“Take your point, old boy, but you’re here practically all the time, right? And people sort of treat you as part of the furniture—no offense, but you know what I mean. Bet they come out with all manner of goodies in front of you when they’ve had a few. Apart from that, a photocopy of your membership list would be worth a bob or two to me. Especially if annotated with your comments.” The slimy little man had been right, of course, but what he hadn’t expected was that, having eventually established precisely how much he meant by “a bob or two,” Prothero would turn him down with a great show of outraged probity.
The hapless journalist had been right in emphasizing that gossip writing was a cutthroat business. Prothero tipped off one of his tempter’s more sophisticated rivals on another paper, who was happy to pay half as much again as the proffered “bob or two” for the means to discredit part of the opposition. This highly successful deal marked the beginning of a relationship that greatly profited both parties. Prothero was indeed in a position to pass on intriguing nuggets of information to his new friend, who thereby achieved a number of what passed for as scoops in his tawdry world.
Inspired by the success of the arrangement, Prothero set up an independent and just as confidential deal with a notorious candid cameraman. This paparazzo specialized in surprising the famous and the glamorous in circumstances they had fondly imagined to be private; and Prothero was often able to tip him off when there was money to be made. The intrepid lensman hawked the less explicit photographs round the British tabloids. Some of the more outré ones found a good home on the Continent, in the pages of the kind of magazines that were forever announcing the Queen’s impending divorce; and Prothero rather fancied that the real sizzlers were usually purchased for substantial sums by or on behalf of their subjects.
In short, Sir Sebastian had, as we have seen, become a realist. As such, he was well aware on that July day in Carnaby Street that he was not only a purveyor of gossip and scandal but also its subject in some quarters. He surmised, correctly, that his name was well-known to certain police officers based at West End Central headquarters whose job it was to keep a discreet eye on such establishments as the Club Mondial. He liked to think that they probably had him down as a contemptible but essentially petty crook, a smoothie con man who sponged off rich women and easy marks, a parasite happily pocketing kickbacks from his Fleet Street cronies. He was content that this should be so. It made it much less likely that they would for a moment connect him with the succession of daring jewel robberies that were greatly exercising a number of provincial police forces, not to mention certain insurance companies.
For Sir Sebastian Prothero was, in his own estimation at least, a criminal mastermind, well on the way that day to perfecting plans for what he confidently intended to be his most audacious coup to date.
• • •
A mile or so to the east in Fleet Street, Mel Forby was choosing her words with more care than she generally did when arguing with the editor of the Daily Negative. The editor for his part was still trying to come to terms with the young woman who had when he first knew her worn intimidating eye makeup and affected an extraordinary and completely bogus American accent, using a vocabulary derived, he thought, from old B movies and hard-boiled private-eye stories. Mel had never actually rushed into his office shouting “Hold the front page!” but he had lived in daily expectation of it. Until, that is, something had transformed her. Her eyes now looked as lustrous as her hair was soft and her figure was voluptuous, while her manner of speech was straightforward, warmed by the hint of the Liverpool accent she had previously tried so hard to varnish over.
At first he, like practically everybody else in the office, assumed she must be in love. The problem with that theory was that Mel showed no sign of floating through life in a romantic haze. On the contrary, she was as tough, intelligent, and resourceful as ever, and her new image and manner made her more formidable, not less. For the people she dealt with were disarmed and bemused by her, and only afterward—sometimes—realized they had been up against an expert.
“I still don’t get it,” the editor said plaintively. “Okay, so you started off with us covering the rag trade, and nobody’s saying you didn’t do a great job. But now you’re a reporter with a well-known byline. You get paid a lot more; you can write about pretty well what you like, especially crime. Except that, well, look at it this way: Pete Morgan would blow a fuse if you suggested covering the Cup Final instead of him. Jason Lombard would have a fit if you were to make a takeover bid for his financial pages. So it’s hardly surprising that Sue’s up in arms over you hijacking this Cedric Benbow nonsense. Sue’s your successor, remember? She writes about fashion now. And while we’re at it, I may say I’m not all that thrilled about the way you’ve been giving all this free publicity to Mode in your pieces lately. I know it’s hardly a competitor, but have you got shares in it or something?”
