The Riviera Express

by TP Fielden

  She had come up with a perfectly good front-page story – the ladies of Regis and Bedlington Bowls Club! – which was now being threatened by more of this Hennessy nonsense. What was it Claud had been telling her about it? Just as she was wandering into the cobweb-filled room which was her memory, Betty saw ahead of her Perce, the telegraph-boy, and quickly swerved across the road to the other pavement. Just in case.

  She had to re-cross the road to make her way on to the police station, and wondered if people had seen her execute this unusual manoeuvre, and if so, had been able to guess why. The trouble with Betty was she spent too long looking in the mirror and pondering; it had made her place in the universe more central than perhaps it actually was.

  The station was looking gloomier than usual, which was saying something. One could never imagine the excitements of, say, Dixon of Dock Green occurring behind this uninspiring façade. There never seemed to be anybody about when Betty made her occasional calls and her imagination did not allow her to hope that stories were there, just for the asking.

  After a longish wait, Sergeant Gull made his appearance accompanied by the usual lengthy discourse on the perils of allotment ownership. Clearly there was nothing to be had here, and Betty was making her farewells when he stopped her.

  ‘You want a Page One story?’ said Gull, mischievously.

  Betty wanted nothing more.

  ‘This Hennessy business,’ said Gull, in no rush to part with the goods.

  ‘Yes, Sergeant?’

  ‘Fellow by the name of Radford was arrested last night. The charge is murder.’

  Betty sat down hard. Her notebook, which had lain dormant in her handbag for most of the morning, was hauled out and a new page rapidly found. ‘Who is he? What is this in connection with?’

  Gull looked down pityingly on Miss Featherstone. The times her name had appeared in prominent type on the front page of the town’s only newspaper marked her, in most people’s minds, as a leading practitioner in the dark arts of journalism, but Gull knew different. By now it was common knowledge that the champagne-quaffing lounge lizard holed up in the Grand Hotel was the agent not only of the murdered Gerald Hennessy but also of the town’s most glamorous visitor, Marion Lake.

  Furthermore, how many murders had there been in the parish of late? A quick sum of one + one might lead a competent reporter to the conclusion that the police thought Hennessy had been murdered by his agent, but for Betty it took a moment for the penny to drop.

  ‘Hennessy . . . was murdered . . . by his agent?’ She struggled with the words.

  ‘Arrested last night by Inspector Topham. He’ll be making a statement at lunchtime.’

  It was as if all Betty’s birthdays had come at once. This was the Page One of all Page Ones! She had dreamed often of leaving this life behind and arriving at last in Fleet Street – now here was her moment! And, as she raced back to the office to tell the editor, some small voice within sang with joy that she had beaten Miss Dimont at her own game. She had nabbed the story Miss Dim had been struggling so hard to get, she, Betty Featherstone!

  Betty Featherstone of the News Chronicle here, Your Grace . . .

  Miss Featherstone of the Daily Herald, if you don’t mind . . .

  Make way there! Featherstone here – Featherstone of the Daily Sketch . . .!

  Rudyard Rhys had no idea how soon he was to lose the most talented and energetic member of his editorial staff. Otherwise her appearance at his door might have been greeted with a greater enthusiasm, tinged – possibly – with an expression of regret.

  ‘Finally, Mr Rhys,’ Betty almost sighed, as she lolled against the doorpost. ‘Finally . . .’

  ‘Rr.’

  ‘The Hennessy story, Mr Rhys.’

  ‘Rr . . . rr.’ The editor was doing battle with his pipe. It was not a good time.

  ‘Could you just listen for a moment, Mr Rhys?’

  Rudyard looked up and stared at his reporter. ‘It’s the splash,’ he said, his tone making clear the editor’s decision was final. ‘Your bowls club story has been put back to page three.’

  It took a moment for ecstatic Betty to gather her wits sufficiently to impart the latest developments, and indicate that Mr Rhys could take Judy Dimont’s name off the story. She was going out now to cover Inspector Topham’s statement – this story was hers from now on!

  Rhys, who did not always feel he was in charge of the newspaper he ran, allowed her to scamper away. As he absorbed what Betty had told him he slowly prepared himself for the onslaught to come – the angry city fathers, the attack-dogs of Fleet Street who’d come and snootily requisition his offices, the loss of calm routine – and he called for his chief reporter.

  ‘Coming,’ trilled Judy, who’d only just returned to her desk.

  The angry scenes which followed behind closed doors are part and parcel of everyday newspaper life. Accusations are hurled, recriminations vented, past failures revisited, human frailties dwelt upon and always, in the air, the noxious whiff of resignation. Miss Dimont emerged from their editorial conference in a state of turmoil.

  She went in search of Athene.

  *

  Back at the station Betty was stirring her cup of Camp coffee and looking up into the eyes of Inspector Topham, seated opposite her in the police canteen. Other police forces laid on more lavish hospitality – biscuits too – if they had something to impart to the press which made them look good, but Temple Regis was limited in its resources, and Topham’s press conference to announce an important arrest amounted to this – a cup of undrinkable coffee in the canteen with Betty. No other representatives of Her Majesty’s fourth estate were present, for the simple reason the town had only one newspaper.

  ‘Man aged forty-eight was arrested last night at the Grand Hotel in connection with the death of Gerald Hennessy,’ he announced, with just the hint of smugness.

  ‘Name and address?’ Betty had never before taken down such thrilling information, but she knew the ropes.

  ‘Hartley Radford, 13 Laurel Mansions, Primrose Hill, London. His actual name is Ronald Smith.’

  ‘And he was Gerry Hennessy’s agent?’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘And the charge against him?’

  ‘We’ll see when he gets into court, but we’re not accusing him of cycling without lights.’

  ‘Murder,’ whispered Betty.

  ‘You may very well assume that,’ said Topham with a syrupy smile.

  ‘Gosh, Inspector,’ said Betty, laying down her pencil and looking through her eyelashes at her passport to fame, ‘how brave you are! Were there lots of you went to arrest him?’

  ‘Just me,’ said Topham. He was enjoying this.

  ‘But he might have . . . I don’t know . . . he could have . . . Oh, you are brave, Inspector!’

  As a matter of fact Frank Topham was brave, and had the medals to prove it. But there is nothing nicer than to be reminded of it, especially by a pleasant young woman who was so very much the opposite of the bespectacled reporter who usually dogged his footsteps.

  ‘Anything else you’d like to know?’ he asked invitingly.

  ‘Well, of course, you’ve given me all that we can print – name, age, address, circs of the arrest and the possible charge. But,’ said Betty, thinking now of the News Chronicle job coming her way, ‘can you give me a little background? For use after the trial?’

  ‘Early days yet,’ said the inspector, but he didn’t see why not. Now that Radford was behind bars there was little more he needed to do until court late this afternoon.

  ‘The coroner ruled that he died of a heart attack,’ said Betty, who it turns out had been listening to Miss Dimont after all. ‘So how come Mr Radford, er, Smith, is to be charged with murder?’

  ‘I didn’t use the word “murder”, Miss Featherstone, but yes. Radford administered poison in the form of fish eggs – or, as some people call it, caviar. Mr Hennessy did die of a heart attack but it was brought on by the fish eggs.’<
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  ‘Go on,’ said Betty, batting her eyelids furiously and hoping the inspector hadn’t noticed she had taken up her pencil again.

  ‘We retrieved the lost attaché case of Mr Hennessy,’ said Topham, putting something of a gloss on the facts. ‘When I opened it, I discovered various remnants of a sandwich which, when sent to the analyst, turned out to be salmon eggs – red caviar. From the breadcrumbs also retrieved it was possible to ascertain that the sandwiches had contained smoked salmon. He wouldn’t have eaten a sandwich which contained only red caviar.’

  ‘Why, Inspector?’

  ‘Well,’ said Topham, ‘his widow – Prudence Aubrey, you know – confided in me that Mr Hennessy had an aversion, an allergy, to fish eggs which rendered him vulnerable to anaphylactic shock if he ate them. Heart attack, d’you see?’

  ‘So someone hid the fish eggs in his smoked salmon sandwiches?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘And that someone was Hartley Radford?’

