Resort to Murder: A must-read vintage crime mystery

‘You’ll have to let me have some on tick,’ said Eve, unsurprised by this attack on her battered high heels. ‘Can’t afford a new pair.’

The fat man looked at her meanly. ‘Borrow some,’ he snapped. ‘And get a move on, you’re due out there in two minutes.’

Altogether twenty-one girls were entered in this eliminating heat. Up for grabs was not only the Riviera queen title, but also the chance to go through to the next round of Miss Great Britain. And, after that, Miss World! Here in the church hall in Temple Regis there was a lot at stake, even if most of the girls were experienced enough to predict the outcome.

Normandy moved away towards the door, blowing a whistle as he went. The prettiest girls in Devon – those at least who were prepared to take part in this fanciful charade – lined up by the door, giving each other the once-over. They were uniformly clad in one-piece bathing suits, high heels, lacquered hair and bearing a cardboard badge on their right wrist signifying their competition number. Their elbows were as sharp as their mutual appraisals.

The Slug launched into his usual pre-pageant routine like a football manager before the match.

‘Just remember,’ he barked, ‘smile. You’re all walking advertisements for Devon so smile, damn you!

‘You’re all about to become famous. And rich. Watch your lip when you’re interviewed, keep smiling, and don’t fall over. There’s expenses forms on the table in the corner you can fill in afterwards.’

‘That’s a laugh,’ whispered Eve to Molly bitterly, thinking about the shoes.

‘“Smile”,’ parrotted Molly, but she did not suit the action to the word.

Normandy was adjusting his bow tie and smoothing his hair prior to sailing forth into the sunshine. His fussy self-important entrance into the Lido would cause the gathered crowds to cease their chatter and crane their necks. This was part of the joy of seaside life, the beauty pageant – an opportunity to sit in the sun and make catty comments about the size of the contestants’ feet.

‘I hadn’t expected this on my first day,’ said Valentine Waterford. ‘A murder and a beauty competition.’

‘Don’t get too excited,’ said Judy, putting on dark glasses with a dash of imperiousness. The bench they were sitting on was extremely hard. ‘And move over, you’re sitting on my dress.’

The young man edged apologetically away. ‘Look, it’s good of you to come,’ he said, ‘I rather expected to have to fend for myself.’

‘I wanted to go out to Todhempstead Beach. Just to take a look at where they found the girl.’

‘Wasn’t anything to see,’ said Valentine. ‘I drove out there after talking to the Inspector.’ His account faltered as the bathing belles made their entrance to a round of wild applause; Eve Berry wobbled slightly in her borrowed heels but managed to avert disaster. ‘By the time I got there it was all over, bit of a waste of time.’ He was betting with himself who would win.

‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ snipped Miss Dimont. ‘If you’re going to be a journalist you must learn to use your eyes.’ Why was she behaving like this? Rude, short, when really he was very charming. It must be the girls.

‘Empty beach, almost nobody there,’ he replied. ‘Only a couple of markers where presumably they found the body, but the tide was in and so you couldn’t see the sand. What else was there to see?’

Miss Dimont considered this.

‘Your story, the one you wrote this morning, said “mystery death”’ she said. ‘If you’re going to be a reporter and you’re going to write about mysteries, don’t you think it’s part of your job to try to get to the bottom of them?’

‘I see what you’re getting at,’ replied Valentine, ‘in a way. But surely that’s the police’s job? We just sit back and report what they find, don’t we, and if they mess it up we tell the public how useless they are?’

He certainly has got a relative in the business, thought Miss Dimont. A lazy one.

‘Tell me, Valentine, who’s your uncle, the one who’s in newspapers?’

‘Gilbert Drury.’

‘Oh,’ said Miss Dimont, wrinkling her nose. ‘The gossip columnist. That makes sense.’

‘Well,’ said Valentine, beating a hasty retreat, ‘not really my uncle. More married to a cousin of my mother’s.’

A wave of applause drowned Miss Dimont’s reply as the contestants for the title of Queen of the English Riviera 1959 were introduced one by one.

The master of ceremonies introduced his menagerie. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he boomed into the microphone, ‘you do us a very great honour in being here today to help select our next queen from this wondrous array of Devon’s beauty.’

