Kitabı oku: «A Miss Dimont Mystery», sayfa 5

‘Extraordinary, the meterological variances in the area,’ said Renishaw, looking up at the sky. It was if he was reading her mind. ‘Sun, snow – all at the same time.’

‘I was with a friend at the weekend, over in Brawbridge. Snowed in. She needed an extra Plymouth gin to keep out the cold.’

‘That wouldn’t be Geraldine Phipps, by any chance?’ asked Renishaw quickly, turning towards her.

In the glow cast from the Christmas tree he seemed strikingly handsome, but of course that was probably the light. She’d decided on first sight he was not to be trusted.

‘Let’s talk about you, David. It seems extraordinary that someone as gifted as you should want to come and work on the Riviera Express. How so, may I ask?’

‘I needed a change.’

‘From what?’ Good, now it’s me asking the questions, she thought.

‘Canada isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Land of infinite promise. You work hard, you get ahead. You don’t like one place, you go to another. Nobody bothers you, asking questions.’

‘Like me, you mean? Asking questions?’

He looked up at the sky again, smoothing back his hair, tamping down the irritating curl. ‘You’re an exceptionally clever woman, Judy, I don’t mind you asking. It’s all the others – with their official forms and their fact-checking and their overbearing manner…’ his voice trailed off.

This seemed a bit of a contradiction, but I’ll leave it lying where it is for the moment, thought Judy. ‘So what do you do while the rest of us are wasting our lives snoozing?’

‘Think up things.’

‘Such as?’

‘Well, everyone has a novel in them, so sometimes I tap away at that. It started out as an autobiography but in everybody’s life there are bits which are plain boring, or you don’t want to revisit, and you need to skip if it’s going to be at all readable. So in the end it was just easier to change the names and make it into a novel.’

‘How’s it going?’

‘I’ve called it On the Road to Calgary.’

‘Would that be a tribute to Jack Kerouac? Or do you think you’ll end up being crucified?’

Renishaw turned to face her and leaned forward. She caught a whiff of something exotic – was it his hair cream? – and involuntarily drew a deep breath.

‘Calgary, Alberta. Where they have a stampede. I worked there for a time on the Calgary Horn. Cattle country. It’s a bit like the wild west out there – you’re an instant star if you can lassoo a chuckwagon to your ten-gallon six-shooter.’

‘Ha, ha!’

‘Fabulous people.’

‘Rather different from Temple Regis.’

‘I’ve travelled a lot. Something always seems to make me want to move on.’

‘And Mrs Renishaw…?’

‘Who can say?’

‘Anything else you do in the wee small hours?’

‘I started an organisation called Underdog. When you’re working on a paper you hear all sorts of things – you know that yourself, Judy – people with genuine grievances against their boss, or their neighbours, or the police. Sometimes as a reporter there’s nothing you can write to help them – the laws of libel and so forth – but a telephone call, or a foot in the door, from someone who’s not afraid of authority can work wonders.’

‘I don’t quite follow.’

‘A stiff talking to. A reminder of the complainant’s rights. A suggestion that they should think twice before bothering the little person again.’

‘That sounds like issuing a threat.’

‘I wouldn’t say that, Judy,’ he replied with a smile. ‘And anyway, don’t tell me that during the war you didn’t use threats to get what you wanted.’

Now how do you know about that? thought Judy. I never talk about my war work.

‘Mr Rhys is an old friend,’ explained Renishaw.

‘I doubt he told you anything about his war work,’ said Judy coldly.

‘There are ways,’ said Renishaw with a nod. He really was supremely arrogant – so self-assured, so careless how he stepped. This whole conversation is not about sleep, or Geraldine Phipps, or the weather, or lassooing cattle in Canada. It’s about him putting me in my place, demonstrating his supremacy, indicating he knows yards more than he will ever share. What’s it all about?

‘I still don’t understand why you chose Temple Regis.’ And I do wish you’d hurry up and choose somewhere else, you’re bothering me.

‘I was working in Fleet Street after I arrived from Canada. I didn’t like the atmosphere. I like fresh air, a small community.’

And now you’re here in Temple Regis, are you going to go round knocking on people’s doors, telling them they can’t do this and they can’t do that? