The Riviera Express

by TP Fielden

  The accused stared out to sea, her back straight, her eyes brimming. ‘I did it for you, Patrick,’ she said very slowly. ‘You have always been so kind to me. All our lives together. I could not allow the Mount Regis title to be allied with . . . that man Pithers. He was a scoundrel, a liar, a fornicator and a cheat. And he was my grandfather.

  ‘If it had come out, what would people say? Especially since your brother is dying and you will inherit the title soon. Oh, Patrick . . .’

  Her husband took her hand. ‘I have said to you,’ he almost whispered, ‘how many times have I said to you that it doesn’t matter who your people were? You have done a wonderful job representing my family in the town over all these years. Why did you have to kill Gerry? Nobody would have taken the slightest bit of notice of what he said in his memoirs – he was an actor, you know. Not of the real world.’

  ‘You will never understand,’ said his wife. ‘Your family history stretches back to the Domesday Book. You know who you are, nobody can dislodge you. People like me, however long we live alongside you, spend our lives constantly worrying we will do or say something which doesn’t quite chime. Old families are so very tribalistic – they view with suspicion anybody who comes to join them. I’ve always felt that.’

  There was a long silence.

  Topham courteously said he would accompany Mrs Marchbank so she might get her coat and pack a small bag. Marchbank said he would come along too. The two plain-clothes men marched back to their car, and Terry turned to Miss Dimont.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘you’re a ruddy marvel, you are!’

  ‘Oh Terry,’ said Miss Dimont. ‘It’s horrible – so sad. She killed out of shame – shame of who she was. You can see the only thing she ever wanted to do was live up to her husband’s family name, she’s essentially a good person – a very good person. It’s tragic.’

  ‘There, there,’ said Terry, and he put his arm round her shoulders. The pair looked out to sea as the purple clouds of night gathered on the horizon, readying themselves for their long journey inland.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Athene was making the tea – ‘Not the Lipton’s, dear, I save that for drinking at home – this is my special.’

  Miss Dimont expressed her delight and collected the cups in preparation. Around her desk in the otherwise deserted newsroom were her dear friend Auriol, Terry, and Peter Pomeroy, the chief sub-editor whose Herculean task of redrawing the front page was at last complete.

  ‘Nifty headline,’ mused Peter, who’d encapsulated the complex saga in two decks of Bodoni 48pt. ‘But I’d rather have written MURDERED BY CAVIAR.’

  ‘You will, Peter, you will – but there has to be a trial first.’

  ‘Now, dear,’ said Athene, bringing over the tea and some welcome Bourbon biscuits, ‘you have to tell me everything. I can only see so far, you know.’

  Miss Dimont pushed her spectacles up and took a sip. ‘I made so many mistakes,’ she started.

  ‘Livin’ up to your name,’ cut in her photographer. ‘Miss Dim.’

  ‘Pipe down, Terry. It was such a difficult case, made all the more complicated by the disappearance of old Cattermole. All the while he was missing I thought he was dead, but trying to fit his death in with the other two meant I was aiming in the wrong direction.’

  ‘You thought it was Prudence Aubrey,’ said Auriol.

  ‘Yes, I did. She had reason to kill all three men – Hennessy because of his desertion, Shrimsley because of his part in writing the memoirs and the threat that he might leak some of the contents regarding her past life to the Sunday newspapers, and Cattermole because – well,’ she said, scratching at her corkscrew hair with a pencil, ‘because he had been a beast to her years ago and she thought he’d told Shrimsley all about it. She clings to her reputation.

  ‘Remember,’ she went on, ‘this is a highly volatile woman, as some actresses can be, Athene.’ But Athene was already lifted to another plane, looking at Miss Dimont’s aura, and was very pleased with what she saw. ‘Yes, dear,’ she said contentedly.

  ‘She is capable of violence, certainly of violent thoughts, she even told me she had contemplated killing her husband.’

  ‘I should have discounted her the moment those words left her lips,’ said Auriol, ever the sage.

  ‘Oh, pipe down, Auriol.’

  Terry helped himself to a biscuit. ‘She might have murdered Hennessy, but how could she have pushed old Shrimsley over the cliff? She was in London.’

