by Amy Myers
A voice from behind startled her. Trust Mavis to wake up at that moment.
‘I shouldn’t have done that,’ Mavis observed. ‘I can’t help pushing it when I see that lot together. But they can’t keep me away from a funeral, can they?’
‘Why would anyone want to keep you away?’ Peter asked, tongue very obviously firmly in cheek.
‘They’re scared of what I’ll say.’
‘With reason it seems,’ Peter commented. ‘Got any more fireworks like that one?’
‘About time the old trout knew,’ Mavis muttered sullenly. ‘Her mum seduced more men than that woman who sat on an island.’
‘Circe?’ Georgia asked, amused.
‘Maybe. There’s lots more about that crowd waiting to be spat out.’
‘Such as?’ Georgia asked lightly.
‘I don’t know. That’s the trouble,’ Mavis wailed unexpectedly. ‘But my David always said don’t get mixed up with that lot, Mave. Funny things going on there.’
‘I don’t know. That’s the trouble,’ Mavis wailed unexpectedly. ‘But my David always said don’t get mixed up with that lot, Mave. Funny things going on there.’
SEVEN
‘Nothing heading nowhere,’ Peter declared, waving a hand round the office.
Georgia did look and was forced to agree, although Peter seemed remarkably sanguine about it. The office was not shouting a triumphant progress towards success but presenting a dismal picture of loose ends. Copies of photos were posted on the walls and the contents of the box she had brought back from Christine’s home were piled on the desk. So far the expected treasure trove from Micky’s diaries had not materialized.
The word diary, she thought crossly, implied long entries revealing not only the writer’s exact state of mind but every detail of daily life in case it was of interest to someone coming across it in the year 4000. Micky’s diaries were not in that class, at least if the volumes she had chosen from the stack Christine showed her were anything to go by. They were for the years 1948 to 1953 but chiefly contained only jotted notes of appointments to come or cryptic comments whose meanings would be clear only to the writer. There was little that expressed the thoughts and emotions of the happy-looking man in the photo stuck on the cork board in the Marsh & Daughter office. Sandy the leader, Micky the acrobat, Tom the stooge.
Even the entry for the sixteenth of August 1952 was disappointing, recording only, ‘The day it happened’. It was nevertheless possible to infer that Micky had been hit hard by the murder, as Ken had implied. He thought Joan was the cat’s whiskers, even if others thought of her only as the cat. The ink looked heavier for these words, as though Micky’s pent-up emotions had transferred themselves to his pen nib.
For the week that followed there were just a bitter ‘the show must go on’ and a plain ‘her funeral’. His wife, Muriel, was often mentioned and also Ken, or as he appeared here, Kennie. The only later entry that displayed personal bias was ‘bloody show a sell-out’. Did that indicate Micky’s bitterness that Joan was no longer in it, or that Tom was in prison awaiting trial for her murder?
‘Might be something here.’ Peter was holding a few photos. ‘I kept these back. They were in a pocket pasted at the back of the 1952 diary.’
‘What are they?’ Georgia asked hopefully, swivelling her chair round from her own desk as Peter spread them out on his. The most interesting showed Joan in the middle of a group. One of her arms was round Sandy, the other round Buck Dillon. There were two others in the photo, neither of whom she could identify with certainty, as their faces were fuzzy. ‘That one –’ she pointed to one of the fuzzy-faced men – ‘looks as if he might be David Maclyn; the other is too blurred.’
‘Micky himself? It’s captioned “The Crew”, but not in Micky’s handwriting. Perhaps Joan was lining up all her lovers? Perhaps Micky drooled once too often over Joan Watson, and his wife objected.’
‘No, it’s too tall for Micky, or for Tom,’ Georgia countered.
‘Harold?’ Peter suggested.
‘Could be. The height would fit, but not the theory about the lovers. No one’s suggested Harold was one of Joan’s circle.’
‘Anyway, if these were Joan’s paramours, why doesn’t jealousy come into the picture? Buck seemed happy to be one of several, David probably knew all about Joan’s flings and so did Sandy.’
