Murder Takes the Stage

by Amy Myers

  ‘I’ll see what I have.’ Ken sounded ungracious, to say the least. ‘Fancy a stroll down to the pier where it all began?’ he then asked heartily.

  ‘Why not?’ Peter said agreeably.

  Georgia could think of plenty of reasons, like spending more time with these photos, but Ken was already putting the lid on the box.

  ‘Will that – er – ?’ Ken pointed at the wheelchair.

  ‘It will get me there OK. Any reasonable request fulfilled,’ Peter said, sounding remarkably cheerful.

  Why was that? Georgia wondered. Had he spotted something she had not? Or was it that Ken so obviously wasn’t telling them everything?

  Broadstairs was not crowded that afternoon, and the paved walk along the seafront to the pier was a pleasant stroll and must always have been so, Georgia thought, with the cliffs ahead of them and Dickens’s Bleak House overlooking the town and pier. She knew it wasn’t called Bleak House in his time, and that its provenance as the inspiration of the novel was disputed, but nevertheless today it made a fine and convincing picture. In the mid nineteenth century Dickens, whose favourite resort had been Broadstairs, had come flying down that hillside to sit by the pier and chat to the fishermen. Now, senior citizens were flocking to the pier benches, but it was still possible, Georgia thought, to imagine these sands packed with children listening to Uncle Mack or other entertainers in Victorian and Edwardian times.

  As Ken led them past the old boat house and on to the pier, she could see there were still a few fishermen and moored boats, but cars had now come to join them on the pier’s far side. The familiar image of a pier was of a long, slender construction reaching far out into the water, but Broadstairs’ pier was short and stubby, a working pier – and she liked it the more for it. Ships’ figureheads on the boat house and a plaque commemorating a lifeboat from the doomed Lusitania that had once been there were but two of the pier’s connections to history, but the modern age had its say too. At its end, where Waves Ahoy! must have taken place, there was now a cafe.

  ‘To me the theatre – as we called it – is still there,’ Ken said ruefully. ‘I never come here without seeing it there, and Dad and the others all playing their socks off, even sometimes when the waves came right over the pier and soaked the lot of them. The show packed up when I was four or five, so I can’t have seen it often, if at all, but it’s so vivid that Dad must have talked about it a lot. I can hear the laughter, see the chorus girls – and then I look again and there’s nothing there. I hear the singing too. And that’s without nipping into the Tartar Frigate.’

  The pub at the shore end of the pier was an ancient establishment. Given its name, it must be crawling with ghosts from the past, of whom Dickens was probably one, Georgia thought. Nice to think of him propping up the bar.

  ‘If your father believed Tom was innocent, who did he think was guilty?’ Georgia seized this opportunity.

  ‘No idea,’ Ken said promptly. He looked distinctly uneasy now. ‘Facts, I said. You’re asking for hearsay. And my scoop comes first.’

  An awkward silence followed, which Georgia had to break. ‘Sit down and I’ll buy three ice creams,’ she offered. When she returned from the kiosk, Ken was sitting in silence on a bench while Peter chatted away about the view in front of them.

  The gift mollified him. ‘I haven’t eaten one of these for many a long year,’ Ken said in surprise as she handed him the ice cream cone. ‘Looks daft eating it though.’

  ‘Not if you like them,’ Georgia said, licking her own and hoping Ken’s might lubricate his tongue again.

  ‘Would we trespass on your scoop if we talk to the people you’ve mentioned, other than Pamela?’ Georgia asked.

  Ken shifted uneasily. ‘Depends, doesn’t it? Never know whether it’s best to speak out or keep mum. It needs to be published soon. The more people know the better it is, I suppose.’

  ‘Could you let us have Cherry and Sandy’s addresses then?’

  Ken still hesitated. ‘Sure, but take care. And we’ve got a bargain, right? My scoop first.’

  ‘If anything was needed to make me curious about Tom Watson, that was it.’ Georgia was determined to keep off the subject of Rick as long as possible. At the moment that lay in her stomach like an undigested meal. ‘I saw one big chicken sitting on some lovely eggs about to hatch.’

  ‘Your chicken seemed very uneasy about giving birth to any eggs at all. Did you note his “need” to publish soon?’

