Died and Gone to Devon

‘We were at the Embassy Club – it’s where we all used to go, everyone knew everyone, of course. And I could see he’d been eyeing me up. His popsy at the time was Thelma Furness, though she wasn’t there that night.

‘He sent someone over to ask me to dance, which really is not the way to go about things, but he was the future king so I suppose he could please himself. We both got up and moved towards the dance floor but the moment we met, you could tell it would be a humiliation for him – I was nearly a foot taller, or so it seemed. We managed to scrape around the floor but he was very unhappy – never liked people showing up how short he was.’

‘Did you lead, or did he?’ asked Miss Dimont mischievously.

‘Ha! Ha! I will say this, he had the grace to ask me back to his table and that’s when it all began.’

‘What, exactly?’

‘Well, there was a group there, possibly ten, can’t remember them all but Prince George was there – you know, the Duke of Kent, the one killed in the war – and he had some American girl in tow. There was Diana Cooper and her husband, as well as Lord Dudley, Lord Sefton, a few others and this girl Pansy Westerham.’

Mrs Phipps looked around the room but so far there was no sign of the gin. She plunged on.

‘Pansy and I hit it off immediately – she raised one eyebrow as if to say, who’s your short friend? We both started laughing and that was it. She was wonderful company, didn’t care a hoot about anybody or anything – big blue eyes, wonderful figure, and funny as all get-out. We had lunch the next day and we were best friends from the word go.

‘She was having a fling with one of the men at that table but wouldn’t say who – she said it was complicated. But she told me everything else, I even knew his inside-leg measurement, dear!

‘After we’d known each other a few weeks she confessed there was someone else – someone she didn’t even like but was drawn to, fascinated by – he sounded quite nasty, actually. We’d meet most nights at the Embassy and she’d tell me little bits and pieces but actually, darling, I was only half listening – that nightclub was the most dazzling place on earth. Everybody who was anybody was there, and slap bang in the middle of it all were the Prince of Wales and Prince George and their côterie. Your eyes were out on stalks and of course, you were on the qui vive – I was between husbands at the time and you never knew who might come over and ask you to dance.’

‘Apart from the Prince of Wales.’

‘Ha! We never danced again – but I did have a go with Prince George – a lovely dancer and very manly with it. But he knew it, my dear, always a bit of a put-off.’

‘Not always.’

‘No, not always.’

There was a pause as they pursued their separate, pleasurable thoughts.

‘So,’ said Miss Dimont after a moment or two, ‘was it Pansy you wanted to talk to me about?’

‘I was just coming to that,’ said Mrs Phipps, beaming as the waitress slid into view with a glass on a silver salver. ‘Won’t you have one?’ The question was rhetorical.

‘After a bit Pansy got very down. It was man-trouble all right, you can always tell, but she didn’t want to discuss it. She just looked very strained and talked about the weather, that sort of thing.

‘Then one day she wasn’t there – pouf! Disappeared like I don’t know what. She had a little house off Knightsbridge, and I called round a couple of times but there was never an answer. I telephoned, left messages, but nothing.

‘I wondered if she’d run away with her bad man, but gossip soon got around our circle and nobody that we knew had left their wife, or absconded, done a bunk, so we were up a gumtree.’

‘I think I know what’s coming,’ said Miss Dimont, leaning forward with interest.

‘I expect you do, dear, what with your background in sleuthing. Anyway, they found her a fortnight later – dead in the street. She’d fallen from the top of her house – just behind Harrods, you know – and it was all very distressing. It turned out she had a husband who loved her dearly, she never told me about him, who lived in Paris. And there was a child she never mentioned either.’

‘Sounds like you never knew her after all.’

‘You’re right, of course. Later I discovered she developed pashes on people but after a bit got bored and moved on. When I thought about it afterwards, I realised she must have been running away in her mind from something – the abandoned husband and child, I suppose. And what she wanted to do was to live inside other people’s worlds. She wanted to open the door and take refuge in your house, as it were. She was delightful company, adorable, but all it covered up was unhappiness.’

‘You think she killed herself?’

