by TP Fielden
Terry then took a minute or two to sum up last night’s accumulated evidence. He left out the bust-up with the two fashionable ladies of Temple Regis, but was less sparing in his account of Betty and Mr Hannaford.
‘But I thought Derek . . .’ said Miss Dimont, marvelling at Betty’s sudden defection to the older man.
‘Nuh. He sent a telegram.’
Both looked pityingly on Betty, now over at the subs’ table, still lost in her world of the coronation ball. Though she looked tired, there was no sense of loss or disjointure in her life – that had been yesterday. Today was today – there was no looking back for Betty.
Terry drifted away and Miss Dimont typed out a handful of NIBs – news-in-brief paragraphs – short items from the courts, council, public-relations handouts and other vital news resources. Her favourite this morning was about the repositioning of a drain cover halfway down Denmark Street. Although the Mothers’ Union skeleton hunt was, in its way, a bit of a corker.
While she typed, she brooded. If Gerald had inherited a fortune, why had Prudence Aubrey not told her? If he was coming down to claim his life presidency, why didn’t she mention it? Were things worse between them than she’d actually confessed? Or was Prudence Aubrey, how could one put this, a bit of a liar?
She lifted the phone and asked the operator for the Grand Hotel. Miss Aubrey, who had parted with her on such good terms, no longer seemed so keen to talk.
‘The golf club?’ pressed Miss Dimont.
‘He never told me.’
‘But he must have mentioned his inheritance. I gather it might be as much as a million.’
‘He might have.’
‘Look, Miss Aubrey, I feel you are telling me things which don’t always quite add up. And at the same time, not telling me quite a lot.’ This last was said with some asperity.
‘I’m an actress,’ said Prudence shortly, as if that were some kind of explanation.
‘Your husband died. That’s very sad, but as I gather from you, the marriage was over. There’s some evidence which points towards . . . well, not as the coroner summed up. Not accidental death.’
‘No,’ said the actress, not sounding in the least surprised. ‘Something was going on, I’ll grant you that. He was talking to that man Shrimsley – the one who died, I do know that.’
‘Why didn’t you mention that before?’ asked Miss Dimont, confused and not a little angered by the illogicality of Prudence’s behaviour and her propensity to tell only fragments of the truth at any given time.
‘Because,’ replied the actress heatedly, ‘it was that rat who was going to write Gerald’s memoirs. Shrimsley was a ghostwriter – what a slovenly job – and he’d written articles for Gerald over the years when some editor would ring up and commission him to write about life in the movies, that sort of thing. They knew each other in the West End – oh, you knew that.’
She paused.
‘I told you about Gerald wanting to change. The inheritance finally decided it. He had enough money to take the gamble and reconstruct himself as an actor for today – not like those has-beens Gielgud and Richardson, so stuck in the past. His memoirs were to be a reinvention for the next generation and that included telling every story against himself and – as I said before – some against me, too. He wanted to show how I was old school and he was new wave. And how as a result my career had hit the rocks.’
There was real anger in her voice. And understandably, thought Judy Dimont, but why not come clean in the first place?
‘Why didn’t you tell me this when we met?’
‘There’s more to it than that.’
‘Did you try and stop him in any way?’
‘Yes. I threatened to go to the papers. I threatened to tell them all about his young friends and his outré life. He was drugging, you know.’
Miss Dimont did not know, and actually did not want to know. Though the layers were beginning to peel away, she was still at heart a fan of Gerald Hennessy and could not quite believe what she was hearing.
‘It’s a horrid word, Miss Aubrey, but in a sense you have to admit you were blackmailing him.’
‘On the contrary,’ came the sharp reply, ‘he was blackmailing me.’
Miss Dimont drew her breath in sharply. She said, ‘The reason why I use that nasty word is that Shrimsley was encouraging Raymond Cattermole to instigate some sort of blackmail campaign against someone, I don’t know who. Did Cattermole try it on with you?’
‘No, as I said the other day, I had more on him than he had on me.’
