The Riviera Express

by TP Fielden

  In fact, if she’d bothered to read the note left on her desk by the editor – submerged in the tidal wave of detritus Betty so inexplicably accumulated each day – she would have learned that this was to be the most momentous AGM in the club’s seventy-year history.

  She awoke to that possibility an hour into the meeting when the chairman passed on to Any Other Business.

  ‘The proposal,’ he intoned, ‘is that lady members should be allowed access to the clubhouse.’

  Gales of laughter greeted this seemingly innocuous notion, and the chairman sat down while the gentlemen members made merry at the very thought. For in Temple Regis and Bedlington, as in many other parts of the British Isles, lady members had yet to attain equal status in any number of spheres of leisure. This despite their universally being granted the vote in 1928 and having shown they could do the work of a man in both world wars.

  The hilarity went on for some time before the chairman rose again. ‘This is a serious proposal,’ he said with mock gravitas, ‘put forward by Mesdames Tuck and Hay. I will read you an extract from Mrs Tuck’s letter.

  ‘“We on the Ladies’ Committee have at all times striven to maintain the reputation of this Club, but our job is made the harder by gentlemen members refusing to grant us equal status. We are expected to provide the teas at club matches, but have to ask permission to enter the clubhouse to get water for the kettles. The kitchen is a separate building with no washing-up facilities and lady members have to take home the dirty plates and cups. Then there is the question of other facilities . . .”’

  ‘Oh dear what can the matter be?’ yodelled a voice from the back of the hall. ‘Two old ladies got locked in the lavatory . . .’

  Explosions of mirth halted the proceedings, and Betty felt quite uncomfortable. On the one hand she expected men to open doors for her and to pay for dinner, but really, didn’t the women have a point? Slowly it dawned upon her that there might be a page one story here after all.

  The womenfolk of Regis and Bedlington BC were ahead of her. As Betty turned over a page of her notebook and sucked on her pencil, Mesdames Glenda Tuck and Nancy Hay unexpectedly strode up the room and took the stage.

  ‘Ladies of this club,’ intoned Mrs Hay in a commanding manner, ‘are we all agreed?’ She was answered by a thrilling cheer from the water-starved section of the membership.

  ‘Then,’ she said, ‘this is to give the AGM formal notice that the ladies of Regis and Bedlington have resigned their membership. There really is no need for further explanation, but since some gentlemen are unable to grasp the virtues of equality, I will make it plain.

  ‘We have consistently won all our matches at both home and away games. The gentlemen . . .’ She let the rest of the sentence hang in the air, for the old gentlemen were not so good on the mat.

  ‘We have washed and ironed the gentlemen members’ flannels. We have made their tea. We have taken home their dirty crockery. We have never so much as been allowed to wash our hands or even . . .’ Again she left the words unsaid, for lady bowls members were above talking about facilities.

  ‘We have given more than our fair share to this club, but gentlemen members’ attitudes remain patronising and dismissive. So we resign.’

  ‘’Oo’s going to make the tea?’ called out one wag in a mock-wavering voice.

  Mrs Hay pressed on. ‘The ladies’ committee has spoken to Lord Mount Regis and he has agreed to our creating a new green at Linhay Mead. He recognises that the women’s team has a greater chance of bringing home silver from the national championships than the men ever would.’

  There was a stunned silence. ‘In addition, Lord Mount Regis has indicated to us that he is reviewing the lease currently coming to an end on this clubhouse, and has told us that he now has other uses in mind for the site. He is constantly being plagued to provide new and better housing for his estate tenants.’

  The silence which followed these very reasonable words went on for some time. And then pandemonium broke loose – the hilarity of a few moments ago replaced by angry shouts, waving fists and red faces. Most of the gentlemen members had spent an hour in the bar before the AGM and were confused and uncomprehending. Some shouted things at their wives they would come to regret once they got home.

  In sporting parlance, Betty was slow to collect the ball, but once she had it she knew what to do with it. As the meeting broke up in disarray, she hastened to the side of Mesdames Tuck and Hay and interviewed them vigorously about their plans to close down their husbands’ club and form their own. This was Page One stuff all right!

