‘He didn’t mention one,’ said Max, ‘but you can be sure that he’ll have some starlet on his arm for the premiere. Preferably someone approved by his publicist.’
Emma wanted to know more but was distracted by the arrival of their food. She had scallops followed by fillet steak, so tender that her knife seemed to sink into it. They drank red wine and talked about the days when Max had performed in variety shows in Brighton.
‘The Hippodrome is closing at the end of the year,’ said Max. ‘I can’t quite believe it.’
‘Nor can I,’ said Emma. ‘The Beatles played there last year.’
‘The Beatles are all we hear about in our house,’ said Edgar.
‘The girls are fans then?’ said Max.
‘No,’ said Emma. ‘I am.’ She realised that she was rather drunk.
‘Ruby’s met them, apparently,’ said Max. ‘They’ve certainly got some loyal fans. So has Bobby. Screaming girls following him everywhere he goes. I saw them hanging about outside the Ritz.’
‘My WPC was one of them today,’ said Edgar. ‘Undercover.’
‘Is that the intrepid Meg Connolly?’ said Emma.
‘Yes,’ said Edgar, looking surprised. ‘How did you know?’
Before she could answer, Max gave an exclamation, ‘Talking of intrepid . . .’ Emma turned and saw Bob Willis weaving through the tables towards them. She’d seen that look on his face before.
‘Sir,’ he said to Edgar, ‘you’d better come. They’ve found a girl’s body on the undercliff walk. She’s wearing a Roedean cloak.’
Chapter 11
The body was discovered near Rottingdean and so Edgar and Bob drove to a nearby pub, the White Horse, and took the sloping path down to the undercliff walk, a raised walkway between the cliffs and the sea. The tide was out but Edgar could hear the waves rushing into the shore. A fitful moon illuminated the dark figure of a uniformed policeman with a sprawled shape at his feet. As he saw them approaching, the PC turned on his torch. In the arc of light Edgar saw Sam Collins and a photographer standing a discreet distance away.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.
‘We heard that a body had been found,’ said Sam. Edgar couldn’t see her expression but he could hear the note of excitement in her voice.
‘Is it a suicide?’ said the photographer, a man called Harry Payne, whom Edgar knew from various civic events.
‘We don’t know anything yet,’ he said. ‘Keep back. Have some respect for the poor girl’s family.’
‘So it is a female then?’ said Sam. Edgar ignored her. He approached the constable, who was talking to Bob. Edgar knelt and drew back the coat that was covering the body. The moon emerged from behind the clouds and he saw blonde hair partly covering a white face.
‘It’s not Rhonda,’ he said.
‘Any ideas of cause of death?’ asked Bob.
‘No,’ said the PC, ‘but she didn’t fall. There’s no blood. Body was found by two men leaving the White Horse to walk back into town.’
‘Where are they now?’
‘I sent them back into the pub to wait for you.’
‘Good work,’ said Edgar. ‘How long have the journalists been here?’
‘They arrived soon after I did. Must have had a tip-off.’
Edgar turned back to the body. It was a young woman, wearing a dark cloak over what was obviously a minidress. Long pale legs sprawled pathetically and she was barefoot.
‘Shine your torch on her face,’ said Edgar.
Now he could clearly see bruising around the girl’s neck. One hand was still clenched in a fist.
A voice behind him said, ‘That’s Sara Henratty.’
‘I told you to stay back,’ said Edgar.
‘It’s Sara,’ said Sam, taking no notice. ‘I recognise her from the photo. Look at her hair.’
The platinum-blonde head gleamed in the moonlight. Edgar thought that Sam was probably right. They had found one of the missing girls.
*
‘Well, that’s the evening finished then,’ said Emma. As soon as she said it, she realised how callous that sounded.
Max didn’t seem shocked though. ‘Not necessarily,’ he said. ‘Would you like a pudding? Or coffee? Or brandy?’
‘I don’t want pudding or coffee,’ said Emma, ‘but I would like a brandy.’
They took their brandies into the lounge and Emma was appalled to find herself saying, with real bitterness, ‘Edgar won’t ask for my help on this case, you know. It’ll be all “let’s not talk about work now”. He’ll leave it all to Bob, who hasn’t got a clue, and the amazing, resourceful Meg Connolly.’