‘Then he must have been attempting to blackmail Gerald.’
‘More than likely,’ came the reply. ‘Lots of fertile ground there.’ You could tell Miss Aubrey was no longer interested.
However she had a last word for the reporter: ‘I have to say, Miss Dimont, your policemen aren’t being terrifically efficient.’
‘Well, this is a rather complex state of affairs.’
‘No, I mean about the attaché case,’ said the actress.
‘What attaché case?’
The widow told the reporter of her recent conversation with Inspector Topham. ‘Somebody came along and pinched it. He doesn’t seem to care very much. But it’s odd, isn’t it, that someone should sneak down the train and walk over a dead body to help themselves to a leather case?’
‘There wasn’t anything in it?’
‘Usually he just kept his sandwiches in it.’
Miss Dimont remembered the paper she’d tidied away. Had it been to wrap his sandwiches in? She must unearth it and take a look.
‘Anything else in the case? Letters, perhaps? Maybe some ideas about this book he was going to write with Shrimsley?’
‘I have no idea,’ said Prudence in a jaded voice. ‘To be honest, I am getting over the shock of Gerald dying and now feeling rather angry that all this nonsense is going on around him.’
‘Can I ask, will he have left you any money?’
‘We never had any. The house we live in is beautiful but is on a Crown lease. We had plenty of clothes, and I have some jewellery but apart from that . . .’
‘Where, do you think, his inheritance from Mr Pithers will go?’
‘It should come to me, of course, his widow. But he was a bit strange towards the end – it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest to discover he’d left it to that . . . that . . .’
‘Miss Lake, you mean, his daughter?’
‘For heaven’s sake, she had all our money while she was growing up,’ snapped Prudence Aubrey. ‘He paid for everything. I . . . now . . . discover,’ she added bitterly.
‘Where do you think he spent the night before he died?’ The question had been asked so many times before, but now it seemed more important than ever.
‘I literally have no idea. There were so many young friends.’
‘Had he often stayed away before? When you had rows?’
‘A couple of times.’
‘And where did he go then?’
‘Well, his club usually. Though once he went to stay with his cousin – she lives somewhere off Piccadilly.’
Just then Miss Dimont heard a thunderous bellow and, looking up, saw the red-faced apparition of Rudyard Rhys thrusting down the corridor from his office into the news-room. He was waving in his hand two ten-by-eight prints and he was roaring Terry’s name.
True you could see the stocking-tops of Mesdames Ferrers and Coryton but really, so what?
Just that Mr Ferrers had been into the office and made clear his opinion, in no uncertain terms, on the question of press ethics and the exploitation of innocent parties for financial gain. The words pouring from the editor’s mouth were not what a lady liked to hear, especially in an office.
Miss Dimont could only rise above.
NINETEEN
Temple Regis was relishing its brush with fame. While Prudence Aubrey was downing cocktails in the Palm Court of the Grand, just as lively a consumption was taking place down at the snug bar of the Fo
rtescue, where the death of Gerald Hennessy and the presence in town of two such dazzling stars as Prudence Aubrey and Marion Lake had caused a temporary suspension in the ongoing debate on whither Plymouth Argyle.
‘’at Mary-un.’
‘She brite.’
‘Werm coddit.’
‘Doo more ’ere, Jethro, quick aboudit.’
As a consequence of these celebrations few Temple Regents would have noted the arrival on the late train of a sharp-suited, middle-aged man with a pencil moustache and expensive luggage. His arrival at the Grand went just as unremarked, and the transfer to his suite was achieved with the minimum of fuss and the maximum of unctuousness. Hartley Radford believed in the liberal distribution of pound notes to ease his passage through life, but then he’d accumulated so many of them he could afford to shed a few.
In fact it was remarkable how rich he had become, given that he did little more than sit in an office all day and talk into the telephone. Occasionally he might go out to lunch, in the evening perhaps the occasional theatre; but on the whole life asked little of him and as a consequence he gave little back. His clients might argue these days he was niggardly with his time, his advice, his condolences, his encouragement. And they had a point – for the gifts once showered liberally upon them were now held in reserve for the newest, the brightest talent swimming towards him from just over the horizon.