  ‘I did. I took that to mean that there were others after the story.’ Had she misread that? ‘Or do you think it was because someone might try to stop him publishing it?’ ‘Could well be the latter. He was nervous about something, and it wasn’t us. Tom’s daughter perhaps. He was very cagey about her. And to be fair, Georgia,’ Peter added, ‘we didn’t have that much time with him, and nor were we in our best interrogation mode.’

  ‘No,’ she agreed as Rick’s shadow danced before her. ‘Shall we—’

  ‘No,’ Peter almost barked at her. ‘Let’s keep away from Rick till we get home. Then you can dig Luke out of his office and we’ll mull the whole thing over with him. OK?’

  ‘Yes.’ Georgia felt her tension subside. Luke would be umpire, Luke could give his judgement on how and indeed whether this lead should be followed up – and on whether they should hope or treat it as just one more possible line that would peter out.

  ‘Back to Tom Watson,’ Peter said firmly. ‘One factor seems very odd indeed.’

  ‘Cherry?’ She glanced at him.

  ‘Right. If she believed him innocent, why—’

  She finished it for him. ‘Didn’t they marry when he was acquitted?’ So that’s why he had been so cheerful earlier. He’d spotted a loophole.

  Peter sighed with relief. ‘We make a good partnership, don’t we?’

  She laughed. Peter had obviously decided he could see this as a Marsh & Daughter venture. ‘On the whole. Is that where Ken’s scoop lies – the Tom and Cherry angle?’

  ‘I doubt it. That’s a basic question he’d have dealt with long ago. His dad probably knew the answer. There was another interesting line though. Did you note the emphasis on “kill” when he talked about Maclyn’s relationship with Joan?’

  ‘No,’ she admitted guiltily. ‘What’s the inference from that?’

  Peter nobly did not reproach her. ‘That there was a relationship other than motive for murder.’

  ‘Ah.’ She turned this over in her mind. ‘Maclyn was one of Joan’s lovers?’

  ‘Highly possible, I suppose.’

  ‘Ken’s scoop?’

  ‘Could be. Who knows?’

  ‘We certainly don’t. We’re starting from scratch.’

  Peter agreed. ‘Much better. Tom Watson was acquitted, but was he really guilty? Disappeared, but no body was ever found.’

  ‘Like Rick.’ Georgia could not stop herself and immediately regretted it. ‘Sorry, Peter. I suppose I’m beginning to see too many similarities. Poor Cherry still waiting, still drifting along on a cloud of hope and irresolution.’

  Peter gave in. Rick obviously wasn’t going to wait. ‘We’re not drifting. Not now. Do you want to go ahead with this Tom Watson case – if case it is – side by side with Rick?’

  It was her own fault. She saw the quests side by side. She had a terrifying fantasy of a long road stretching ahead, with Rick strolling along it into the distance with a golden-haired girl and a clown trotting behind them. Although his back was to her, she knew that clown was still wearing his painted face. Suppose they all vanished into the distance without once turning to wave goodbye?

  Nonsense perhaps, but the image would not go; she had to force it to disappear. ‘We might succeed in finding the answers to both.’

  Peter did not reply, and she had to continue jerkily, ‘We can’t turn back now. We’d always wonder whether we should have gone on.’

  This time he did reply, with a surprisingly resilient, ‘You’re right.’

  ‘But that’s
really a hopeful lead,’ Luke said immediately, when Georgia told him of their modest breakthrough over Rick. ‘Do you agree, Peter?’

  Luke must have been able to tell from her expression that it was important, as he’d made surprisingly little protest at being hauled out of his office in the oast house and into Medlars’ living room.

  Medlars was only a mile or two from Haden Shaw where Peter lived, and its adjacent oast house housed the Frost & Co offices, which (as Georgia worked in Peter’s office in Haden Shaw) distanced their home and working lives admirably.

  Medlars was a ramshackle and comfortable house, and she knew Peter felt almost as at home there as she and Luke. Its wisteria-covered walls, old terrace and multi-period additions and restorations gave it the air of having solved problems far worse than theirs for a great many centuries, and today he needed such relaxation. He rarely came to the house in the evenings, however, and had paid even less frequent visits in recent months, now that he spent a lot of his spare time with Janie Gale, whom he had met during their previous case.