Mel hoped very much that she wasn’t visibly blushing. “Of course I haven’t. I’m sorry Sue’s upset, and I wish she’d spoken to me about it. I’m sure I could have made her see that this is really art we’re talking about, not fashion. And the Negative doesn’t run to an art correspondent. Anyway, the Lalique Lady competition is over, the girl’s been chosen, and I’m overdue for that vacation you promised me. I’m off tomorrow. So I’ll be out of Sue’s hair for a while. By the time I get back she’ll have calmed down, and I’ll keep well off her territory from now on, I promise.”
The editor enjoyed his job, but not when he had to act as adjudicator in interoffice squabbles. “Fair enough. Leave a contact address. Going abroad?”
“No,” Mel said sweetly. “Just planning a few days in Kent.”
The editor cast a look of deep suspicion at her. “Kent? You haven’t had a tip-off about anything to do with the Battling Brolly, have you?”
“Miss Seeton? Not a word. Now, I ask you, would I keep anything juicy to myself?”
“Damn right you would. Go away, Mel; you’re making my indigestion flare up. And get in touch the moment she makes a move.”
chapter
~4~
WENDY SMITH was in Bermuda, sitting at a poolside table with a really groovy man—the older type, graying at the temples—and sipping a daiquiri when the sound of a distant but approaching fire engine’s bell unsportingly transformed itself into the shrilling of her alarm clock. She had bought it at the staff discount price at Woolworth’s in Holloway Road eight or nine months earlier, and though of small intrinsic value it was one of her most important possessions. Wendy was nineteen, going on twenty, and she slept soundly. Too soundly, she soon discovered after she took the plunge, braved her dad’s noisy bluster, her mum’s tearful reproaches, and her younger brother Terry’s hurt, uncomprehending silence, left the council flat near Shepherd’s Bush for good, and moved in with her best mate, June.
June was a student nurse at the Royal Northern Hospital, but then she had always been brainy at school. Wendy admired her a lot, while preferring not to hear about the horrible yucky things she had to do in the line of her chosen profession. All the same she jumped at the chance of sharing the flat just off Seven Sisters Road, ten minutes’ walk from the Northern, and a bit nearer than that to Woolie’s. Since June had found the flat originally through the good offices of the lodgings lady at the hospital, she was really in honor bound to try to replace her departing flatmate with another nurse; but blow that, she had reasoned when offering the room to Wendy.
Wendy thought then that it was a terrific idea, and—apart from the row at home, of course, and the fact that she no longer had Mum to get her up in the mornings—she still did. She had been working at the Woolie’s branch at Hammersmith since leaving school, and Mr. Turnbull had been really nice about arranging for her to transfer more or less straight away to the big one in Holloway Road. Their basement flat in the damp Victorian house wasn’t exactly classy, but Wendy and June each had a bedroom, the kitchen was big enough to sit around in, they had their own ti
tchy bathroom and toilet, their own front door!
Wendy’s groping hand finally found the alarm clock and shut off the racket. Still half-asleep, she was briefly tempted to roll over and try another daiquiri in Bermuda. She had never been to Bermuda, never tasted a daiquiri, and actually didn’t much fancy older men, but it had been an out-of-sight dream all the same. A few seconds later she came to full consciousness and the awareness that reality was currently much more fab than any stupid old dream; and she lay there for a minute or two wide awake and hugging herself in ecstasy. Could it be true? Was it really true? Yes, it really and truly was really and truly true! Good old Harry! Wow!