‘Joan was used to getting her own way, using sex as a magnet as well as a charm weapon,’ Georgia pointed out. ‘If it amused her to get all her current extramaritals together, no one would say no. But it’s a wobbly thesis.’
‘I’ll stick it up on the wall. It might remind us that the focus of the case could be Joan, not Tom.’
‘It won’t do any good,’ she said despondently, swinging back to her own desk. ‘We’re taking a suggestion here, an idea there, lurching forward and then falling back. Just like Rick. The real story seems to float further away whenever it seems just within reach.’
There was a silence that made her glance at Peter – still looking cheerful. ‘No luck on Mozart?’ she asked.
‘Now you mention it,’ he replied airily, ‘yes, there is. I was keeping it back to cheer you up. Mind you –’ he must have seen her instant reaction ‘– don’t pin too much on it.’
‘What?’
‘Forget Salzburg and Prague. Think Aix-en-Provence. They have a summer festival in July. There was one in 1994, of course, and it lasted three weeks. Operas are put on in the courtyard of the Archbishop’s Palace. And guess what?’
She hardly dared breathe. ‘The Magic Flute?’
‘Got it in one. A fabulous performance, especially good because Natalie Dessay was singing the Queen of the Night. Worth Rick and Miss Blondie Pamina travelling all the way from Brittany for?’
‘Yes.’ It came out as a croak. ‘There must be a drawback.’
‘Let’s hope not. But the drawback could be that the French police sent details about Rick all round France.’
He was right. She remembered Inspector Décourt telling them so. And yet . . . and yet . . . Aix was the obvious place they might have gone to.
‘I’ll get on to them,’ Peter added.
Despite the warning, Georgia’s hopes were racing ahead. Surely in this lead Rick had left some kind of fingerprints – just as Tom had?
There seemed an air of holiday in Broadstairs. It was only late June but the town – or perhaps more accurately the tourist face of the town – looked proudly ready for the main season, and the general spirit helped Georgia to feel better about facing the Watson flat again. Gary, when she accosted him in the fish bar, had been mournfully accepting of her quaint wish to revisit the scene of the crime.
‘Put a quid or two in the charity box,’ he suggested. ‘Can’t guarantee a ghost though, so no money back.’
‘Thanks. I don’t need a ghost.’ Those fingerprints Tom had left were all too clear without the need for a phantom to come gliding through a wall. She passed the ordeal of the steps up to the Watson flat as quickly as possible, breathing a sigh of relief as she reached the top. Wasn’t it odd, it occurred to her, that the fingerprints were at the foot of the steps, not up there inside the flat where the violence had taken place?
The key turned easily in the lock, naturally enough, as Gary had told her he kept stores there. It was clear, however, that the flat hadn’t been lived in for some time. Although there were radiators in the rooms, the damp atmosphere and smell indicated they had not been operated regularly. It didn’t help her instinctive reaction to the place. No fingerprints perhaps, but a general sense of waste and decay.
The walls were still covered in nineteen fifties wallpaper, and open, tiled fireplaces made it seem as though she had taken a step back in time. The living room was to the left and the kitchen to the right. A staircase went up to the bedrooms and presumably a bathroom. Georgia pictured Brian James running up it that night and finding Pamela peacefully sleeping through the nightmare of what lay below her.
The flat
was still carpeted but no longer furnished. Boxes of cafe supplies were piled high in the living room, although to one side of the room was an old and very dusty sofa, which looked as if it might have been here in the Watsons’ time. It must have been here that Joan’s body had been found, and Tom had perhaps been sitting on that very sofa when the police arrived. It was easy, now that she was in the actual room, to conjure up the scene. Saying nothing, doing nothing, he was just looking at the corpse, all passion spent. Georgia shivered. Those three words were from Milton’s Samson Agonistes. Joan had been a Delilah, but Tom was no Samson. Not physically anyway, although perhaps mentally he had been driven beyond his normal limits to kill the woman he loved. No, she corrected herself, it was Cherry he loved. That meant Joan could have been standing in his way. Even in those days, however, one could divorce wives for adultery, so why turn to murder? Georgia swallowed. Whichever way one looked at it, Tom Watson still retained his secrets.