‘You miss it,’ said Max, swilling the brandy to and fro in his glass. It wasn’t a question.
‘Yes, I do,’ said Emma. ‘I suppose you think that’s very strange, to miss murder.’
‘Not at all,’ said Max. ‘I miss staying in freezing boarding houses and performing to sparse audiences in filthy provincial theatres.’
‘Do you?’ said Emma, turning to look at him.
‘Yes,’ said Max, his eyes meeting hers. ‘I miss it unbearably sometimes.’
‘But couldn’t you still perform on stage?’
‘Variety’s dead,’ said Max, taking a hefty swig of brandy. ‘It’s all film or TV these days. You have to do what Ruby’s done, become a TV personality, as they’re called now. It’s not enough just to have a talent. You have to be a personality. To make the public love you.’
‘But you’re a film star,’ said Emma. ‘That’s better than being a TV personality.’
Max laughed, rather harshly. ‘I’ve been fairly successful in a few films but I’m not really an actor. Not the way that Lydia is. She’s an actress to her fingertips; it’s extraordinary the way she can become another person, from her walk to the way she moves her mouth. I’ve been lucky to have had roles that have allowed me to play a version of myself. No, I’m a magician. It’s all I really know how to do.’
‘But do you have to go on acting?’ said Emma. ‘I mean, you’re so . . .’ She was going to say ‘rich’ but compromised with ‘successful’.
‘No,’ said Max. ‘I don’t have to act or perform magic. And you don’t have to go out and solve crimes. We’ve both got nice, comfortable lives with loving partners and beautiful children. But it’s not enough, is it?’
Emma wanted to disagree but, faced with Max’s sardonic gaze, she could only nod and look away. He was right; it wasn’t enough.
They walked back along the seafront. The lights were still shining on the piers and they could hear laughter coming from the pubs on the edge of the beach. Brighton was getting ready for the summer. The covers were off the merry-go-round and as they wandered past it Emma could see the glint of the horses’ teeth, bared in that slightly threatening carousel smile.
‘It’ll be the Whitsun bank holiday soon,’ she said. ‘Edgar’s worried about the mods and rockers causing trouble.’
‘Joe Passolini is a mod, apparently,’ said Max. ‘Or he just likes the clothes. We don’t have all this in LA, the tribal thing. Or rather, we have different tribes.’
‘When are you going back to America?’ asked Emma. She noticed that he said ‘we’.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Max. ‘If Bobby gets the finance in place for the film, he wants to start shooting immediately. That would mean that I’m here for the summer. Lydia and the kids might come and join me.’
‘What’s she like?’ said Emma. ‘Lydia?’ She would never have asked this normally but something about the night, and the fact that they were walking side by side, created an odd feeling of intimacy. Besides, she was still slightly drunk.
Max hesitated before replying, inhaling on his cigarette, the tip glowing red in the darkness. ‘Lydia’s very bright,’ he said at last. ‘Very intense. She’s had a hard life. She started out with nothing, apart from her extraordinary looks, of course. And her acting talent. But it makes her very insecure. She always has to be striving for the next
thing. We fell in love on the set of The Conjuror when I played this Svengali figure and I’m afraid that she still has me cast in that role.’ Max was silent for the next hundred yards and then he said, ‘I’m not sure that I’ve ever been properly in love. Apart from that one time with Florence but that was over so soon. Who knows what would have happened?’
Florence had been murdered. Emma remembered finding her body, the dark hair brushing the floor, the macabre staging to make the scene look like the death of Cleopatra. She wished that she hadn’t talked about missing murder. ‘That must have been awful for you,’ she said.
‘Awful for her and her family,’ said Max. ‘She had so much talent. I’ve still got the plays and sketches that she wrote. That’s something I want to do while I’m here. Try to get them played on the radio. Florence deserves to be remembered as something more than a murder victim.’
Florence had died eleven years ago and Max still carried her writings round with him. Emma had never realised how deeply he felt about her.