  ‘She said she was, but we had no way of knowing. She has a devious mind – look how she managed to frame that odious agent Radford. Quite took Inspector Topham in.’

  ‘Certainly made my life difficult,’ said Peter Pomeroy, gazing with pleasure on his page-proof of tomorrow’s Riviera Express. Like all deskbound journalists he wanted to write himself into the narrative. ‘Imagine if the paper had gone to bed saying Radford had done it and was going to swing while all the time it was Mrs March!’

  ‘You did a wonderful job, dear,’ sighed Athene. ‘And you always make my page look so nice.’

  ‘A pleasure,’ said Peter. ‘My wife loves what you write. She even reads all the other star signs too. Says they give her hope.’ Athene blushed.

  ‘What about the message Hennessy left on the railway carriage window?’ said Terry, still proud of having captured it with his masterful f5.6 at 1/60th. ‘You know, M . . . U . . . R . . .?’

  ‘Well, that had me scuttling around,’ admitted Miss Dimont. ‘When you first showed it to me, it had to say “murder”. It was our first clue, remember? Later, when I suspected Prudence Aubrey, it convinced me it must be her because he called her Murgs.

  ‘But,’ she said shamefacedly, ‘I had the answer all along. When I went into the carriage there was a piece of newspaper on the floor. It seemed so wrong that the death-place of someone so famous should have litter so I put it in my handbag and shoved it in Herbert’s pannier basket. Only when I remembered it did I discover it was a Daily Telegraph crossword which Hennessy had started but not finished. I looked in it for clues, and then I came across this one – rum conversation behind closed doors: hush-hush.’

  ‘Murmur,’ said Auriol, quick as a flash.

  ‘Oh Auriol, you’re so blankety clever,’ said Miss Dim, exasperated. ‘Took me some time to work that one out. Poor Gerald wasn’t accusing anybody when he wrote on the window, just trying out a crossword clue.’

  ‘Just as well Topham isn’t here,’ said Terry, ‘he’d have you clapped in irons for tampering with the evidence.’

  Miss Dimont smiled. ‘Inspector Topham is in many ways a wonderful man,’ she said. ‘Unlike many of his calling, he has humility. He was quite sweet to me about having got it wrong.

  ‘But,’ she added, ‘I think that particular clue would have passed the inspector by. He is not one to spend time with a crossword.’

  Athene poured more tea. ‘I did for a moment consider Marion Lake. She had the motive – tangled feelings about her father, topped off with a sense of rejection because he wouldn’t allow her a part in his new film. She had the opportunity – she was in the train with Hennessy when he ate his sandwiches. But you have only to look at her to see that although she’s pretty competent with a script in front of the camera, she’s not much good at the rest of life. Look at that unfortunate fellow she dragged down here.

  ‘And then, of course, it could have been Cattermole. He had a deep-seated hatred of Hennessy – reckons he put paid to his career. But I don’t think he has it in him.’

  She paused. ‘And,’ she said, ‘then I went back to see Captain Hulton.’

  ‘Captain Hulton?’ said Terry. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Lives up on Mudford Cliffs. An honorary member of what he calls the She-Club – ladies who walk their dogs. He has a very sweet dachshund called Bruce. You know I never really liked dachshunds, but—’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Terry, who could see Miss Dimont’s story taking a lengthy side-turning. ‘Captain
Hulton, Judy!’

  ‘Captain Hulton is rather shy. He doesn’t talk to people very much. But the She-Club are kind, and they chat to him. I went back on the off-chance that he talked to some of their number after our conversation, and they’d come up with something more.

  ‘They had,’ added Miss Dimont. ‘Or, actually they hadn’t.’

  ‘Come on now,’ said Auriol. ‘Which?’

  ‘The women who were out walking at midday saw a well-dressed woman with no dog. That was strange – why would a woman be up on Mudford Cliffs, that well-known dog-walking place, with no dog?

  ‘Anyway, they said she had a smart-looking car. That same car was back the next day – still no dog. Captain Hulton persisted, and they said it was a Wolseley.’

  ‘There was a Wolseley in the stables at Lummacombe,’ said Terry.

