worse than that. Disinterested. The odd clip round the ear at least demonstrates a sense of engagement. The girls got nothing. Their father, Webster Clackett, was a draper. I say draper but, in reality, he was what we’d call today a tycoon. At least, a would-be tycoon. He’d started with a single shop in the Mile End Road and by the time the good-old Queen was cold in her grave, he had twenty or more all over London. Meanwhile, the girls had been brought up by a succession of nursemaids and governesses.”

  “So they were well looked after.”

  “In a material sense, yes. In a spiritual sense… Well, they never knew a mother’s love and viewed their father from a distance. Perhaps that was just as well. It turned out that Clackett knew more about ribbons and pin cushions than big business. He over-reached himself and went bankrupt. Couldn’t stand the shame and hanged himself from a roof beam in one of his stock rooms. Used a silk stocking to do the job. Five shillings a pair, too.”

  I took a pull at my sherry. “That must have shocked the girls.”

  “The fact he used a stocking?”

  “No, that he killed himself.”

  “It certainly shocked Venetia who discovered him. Marie was off touring the provinces in a risqué review – A Flash of My Frillies – vulgar title, vulgar performance, no doubt. Anyway, from what I gather, the event deeply impressed itself on Venetia and she never completely recovered from the shock.”

  “When was this?” I asked.

  “Edward the Seventh had been on the throne for some years. I think it was around 1908.”

  “Which would have made Venetia and Marie both twenty-three at the time.”

  Terr
y cocked his head to one side while he pondered the arithmetic. “Yes.”

  “You said they were identical twins – did they pursue the same aims in life?” I asked.

  “They were identical in looks – both great beauties. It was said no one could tell them apart, right through their childhood and teenage years. Even their father. But, then, he rarely saw them, anyway. But by the time they were growing up into young women, I think they realised they wanted different things out of life.”

  “So Sybil turned into Marie and became an actress?” I said.

  “And became the toast of London. She mixed with the highest in society. And when I say the highest, I mean the very peak.”

  “She loved the high life?”

  “That was the paradox. She treated it with a kind of cool detachment. She could take it or leave it. It was her sister Venetia who craved acceptance into the upper reaches of the aristocracy. Marie’s cavalier attitude to aristocrats amused them at first but became tiresome after a time. Besides, Marie’s first love was acting – or at least appearing, which is not quite the same thing. And not the basis of lasting success.”

  “So her career didn’t prosper?”

  “For many years it did. She must have appeared in fifty or more silent movies, mostly the kind that would be avoided by respectable people – at least, when anybody else was looking. I recall her first big break was in a salacious production of Salome. There was a disgusting scene with the decapitated John the Baptist. I suppose, at least, it gave her a head start.” He sniggered at his joke.

  “I always thought Edwardian films were prim and proper,” I said.

  “That’s what they would like you to believe. But there was a demi-monde world of silent movies – and Marie was the star of it. Her Nell Gwynne apparently caused a run on oranges in Covent Garden. I don’t think anyone had realised such a simple fruit could have such varied possibilities.”

  “So why didn’t the career last?”

  “She married a coal owner from Nottingham – Bulstrode by name, I recall. It wasn’t long before a son, Clarence, came along and, well… I think she realised how much she’d missed a mother’s love and wanted to spend as much time with her own child as she could. Besides, she now had a wealthy husband. So, for many years, she turned down engagements.