‘It’s like the old stage trick,’ he said, as they made their way up St James’s Street. ‘The girl is in the cabinet and, when you open the door, she’s gone. Now you see her. Now you don’t. The Vanishing Box. I went walking around Brighton yesterday, Mrs M’s boarding house, the Hippodrome, the Royal Albion. I kept seeing Florence everywhere.’
‘Maybe it’s being back in Brighton,’ said Emma.
‘Maybe,’ said Max. ‘Maybe it’s just because I’ve avoided thinking about her all these years. I should have found a shrink and poured out my emotions to them. That’s what all the film stars do.’
Is that what Lydia Lamont did? Emma wondered. Aloud she said, ‘Sometimes it’s good to keep your feelings hidden.’
Max stopped under a streetlight to look at her. ‘But you’re lucky, you’ve got Edgar to talk to.’
‘Yes,’ said Emma. ‘I’m one of the lucky ones.’
They had reached Emma’s front door. She didn’t know whether to invite Max in or to kiss him on the cheek when they parted. He solved that for her by making her a sweeping bow.
‘Goodnight, Mrs Stephens.’
And, as soon as she had the door open, he set off down the dark street.
Chapter 12
‘The warden of the children’s home identified the corpse as being that of Sara Henratty, aged sixteen. The body was discovered on the undercliff walk near Rottingdean at ten-thirty p.m. by two men leaving the nearby White Horse pub. Rigor mortis had not set in which indicates that decease was relatively recent. We haven’t had post-mortem results yet but the police surgeon thinks that death was the result of manual strangulation. There was bruising around the deceased’s neck and blood under her nails which indicate that she must have tried to fight her assailant off. Her necklace was broken and there were marks on her skin where it had dug into her neck. She was barefoot, wearing a skirt and jumper and a cloak that forms part of the Roedean uniform and which contained the nametag “Rhonda Miles”. This supports the theory that the disappearances of Rhonda Miles and Sara Henratty are linked and may also be linked to the disappearance of Louise Dawkins.’
That was the super’s theory, thought Meg, and she wouldn’t put it past his wife, genius detective Emma Holmes, winner of the public speaking championship 1944, to have put the thought in his mind. But the DI, who was giving the briefing in his usual deadpan style, wasn’t about to deviate from his notes. There was something curiously upsetting about hearing another human’s death described in these terms, ‘manual strangulation’, ‘rigor mortis had not set in’. She looked up at the photograph of Sara on the incident board: the blonde hair, the miniskirt, the defiant expression. Sara could have been any one of the girls that Meg had been to school with; she could have been any one of the girls camped outside the Ritz Hotel. She was only sixteen, she should have been at school today or working in a factory or a shop, longing for the weekend ahead. Instead, she was lying in a morgue, identified only by a nameless warden. Meg felt her eyelids begin to prickle. She couldn’t cry, not here, not in front of O’Neill and Barker, both of whom were lounging in their chairs as if hearing about a teenager’s death was the perfect way to spend a Friday morning.
DI Willis was winding up. ‘Our focus of investigation is on the undercliff area between Rottingdean and Brighton. It’s well used by pedestrians and cyclists. I’m sending a team down there today to see if anyone saw anything suspicious last night. We will also follow up on Rhonda Miles and Louise Dawkins.’
‘I’m surprised Lord Snooty hasn’t been in already,’ said O’Neill, ‘demanding to know why we haven’t found his daughter.’
‘If you mean Sir Crispian Miles,’ said the DI, ‘Superintendent Stephens is driving to Surrey today to give him the news in person.’
That’s special treatment, if you like, thought Meg. She was pretty sure that the super wasn’t in the habit of making house calls to concerned relatives.
DI Willis was talking to Sergeant O’Neill now: ‘What did you discover from Louise’s nursing friends?’
‘Nothing much,’ said O’Neill, with a shrug. ‘They all liked Louise but none of them were particularly close to her. The other nurses seemed to accept the story about her going to the West Indies although Louise had never mentioned any family there. There was apparently a doctor, a houseman, who seemed suspicious though, asked a few questions.’
‘Interview him,’ said the DI. ‘Was he Louise’s boyfriend?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Barker. ‘But he’s on our list.’ He made it sound very sinister.
