A Quarter Past Dead

Fluffles obliged, her considerable expanse threatening to envelop the King’s small head. It was an absurd pose, but one guaranteed to find space in the paper. Terry knew what he was doing all right.

Did Miss Dimont? She wasn’t quite sure where to start. The small man in front of her – even at first glance – was arrogant, manipulative, a liar, a cheat, an adulterer, and a rapacious exploiter of the small incomes and high hopes of millions of working-class families.

‘How lovely to meet you,’ she said sweetly, and sat down.

‘Everyone is so thrilled you chose Temple Regis for your holiday camp,’ she lied.

‘It has done wonders for the town.’ Another stinker.

‘All that silly opposition last year.’ We nearly saw you off, but for the whopping great bribes you paid a couple of councillors.

‘And look at the success of it all!’ One dead body, unexplained.

‘I want to write something nice about Buntorama,’ not necessarily, ‘so maybe we can clear up this shooting business with your help, Mr Bunton.’

For some reason the King chose not to look Miss Dimont in the eye. Instead he fixed his gaze on Fluffles.

‘People get excitable when they go on holiday,’ he sighed, as if having someone shot on the premises was a weekly event. ‘They’ve been saving up all year, it’s going to be the best fortnight they’ve ever had, then they come down here and don’t know what to do with themselves. That’s why I provide so many distractions – the funfair rides, the keep-fit classes, the dance competitions. These people work hard all year, they never have a moment to themselves.’

He took a swig from a heavy goblet. ‘Suddenly their time’s their own and after a few days they go a bit nuts. Some take to drink, some go off with other men’s wives, and a hell of a lot of them just sit down and have an out-and-out row. Men and women – the age-old story.’

He got up as if to signal the interview was over. A famous man, a rich man, he had generously given of his time and his wisdom to the local rag, and now it was time to get back to the business of making money.

Miss Dimont remained in her seat and elaborately turned over a page in her notebook, her signal to Bunton the interview was far from over. She could see him watching her out of the corner of his eye, even though he appeared to be summoning the wine-waiter.

‘So that’s what it was,’ said Judy, ‘just a domestic argument?’

‘Yup.’ Bunton was flapping his hand at some far-distant minion.

‘Man shot his wife dead?’

‘What else,’ came the dead-ball reply. ‘The clock ticks. He can’t stand her a moment longer, it’s driving him crazy. Clock chimes the quarter-hour and – bam! He’s glad it’s over.’

Fluffles was too busy with her powder-compact to pay attention to this shockingly arbitrary supposition. She stretched her lips and grinned in ghastly fashion back at her reflection.

‘She wasn’t married.’

The King spared his interlocutor a look. ‘How do you know?’

‘No wedding ring.’

‘Proves nothing.’

‘Had registered on her own,’ insisted Judy. ‘Had not been seen with anyone. Her neighbours in the chalets either side confirmed that.’

This was not strictly true, in fact it wasn’t true at all, but when interviewees are nasty or unhelpful or contemptuous, it does no harm to give them a prod. Bobby Bunton wouldn’t know what Patsy Rouchos’ neighbours had seen or hadn’t but he did know something, and Miss Dimont was determined to get it from him.

‘She wasn’t a holidaymaker in the ordinary sense of the word,’ she said, half-guessing. ‘Could she have been here on business? Or waiting for a boyfriend who didn’t turn up – is that what it is?’

Bobby Bunton stared hard at her, as if for the first time. ‘It. Really. Doesn’t. Matter,’ he said through yellow, oversized front teeth. ‘She’s. Dead. A. Tragedy. Our. Hearts. Go. Out. To. Her. Family.’ The effort from issuing these words seemed to have exhausted him and he leaned against Fluffles’ pillows. Fluffles looked at Miss Dimont with hatred.

‘Ah,’ said Judy, ‘so you do know who her family is, and therefore presumably you know what she was doing here.’

She paused. ‘You see, Mr Bunton, Temple Regis is thrilled to have Buntorama here but it would be a concern to townsfolk to think that people come down here with guns. And then shoot people with them. It’s just not that kind of place, you know – we have a reputation as being one of the safest resorts in the West of England.

