by TP Fielden
‘He was eighty,’ said Topham, uncomprehending.
‘Nonsense – life in the old dog and all that,’ responded Miss Dimont in parrot-like fashion. She couldn’t believe what passions these ancients were capable of.
‘You can see how tough she is. Larsson discovers she’s been plotting with her son against him, she’s out on her ear as well. There’s a precision about her, a Scandinavian coldness however beautiful she may be – don’t you think she’s more likely to do the job efficiently than that useless son of hers? He had the motive and the means, yes, but did he have the capability?’
‘Of course he did!’ said Topham. ‘He knew the Rejuvenator inside out, he’d been working on a replacement for months. It would be easy for him to alter its settings and give the old man a fatal shock, though we’re still not sure how it was done.’
‘Hmm,’ said Miss Dimont, who was sure but wasn’t ready to share. ‘Another pint?’
Surprisingly. her company had eased the constriction in the policeman’s throat. His glass was now nearly empty.
‘Go on then.’
‘The problem for me is that there are so many suspects,’ Judy went on. ‘Mrs Larsson could easily have slipped away from the gardener during that hour she was down in the potting shed, so she had the opportunity.’
‘Well, if you want to look at it that way,’ said Topham, ‘it could equally have been the manservant Lamb. He’s the only person who was in the background for the whole time when the murder could have occurred. Everybody else came and went. Plus, he knew how the Rejuvenator worked – he used to demonstrate it to the visitors.’
‘What about those loopy people from the Lazarus League? Has anybody spoken to them?’
‘Oh, come on! You’ve seen enough of them in town over the years – these are people who wouldn’t even swat a fly, let alone murder someone in cold blood. And do you honestly think there’d be one amongst them who was sophisticated enough to be able to fiddle with the machine so that it became lethal?’
‘I can quite easily see one of them with a grudge,’ said Miss Dimont. ‘Maybe a family member had been injured – died even – because of the Rejuvenator. Think how much worse that would be for a devoted follower – a double betrayal, you might say. I can see them being very angry and, of course, because he used to have open house for the Lazarus League, they’d have no problem with access to the machine and its inventor.’
Topham did not like this, because though what he said about the League was incontestable, he’d been perhaps less rigorous in following up this particular line of inquiry. ‘My men are on it,’ he said vaguely, but the words had a hollow ring.
A pink face poked its nose around the door of the bar – a poor little lamb who had lost his way. Soberer, he might have recognised the undeniable figure of a plain clothes policeman and the urgent body language of a reporter debriefing him, but his eyes only vaguely took in the room before fixing on Sid, the barman.
‘The gentleman … schroom?’ he inquired mildly, if a little slowly.
‘Next on the left,’ said Sid. The man from the News Chronicle waddled away.
Every local newspaper has its prize bore and Ray Bennett, the Riviera Express’s arts reporter, had long ago won every prize going when it came to talking the hind leg off the proverbial.
Fresh sacrificial lambs were hard to come by, so the fat old man in his floppy bow tie gleamed with joy as he stepped into the newsroom to discover Valentine’s slender figure crouched over his typewriter. He wandered over, sat down noisily, and, without the bother of an introduction, launched forth.
‘Schism in the choir!’ he announced with grandeur.
Valentine glanced up distractedly, then went back to work.
‘The most extraordinary thing. They’re at each other’s throats. Temple Regis has never seen anything like it! Really – you know - the most important story!’
It being relatively easy to spot a bore, especially at such close quarters, Valentine adopted a defensive body posture but the fat old man droned on – and whatever his drawbacks, when Ray Bennett got hold of a story he knew its value. The schism in the choir, he declared, went to the very heart of Temple Regis’ inner life. The town might put on a special face to welcome visitors during the summer months, but that didn’t mean the ebb and flow of rancour and disorder which veins all small communities was not alive and well!
Valentine found it hard to concentrate. The sad tale of missing Faye Addams and her distraught admirer, Boots McGuigan, had all the makings of a follow-up in the national newspapers, and this could be his first big scoop.