How about Pamela Trent? she wondered as she went upstairs. Was she the key to the situation that had led to murder? Perhaps Tom only found out that night that she was David’s child, not his? He had almost certainly been present at the row between Mavis and Joan that night, and yet if Tom had killed Joan for that reason, there would have been no unfinished business or injustice, as the fingerprints on time still suggested, when she had walked up the outside steps. Or, it occurred to her, were they Joan’s fingerprints, not Tom’s? Whatever Ken might have said, it was Joan who had been the major victim.
Slowly Georgia went back downstairs, aware that she now had to run the gauntlet of those fingerprints again. She forced herself to open the front door, lock it behind her and then face the steps again. The fingerprints met her in full force as she walked down to the yard. Worse, there was someone lounging against the back gate, who in that scaring instant seemed to reinforce the threat that the fingerprints were making. She had seen him before. It was Greg Dale.
‘Hello,’ she made herself call out as normally as possible. ‘We’ve met, haven’t we?’ She tried to conquer the shakiness in her voice as he detached himself from the support of the gate and stood astride at the foot of the steps, hands in his pockets.
‘Yes,’ he answered in a polite voice that did not fit his stance. ‘I believe we did.’
She forced herself into a normality she didn’t feel. What was he doing here? Watching her? Following her? ‘Here for some fish and chips, are you?’ she asked nonsensically.
‘Not really.’ He was grinning now, as if he felt he had the upper hand. ‘Did you happen to find anything up there?’ To pass him she would have to push past him. Was he really a threat, or was this just the fingerprints having their effect on her?
‘Only a couple of ghosts,’ she replied lightly.
He stared at her, the grin vanished. ‘Nothing else?’
‘What would you expect?’
‘What did you go for?’ he countered lazily. ‘The Trents don’t like anyone poking around up there.’
‘The flat belongs to the fish bar, not the Trents.’
‘They still don’t like people nosing around. Just thought I’d mention it.’
‘Nothing moves on in this world if no one is prepared to nose around.’
‘Then no one would come to any harm, would they?’ That oh-so-polite voice gave this a creepier edge than she could deal with. Whether it was intended or the result of the fingerprints, she longed to wipe the smile off his smug face. She pushed him aside so forcefully and unexpectedly that he stepped back, leaving her enough room to get by to return the keys to Gary. Should she go out through the front entrance of the cafe? No, she wouldn’t give Greg Dale the satisfaction of retreat. She would go back through the yard. When she did so, there was no sign of him, but as she reached the corner of Jameston Avenue, there he was, watching her from a doorway. Just watching.
Mavis lived in a sheltered home on the outskirts of Canterbury. Today it looked just as sedate and anonymous as it had when she had driven her home from the funeral. What did the other residents make of her? Georgia wondered. Perhaps Mavis kept her wilder side for her jaunts out, rather than playing the enfant terrible on her own home turf. Once the door had opened, however, it was clear that Mavis would be Mavis wherever she was. The flowing purple print and the challenging body language assured her of that. In a way, Georgia was relieved. Much easier to deal with the Mavis she had already met. After yesterday’s encounter with Greg Dale, it would be a doddle.
‘It’s good of you to see me,’ she began politely.
‘I don’t do good.’ Mavis grinned. ‘I only do want at my age. Come in.’
Georgia followed her as she half waddled, half floated down the hallway to a living room overlooking a small patio and pocket handkerchief of a garden. ‘Drink?’ Mavis offered.
‘No thank you.’ Georgia could see the wine bottles lined up on the dresser. ‘Tea?’ she asked hopefully.
‘If you must.’ Sigh. ‘I blame David for this lot.’ Mavis waved a hand at the dresser’s display. ‘I was a tea girl myself when we met, but once he hit the jackpot, teapots flew out of the window. Those were the days, eh? The bottles got him in the end though, and now they’re after me.’
