The Riviera Express

by TP Fielden

  ‘Your turn to get the charge sheet,’ said Miss Dim, for she hated being snubbed by Mr Thurlestone the magistrates’ clerk.

  ‘Got it,’ chirruped Barry Bowles, as he slid in beside them. Barry had made it big on the Biggleswade Chronicle before coming down to Devon. Nobody was quite sure what had happened, but now he spent most of his time ferrying people round the harbour and only took his notebook and pen out for specials. There was something unnerving in Barry’s gaze and Miss Dimont preferred not to sit next to him when he came into court.

  ‘Look at them,’ wheezed Mrs Greenway. ‘Teddy boys, motor bikers – disgusting! And here in Temple Regis! If they want to kill each other with their flick-knives and bicycle chains why don’t they do it in their own towns?’

  Miss Dimont could see that one of the accursed tribe had been obliged to sit down. He was shaking like a leaf and clearly very nervous indeed, as if the charge of causing an affray carried with it the death sentence.

  ‘All rise,’ Mr Thurlestone barked nastily. ‘The court is in session.’

  In swept the Hon. Mrs Marchbank, looking quite wonderful this morning in tweed suit, pearls and maroon velvet beret perched, not too saucily, on one side of her head. She was accompanied by two elderly aldermen who you could tell were already looking forward to their lunch at the golf club.

  Mr Thurlestone adjusted his disreputable wig and launched into the charges against these youths. Miss Dimont settled back, her pen at rest. While this outrageous display of martial arts on Temple Regis’s seafront may be of interest to the readers of the Daily Press and Torquay Times, it would rate no more than a filler-par or NIB in the Riviera Express, for Rudyard Rhys had no wish to invite more larrikins from foreign parts to come and overturn the litter bins around the bandstand, or lift up the skirts of the waitresses at Beryl’s. Writing about such affairs, he believed, only encouraged them.

  And so the morning passed in something of a daze. A good supper and an excellent night’s sleep at Auriol’s had erased the unpleasantness of her two confrontations yesterday, and Miss Dimont used the time to go over what Prudence Aubrey had said last night. As Terry had announced to the editor, once she’d seen Marion Lake she would make up her mind which woman to believe. Only then would she share her findings with Inspector Topham and her readers (though not necessarily in that order).

  She emerged from her reverie to hear Mrs March delivering her magisterial findings together with a customary dash of hometown homily. The aristocratic custodian of the town’s reputation spared the young men no quarter.

  ‘You will each go to jail for three months. Take them down.’

  Consternation broke out. Some of the hooligans’ parents had accompanied their sons into court and their shouts and scuffles erupted in the gallery. The solicitors brought in at some expense to defend Devon’s gilded youth and safeguard their liberty looked at each other and scratched their heads. On the whole, the young men took their fate reasonably well, though the blond chap Miss Dimont had spotted before looked as though he was about to be sick.

  Mr Thurlestone rose swiftly and turned to speak to Mrs Marchbank, but she had already pushed back her heavy oak chair and was striding towards the door. The rosy-cheeked aldermen shuffled behind, eager for their pre-prandial gin and tonics.

  The two other reporters in the bench looked at each other with surprise and delight. They had their story – jail all round for the ton-up boys! But Miss Dimont saw it differently.

  ‘She can’t do that,’ she said, quite determinedly. And elbowing past her fellow-scribes, she strode purposefully towards the Bench.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Mr Thurlestone seemed strangely diminished without his wig. He was taking off his lawyer’s gown and tabs and looked startled to see Miss Dimont’s face at the door. In court Mr Thurlestone was king but here in his little rabbit-hutch of an office, in déshabille, he seemed unmanned.

  ‘Yes?’ he said, hesitantly.

  ‘Mr Thurlestone, what has happened in your court is not allowable.’ Miss Dimont saw no point in beating around the bush. ‘Mrs Marchbank has passed a sentence which is as astonishing as it is plain wrong. These are all first-time offenders!’

  You could see from Mr Thurlestone’s corrugated brow that he knew it was so.

