by Amy Myers
‘Have to keep body and soul together.’ He grinned as he saw what she was looking at. ‘I’ve dug these out. There are quite a few that might interest you.’
‘Your family took all these, although he was just the lodger?’ She purposely kept the ‘he’ anonymous, waiting for him to take the lead.
‘Part of the family,’ Ron said promptly. ‘Those were different days. I was only a kid when he first came. Coronation year, Mum always remembered it by. I was five then.’
‘The man we’re looking for is called Tom.’
‘No. Bert. He was Bert Holmes.’
Georgia’s heart sank. True, Tom could have changed his name – in fact, she cheered up, he probably did. In fact, Holmes – Watson? Coincidence? Maybe not, and she brought out her own photos of Tom in that period. ‘Let’s lay them side by side,’ she suggested.
She spread hers out on the table, and Ron opened the albums in which the photos had been carefully pasted in by loving hands.
‘That’s Mum there – that’s Dad – ’ The black and white photo showed two men and a woman with their arms round each other on an open heathland – Hampstead, Georgia wondered, or Regent’s Park? The wide skirt and the trilby hats spoke clearly of the fifties. ‘And that’s Uncle Bert.’ Ron pointed to the second man.
‘Uncle?’
‘That’s what we did then,’ Ron explained to her relief. ‘Couldn’t call him Mr Holmes, too formal when you had your breakfast with him every day and he took you to school or to the playground, but then you couldn’t call him Bert either. Disrespectful. So it was always Uncle.’
‘He really was considered part of the family then.’ She studied the photos of Bert side by side with those of Tom, looking at the hands, the eyes, the angle of the head as he faced the camera, the slope of the shoulders if he was in side or back view. They were of the same man. This couldn’t only be her eagerness to get a match.
‘Oh, yes, he was a proper entertainer, was Uncle Bert. Always doing tricks. I thought he was the cat’s whiskers. Few conjuring tricks, lots of jokes. Said he’d been a clown for a short time, like at the circus.’
So that was surely proof. Although – Georgia had a sudden doubt. Could Ron have looked up Tom Watson’s career? To her relief, she remembered that Marsh & Daughter hadn’t used Tom’s name on their website. ‘Did he still do stage work professionally?’
‘No. Surprising, really, because he was good. He did odd jobs, though Mum told me he settled down to a job as a washer-up at some club in Soho later on. I had my own life when I started working, so I didn’t take too much notice.’
Soho? That was the site of the second cluster of reds on the location map. She thanked her lucky stars that she’d brought all the Soho details with her. It was time to plunge in the deep end, she decided. ‘Does the name Tom Watson mean anything to you?’
‘Don’t think so. Should it?’
‘He went on trial for the murder of his wife in 1953 but was acquitted.’
‘And you think he’s my Uncle Bert?’ He couldn’t be faking that look of astonishment.
‘Tom Watson was a clown. He had regular season slots in shows on the south coast.’
‘He talked about the war – he’d been in the army, he said, but never on the stage.’
‘Your parents never mentioned it?’
‘Not that I can remember, but they might have known and never thought to mention it. Mind you, they wouldn’t want me going out with a murderer,’ he added doubtfully.
‘Acquitted,’ Georgia said firmly. Amazing how the word ‘murderer’ was so emotive that it cancelled out all else.
‘There weren’t so many murders then, and it would have been in the press. They never said anything, and Bert lived a quiet life here.’
‘When did he leave?’
‘He was here a good long time, a good twenty years.’
‘He left in the 1970s?’ Was this coincidence? Not too fast, Georgia warned herself. Take it step by step.
He took his time thinking about this as she looked at more of the neatly captioned photographs, mentally thanking Ron’s parents. How would researchers in the future fare now that photo albums were so often stored inside computers?
‘Yes,’ Bert said at last. ‘I reckon I was in my mid twenties when he left. I was busy at work and so on, but I still lived here, and Bert and I were sort of mates.’
‘Sort of?’
‘Well, he was a lot older than me,’ Ron said apologetically. ‘I thought of him as Mum’s and Dad’s friend by that time. Mind you, we went to a lot of opera together.’
