A Quarter Past Dead

‘Here’s the story, Richard. The Marine Hotel knowingly allows a prostitute to ply her trade in their bar. It allows its business rival, heaven knows why, to sit drinking in the same bar until his piece of stuff topples off her high heels and exposes herself to the world, then it kicks them both out.’

‘Bunton’s not a rival,’ growled Rhys. ‘Different ends of the business – carriage-trade versus knotted handkerchief brigade.’

‘Precisely my point,’ said Miss Dimont crisply. ‘And do you think that when Fleet Steet gets down here that particular penny isn’t going to drop? The battle between upstairs and downstairs? Class war on the coast?

‘This is only Buntorama’s second season. But already you can see the resentment and rivalry building up between these two establishments – side-by-side and away from the centre of town.

‘Bobby Bunton’s a maverick, and when it suits him he’ll turn his guns on the Marine – accuse them of being snobs. Then we’ll have an all-out battle in Temple Regis, and just when the local economy was picking up nicely.’

The editor picked up a box of matches and turned it over in his hand. The room smelt of old dogs, though it was probably his overcoat which hung on the coat-rack winter and summer. The sun’s heat was coming through the window and Miss Dimont realised why in general it was better to leave the door open.

‘Don’t think I hadn’t considered this,’ he said weightily. ‘It was a mistake letting Bobby Bunton into town and I’ll be frank – but this must go no further – I saw Hugh Radipole at lunch today. He warned there were likely to be severe repercussions if Bunton steps out of line.

‘He was telling me something of Bunton’s past – d’you know he carries a cut-throat razor in his top pocket all the time? – and unless Bunton calms down and stays out of the Marine there’ll be some howitzer-fire going over the fence. Radipole’s not a man to take things lying down.’

‘Good Lord, Richard,’ said Judy happily, ‘I think you’ve got yourself a scoop there!’

FIVE

Auriol Hedley sat waiting for her friend on the back deck of the Princess Evening Tide, an old but beautifully turned-out yacht whose sheets were white, whose brass was polished, and whose prow was sharply elegant.

Evening Tide occupied a space against the harbour wall from where Auriol could see all the way down the estuary to its mouth, while over her shoulder she could keep an eye on her place of business, the Seagull Café. It was her habit in summer to come down here for a gin and tonic, usually in the company of her dear friend, Judy Dimont, on a sunny evening.

‘She’s late,’ said Auriol to the elegant gentleman sitting across the deck, shoes twinkling in the sunlight. His eyes were half-shut.

‘Good Lord!’ said the old boy, stirring from a half-slumber. It was hot. ‘That the time?’

‘Are you going to say something to her before you go?’

‘Not if she doesn’t hurry up. I’ve that train to catch.’

‘It’s been going on too long, Arthur, this campaign to keep her mother at arm’s length. If Madame Dimont finally carries out her threat and pays a visit, we’re all in the soup.’

‘Not me,’ said Arthur, chuckling. ‘I’m off!’

Just then the sputtering and clacking which usually proclaimed the arrival of Herbert pierced the early evening air. Meandering gulls on their evening stroll scattered to make way for man and machine, lifting off into the gathering haze. Miss Dimont clambered aboard.

‘Ginger beer, no ice,’ said Auriol, shuddering as she proffered the customary glass. ‘What kept you?’

‘Tell you later,’ replied Judy, offering a cheek to the old boy. ‘Hello, Arthur, what a surprise, how lovely!’

‘Just passing,’ said her uncle lightly, though this could not conceivably be true. ‘Auriol’s gin fizzes – what a miracle!’

‘Your glass is empty.’

‘Just going.’

‘But I’ve only just got here!’

‘Taking the Pullman to London. Been here all afternoon. Hoped I’d see more of you before I went. Must dash, though.’

He was old but still had a schoolboy bounce about him. ‘I say, Huguette, will you come up to town and have lunch with me at the club? Your mother’s coming. You could help out.’

‘Bit busy at the moment,’ said Judy, guardedly. ‘Been a murder over at Buntorama.’

At the mention of the word ‘murder’, the old man’s face lengthened in a mixture of disbelief and resignation. There was a pause. ‘I do not know,’ he said, slowly, ‘even after all these years I cannot understand, what brings one man to want to do away with another.’

Miss Dimont was hoping he might go on – he usually had something very useful to say after all those years of experience – but he was eager to disembark.

