by TP Fielden
That it was Sirraway who committed the foul deed was beyond question – the murder weapon had been round his neck only minutes earlier, witnessed by dozens who were elbowed aside in the fight. The party faithful were quick to recall the professor’s feverish attacks on Hungerford, not only at today’s meeting, but back in December when he barracked them noisily outside the Christmas party.
And Hamish Madden, interviewed by one of Topham’s assistants, confirmed the extent of Sirraway’s hatred: ‘I feel an intense personal responsibility,’ he said emotionally, clutching a large glass of whisky. ‘I saw him in the crowd, I had a further warning when he pulled out that banner and started waving it about. And when he started shouting abuse, I should have had him thrown out immediately. But Sir Freddy likes – liked! – a spot of rough-and-tumble at his meetings; he got the idea from Oswald Mosley and the Blackshirts. So I just let it go.’
‘Did you have any previous intimation that he might do something like this?’ asked the copper laboriously.
‘Well, I’ll be frank, officer. He’d been writing to Sir Freddy for the past two years, claiming this and claiming that – all lies, of course! – so much so that we were forced to create a special file on him. He came to the House of Commons and kicked up a terrible stink. And if things had gone any further, Sir Freddy was going to have him arrested. He was a terrible nuisance – mad as a hatter.’
‘Shame you didn’t move sooner,’ said the policeman with scant sympathy. ‘Was he just as anti Mrs Clifford?’
‘I can’t tell you that.’ Madden paused a moment. ‘You think he killed them both?’
‘Looks like it, dunnit,’ said the copper, lifting his eyes to heaven as if talking to a particularly stupid child.
‘I heard somebody shouting he’d got a knife. Odd that he should strangle poor old Freddy if he had a knife.’
‘There’s no telling,’ said the copper, shutting the conversation down. Madden raised the whisky to his lips and drained it in one.
Back at police HQ, Frank Topham had just returned to the CID room after a deeply unpleasant interview with the Chief Constable. That’s me finished, he thought, as he pictured the national newspaper headlines tomorrow morning – why the devil did Fleet Street have to be in town when this happened? The MURDER CAPITAL OF GREAT BRITAIN headline would be on all their front pages tomorrow – and just when the holiday season was getting under way!
‘I want you to take four men and go up to Hatherleigh,’ he told Sergeant Gull, whose policing in recent years had been restricted to the pencils on his desk. ‘I have to stay here and co-ordinate things. If he’s got any sense he won’t be going anywhere near the place, but you can go and have a sniff round.’
‘Lift the latch, so to speak?’ said Gull with a wink.
‘I didn’t tell you to do that,’ replied the Inspector, though instead of shaking his head he gave an affirmative nod. ‘Now I need to find Mrs Clifford’s secretary – surely she must have some clues as to the connection between these two killings?’
Sergeant Gull was in no position to advise – he was already out of the door and on his way, the prospect of a nice spot of overtime speeding him onwards.
At the murder scene, Topham’s men interviewed the key witnesses and got the body away, while in his office the Chief Constable pondered the vital question of whether to wear his uniform or a nice suit when he came before the Press cameras. He strolled into his anteroom, put on his trilby, and tried a few experimental phrases into the mirror before rejecting it for the peaked cap.
Fleet Street’s finest were at full throttle. Once the news of the assassination broke, Guy Brace jumped on a chair in the Old Jawbones and started dishing out orders. ‘Mulchrone – up to Hatherleigh! Crossley – find Inspector Topham! Brittenden – find the Prof’s university and get his file from them, no arguments! And Lamb…’ But here the instructions petered out, for the red-nosed Lamb had fallen asleep cradling his brandy glass and would be no use to anybody for a couple of hours at least.
He looked round the serried ranks of reporters and caught the eye of Inkpen.
‘And what are you going to do, Inks?’ The News Chronicle man was a bit of a lone wolf.
‘Whatever’s best,’ came the reply. Though he’d had a brilliant idea about the Interpol angle, there’d been no time to develop it and for once he was at a loose end. ‘That chap, wossisname, Hamey McGamey, Hungerford’s right-hand man. I’ll give him the treatment.’