Georgia must have looked as amazed as she felt, because he took her up on it, grinning. ‘We both liked it. It’s so expensive today that it’s more for the nobs and idle rich, but back in those days the galleries were stuffed full of East Enders and regular folk like me. Bert took me to my first one – must have been in the mid sixties, when London was supposed to be swinging. Didn’t swing much round here though; life went on as normal. It was Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci we saw. That makes sense, now you tell me Bert was a clown himself. I thought opera a bit daft first off; but it began to get hold of me, and we went to quite a few.’
Georgia had to get a grip on herself. Pagliacci – the story of a man who comes home and kills his wife because he fears she’s unfaithful. ‘Vesti la Giubba’ – ‘Put on the Costume’ – was the famous aria; once the costume was on, no one thought of the man who wore it, that he had emotions and tragedies in his life like anyone else. But why should this suddenly seem so significant to her? Because, she acknowledged, it brought Tom to life for her so vividly, as a man who had lived and worked here, who had interests outside work and a home that he could return to. She almost knew what Ron Eastley was going to say next. And he did.
‘But Bert liked Mozart best though. The Magic Flute was his favourite.’
Forget Rick, this is Tom, Georgia tried to tell herself, but the two were merging even more strongly into one. Still no word from the French police about Aix-en-Provence.
‘He liked operas in English so he could understand,’ Ron continued, ‘so we went to Sadler’s Wells pretty often and then to the Coliseum when the Wells opera moved there. Sometimes we even went to Covent Garden. That was really something. Bert said he liked Papageno best of all.’
Of course, he would, Georgia thought jubilantly. It all fitted. Papageno the mirth maker, the clown. A step forward on Tom seemed to bring hope for the same progress on Rick.
‘I used to tease Bert by asking him if he didn’t ever want a Papagena for himself.’ Ron looked taken aback. ‘Pretty tactless of me, if you say he was accused of murdering his wife.’
‘You weren’t to know.’
‘He used to joke I should find one for myself first, and if there were any left over, he might consider it. I never did find one, of course, but we can’t have everything. You married?’
‘Newly wed,’ Georgia told him. ‘At Easter.’
‘I thought about it. Still do . . . but somehow –’ his eye roved round the room ‘– this place is a bit like marriage. Know what I mean?’
‘It’s home and memories. And they’re part of marriage.’
He looked pleased. ‘I’ve got a lodger up above too. She’s company. We go on holiday together sometimes, or I go with my mates, so I’ve got things sorted.’
She thought he had, and so, perhaps, had Tom, when he lived here. ‘Was Bert happy, do you think?’
He considered this. ‘You never ask yourself things like that at the time, do you? I never wonder if my upstairs’ lodger’s happy. We just potter on. Answering your question, I reckon Bert was. He looked comfortable just pottering on.’
There was a major question still burning in her mind. ‘So why do you think Bert left?’
‘I never knew. I asked Mum and Dad, and they were mystified too. Bert said he’d just seen an old friend and was going on a short trip; he packed a small bag, and off he went. I’ve been thinking it through. This would have been
about 1974 or 1975.’
‘Did he say where he’d been when he returned?’
‘He didn’t come back – that was the thing. They had a postcard saying he wouldn’t be coming back, thank you very much, and someone would be coming for the rest of his things.’
Georgia went very cold. ‘And did someone call?’
‘Yes, his brother came round to collect his stuff. Not that there was much of it.’
His brother? In all their enquiries, nothing had turned up any information about a brother.
‘And the postcard was definitely from Bert? Did your parents hear from him after that?’ Please, please let the answer be yes.
‘I think there was a Christmas card for a year or two, no address. Mum and Dad never said anything about the postcard, so I wouldn’t know. They were pretty upset.’
‘They didn’t think it strange?’
‘They assumed he’d gone back to his old life and that was that. Course they had no idea he was a—’ He caught her eye. ‘About the murder and all that.’