‘Well, people took quite a lot of drugs back then – not like today, dear.’ Mrs Phipps looked ruminatively into her gin glass. ‘Morphine and cocaine and so on. Quite a lot of people killed themselves back then – but no.

‘No, that’s why I wanted to talk to you about her, Huguette – shall I call you that? I think she was murdered, and something inside me – even thirty years later – wants to find out what exactly happened.’

There were tears in her eyes. ‘Will you help me? Do you think you could get to the bottom of it? Find out the truth?’

‘Geraldine, think about it – how could I find anything out after all these years? There’s been a world war, an atom bomb, who knows what.’

‘But my dear, you’re so clever! All those things you’ve seen and done!’

Judy Dimont got up. ‘After all this time?’ she repeated, gathering up her raffia bag. ‘Geraldine, I would love to, but there’s not a chance. Too much water under the bridge.’

The old woman looked forlornly into her gin.

‘But now you’ve told me, I won’t be able to think about anything else.’

Four

Monday morning was always unnerving at the Riviera Express. The weekend had gone by in a flash, and now there were only four days left to press day. An ancient accounts book, importantly renamed ‘the diary’, sat on a rickety table outside the editor’s office and its entries were a strong indicator of the excitements ahead for the newspaper’s readers on Friday.

MONDAY Townswomen’s Guild rededication TR rent Tribunal Bell-ringers’ AGM, St Margaret’s TUESDAY Mag Court Highways Committee Rural District Council WEDNESDAY THURSDAY Mag Court Mothers Union jumble sale Lifeboat lift-out

The blank space against Wednesday was not unusual – it was early closing day and probably for that reason alone the world came to a halt in Temple Regis. Maybe it was the day people stayed at home for Ray’s A Laugh on the wireless, but whatever the reason, it was unnerving to see how little news there was to harvest in the coming days – hence the nervous 11 a.m. weekly assembly over which the editor, Rudyard Rhys, grumpily presided.

His room was crowded with the flotsam and jetsam which staffed the editorial departments of local newspapers everywhere – retired servicemen, young hopefuls, failed theatricals like Ray Bennett, the arts editor, and people into whose background it was as well not to inquire too closely. They were a shifting community with little in common outside a good shorthand note.

One recent addition stood out a little uncomfortably. David Renishaw had appeared out of nowhere with an impressive sheaf of cuttings, an urgent self-confidence, impeccable manners, and the apparent capacity to oil his way through locked doors. As journalists went, he was a cut above.

Miss Dimont took against him in an instant.

‘Too good to be true,’ she said to her friend Auriol as they’d walked back from church the previous day. ‘He’s handsome, accomplished, go-getting – I don’t understand what he’s doing in Temple Regis when he should be in Fleet Street.’

‘Woman trouble,’ judged Auriol shrewdly.

‘Apparently there’s a wife in Canada. She’s going to join him once he’s settled in.’

‘We’ll see. How long’s he been here?’

‘Three weeks.’

‘Going home for Christmas?’

‘Can’t afford it.’

‘There, I told you.’

Miss Dimont ignored this. ‘He’s volunteered to do the Christmas rounds.’ These entailed the reporter visiting the resort’s hospital and hostel and nursing homes, then returning to the office to paint a rosy Yuletide picture of those less fortunate than himself. Normally Ray Bennett, lonely confirmed bachelor, did the job with loud moans of self-sacrifice, but he’d been ousted by Renishaw and was very upset about it. This Christmas he would have nothing to complain about.

Renishaw was sitting next to John Ross in the editor’s office, with Peter Pomeroy as usual serving up the tea. There was a gaggle of other reporters, including one or two from the district offices, as well as Judy and Betty, until the room was full to the brim with journalistic talent. Why, then, with so many people, was it so difficult to fill the paper each week?

‘What have you got, Judy?’ Mr Rhys was in typically gangrenous form.

‘Caring volunteers,’ she said, absently – she was thinking about the long-dead Pansy Westerham.

‘Rr… rrr.’ The growl coming from behind the editor’s whiskers indicating disapproval, disappointment, disbelief at so feeble an offering. It was no different to any Monday – if the town hall had burned down and His Worshipful had been caught halfway up the flagpole in his longjohns, it would have drawn the same reaction. If Brigitte Bardot had blown in and landed a kiss on Rudyard’s cheek with the news she was moving to Temple Regis, it would have been no different. Nothing was ever good enough for the editor.