‘At the funeral you said it was Joan who got him,’ Georgia reminded her.
‘Joan led him to the drink. That who you want to talk about?’
‘Can you bear it?’
‘I think about it all the time, so why not have a nice chat too?’
As Mavis made tea, Georgia looked at the photos of David crowding the room, including some of him with the younger Mavis she had seen in Ken’s photos. She was recognizable today only through her energy and general vitality. No wine or spirits appeared, in fact, as Mavis opted for tea too. Perhaps her relapse at the funeral had been brought on by the strain of facing the event rather than habitual drinking.
‘Did you mean what you said about David being Pamela’s father?’
‘Of course,’ Mavis answered readily, and with dignity. ‘You don’t think I’d have said it otherwise, do you? That’s why Joan married poor old Tom in such a hurry.’
‘Did Tom know she was pregnant when they married?’
‘What you mean is: did David know and is that why he dropped her?’ Mavis said calmly.
‘Both,’ Georgia admitted. ‘Unless . . .’
Mavis took a long, noisy sip of tea. ‘Unless it’s embarrassing, eh? Well, it doesn’t say much for my sex appeal, does it, that David wandered off to so many fresh fields? We’d only been married two years when little Pam appeared. Trouble is, I was up the spout with my first when she was conceived. I couldn’t provide any action for David, and darling Joan guessed it. She’d always been hanging around, but he gave her up to marry me, and she saw her chance of revenge when I was laid up with David junior. Rest on your back, said the good old doc. Reckon he gave her the same advice, only not for the same reasons. She spent more time on her back than on her dancing feet, that’s for sure. That do you, darling?’
‘I think I get the general picture,’ Georgia replied. ‘Not much fun for you though, feeling rotten and knowing David was with her.’
‘You can say that again with knobs on.’ Mavis pulled a face. ‘Then Joan did her usual trick. Told David she was preggers, and he told me. Poor chap, wasn’t his fault. These women threw themselves at him.’
Georgia wondered just how hard they’d had to work. David had certainly been lucky in his wife, and she seemed to bear no grudge.
‘I was all for her getting rid of it, but Madame Joan says no she won’t. She had a better idea. Before we knew it, she was spliced with Tom and had the cheek to give David the bill for the wedding.’
Georgia blinked. This tallied with the Joan of ‘The Crew’ photograph. ‘Tom didn’t realize she was pregnant when they married?’
‘Not that I know of. There was a lot of talk, of course, but we all liked Tom, so there was none when he was around.’
‘Did he ever find out?’
/> ‘I don’t know, dear. I’m not a fly on the wall. But if you’re thinking it was that evening – well, it could have been. We none of us said anything to the police for the kiddie’s sake, as well as Tom’s.’
‘Did it come up during your spat with Joan on the night of the murder?’
‘Might have done,’ Mavis replied airily. ‘Tom muscled in on it halfway through, so he could have overheard. She’d been mocking me as he arrived because she was having it off with David again, so I told her that was nothing. Four other women could say the same. She didn’t know whether to believe me or not, so we had a right set-to, and I told her the next time she came near David she’d have me to reckon with. I’d get her thrown out of the show.’
‘Could you have done that?’
‘You bet I could. If I’d told Haughty Harold that she was upsetting his prize star, he’d have sacked her, even though she was sleeping with him too. All good for Madame’s CV.’
Harold? So he could have been in that photo, Georgia thought. ‘In that case, wasn’t he more likely to sack David?’
‘You don’t know Harold. The show first, which meant career and money. Sex second. After Joan tired of motherhood, she took a fancy for gathering scalps. Want the full list?’
‘Please.’ There might a new name on it, Georgia thought. So far it wasn’t looking good for Tom’s innocence.
‘That nice US sergeant for one. Harold probably, David for sure, and I’ve a feeling Sandy got drawn into the honeytrap. She had Micky where she wanted him, though probably without bothering to open her legs for him. He thought Joan the greatest thing since powdered egg.’
‘Were both you and David at the Black Lion that night?’