  ‘However much of a nuisance it is to have Teddy boys coming to disturb the peace in Temple Regis, you cannot allow—’

  The lawyer limply rallied. ‘Her Honourable Worship is a lady of very firm opinions. She has many years of experience as a magistrate and Chairman of the Bench. And in any event in this decision she had the support of her fellow magistrates.’

  ‘Those two old boys were barely awake. It’s time they introduced a retirement age.’

  Miss Dimont’s coruscations, it must be noted, were as audacious and misplaced as Mrs March’s draconian ruling – for journalists have no part in the legal process, they merely report it. But in the past she had seen the court clerk argue successfully against overly harsh sentences and wondered why he had not done so on this occasion. True, the ton-up boys and Teds had made a terrible nuisance of themselves on the seafront and seriously upset the local populus, but their crimes amounted to little more than an overenthusiastic exchange of opinions. A suitable punishment might be probation or suspended sentence, but jail – never.

  ‘I wonder what the readers will make of today’s ruling,’ she said pointedly, meaning the injustice of it all.

  ‘They’ll be delighted,’ snapped Mr Thurlestone. And he was right – Temple Regents didn’t concern themselves with finer points of the law, what they minded was hooligans riding into town and staging a vulgar brawl.

  Miss Dimont felt there was nothing more she could do. If the defence solicitors couldn’t be bothered to save their clients from a spell behind bars, who was she to interfere? She turned impatiently to leave, but just then Mrs Marchbank’s head popped round the door.

  ‘Mr Thurlestone,’ the magistrate began commandingly, before her gaze fell on Miss Dimont.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded imperiously. Clearly the place for reporters in court was on the press benches – nowhere else. She turned her head away from the offending intruder and started to speak again to her clerk, but Miss Dimont, unmoved by this aristocratic snub, decided to answer her enquiry.

  ‘I was pointing out to Mr Thurlestone that these are not jailable offences,’ she said, standing on tiptoe as if to emphasise the point – in her court shoes Mrs March was several inches taller. ‘All of those young men will be released on appeal.’

  ‘What do you know about—’ blurted Mrs March before realising the ridiculousness of her question, for Miss Dimont was in court quite as often as she. Neither had had formal training, but both had a considerable working knowledge of the legal system.

  ‘They’ll all be out in a few days. It makes the whole process a laughing stock.’

  ‘I really can’t discuss such matters with – you,’ snapped Mrs March, though her hand reached up to straighten her velvet beret in what was clearly a nervous motion. Her clear blue eyes, so beloved of the ancient town councillors she beguilingly patronised, narrowed sharply.

  Later, as Miss Dimont tried to piece together her recollections of what happened next, she found it hard to remember at which point Mrs Marchbank completely lost her temper. Maybe it was during the reporter’s cool roll-call of the many who had been sent to jail in recent months by the Chief Magistrate. Maybe it was her subsequent analysis of the necessity for the magistrates’ clerk to rein in the hangers and floggers whom fate and a quiescent electorate allowed to become Their Worships.

  Then again, it may simply have been merely her repetition of the word ‘unlawful’. Whatever it was, it drove the Queen of Temple Regis into a tempestuous rage. The small oak-panelled room reverberated as its three occupants, each as strongly opinioned as the next, offered their version of what was right and what was wrong with the administration of justice in Temple Regis.

  It slowly t
urned into something more gladiatorial, with Mr Thurlestone stepping back fearfully to watch the two women seek to impose their view on each other. Miss Dimont remained obstinately calm, but Mrs Marchbank’s voice rose slowly up the scale as her arguments became less rational. It seemed that neither side would win the argument, but as it progressed, Mrs Marchbank’s voice seemed to alter in some way, becoming harsher, shriller, less assured. Her mannerisms, too, shed much of their customary polish until the Queen of Temple Regis resembled nothing so much as old toothless Edith down the snug at the Fort.

  The row was pointless, of course. The Chief Magistrate had passed sentence, and it would take the merest effort from those slothful men of the law who had parked their comfortable behinds in the defence benches to spring their charges from incarceration. Miss Dimont would write an excoriating ‘Opinion’ piece for the Riviera Express which Rudyard Rhys would water down before allowing it into print; but otherwise nothing much would come of this heated clash.