Something in his tone implied however that he, Cyril Normandy, was the one conferring the honour, not the paying public. The hot June sunlight was gradually melting the Brylcreem which held down his thinning hair and at the same time it highlighted the dandruff sprinkled across the shoulders of his navy blazer.

‘As you know, it has fallen to Temple Regis to host these important finals this year, and let me remind you, ladies and gentlemen, the winner of today’s crown will go on to compete in Miss Great Britain in the autumn. So this is a huge stepping stone for one of these fine young ladies, on their way to fame and fortune, and, ladies and gentlemen, it will be you who is to be responsible for their future happiness!

‘Just take a very close look at all these gorgeous girls, because, ladies and gentlemen, it is your vote that counts!’

‘Are you taking notes?’ said Miss Dimont crisply from behind the dark glasses.

‘I, er …’

‘You’ll find it an enormous help as you go along to have a pencil and notebook about your person. Sort of aide-memoire,’ she added with more than a hint of acid. ‘For when you’re back at the office searching your memory for people’s names. You’ll find they come in handy.’ Maybe the hot sun was reacting badly to the lost sleep and the early-morning rum, not to mention the force nine. This was not like Miss Dimont!

The well-padded MC had a microphone in his hand now and was interviewing the girls by the pool’s edge, apparently astonished by the wisdom of their answers. But while he debriefed them on how proud they were to be an ambassador for Britain’s most-favoured county, about their ambitions to do well for themselves and the world, and, most importantly, what a thrill it was to support the town whose sash they had the honour to wear, they were thinking of the free cosmetics and underwear, the trips to London, the boys they might yet meet, and how their feet hurt.

‘Don’t seem to have the full complement,’ puzzled Valentine, looking down the flimsy programme.

‘What was going on back at the police station,’ pondered Miss Dimont, ignoring this and returning to her earlier theme, ‘about whether it was murder or misadventure?’

‘One missing. Erm, what?’

‘Inspector Topham.’

‘He was definite it was accidental.’

‘Something has to account for the fact that Sergeant Gull told you it was murder. I’ve never known him wrong.’

‘But the Inspector outranks him. It was the Inspector who went out to view the scene. So it must be the inspector who’s right.’

‘Never that simple in Temple Regis,’ murmured Miss Dimont, thinking of Dr Rudkin, the coroner, and how he always liked to sweep things under the carpet. ‘No, for the word to have got back to the sergeant that it could be murder must mean that’s what the first call back to the station said.’

‘But why were the body markers so far away from the railway embankment?’ Valentine was suddenly more interested in this conversation than he was in the girls who were parading up and down the pool edge. ‘She couldn’t have fallen, or been pushed, that far away from the railway line.’

‘There you have it—’ Miss Dimont smiled and, lifting her dark glasses, turned to face the trainee reporter ‘—in a nutshell. A mystery death. Needs looking into, wouldn’t you say?’

Valentine Waterford smiled back. He had no idea what a time he was in for.

FOUR

Perched high on the cliffs at the tip of the estuary, Ransome’s Retreat boasted the most beautiful gardens in the west of England, its terraces tumbling over the rocks into apparent infinity and its borders filled with a dazzling year-round display.

Palm trees wafted. Magnolias, a century old, lined the paths between terraces and from the branches above hung heavy Angel’s Trumpets. The glasshouses were filled with ripening peaches and pineapples, and the newly shaved lawns gave off a honeyed scent which made visitors feel they had arrived at the gates of Eden.

‘Some more tea, Mr Larsson?’ ‘I’m exhausted.’

‘No more visitors today, sir,’ the manservant said soothingly. ‘All gone now.’

‘Just too tiring,’ complained the old man. ‘Debilitating. And such a bore.’

The world-famous inventor of Larsson’s Life Rejuvenator looked as if he could use a touch of his own medicine. Though the contraption had made him a rich man, keeping it before the public eye these days sapped his energy. His hand fluttered slightly as he reached for the teacup.

There was a time, before the War, when his factory could not make enough of them. The little leather-covered boxes containing a complex electrical device had been shipped all over the world. Larsson’s clients included royalty, film stars, cabinet ministers, and a wide range of society figures, especially ladies of a certain age. It was guaranteed to put a spring back in everyone’s step.