Georgia took herself to lunch at a local fish and chip shop, which seemed fitting. She wondered if it had been open in the nineteen fifties and tried to picture Tom eating here. Perhaps the connection to Broadstairs would have been too much for him. She tried to make sense of her thoughts. She had no doubt that Bert Holmes had been Tom Watson, but where did that leave Marsh & Daughter? It suggested that Pamela’s story was true for a start, but where had Tom gone after that? And what about this brother? He must have known where Tom was. One thing was for sure. She felt more confident about asking Luke for a contract.
She decided a phone call to Peter was in order. Would it be worth checking the Soho connection while she was here? One of the three red-flag contacts had claimed she worked with Tom. On the other hand, Georgia had had an uneasy feeling on leaving Ron’s house that she was being watched. Was it Ron peering through the window, Greg Dale even more dedicated to her trail than she had feared or was it just a prickling feeling in her spine that there were uncharted waters ahead? She reassured herself that it could be due to the memory of a former case where she had indeed been stalked on a London visit and that today she was merely imagining a silent watcher. It was ghosts from the past who were following her, not flesh and blood from today.
The number rang – but it wasn’t Peter who answered it, nor even Margaret. It was Janie, which surprised her, as this was their office number. Then the receiver must have been snatched by Peter, for he took over peremptorily. ‘What news?’ he snapped.
‘Good news. Almost certainly our Tom. It’s worth my trying the Soho contact.’ Georgia told him briefly about the disappearance in the nineteen seventies, to which he said, ‘Hmm,’ and other noises to that effect.
The contact turned out not to live in Soho at all. Soho was where she had known Tom, or Bert Holmes, or of course neither if it wasn’t the same person, Georgia reasoned. Dorothy Wild now lived in a flat in Finchley, on the ground floor of her daughter’s home. That was an easier journey by underground than Soho, although the house was some way to walk once she reached Finchley station.
Dorothy Wild looked as if she were in her eighties or late seventies, which is what Georgia had expected, given the fact she claimed to have worked with the supposed Tom. She was no slight Alison Robin to look at and was far more robust physically, tall and purposeful.
‘It’s a long time ago,’ she said doubtfully. ‘You probably think I’m rambling.’
‘No,’ Georgia replied truthfully. Those alert eyes wouldn’t be rambling for a good while yet.
‘That chap on your website was Bert Holmes. I check it regularly just for fun – but I never expected to see anyone I knew. And blow me down, up pops Bert.’
‘You’re an Internet fan?’
‘Not much else to do at my age. Get with it or get lost, I say. I like your books, by the way. That’s why I click on the website.’
‘I’m glad you do,’ Georgia said sincerely. ‘Have a look at these photos and see if you recognize him in any of them.’
She passed over three or four and studied Mrs Wild as she looked at them. ‘Not sure about these. I knew an older man,’ Dorothy said, passing the first test. The words ‘not sure’ meant she could rely on her.
‘Try this one.’ Georgia gave her an unidentified photo from the white envelope in Ken’s box, and this time the answer, to her relief, was:
‘That’s Bert all right. I worked with him in the late sixties, early seventies. I was a waitress at this club, the Blue Parrot. Bert did the washing up.’
‘He was actually a clown by training – did you know that?’
‘A clown?’ Mrs Wild looked surprised. ‘He was a bit of a comedian in his quiet way, but no acrobatics at the kitchen sink. I suppose he wouldn’t, would he?’
‘Did he talk about his past life?’
‘I didn’t know him much outside work, only a “how are you?” sort of relationship. He was a nice chap, got a rough deal from the other staff because he wasn’t the mixing sort. He was still there when I left in seventy-two though.’
‘Do you know what happened to him afterwards?’
Mrs Wild looked suspicious. ‘What do you want to know all this for? What’s he done?’
‘His name was really Tom Watson, and in 1953 he was acquitted of having murdered his wife.’
Dorothy snorted. ‘Not surprised he was acquitted. If Bert was this Tom, he couldn’t murder a sandwich, let alone a woman.’
‘The jury agreed with you.’
‘So that’s why he came up to the Smoke, to get over it?’