‘OK. Off you go.’
The highly disciplined cadre of hacks evaporated like the morning mist, each hunting down their quarry, assured of space on their front pages the following morning. Two murders in one resort! Two parliamentary candidates, one after the other, bam bam! And both from the same party – how could they miss!
Brace wandered over to the recumbent form of the News of the World man and stole his brandy. All he had to do was wait till the boys came back and together they would pool their information and file their stories.
No such battle plan was being enacted over at the Riviera Express. In his editor’s office Rudyard Rhys sat in a chair by the window and looked vacantly out at the seascape while, behind him, what remnants of staff that could be found on a Friday afternoon filed in and sat down quietly. As if by unspoken agreement, Miss Dimont assumed the chair behind the editor’s desk and started proceedings, since Mr Rhys was known to equivocate in times of trouble.
‘Where’s Renishaw?’ she said.
Silence.
‘Terry?’
The chief photographer explained again what had happened – the agitated Sirraway, the anxious Renishaw, the dash through the crowd, the fight.
‘It was just disgraceful. Same as what happened up at Hatherleigh, only worse! I reckon he was looking for Sirraway from the moment we came in and was determined to knock his block off.’
‘Did Sirraway actually have a knife? Did you see a knife?’
‘Nah, I think it was David’s imagination. He wasn’t in a right frame of mind, if you ask me.’
‘Was Sirraway making a move towards the stage – did it look as though he was going to attack Hungerford?’
‘No, and I had my lens trained on him after David spotted him. It was more like he was barracking – shouting, trying to throw Hungerford off his speech. Taunting, like – yes, that’s it, he was taunting him. Hungerford looked as though he was enjoying it.’
‘So why did Sirraway suddenly launch an attack on him?’
‘He didn’t launch an attack, Judy. The only person who attacked anybody was Renishaw.’
‘Well, that really is shocking!’ gasped Peter Pomeroy. ‘What will people think of this newspaper if we send people out to report, and they do that sort of thing!’
‘No need to worry about him anymore,’ came a voice from the window. ‘I dismissed him this morning.’
‘Good Lord, Richard!’ said Miss Dimont. ‘What happened?’
‘Disobedient, obstructive, too clever by half. Covering today’s hustings was his last job for the Express – I told him to write it up, pack up his things and leave quietly. But obviously he was angry at being sacked and it caused him to act that way. He wanted to get back at me.’
‘Didn’t look that way to me,’ said Terry.
‘So,’ said Judy, ‘he’s just gone? That’s it?’
‘Just as well,’ said Peter Pomeroy, the deputy editor. ‘And good riddance. Even so, think of the damage done to the reputation of the Express.’ He was really quite upset.
‘I doubt people will pay too much attention to Renishaw’s behaviour. I think mainly people will be asking who let the murderer in,’ said Judy soothingly. ‘Anyway, everybody, we have a breathing space before our next edition – and of course those boys from the nationals will have stolen all the juiciest bits for their newspapers tomorrow and on Sunday.
‘But they don’t have what we have, which is local knowledge, so we have the chance to show them all up when the next Express comes out.
&
nbsp; ‘So now here’s what I think we should do…’
Much later Judy was sitting with Auriol in her back garden. The light was going, the air was clear, the church clock striking the hour, a noisy blackbird going through his night-time repertoire. It was getting chilly, though.
‘We’ll have to go in. Will you stay the night?’
‘That would be lovely,’ said Auriol, ‘it’ll give us more time to chat. Anyway, go on with it – you’ve told me once, I want to hear it all again. Things get clearer in my mind the more I hear them.’
Judy talked as she made a salad. ‘We have to accept that Hector Sirraway was the murderer of both Freddy Hungerford and Mirabel Clifford – I saw the letters where he was trying to drag Mirabel into his dispute with Hungerford. Sure enough he had a genuine complaint, but he was allowing it to skew his judgement – he was trying to implicate Mirabel, determined that she should suffer, too.’
