The Riviera Express

by TP Fielden

  ‘There must have been a moment when—’

  ‘We avoid the weather. It changes so much that the conversation is redundant before it’s begun. Also, rather banal, dontcha think? Like those people who say “How are you?” – they aren’t interested when they ask and I’m not interested in replying. No weather, no personal stuff. That way we all get on fine.’

  These rules seemed rather hair-shirt to Miss Dimont, who could carry on a conversation about anything at the drop of a handkerchief. How would you ever know anything about anybody if you didn’t ask?

  But the honorary male member of the She-Club had taken on its rules as the price of his membership. People he had known for sixteen or seventeen months – he had no idea what their names were. Though cordial, everyone kept at arm’s length from each other.

  Miss Dimont realised what an utterly useless witness she had on her hands.

  ‘Well, how lovely,’ she said sweetly, and bent over Bruce to give his nose a quick fondle. ‘I must be getting back now.’

  The captain looked at her with gratitude, and suddenly she realised that possibly he had exaggerated his full membership of the She-Club. Maybe he spoke less often – maybe they spoke less often – than he had implied. He was old. He wore his regimental tie over a not altogether clean shirt. His shoes were well polished but the trousers had not seen a steam iron any time recently. Perhaps the smart ladies did not wish to dally too long with the owner of Bruce.

  Miss Dimont wanted in that moment to hug him – this brave, this worn-out, old soldier.

  ‘So lovely talking to you,’ and she meant it. You are a human being first and a journalist second, she’d decided when she found herself quite by chance in this arcane profession. Never forget how important the person standing in front of you is.

  ‘Just one thing,’ said the captain, and Miss Dimont immediately wondered whether she hadn’t been too kind. Was he now going to cling to her coat sleeve and not allow her to leave?

  ‘Bruce and I were, as you know, detained at bridge when the unfortunate incident took place. But we did come up here after tea, didn’t we, old chap?’

  Bruce was equivocal. He wanted more walkies.

  ‘Yes?’ said Miss Dimont encouragingly.

  ‘Went and had a look, of course. The police had come and gone by then – all the action was down the bottom of the cliff, dontcha see, they were down there then. Most people had done their dog-walking for the day but Bruce and I had a wander round. Blow me down if he didn’t find a trophy.’

  Miss D was not a member of the She-Club. She was only mildly interested in dogs. Really you were either a cat person or a dog person and frankly anybody who set eyes on her Mulligatawny would agree there could be no contest. So dogs digging up bones were not of compelling interest, especially as she was still officially on duty and her trip up to Mudford Cliffs had been a personal whim.

  ‘Well I’ll be getting—’

  ‘I hung it on the picket fence and next day it had gone. Rather expensive, I’d say. Nice perfume.’

  Something held Miss Dimont back from letting out Herbert’s clutch.

  ‘It was a . . .?’

  ‘Ladies’ scarf. White, silk. Torn. I found it beyond the barrier – I know we shouldn’t, but Bruce and I wanted to see where the chap had gone down, didn’t we, boy?’

  ‘Er, anything else?’ asked Miss Dimont, suddenly very interested.

  ‘Not a thing. Don’t know why it was there – probably blown over on the breeze. It gets windy up here, even in summer.’

  ‘So you hung it on the fence and it had gone next day?’

  ‘Yes. Expect the owner came along to collect it.’

  ‘Well,’ said Miss Dimont, ‘that is interesting.’

  Herbert took her, at no great speed, back to the Riviera Express. Part of the reason Miss Dimont so loved her old moped was because he allowed her time to think. And now she used the journey to reorder her thoughts once more.

  Despite his apparent failure as a witness, the captain had said something quite important. It was almost unheard of for men to walk dogs up on Mudford Cliffs. The She-Club dominated the day – though doubtless husbands did their duty in the early morning or at night after work. So to find a man up on the greensward in the middle of the day would be remarkable.

  And, again, why would Shrimsley be walking a dog half-an-hour’s journey from his home when he didn’t even possess one?

  Answer, thought Miss Dimont, wobbling a bit as she came down the hill past Tuppenny Row. There can only be one answer.

  It wasn’t his dog.