‘I imagine that’s the reason. Most people in his hometown still thought he was guilty.’
‘Poor old bugger. I never realized. Mind you, we never talked much. Except once. That club was a funny place. I reckon Bert was the only one who didn’t know it was a meeting place for half the gangs of London. And I don’t mean spotty kids. Soho had all the bright lights then. Not that you’d have seen much light in the Blue Parrot. Know anything about those days, do you?’
‘The age of the Beatles, Carnaby Street, rise of pop music, women’s lib . . .’
‘Crime, ducky, crime. The fifties and sixties were the time for the big gangs. Billy Hill and Jack Spot ruled the fifties and the Krays and others in the sixties. One of them was the Silver Gang. Nasty lot, they were, and for a time they were riding high in the crime charts, until they went a step too far with their rivals and had to scatter for their lives. They used to like the Blue Parrot.’
She paused and looked as if she was doubtful whether to continue, but thankfully she did. ‘Bert was in the kitchens, of course, but he used to take a peek at the punters every so often. We all did. One day in comes the Silver Gang together with the big chief, Quicksilver, they called him. Well, Bert freaked out.’
‘In what way?’
‘He got very excited and said he knew a couple of the guys, and went out to talk to them. Then he came back again, looking rather queer. We all reckoned Bert must have done time or got mixed up with a bad crowd at some point.’
‘Could this have been about the time he left?’ Even as she spoke, she realized her mistake.
‘Oh no,’ was the inevitable and disappointing answer. ‘This would have been in the late sixties.’
‘And you didn’t see him again?’
‘Afraid not.’
So Dorothy Wild could not have been the ‘old friend’ whom Tom had seen just before he left for Broadstairs. Two steps forward, one back. Nevertheless, Georgia consoled herself that the Blue Parrot information could suggest Tom had been mixed up with a criminal crowd in London.
She needed Peter’s input on this, so risking the chance that Janie might still be with Peter at Haden Shaw, she went straight there after picking up her car at Canterbury. When she reached Haden Shaw, there was no sign of Janie, which might have made it difficult to talk freely. Even so, she was annoyed with herself for feeling relieved. Discussions between three, however, w
ere not as focused as discussions between two, and she could hardly have asked Janie to kindly step into another room.
‘No Janie?’ she asked as casually as she could.
‘She’s gone,’ said Peter. ‘Fire away.’
His voice did not encourage further questions, and Georgia had plenty of talking to do, so she postponed them.
‘It’s quite likely Tom got drawn into crime in London,’ Peter agreed after she’d finished. ‘If there had been any connection between the couple he saw at the Blue Parrot and Broadstairs, it would have been under the name of Tom Watson, and if he was anxious to preserve his new identity, he would hardly have jeopardized it by rushing out to greet them. Which suggests they knew him as Bert Holmes.’
‘Wrong. He might not have known these chums were part of the Silver Gang.’
‘True. As Dorothy Wild remembered it for over thirty years, however, it must have imprinted itself strongly.’
‘Or grown in her mind,’ Georgia said brightly.
Peter ruminated. ‘Let’s be optimistic and assume we have a clear-headed witness. Sufficiently so to take us a stage further, at any rate. We could check out the gang, see what’s known about them?’
‘Even though it was years before Tom returned to Broadstairs?’
‘Despite that. Remember that we were told about some odd goings-on in Broadstairs in the fifties. Perhaps it’s time we talked to Brian James again. Your favourite misogynist.’
Peter didn’t seem overeager about this, however. In fact, she realized, although he had looked impressed, he had not been as delighted at her news as she had hoped. Something must be wrong.
‘Is it Janie?’ she blurted out.
‘No.’ He didn’t even look surprised, and she realized why. It was worse than that.
‘Rick?’ Of course it was. Realization hit her like a blow to the stomach.
‘I’m afraid so. Décourt has done a good job, but it’s bad news. The Provençal police were notified at the time along with every other national police force. He’s been in touch with them again, but there were no unidentifieds in Aix or the surrounding area that could possibly have been our Rick – then or more recently.’