‘So the point is, they’re not speaking,’ wheezed on old Ray. ‘It’s all to do with the piano accompaniment – half the choir come down on the side of the Schubertian dotted crotchet, the other have plumped for Brahmsian polyrhythms. D’you see? D’you understand? The Stabat Mater only three weeks away and rehearsals have stopped. Stone dead!’
Valentine wanted to be polite but was too absorbed to pay proper attention. In addition, though burdened with few prejudices, he found the sight of a bow tie worn during the day rather hard to swallow.
‘Tricky,’ he replied, while modulating his tone towards the end of the second syllable to indicate how busy he was.
Bennett maundered on. ‘I tried this out on the editor but he was really quite dismissive. The man is uncultured and knows nothing of music – I mean for heaven’s sake, he’s completely missing the point!’
‘Which is?’ said Valentine without lifting his head.
‘Schism in the choir means schism in the community. There’s Bardel the greengrocer and Retson his next-door neighbour in the boot repair shop, they’re not speaking. Multiply that by sixty, which is the number of the choir, add in their wives and families who are bound to take sides, and half of Temple Regis isn’t speaking to the other half! The Schubertian dotted crotchet, my boy!’
Valentine looked up from his notebook and started to pay attention for the first time.
‘Lord,’ he said, ‘that does sound quite interesting.’
The fat man looked replete. ‘Won’t be in the paper though,’ he said smugly, gratified his scoop had been acknowledged, ‘the editor is too busy even to discuss it.’
‘If I may say so,’ said Valentine, feeling his way, ‘surely the story is not about the technical detail, the dotted whatnot, but that such a paltry matter has caused this town to stop speaking to its neighbour?’
‘That’s what I said,’ said Bennett stoutly.
No you didn’t, thought Valentine. You were so busy showing off your musical knowledge the poor fellow was unable to see the wood for the trees – no wonder he turned the story down.
‘Well I think it’s brilliant,’ said Valentine, feeding copy paper into his typewriter – an act of body language in newspaper offices which says, go away now, I am composing my thoughts and entering that torture chamber where I have to discover what the intro to my story will be.
But Bennett, as well as being fat and old, was deaf as well: ‘Well, you tell him then!’ he blundered on. ‘Go and tell him what a good story it is!’
‘I don’t think he’s receiving visitors at this hour,’ said Valentine, glancing at the editor’s closed door.
‘Well, all I can say is that choir rehearsal was a waste of an evening when I could have been at home with my novel.’
The way Ray said ‘novel’ it sounded important – though whether he was writing one or reading one passed Valentine by. ‘It was all very tiresome, and I kept being pestered by some young flibbertigibbet who wouldn’t leave me alone. Is there some young girl missing, or something?’
Valentine’s head rose slowly once again from his typewriter and he fixed the arts reporter with a steady gaze. ‘As a matter of fact there is, Mr Bennett,’ he said slowly. ‘A girl is, indeed, missing.’
Don’t you read your own newspaper? he thought. For heaven’s sake! ‘What did the young lady have to say?’
‘Apparently she’s
a beauty queen or whatever you call it.’
‘Which, the dead girl? Or your flibbertigibbet?’
‘Both. Is she dead? Oh dear.’
‘Er, Mr Bennett,’ said Valentine evenly, ‘this might be quite important. Do you recall the name of the fli—the young lady?’
‘No idea,’ said Ray, whose idea of journalism, learned long ago, was that a correspondent of his stature talked only to the important people. ‘You could try the choir secretary, Mrs Southpool – though of course if the woman is on the wrong side of the Schubertian–Brahmsian divide you probably won’t get very far.’
It took Valentine an hour to track down the secretary, and a further thirty minutes to find himself seated opposite Molly Churchstow in the Expresso Bongo coffee bar. ‘Blinkin’ wonderful newspaper yours turns out to be,’ she said, coldly.
‘Sorry?’
‘Call yourselves reporters?’
‘Sorry, not quite with you Miss, er, Churchstow.’
‘Molly.’
‘Molly.’
‘I rang you up and said, it’s Faye Addams that’s missing. Did you do anything about it? Not a proverbial sausage!’