  It wasn’t his dog and he had gone up to the cliffs to meet someone who did have a dog. Something had occurred between them. Arthur fell. The lady – it must have been a lady – took her dog and disappeared.

  And . . . Could this be connected? A white scarf – a damaged white scarf – had been left behind at the scene of the crime – by now surely it must be a crime – though now it had disappeared.

  Shrimsley was a hateful character. He had written of blackmail. Was this the blackmail victim, who took the law into her own hands and saw him off?

  Herbert arrived safe and sound in the Express car park and Miss Dimont alighted, happily patting her corkscrew hair back into some semblance of shape.

  THIRTEEN

  Rudyard Rhys was in typical mood – grumpy, indecisive, distracted. He struggled with his nasty briar pipe.

  ‘What time do you call this?’

  ‘Been out to Bedlington on the Hennessy story,’ said his chief reporter happily.

  ‘Please come into my office.’

  This did not augur well. If Mr Rhys had something to say, he said it wherever he stood and didn’t care who heard, and as he shut the door behind him Miss Dimont had a presentiment of ugly things to come.

  ‘You appear to be playing detective,’ he said, not kindly.

  ‘Well in a manner of—’

  ‘Again.’

  ‘I don’t go out of my way to discover dead bodies, Mr Rhys.’

  ‘Betty tells me you have some theory about these deaths.’

  ‘In a manner of speaking, yes.’

  ‘Well, let me tell you, in a manner of speaking’ rasped Rudyard Rhys, ‘I’ve had a complaint.’

  Miss Dimont’s heart sank. No matter how hard you tried, there was always someone. She hadn’t meant to put the cat among the pigeons at the Regis Conservative Ball last winter – these things just happen. As for the mix-up over the winners of the Class Two Chrysanthemums (incurved) . . .

  It always gave the editor an unfair advantage. Implicit in his every instruction was the order to stick one’s neck out, yet the moment someone complained the fault was yours, not his. He never took risks himself but wanted you to do it on his behalf.

  ‘What is it this time?’ asked Miss Dimont rhetorically, with a deflationary sigh. She had plenty of work to do and complaints took up precious time.

  ‘Prudence Aubrey,’ said the editor.

  Miss Dimont quailed inwardly. It was the inquest tomorrow.

  ‘I saw Inspector Topham at the Club at lunchtime. He has been talking to Miss Aubrey. Miss Aubrey,’ Rhys repeated the name with a degree of reverence before turning his fire on the reporter, ‘is complaining of press harassment.’

  ‘Well, those people from the Western Daily Press are nothing short of animals,’ said Miss Dim. ‘Jackals. The worst kind of—’

  ‘Miss Aubrey,’ snarled Rhys, ‘was talking about you.’

  Miss Dimont sat for five minutes while her editor relayed with some relish the actress’s complaints as divulged to Topham. It may not have helped Miss Dimont’s cause that in the past – especially in the Pillsbury case – she had called into question the efficacy, even the existence, of Temple Regis’s CID department.

  The head of that department clearly believed in the dish-served-cold philosophy. The Pillsbury case, through which he had marched painfully slowly, and to no great effect, had been almost a year ago.

&n
bsp; ‘I will say this, Mr Rhys. There’s something odd about Miss Aubrey. She’s jumpy, angry, evasive and doesn’t respond in the way most actresses do to gentle questioning by the press.’

  ‘She’s just lost her husband, what do you expect?’

  ‘It’s not that. There are things going on we don’t know about, Mr Rhys. I think you should trust me. There are things going on.’

  The editor looked at his chief reporter. The last time Miss Dimont had used the ‘trust me’ line he had received a personal letter of congratulation from the managing director of the Riviera Express. He had taken it home and shown it to Mrs Rhys. Miss Dimont’s report had gathered widespread praise and Mr Rhys had naturally taken his share, perhaps more, of credit for having the courage to print it.

  ‘Well,’ he said, caught in a quandary, ‘that’s as may be. But until you have anything more to write you must remember that the Express represents the people of Temple Regis. It has a responsibility to be above reproach. I don’t want people coming in from outside and criticising the way we do things. You watch your step.’

  Tight-lipped, for she had done no wrong – quite the opposite in fact – Miss Dimont rose to go.