  ‘Yes,’ Peter agreed, to Georgia’s relief. ‘But it’s a pretty daunting task, you must admit. A nameless singer, an unidentified event and venue.’

  ‘Not that daunting,’ Georgia said stoutly, in the interests of spurring Peter onwards. ‘We’ve got the date, after all. We can check what Mozart events were on at that time. With her nickname, it could even have been The Magic Flute – that would explain the something-really-special element.’

  ‘How do we know if this Miss Blondie was persuading him to come to an opera, a concert or just a general local knees-up? Or even whether this girl was singing herself or only in the audience?’ Luke asked.

  ‘We don’t. But she was a professional singer, so that could suggest an opera.’ Peter was beginning to fasten on to the problem now, Georgia realized thankfully. She had been worried that he would stay outside the discussion, afraid even to hope that it might lead somewhere.

  ‘Does her being a professional make a difference?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. As a professional, even if she were in the audience, it’s unlikely to have been a village-hall concert if she had persuaded Rick to go with her.’

  ‘Possibly,’ Luke didn’t seem too convinced. ‘It depends on your definition of professional. Miss Blondie could simply have had a few singing lessons and a date in the local pub for which she was paid a fiver.’

  Georgia was thrown by this dose of cold water. ‘That’s pretty pessimistic, Luke.’

  ‘He’s right, Georgia,’ Peter said gently. ‘That’s why we’re here, to come down to earth and start seeing the situation for real.’

  ‘At least you have a trail to follow,’ Luke said placatingly.

  Georgia glared at him. ‘You mean a straw to clutch at.’

  ‘Yes, but a straw might turn into a stick, and then a branch.’

  ‘But we shouldn’t get our hopes up.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Luke said in genuine surprise. ‘This is something you’ve been hoping to find for years. So go for it.’

  He was right. Why not? Now they had the lead, they had no choice. Leaving it to lie fallow was not an option. And neither, perhaps, was Tom Watson.

  ‘We’ve heard of someone else in roughly the same boat,’ Georgia told Luke, ‘in that there’s nothing tangible, just an unfinished story and a missing person. There’s a murder involved, so it might make a case for us.’

  ‘A publishable case?’ Luke looked interested. ‘I was beginning to think Marsh & Daughter had found another publisher.’

  ‘We’ll be in touch in due course,’ Georgia said grandly. ‘After we’ve met the person in the same situation as us.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘An old lady called Cherry Harding. She believed in her lover’s innocence over the murder of his wife. He was acquitted of murder but condemned by his fellow townsfolk by word of mouth. Then he disappeared – and probably killed himself.’

  Luke looked dubious. ‘Remember the Luard case, near Sevenoaks, where the husband was thought to have murdered his wife? She was found dead in their summer chalet in woodland. He was never charged with murder, and yet there was a witch-hunt against him, and he committed suicide probably for that reason. The case was never solved. What’s the situation with your man?’

  ‘Again never cleared up. Tom Watson apparently adored his wife.’

  ‘Then why,’ Luke threw over his shoulder as he headed to the kitchen to cook the spaghetti, ‘did he need a sweetheart?’

  THREE

  Why did he need a sweetheart? For the umpteenth time, Georgia turned the question over in her mind. Lots of reasons surely presented themselves. For instance: Tom could have been a womanizer, or Cherry a fantasist, or their love was not mutual, or his relationship with Joan was not as Ken had made it out to be. Was Tom’s daughter a factor? Ken’s reluctance to provide contact details suggested she might be.

  She longed to get started on the case, both for its own sake and because it might help the nagging ache that came from thinking about Rick. Despite the endless Internet work, endless press reports, endless speculation, she and Peter were moving forward on neither mission. This Tuesday morning, arriving at the office she shared with Peter on the ground floor of his home, she decided enough was enough. It had been nearly two weeks since their visit to Broadstairs. Yesterday had been a bank holiday, which Peter had spent at the Fernbourne Museum with Janie, and she and Luke had wrestled with the garden when the weather permitted.

