Died and Gone to Devon

by TP Fielden

  Or, was it time to call it a day anyway, give in to her mother’s constant demands and go home to Essex, far from her cherished Devon, and take up the diamond trade again? There was nothing she wanted less, but maybe the choice was about to be made for her – maybe Rudyard Rhys’s prayers had been answered, and he’d finally found a replacement for her.

  ‘Next stop – Regis Junction for Temple Regis! Don’t forget yer bucket and spade!’ came the chirpy announcement over the tannoy. She looked out of the window as the train eased slowly to a halt and there at the end of the platform, she spotted the waiting figure of Terry Eagleton.

  No sight could have made her happier.

  ‘Terry!’

  ‘Urs.’

  A quick double-take: ‘What’s that you’re wearing?’

  ‘Don’t you start,’ he said, cranking up the Minor. The winter sunshine through the windscreen made his Hepworth’s seven-guinea miracle shine like bauble on a Christmas tree.

  ‘Well, you look very smart,’ said Miss Dimont in placatory tones, though she asked herself what they’d say when he strolled into the Old Jawbones wearing it – it really was a stinker.

  A pause, then they both started talking at once. Terry was desperate to tell her about Renishaw’s startling assault on the mad professor while Judy wanted to unload the treachery of Freddy Hungerford and the anguish of her lost scoop.

  Who should go first?

  ‘Lovely Mary’s,’ they agreed simultaneously, and Terry energetically steered the Minor towards the Signal Box Café. Once ensconced in its steamy interior, overlooking the railway line and only a hair’s breadth from the passing locomotives, the frustrations of the past twenty-four hours gently eased. Though first Miss Dimont had a point to make.

  ‘Mary,’ she said commandingly as the sweet-faced proprietress brought them fish and chips twice, extra chips for Terry, ‘Mary!’

  ‘Yes, maid?’

  ‘How long have we known each other?’

  ‘’Arf a lifetime, my darlin’!’

  ‘And you know where I work, don’t you?’

  Mary scratched her head with the pencil she kept behind her ear. She lived up to her name at such moments – there was something particularly adorable about her features, even when her hair was anyhow and the orders were stacking up in the kitchen.

  ‘’Course I does!’

  ‘Well, Mary,’ said Judy with a touch of asperity, ‘I’m just a bit surprised you never told me our new reporter is your lodger. I mean, he works in my office! Didn’t you think I’d be interested in knowing that?’

  Mary’s eyes flicked to the door as more customers pushed their way in. It was a particularly busy lunchtime, what with the monthly cattle market and everything. ‘Din’ he tell you?’ she asked, surprised.

  ‘No, he didn’t.’

  ‘Oh. Well, he bin with us a fortnight. Was in the Station Hotel for the first week then moved over when he heard I had a vacancy. Is he permanent-like?’

  Not if I have my way, thought Miss Dimont.

  Terry was chewing his chips and looking out of the window. ‘Bit secretive, is ’e?’ he said to his reflection.

  ‘You could say that,’ said Mary slowly, then compressed her lips. If there was one thing about her, it was loyalty – she wasn’t going to gossip about her lodger, even to Judy and Terry. She wiped the table with her cloth and whisked away.

  ‘A rum ’un,’ said Terry, and told the story of yesterday’s action-packed trip to Hatherleigh. ‘’E takes things personal. ’E thought the Prof had kidnapped old Hungerford, and he wanted to perform a citizen’s arrest. What is a citizen’s arrest, anyway?’

  ‘An action legitimised by section 24(A)2 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act,’ said Judy automatically. ‘You’re allowed to collar someone who you believe has committed a crime.’

  ‘You allowed to beat ’im up?’

  ‘No, Terry, no. You’re supposed to arrest them and take them to a police station wrapped in cotton wool.’

  ‘All I can say is your Mr Renishaw doesn’t think he needs the police. Yesterday he was judge, jury and bleedin’ executioner. I had to put him in the car a bit forceful-like.’

  Miss Dimont nodded her approval. ‘Well, as I told you, Sir Freddy was never abducted. But he was attacked – I saw the bruises. Could Sirraway have done that?’