‘Erm, who did you speak to?’ Molly was attractive in an artificial sort of way, but hard. She smelt of cigarettes and face powder.
‘I ask for the editor. He said he’d make a note of it.’
‘When was this, Molly?’
‘Three, four days ago. Nothing happened, I waited for someone to phone me back but nobody did. Then I saw that old fool at choir practice and let ’im ’ave it.’
As she lit another Woodbine, Valentine regarded the beauty queen with curiosity. On the jukebox Danny Trouble and The Urge’s ballad ‘A Beautiful Summer Place’ – not Temple Regis, obviously, given the manager’s contempt for the town – was playing and she was humming along to it.
‘I must say,’ he said after a moment, ‘most unusual for you to be in the beauty business and to love pop music like this, and then to sing in a classical music choir as well.’
‘My dad was a verger. I went to church so many times a week I lost count. I used to sit in the verger’s pew, but it was easier to see the boys from the choir stalls so I joined the choir. Stayed with it.’
‘So, anyway, you saw our Mr Bennett and …’
‘Pompous old git, couldn’t even be bothered to listen. Though I s’pose he must of done or you wouldn’t be here.’
‘Quite,’ said Valentine, too polite to reveal that Bennett wouldn’t know a story if he tripped over it on the promenade. No, that wasn’t fair – but not reading your own newspaper!
‘Please, then, go back to the beginning and tell me everything. D’you know Boots McGuigan?’
‘What? From The Urge? The dishy one?’
‘He was Faye’s boyfriend.’
‘Never! Lucky girl – he’s gorgeous! She kept that pretty quiet!’
‘He’s been looking for her. He doesn’t know she’s dead – in fact, Molly, half the world seems to know she’s missing while the other half has been worrying about a dead body on the beach over at Todhempstead. Nobody seems to have put two and two together.’
‘One and one, actually.’ Molly looked at him. She was older but she liked what she saw – his blond curls were particularly attractive. ‘Anyway, I did,’ she simpered, and smiled a certain sort of smile.
This was lost on Valentine, who was not used to certain smiles. ‘How well did you know her?’
‘Hardly at all. She turned up out of the blue for one of the heats for Queen of the English Riviera. She’d been working as a beautician in one of the London stores and decided to chuck it in and get on the pageant scene. She thought she was going to become Miss Great Britain. Don’t we all,’ added Molly, wearily.
‘Yes?’
‘Told me she’d got a new boyfriend and she was coming down here to do the Riviera heats because he had a summer job in Temple Regis so she could be near him. So that was Boots McGuigan?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well I never. Wonderfully hunky sort of name – Boots – so manly!’
Valentine didn’t mention the chemist. He couldn’t see the point.
Just then the door swung open and a vision in yellow clacked in on perilous high heels – the glorious Eve Berry, currently riding the crest of the wave as Miss Exmouth. She carried about her the air of detachment she’d picked up from once seeing Diana Dors in the street. Her look said ‘Fame!’ and set her apart from Molly and the others who hadn’t learned this secret trick, but it made her no more successful on the beauty pageant circuit. The interview always let her down.
‘Thought I’d find you here,’ she breathed, talking to Molly but eyeing up Valentine. ‘Who’s this?’
The reporter rose from his seat. ‘Valentine, er, Ford … from the Riviera Express. May I get you a cup of coffee?’
‘Cappuccino,’ said Eve, in her Diana Dors voice. ‘Put a wizzle in it and make it extra frothy …’
The boy had no idea what she was talking about.
When he returned, the beauty queens were discussing the late Faye Addams in suitably hushed tones.
‘Stuck-up bitch,’ said Eve.
‘Broad in the beam as well. Wrong shape to win the title,’ added Molly.
They both eyed Valentine in a mildly carnivorous sort of way. ‘So what are you doin’ about it, handsome?’ barked Molly. ‘Not much, eh? Call yourself a reporter?’ She found an aggressive approach to fit young men sometimes could provoke, well, a thrillingly muscular response.
