Murder Takes the Stage

by Amy Myers

  Her favourite misogynist, Brian James, had apparently been delighted to see Peter again. Georgia had refused to go on the grounds that Peter would get far more out of him than her presence would allow. He agreed rather too readily, but she wasn’t sorry. She was still smarting from the setback over Rick. So great was the disappointment that neither she nor Peter had had the will to discuss a next step – if any. Besides, she had plenty to do at Medlars. His appointment had been for Friday, and it had suited her well to have an afternoon off. Early July was no time to be on the computer all day.

  ‘A Kir if you please.’ Peter turned up at Medlars early on the Friday evening, looking, she thought, more cheerful.

  ‘Not unless you’re staying the night,’ Luke said firmly. ‘I pack a powerful punch in my Kirs.’

  ‘A relaxing tomato juice then,’ Peter said sulkily. ‘I must say this is a very welcoming room – apart from its drinks service.’

  ‘Brian James,’ Georgia reminded him.

  ‘He was quite forthcoming about the funny goings-on in Broadstairs,’ Peter told her. ‘Not much help on the Tom Watson front though. When I put my point about Tom possibly being mixed up with London crime, and could it link with what was happening in Broadstairs, Brian came back with the fact that on the south coast there had been a tradition of funny goings-on for centuries. The other word for it is smuggling, including just after the Second World War.’

  ‘For the black market?’

  ‘Indeed. Cigarettes, brandy, booze, this, that and the other, paintings – you name it.’

  ‘Smuggled in by boat?’

  ‘Chiefly. It came into the Gaps, seven coves along the coast, and was then taken into the town or through tunnels to inland farms. The particular Gap that Brian says they had their eye on in the early fifties was the furthest north towards Cliftonville, appropriately called Botany Bay. It was pretty deserted out there then, with only the odd bungalow around and unmade-up paths.’

  ‘Ideal for Joan’s lifestyle,’ Georgia commented.

  ‘Not just her. It’s an interesting line to follow up. I wonder if anything other than light entertainment was going on in Waves Ahoy! Talking of interesting lines,’ Peter added, ‘I forgot to tell you that, as we suspected, Tom Watson didn’t have a brother.’

  ‘So who was the so-called relative?’

  ‘Could be the Eastleys’ memories at fault.’

  ‘It could,’ she agreed, but there was surely a question mark over that. ‘There’s something I forgot to tell you too.’

  ‘Good. We’re quits. What?’

  ‘The Magic Flute was Tom’s favourite opera.’

  ‘The Magic Flute was Tom’s favourite opera.’

  TEN

  So Tom had no brother. Georgia was still grappling with the implications. Did that mean Tom wasn’t Bert or something more sinister? What had happened to him after that visit to Broadstairs? The coming of another Monday morning made the answers no easier. Weeks were passing, and every time she and Peter seemed to be in command of the boxing ring, they were thrown back on the ropes. She did not dare raise the subject of Rick. She had forced herself to spend time on the Internet chasing up Mozart performances in other capital cities of Europe, but increasingly it seemed a hopeless task, when they had no firm evidence that Rick had even gone anywhere with Miss Blondie. Tom Watson seemed an easier option – although not by much.

  ‘Is your Mr Eastley a reliable witness?’ Peter asked for the umpteenth time. ‘It could have been the same “old friend” who called for the luggage, or even Bert himself. And was the “old friend” part of the reason he went to Broadstairs?’

  ‘Who knows?’ Georgia fumed. ‘Presuming what Ron said was accurate though – where does that take us? Did Tom do another disappearing act after coming back to Broadstairs and, if so, why?’

  ‘The Silver Gang reared its head again when he got back to London? Presumably it liked to keep a low profile and Bert-cum-Tom knew who at least two of them were. Quicksilver wouldn’t like that. It’s a nickname that suggests he liked keeping himself and his gang out of the limelight.’

  ‘Bert hadn’t come to any harm since he’d seen them in the club.’

  ‘Maybe he became part of the gang.’

  ‘He might have run into the gang again.’

  ‘Sheer speculation.’ Georgia dismissed this gloomily. ‘Even Suspects Anonymous turned up its nose at that when I tried it on them.’