‘Sara Henratty’s mother is dead,’ said DI Willis. ‘No one knows where her father is but I’ll put out an appeal. There’s an aunt in Seaford. WPC Connolly, I’d like you to come with me to break the news to her. Any questions?’
Plenty, thought Meg. Why do I have to visit the aunt in Seaford? Is it because DI Willis is scared that she’ll cry and he needs a woman to do the tea and sympathy bit? Why is the super driving all the way to Surrey? Why do O’Neill and Barker always get to do everything together? She always liked to ask a question though, just to show that she was paying attention, so she said, ‘What about Sara’s shoes?’
‘What?’ The DI, who had been pinning something on the board, turned to look at her. O’Neill whispered something to Barker, who laughed.
‘You said that Sara had been found without her shoes. I mean, that’s strange, isn’t it? She was warmly dressed, wearing a cloak and everything, why wasn’t she wearing shoes?’
‘It seemed that she had been wearing shoes,’ said DI Willis, ‘the soles of her feet weren’t cut or dirty as they would have been if she’d been walking barefoot. It appears that the shoes were removed from the scene.’
‘Why?’ said Meg, adding ‘sir’ as an afterthought.
‘The super thought they may have been taken by the killer as a trophy of some kind,’ said DI Willis. ‘Or else they held a clue. The pin that holds the cloak together was also missing. That might also have been kept as a trophy or keepsake.’
‘Fancy a new pair of shoes, Meg?’ said O’Neill.
Meg ignored him.
*
Having caught the early train to London, Max was not amused to be kept waiting ten minutes at the Garrick Club by Bobby Hambro and his director, Wilbur Wallace. He didn’t like the Garrick either, even though it had links with one of his favourite venues, the Theatre Royal on Drury Lane. But today the place seemed to have little or nothing to do with show business. In fact the decor, with its leather armchairs and flock wallpaper, reminded Max of his father’s London club, where they had met once or twice for uncomfortable lunches where the then Lord Massingham had told his son quite what a disappointment he had proved to be. Max hadn’t been close to his father; he supposed that, subconsciously, he had always blamed him for his mother’s death. Alastair Massingham had been a distant parent, disapproving of Max’s show-business career and hardly much more impressed with his wartime exploits. Though, to be fair, Max d
id remember his father once sending him a telegram, care of the War Office, enquiring if he was still alive, so perhaps he had cared a bit.
It was funny, he had never seen much of his father when he was alive, but now Max found himself almost missing him. The late Lord Massingham would be quite at home here, ordering tea and digestive biscuits, or perhaps a martini as it was almost midday. Max sighed and drank some of his – almost undrinkable – coffee. He’d give Bobby another ten minutes and then he’d head off to somewhere more congenial. The London Dungeon, perhaps.
Bobby arrived just as Max was gathering up his things.
‘Sorry, sorry.’ It was pronounced ‘sarree’. ‘The morning just got away from me.’ This was hardly an excuse, in Max’s book. He was also irritated to see Joe Passolini in attendance on the Hollywood star. He knew that Joe, who hated to see a profitable client slip away, would like to control his affairs again but Max was quite happy with his American agent, a quietly spoken New Yorker called Harvey Broom, who was known as the deadliest deal-maker in the business.
Wilbur Wallace, the director, didn’t look the deadly type. He was a thin, bespectacled man with a slight look of John Lennon, for Max’s money the only interesting Beatle. It was a surprise, when Wilbur spoke, to hear an American accent rather than a Scouse twang.
Bobby and Wilbur ordered tea but Joe asked for a Bloody Mary. The hangover drink, thought Max. Joe certainly had the slightly pasty look of someone who had been out on the tiles the night before.
‘So, Max,’ said Bobby, flashing him the famous ‘golden’ smile. ‘We have the funding. I’ve been searching for a big old house that we can use for Dorincourt. I was in Worcester last weekend.’ He pronounced it ‘War-cester’.
‘It’s pronounced Wooster,’ said Max.
‘No! That’s real neat. They didn’t have anything that was quite right though. But – great news – we’ve got Vanessa Lee to play Sandy.’
‘Who?’
‘Fauntleroy’s American girlfriend, Sandy.’
Now You See Them: The Brighton Mysteries 5 Page 8