Valentine was more interested in his notebook. ‘D’you mind if we go over this methodically? I’ll be asked about it when I get back to the office and I want to make sure I’ve got this straight.
‘As I understand it, Miss Addams was not part of your usual beauty pageant circuit, sort of came out of nowhere?’
‘She wasn’t even local,’ said Eve, ‘though that’s not against the rules. She come from London, been working at a beauty counter.’
‘All you lady contestants down here know each other, but nobody had seen Miss Addams before?’
‘That’s right. She was brought in by Cyril Normandy. In fact, I thought she was his bit of stuff,’ said Eve, whose lips were now coated in coffee froth.
‘Nah,’ said Molly. ‘Cyril never touches the goods, far too fly.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ retorted Eve. ‘The Brixham eliminator, I caught them havin’ a go at each other.’
‘Er,’ said Valentine, ‘what exactly do you mean when you say “having a go”?’
The two queens looked at each other and burst out laughing. ‘Not what you’re thinking, sonny,’ said Eve, who’d switched off her headlights now – she could see he wasn’t interested.
‘They were havin’ a ding-dong, a spat. A row. But to me it looked like a lovers’ tiff. And I reckoned that he’d picked her up in London and told her he’d make her the Riviera Queen. All she had to was turn up and he’d rig the voting. Like ’e always does,’ she added bitterly.
‘He uses us like cattle,’ said Molly. ‘Puts us on parade, takes the money. He’s cruel, that’s what he is.’
‘So they could have been boyfriend and girlfriend, Faye and Mr Normandy?’
‘You hev been brought up proper,’ mocked Eve, affecting a posh tone. ‘That devil is old enough to be her grandfather.’
‘Not quite,’ cut in Molly, who’d once tried it on with Normandy in the hope of advancing her cause. ‘He is older, but not that old.’
‘Those nasty pudgy hands.’
‘That dandruff.’
‘Those nasty niffs …’
‘Weeeeeurgh!’
Valentine felt they were straying from the point. ‘So Miss Addams may have been having a fling with Mr Normandy. But at the same time she was the girlfriend of Boots McGuigan? And this chap in The Shadows as well?’
‘How old are you?’ asked Molly witheringly.
Valentine didn’t respond. ‘So one might assume, if one was
in the detecting sort of lark, that if Boots or Normandy got to hear of the other, they might take out their, er, disappointment on Miss Addams?’
‘You mean murder her?’ asked Eve, fascinated.
‘Well, since you put it that way. I think we can take it that her wounds were not self-inflicted,’ said Valentine drily. ‘There has to be some explanation for her being found on the beach with her head caved in.’
‘D’you think he would have made her queen?’ said Molly to Eve, a plaintive note in her voice. This was more important than their rival’s bloody end, for the what-if governed their every thought and action. What if she’d won, what if they’d lost?
‘It’s always a fix,’ replied Eve vigorously. ‘I tell you, one day I’m going to do that Normandy in, I swear I will!’
TWENTY
Miss Dimont and Valentine met in the front hall of the Riviera Express.
‘Haven’t seen you for a while,’ said Judy shyly, looking at him sideways. ‘Been busy?’
‘Just a bit. There’s lots going on.’
‘Let’s go outside,’ she said, leading the way through the back office into the car park. She sat down on a low wall, turned her face up to the sun and shook out her curls. ‘Far too lovely to be cooped up in the office.’
Valentine remained standing. He felt the need to report. ‘Rusty, as you call him, has gone to ground. People go into his office, they come out. The door’s permanently closed. I’m beginning to wonder what’s up.’
‘He hates it when the Fleet Street pack come into town. Pretty soon they’ll be in the office parking themselves at people’s desks, commandeering the phones and the telex, the photographers elbowing their way around the darkroom.’
‘I don’t think it’s about Fleet Street.’
‘I think it is.’
The two looked at each other afresh and their glances lingered. They had not seen each other since the night at Judy’s cottage.
‘Rudyard Rhys knew about the identity of the dead girl, and he didn’t do anything about it. Couple that with his extraordinary behaviour over Ben Larsson and …’