  ‘In cases like this,’ said Topham, who’d never handled a case like this, ‘you look for motive, means and opportunity. Those were not difficult to find.’

  Indeed not – sharing a glass or two of Prudence Aubrey’s champagne last evening, the inspector had been helpfully provided with all three. Curling her legs up on her sofa and allowing him to act as her butler, the actress scattered clues aplenty before her admiring interlocutor.

  Radford, who had some time ago discontinued his professional relationship with Miss Aubrey – he could see she was on her way out – was clearly no favourite of hers. The motive, she happily explained, was that Radford had been milking Gerry’s bank accounts for years and, though Gerry knew it, Radford was afraid his actions might be exposed in the forthcoming memoirs. Their relationship had deteriorated and with Gerry’s new-found wealth, he could afford himself a new agent who was less sticky-fingered.

  The means – Radford, as Gerry’s agent, knew all about the allergy to fish eggs and had covered for him when he’d collapsed on the previous occasion.

  The opportunity – shouldn’t the inspector check whether Radford had accompanied Gerry to Paddington Station on his last fateful journey? Given him the sandwiches for his lunch?

  Topham had fortified himself with a second glass of Prudence’s Veuve Cliquot (‘Not again, Stanley!’) and walked across the hall to Radford’s suite. The ensuing conversation lasted no more than twenty minutes and convinced the inspector he had got his man. Radford, taken aback at Topham’s attack on his integrity, agreed to continue the conversation down at the station and there he was later arrested.

  Betty’s pencil came to a standstill. ‘Murder By Caviar’ was the screamer – front-page headline – she dreamed up for herself, a headline which would grace her exclusive story when she was newly installed in Fleet Street. She felt like kissing the inspector.

  For now, the rules of court reporting allowed her only a limited number of facts regarding Radford’s sensational arrest, but these could be dolled up with innocuous background information – the clothes he wore, the suite he had taken at the Grand, the list of illustrious clients which read like a Who’s Who of the British cinema. She couldn’t wait to get back to the office.

  When she did so she found that Miss Dimont, anticipating her arrival, had helped clear up the mess on her desk and had even provided Betty with a cup of tea. ‘Athene’s miracle cure,’ she said nicely enough.

  Betty was not quite sure how to take these generous acts. She had stolen Judy’s story and made it her own – and now, possession being nine points not only of the law but of journalism, the story would be hers until Radford went to trial, was found guilty, and sentenced to be hanged. The Hennessy case was, at last, her big break!

  Miss Dimont, she could tell instinctively, was covering some hurt. Given her fiery relationship with Mr Rhys, it was likely that there had been an exchange of views, and by the look of it the chief reporter had not come out of it very well. She seemed to have lost her perpetual bounce.

  ‘If you need any help, dear,’ said Miss Dimont, as Betty threaded her copy-paper sandwich into her typewriter – and by the sound of it, she meant it.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ said Betty. ‘A real scoop, murder on our doorstep – the most famous actor in the land murdered, by his agent. Unbelievable!’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Judy Dimont, almost to herself. ‘Unbelievable. He didn’t do it.’

  Betty wasn’t listening.

  TWENTY-SIX

  For others it might be a bitter pill to swallow: to have your story stolen by a trusted colleague, and then be made to add extra paragraphs to it. But then for that someone else to take all the glory, is like landing on that square in Monopoly where you go to jail and are fined £40.

  But as ever, Miss Dimont rose above. The editor had sent her to court to cover the remand hearing, not as a punishment for wasting company time on her ill-founded theories, but because she had a better shorthand note than Betty and could be trusted not to miss a single drop of information that was allowable in law to be published.

  As every cub reporter knows, at a remand hearing only skeleton details are permitted to be reported as a precaution against prejudicing a forthcoming trial. But there are ways and ways of building up a picture for the readers – and for sure, Riviera Express subscribers would want to have every last morsel from this quite extraordinary turn of events. Miss Dimont was adept at describing the clothes and behaviour of the accused, the atmosphere in court, even the demeanour of the prosecuting counsel, solicitor or policeman – details which could never prejudice a trial jury against the accused (should they even read them), but which were meat and drink to Express readers. The more detail she could legitimately squeeze from the proceedings, the happier her editor would be.