‘I wonder though,’ said Auriol, the wise owl. ‘Two murders, but so very different. Mirabel is stabbed to death, Sir Freddy – well, I suppose you’d use the word garroted. It just doesn’t sound right to me. Did Sirraway lose his knife in the fight with your Mr Renishaw, d’you think, and had to improvise in order to finish Sir Freddy off?’
‘I asked Terry that. He said he never saw a knife. Remember, Renishaw says to him, There’s Sirraway, and Terry focuses his long lens on him. So though they’re not near each other and there’s a crowd between them, Terry can see quite clearly what’s going on. Sirraway’s got his placard in both hands.’
‘So no knife.’
‘Can’t be certain, but pretty sure not.’
‘So Renishaw made that bit up? As an excuse to launch an attack on the professor? Could that be the case?’
‘Always possible. He’s had a thing about Sirraway ever since that dust-up in Hatherleigh. Says he’s mad and violent even if nobody else seems to have got that impression.’
Judy opened the kitchen door to encourage Mulligatawny to go out for his evening prowl. Instead, the rebel clung tight to his special cushion on a kitchen chair and refused to budge. He gave a low growl.
‘Cats,’ sighed Auriol with exasperation. ‘Why I could never have one – they never do what you tell them.’
‘You don’t understand,’ replied Judy happily, ‘that’s the point about them! Glass of wine? There’s some delicious rosé.’
‘Yes, please. I was wondering, can we turn this thing inside out – could it be Renishaw who’s the murderer? From what you say, his behaviour has become, well, bizarre to say the least.’
‘It always was. I thought about that, but he can’t have killed Mirabel because he was with Denise, our sub-editor, the whole evening – she told me that when I saw her the other day. So that won’t fit. Also, Hungerford was killed with Sirraway’s tie – Terry saw Sirraway rip it off after the fight and stuff it in his pocket.’
‘Two murderers, then,’ said Auriol.
‘Ha! Why not three? Four?’
Together they finished preparing the salad, and Judy switched on the lamps in the sitting room. ‘We’ll have it on our knees,’ she said, and Mulligatawny strolled in to see if there was a morsel for him.
‘Let’s start again. Let’s go back to Sir Freddy – go back to that time Geraldine Phipps was talking about. He stole the money from that poor woman.’
‘Pansy Westerham,’ said Auriol.
‘Yes.’
‘Then she died.’
‘Yes.’
‘He killed her.’
‘Might have.’
‘Well then,’ said Auriol, ‘couldn’t he have killed Mirabel? If he had the capacity to kill once, he could always do it again.’
‘I doubt,’ said Judy, ‘that he then strangled himself in remorse. With someone else’s necktie. Though I suppose it’s always possible.’
‘Ha, ha, very funny.’
‘No, I’m going back to the idea of two killers,’ said Judy. ‘Freddy kills Mirabel because he’s been denied his seat in the Lords. Someone then kills him.’
‘Who d’you have in mind for that?’
‘Hamish Madden, his assistant.’ She explained Madden’s confession of giving his boss a biffing outside the House of Commons. ‘He told me himself he doesn’t know his own strength – although it was meant to be a set-up, he overdid it.’
‘Why would he want to kill the man who pays his wages?’
‘He wouldn’t be the first. Haven’t you ever wanted to kill your boss? I have…’
‘You mean when we were at the Admiralty together?’ laughed Auriol. ‘Thanks very much, chum!’
‘I was thinking more of Richard Rhys, actually. Anyway, there’s just something not quite right in Madden’s eye. And you know, you could see the way Hungerford treated him as a dogsbody, so contemptuous of him.’
‘All fine and dandy, but wasn’t this Mr Madden in the hall serving drinks while Sir Freddy was being strangled?’
‘You have a point there.’
‘As for Freddy killing Mirabel, think about it – he’s seventy-plus. He’s going to walk her, or drag her, up that tall lighthouse tower and then, against her will, stick a knife into her? She was comparatively young and fit – really, Hugue, if I had to go up all those stairs I’d be on my hands and knees by the time I got to the top!’
Judy shook her head. ‘These two murders are linked, they have to be! Come on, have another glass, let’s walk this thing round the block once more. Just like we used to in the old days.’