Post-war, however, when most people felt lucky just to be alive, there seemed to be less of a thirst to have one’s life rejuvenated – maybe just waking up and finding one was breathing was enough. And certainly, in these straitened times, even the rich were finding better things to do with their money.

‘No more phone calls, Lamb,’ he said. ‘I’m going to take a nap.’ Bengt Larsson – Ben to that small circle who called themselves his friends – was rich. Very. But his estate in Argentina bled money, the Cote d’Azur mansion similarly, and his two private airplanes – one in Deauville, one in Devon – cost a packet to keep going. Fame is a furnace which needs constant stoking.

Fame can also be a fickle friend: left half-hidden among the pillows on the terrace bench the great man had just vacated was a crumpled copy of the Daily Herald the dutiful Lamb had tried his best to hide at breakfast. Larsson’s face, still handsome after all these years, stared out from a page whose headline screamed:

THE LARSSON LEGACY:

DEATH, DEPRESSION, DEGRADATION

– this is what you can expect

when you buy his famous Rejuvenator

This morning the Daily Herald exposes the truth behind the world-famous Larsson Life Rejuvenator, which has made its Swedish-born inventor one of the country’s richest men.An investigation by this newspaper proves beyond all doubt that Bengt Larsson’s promises that your life will be healthier, longer and livelier by the use of his machine are false.The inventor, who started his career in a chemist’s shop in Hull, has made repeated promises about the efficacy of the Rejuvenator. It has been endorsed by actors, radio stars and other famous figures, but a laboratory trial conducted by the (turn to p.5)

From the sun-dappled lawns blackbirds collected their worms and flew up into the eucalyptus trees to nourish their young, oblivious to the crisis unfolding beneath. The manservant Lamb collected the tea things and moved indoors out of the hot sun. Calm, of a sort, descended.

In the garden room Pernilla Larsson was writing a letter. Or, more exactly, not writing a letter. This latest press attack on her husband was not only bad for business, it unsettled life at Ransome’s Retreat. And though as the inventor’s fourth wife, she had brought a new stability to his restless life, Larsson was an unpredictable man given to violent mood swings and she could never be sure where things would go with him. It made concentrating very difficult.

‘Lamb.’

‘Yes, madam?’

‘Have you given my husband his sedative?’

‘In the second cup, madam.’ Mistress and servant looked steadily at each other.

‘Ask Gus to come in.’

‘Very well, m’m.’

Just then an array of ancient clocks positioned across the ground floor of the ancient house raggedly signalled their agreement that it was four o’clock, and a confident-looking young man entered with a sheaf of papers in his hand.

‘What worries me,’ he said, ‘is not the Herald. It’s those idiots at the Doctors’ Medical Journal. They’re determined to get him.’

‘They’ve always hated him. Ever since he published A New Electronic Theory of Life.’

‘Quacks,’ uttered Gus Wetherby with a sneer. ‘Just because they’ve got medical qualifications they think they know everything. There are people on that journal who are out to get him, no matter what. Medics! Wouldn’t surprise me if they weren’t behind this latest press attack.’

Pernilla Larsson took off her glasses and looked at her son. ‘There are a lot of people,’ she said slowly, ‘who might be behind this latest attack. People have turned against Ben, they really have.’

‘Not altogether – we still have the daily visitors. The pilgrims to the shrine.’

‘I wish he hadn’t started that movement. It’s an embarrassment in the present circumstances – it was supposed to be about health and vitality, but they turned it into a religion! It’s one thing to say your invention can extend human life, quite another to allow people to believe there’s something mystical attached to it.’

‘They’re nuts. They think his book is the Bible.’

Wetherby picked up a biscuit off the tea tray. ‘That was all before the War,’ he went on. ‘People looking for something that couldn’t be found. Hoping to contact loved ones, trying to make sense of that lost generation after the First War. People who didn’t believe in spiritualism and Ouija boards and all that junk, but were looking for something …’

‘That couldn’t be found,’ said Pernilla, completing his sentence. The two often thought as one, it was uncanny.

‘So where are we?’ she said, collecting her thoughts. ‘Are the specifications right?’

‘I had them checked. We can go ahead.’

