Resort to Murder: A must-read vintage crime mystery

And now, the battle done, she sat outside on a bench taking in the sun while Old Jacky shared his thoughts with her.

‘Just goin’ on me ’olidays,’ he was saying.

‘Oh,’ said Miss Dimont, rallying. ‘Anywhere nice?’

‘Down ’oo Spain,’ said Jacky. ‘See if I can get some deckhand work.’

‘You mean – you fish all year, then when you go on holiday … you fish?’

The wrinkled old sailor smiled at her and shifted his cap. ‘’Bout right.’

Just then Cran Conybeer came out of the Jawbones and saw his most recent crew member marooned on her bench.

‘Lan’lubber,’ he said, laughing. ‘You carn walk, can you?’ ‘Of course I can,’ said Miss Dimont in her peppery voice, rising unsteadily to her feet.

‘You come along a me,’ said the captain, hoisting Miss Dimont up gently and putting his arm through hers. ‘You come along a me, I’ll make sure you’re safe.’

At the landward end of the pier at Temple Regis stood the Pavilion Theatre, a crumbling structure with precious little life left in it whichever way you looked at it. If there was one thing the town cried out for it was a cultural centre where visitors could congregate at the end of an exhausting day’s holidaymaking to be entertained and where locals, too, could pick up some crumbs of artistic comfort at the bookends of the season. This was not it.

For years the Pavilion had been run – first successfully, then gradually less so – by Raymond Cattermole, a former actor. Occasionally, a star from London would descend for a short season in support of their old friend, but Cattermole’s homegrown fare was proving less appetising as the years went by. He looked for comfort to his current squeeze, Geraldine Phipps, and sometimes beyond – for after a lifetime of ups and downs on the stage the old Gaiety Girl would rather have a glass of gin than a spot of pillow talk. And so, after a particularly disastrous performance of his one-man show My West End Life, the actor-manager came to the conclusion there was no point in sharing his genius with the oafs in the one-and-thruppennies, and for some days now his doors had been shut.

This afternoon, however, a side door creaked open a crack and from within came a rasping but cultured voice.

‘Come in, dear. Mind the rubbish.’

The young man mooched down the long corridor towards the large back room which, though lacking home comforts, had at least the consolation of a bottle of Plymouth gin.

Mrs Phipps, who had commandeered the only glass, swilled out a mug under the cold tap and placed it before her guest. ‘Pour away to your heart’s content. He left a crate of it behind.’

Her guest made himself a cup of tea.

‘So tell me again, dear, what are they called?’

‘Danny Trouble. And The Urge.’

The ancient Mrs Phipps blenched. ‘Are you sure?’ She lit a Navy Cut and her hands shook slightly as she did so.

‘They’re cool,’ said her grandson. ‘Just what’s needed in a dead-and-alive hole like this.’

‘You know,’ said Mrs Phipps sourly – the gin had not yet mellowed the edges – ‘I learned what entertainment was more than half a century ago, but from what you tell me these young men are far from entertaining, just rude. I’ve seen their sort on TV – no finesse, no culture, no style. They may look sweet onstage in their matching suits and their shiny guitars but from the way they curl their lips and waggle about I’d say they neither seek the adulation of their audience, nor do they even try to charm them.’

‘That’s the point!’ exclaimed Gavin Armstrong. ‘It’s the love-’em-and-leave-’em principle. The girls adore it.’ Mrs Phipps took refuge in the gin.

‘You should see them – they’re positively electric! Onstage it’s like November the Fifth and the 1812 Overture all rolled into one.’

‘There’s another thing,’ said Mrs Phipps sharply, ‘the electricity. They all have these electric guitars, don’t they? That must use up an awful lot of juice. What I need to do here now Ray’s hopped it is get costs down and …’

‘What you need is The Urge, Granny.’

‘What I need, Gavin,’ continued Mrs Phipps, who in her time had experienced more urges than her grandson could possibly imagine, ‘what I need to do is keep this theatre open – and to do that I’ve got to find an act which is cheap and a guaranteed box-office success. Not something that’s going to eat up the profits with sky-high electric bills and frighten the locals away at the same time.’

‘They won’t need all those spotlights you’ve got. They don’t need a stage set. They don’t need make-up – though one or two could do to cover up their spots, I’ll admit – and the last thing they need is people ushering the punters into their seats. In fact the fans’d probably tear out the seats if they did.’