  But Rudyard Rhys was happy already. Today was Thursday, press day, and the story would lead his newspaper’s front page the following morning. No national press were aware of Radford’s arrest, and they would only learn it through the pages of the Riviera Express. Naturally, as its editor, Rudyard Rhys would be taking the full credit as his nationwide scoop was gradually followed up by The Times and its lesser brethren.

  The court was empty when Miss Dimont arrived at 4.30 p.m., though fairly soon Mr Thurlestone came in and slid his eyes towards the press bench. He and Miss Dimont looked at each other, and tacitly agreed to put yesterday’s business between them to one side. Life was long in Temple Regis, and for the forseeable future these two players in a bigger drama would be meeting twice a week in this very room. It was best to make up.

  Soon the motley handful of people who inhabit Magistrates’ Courts with no definable role found themselves seats, Inspector Topham took his place in the front bench, and two prison warders brought Hartley Radford up into the dock.

  The accused looked remarkably fresh. His night in the cells, away from his daily intake of champagne and cigars, had if anything put a spring in his step. He looked not the least apologetic at having brought together, at a time when they should have been sitting down to their tea, this disparate group of players and onlookers.

  ‘All rise,’ barked Mr Thurlestone. The door behind the bench opened and in walked two old warhorses, their faces pink from the late summer sunshine they had so recently been enjoying in their gardens. Behind them came their chairman.

  But no, it was not Mrs Marchbank! Miss Dimont could not believe her eyes. How could the town’s self-appointed scourge of wrongdoing miss an opportunity like this, to send onward to his ultimate destruction a man who so wilfully had robbed one of Britain’s best-loved characters of his life? Where on earth could she be?

  Instead in her place was Colonel de Saumarez, a man of immense rectitude and beautifully pressed tweed suits. The accused might well be assured of a fair hearing from him.

  ‘You are Ronald Hartley Smith, also known as Hartley Radford?’

  ‘I am,’ said Radford, who didn’t seem to mind anybody knowing.

  ‘You live
at 13 Laurel Mansions, Primrose Hill, London?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘State your age.’

  ‘Forty-eight.’

  ‘Ronald Hardtley Smith, you are charged that on the twelfth of September of this year you did wilfully murder Gerald Victor Midleton Hennessy. How do you plead?’

  A smooth-looking fellow in dark jacket and striped trousers eased himself languidly to his feet and said, ‘Your Worship, I represent Mr Radford whom you charge as Smith. He will plead not guilty.’

  Colonel de Saumarez peered down his nose at this stranger in his town. He did not like what he saw. Like the accused, the barrister was clearly from London and that did not count in his favour.

  ‘You are?’ he said, uninterestedly.

  ‘Henry Montagu, senior counsel.’

  ‘Mm,’ said the colonel, this monosyllable loaded with ambiguity. The ensuing battle over Hartley Radford’s liberty was not helped by the mutual contempt shooting like electric currents across the bench, and despite Mr Montagu’s perfectly reasonable arguments as to the probity of his client and of his personal guarantee that he would turn up for the trial, Radford was remanded in custody for a week.

  ‘I’d like the usual reports,’ said the colonel importantly to Mr Thurlestone, as if he knew more about the law than Mr Montagu. Thurlestone nodded and straightened his wig.

  And that was that. All Miss Dimont had to do now was convert this dull exchange of meagre information into magical prose which would transform an automatic, almost robotic, event into high drama. But she was good at that.

  Back in the office she sought out Betty to let her know what she’d be writing to accompany the star reporter’s own version of events. ‘You know,’ she said, as they settled down with a cup of tea, ‘the oddest thing was that Mrs March wasn’t in court. I can’t understand it – she wouldn’t miss the opportunity to give Radford a bit of a lecture about behaving himself when in Temple Regis – you know the usual thing.’

  Betty nodded, but in truth she did not know. She avoided court reporting because it made her go to sleep. And then she would be in trouble with the editor.