‘So, you see, a simple explanation is so much better for them than a mystery. “MYSTERY DEATH” is an unsettling thing to read in a headline, whereas “DEATH AS A RESULT OF A DOMESTIC DISPUTE” – or whatever it was that happened – they can swallow much more easily. Less unsettling. So I need your help.’

As Bunton took a swig from his glass Judy reflected, not for the first time, how difficult it was to worm information out of habitual liars. Yes, she had lied herself to wrest information out of the King, but those were white lies, little ones. Bunton’s were of a much deeper hue.

Then again, she thought, looking at the pint-sized individual opposite, how much harder a reporter’s life is than a photographer’s. Terry just ambled in here, didn’t introduce himself, got his camera out and took a picture which would occupy as much space in the paper as her words. Job over and done in a matter of seconds while she, Judy, had to beaver away at screwing information out of this tight-mouthed wide boy. It could take all morning.

It was why she loved the job so much. The challenge!

‘I like to do my best for the local press,’ said Bunton, who’d evidently undertaken a snap re-evaluation of the woman sitting opposite him. ‘We rely on you, at each of our resorts, to maintain a connection between our business and the local folks. Even so, you won’t want this in your paper.’

‘What is it we won’t want?’

‘This woman, the dead woman, she was a prossie. A working girl. She was coming over here to the Marine from the camp, sitting in the bar here, waiting to pick someone up.’

‘Oh.’ Miss Dimont took off her glasses and polished them. Such things were not unknown, but here – in Temple Regis! A lady of the night!

‘I saw her in here the night of the – disturbance,’ said Bunton. ‘You can always spot ’em a mile off.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Miss Dimont, recalling the scrapped front-page article from last night’s paper. ‘I wanted to ask you about that. Seems a little high-handed of the Marine to ask you to leave.’

‘Kick me out, more like. But,’ said the little man proprietorially, ‘as you see, we’re back here buying the Marine’s drinks at their extortionate prices. Always ready to take our money!’ He had more success this time when he beckoned the waiter. ‘What’s yours?’

‘No thank you,’ said Judy. ‘So what exactly happened?’

Bunton threw his thumb at Fluffles’ embonpoint. ‘You tell her, darlin’.’

The courtesan straightened her hair and glanced down at her abundant heritage. ‘Outrageous!’ she squawked. ‘You can still see the bruise if you look closely enough. They were outrageous!

‘We’d been in here for a few hours, Bobs was doing business on the phone and then talking to someone at the bar, I got a bit bored. I do like a man to pay attention!’ she said pointedly and flapped her hand at Bunton’s belly. ‘So yes, I’d had a glass or two and I decided to go over and break it up.’

‘That’ll do,’ said Bunton, with a warning glance. ‘What she’s trying to say, Mrs, er…’

‘Miss Dimont.’

‘Yers. What she’s trying to say is that as she got up she slipped on some liquid on the floor. I mean, they charge so much you’d think they’d have staff looking after you properly if you spill your drink – they should have wiped it up immediately.’

‘Anyway, Bobs,’ intervened Fluffles, not to be denied her moment, ‘it was all your fault. If you hadn’t spent so long chatting to that person I wouldn’t…’

‘What actually happened,’ said Bunton, cutting in, ‘Fluffles got up, slipped on the drink, went over. Someone came over and helped her up…’

‘Split my dress,’ chimed in Fluffles cheerily. ‘That got everybody’s attention – including his!’

‘Hardly needed splitting,’ said Bobs, ‘you was showing everything anyway.’

‘It got him away from her, anyway,’ she said to Miss Dimont. ‘So then I told him off – look at me, I says, covered in drink, my face bashed in from falling over, one of my heels broken, my whatnots falling out – if you’d left her alone none of this would have happened.

‘Then she came over, and I let her have it with my handbag. Bitch. She just stood there looking all superior, kind of looking down her nose at me, one heel on one heel off. I tell you, she’ll remember that handbag!’

‘Er, sorry, can we just go back a moment?’ asked Judy. ‘This lady we’re talking about at the bar. The one your Bobs was talking to all evening.’

‘Bitch!’

‘Yes, I’m sure. But, she was the one from Buntorama, the, er… prossie?’

‘Never seen a cheaper-looking tart.’

‘She was the one who was shot?’

‘A bullet never found a more deserving home,’ said Fluffles magnificently, pushing out her chest as she wiggled out of the chair.