  Yet for a moment the reporter glimpsed something new in the character of the woman who had reigned supreme in Temple Regis society since the War’s end.

  ‘It’s as if her whole persona was just a stage act,’ she told Auriol later. ‘A complete transformation.’

  ‘That’s what they do, though, isn’t it?’ said Auriol, who despite a privileged upbringing always voted Labour. ‘We have no idea how they behave at home but when they’re out in public, it’s always an act. You never see them other than perfectly dressed, or their manners other than completely polished. That way they maintain a respectful distance – you’re respectful, they keep their distance.’

  Miss Dimont thought this a bit harsh and tried to refocus on the matter in hand. ‘You might almost think . . .’ she started, but then plunged off into her own thoughts while Auriol kindly provided a cup of tea and a bun.

  *

  Hartley Radford was locked in conference with his leading light Marion Lake. She looked, as she sat on his sofa in the morning light, shorn of night-time allure, rather ordinary.

  ‘So,’ said Radford, in heartless fashion, ‘you lost the father you never had.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And now you will be taking time to get to know Prudence Aubrey in the hope you can be close friends.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ll be going home often to see your mother until the shock of Gerry’s death subsides.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘No mention of the fortune you are likely to inherit.’

  ‘Nn.’

  ‘Or the fact that Gerry wouldn’t let you appear in this last film of his.’

  Miss Lake looked as though she had been prodded by something nasty. ‘Of course I’m not going to mention that,’ she said crossly, by now bored with this press briefing. ‘Though why he refused to play opposite me . . . that part was made for me!’

  ‘It may have been the director’s decision, we have no way of knowing,’ said Radford with a snakelike smile, even though he knew Gerry had threatened to walk out of the movie if his daughter were cast opposite him.

  ‘He was so . . . selfish,’ muttered Marion, and lit a cigarette.

  ‘Careful. He may just have made you a very rich woman,’ said Radford, as though the thought had only just occurred, adding as an afterthought, ‘I’ll have something to say to you about investments once the will is read.’

  Marion ignored this olive branch. ‘I’m on my way,’ she snapped. ‘I don’t need his money. Though it would be nice,’ she added hastily after a moment’s thought.

  ‘I remember Prudence making the same speech,’ said Radford with only the merest hint of nastiness. ‘Look what happened to her career. Just be careful what you say.’

  ‘She’ll be here in a minute,’ said Marion, looking at her watch.

  ‘I’m off,’ said Radford. ‘A few tears wouldn’t go amiss.’

  The nation’s most admired film actress threw her agent a poisonous look. It bounced off him like a rubber balloon.

  Moments later, Miss Dimont was knocking on the door of Marion’s suite.

  ‘It’s only a tuppenny bus ride but sometimes it takes forever,’ she said. ‘Sorry if I’m late.’

  ‘Have a cup of coffee,’ said Marion, who didn’t care whether she did or didn’t.

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Miss Dimont, putting down her raffia bag but failing to extract the notebook, which is the customary prelude to a newspaper interview. ‘I want to ask you about Gerald’s death.’

  The actress took out a handkerchief. ‘I lost the father I never had,’ she said, and sniffed experimentally.

  ‘I’ve been to see Prudence Aubrey,’ continued an unmoved Miss Dimont, and Marion Lake faultlessly rose to her cue. ‘It’s time to get to know her,’ she repeated faithfully, ‘I hope we can become good friends.’

  Miss Dimont doubted this, given the spectacular catfight at the inquest. ‘Yes, yes,’ she said and the lack of interest in her voice made Marion Lake realise this was not going the way she had anticipated.

  ‘You travelled down in the Riviera Express with your father,’ Miss Dim pressed on firmly. ‘You were with him part of the time, but not all the time.’

  ‘I was travelling with . . . someone else,’ said Marion defensively. ‘You know that.’

  ‘That person never spoke to your father.’

  ‘Given the circs—’ a worldly sigh ‘—it would not have been a good idea.’

  ‘Did you see your father eat a sandwich?’

