The Riviera Express

by TP Fielden

  He had pondered the business of Marion Lake – the fact that she turned out to be the daughter of Gerald Hennessy, not his mistress. How did that affect the death of the actor or, come to that, the death of Mr Shrimsley? Not at all. So that could be struck from the record as well. Honestly, the inspector would say to his wife in a rare moment of confession, I could write a book with all the stuff I hear but never repeat!

  The inspector’s motives may be honourable, but they made for pallid copy when the likes of Miss Dimont and her colleagues on the press bench read back their notes. Where was the quotable quote, the juicy detail? Nowhere, if Frank Topham had anything to do with it!

  But neither police nor press were prepared for the drama which was just about to unfold in this grey civic backwater. As the witnesses and observers filed into the dusty coroner’s room, the inspector at their head, there was suddenly an almighty kerfuffle outside. Topham could hear women’s voices raised to fever pitch and the unmistakable sound of a physical dust-up.

  The inspector pushed back through a crowd which was only just waking up to the realisation that something was going on. He broke through the crush to discover the two famous women he had come to know in the past week standing, sobbing, dishevelled, angry and, in Prudence Aubrey’s case, almost mad with rage.

  If she had a knife she would use it, thought Topham, who’d had experience of such things in India. But in a second he had his hand on her shoulder and was issuing restraining words which, though gently spoken, were an order not to be disobeyed. Nor would Prudence do such a thing – for hadn’t she known Colonel ffrench-Blake, Topham’s commanding officer?

  Further down the hall Marion Lake turned her face to the wall and wailed.

  ‘Now what’s this?’ asked the inspector sharply, more perplexed than anything else. ‘This is a coroner’s court, madam, a place where you must show some respect. We are here to hear evidence of your late husband’s death.’

  A knot of spectators had gathered and it grew larger by the second – court officials, policemen, secretaries – because to witness a catfight between two of the most famous women in the land, for that is what it had been, was a remarkable spectacle.

  Out across the parquet floor billowed the contents of Miss Aubrey’s alligator-skin bag – make-up, handkerchiefs, banknotes, coins. The bag itself was some way down the hall and Topham’s experienced eye could tell at a glance that the older woman had come off worst in the encounter.

  ‘What’s this all about?’ he asked the actress, nodding to a uniform sergeant to take hold of Marion Lake.

  ‘How could she?’ sobbed Miss Aubrey. ‘How could she? How could that piece of stuff have the temerity to come to this place when we are just about to hear about the last day of my late husband’s life?’

  ‘Well,’ said Topham logically, ‘she could be called as a witness. You see, she was on the train with—’

  ‘I know she was on the train with him!’ shouted Miss Aubrey, all pretence of control now gone. ‘She was coming down for a dirty weekend with him! How could she possibly show her face here, the brazen—’ Suddenly she sat down, hard, on the floor. Her legs had given way beneath her.

  Topham kindly leant over Prudence Aubrey just as Miss Dimont hove into view. Between them, they lifted the distraught woman and helped her into a chair. Topham leant forward and tried to whisper something in Prudence’s ear. But such was her distress it was clear his message went unrecognised.

  But Miss Dimont heard it all right. What the inspector had said explained everything.

  Miss Dimont felt she needed a chair to sit down on too. Could it be true? Could Gerald Hennessy, that urbane and rakish charmer, have fathered Britain’s number-one sex siren without anybody knowing? And who was the mother? Clearly not Prudence Aubrey!

  So far Miss D had this scoop to herself and, as she recovered her wits, she was keen to keep it that way. Mercifully, the other members of the press who were there were still in the courtroom, assuming that the business of the day must start any moment.

  She whisked across to where Marion Lake was standing, now reapplying her make-up and showing a degree more composure than her assailant.

  ‘Judy Dimont, Riviera Express,’ she said briskly. ‘Just one question: are you, were you, Gerald Hennessy’s daughter?’

  Miss Lake looked down her long nose with her lustrous big blue eyes. ‘Ye-es,’ she said slowly.

  ‘Could you explain how . . .?’

  Miss Lake had a reputation of never letting the press down, and now was not the time to quit.