‘There’s just the matter of convincing Ben.’

The conspirators paused. ‘Look,’ said Gus, ‘even Ben knows the game’s up. Once upon a time people believed the Rejuvenator really did what it’s supposed to do but …’

‘You know he won’t accept criticism,’ warned Pernilla. ‘And he can’t accept the idea of change.’

‘That’s the problem, he’s a one-trick pony. All that publicity at the beginning – “Hope for the Aged – Electricity to Make Old Folk Young” – that kind of thing, it went to his head. And all he’d invented was a dolled-up and very expensive box of tricks, something that you plugged yourself into when you felt low which delivered a weak electric current and made you think you felt better.’

‘Don’t be disloyal!’ snapped Pernilla, though her response seemed automatic rather than anything else. ‘HE believed in it, THEY believed in it, therefore we must believe in it too.’ She paused for a moment, pulled in two directions. ‘Though I must confess the letters which are rolling in these days – people don’t want to believe any more. They want their money back.’

‘He shouldn’t have charged so much.’

Pernilla looked around the long, low room, its walls dotted with Impressionist paintings. ‘It bought all this,’ she reminded him quietly.

‘It can be done again,’ said Gus forcefully. ‘Now that we’ve found the formula for a Rejuvenator which really does work.’

Pernilla nodded. ‘All those old men,’ she sighed. ‘All wanting to be young again. All thinking, with the Rejuvenator I can have a younger model.’

Gus raised an eyebrow and smiled. Didn’t his mother become the fourth Mrs Larsson for precisely that reason?

‘Oh yes!’ she said, catching his meaning. Her cigarette holder described an elegant parabola as she laughed, her salt-and-pepper hair glowed, and her jewellery flashed in the sunlight. She looked expensive.

‘We still have to find a way to kill the kind of publicity we’re getting in the press,’ said Gus. ‘Have to announce the new model. Different name, fresh start.’

He warmed to his theme. ‘Got to stop those attack dogs at the Medical Journal. It would make sense for us to tell them, look, the Rejuvenator is a thing of the past, a creature of its time, whatever they want to hear – stopping short, of course, of saying that it never actually worked.’

Wetherby broke his biscuit in half but left its tumbling crumbs to disappear into the folds of the sofa while he thought. ‘We say it’s a new idea with a new inventor – me. Push Ben back into the shadows. For heaven’s sake, he’s eighty. Time to take a back seat!’

‘It’s been his whole life.’

‘Let him enjoy what’s left of it. Look,’ said Wetherby, standing up, ‘this is possibly the most idyllic place anywhere in the world – this house, these gardens, this climate. Back seat!’

‘He won’t agree.’

‘He’ll have to agree,’ said Gus Wetherby harshly, ‘or we’re all dead.’

The sun made its slow descent behind the Temple Regis skyline, gilding the rooftops, casting long black shadows across the greensward towards the broad open sands.

‘There are five hundred stars,’ sighed Athene Madrigale, the famous astrologer, looking upwards, ‘all competing with each other for my attention.’

Her companion did not take much notice of this. Athene often spoke like that.

‘I have been listening to the waves shuffling the stones. I have been watching the moon pulling the waves. Can you hear?’

There was a pause.

‘A shame about the dead girl,’ said Judy Dimont slowly. ‘Horrible, really.’

Athene nodded. They understood each other’s preoccupations.

Night was Athene’s daytime. It allowed her the space to clear her mind for the impossible task of telling Temple Regents what lay ahead in their lives. Her column in the Riviera Express was the most important part of the newspaper, foretelling events in readers’ lives with startling accuracy:

Pisces: an event of great joy is about to occur – to you, or your loved ones.

Sagittarius: look around and see new things today! They are glorious!

Cancer: never forget how kind a friend can be to you. Do the same for them and you will be rewarded threefold!

People read her column and felt better. Those very few who had been privileged to actually meet Athene were struck by her special radiance, and it was only a fool who dismissed her outpourings as ingenuous nonsense.

Tonight, she was wearing a lemon top, pink skirt and purple trousers. The plimsolls on her feet were quite worn and of differing hues, but one of them matched perfectly the blue paper rose she wore in the bun on the back of her head. In the half-light the overall effect was strangely soothing.