‘Caring volunteers crisis,’ Judy soldiered on, though she could tell he wasn’t listening. ‘This round of flu has meant that there’s nobody fit enough, or free enough of germs, to visit those who need calling on over the Christmas period.’

‘A wee job there for Ray, then,’ said John Ross acidly, out of the corner of his mouth. ‘He’s been bellyachin’ ever since you gave the Christmas calls to young Renishaw here.’ He approved of the new arrival, whose copy came perfectly typed with no mistakes and an extra carbon included, just in case.

‘OK,’ agreed the editor. If he’d said the other thing there’d be nothing in the paper. ‘Betty?’

Betty was doing a crossword and didn’t realise immediately it was her turn. Judy gave her a nudge.

‘Hairdressing night,’ she said finally.

Everyone groaned.

‘All the hairdressers are doing late-night opening so everyone can get their perms done for Christmas. I thought I could get mine done this week – picture story – help drum up trade.’

There was the traditional rustling of notebooks which accompanied stinkers like this, a vicious indicator that buried somewhere in their scribbled pages they had a better idea. But the editor nodded and the moment passed. ‘Mr Renishaw?’

Miss Dimont looked up from her notebook and watched the newcomer’s profile as he started to speak. His words came without hesitation in a low, urgent murmur and with no recourse to notes.

‘I’ve been speaking to a member of the Chamber of Commerce,’ he said. ‘They’re thinking of charging an entry fee to holidaymakers coming into Temple Regis – thruppence in the box at Regis Junction when you get out of the train, or one per cent on the bill in the hotels and guesthouses. He reckons that in three years it will have generated enough income to build a bridge from Todhempstead Sands out to Nether Island – which would then generate even more income from toll charges. It will bring a massive new wealth to Temple Regis and steal a march on Torquay and Paignton and all the others.’

You could have heard a pin drop. This was actually a very good story, brought in by a reporter who’d been here so little time he’d hadn’t yet had the opportunity to find the Oddfellows’ Hall. How on earth had he pulled it off?

‘Rr… rrr,’ rumbled Rudyard Rhys, ‘first I’ve heard of it.’ He usually got all the best stories down at the Con Club at lunch on Fridays, after the paper had been published. ‘Who told you that?’

‘Confidential source,’ said Renishaw. This was not a phrase you ever heard at the Express – Temple Regis being the kind of town where everybody knew everybody else’s business. And how had this newcomer, in so short a space of time, managed to find a contact prepared to confide a piece of information which could radically alter the town’s fortunes and set it apart from its rivals on the English Riviera?

It beggared belief.

‘So… are you saying people will be forced to pay to be allowed into Temple Regis?’

‘That’s about it,’ replied Renishaw. He didn’t seem to think it that peculiar.

‘I can’t think of another place in Britain that does that.’

‘My source is an innovator, thinks differently from the rest of us. Says the town needs shaking up, or it’s going to lose its custom to the bigger resorts. Look at what Teignmouth has been doing recently!’

‘But – it’s like paying to go into a shop!’ said Peter Pomeroy scornfully. ‘Who’d want to do that?’

Others in the conference, perhaps less forward-thinking, nodded in agreement. But Renishaw was unruffled: ‘You all agree Temple Regis is the prettiest resort in Devon. Now’s the time to test that theory. If people really do want to come here, what’s an extra thruppence?’

There was a silence which could only be described as hostile.

‘Very well,’ said the editor, and just for a moment a wintry smile broke out on his bewhiskered face. Persuading young Renishaw to join the Express was the best thing he’d done in years. His choice, his decision, his triumph!

‘See,’ he crowed, turning to the bunch of deadbeats he’d also employed over the years, ‘see how it’s done? All you have to do is put yourselves out there, make your contacts, and they come running to you with their best stories. That’s journalism for you!’

‘Have you noticed that he has a bit of hair that springs up on the back of his head?’ whispered Betty to Judy. ‘It could do with a bit of smoothing down and I bet if he let me I could—’

‘Married,’ reminded Judy.