Having realized that she was positively looking forward to getting up, Wendy did so, and skipped into the kitchen in her baby-doll pajamas. There should have been some corn flakes left, but June must have noshed them before going to bed. Couldn’t blame her really; must be the pits to be on nights. And there was still one Weetabix in the box, and half a tin of orange juice in the little fridge. These she dealt with on the wing, as it were, while moving her own and June’s drying tights and knickers out of the way and running herself a deep bath with a fine disregard for the gas bill to come. Gas bills? Student nurses and girls who worked in Woolworth’s might have to worry about gas bills, but Wendy didn’t work at Woolworth’s anymore, did she? Not since two weeks ago, two fantastic, unbelievable weeks ago!
Wendy lay back in the bath and happily reflected on her recent past. It had in fact been six months or so since she had met Harry Manning, early one evening soon after Christmas when she and June had been up the West End for the sales. They were in Regent Street, still giggling over some of the weird things they’d been looking at in Dickins and Jones, when this bloke in the hip leather gear and the fancy camera snapped their picture and then started chatting them up.
He claimed to be a freelance press, society, and fashion photographer, and this, Wendy remembered, had made them both fall about laughing. Harry was a good sport, though, and hadn’t seemed to mind when June told him to pull the other one—it had bells on it. In fact, he took several more photos of them, together and separately, and the three of them ended up eating sweet and sour pork with rice and mixed Chinese vegetables in Gerrard Street. There Harry fished a tattered copy of Nova out of his capacious shoulder bag and showed them some pictures of glassy-eyed young people in evening dress. He said he’d taken them himself, at a ball at the Grosvenor House Hotel, and this time they believed him.
Harry insisted on paying for the meal, and before they parted he gave Wendy his card and asked for their phone number so he could let them know if—when, he said—their picture was going to be in the paper. They hadn’t got a phone, and Mr. Christodoulou in the ground-floor flat above them had made it very clear that he wasn’t in the business of taking messages. June was a bit dubious about giving Harry their address, but Wendy told him anyway.
It was June who came into the flat shrieking with delight a few days later clutching a copy of the Evening News opened at the page from which two pretty, booted girls in Laura Ashley dresses under shaggy afghan coats smiled out across three columns above a caption that said NEW YEAR SPIRIT IN REGENT STREET. Wendy popped out to the phone booth at the end of the street and rang the number on Harry’s card.
Harry was out on a job, she was told by the bloke who answered, and wouldn’t be back till late. Any message? Oh, not really . . . well, perhaps just that Wendy rang to say we think the picture in the Evening News is really fab and thanks very much.
Needless to say it was all over both Woolworth’s and the Royal Northern the next day, and the girls basked in the envious compliments showered on them. Then it all seemed to go a bit flat, until they got a note from Harry Manning on the following Tuesday saying he owed them a good dinner and what about some Italian nosh Friday, and to please give him a ring between six and seven Wednesday. Well, free dinners don’t grow on trees, do they?
They both enjoyed the meal, and they both quite liked Harry, who seemed to know all the in crowd and had once been in the same room with Julie Christie and Terence Stamp. He smelled out of sight, too, and was wearing a different leather jacket, one that must have cost fifty quid at least. And he took them home in a taxi, sat in the middle but didn’t try anything—well, you could hardly count a friendly arm round each of their shoulders and a good night peck.
All the same June was firmly against Harry’s idea that they might make a useful bit of cash by doing part-time modeling work. Thanks, but no thanks. Harry Manning was quite old, must be going on thirty, and had been around—anybody could see that. Frocks and stuff for a mail-order catalog? Yeah, maybe, to start with. But then it would be bikinis, and then your boobs all over Men Only for the benefit of a load of dirty old men in raincoats, and then—no, thank you! But you do what you like, Wendy, no skin off my nose.
As she emerged rosily from the bath and reached for her towel—which could have done with a trip to the launderette round the corner—Wendy reflected that but for this fantastic, incredible stroke of luck June might have turned out to be right. Lying about in the cluttered little Camden Town studio Harry shared with his mate, Kevin, there certainly were plenty of, well, the sort of pictures that would give her mum a heart attack. You soon sort of got used to seeing them around, though, and began to wonder why teachers and clergymen and that Mrs. Whitehouse got their knickers in such a twist over a few tits and bums. Just like June’d said would happen.