‘I can’t believe it was an accident,’ said Miss Dimont. They had walked over to a bench on the promenade and sat to watch the last golden light slowly disappear from the horizon.

‘The girl?’ asked Athene.

‘Yes, the girl.’

‘I was there,’ said Athene. ‘On the beach.’

‘Todhempstead Sands?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good Lord, why didn’t you say sooner, Athene? This could be murder, you know.’

Athene turned her head slowly to her companion. ‘She didn’t die there.’

Miss Dimont, the veteran of many a similar inquiry, was bemused. How could Athene Madrigale be witness to a murder – or an accidental death, whichever it was – and not tell anyone?

‘Why …?’ she started.

‘I was counting the clouds, dear. It’s very difficult – have you ever tried? Altostratus, cumulonimbus, dear sweet cirrus – I was too busy to really see what happened.’

‘But …’

‘I only noticed when those policemen came down onto the beach. Then I saw the girl’s body.’

‘So how could you know whether she died there or not?’

‘The clouds told me.’

Miss Dimont kicked her raffia bag in frustration. On the one hand she had an eyewitness, on the other she did not. Then again, most things Athene said turned out to be true – but if this was a murder, if the girl had died on or near the beach, as evidence it was valueless.

For the time being, at least.

‘I’m going back to the office,’ said Judy. ‘Coming?’ Home and Mulligatawny were going to have to wait tonight.

‘Have to think carefully about my column,’ said Athene. ‘I’ll make you some of my special tea if you’re still there later.’

Miss Dimont walked over to the kerbside where Herbert, her faithful moped, stood expectantly awaiting their next expedition. At the kick of a pedal, he sprang cheerfully into action and together they made their way back up the promenade towards the Riviera Express.

Though during the day the newspaper office was like a ship’s engine room, a positive maelstrom of movement and drama, by the time dusk fell the place was usually empty – as if news only happened during the day! She walked up the long corridor to the newsroom, past the mousetraps laid down to capture nocturnal visitors, but as she approached she could hear the slow, almost ghostly, tapping of a typewriter.

She pushed open the door and looked down the long office to her desk. Seated with his back to her was the new boy, Valentine whatsisname. He appeared to be writing something up, and was taking his time about it.

Miss Dimont was not pleased. She wanted the place to herself.

‘Hello, Valentine,’ she said, not entirely kindly. ‘Don’t you have a home to go to?’

The young man swung round and delivered a rueful smile. ‘Actually there was a bit of a palaver over accom,’ he replied. ‘They parked me in the oddest place – a bed and breakfast done up to look like a castle, only the inside walls of the house were painted like the outside of the castle. Not quite the home from home.’

From this light mockery might be deduced the young Waterford once actually lived in a castle. He’d been quite evasive about where he came from.

‘They all go there,’ said Judy. ‘Usually last longer than you before making a bolt for it.’

‘Actually there’s a cottage belonging to the family. Thought it better to go there. Bedlington.’

Miss Dimont looked over his shoulder at the paper in Valentine’s typewriter. ‘So what are you writing now?’

‘I was given a word of advice by Mr Ross,’ he said, nodding amiably towards the old Scotsman. ‘He said the first thing you should do when you join a newspaper is write your own obituary.’

‘Are you thinking of dying any time soon, Valentine?’

‘You never know.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Twenty-three soon.’

Miss Dimont sat down at her desk. It had been her intention to write a Comment piece about the award-winning fishermen – brave, hardy men bringing lustre to Temple Regis along with their rich daily harvest – but it was getting late and she’d had an early start. Her return to the office was more a delaying tactic because by now she was exhausted – and the thought of kick-starting Herbert, who could be obstructive if left waiting too long in the dark, suddenly drained her of the will to go home.

‘How are you getting on?’ she asked, more out of good manners than with any real interest.

‘It’s difficult. School, army, one day on the newspaper. Not a lot to write about. Then I thought, well, I could add a bit about my family background so I started doing that. But then it seemed rather boastful so I …’

Miss Dimont’s eyes travelled down to the wicker bin by Valentine’s ankle and saw that he must have been at his task for some time – it was overflowing with rejected copy paper, scrumpled and torn and trodden on. This young man is very keen, she observed.