‘Disgusting,’ spat Mrs Phipps, pouring herself another. ‘Nothing but louts and Teddy boys. Don’t you see what people want on a nice night out? They want glamour, they want to be carried away on wings of song.’

‘No they don’t, Gran. These days what they want is deafening noise.’

Mrs Phipps shuddered. ‘To think we fought our way through two wars to end up like this,’ she said. ‘Once upon a time and not so long ago, gentlemen would wait at the stage door of the Adelphi with a gardenia, a bottle of perfume and a taxi waiting to whisk me off to supper at the Café Royal.’

‘Darling thing,’ sighed Gavin, ‘the days of the Gaiety Girl are long gone. The war’s been over for an age, and there’s a whole new generation that wants something different, something original. Danny Trouble and The Urge are it.’

‘They’re noisy and uncouth,’ said Mrs Phipps, who had no idea whether they were or not.

‘They’re definitely that all right,’ said Gavin, with pride.

‘But what will the townsfolk say? The council? The press?’

‘Ah,’ said Gavin, a wily smile on his lips, ‘you can’t fail with the press. They’ll have to write about them, one way or the other. That’s guaranteed! Either it’ll be “Disgrace to Temple Regis” or else “Britain’s Top Beat Group Come to Town”, and hopefully both. The theatre will be full. Every night.’

‘No,’ said Mrs Phipps, exhaling a hefty cloud of nicotine, ‘no, Gavin. It really won’t do.’

‘It’s the new religion!’

‘Then you’re a poor missionary, and I am no convert,’ said Mrs Phipps, absently peering into her glass.

‘Look,’ said Gavin, ‘we both have an opportunity here, Granny. Raymond’s scarpered and you don’t know when or if he’ll be back …’

‘Oh, he’ll be back,’ said Mrs Phipps, ‘he can’t live without me.’

‘You didn’t say that last time he ran off with Suki Raffray.’

‘Don’t mention that Jezebel’s name!’ screeched Mrs Phipps. It had been an ugly business.

‘You don’t know when or if he’ll be back,’ repeated Gavin, seizing his moment. ‘The theatre has to open for the new season next week – what are you planning to put on? I’ve got Danny and the lads on a contract until the end of the year, but that’s all. They’ve just had their first Number One and pretty soon some manager will come along who knows what they’re doing, and that’ll be curtains for me.

‘Bringing them down here, they’ll be the first beat group ever to do a summer residency in a British seaside resort. That’ll give them headlines, it’ll give Temple Regis headlines, and people will come flocking to this …’ he paused, searching sarcastically for the word ‘. . . er, delightful town.’

‘Plus,’ he added ingratiatingly. ‘you can pay them less than you paid Alma Cogan last year. They’d have a regular income, and I’d get paid.’

Mrs Phipps looked across at her grandson and shook her head. ‘You father had such hopes for you, Gavin. The Brigade … maybe the Foreign Office afterwards …’ She sighed. ‘But since you ask, what I had in mind was Sidney Torch and his Light Orchestra. I know Sidney, and he’d come down here for me in an instant, I feel sure of that. They have such beguiling music, darling, just the sort of thing to attract the traditional holidaymaker. He came down here once before, years ago, and you know, they even got up in the aisles and danced!’

‘With Danny Trouble they’ll never sit down,’ said Gavin tartly. ‘What this place desperately needs is something for the younger crowd.

‘You know, Granny’ he went on, ‘this is 1959 – people don’t want to dance cheek to cheek any more, they want rock and roll!’

‘I suppose you may be right,’ conceded his grandmother, who was becoming alarmed at the prospect of having to confess to Temple Regis that the Pavilion Theatre would remain dark through the summer season. ‘We do need something new. People got fed up with Arthur doing his West End Life – that’s why he ran away, you know. They got up and started catcalling.’

‘It wasn’t Suki Raffray, then? Why he ran away?’

‘IT WAS NOT SUKI RAFFRAY!’ shouted Mrs Phipps. ‘Don’t mention that name again!’

‘Then you agree, Granny? That Danny and the boys can come for the six-week season?’

‘What else can I do?’ said Mrs Phipps, shaking her head so hard her fine silvery hair escaped its pinnings. ‘I have no alternative.’

‘You won’t regret it, Gran.’

Mrs Phipps shuddered as she reached again for Plymouth’s most famous export.