FOUR

They were in the Minor speeding back to the office, and Terry was humming to himself.

‘Take that stupid look off your face. Not as if you haven’t seen a woman before.’

Terry kept up the tuneless noise but now his countenance melted into idiot proportions.

‘Fluffles,’ he breathed to himself, breaking into a crooked smile. The pictures he’d got of the infamous beast were clearly going to be eye-poppers.

‘Where d’you think she got that silly name?’ said Miss Dimont peevishly. ‘Fluffles Janetti?’

‘Come over from Italy,’ said Terry, who’d read up her clippings in the cuttings library before coming out. Actually he hadn’t done much reading – mostly it was looking at other people’s photographs of the minx to see how he could better the shot, for Terry was nothing if not competitive. Some of the caption information must have drizzled into his brain by a process of osmosis, though, the way that most photographers learned things.

‘So that was an Italian accent she was talking with?’

‘More sort of Birmingham,’ said Terry after a moment’s reflection.

‘Just so,’ said Judy, who’d done the same amount of homework but had concentrated on the words, not pictures. ‘And I suppose you think that’s her name, Fluffles?’

‘“FLUFFLES JANETTI – THE FIRECRACKER FROM FIRENZE,”’ Terry quoted a headline which had stuck in his brain.

‘Janet Fludd – the bosom from Brum. Famous for the wide variety of bedsprings she has tested in her time.’

Terry turned to the reporter with a look of reproval. ‘That’s not like you,’ he said, ‘to be so snooty.’

‘Oh, Terry, you’re such a fool with women,’ she replied, taking off her spectacles and giving them a good wipe.

‘I’m a photographer,’ he said, as if it were explanation enough.

Back at the office Terry parked the car and scuttled away to the darkroom to do what photographers do. Judy entered the newsroom and wandered down to her desk.

Even at a distance she could see that, as usual, it was covered with the typical avalanche of debris which forever tumbled from Betty Featherstone’s workplace opposite – the discarded copy-paper, sheets of carbon, glue pots, cuttings, old notebooks and the copious contents of a handbag.

There was also a dead cat.

Still some yards away Miss Dimont stopped and stared in horror. ‘Betty!’ she called, ‘Betty!’ She loved Mulligatawny more than life itself and could not bear the thought of poor sad corpses. And in the office, too!

The miscreant wandered over from Curse Corner where she’d been chatting to the chief sub-editor, John Ross: ‘Hello, Judy, cup of tea? Your turn.’

‘What on earth is this creature doing on my desk, Betty?’

Betty stepped forward and looked down in a vague sort of way. ‘Oh sorry, the usual debris, Judy, I’ll clear it away in a minute.’

‘Not the debris,’ seethed Miss Dimont through gritted teeth, ‘the dead animal.’

Betty laughed, but it came out bitterly.

‘I couldn’t bear it,’ she said. ‘Try wearing that on your head, Judy, the weight of it, the sense of claustrophobia. I don’t know how people do it.’

‘Do what? Wear dead cats on their heads?’

Betty picked up the offending corpse and draped it over her hair. ‘Honestly, d’you think it makes me look any better?’ she said, and flung down the bedraggled wig with disdain.

‘Gave me quite a shock,’ said Judy, catching up.

‘Not as much as the platinum blonde dye did me. Honestly, when I saw myself in the mirror after I’d done it – I wanted to kill myself. Look, there are still green patches!’

‘You should take a tip or two from Fluffles Janetti,’ said Judy, and described the frozen platinum helmet she’d recently witnessed adorning the nation’s favourite courtesan.

Betty was transfixed: ‘I must meet her!’

‘No, Betty,’ said Judy, ‘I would fear for your moral compass if left alone in Fluffles’ company for more than five minutes. You’re better off with Dud Fensome.’

‘Not any more. I sent him a wire.’

That makes a change, thought Judy. Normally it was Perce, the telegram boy, who waylaid Betty to alert her to the latest failed venture in the marriage stakes. A wire could guarantee an end to the affair without need for the inevitable exchange of recrimination and disappointment. Betty didn’t like getting them, but they were preferable to a confrontation – and always they brought with them the prospect of greener grass. She’d never had much luck in finding Mr Right.

Just then Miss D’s eye was caught by the sight of a woman dressed head to foot in deepest purple, walking across the end of the newsroom as though leading a funeral procession. Her head was bowed, her movements slowed, as if weighted down by the sorrows of the world.