That shut Betty up. She had Certain Rules – though they didn’t prevent her looking.

‘How old is he, d’you think?’

‘Mid-thirties. Still married, Betty.’

The news conference trundled on, with a depressing amount of time devoted to the fortunes of Regis Rangers, the local football team, and Plymouth Argyle, nearby giants of the turf. Betty went back to her crossword and Judy briefly focused her attention on the rogue curl on the back of David Renishaw’s head.

She wasn’t thinking about him, however – she’d already formed certain conclusions about this genius in their midst – she was thinking about Pansy Westerham.

‘You wouldn’t believe it,’ Terry was saying, shaking his head in disbelief.

They were in the Minor, the only editorial vehicle the Riviera Express possessed. Mostly if you were a reporter you had to catch the bus or use Shanks’s pony, though Miss Dimont was something of a legend in Temple Regis the way she manoeuvred Herbert, her trusty moped, around the town.

For a time she’d enjoyed the novelty of young reporter Valentine Waterford’s tinny red bubble car – indeed, enjoyed the novelty of Valentine himself – but local newspapers have the careless habit of losing those most talented or attractive and one day he’d gone, never to be heard of again.

There was always Terry, though. He had a strong, sturdy profile, an enviable work ethic, an agile mind and a lust for perfection. He could also burble on about the most dreary topics, and his taste in clothes – witness the deerstalker – was nothing short of a crying shame.

‘D’you know he spent forty years photographing snowflakes,’ droned Terry. ‘The pictures are incredible – specially when you consider they were taken using a plate camera attached to a microscope.’ They were off to the cottage hospital to see what they could work up on the Caring Volunteers crisis.

‘Mm,’ responded Miss Dimont, the sound from her closed lips a dipthong of apparent interest and barely concealed boredom. She was careful never to encourage him.

‘The only way he could capture them – this is the 1890s, Judy – was by catching the flakes on a piece of black velvet. Wilson Bentley – what a genius! That’s why I got the new filter for the Leica and, Judy, while you were holed up with that old biddy in Wistman’s Hotel I managed to capture a few.’

‘Oh?’ A fleeting moment of interest.

‘Didn’t really work – too much sunlight. You see, when you photograph snow there are no shadows…’ and on he rambled. Judy looked out of the window as they climbed the hill and came down the other side to Ruggleswick, where the cottage hospital was to be found.

At the lookout point halfway down the hill, Terry stopped the Minor and switched off the engine. He quite often did this when they came out this way, just to stare in amazement at the view. For Terry, the shifting light on the water was a technical challenge never to be mastered, and this morning’s brilliant sunshine, despite the proximity of Christmas, threw up extra hurdles.

For Miss Dimont the seascape recalled memories and moments, captured like flowers pressed into a book, forgotten, only to be rediscovered by chance. The inexorable roll of the waves diminished life’s hurts and filled one’s heart with new hope. There would come a moment, when the sun shone on water on a winter’s day like this, when she would forget about Eric Hedley. But not quite yet.

‘This chap Renishaw,’ said Terry, breaking into her thoughts. ‘’E’s good.’

Miss Dimont swivelled her head round to look at the photographer. ‘You think so?’

‘We went out last week and I’ve never seen anyone work so fast. Brilliant. ’E won’t last long at the Express, far too good for the likes of us.’

Judy took this personally. She had a sharp eye for a story and was – until Mr Renishaw appeared – the best interviewer in the West Country. She could create a story out of a handful of dust.

‘Did he tell you what he’s doing down here, sharing that towering talent with us lesser mortals?’

‘Something about wanting a change. I think he worked in Fleet Street for a bit. Or maybe he was on one of the nationals in Canada. A bit vague. We spent most of the time talking about ballroom dancing.’

‘What would you know about that,’ snapped Judy, memories of bruised toes flooding back.

‘You’d be surprised.’

‘Coffee?’ They often brought a Thermos on trips away from the office – it was nice, once you were out, to stay out.

‘I wanted to ask you something – but Terry, don’t go all technical on me. Just a simple answer.’ She poured the coffee into two tin mugs and the Minor’s windows started to steam up. Glimpsing the silhouette of their heads together, a passer-by might think they were lovers.