  TWENTY-TWO

  Such is the nature of journalism that two reporters on the same newspaper can gather between them the components of an explosive story – one the bearer of the nitro, the other the glycerine – yet the two never come together.

  Betty had the answer to the death of Gerald Hennessy, but did not know it. Judy Dimont had all the clues, but without Betty’s one important part of the jigsaw, could never solve the mystery. Meanwhile, Inspector Topham . . . though working earnestly, he seemed to have no clues at all.

  The nitro and the glycerine passed each other on the hill just out of Bedlington. Betty was returning to town beside herself with delight at the scoop she was clutching to her bosom. Judy was being driven by Auriol Hedley to spend the night at her seafront cottage. Neither reporter saw the other, and as a consequence there was no explosion.

  ‘I have some delicious Burgundy,’ Auriol was saying to her old friend. ‘Just what you need to soothe your nerves. What a day, Judy!’

  ‘Thank you for coming to rescue me,’ came the muted reply. ‘In the end I don’t think that young man meant to do me any harm, he was just frightened and confused. He thought we might have him taken away. But you know, Auriol,’ she said, ‘no jail cell could rectify the damage done to that poor thing. The safest place for him is where he is, with his adoptive parents.’

  ‘I wonder what will happen to him when they die,’ answered Auriol absently, but her thoughts were already on the greater threat of Prudence Aubrey.

  ‘She was much more of a danger,’ said Judy, her thoughts running parallel. ‘There’s something not right about her and you know, in spite of her denials, I can’t help feeling she had a hand in Hennessy’s death.’

  ‘Let’s wait till we get home,’ said Auriol, shifting into a lower gear as they came down the steep hill into Bedlington.

  The light had almost gone, but as they stepped out of the car a last ray defiantly clung on, striking the rim of the cliffs which rose darkly over Bedlington harbour. Miss Dimont looked up and remembered the sprawled body of Arthur Shrimsley, a man all but forgotten in the pursuit of Gerald Hennessy’s murderer – she hadn’t been able to make any headway there. A cold wind blew in from the sea as they walked up the garden path.

  ‘Much better here with me,’ said Auriol kindly, as she turned on the lamps in her tiny cottage and made for the kitchen. ‘Cheese omelette?’

  ‘That would be lovely.’

  ‘You know,’ Auriol went on, as she opened the wine, ‘it’s all most irregular. I think we can find our way to Hennessy’s murderer, but the more that path seems certain, the more obscure becomes the death of that other man.’

  ‘Shrimsley.’

  ‘And the missing theatre chap.’

  ‘Cattermole. There’s got to be a connection, but I just can’t find it.’

  ‘Let’s take it apart, piece by piece, just like we did in the old days,’ she said, and both women glanced up briefly at the photograph of Eric Hedley on the mantlepiece. ‘Who, in the end, do you suspect? And why?’

  Miss Dimont sipped her wine and thought. ‘You know, Terry is marvellous,’ she said eventually. ‘He’s incredibly irritating. He seems to know everything without ever having learned anything – that’s so maddening! But he is a perfectionist.’

  ‘Eric was a bit like that.’

  ‘Yes.’ There was a pause between them.

  ‘Go on.’ />
  ‘Even when he was confronted with a dead body, Terry made sure his light and aperture were spot on. The night Gerald died he showed me the photos he’d taken of the body. Rudyard was never going to print them, but they did show one extraordinary thing. He had written in the dust on the window the letters M . . . U . . . R . . .’

  ‘Murder,’ said Auriol drily. She didn’t believe it for one second.

  ‘No,’ said her friend, ‘no. It could easily be the first three letters of his pet name for his wife. He called Prudence “Murgs” because one of her names is Murgatroyd. Don’t you see?’

  ‘It could still be murder.’ Auriol could be irritating like that. They’d had a few up-and-downers back in the old Admiralty days when she would vaporise some brilliant idea of Judy’s with her down-to-earth practicality, then turn the proposition back upside down – just for the hell of it. ‘More likely “murder” than “Murgs”, and frankly neither seems very likely to me.’

  This was not the way to make progress.