  Pulling up ground elder was a satisfactory way of getting rid of frustration, but today, back in the office, the latter returned with as much force as no doubt the former would. She and Peter had been holding back from contacting anyone until the spadework had been done, and until they knew when Ken’s scoop would appear. That didn’t prevent images of a clown removing his painted face to reveal – what? Nor did it remove that even more poignant image of Rick on his long road to eternity with a fair-haired girl at his side.

  ‘Don’t you think we’ve given Ken enough time? Let’s ask him what’s happening,’ Georgia pleaded as soon as she had flung off her jacket, greeted Margaret, Peter’s carer, who was busy in the kitchen, and cast one scathing look over the piles of catalogues, bills and other inessentials that had constituted post.

  Until recently she had owned the house next door, where she had worked and lived until she moved to Medlars with Luke eighteen months ago. Her own house had now been sold, but just at the moment she could have done with its solitude to work off her grumpiness.

  ‘Your patience is rewarded, child,’ Peter said smugly. ‘Ken’s emailed to say it will be in next week’s issue of the Broadstairs Chronicle. It comes out on a Friday.’

  ‘More waiting!’

  ‘They also serve . . .’ Peter murmured maddeningly. ‘If it cheers you up, Mike’s come up with the name of a chap who worked on the Tom Watson case.’

  ‘Really?’ It did cheer her up. Mike Gilroy had been Peter’s sergeant during his police career, before the accident that forced his retirement – if Peter’s life today could be called that. Peter still treated him as his private number two, which Detective Superintendent Mike Gilroy permitted, although he had his own ways of gently saying enough is enough.

  ‘He claims he can’t get at the records of the investigation,’ Peter said scathingly. ‘Claims he’s Downs Area and this case was under Thanet, and then some rubbish about the Data Protection Act. Tom Watson, although officially declared dead in 1963, might still pop up and threaten to sue the almighty Kent Police. Anyway, Mike’s chap lives in Tenterden now. His name’s Brian James, and he was a PC wet behind the ears in 1952.’

  ‘What about Cherry Harding?’ Georgia demanded. She was impatient to put her image of Tom’s sweetheart out of her mind and firmly implant the real woman, because she was surely at the centre of this case. ‘Shouldn’t we see her first?’

  ‘Police first. Cherry Harding will be prejudiced,’ Peter pointed out.

  ‘And
the police never are?’

  A withering glance. ‘Less likely, let’s say. We’re all human. Besides,’ he added, ‘I’d like to see James before I read Ken’s scoop. He was nervous about it, either through excitement or because it was going to stir up the case again, and so we need to know the police’s angle on it first.’

  ‘The murder was well over fifty years ago,’ Georgia pointed out. ‘It’s ancient history to the vast majority of Chronicle readers.’

  ‘It’s the minority Ken might be worried about,’ Peter said darkly. ‘Ten to one it will pass unnoticed, but just in case it arouses slumbering passions, I’d like to have more than the basics. It’s possible our ex-Chief Inspector Brian James will add some colour.’

  ‘Possibly over-lurid. Time adds rose-coloured spectacles but sometimes darkens them instead.’

  ‘Very poetic, but I’m going even if you don’t want to.’

  Georgia knew when she was beaten. ‘OK. Let’s book it.’

  ‘I have, darling. We’re off on Friday afternoon – provided you’ve no more important engagement like a hair appointment.’

  ‘My hair,’ Georgia retorted, restored to good humour, ‘knows when to lie low.’

  Fingers were drummed on the table. ‘There’s something else too, Georgia.’

  She was immediately alert. ‘Rick?’ Peter was avoiding her eye, so it almost certainly was.

  ‘All thanks to Google. I scrolled through another thousand or so entries. Have you heard of Guidel?’

  ‘No.’ Her heart seemed to be beating painfully.

  ‘Or the Festival des Sept Chapelles?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Janie says it was inaugurated in 1986 by the Duc de Polignac with the help of Dame Moura Lympany. A music festival, of course, not opera, but it would include Mozart. It’s now the Festival de Polignac.’

  ‘Janie?’ Georgia was taken aback. ‘You’ve told her about Rick?’

  Peter looked at her steadily. ‘You have Luke, Georgia.’

  ‘And you have us both.’

  ‘Sometimes, just sometimes, that’s not enough.’