‘Train to catch,’ he said. ‘If you won’t come and have lunch with Grace and me, you know she’ll come down here. I thought you wanted to avoid that.’

‘When she comes, uncle, she straightens up my house. Goes through my drawers. Reads my correspondence. Looks down her nose at the neighbours. Dislikes intensely what I do for a living. But still she comes and sits in the Express front hall every lunchtime expecting to be taken out. She absolutely despises Terry and…’

‘You often have a word or two to say about Terry yourself,’ chipped in Auriol. ‘And not always complimentary, Hugue.’

‘She’s your mother,’ sighed the old man patiently. ‘Be kind, Huguette.’

‘If only she could be kind to me!’

All three stepped onto the quayside and Auriol wandered back to the café, leaving uncle and niece together by the waiting taxi.

‘Auriol sent for you, Arthur.’

‘I say, that sounds a bit accusatory!’

‘To do her dirty work for her. She’s been on at me for months to have Maman come and stay.’

‘Wouldn’t it be better? Get it over and done with?’

Miss Dimont shook her curls impatiently. ‘She’s your sister, uncle, can’t you do something about it?’

‘You know how odd she is. Running away to the Continent all those years ago, insisting even after your father died she should still be addressed as Madame Dimont. Talking in that affected Frenchified way.’

‘Still you named your daughter after her.’

‘She made me,’ said the old boy with a conspiratorial smile – they were in this together. ‘Come to the Club. Get me out of a hole.’

‘Oh – all right then.’

‘Don’t sound so dashed. It’ll save her coming down here and rifling through your things.’

They embraced, and the taxi sped away up Bedlington hill towards the station. The reporter walked slowly back to the Seagull Café to rejoin her friend.

‘A shame you missed him,’ said Auriol, cracking eggs into a bowl. ‘He was on wonderful form, telling me lots of things about the old days. Really, some of his adventures!’

‘Permanent schoolboy,’ said Judy.

‘Your mother has him under her thumb.’

‘Did you get him to come all the way down here just to tell me I must have Maman to stay? That seems a bit steep.’

‘He was passing through on his way from Dartmouth. Bit of a reunion, by the sound of it.’

Auriol turned to face her friend. She was still gloriously attractive, thought Miss Dimont, almost unchanged since their days in the underground corridors of the Admiralty building all those years ago. Everyone from able seaman to Admiral of the Fleet had been stunned by Auriol’s dark hair, coal-black eyes, perfect deportment and beautiful figure. Moreover, in a branch of the armed services almost completely peopled by men, she had the commanding presence to issue orders which they were happy to obey.

More than that, Auriol was the perfect sounding board – you could throw facts at her and she would size them up, turn them round, look at them upside-down and deliver them back to you in such an orderly fashion they were almost unrecognisable. Often when she was stuck with a problem, Miss Dimont would hand a bundle of information over to her friend and watch her go through it like a costermonger feeling up the apples and putting the best ones at the front of the stall.

‘. . . so you see,’ Miss Dimont was saying, ‘Bobby, Fluffles, then this woman Rouchos.’

‘That name sounds familiar.’

‘Does it?’ She was slicing up tomatoes to go in the omelette, their sharp sweet odour pricking her nostrils.

‘Can’t think why. Keep going, it’ll come to me.’

‘I just feel in my bones there’s something very odd about this set-up. Why in the first place did Hugh Radipole allow Bobby Bunton to loll about in the Marine making trouble when, really, his presence was a pain in the proverbial?’

‘His money is as good as anyone else’s. And it sounds like that piece of stuff of his is a thirsty one.’

‘And how! But the point is these two men were at each other’s throats. There’s Radipole on the one hand, urbane and sophisticated, who’s had that end of the beach all to himself ever since he arrived here years ago. Builds up a reputation for his hotel as a rich man’s hideaway – I mean, he doesn’t even want the Express in there to publicise the place, I always get a nasty look when I go in. He’s snooty, his guests are snooty!

‘Then,’ said Judy, laying out the knives and forks and freshly laundered napkins, ‘there’s the King of the Holiday Camps.’ She uttered the words satirically. ‘He’s noisy, he’s brash, he lacks polish and wears horrible clothes. And the way he talks!’

‘Never had you for a snob, Hugue.’