Temple Regis, had it known who’d slipped so sinuously from station to taxi and thence into the Grand, would have gladly laid down a path of palm leaves to welcome and celebrate this man; for though his name was unknown to them, he knew more famous people than most famous people did. Hartley Radford was not only a theatrical agent, he was the theatrical agent. A curt word from him on the telephone could send even the most eminent star of film or stage scurrying down to the Imperial, Scunthorpe, to play second fiddle to a pair of unicycling costermongers, such was his power.
Hartley Radford had easily accumulated power and contacts because he instinctively understood the nature of celebrity – its insecurity, its narcissism, its greed and all-consuming envy – and with effortless alchemy he was capable of transforming these negative forces into that unique product called stardom. He was Gerald Hennessy’s agent, and he was Marion Lake’s agent. He was no longer Prudence Aubrey’s.
A limp hand lifted the telephone. ‘What is the oldest champagne you have?’ he intoned, the words more an instruction than an enquiry. The response evidently did not fill him with hope, but he ordered a magnum before calling Marion Lake’s suite and issuing a softly spoken invitation.
The actress was there in a moment, and the murky business of her recently revealed parentage was discussed at some length. Hartley Radford smelt money in this extraordinary revelation, but to his client his tone was one of hurt and surprise.
‘That you . . . and Gerry . . . should never think to tell me . . . Marion, I really am saddened by this . . .’
Arguably the most desired woman in the land knelt on the floor in front of her agent. ‘Hartley, I am so sorry,’ she whispered tearfully, her delivery not a million miles from that line which stole so many hearts in Don’t Call Me Baby. ‘I . . . had . . . no . . . idea . . .’ and, with that, her platinum blonde locks fell forward abruptly and she began to sob.
Radford, battle-hardened to such absurdity, had his mind focused on the path ahead. Crisply he issued instructions to his protégée and sent her packing. The glass of champagne he had poured her remained untouched on a side table.
*
The matter of the attaché case seemed so trivial and yet at the same time so important. With the whiff of suspicion hanging over two, if not three, deaths in Temple Regis yet with no firm evidence to point to foul play, its absence assumed an undue prominence in the minds of both Prudence Aubrey and Inspector Topham, and now Miss Dimont. What lay within its battered but urbane exterior most likely held the clue to . . . who knows what? But that it must be found became the focal point of their thinking.
Miss Dimont was having her lunch in the Signal Box Café – the ham, egg and chips were always terribly good – when in came two of those anonymous men who strode each morning into the CID room down at the police station. Nobody knew their names and it would be difficult to recall what they looked like, which probably served them well as agents of the State, but their demeanour was cold and brittle. They engaged Lovely Mary, the proprietress, in purposeful conversation and from where she sat by the window Miss Dimont could see them pointing back towards the station and Platform 1.
One of them made notes while Lovely Mary pointed and gesticulated. The reporter could see her offering the detectives a cup of tea but they swept away, shaking their heads, each face an inscrutable mask.
It may have been her lunch hour but Judy Dimont was never off-duty.
‘What was that all about, Lovely?’
‘Bluddy buggerrs,’ said Mary, not in a lovely way.
‘What’s that?’
‘Tole me the licence sign on my door was out of date and I could be prosecuted.’
‘They came here, from the police station, two of them? To threaten you with prosecution? Over a sign? When did it expire?’ Here were the makings of a story, she thought, police making threatening noises to an innocent café owner whose ham and eggs were quite exceptional while murderers were on the loose and could strike again at any moment.
‘Lars week,’ said Lovely Mary. ‘I offerum a cuppa tea but they say no.’
It seemed unreasonable. Inspector Topham had a well-paid and, by the look of them, well-nourished team of underlings who surely had better things to do than bully Lovely.
‘But I tole ’em about that case anyways,’ said Mary, for at heart she was a magnanimous soul who often deducted ha’pennies from Miss Dimont’s bill because she liked her face. ‘I tole ’em about that young lad.’