  ‘A sandwich?’

  ‘Smoked salmon. Hovis.’

  ‘I don’t—’

  ‘With perhaps a little extra garnish,’ added the reporter, dangerously. ‘Did you see him with a sandwich?’

  ‘No, I don’t think I did. He was learning his lines.’

  ‘Did you, perhaps, make him a sandwich for the journey?’

  Marion Lake looked puzzled. ‘Me? No, why should I? If anyone was going to do that, it would have been Murgs. Er, Prudence.’

  ‘Never put anything in his attaché case?’

  ‘I thought this was supposed to be a newspaper interview!’ exploded the actress. ‘About the loss of the father I never had. That’s what Mr Radford told me. About building bridges with my . . . um . . . stepmother.’

  Miss Dimont smiled. What had she told the agent was the purpose of this interview? Sometimes reporters, when seeking urgently to speak to people, do not always give the right impression. It is not an admirable habit but, in the pursuit of truth, who’s to say what is right and wrong?

  ‘Your father was murdered,’ said Miss Dimont, ‘killed by . . . something . . . in his sandwich. You never gave him a sandwich, you never saw his sandwiches?’

  Marion reacted by lighting another cigarette from the one already in her mouth. Her hands were shaking as she did so.

  ‘Murdered?’ she whispered, in echo of her Miss Anderson in The Cruel Are Lonely. ‘Murdered?’

  Miss Dimont retraced her steps down a well-trodden path to give the actress some, but not all, of her findings. She watched closely as her narrative unfolded but could detect no agitation or alarm, merely incomprehension in the actress.

  ‘I have the feeling you and your father did not get on particularly well,’ she hazarded.

  ‘It was fine to start with, I think he was pretty thrilled to have such a famous daughter out of nowhere. But, you know, he stopped paying the maintenance early on and my mother and stepfather used to say such horrid things about him, it was hard to forgive.

  ‘And he didn’t want it coming out that I was his child. He was reinventing himself for a new generation of fans and didn’t want to be thought old enough to have a daughter of twenty-seven. And,’ said Miss Lake, suddenly rallying, ‘I thought we were going to do his new movie together. Suddenly he changed his mind when he inherited that money.’

  ‘The money changed a lot of things in his life,’ agreed the reporter. ‘He decided to write his autobiography, to leave his wife, to alter his public image.�
��

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Marion, baffled. ‘When you asked if I made him a sandwich, you don’t mean . . .’

  ‘You had the motive,’ said Miss Dimont very firmly. ‘And the opportunity.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean by opportunity,’ snapped the actress, standing up. ‘I hadn’t seen him for two months before we met on the train. I arrived at Paddington just when the train was leaving – I’m always late – then I went with Mr Maltby and sat in our compartment. I popped in to see him just as the train reached Exeter to see if he was staying at the Grand; we had a few words but he was keen to get on with his lines.’

  ‘So you didn’t see him after Exeter?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Didn’t give him any sandwiches?’

  ‘I’ve already said I didn’t,’ snapped Miss Lake. ‘You know – perhaps you don’t know – girls with figures like mine don’t keep their shape by eating bread and butter.’

  Miss Dimont, who enjoyed the occasional fish-paste sandwich at tea, blinked crossly. ‘So what were you doing, coming down to Temple Regis?’

  ‘A happy weekend, darling,’ sneered Marion Lake. ‘Not that I’d expect you to know about such things.’

  Miss Dimont gathered up her raffia bag and said goodbye. In the lift she mentally crossed Marion Lake off her list of suspects.

  But only with difficulty. She was so obnoxious.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Ray Cattermole stepped from the second-class carriage of the Riviera Express and looked about him. If he appeared a little jaded it was probably just his age – these little adventures never came to anything much, but they certainly took it out of you.

  The once-famous actor-manager wandered languidly over to the bus stop unaware that, in his short absence from the side of Mrs Phipps, he had created a sensation for press and police. He was, according to which viewpoint you supported, either a murderer or had been murdered. Either way he was about to trigger the sort of personal publicity he had not enjoyed in half a lifetime.