‘I feel as though someone just walked over my grave,’ she said.

THREE

The atmosphere in the editor’s office at the Riviera Express was as it always was – dusty – but the moment the newspaper’s chief reporter walked in it got dustier.

Judy Dimont was everything an editor could wish for – a brilliant mind, a dazzling shorthand note and charm enough to entice whole flocks from the trees. Yet, as Rudyard Rhys raised his eyes from the task in hand, a particularly recalcitrant briar pipe, he could see none of this. Before him stood a striking woman of indeterminate age dressed vaguely in a macintosh with its belt pulled tight at the waist, and with a waft of corkscrew curls slipping joyously from the restraints of a silk scarf. A faint scent of rum entered the room with her.

‘Got the fishermen,’ said Judy Dimont, a trifle dreamily. ‘What extraordinary men they are! Why, do you know …’

‘Rr … rrrr,’ growled her editor, whether by way of approval or dissent it was hard to tell, but enough to douse Miss Dimont’s tribute to those in peril on the sea.

Rhys returned to his pipe. ‘There was a murder while you were out on your jolly boating trip,’ he said, a nasty edge to his voice. ‘As my chief reporter I should have liked you there.’

‘There was a force nine out beyond the headland,’ said Miss Dimont, not a little proud of her early morning exploits. ‘Rather difficult to spot a murder from there. Anyway, who …’

‘Had to send him,’ said Rhys, nodding towards a corner of the room. A young man half rose from his seat and, with a slight smile, gently inclined his head. In a second the chief reporter had it summed up – wet-behind-the-ears recruit, probably the son of a friend of the managing director, going to be useless, a dead weight, another failed experiment in attracting the nation’s young talent into local journalism.

Miss Dimont was not without prejudice but in general she was kind. She did not feel kind this morning.

‘Well then, let him write it up,’ she said, eyeing not without prejudice the item which hung round his neck and which looked suspiciously like an old school tie. ‘I’ve got this feature to write and then, if it’s OK with you, Mr Rhys, I’m going home. I was up at three this morning to catch the tide.’

For a man who once had worn Royal Navy uniform himself, Rhys showed a surprising lack of interest over the vicissitudes of the ocean. ‘Give him a hand,’ he ordered, and dismissed them both with the swish of a damp page-proof.

Pushing up the spectacles which adorned her glorious nose, Miss Dimont stepped, with an audible sigh, out into the corridor. The last thing she wanted – another trainee reporter dumped on her!

‘Have you found yourself a desk?’ she inquired shortly, not even bothering to look over her shoulder as she strode into the newsroom.

‘They … they told me to sit opposite you,’ said the young man. ‘The other lady, er …’

‘Betty.’

‘Yes, Betty’s … um … I think she’s … er, not quite sure. I think she’s been sent elsewhere.’ The words seemed hesitant but he appeared pretty self-assured. ‘Newbury something.’

‘Newton Abbot?’ she said.

‘That’s about the size of it,’ said the young man. ‘She didn’t seem too happy.’

This did not please Miss Dimont one bit. Betty Featherstone was effectively her number two and, though uninspired, was a useful reporter who did her share of filling the copious news pages which made up the weekly digest of events in Devon’s prettiest town. Having her dispatched to the district office was a blow. It would increase the chief reporter’s workload and, at the same time, require her to shepherd this innocent lamb through his first weeks on the paper until he got the hang of it.

Or disappeared.

The young man sat down opposite her. ‘Erm, we haven’t been introduced. Valentine is the name.’

‘Judy Dimont, Mr Valentine. Welcome to the Riviera Express.’ The words didn’t have quite the cheery ring they might, but then she was not used to rum for breakfast. She felt tired and wanted to go home to Mulligatawny.

‘Er, Valentine’s the first name,’ the boy said.

‘Surname?’

‘Waterford.’

‘Well, that’ll look pretty as a front-page byline,’ she said, not entirely kindly. ‘Raise the tone a bit.’

‘I was thinking of shortening it to Ford. It’s a bit of a mouthful,’ he said apologetically.

‘Well, you won’t need to do anything with it if you don’t write up your murder,’ said Miss Dimont crisply. ‘No story, no byline. You do know what a byline is?’

‘Window dressing,’ said Waterford. ‘For the reporter, it’s compensation for not being paid properly. A bun to the starving bear.’