  ‘It was equally dismissive of the rest of the website replies. It spat most of them straight out again and dumped them in its trash can as irrelevant. We’ve nothing left for either the period leading up to the Broadstairs visit or after it, except for some “maybes”.’

  The dreaded maybes. It was always a problem deciding whether or not to follow such replies up, save for acknowledgement and thanks. She usually left it to Peter to settle, since it was a job he’d faced so often in his police career.

  ‘If the few maybes on Tom after the mid seventies don’t lead anywhere, are we entering murky waters?’ She had to voice what Peter must also have been thinking. ‘Could Tom have committed suicide after that, or did he disappear so convincingly that he wasn’t noticed by anyone?’

  ‘It’s a line of investigation,’ Peter agreed cautiously. ‘After all, if he had plans not to return to London after Broadstairs, why not tell the Eastleys? I’ll check the name Bert Holmes to see how many deaths were recorded around that time, but it’s going to be hard to work out which was our Bert Holmes, if indeed any of them were.’

  ‘And if it leads nowhere?’

  ‘We look at the possibility that something happened during his visit either to change Tom’s mind about returning to London or which caused it to be changed for him.’

  Pleasant though it was for her to be sitting in the gardens on Broadstairs’ seafront, it was less attractive to think what it might have been like for Tom after over twenty years’ absence, Georgia thought. Here he could be passed unrecognized by former friends, colleagues and acquaintances without a second look. What would Tom have been thinking about? What were his plans, his reasons for being here, besides seeing Pamela on her birthday, or was that really his sole purpose? If so, after achieving it he had walked off into a metaphorical sunset, so far as the record was concerned.

  Would Tom have tried to see Cherry and failed – perhaps for the mundane reason that she had been out when he called? No, such a meeting would be too painful for both, unless he meant to settle down here for good. Tom seemed to have been the sort of person who might have sacrificed his own happiness in the interests of freeing his former sweetheart from the taint of association with him. That was unlikely to have changed in the years since the murder, and therefore he would be unlikely to seek her out.

  It was far more likely, Georgia reasoned, that Tom would try Sandy or Micky, and perhaps even Mavis. Tom’s former home would represent unhappiness, so he would not linger there after seeing the neighbour, and he would avoid the pubs. Where in the town might Tom have been happy? One obvious answer was in Waves Ahoy! and on the pier where it had taken place. If anywhere, he would go there after seeing Pamela, Georgia decided, especially as he’d come in summer, when there might have been another show on the pier. He was unlikely to have had a car, so probably would have come to Broadstairs by train. After visiting the pier and the site of the former theatre, he would have walked back up the High Street to take the train back to London. No, that was wrong. Tom had taken a bag with him, so perhaps he intended to stay at least one night.

  Tom, like Rick, was becoming an increasingly elusive shadow to pin down, but now Luke had agreed to a contract and it had been signed, Marsh & Daughter were committed to push onwards, however foggy the outlook.

  Peter had suggested Georgia should make Christine her first port of call today. Apart from being a friendly face, Christine held Micky’s diaries from the nineteen seventies, and so far she and Peter had checked only those for the nineteen forties and fifties. The new information meant the
re was a slim chance of Micky’s diaries from the later period indicating something of interest.

  To Georgia’s relief, Christine looked much better than she had at the funeral. She needed all her energy for the coming baby. ‘Only a month or so to go now,’ she said happily as she led the way to the garden, where two easy chairs awaited them. ‘So far the hospital is pleased with me. No complications, so full-steam ahead for the big one.’

  ‘Not too big, I hope,’ Georgia joked.

  ‘How are you getting on with your Brittany quest?’ Christine asked diffidently. ‘Any luck?’

  ‘We’re more or less at a standstill,’ Georgia confessed. ‘Just as in the Watson case, there are too many ifs and buts to proceed in a straight line. We’ve got a lead on Tom though. Could I have a look at the diaries from 1973 onwards?’ Better to be on the safe side. Both Pamela and Ron had been unclear about the precise year, although 1974 was the most likely.

  ‘Just in time. We were thinking of chucking them all out.’

  ‘Don’t do that,’ Georgia pleaded.

  Christine laughed. ‘Chucking them into the garage, at any rate, just in case the British Library wants to make an offer for them. I’d keep them inside, if they really meant anything to the family, but they don’t.’