‘Athene!’ Judy called, but the mourner did not hear.

The reporter rose and nipped quickly over to the furthermost corner of the room, where there was a desk secreted behind a Chinese screen, draped with silk scarves and ostrich feathers. This was the lair of Athene Madrigale, the greatest astrologer the county of Devon had ever known, the person to whom every subscriber to the Riviera Express turned first on a Friday morning to discover what the week ahead held in store.

‘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!’

Athene was, in a county undoubtedly blessed with more sunlight hours than any other, the one ray of sunshine which never hid behind a cloud. People who read her words felt infinitely strengthened, while her page in the newspaper carried more weight than any sensational news from the town council or the magistrates’ court.

Those few who were privileged to meet Athene – and there weren’t many, for their day was her night – saw the astrologer as if through a glass prism infused by the colours of the rainbow. She might wear a lemon top, pink skirt, mauve trousers with plimsolls of differing hues on each foot. Her wispy grey-blonde hair would be pinned back by a blue paper rose, and the glasses suspended on the end of her nose radiated a delectable glow of Seville orange. She was remarkable.

Today, though, her clothing and countenance were the colour of death, and her voice sounded as though it came from beneath the grave.

‘Athene, dear,’ said Judy with concern as she sidled around the screen, ‘what on earth is it?’ She adored Miss Madrigale for all the good things she imparted, and would do anything to spare her even the slightest discomfort.

‘It’s impossible,’ said Athene in a broken voice, ‘I thought by doing this in daylight it might make things better, but it doesn’t.’ She picked up an ostrich feather and fanned the air as if to soothe it, or herself.

‘What is it? Why are you dressed like this? Has someone died?’

‘I have died, dearest. My soul has been thrown overboard.’

‘What can you mean, Athene?’

‘You were away last week. The editor came over to see me and said I had a wonderful new job, one that would bring me even more adoring letters.’

‘Oh yes?’ said Judy suspiciously, ‘did he now.’

‘I do so love an educated hand, don’t you? Look at this lovely letter from Bedlington this morning – what a wonderful person this must be – and she takes the time to write! You should see the delightful things she…’

‘Athene,’ said Judy, ‘what did Mr Rhys ask you to do?’

The astrologer laid her hands palm upwards on the desk and stared wretchedly into their empty wastes.

‘He has made me an agony aunt. And now for the first time I understand the meaning of the phrase for, Judy, I am in agony. The sorrows of the world! All here! On this desk!’

‘He didn’t tell me he was going to do that.’

‘He wanted it to be a secret. He said he had been keeping back letters from readers who had special problems. He said he knew that if anybody could solve their woes it would be me! But I can’t, Judy, I can’t!’

In an instant Miss Dimont had grasped the problem. Agony aunts dispense their wisdom with breezy disdain, exhibiting a dangerous lack of contact with human misery, safe in their comfy chair and with a loving husband in the kitchen making them a cup of tea. They are secure, emotionally and financially, and disengaged from the plights and problems of ordinary folk. It is these very qualities which allow them to issue lifesaving instructions to those pitched into life’s ocean without a hope.

Athene possessed none of these attributes. Gentle, sensitive, the merest shadow of a being, she was too fragile to sustain a marriage, too unsure to issue instructions, too caring to dismiss the cries for help. Her great triumph was her personal joyousness, her upbeat message, told simply, carried from the stars, to every Sagittarian and Capricorn and Piscean in Temple Regis. To ask more of her was to ask too much.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll talk to Mr Rhys,’ said Judy decisively. ‘I can’t have you upset. And for heaven’s sake, Athene, drop the purple – nobody died!’

‘Only me, Judy. Only me.’

The editor was back from lunch and wrestling with his disgusting briar pipe. His wardrobe was particularly ambitious today – rumpled tweed suit, old brogues, grey shirt and woollen tie. The suit was ancient and its exposure to the elements over the years meant the trousers had shrunk and no longer reached his ankles.

Miss Dimont shut the door. An ominous sign, for Rudyard Rhys preferred it left open.

‘Richard, a word about Athene.’

‘Rr… rrr!’ came from behind the briar pipe. The great man did not like to be reminded he’d been born with a less glamorous first name than the one he now bore.