His words caused Miss Dimont to look at him again. Could, for once, the management have recruited some young cannon fodder who actually had a few brains?

‘Makes the page look nice, makes the reading public think they know who wrote the story,’ he went on, smiling. ‘A byline makes everybody happy.’

Good Lord, thought Miss Dimont, her head clearing rapidly. He’s what, twenty-two? Obviously just finished National Service. How come he knows so much about journalism?

‘How come you seem to know so much about …’

‘Uncle in the business,’ said Valentine, looking with unease at the large Remington Standard typewriter in front of him. He carefully folded a sheet of copy paper into the machine, took out a brand-new notebook and started to tap. Very slowly.

Obviously he does not need my help, thought Miss Dimont, and set about her own preparations to bring to life the world of Cran Conybeer and his lion-hearted friends.

Just then Betty Featherstone wafted by, attracted by the mop of tousled hair atop Valentine Waterford’s handsome young head. Despite her marching orders she was evidently in no hurry to catch the bus to Newton Abbot.

It was a sight to behold when Miss Dimont got to work. She hunched over her Quiet-Riter and the words just flowed from her flying fingers. Her corkscrew hair wobbled from side to side, her right hand turned the pages of the notebook while the left continued to tap away, and her lovely features sometimes pinched into an unattractive scowl when she found herself momentarily lost for a word or phrase. But as the paper in her typewriter smoothly ratcheted up, line by line, the story of the extraordinary events of her pre-dawn foray in the English Channel came gracefully to life.

‘. . . single?’ Betty was saying, adjusting the broad belt which held in her billowing skirt – how lovely he looked with his slim figure, borrowed suit and polished shoes! She was not one to waste time on irrelevancies.

‘Been in the Army,’ said the young man, ‘not much time for all that.’ It was clear to Miss Dimont, though not to Betty, that this was not the moment to turn on her headlights.

‘Can I help?’ Judy interrupted, nodding Betty away.

‘Matter of nomenclature,’ said Valentine.

‘What’s the difficulty?’

‘It’s supposed to be a murder. But it’s an accidental death. Though it could be a murder,’ he said. He went on to explain his arrival at Temple Regis Police Station, his briefing by the ever-garrulous Sergeant Gull (murder) followed by a second briefing by the taciturn Topham (accidental).

‘Which do I call it? Murder? Or accidental?’

‘Well, just wait a minute now,’ said Miss Dimont, suddenly very interested. ‘Who is it who’s supposed to have been murdered?’ She had, after all, some experience in such matters.

‘Young lady, possibly early twenties. Bad head injuries, found in the middle of a big wide beach.’

This sounded very odd.

‘Mystery death,’ ordered Miss Dimont crisply. ‘If even the police can’t find the word for it, then it’s a mystery. Tell me more.’

Waterford described the discovery of the body, details kindly supplied by Sergeant Gull. Then he reported the deliberate downplaying by Inspector Topham: ‘Rather angry about it he was, actually. Reminded me of my sergeant-major.’

‘He was a sergeant-major.’

‘That would explain it.’

‘When’s the inquest?’ ‘Inquest?’

He’s rather sweet, thought Miss Dimont, but he knows nothing. ‘Anything unusual about a death,’ she explained, ‘there’s a post-mortem. The coroner opens a public investigation into the circs.’

‘Excellent. There’s a lot to learn, isn’t there? And my journalism training course doesn’t start until I’ve been here three months.’

So you’re going to be a dead weight until then, thought Miss Dimont. ‘You know how to make a cup of tea?’

‘Er, yes.’

‘Jolly good,’ she said briskly. The boy wonder took the hint and slid away.

Miss Dimont paused for a moment to consider what she’d just been told. Though she made little of it, she was no stranger to death; and since her arrival in Temple Regis she’d figured significantly in the detection of a number of serious crimes. Within recent memory there was the case of Mrs Marchbank, the magistrate, who had managed to do away with her cousin in the most ingenious fashion. The fact that the police couldn’t make up their minds whether this new case was murder or accidental set the alarm bells ringing, but first she must finish the job in hand.

It took less than an hour to turn out six hundred words on the Lass O’Doune’s battles against nature, her triumphant victory in bringing food to the mouths of the nation, and the safe return from tumultuous seas. Miss Dimont made no mention of her own part in hauling in the rough and seething nets, her drenching by the ocean deep, the souvenir piece of turbot which she and Mulligatawny would share tonight – she did not believe in writing about herself.