‘I don’t mean that – he talks like a spiv, always slightly threatening in the way he says things. Smarmy one minute, would take a cut-throat razor to you the next. And that frightful woman!’

‘The fancy piece? What did you call her – the courtesan?’

‘I was being polite. She’s the worst kind of advert for our gender you could ever imagine.’

‘Men seem to like her,’ said Auriol evenly, serving on to the plates, ‘a lot. By that I mean, a lot of men like her a lot.’

‘What I feel is that there’s something toxic about her – you could see that men might kill over her, however worthless she may be. Goodness, even Terry…!’

Auriol often heard complaints about Terry. Judy didn’t always mean what she said.

‘What interests me is this other woman, Rouchos,’ said Auriol, switching tack. ‘Clearly not the kind of person you’d normally find in a Buntorama. Disguised herself with her choice of clothes, but the jewellery gave her away, didn’t it? What the devil was she doing there? And more importantly, where was she when she wasn’t in the camp?’

Miss Dimont thought about this. ‘Bunton said she was a prostitute, but I don’t believe it. The clothes she left behind, the make-up, the perfume – all wrong for a woman in that line of business.’

Auriol arched an eyebrow. ‘And you’d know?’

‘I would assume,’ added Judy quickly. ‘OK, she’s sitting on her bed fully dressed, she might have been waiting for a client, but when you think about it she hadn’t been seen around the place all week so she wasn’t using the chalet as a place of work. Why would she suddenly change tack?’

‘According to what you say, Bunton claimed she was going to the Marine Hotel to grab a client or two. Maybe she had a room there.’

‘What, a room in Buntorama and one in the Marine? Why on earth would she do that?’

‘I’d check,’ said Auriol with that sliver of authority which once had junior naval officers scurrying to make her a pot of tea, no sugar, two digestives.

‘I will. Now what about Does the Team Think? – it must almost be time.’

Auriol switched on the radio and they sat with a glass of wine listening to silly jokes from the mouths of Jimmy Edwards, Ted Ray and Arthur Askey, a world away from the sinister doings in Ruggleswick. Both were listening, both were laughing, but both were thinking at the same time.

However, as a rat-tat of audience applause signalled the end of the show, the conversation did not immediately return to murder but to another kind of death. On the wall above the bakelite wireless hung the same photograph each woman displayed in her home, a black-and-white portrait of a man they both had loved – Auriol as a sister, Miss Dimont as his fiancée.

‘Not his kind of humour,’ said Auriol, switching off the radio. ‘Coffee?’

‘I think he’d have enjoyed The Goon Show more.’

‘Yes, madcap. Like Johnny Ramensky.’

It was always painful steering the conversation round to Eric Hedley, almost like picking at a scab, but most times they did. Both bitterly felt his loss, his heroic sacrifice in the last days of war when really he could have been spared. Auriol and Judy were friends, but Eric was what made their friendship eternal.

‘Johnny was a terror.’

‘It’s why Eric adored him so much. And, Hugue, you have to admit, the neatest safe-cracker you ever came across.’

‘To be honest,’ said Miss Dimont, ‘I never knew that many men with a passion for gelignite.’

Back in the office Betty Featherstone was making up for time off prompted by the hair debacle. She was doing the early pages, her desk overflowing with scraps of paper sent in by correspondents with a greater passion for the minutiae of village life than Betty could ever muster.

But her mind was on the colossal sense of entitlement Dud Fensome seemed to have. What Dud wanted, Dud got. The green patches among the platinum were, after all, just the tip of the iceberg when it came to his demands.

She dithered for half-an-hour over the Ashburton Sheep Sale market report, with its complex, interwoven, arcane and utterly boring detail on greyface ewes, whiteface ewes, clun ewes, kerrys, hoggets, wether lambs and registered greyface lambs. To turn into readable prose the pencilled notes scribbled on the back of a sale bill – was that the poor sheep’s last drop of blood tainting the dispatch? – required more concentration than she could cope with at the end of a long day. She lifted the paper to one side but it stuck to her fingers, the blood not quite dry.

‘Ew!’ Betty squeaked, as John Ross strolled by.

‘Ay, lassie,’ growled the Glaswegian. ‘Ewes indeed – they got you on the early pages, eh? Try to get it right this week.’

‘I simply haven’t the energy,’ said Betty, thinking about cycling home to have another go at her hair.