  ‘Twenty-five years ago, while he was engaged to Prudence Aubrey, he had an affair with my mother,’ she said calmly. ‘He did the decent thing – paid up and disappeared. My mother refused always to say who my real father was – they’d come to an arrangement – and in any case I didn’t care because she married my adoptive father before I was born. It all happened very quickly.’

  Miss Dimont trod very carefully. ‘I interviewed Miss Aubrey very recently,’ she said. ‘She told me that she and Mr Hennessy had never had children because he was unable to.’

  Marion Lake realised that this may be a lynchpin moment in her career. She could already see the national newspaper headlines the next morning. She was only sorry there was just one reporter in front of her with whom to share the news.

  ‘I finally found out who my father was only very recently,’ she said, as if she had rehearsed the story in front of the mirror that morning before breakfast. ‘I had employed a search agent. I was intrigued to know where all this acting – talent—’ she dwelt on the word ‘—had come from.

  ‘To be honest when they told me it was Gerald, I wasn’t in the slightest surprised. I got in touch with him and we found we hit it off very well. But obviously it wasn’t a secret he was going to share with his wife, given the circumstances.’

  ‘But,’ said Miss Dimont, never afraid to press the point, ‘Gerald Hennessy was unable to have children. Miss Aubrey told me so.’

  Marion Lake’s smile was almost pitying. ‘It was she who could not have children,’ she said, with just the faintest hint of triumph in her voice. ‘Once it emerged there were difficulties, Gerry went to the doctor and he discovered the truth. He told me all this at our first meeting. He loved her – then – and didn’t want to upset her so he took the blame.’

  It seemed plausible, but it left Miss Dimont on the horns of a dilemma – the story was not complete without Miss Aubrey’s response to this quite extraordinary revelation. It meant the reporter would have to go back down the corridor and confront a woman who was facing the wretched ordeal of hearing her husband’s last moments being lingered over in a public courtroom.

  She could see Prudence Aubrey, still seated and in some distress, surrounded by a circle of admirers and that small knot of helpful souls who spring from nowhere in courtrooms to support and protect those bemused at finding themselves in such an alien environment.

  This was not going to be pleasant. On the one hand, repeating what Marion Lake had just told her removed the sting of Hennessy’s apparent adulterous intentions on the last day of his life. On the other, Miss Dimont was about to tell a woman of a certain age that the reason she had never had children with Gerald Hennessy lay with her, not her husband.

  It is at moments like this that the average reporter shrugs their shoulders and blunders straight in, using the surprise element to extract the maximum amount of quotes before their victim rightly shuts up. Miss Dimont was not an average reporter.

  She had little time to deliberate because the coroner’s clerk was calling people back into the courtroom, where proceedings were about to start.

  Walking up to Miss Aubrey, she took the situation in hand. ‘You are not ready to face the court,’ she said. Miss Aubrey, through her tears, mumbled incoherently. ‘I will explain to the clerk that proceedings cannot go ahead without you, but you need time to compose yourself.’

  Miss Aubrey nodded dumbly.

  ‘Let me take you
to the waiting room once I’ve done that,’ she said firmly but caringly. ‘Sit here for the moment.’

  The reporter caught the coroner’s clerk at the door and briefly explained the situation. After a hurried consultation he returned and nodded. ‘Dr Rudkin will grant Mrs Hennessy a thirty-minute recess to allow her to regain her composure, but there are other witnesses here and he will have to go ahead without her if she is not ready by eleven o’clock.’

  Miss Dimont nodded. What she was about to vouchsafe was not exactly guaranteed to put the actress in a more stable frame of mind, but with fortitude she returned to Prudence Aubrey’s side and helped her into the waiting room. A kind helper suggested a cup of coffee and skipped away to fetch it.

  ‘Now, Miss Aubrey,’ said Miss Dimont, ‘I am going to tell you something to ease your distress.’ The actress looked her hopefully. ‘Then I have something more uncomfortable to impart.’

  The actress’s gratitude was such that she appeared not to hear this second statement.

  ‘Miss Lake was not Mr Hennessy’s lover.’