  ‘I’m hoping they’ll make more sense to us now that we know a little more.’ Georgia realized to her surprise that with them actually in front of her she was eager to get started. A new day, a new lead, she thought hopefully.

  ‘Nineteen seventy-three.’ Christine came back with the relevant diary, and Georgia looked quickly through the July entries. There were the familiar jottings of names and the same cryptic comments, but Christine was right. There was little here to aid the entertainment historian of the future, or even the family researcher, and certainly not Marsh & Daughter. She went through the weeks following Pamela’s birthday in case Micky had recorded the visit later, but there was nothing that could possibly relate to Tom Watson.

  Christine disappeared inside again and came out with the 1974 volume, on which Georgia was pinning her hopes. Again she was disappointed. There was nothing.

  With decreasing hope, she opened up 1975 and turned to the fourteenth of July.

  ‘Hey, jackpot time!’ She was staring at a familiar name. ‘Bert Holmes.’ That was all Micky had written, but it was enough. It was a bullseye. ‘Thanks, Christine.’

  At least she now knew Tom had called on Micky, and possibly Sandy as well, although Sandy had kept quiet about it if so. Another thought: ‘Did Ken ever look at these?’

  ‘He had them on his shelves, but he never talked about them.’

  Could Ken have just chanced on this entry and seen the Watson connection there? Even if he did, Georgia thought, excitement draining away, it was surely too slender a clue for Ken to build his entire scoop on. And yet it was tempting to believe he could and that he, like Peter and herself, had found Mrs Robin and even persuaded Pamela to talk, even though she had been annoyed at his pestering.

  On the off chance, she leafed through the entire diary and at the very end was rewarded. Micky liked being cryptic, and here was plenty of proof of that. Under ‘Addresses’, he had written with heavy underlining: Notes on Sherlock’s Last Case, and a series of notes: ‘The Adventure at Wisteria Lodge’; ‘Talk about the Three Garridebs’ – the Three Joeys, she wondered. Irene Adler was another name noted down – Joan Watson? Micky was devoted to her, as Sherlock was to ‘the woman’. ‘The Mysterious Lodger’ was another, and at the end a query mark with ‘The Giant Rat of Sumatra’, the famous story that Sherlock had never recorded, if she remembered correctly. So to what was that a reference? And if Tom had told Micky the story, why the need for a question mark?

  ‘Helpful?’ Christine asked, obviously curious.

  ‘Oh indeed it is. I think Tom Watson did come to see your grandfather in 1975, but I need a few months to work out Micky’s clues. Could I—’

  Christine laughed. ‘Of course you can take it.’ Then her face clouded. ‘Do you think my father read this and that he was as excited as you?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ Georgia said gently.

  A pause. ‘So Tom didn’t commit suicide in 1953. This diary seems to be proof, and it’s probably what Dad had discovered too.’ Another pause. ‘Does Cherry know?’

  ‘No, and I don’t think she should. Not yet, at least. It’s unlikely that Tom went to see her, because it would be hurtful for her if he then left again.’

  Christine accepted this, to Georgia’s relief. She tried to put herself in Cherry’s position. Suppose she and Peter discovered that Rick had paid a visit to Kent and not bothered to look in to see them?

  Port of call Number Two was Cath for lunch, and Georgia arrived at Marchesi’s on the seafront buoyed up with the success of the morning. It was a pleasant place for lunch, and so full of atmosphere that it would be easy to think that the famous Signor Marchesi, who had moved here in the nineteenth century, was still busily baking away in the kitchens. Georgia realized she and Cath had been talking for half an hour without a word of work.

  At last, Cath leaned back and said, ‘OK. That was good. Now tell me what I’m here for.’

  ‘To have dessert.’

  ‘Sounds good. I haven’t got much for you yet in the way of information though. Poor return for your cash if lunch is on you.’

  ‘It is, and you should have some soon, I hope. How about smuggling and the black market in the nineteen fifties?’

  Cath cocked an interested eye at her. ‘Our lads at it, were they? Uncle Tom Watson and all?’

  ‘Not Tom necessarily, but it would explain Joan’s lifestyle.’

  ‘So would generosity with sexual favours. Anyway, you need my help?’