The chief sub-editor leaned over and started shuffling through the confetti on her desk.

‘Good one here,’ he grunted, voice tinged with venom. ‘Women’s Institute announcing their new competition – “A SALAD FOR ONE.”

‘And look! The winner of last week’s lampshade-making contest! Gloooorious…’ he added bitterly. Once he’d been a football reporter on a Fleet Street newspaper, now he was reduced to inventing headlines for the pitiful scraps of information sent in from the far-flung extremities of the newspaper’s circulation area. Dispatches from places where reporters never trod.

‘Och!’ he said, shaking his ugly head at a missive written in block capitals, ‘WAR DECLARED ON THE RABBIT POPULATION.’

‘And this! “DRAMATIC RESCUE ON MUDFORD CLIFFS”,’ he intoned, adding with heavy irony, ‘“NOT MANY DEAD”.’

One more caught his jaded eye. ‘That old chestnut about no public lavs down at Bedlington. Again. Oh mother Mary, save me now!’

Once upon a time Ross would be consoling himself in the pub by this hour, but since he was sworn off the booze these days he took it out on anybody left in the office after opening-time.

‘You just don’t get the quality of local corr any more,’ he said, churning hopelessly through the paper mountain on Betty’s desk as if panning for gold. ‘The stupidity of the village correspondents. You ask them to give you a story and all they can come up with is – oh, Christ!’

Betty abruptly put down the hand-mirror. She’d given up typing and was inspecting her green and platinum stripes. ‘What is it, Mr Ross?’

‘Girrlie, girrlie, oh girrlie…’ he whispered as if he had struck the mother lode, ‘ye canna believe… look at this week’s Umbrella!’

This was not an invitation to step out into the rain but to scrutinise the cage-droppings of a chum of the editor, a man who once made a half-funny speech at Rotary and was immediately snapped up to do a weekly column.

This half-wit called his column ‘Between Ourselves’ and signed himself ‘Umbrella Man’. Nobody knew why.

‘What’s it about?’ said Betty listlessly.

‘Dog bowls in pubs,’ replied Ross, his voice hoarser than an undertaker’s.

‘Well, look,’ said Betty, trying to break the mood. ‘Just think, next week I’m off to meet Moomie. We’ll get something wonderful out of that!’

The chief sub looked at her suspiciously. ‘Mommie?’

‘No, Moomie – Moomie Etta-Shaw, the jazz singer. She’s doing the summer season at the Marine.’

‘Ay,’ said Ross. ‘I know who you mean now. She and Alma Cogan used to work together at the Blue Lagoon in Soho.’

‘Didn’t she start out as a cloakroom attendant?’ asked Betty, who’d been doing her homework.

‘Nah,’ said Ross caustically, walking away. ‘She only took people’s coats.’

If this was supposed to be a joke it went over Betty’s head and she returned to the fuss over the building of a bus shelter in Exbridge – nobody wanted it outside their house yet everyone agreed it was vital in winter to stop villagers being splashed by passing traffic. Betty’s fingers were flying, the copy-paper was emerging from the top of her machine, but you couldn’t call it writing.

‘Time for a quick one,’ said Terry, who’d emerged from the darkroom and was looking for a drinking partner. Betty touched her hair – she wouldn’t be seen dead in the Fort or the Jawbones in her present state.

Unless, of course, she put the dead cat on her head again.

‘Won’t be a moment,’ she said, nippily pushing her typewriter away.

SIX

Frank Topham sat solidly in his chair at the head of the table while his detectives hunched over their notes, waiting uneasily for the inquisition ahead.

‘So,’ said the Inspector without the slightest hint of hope in his voice, ‘what have we got?’

One of the grey-faced assistants cleared his throat. ‘I checked on Bunton’s movements at the time of the shooting and it couldn’t have been him – he was at the Buntorama in Clacton, just like he said.’

‘Well, you had to ask. But he’s hardly likely to go round shooting his own customers, is he? Not good for business.’

‘You never know, sir.’

‘His piece of Fluff?’

The man managed a weary smile. ‘She was with him when the woman was shot, she’s always with him – she won’t let him out of her sight. She’s going to have that man for breakfast, lunch and dinner.’

‘Bunton’s under the impression she’s just his latest piece of stuff,’ said the other copper. ‘He has no idea that she’s his next wife who’ll take him for every last farthing before she spits him out.’