  Terry thought about it. ‘Yes, he could. He was definitely not at home when Hungerford was attacked – he said he’d gone to stay with a friend in Ilfracombe, but he could easily have been in London. And he’s certainly got a bee in his bonnet about Hungerford – I couldn’t get to the bottom of it all; he was rambling on a bit about stolen property, but I think that was because he was in shock after Renishaw attacked him. Don’t you think I should tell Mr Rhys?’

  ‘That a member of the public had been assaulted by a member of his reporting staff?’

  ‘Well, don’t you?’

  Judy itched to say yes – looks like old Rudyard’s got it wrong again, she thought. Just like his whopping mistakes over the Vicar’s Longboat Party, and the Temple Regis Tennis Scandal, and the football pools farrago. Just when he thinks he’s on top of this editing malarkey he goes and slips on another banana skin. One more trick like that and our Mr Renishaw will be on his way back to Canada.

  Or jail.

  ‘He took me mouse-racing,’ she said. ‘You know how much I hate…’

  ‘’S why you have that Mulligatawny,’ said Terry, though he was more interested in a green-liveried locomotive that was trundling by the window. ‘Look at that, Judy – an absolutely pristine 4-6-2 Class 8P, that is!’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Terry, you and your steam engines! Have you read the papers today?’

  ‘Might have.’ This meant no.

  ‘Well, I think, to keep on top of all this, you need to know about Sir Freddy and his popsy.’

  ‘Hold on a min’,’ said Terry, and pushing his plate aside he reached into his camera bag and brought out a large buff envelope. ‘You were asking about Pansy Westerham.’

  Judy had forgotten all about it. ‘Yes, but not now, Ter—’

  ‘I had to call in a favour or two from a chum at the Press Association. Here y’are,’ and with that he triumphantly slid half a dozen black-and-white prints onto the café table.

  Only her innate good manners forced the chief reporter to turn her attention from a present-day political crisis involving a well-known politician to an obscure event which occurred twenty-five years before, the sum of which was a brittle blonde socialite spending most of her life in nightclubs and falling from the roof of a Knightsbridge house.

  Well, perhaps that was unkind. Perhaps Pansy Westerham had been a lovely person, much adored, much missed. Certainly, Geraldine Phipps spoke up for her, while admitting that Pansy was not the friend to her that she had been to Pansy. Whatever Mrs W’s pluses and minuses, here was all there was left of her – a handful of photographs which comprised her entire epitaph.

  The wrinkled prints had gone brown with age. Each, according to librarian tradition, had a little paper tag pasted on the back with a typewritten caption giving the date and location.

  THE ROYAL ACADEMY SUMMER EXHIBITION, JUNE 5 1935. L-R, LADY DIANA COOPER, MISS MARGARET WHIGHAM, LORD ANDREW CAVENDISH, MRS PANSY WESTERHAM.

  LADIES’ DAY AT ROYAL ASCOT, JUNE 14 1934. L-R, THE DUCHESS OF FIFE, THE EARL OF CRAVEN, LADY PORCHESTER, MRS PANSY WESTERHAM, THE MAHARANEE OF JAIPUR.

  Miss Dimont found the images irresistible. They spoke of a time when women of a certain class would don as many jewels as they could muster and step into a satin gown before setting sail into the night. Perhaps they did it still, thought Miss Dimont, I wouldn’t know – do people wear extravagant jewels any more? Not down here in Devon they don’t!

  ‘Oh look!’ she exclaimed to Terry, who’d got a magnifying glass out and was professionally absorbing the whole content of the pictures – not just the hairdos – and making the occasional note. ‘Look, Terry, her
e’s Mrs Phipps!’

  FIRST NIGHT, THE TRANSATLANTIC EXPRESS, ADELPHI THEATRE, PICCADILLY. L-R, JAMES DONAHUE, MISS BARBARA HUTTON, THE MARQUESS OF MILFORD HAVEN, MISS GERALDINE BEAUREGARD, MRS PANSY WESTERHAM.

  ‘Geraldine!’ exclaimed Judy. ‘How incredibly glamorous she was! Just look at those legs! And how wonderful to take the name Beauregard for the stage!’

  ‘Are you lookin’ at this Miss Westerham?’ said Terry sternly. ‘Or just stargazing? This Pansy looks a pretty cold fish to me. Strained, not natural, looks like she’s wearing a mask.’