  Miss Aubrey looked disbelieving.

  ‘She was his daughter. The inspector said so.’

  A sudden movement, a hand clutching at a mouth, then a heart. A terrible, long silence. No words, just silence.

  ‘I am telling you this,’ said Miss Dimont, gently, as if speaking to a small child, ‘because whether I write it or not, it will be in the national newspapers tomorrow. I know this will come as a terrible shock to you, but it would appear to be the truth.’

  ‘Nnn . . . Not . . .’ murmured Prudence Aubrey. ‘Not . . . now . . .’

  Miss Dimont did not quite understand this, but carried on. ‘Miss Lake says that her mother and Mr Hennessy had a brief affair when you became engaged to him.’

  ‘I was away a lot on tour,’ said Prudence, as if through a mist.

  Miss Dimont pressed on. ‘She says that it was brief and her mother went on to marry the man she had intended to from the first. He still believes that Miss Lake is his daughter.

  ‘Miss Lake says that despite what you told me the other night, Mr Hennessy was in fact capable of fathering children – as demonstrated by the fact that he paid for the child and her education.’

  ‘I often wondered why we were so poor.’

  ‘You don’t seem surprised,’ remarked Miss Dimont. ‘I should have thought—’

  ‘Well, I didn’t know about the child,’ said Prudence sharply. ‘And of course it would have to turn out to be Marion Lake.’ She hissed the name.

  ‘But of course I knew it was me who wasn’t capable of becoming pregnant. It has been a source of deep and bitter regret every day of my adult life.’

  Curiously, uttering this statement helped clear away her tears, and emotion was replaced by the addressing of a lengthy personal history.

  ‘So you . . .’

  ‘Gerry was the one who made the decision to tell it that way. He reasoned that, as a female star, I should appear perfect in every way – unattainable, that sort of thing. That’s really been my image, ever since he took control of my career. To women fans, therefore, there must always remain the possibility that I – like them – would one day have a child. It is in the nature of celebrity that people live their lives through yours.

  ‘Take away that possibility and you become flawed, damaged goods. Or that was Gerald’s thinking.

  ‘On the other hand, he had this devil-may-care image which somehow it didn’t matter that he couldn’t father children. If anything it made him all the more exciting.’

  Miss Dimont looked puzzled.

  ‘Oh, you haven’t seen the fan mail,’ she said witheringly. ‘The things they say! Gerry was very good at manipulating his image, and as soon as he realised that the fans who adored him loved him all the more – the fantasy, I think, was that they could bed him without their husbands knowing or there being any untoward consequences.’

  ‘I have the feeling,’ said Miss Dimont carefully, ‘that now the cat is out of the bag, Miss Lake will be only too happy to add to her collection of front-page headlines. Are you going to mind that?’

  Prudence looked at her as she dried her tears and took out her powder compact. ‘I think that will put the final nail in the coffin of my career,’ she said slowly. ‘Don’t you? My husband. This woman, his daughter. The humiliation . . .’

  ‘I don’t see why,’ said Miss Dimont, though she did really.

  The actress shook her head. ‘In a sense I’ve known it was over for some time. Very few women reach my age in the film world and continue to work regularly. The ones who do character parts can go on indefinitely but actresses like me, with a special attraction I suppose you can call it, only go on as long as the crow’s feet don’t show.’

  She sniffed. ‘There’s always television. I don’t know much about it but I daresay some producer will pick me up when all this comes out. He’ll get the headlines for casting me, I’ll get the work. It could be worse.’

  Miss Dimont marvelled at such a pragmatic approach, but acting is a cruel profession and you cannot continue in it for long if you do not confront its ugly realities. Miss Aubrey would survive, and maybe this untoward publicity (to which Miss Dimont now felt released to contribute) could bring a new lease of life to her career.

  Miss Dimont rose and smiled down at the actress, now fully restored. ‘Are you ready? Shall we go in?’

  FIFTEEN

  Coroner’s courts are never very inspiring places, and Dr Rudkin diligently sought to make his as uninspired as possible. Whatever antics took place outside its doors, in here all was decorum; his was, after all, a branch of the undertaking trade and all the hallmarks of that business could be found in his grey-painted courtroom.