‘Splits him out,’ said the first, referring to the regrettable incident in the Primrose Bar. They both laughed, in a tired sort of way.

Topham was not so amused. ‘The victim? What new information do we have?’

‘Address in Chelsea she gave to the reception people at Buntorama turned out to be false. It’s a chemist’s shop.’

‘How did she pay?’

‘Cash, they prefer it that way in holiday camps.’

‘I daresay the Inland Revenue might have something to say about that,’ said Topham, a decent man who believed in people paying their taxes. It would be a useful bargaining chip when trying to get more information out of the clamlike Bunton.

‘And you didn’t get any more from any of the punters over at the holiday camp?’

‘One or two of them said they saw her. Posh, is what most of them say, in spite of her cheap clothes – the way she smiled but said nothing. Polite but condescending in that us-and-them sort of way.’

‘But are you saying she spoke to nobody at Buntorama? Didn’t go to the dances, sit in the bar? Wasn’t she missed at mealtimes?’

‘She was single so she was put on the long table where all the odds and sods end up. Everybody moves around – it’s not like being given a table for four in a hotel or on a liner where you know everybody’s business by the end of the fish course. She was on what you might call a moveable feast.’

If that was a joke it fell flat.

‘So,’ said Topham, ‘she was noticeable enough to be noticed, as it were, but nobody’s missed her.’

‘One woman said she didn’t smell right.’

‘And you checked back on her possessions?’

‘You saw yourself, sir, there was almost nothing in her suitcase. Cheap clothes, newly bought. Old suitcase. Two pairs of shoes in the wardrobe, make-up bag but no handbag. Clothes she was wearing when she was killed were the same make as the ones in the suitcase, no clues whatsoever. She was wearing expensive earrings, very yellow gold, no hallmark. Gold bracelet, also no hallmark. Very odd, that. Wedding ring on her third finger, right hand – old.’

‘How old?’

‘Older than her. Could have been her mother’s. Could’ve been a hand-me-down from a marriage which failed.’

‘She could be French,’ hazarded the other detective, but this fell on stony ground. He didn’t have a clue really.

‘No question, then,’ said Topham with conviction. ‘A mystery woman with expensive jewellery and cheap clothes. If that isn’t a disguise I’m a Chinaman’s uncle.’

Not having heard of any oriental relations in the Topham tribe, his men nodded in affirmation.

‘What next, sir?’

‘I have absolutely no idea,’ said the Detective Inspector with finality, gathering his papers and standing up. ‘You just carry on.’

Dear Hermione,

I am known among my friends for having a generous nature but now I feel the milk of human kindness has drained away and may never return. Please help.

Every year I am fortunate enough to have a bumper crop of strawberries. Last year I gave some to my best friend to make jam. She has now won First Prize for her strawberry jam at the Mothers’ Union and has been boasting to everyone how clever she is, without once mentioning that it was my strawberries that done it.

She has been my friend for years but now I feel I hate her. What can I do?

Miss Dimont looked again at the letter, took off her glasses, polished them, and replaced them on her deliciously curved nose. After a pause she got up to make a cup of tea. The letter was waiting when she got back, looking up pleadingly and urgently demanding Hermione’s adjudication. Miss Dimont stared at her Remington Quiet-Riter for quite some time then decided its ribbon needed changing.

A sub-editor wandered by and for a good ten minutes they discussed the latest film starring Dirk Bogarde at the Picturedrome. It turned out neither had seen it, but both had heard good reports.

The letter remained. There was, in fact, no answer to the agonising dilemma it presented and yet the heartfelt plea to Hermione cried out for a response, and Miss Dimont’s sense of duty told her she must answer, truthfully, and to the best of her ability.

She pushed the letter to one side and picked up another.

Dear Hermione,

I am in tears as I write this. I feel my son has been poisoned against me by my daughter-in-law and no longer wishes to see me. I am seventy next birthday and a widow.

I fail to understand why things should be this way when I have always gone out of my way to help my daughter-in-law with her children. I am always on hand to give good advice, even going to the trouble of writing her long letters advising her of better ways of managing things. I pop in at odd times to give the children a surprise – also it gives me a chance to help with the cleaning, going through the cupboards and so on.

I feel for some reason this annoys her, though why I can’t…

Miss Dimont looked up at the big clock down the other end of the newsroom. Almost lunchtime!