  ‘And Inspector Topham found the torn silk scarf still in the glove compartment,’ said Miss Dimont. ‘No doubt it will match the fragment of material in Shrimsley’s hand, which you and I, Terry, thought was a letter.’

  ‘Never said it was a letter.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Terry! You can’t be right all the time!’

  Terry responded with a smug smile.

  ‘Poor old Betty,’ said Peter Pomeroy. ‘Her beloved Page One taken away from her again. Did you notice I gave you an extra-big byline, Judy?’

  ‘Yes, Peter, and thank you.’

  ‘She’ll be hopping mad.’

  ‘Betty,’ said Miss Dimont slowly, ‘knew all along that Mrs March was Pithers’ granddaughter. Her new boyfriend, Hannaford, told her. She had seen my notes – she was keeping an eye on me for Rudyard, silly old fool – and she could quite possibly have made the deduction for herself.’

  ‘Not her boyfriend any more,’ said Athene. ‘She had to choose between a weekend away with him or the hockey team. She chose hockey.’

  ‘I thought she liked his big Rolls-Royce.’

  ‘Obviously not that much.’

  All this went over Auriol’s head. ‘So Rhys was spying on you? Trying to find out what you knew?’

  ‘Auriol,’ said Miss Dimont, ‘that’s not spying, not as we know it.’

  Her friend laughed. ‘He never was much good at the Admiralty – Rusty Rhys! It’s a wonder you work for him.’

  ‘It suits me.’

  ‘Time to go home,’ said Terry. ‘It’s gone midnight. Want a lift in the Minor?’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Yes, Terry,’ said Miss Dimont, looking up at him. ‘Why ever not?’

  Everyone got up to leave. Then Auriol said, ‘Better give you this. She says you never answer her letters, so she sent it to me to pass on.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Miss Dimont, ‘oh dear . . .’

  Auriol had passed her a stiff white envelope whose frontage was adorned with a beautifully formed copperplate hand. It read:

  Mlle Huguette Dimont,

  c/o Cmdt. Auriol Hedley, WRNS,

  Crabrock Cottage,

  Bedlington-on-Sea,

  Devon.

  With heavy reluctance she drew from its interior a short note.

  Dear Huguette,

  I have been very worried about you. Since you do not answer my letters this is the only way to reach you.

  I am coming down on the Riviera Express on Friday which arrives at 4.30. Please do me the courtesy of meeting the train.

  Your loving,

  Maman

  ‘Oh Lord,’ said Judy Dimont. ‘Terry, I don’t think I can take that lift after all.’

  Missing Temple Regis already?

  Read more of the Miss Judy Dimont Mystery series in

  RESORT TO MURDER

  Coming November 2017

  ONE

  Pale aquamarine and milky like the waters of Venice, the sea moved slowly inland. The shoreline at Todhempstead welcomed the advance reluctantly, giving up its golden sands inch by inch, unwilling to concede a single yard of the most beautiful beach.

  The body lay some way distant from the incoming tide, but sooner or later it would have to be moved.

  For the moment, though, it lay there, surrounded by a frozen tableau – a small group of people immobilised by what lay at their feet. Death changes behaviour patterns, imposes a protocol of its own.

  She was young, she was blonde, and she may have been pretty but for the hideous open wound that claimed half her face. Her dress was glamorous in an inexpensive sort of way, arranged around her decorously enough. It was still dry, a sure indicator it had not been here too long.

  Frank Topham looked down with some discomfort. The long shallow beach had at its furthest end a high embankment, surely too far away for the victim to have fallen from and landed here. The injuries which claimed her life were too severe – that much was evident – for her to have walked or crawled to her final resting place, yet there were no footprints around the body apart from those made sparingly by the small group of eyewitnesses.

  Nor was there any blood.

  These contradictions jarred Inspector Topham’s usually tranquil state of mind, but were swept aside for the moment as he looked down on the wretched girl.

  ‘Twenty, I should say,’ he murmured to the two faceless acolytes standing at his shoulder.

  ‘No shoes,’ said one.

  ‘No handbag,’ replied Topham.

  The other lit a cigarette and looked up at the sky. He didn’t seem terribly interested.