  ‘You asked me,’ snipped Miss Dimont, pushing her spectacles up her nose, ‘what I thought. This is what I think. I think Prudence Aubrey is mentally unbalanced; I think she is probably capable of being two different people – one who loves her husband, and one who is an animal that will fight and kill to preserve her professional reputation. I have witnessed those mood swings and they are quite frightening.

  ‘Gerry Hennessy was about to leave her for a new life, expose her washed-up career, and who knows – maybe there was another woman involved as well, it wouldn’t be surprising knowing what we know now. She had to stop him in his tracks. Only she knew about his allergy to caviar.’

  ‘No,’ countered Auriol. ‘You told me on the way here, members of his family as well.’

  ‘He had no family. Both his parents are dead and he has no brother or sister. The only other person related to him is Marion Lake, and the way Prudence was so ready to point the finger at Marion, the more I suspect her. We don’t know that Marion knew about the caviar, but we do know that Prudence did.’

  Auriol lit the fire and they talked on as its embers burned low. Progress may or may not have been made that night, but eventually the talk went back, as it always did, to the old days. There was much fun to be had at the expense of Rusty Rhys and his erratic contribution to the war effort, but inevitably, as the evening wore on and a glass of Armagnac soothed away the terrors of the day, their conversation turned to the absent Eric Hedley.

  It was as if he were in the room with them still.

  ‘How would it be, if he were still alive?’

  ‘We’d all be living here, I’d be running the café and you would be reporting for the Riviera Express. Eric would – well, he’d be married to you for a start.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Judy, ‘I don’t know . . . It always had to be adventure for him – you remember his plan to sail to the Falkland Islands when the War was over.’

  ‘To finally solve those murders – Mathew Brisbane and the others. But everyone knew that Rivero, or whatever his name was, was to blame. We heard that story so many times the record had worn thin.’

  ‘He wanted to be sure – was Rivero a national hero, or was he a criminal? The two, as we know, Auriol, are so closely linked.’

  ‘A long way to go to solve something which happened over a hundred years ago. The effect of which has no importance to this country at all.’

  ‘But that was Eric,’ said Judy Dimont, and they both smiled.

  ‘He gave you the taste for investigation, though,’ said Auriol, putting the cork back in the Armagnac bottle.

  Miss Dimont knitted her brow and thought back to those subterranean days and nights in the old Admiralty building. ‘I think it was when we thought we had sight of those contemptible men who betrayed our side.’

  ‘Stanley, Homer, Hicks and Johnson.’ The traitors’ names slid like serpents from Auriol’s mouth.

  ‘Well, Eric was right about two of them. Sooner or later we’ll know about the others. And all the rest.’

  With that, the two women rolled up their memories like a groundsheet, extinguished the lights and said goodnight. Miss Dim gave one last glance at the photograph on the mantlepiece, but her last thoughts before sleep were for Mulligatawny, fed and put to bed by her lovely neighbour opposite, Mrs Purser. She wished him pleasant dreams and good mouse-hunting.

  *

  Betty was in the office bright and early. Her path just happened to take her past the editor’s door and she popped her head in.

  ‘Morning, Mr Rhys.’

  ‘Rrrr.’

  ‘I think I’ve got the splash for you, Mr Rhys.’

  ‘Rrr-rr.’

  ‘The bowls club last night. You can’t believe what happened!’

  ‘The womenfolk walked out,’ said the editor, without raising his eyes from the page-proof he was reading.

  ‘Oh!’ squeaked Betty, perplexed. ‘How did you—’

  ‘If you had bothered, Miss Featherstone, to read my memo to you,’ snarled Rhys, ‘you would have known that in advance. Clearly you do not believe in reading missives sent by your editor.’

  Betty glanced guiltily over her shoulder to her desk in the corner of the newsroom, covered in its usual slurry of paper and office debris. But she knew her editor’s moods.

  ‘Bet you didn’t get the next bit, though,’ she chirped. ‘The women are setting up their own club, yes, but they’re closing the men’s club down!’

  Rudyard Rhys picked up his gnarled briar pipe, inspected it suspiciously, and paused weightily.

  ‘Make it the splash, then,’ he conceded grumpily, and Betty skipped away to excavate her typewriter from the chaos.