Betty had no such qualms: she was always ready to illustrate her stories with a photograph or two of her digging a hole, baking a cake, riding a bicycle or anything else the photographer demanded. Actually she had one of those faces which looked nicer in photographs than in real life, and her editor often took advantage of her thirst for self-publicity. By comparison Judy Dimont was disinclined to make a display of herself: her elusive beauty was more difficult to capture, though Terry Eagleton, the chief photographer, had taken some gorgeous portraits of her only recently.

While she’d been finishing the fishermen piece, Valentine Waterford was having his copy rewritten by the chief sub-editor. He returned to discover Miss Dimont’s tea cold and untouched. ‘Perhaps a cup of coffee instead?’ he asked anxiously. ‘I’ll get the hang of it, I expect.’

‘Well,’ said Miss Dimont, ‘you better had. We all take turns to make the tea and,’ she added pointedly, ‘some people round here are quite fussy.’

‘I’ve decided on Ford,’ he replied, looking again as all young reporters do at his first story in print, and marvelling. ‘It fits into a column better.’

‘Good idea. Now come and tell me more about this dead body.’

The drab, bare hall behind St Margaret’s Church had never seen anything like it. Where normally baize-topped card tables were laid out for the Mothers’ Union weekly whist drive there were racks of clothes and a number of long mirrors. The hooks containing the choir’s cassocks and surplices had been cleared, in their place a selection of skimpy bathing costumes. Hat boxes littered the floor, the smell of face powder filled the air, and a number of young ladies in various states of undress could be seen bad-temperedly foraging for clothing, hairpins and inspiration.

‘Season gets earlier and earlier,’ said one grumpily. ‘Ain’t going down well with my Fred.’

‘Lend us your Mum rolette, dear.’

‘Certimly not. That’s personal.’

‘Oh go on, Molly, I always pong otherwise. Nerves, you know.’

‘Shouldn’t have nerves, the length of time you’ve been at this malarkey.’

They’d all been at it too long, if truth be told. But fame is a drug, and the acquisition of fame just as addictive. You had to look – and smell – your best at all times.

Molly Churchstow was looking a little long in the tooth today. Her life had become a triumph of hope over experience, for the longed-for crown which came with the title Queen of the English Riviera continued to elude her. But she remained determined: so determined, in fact, that her Fred had given up hope of ever marrying her, for the rules clearly stated that a beauty pageant contestant must be single. Even the merest glimpse of an engagement ring meant she would be jettisoned in the early rounds, once the maximum publicity of her enforced departure had been squeezed out of the local newspapers. Beauty queens must forever be single and available to their adoring public!

Molly hoped to be this year’s Riviera queen, having previously triumphed in the hotly-contested title fights for Miss Dawlish, Miss Teignmouth, and Miss Dartmouth, but it had been a long struggle with diminishing rewards. It would unkind to suggest that over the years she’d become a prisoner of her ambition – for Molly had a bee in her bonnet about being loved, being admired, and becoming famous.

Most of the girls in the grey-painted hall had a similar tale to tell. Each had tasted the mixed blessing of being a beauty queen: you got your photograph in the paper, people stopped you in the street for your autograph, you got a better class of boyfriend, usually with a car, and your love life was destined always to be a disaster.

But oh the thrill! The parades with mounted police, the brass bands, the motorcades through the town! The popping flashbulbs and your name in the papers!

‘Oh Lord, my corns,’ said Eve Berry, and sat down heavily. ‘How long are Hannaford’s giving you off? Or are you havin’ to do overtime to make up for the days off?’

‘Stocktaking in the basement with that lecher Mr French. It’s never very pleasant. You?’

Molly did not reply to this but hissed back, ‘Watch out, here comes The Slug.’

Looking not unlike like his nickname, Cyril Normandy elbowed his way through a dozen girls, his heavy feet crushing girdles, make-up bags, lipsticks and anything else which had fallen to the floor in the melee. Another man of his age and girth might dream and dream of sharing a room so filled with temptation, but not Normandy. Greed was etched into every line on his fat face and he looked neither to left nor right.

‘Stuff something into that top, Dartmouth,’ he said roughly to Molly. ‘You’re flat as a pancake.’

Molly was used to this.

‘As for you Exmouth,’ he said, referring to Eve’s title – he never used Christian names – ‘those shoes!’