  ‘Yes. We need to know if any of the Waves Ahoy! company could have been involved.’

  ‘Ships rowed ashore at dead of night? Smugglers’ tunnels – that sort of thing?’

  ‘Do you know the Gaps, and in particular Botany Bay?’ She outlined what Peter had learned from Brian James.

  ‘I knew there were a lot of tunnels,’ Cath said when Georgia had finished, ‘but I don’t know which if any were in use in Tom Watson’s time, or how distribution was done in the fifties. Actually, we may make light of it,’ she added, ‘but it can’t have been a barrel of fun living on rationing. And there must have been a thin line between the butcher handing you the best joint and paying for foreign goodies on the black market.’

  ‘The smuggling going on sounds rather more than that. Anyway, I suppose fun’s what you make of a situation.’

  ‘Are you the family’s chief moralizer, Georgia?’ Cath pulled a face. ‘If so, warn me now.’

  Georgia did a double take. ‘Are you implying . . .’

  ‘I’m considering my options,’ Cath said hastily. ‘Could you stick me around long term?’

  ‘I could try. Can you stick Charlie, warts and all?’

  ‘I guess it’s the warts that attract me, so the answer’s yes.’

  ‘They might not attract you so much with a mortgage to pay and housework to be done.’

  Cath grinned. ‘Trying to put me off?’

  ‘No way,’ Georgia said fervently. ‘You’re the great white hope for Charlie, and therefore for Gwen and also for us. Keep right on.’

  ‘That’s nice. Maybe I’ll think about it seriously. Charlie and I might shack up together for a while anyway.’

  ‘Not a bad plan. That’s what Luke and I did.’ Georgia decided not to mention all the agony, the heart searchings, the ‘what ifs’ that had preceded their marriage. Cath could reason that out for herself. Georgia realized with some surprise that she had difficulty remembering them now. One step, and on to a new plateau, which seemed wonderfully good so far.

  ‘This smuggling thing,’ Cath hesitated. ‘Suppose I have to take this all the way?’

  Georgia knew exactly what Cath meant. Her grandfather, who worked in the US stores. ‘Do you want me to tackle Buck on it?’ she
asked.

  ‘No. I’ll put my mouth where my heart is. Leave him to me. That’s if you trust me.’

  Georgia thought about this perhaps rather too long for Cath raised her eyebrows, even as Georgia replied, ‘Yes. In return,’ she added, ‘I’ll present you with some information. Maybe Buck could help on that. Strictly under wraps at the moment.’

  ‘I promise. What is it?’

  ‘We’ve evidence that Tom came back here, at least briefly, in 1975.’

  ‘What?’ Cath looked incredulous. ‘You really mean the suicide, the presumed death and all that are all so much hot air? Are you sure? Was Ken on to this?’

  ‘I think so. What we don’t know is everything that Tom did when he came back that day, and what happened to him after that. It seems fairly sure he came back primarily to see Pamela, who had been a toddler when he left. What we don’t know is who else he saw while he was here, apart from Micky Winton.’

  Cath’s eyes gleamed. ‘Ken’s scoop? You mean Micky kept mum all that time?’

  ‘He seems to have done, and it’s more than possible that that was indeed Ken’s last scoop. We need to know who else Tom visited though.’

  ‘Such as Grandpops?’ Cath asked sharply. ‘Well, OK. I’ll tackle him, but he tends to be rather good at parrying tackles. How likely is it Ken was about to launch the news of Tom’s return plus a “where are you now?” appeal?’

  ‘It seems a strong probability. It’s even possible that one reason for his return was to spill the beans on who did kill Joan.’

  ‘Then why didn’t he do just that?’

  ‘That,’ Georgia said, ‘is open to discussion.’

  ‘He was stopped?’

  ‘Nothing to rule that out yet.’ She had been hoping Cath wouldn’t make the connection. Some hopes! Cath was right there.

  ‘Then you – we – might be in for a big surprise, like the teddy bears in the old song. You know what I think?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘If Tom copped it in 1975 and Ken this year, so could you, so could Peter and so could I, if we go probing too far. Unless it’s general knowledge that Tom returned here. I’d be in favour of telling the whole damn world or, short of that, everyone concerned with Tom Watson.’