  Just then Terry popped his head round the door. Mr Rhys was always more circumspect in his dealings with photographers for they are, indeed, a race apart. One could never be sure they ever read the newspaper they worked for, yet by some strange osmotic process they acquired every last detail – usually, it was Rhys’s opinion, by sitting round with cups of tea grilling the pretty secretaries and sub-editors for information about their private lives and having to absorb, inter alia, the daily gleanings of the newspaper.

  ‘Miss Dim been in yet?’ said Terry.

  ‘In court this morning,’ said Rhys curtly, resuming his proof-reading.

  ‘Just to let you know then, the Hennessy story. It’s murder now.’

  A stricken look crossed the editor’s face. ‘Ohhh . . . rrr-rrr,’ he groaned, as though a loved one had just passed away. ‘Don’t tell me . . .’

  This utterance, it was understood between the two men, was merely a staying rhetorical device. Mr Rhys was not so incompetent he would turn his back on a story of such magnitude, he did want to be told; but his agile mind already stretched ahead to the complications of the Express breaking such a piece of news – the national press descending, the scrutiny of his own conduct of the story, the anger of the city fathers who forbade him, whenever they met, to write anything which damaged the reputation of gorgeous Temple Regis.

  Murder. He saw the barbed-wire hurdles ahead, and he shrank from their challenge. At the same moment, he calculated he would now have to put the bowls club story on page three and face the intimidating tears of Betty Featherstone.

  ‘Go on, then,’ he said. His words chilled to frost as they left his lips. Was it the Greeks who killed the messenger? No, recalled Rhys, it was Tigranes, Emperor of Armenia who, not best pleased that the Roman commander Lucullus was coming to give him a drubbing, chopped the head off the poor messenger who brought him the necessary intelligence.

  Terry was in less danger, but only because he was a photographer.

  ‘Murdered by caviar,’ he said, negligently lolling against the doorpost.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Never heard of it?’

  ‘Caviar?’ roared Rhys.

  ‘You know,’ said Terry, encouragingly. ‘Fish eggs. Someone put the caviar in his sandwiches. He was allergic. Gave him a heart
attack. No question, it’s murder.’

  ‘Why isn’t Miss Dimont here to tell me this?’

  ‘She’s hoping to see Marion Lake during the lunch break.’

  The editor looked imploringly at his photographer. It was easy to read the question in his eyes.

  ‘Suspect,’ said Terry. ‘It’s either her or Prudence Aubrey that did it. Miss Dim will make up her mind once she’s spoken to Marion.’

  Despair bathed Rhys’s craggy countenance. ‘And what are the police doing about—’

  ‘No idea,’ said Terry brightly. ‘Not much. Time old Topham retired, I reckon. Too interested in the briefcase.’

  Rudyard Rhys had not heard about the briefcase, and did not want to. ‘Well, we’ll need to see what they have to say about it all.’

  ‘She’ll be back after lunch,’ said Terry, and wandered off to collect his cameras. It was the Townswomen’s Guild annual flower show in an hour, he always got a nice cup of tea. The editor sank his head in his hands.

  While this conversation was going on, the chief reporter of the Riviera Gazette was settling herself into the well-worn press bench in Temple Regis Magistrates’ Court. Today there were representatives of the Western Daily Press and the Torquay Times alongside her – crumpled journeyman scriveners called in when there was a case which might interest their readership. The unfortunate dust-up on the seafront between some ton-up boys from Exeter who had roared into town on their motorbikes and their sworn enemies, the Torquay Teddy Boys, was just the sort of thing to give their front pages some pep.

  Waiting to go into the dock were an ill-assorted group of youths, some wearing leather and others in impossibly tight trousers and strange jackets, all with their hair arranged in impossibly greased folds. They looked rather gorgeous in their lanky, ill-disciplined way, thought Miss Dimont – frightening yet curiously appealing at the same time. It must have been the same when the Vikings invaded – handsome warriors dressed to kill, both literally and metaphorically. She allowed her gaze to linger.

  ‘Budge up,’ said Kathy Greenway, a hurrumphing old dear long past retirement who got called out for specials like this. She had a superb shorthand note but her asthma sometimes made the proceedings difficult to hear.