  ‘And, Miss Dim. I want you to go round and apologise to Miss Aubrey. Take some flowers for heaven’s sake, put them on your expenses. It’s the inquest tomorrow – I don’t want her getting up in court and saying things about my newspaper.’

  ‘I really don’t think that’s necessary, Mr Rhys.’

  ‘Please, Miss Dimont, do as I say,’ he replied testily. For once the editor’s decision was final.

  It was just as well Athene was in the office. One glance at Miss Dimont could tell her aura had turned to black.

  ‘Cup of tea, dear?’

  ‘Hemlock more like,’ sniffed Miss Dimont, but ten minutes in Athene’s glorious company put some semblance of sunshine back in her life. Between them they worked out which flowers Judy should take round to the Grand, and what words of contrition might be chosen which did not compromise her legitimate search after the truth.

  The cups washed, Miss Dimont set off. In September, in Temple Regis, a suitable offering is those autumn chrysanthemums so beloved of harvest festivals and late Horticultural Society open days. Not perhaps the most celebrated in the floral pantheon, they nonetheless carry a very special message of hope and warmth. Miss Dimont had found just the right ones, in a delicious array of browns and golds.

  Nonetheless her approach to Miss Aubrey’s door on the Grand Hotel’s second floor was not without its moments of doubt, regret and annoyance. She knocked, and waited.

  No silk sheath for the film star this evening – evidently she was a planning a night alone with the wireless. A faded cashmere sweater, clearly comfort clothing, was wrapped around her spare frame and on her feet a pair of worn Turkish slippers. The hair was not quite so perfectly set, the make-up had rubbed thin.

  ‘Come in, come in, don’t stand on the doorstep.’

  Miss Dimont couldn’t get from her tone quite what mood she was in, but mood there was, aplenty.

  Not for a humble reporter the glass charged with turbo-powered cocktails, as for Inspector Topham. Instead, without invitation, Miss Dimont was handed a hefty glass of sherry. It was just what she needed to get the ball rolling.

  ‘Look, Miss Aubrey, I gather I have rather put my foot in it. I was a great admirer of your husband and I wanted to give him as comprehensive and as fitting a farewell as it is possible for a local newspaper to make. We do not, as a rule, see so many of his stature here in Temple Regis.’

  ‘You did,’ said Miss Aubrey, subsiding on a couch and tucking up her knees, ‘a really wonderful job.’

  Miss Dimont blinked. What did she just say?

  ‘Vincent Mulchrone in the Daily Mail, Jack Higgins in the Daily Herald – they all tried to capture Gerry in their obituaries, but his was an elusive character. He had many flaws but he had a magical side to him as well. But I loved your phrase, “Angel with one foot in the . . .”’

  ‘Gutter,’ finished Miss D.

  ‘That dreadful character Jack Spivimo he played in The Devil’s Quartet – he did that just as well as all those tiresome war heroes he played, didn’t he?’

  ‘I thought so,’ said Miss Dimont.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Miss Aubrey, ‘we got off on the wrong foot. The press have always been very kind to me. It was just – well, you know, the shock, the readjustment. I like to have a script and I like to stick to the script. Suddenly there was no script. I haven’t been quite myself.’

  And with that she got up and poured more sherry. The long windows giving out on to the balcony, with the sea beyond and the still effulgent clouds suspended above, allowed eventide to enter the room and bestow upon its furniture a special glow.

  The sherry, the elegance of her surroundings, the extraordinary turnabout in Miss Aubrey’s attitude, caught Miss Dimont off-balance. It was comforting, it was enjoyable, but wasn’t it all just an act – and had she just suspended her disbelief in Miss Aubrey’s innocence? Had she, unawares, been made to, by some unseen force?

  After all, the woman before her was caught up in a blackmail plot. Her husband was dead, and his rival, the man with whom she had had a brief affaire, was missing.

  Yet this evening Prudence Aubrey looked alone and slightly afraid. The hauteur, the grandiose gestures, were missing.

  ‘I’m glad you’ve come,’ she said. ‘There are some things I want to say. I tried to tell the inspector but, fine fellow though he is – I knew his commanding officer – he’s not what you might call sympatico. He doesn’t understand family matters, and really this is at the heart of it all.’