  His trained eye was spot on. Though the backdrops and the clothes and the jewels and the hair changed from picture to picture, one thing remained static – and that was Pansy’s face. Crowned by a thatch of blonde hair, she was a thing of immense beauty with chiselled cheekbones and a square-cut jaw. The lips were full, the eyes wide – but her expression never changed, frozen as it was in a mixture of surprise and disdain.

  ‘She’s at all these parties but she’s not enjoying herself,’ observed Terry.

  ‘Geraldine described her as the life and soul,’ said Judy, ‘but you’re right. It’s as if when a photographer hoves into view, she sets her features and they never change. As if she believes the camera can see inside her and she is determined not to let it.’

  Lovely Mary brought an extra cup of tea; she was feeling a bit regretful she hadn’t told Judy about David Renishaw.

  ‘What do these pictures tell you, Ter?’

  ‘Absolutely nothing. A bunch of stuck-up socialites putting on their best face for the camera. ’Er included.’

  ‘I fear you’re right. But Pansy doesn’t look as though she belongs to them, she’s always standing apart from the group. As if she doesn’t really want to be there. It’s all a big mystery. I know Mrs Phipps has high hopes of me finding something out about this case but I don’t know, Terry, it’s all so long ago.’

  ‘Tell me about Sir Freddy instead, then,’ said Terry resignedly, scooping up the prints and putting them back in his folder. ‘I know you’re dying to.’

  Thirteen

  It was Monday again, time for the dreaded weekly conference. But for once this was a joyous occasion – Christmas Day was on Thursday, which meant no newspaper. The conference was therefore given over to a stern tongue-lashing from the editor.

  ‘Let there be no slacking,’ hectored Rhys, looking with disdain upon his scurvy crew. ‘I want a full working week from you all – the early pages drawn up even earlier, pictures filed, captions sorted, and then we’ll leave the news pages over till next week. Obviously there’ll be a great deal of Boxing Day sport, so that’ll take up the space left by those lily-livered advertisers who don’t believe our paper will be read over the Christmas break.’

  ‘Ayyyy…’ growled John Ross from the back of the room, ‘and how rrrrr… right they would be.’

  The editor feigned not to hear this and pressed on with his plan for reporters to make their New Year resolution to clear their desks of debris and smarten themselves up. In her notebook Miss Dimont practised the shorthand signs for ‘hopeless’ and ‘futile’, thus giving the appearance of taking notes while devoting her agile mind to the question of Freddy Hungerford.

  The meeting broke up with little achieved and Judy returned to the newsroom.

  ‘David Renishaw,’ said Betty, shifting to her side of the desk – she had the irritating habit of occupying other people’s chairs, just to see what the view was like from where they sat.

  ‘Why weren’t you in conference?’

  ‘Late night, the alarm didn’t go off.’ With a faint blush she straightened her unruly hair. ‘Now… David Renishaw…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Not what he seems,’ said Betty.

  ‘I think we’ve gathered that.’

  ‘No, I mean – really not what he seems.’ She was itching to tell someone about Operation Underdog, but wasn’t yet ready to confess to having riffled through the reporter’s drawers.

  ‘When you interviewed Sir Freddy the other day,’ said Miss Dimont, oblivious to the world scoop Betty was incubating, ‘did he strike you as being a little odd?’

  ‘No more than usual,’ replied Betty, ‘a pat on the backside, the usual. Honestly, Judy – the colossal nerve of the man! Horrendous! Thank heavens he’s going!’

  ‘I agree with that,’ said Judy, and told the story of Millie Barnes and the black eye covered by her make-up, which cheered Betty up – she was having to go home to her parents for Christmas and wasn’t looking forward to it.

  ‘The whole thing seemed so contrived – the punch-up in the street,’ said Judy, puzzling. ‘It just seems really odd.’

  ‘There must be a dozen women who’d like to do that,’ said Betty, ‘give him what-for. I wouldn’t mind a go myself.’

  ‘Was there anything, though, that struck you as unusual about his behaviour that night?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Betty after a moment’s thought. ‘I thought it was a joke at first, but when I mentioned Mirabel Clifford’s name he refused to acknowledge her existence. That seemed very strange – the election’s only a few months away, surely he wants his party to win?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Judy. ‘I get the feeling it’s more a case of après moi le déluge – he wants everyone to fail, so that in the history books his lengthy reign in Temple Regis will seem even more magnificent.’