‘What?’

‘I’d like to find some photographs of a woman who died, oh, thirty years ago. She was a socialite, very glamorous, but only appeared on the scene for a very short time before she fell off a roof and was killed.’

Terry looked at her keenly. ‘Killed? D’you mean murdered?’

‘I have no idea. But yes, it could be. On the other hand she may just have been depressed, or taken drugs – I don’t know. But I want to know more about her, and to do that I need to see what she looked like.’

‘Socialite, you say?’

‘Yes.’

‘Two places you go, then. The Illustrated London News has the best society picture library. Failing that, the Press Association. Or possibly Tatler.’

‘I thought of that – but how do you ask?’

‘Leave it to me. Hadn’t we better get on?’

They rolled down the hill into Ruggleswick, parked outside the cottage hospital and were greeted by the Matron, Miss Stanway.

What followed was standard fare for the Express and any other local newspaper – a sad tale of the current flu epidemic leaving the town shorn of its crop of volunteers who traditionally swarmed in around Christmas to cheer up the lonely or those abandoned by their families.

In forthright tones Miss Stanway issued the plea that those more comfortably placed in the community might put their seasonal priorities to one side and step forward to fill the gap, while Miss Dimont’s flawless shorthand took down every word. Terry took a picture of Matron standing in her hospital ward, and managed to capture the poignancy of the story by snapping her with a shaft of light behind her left shoulder, pouring down onto a bed whose occupant had turned her head away, as if in despair.

It’s what made Terry brilliant. He may not be able to do The Times crossword and heaven knows when he last opened a book. His love of music was eccentric, and as for his dancing! It infuriated Miss Dimont that someone who wandered through life so immune to its glories could come up with the perfect picture to illustrate her story. How did he manage it?

When they came outside the sun had gone. The seascape had turned grey and nightfall was marching rapidly towards them, even though it was not yet four o’clock. A flock of seagulls suddenly took an interest and circled overhead, noisily beseeching these two isolated human beings to eat something and leave behind the remains.

Miss Dimont felt unnerved by how close they dared to come and rapidly got back in the Minor. Terry stopped to take a shot of them, but when he got in the car started complaining he’d got his stop wrong, or something. When he’d finished whinnying Miss Dimont asked if he’d drive her over to Bedlington.

‘Not going back to the office to type it up? That’s not like you, Judy.’

‘My uncle’s staying with Auriol. We’re all going to have a not-so-nice evening together.’

‘Isn’t he staying with you?’

‘He doesn’t like cats.’ Mulligatawny would have to do without her tonight.

‘Why not-so-nice?’ Terry was full of questions today.

‘Because he’s doing his best – yet again – to get my mother and I together in the same room.’

Terry knew a lot about the redoubtable Madame Dimont, who despite her English birth still insisted on being addressed that way, supporting her demand with a flimsy Belgian accent. Ever since her arrival at the Riviera Express Judy had filled empty conversational moments in the Minor regaling Terry with the Madame’s awfulness and the avalanche of reproving letters with which Grace Dimont bombarded her only child.

‘She’s coming for Christmas,’ she confessed. ‘Staying at the Grand. Won’t stay with me because there’s no room service and no flock of adoring servants. She hates cats, too, just like Arthur – between them they must have had a sadly deprived childhood.’

‘But you’ll give her Christmas lunch at your house?’

‘That’s what we’re going to discuss. How to make the best of a bad job. You don’t want to come and join the party on Christmas Day, Terry?’ For a moment she looked almost vulnerable.

‘Not ruddy likely,’ said Terry, starting up the motor. ‘How long is it since you saw her? Your mother?’

‘Oh…’ answered Miss Dimont looking out of the window, not wanting to think about it anymore. ‘Look, those seagulls are following us.’

‘Nothin’ better to do.’

‘Get a move on, then!’ She didn’t like the way they tracked the car’s progress, like enemy bombers.

‘I’ll talk to some mates when I get back to the office,’ said Terry, sensing her alarm, changing the subject. ‘See if we can find some pics of that woman you was interested in. What’s her name by the way?’