‘I wish Arthur was here. I don’t know what it is – he says a word here, a phrase there. Asks a question which seems to have no meaning, and then it all falls into place.’
‘Well, he isn’t – so let’s jolly well get on with it.’
The two women sat silent for a moment, then Judy said, ‘I’m thinking back to something that fellow from the News Chronicle mentioned at the Grand Hotel, when I caught him with Frank Topham before Christmas. He said that Interpol was looking for a man who was hiding in Temple Regis.
‘Well,’ she went on, ‘we didn’t hear any more about that, so it was probably just a line he was throwing at the Inspector. On the other hand, if there was some truth in it then suddenly it might all make sense. These deaths are linked, unquestionably – but we can’t find a suspect who could have done them both.
‘If there was someone else, that person could have done both. But where would they be coming from, for Interpol to be involved? Why would he – or she, come to that – have such a close interest in two political candidates from the same party?’
‘Trying to destroy their chances of winning the election, maybe?’ suggested Auriol. ‘After all, they’ll be hard pressed to find a third prospective candidate in the time left before the ballot.’
‘That’s a bit far-fetched.’
‘You think of something better, Hugue.’
‘Hmm. Mirabel told me herself her chances of getting elected were slim. The Labour or the Liberal is likely to take the seat.’
‘This isn’t going terribly well, is it?’ said Auriol. ‘More wine, Hugue. My glass doesn’t seem to be doing its job.’
Twenty-Four
Murder may make big headlines, but it’s marriage that sells newspapers. Next morning Miss Dimont was back at her desk helping boost the Express’s circulation in time-honoured-style:
It was separate beds for Dawn Playfair and Ernie Pool after their marriage at St Margaret’s Church on Tuesday. Dawn returned home to her parents’ house in Creamery Close, while Ernie climbed into his hammock aboard HMS Antilles, which set sail from Plymouth in the early evening.
The couple, who met at Temple’s British Legion…
But here, inspiration failed. The mesmerising tale of a sailor and the girl who would wait for him while he went about defending the world against itself failed to catch fire. Heaving a sigh she pushed back her chair and picked up the kettle.
‘Have some of my special!’ came the dulcet tones of Athene, hidden behind her
ostrich-feathered screen on the other side of the newsroom.
‘Oh! I didn’t notice you were there,’ said Judy, glad of the distraction, weaving her way through the empty desks to where Devon’s number one astrologer sat. ‘How’s everything?’
‘Look in your cup when you’ve finished your tea and see if you can tell me!’ joked Athene. ‘Anyway, what was all that fuss about when I came into the office yesterday?’
‘Everybody blaming everybody else for the death of Freddy Hungerford,’ said Judy sourly. ‘Our supreme commander Mr Rhys all at sea, as usual.’
‘That sounds harsh, Judy, not like you.’
Just then a telephone rang on an unoccupied desk. With reluctance Miss Dimont wandered over, hoping it would stop before she reached it.
‘Hello, newsroom.’
‘I want to speak to a reporter.’
‘There’s nobody much around at the moment, I wonder if you could call back on Monday when…’
‘Are you a reporter?’ The voice was distant, but firm.
‘Well, yes but…’
‘My name is Gertrude Atherton,’ said the voice. ‘I live in the Lake District but for many years I was resident in Tuppenny Row.’
Judy sat down and idly reached for a piece of copy paper to scribble on: ‘How can I help, Mrs Atherton?’
‘Miss Atherton. I heard on the news this morning about the death of Sir Frederick Hungerford.’
‘Yes,’ said Miss Dimont. This lady sounds old, and no doubt wants to recall when he came to open her church fête, or judged her petunias to be the best in Devon. Or maybe she was his mistress a hundred years ago, she thought wickedly. ‘Yes, very sad, Miss Atherton. We’re all very saddened.’
‘Well, I’m not,’ said the distant voice. ‘The man was a mountebank.’
Well, this sounds interesting, thought Judy – more interesting than separate beds for Dawn and Ernie!
‘Well, of course,’ she replied, ‘not everybody voted for him.’
‘Nor would I ever! A lifelong Liberal, I am, and I very much hope our candidate Mrs Copplestone will win the seat.’