  Miss Dimont sipped her sherry and waited.

  ‘It’s all been a terrible mistake. Gerry came down on the Express with a woman – that woman, Marion Lake. It would not take an Einstein to work out what was going on. I just felt so terribly hurt, not only that he should do it – though Lord knows how many times there have been before – but that he should die so publicly and offer the public the opportunity to see that our marriage was not what we pretended it to be.

  ‘He could always do that rueful smile, scratch his jaw, waggle an eyebrow and make you believe that that’s what chaps do. But an actress . . . like me . . . at a certain time in her career . . . and him dead in the arms of the latest sex siren. I mean, there’s been rather a long gap since my last film, which could only be made all the more prominent by the fact that Miss Lake is half my age and has made a handful of movies since I last stood in front of the camera.

  ‘A word of that in the press and what little chance I have of getting a good part again would be dashed. So you will see why I was a little . . . er, cautious . . . in answering your questions.’

  On the face of it all this seemed quite plausible, but Miss Dimont had a reporter’s instinct that this was merely a version of the truth, not the full bag of tricks.

  But her task here was not to enquire further, merely to smooth the ruffled feathers of this elegant swan seated before her. Two glasses of sherry and very little said by Miss Dimont seemed to have achieved that purpose and now, perhaps, the best course of action would be to retire. But Prudence Aubrey was in no mood to draw the interview, if that’s what it was, to a close and they started to discuss the following day’s inquest.

  Here Miss Dimont was of some comfort and assistance, for she had attended many such occasions while Miss Aubrey had never set foot in a coroner’s court. Naturally she was keen to learn how many press might attend, what might be her best outfit, where the best place would be to pose for the cameras – inside or outside the courtroom? Miss Dimont soon put her mind to rest on the latter point: ‘The coroner will probably have you arrested for contempt if you encourage the photographers to snap you indoors.’

  Little hints like this fostered a growing sense of trust in Prudence. She rang the bell and ordered sandwiches. It encouraged the irrepressible Miss Dimont forward, for here she was in the pr
esence of the one person who might know the connection between her husband’s death and that of Shrimsley, and possibly had some inkling as to why Cattermole had disappeared. It was not the moment to back off – a reporter has a duty to his story, after all.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Miss Dimont casually, ‘do you know the name Arthur Shrimsley?’

  Miss Aubrey’s eyes narrowed. ‘Shrimsley? Wasn’t he the one who died soon after Gerry?’

  And halved the front-page coverage of her husband’s demise, thought Miss Dimont. In the acting profession it’s all about how big the headline is – it would have been preferable if the wretched Shrimsley could have saved his cliff fall for another week.

  ‘He was rather a disgusting figure. Drank too much and leeched off other people’s lives,’ said Miss Dimont in a rare bleak judgement, for generally she saw the best in people.

  ‘The name seems familiar. Did he not work in Fleet Street after the War? He may have interviewed me. Or Gerry. Or both. Forgive me, Miss Dimont, but there have been so many interviews, one does not remember them all. And one most determinedly does not remember the ones which went wrong.’

  Let’s hope this one doesn’t, then, thought Miss Dimont guiltily.

  ‘I’m just wondering whether . . . he didn’t get in touch with you recently, did he?’

  ‘Why would he?’

  ‘Didn’t write to you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Raymond Cattermole,’ said Miss Dimont. ‘Did he write to you?’

  ‘No. He did write to Gerry, though. I seem to remember Gerry and I at breakfast recalling what a terrible fraud Cattermole was when we were in the West End. You know I was playing Sybil in Private Lives at the Apollo while those two round the corner were doing Earnest?

  ‘Gerry disliked him intensely. “Glad I broke his arm,” he used to say. There was something between them, I’m not sure what.’

  ‘Jealousy?’ prompted Miss Dimont. ‘Rivalry?’

  ‘I see you are a clever woman,’ said Miss Aubrey drily. ‘You mean jealousy and rivalry over me. Well, yes, it could have been that. And since you are asking by the arch of your eyebrows was there an affaire between Raymond Cattermole and me, the answer I regret to say is yes.