‘Oh,’ said Miss Dim, pushing her spectacles up her convex nose as dawn slowly broke. ‘Oh! What case would that be? An . . . attaché case by any chance?’
Lovely Mary confirmed that this indeed was so. She liked Miss Dim so much she presented the reporter with the full evidence she had offered Inspector Topham’s surly henchmen.
Shortly after the late Gerald Hennessy arrived at Temple Regis station, she said, a young man had come into the Signal Box, ordered a cup of tea, sat down and opened a small case.
‘Not much inside, just a yellow book,’ said Mary. ‘’Ere, you wanoo have a look? I forgot to show it to they police.’ And from under the counter she produced a small volume bearing the name Wisden on its cover.
‘Summat to do with cricket,’ she added obligingly.
‘What happened next?’ asked Miss Dim.
The young man, apparently, had shut up the case, paid for his tea, and scarpered. He was very polite but looked poor. ‘I was going to give ’im some toast but ’e went,’ said Mary. ‘Nice boy.’
But was he a nice boy, Miss Dim asked herself as she walked back to the office. One read so often of angel-faced killers. If he had his hands on Gerald Hennessy’s missing case, he can only have got it by stealing it from the first-class compartment on the train – there simply wasn’t time for it to have changed hands because he came into the Signal Box only moments after the Riviera Express had steamed to a halt.
Hennessy, it had been established, was alone in his compartment. Had the young man entered, threatened him, struggled with him, caused the heart attack, nabbed the case and run off? Was the tracery in the dust of the letters ‘M . . . U . . . R . . .’ the actor’s message that he’d been murdered? In the absence of other evidence, at least this was a fresh line of inquiry.
Just as she reached the front door of the Express she saw across the street a distracted-looking Inspector Topham, talking to the two shadowy figures who’d quizzed Lovely Mary only minutes before. Miss Dim purposefully crossed the road as the anonymous pair melted away.
‘Just a moment, Inspector.’
Topham did not care for her tone. If his
service in the Guards had taught him anything, it was about position. In his eyes, a detective inspector of police ranked higher than a mere reporter on a local rag.
‘Nothing to say,’ he said. ‘When there is, I’ll let you know. Or you can ask Sergeant Gull.’ The Inspector did not approve of the officially sanctioned leakage of police information to nosy reporters. He did not approve of Sergeant Gull chit-chatting to the press every morning, for he was of the firm belief that knowledge is power and the withholding of knowledge made one more powerful still. And he did not like Miss Dimont, for she made him feel decidedly uncomfortable.
‘Correct me if I’m wrong, Inspector, but do we now have a murder inquiry?’
Topham stared down at her. ‘I correct you,’ he uttered stiffly. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Inspector, there is something not quite right about the deaths of Gerald Hennessy and Arthur Shrimsley. Despite Dr Rudkin’s findings, this story won’t go away. Now we have a young man on the run with an attaché case belonging to Mr Hennessy, which he quite clearly stole from the compartment. Did he also bring about Mr Hennessy’s death?
‘And,’ she went on, ‘what about Mr Shrimsley’s dog, Inspector? He didn’t have a dog. What on earth was he doing walking a dog on Mudford Cliffs, miles from his home, and what happened to the dog?’
The inspector’s body gave every sign that he was about to break into a parade-ground quick march, to get away from this nonsense. Miss Dimont stepped in front of him and looked up.
‘And just explain to me that if it wasn’t a letter in Mr Shrimsley’s hand, what he was doing holding a piece of cloth, Inspector? And, while we’re about it, what progress have you made in finding Mr Cattermole?’
Have I overstepped the mark? she asked herself. On the one hand, it was right to ask these questions – her job expected it of her – on the other, she could see the angry bafflement in Topham’s eyes. He was a straightforward, decent, honest fellow, but what this investigation clearly needed was someone who could match fire with fire, someone whose mind tended towards the criminal. Topham was just too upright a fellow for the job.