‘She can’t do it. The agony column. It’s making her unwell.’

‘Rr… rrr.’

‘Richard, why didn’t you ask me? I could have told you she’s not up to it – she’s in despair.’

‘We have to move with the times. Everybody’s got an agony column these days. We have to keep up-to-date.’

Miss Dimont looked down at her wartime comrade and wondered whether, in the thirteen years since peace was declared, he’d entertained a single ‘up-to-date’ thought.

‘Well, Athene can’t do it. You’ll make her ill.’

‘Somebody has to.’

‘There’s a crowded newsroom out there brimming with talent. Pick one of your reporters or sub-editors and let them have a go at the column. Any one of them would love to do it.’

Rhys looked out of the window at the circling gulls as if they were waiting for his corpse to be tossed on to the promenade.

‘Betty then.’

Judy blinked. Rhys’s capacity for making the wrong judgement knew no bounds.

‘Well, she’d love it. But consider this – is a woman who’s never been able to sustain a relationship with the opposite sex qualified to tell others how to sort out their love lives? Should someone who never knows what time of day it is tell people how to live a more orderly life? Is a person who wears a dead cat on her head qualified to hand out fashion advice?’

This last question briefly stirred the editor out of his post-prandial torpor. Friday lunch at the Con Club was the high point of the week, a moment when Rhys could sit as an equal with the city fathers while they discussed matters far too important ever to get an airing in next week’s paper. The lunches were heavy and long.

‘Rr… rrr, dead cat? What’re you talking about?’

‘A figure of speech, Richard.’

‘You’d better write it this afternoon for next week’s paper. I’ll get someone else on Monday.’ His body language intimated there was not enough room in his spacious office for two.

‘Another thing, Richard.’

‘Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.’

‘The murder over at Buntorama. I doubt we’ll be able to keep it to ourselves until next Thursday. You’d better prepare yourself for the usual Fleet Street hue and cry.’

Rhys looked desolate. If there was one thing he couldn’t bear it was an invasion of the national press into Temple Regis – shouldering and bullying their way around, noisily filling up the Palm Court at the Grand Hotel, bribing people to tell half-truths which made his own printed version of events seem tame – inaccurate, even – when the versions delivered by the national and local press were compared by the readers.

‘What have you got?’

‘I saw Bobby Bunton this morning and that dreadful woman he tugs around – Fluffles.’

‘The one who was thrown out of the Marine?’

‘Yes. She’s the latest sweetie-pie. That woman who was shot over at Buntorama was part of that incident. There was a dust-up in the Primrose Bar involving her and Bunton and Fluffles. Bunton spent the evening talking to her and ignoring Fluffles, and there was a fight. Then two days later, the woman was dead.’

‘She was a holidaymaker at Buntorama but drinking in the Marine? That’s unheard of. Two different classes of people altogether. The Marine doesn’t allow Buntorama customers inside their doors if they can possibly avoid it.’

‘She was a prostitute, according to Bunton.’

‘A prostitute? And he spent the evening talking to her? We can’t have that in the paper.’

‘Why ever not?’

‘Because,’ said the editor wearily, ‘first, he’s an important employer in Temple Regis and we don’t want the town thinking he’s a wrong ’un. They may start questioning why he was allowed to start up the camp in the first place.’

‘Ah, the Express backed those plans, of course.’ The faintest drop of acid in her voice.

The editor ignored this. ‘Second, I want no mention of prostitutes in Temple Regis. It will only encourage the others to flock back. Third, I’m really not keen on suggesting there’s been a fight at the Marine, given its remarkable reputation, and fourth, I think the least said about the dead body in Buntorama the better. It’ll soon go away.’

‘Not if Fleet Street gets hold of it.’

Rudyard Rhys groaned horribly.

‘Look, all I’m saying is – use the soft pedal, Miss Dimont.’ He did not like to use her first name. ‘The summer season’s starting up, and there are those new attractions over in Paignton and Torquay. Heavens, people are even going to Totnes now – and Salcombe! Soon they’ll have deserted Temple Regis altogether!’

If she could, Miss Dimont would have felt pity for her editor. But long experience told her this was a vacillating, fearful man who only made problems for himself by virtue of his nervousness. If there was an important decision to make between two choices, he’d always pick the wrong one.