  Having secured the presence of a refreshed-looking Prudence Aubrey (Marion Lake took care to sit at the back of the court), Dr Rudkin proceeded first to review the death of Gerald Victor Midleton Hennessy, of Regent’s Lodge, Regent’s Park, London.

  ‘Inspector Topham.’

  ‘Sir. The deceased was discovered in the penultimate first-class carriage of the Riviera Express when it arrived at the railway station last Tuesday afternoon. The 4.30. He had travelled from Paddington having stayed the previous night at his club, the . . . ah, Savile, sir.’

  Dr Rudkin nodded approval. He knew people who were members there.

  ‘The ambulance was called and a doctor attended the scene. It would appear he had died of a heart attack some time after the train left Exeter. He had been dead approximately twenty minutes, as far as the doctor could judge.’

  ‘No signs of disturbance in the carriage?’

  ‘None, sir.’

  ‘Was there anyone else in the compartment during his journey?’

  Topham cleared his throat. ‘Er, no. Sir.’ Marion Lake studied her shoes intently.

  ‘Evidence of identification?’

  This rather threw the policeman. ‘Well, sir, the deceased was a very well-known actor.’ A chuckle from the packed courtroom.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Dr Rudkin testily, as if drawing attention to the fact might trigger a few more abominated headlines.

  ‘Just about anybody in Temple Regis could have identified him, sir. He looked very much the way you see him on the cinema screen.’

  This was not going well for Dr Rudkin – the policeman was now drawing attention to the fact the chap was a film star. It had to be stopped. ‘Inspector,’ he said tightly. ‘You know very well we stick to correct procedure in this court. There will have been a formal identification. That was undertaken by . . .’

  ‘Mrs Hennessy, sir. She is better known as Prudence Aubrey.’

  Dr Rudkin was gnashing his teeth now and would have eaten his moustache if he could. He’d had enough of Topham and his headline-making.

  ‘Dr Protheroe.’

  ‘The deceased was a man of forty-seven years of age, sir,’ said the pathologist. ‘It is my opinion he died of myocardial infarction. I took the trouble of consul
ting his London doctor, who told me that given Mr Hennessy’s, ah, heavy work schedule – the stress in his profession is considerable – given his history, a heart attack was entirely possible. I believe they say, “he worked hard and he played hard”.’

  Dr Rudkin snarled. ‘Please confine yourself to the facts, Dr Protheroe.’

  ‘The body of a well-nourished male, reasonably physically fit. The post-mortem revealed some fatty degeneration around the heart, otherwise organs undamaged.’

  ‘Any previous heart problems?’

  ‘Not that I know of, sir.’

  ‘Liver?’

  ‘All in order,’ said Dr Protheroe blithely while cursing under his breath. That last question of Rudkin’s was a googly – he hadn’t had the liver tested, and why would he? Chap died of a heart attack, for goodness’ sake!

  Dr Rudkin, who was never very keen on the testimony of others in his profession, had scored his point. He smiled in a sardonic way down at Protheroe, who looked away in disgust.

  ‘Anything else?’ The question was rhetorical.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Mrs Hennessy.’

  The packed courtroom sat upright, drew in its breath. So far nothing had been said that hadn’t already appeared in last week’s Riviera Express. Now, at last, they were going to get what they’d come for – Britain’s newest and best-known widow. What’s more, they were not paying 1s 9d or 2s 6d for this performance – it was free!

  ‘Your name, please, madam.’

  ‘I am known professionally as Prudence Aubrey.’

  Dr Rudkin did not like this. Another person using his court to try to milk some publicity for themselves!

  ‘The name as stated on your passport, if you please.’

  ‘Janine Murgatroyd Hope-Simpson Hennessy,’ said Prudence. She’d hoped to avoid all that – and especially the thrill of wonderment which rippled round the courtroom. So depressing when people are reminded of your real name – in her mind she had jettisoned it years ago. The public were getting a feast of revelation, and the proceedings had only just begun.