  ‘Well, if he knows who his successor is – and I bet he does,’ said Betty, ‘I reckon he must hate her guts to not even mention her in his farewell speech to the party workers.’

  Judy made a mental note to tackle Mirabel Clifford again, once she returned to Temple Regis.

  ‘But now – David Renishaw,’ said Betty, bringing the conversation back to square one. She was brimming over with her secret.

  ‘Where is he? He should have been in conference.’

  ‘He’s gone to test-drive the new office car.’

  ‘New… office car? I haven’t heard anything about that…!’

  ‘He persuaded Mr Rhys we needed another car. So that he could get around the circulation area more easily. He was complaining about being stuck in the Minor with Terry, after that trip up to Hatherleigh.’

  Miss Dimont was furious. First, being stuck in the Minor with Terry could be a penance, but one which all reporters had to put up with. He smelled nice but heavens, he could be boring if he got on one of his hobby-horses. Surely, if anyone was going to get a new office car, it should be the chief reporter!

  Second, she’d asked Rudyard Rhys a dozen times if the newspaper could have more transport and he always said no on budgetary grounds – why was Renishaw able to persuade him when she couldn’t?

  And third, did it mean that she would have to continue whizzing round town on Herbert? He was a joy to ride in the summer months, but a vicious companion in the wet and cold. For a moment it made her think fondly of Valentine Waterford and his old tin bubble car2, though you didn’t want to be seen getting in and out of it in a skirt.

  ‘I’m going out!’ she said crossly and swept up her raffia bag.

  Judy stepped into the street without thinking where she was going – there were a few small gifts still to get, she could do that. Or she could go over to Lovely Mary’s for a cup of coffee, but that was sure to bring up the vexed question of Renishaw again.

  Or she could hop on Herbert and go over to Bedlington to see Auriol – but she was due there this evening for the final showdown on Grace Dimont’s arrival in town tomorrow, and she saw no reason to hasten that particular conversation.

  Her footsteps took her towards the Market Square, where a huge Christmas tree dominated the canvas-topped stalls underneath. She eased her way into the crowd, shoppers eagerly snapping up last-minute purchases they’d regret the moment they got home, and for a moment gave up her thoughts to the sheer pleasure of seeing the red faces and bright eyes of the crowds.

  ‘Hello.’

  Standing before her was Mirabel
Clifford with a wry smile on her face.

  ‘Did you go carol singing with Sir Freddy in Ebury Street?’ quizzed the solicitor, tongue-in-cheek. ‘I saw something in the Daily Herald next day – was that you?’

  ‘Yes. No.’

  ‘Why don’t you come into the office and have a cup of tea? I don’t have a client for another hour or so.’

  ‘That would be lovely.’ The two women stepped across the square to where an important-looking portico announced the premises of Clifford & Co., Solicitors.

  ‘I felt it was tempting fate to talk to you in the Commons Library,’ began Mrs Clifford, once they’d settled in her wood-panelled office. ‘I’m not an MP yet, and as I indicated, there’s every chance I won’t get elected – it didn’t seem the time or place. But over the weekend I had the chance to think about our encounter and as long as I feel I can trust you, there are probably some things you ought to know.’

  ‘About Sir Freddy?’

  ‘Can I trust you?’

  ‘That’s a difficult one to answer. Supposing you tell me something I might find out by other means? If I were then to print it, you’d accuse me of having double-crossed you.’

  ‘Point taken. Well, then, shall we come to what might be called an uneasy understanding?’

  I like her, thought Miss Dimont. She’s savvy.

  ‘I’ve been having a problem with a man called Sirraway,’ said the lawyer. ‘He’s been pestering me with complaints about Sir Freddy and I wonder if you know anything about him.’

  ‘A little. What sort of complaints?’

  ‘Well, it started out with him sending me a fairly comprehensive report on some less-than-legitimate property deals – all a very long time ago, but on the face of it decidedly shady.’

  ‘Do you know he made an appearance in court before Colonel de Saumaurez the other day?’

  ‘Yes, I’d heard that. The man’s a nuisance, no question. No, the reason I mention him is because he then went further, sending in letters accusing Sir Freddy of a number of acts of embezzlement over the years, mainly from women who, according to Sirraway, were Sir Freddy’s lady friends.’