June had not gone on to point out that the devil finds work for idle hands to do, but all the same it was true that after a few sessions in which Wendy had indeed modeled jumpers and skirts that might be all the rage in Macclesfield or Wolverhampton but which she personally would die rather than wear in public, other possibilities had suggested themselves to her.
To be strictly accurate, Lynn had suggested them. Wendy had met Lynn one day at the well-equipped commercial studio Harry rented for what he always called his “festive sprouts” fashion work, by which he meant cardigans, bed jackets, and the like for Woman’s Weekly. It seemed that on one occasion a couple of his pictures had illustrated a feature “Adventurous Dressmaking” alongside one called “Party Food Need Not Cost a Lot.” Included on the suggested menu was an item called “Festive Sprouts,” and Harry enjoyed the thought.
Lynn was doing lingerie that day, and told Wendy how much she got paid: a good bit more than Wendy. Then, since something had gone wrong with the lighting and they were both kept hanging about with nothing to do but natter, it came out that Lynn also did glamor work and, you know, sexy stuff that paid even better. Wendy remembered how she had brooded about what Lynn had told her before broaching the subject with Harry, who looked at her with some surprise and hesitated before replying. Then he shrugged and said he reckoned she ought to stick to fashion, but there was no harm in banging off a few sample glamor pix if she liked.
Now, standing in her underwear in front of her dressing table mirror doing her makeup, Wendy remembered, too, the cringe-making embarrassment of that day in Harry’s own little studio. It was bad enough in the bikini with her arms crossed to produce more cleavage, but when it came to the ones in the sexy gear she had herself bought at Weiss’s in Shaftesbury Avenue, she nearly ran away. Yet Lynn had seemed such a nice, cheerful sort of person, somebody you’d enjoy going to the pictures with, and Wendy told herself that if Lynn could do it, then she could. So when Harry—coolly professional—told her to take off the wispy bra, she did, flaunted them, and even pouted her lips to order.
What a relief when, next time she went to Camden Town, Harry first gave her a set of prints that horrified her, then shook his head and told her to forget it. “You’re a hell of a lot more curvy than Twiggy, love, and if you’re hard up and willing to do anything for money, there’re plenty of grotty types’ll pay you for porn. But you’ve got the face to go upmarket. Fashion work, maybe really classy nudes one day, you know, David Bailey stuff, but not this sort of thing. You’re learning fast. Be too good fo
r ‘festive sprouts’ in a few months, but stick to it and wait for that lucky break. It’ll come.”
Come it did, thanks to good old Harry; Harry who heard on the grapevine long before it became common knowledge that Cedric Benbow had agreed to shoot a major glossy magazine feature and that the publicity types had dreamed up this notion of a nationwide competition to find “the possessor of The Face, the girl Cedric himself would select as his model and adorn with beautiful clothes and priceless jewels.”
That was only the beginning. It had been Harry, and this pal of his, Mel, who had steered her through the preliminaries. Mel was pretty dishy herself but didn’t exactly act like Harry’s bird. Might have been, of course, but might not. Anyhow, she worked on the Daily Negative but said to keep quiet about that. Mel found out all about this Lalique geezer and located pictures of his stuff. Sort of weird, some of it, whopping great brooches looking like spiders or lizards and stuff, but some fab pendants, and bracelets, and things you’d hardly know how to describe. Really far out, anyway. Mel got hold of these photos of the sort of women who wore the jewelry, too. And picture postcards of paintings, like ads from fashion magazines, only real old. Lady This and the Princess de Wotsername. Actresses, too—Sarah Somebody and Lillie Langtry who used to have it off with the king, Harry said. And some bird lying on a heap of tiger skins in the nude except for about fifty bangles on her arms and legs and enough chains and necklaces to stock a shop. Dead kinky.
Miss Seeton, By Appointment (A Miss Seeton Mystery Book 6) Page 3