  Whatever passed next between these custodians of the peace was drowned by the arrival of the up train from Exbridge, a billowing, grunting triumph of the steam engineer’s art, slowing as it made its long approach into Todhempstead Spa station.

  ‘Better get her away,’ Topham said to the police doctor. The man on his knees looked over his shoulder at the advancing waves and nodded.

  ‘No evidence,’ said Topham wretchedly. ‘No clues. We’re moving the body and there’s no clues.’

  Taking his cue, the second man moved vaguely away and came back. ‘Tizer bottle.’

  ‘Is the label wet?’ asked Topham without even looking at it.

  ‘Yer.’

  ‘Chuck it,’ snapped the inspector. ‘No use to us.’

  He moved swiftly off to the slipway where the car was parked, not wanting the men to see his face. There had been too many deaths back in the war, but wasn’t that why he had fought? So there wouldn’t be any more? It was a man’s job to die, not a woman’s.

  For a moment he turned to look back at the scene below. The dead body claimed his focus, but, beyond, it was as if nobody cared that the world had lost a soul this morning. In the distance two sand-yachts raced each other across the broad beach, and overhead an ancient biplane trailed a long banner flapping from its tail. Smith’s Crisps, according to its message, gave you a wholesome happy holiday.

  Far in the distance he could see a solitary female figure, dressed in rainbow colours, standing perfectly still and looking out to sea as if what it had to offer was somehow more interesting than a dead body. It was as if nobody cared.

  Inspector Topham got in the car and pulled out on to the empty road. He reached Todhempstead Spa station in a matter of minutes, but already the Riviera Express was pulling out, heading on towards Exeter at a slow roll – huffing, grinding, thumping, clanging. He could get it stopped at Newton Abbot to check if there was evidence on the front buffers of contact with human flesh from the downward journey, to quiz the train guard and the driver. But they’d all be back again this afternoon on the return trip, and he doubted, given the distance of the body from the railway embankment, that this was a rail fatality. Though, with death, you could never be sure about anything.

  As he drove back to the Sands, his eyes lifted for a moment from the road ahead. It was already mid-June and the lanes running parallel to the beach were bursting with joy at summer’s arrival. Though the bluebells and primroses had retreated, the hedgerows were noisy with young blackbirds testing their beautiful voices, while, beneath, newly arrived wild roses and c
ow parsley reached out, begging to be noticed.

  How, asked the policeman, could anyone wish a young girl dead at this season, when hope is in the air and the breeze is scented with promise? His years in the desert, those arid wastes of death, might be long behind but still they cast their shadow. He drove down the slipway on to the beach, got slowly out, and nodded to his men.

  ‘Body away,’ said one.

  ‘Come on then.’

  Topham removed his hat and got back in the car. His square head, doughty and in its own way distinguished, grazed the ceiling because of his ramrod-straight back. Despite the rising heat he still wore the raincoat he’d donned in the early morning when he got the call. He’d been too distracted by what he’d seen to take it off.

  Too honest a man, too upright, perhaps too regimented in his thinking to see life the way criminals do, Frank Topham was both the very best of British policing and, some might argue, the worst. There was a dead woman on the beach, but if it was murder – if – the culprit might never be caught. No clues, no arrest.

  No hope of an arrest.

  The car approached Temple Regis, the prettiest town in the whole of Devon, and, as the inspector drove up Cable Street and over Tuppenny Row, his eyes took solace in the elegant terrace of Regency cottages whose pink brickwork blushed in the summer sunshine. Further down the hill he could hear the clanking arrival of the 10.30 from Paddington, its sooty steamy clouds shooting upwards from Regis Junction station. Life was carrying on as if nothing had happened.

  Topham entered the police station at his regulation quick-march. The front office was empty apart from the desk sergeant.

  ‘Frank.’

  ‘Bert.’

  ‘Anything for the book?’ The sergeant had his pen poised.

  Topham hesitated. ‘Accidental. Woman on T’emstead Beach.’

  The other man gazed shrewdly at him. ‘You sure? Accidental?’

  Topham returned his gaze evenly. ‘Accidental.’ He tried to make it sound as though he believed it.

  ‘Only I got a reporter in the interview room. Saying murder.’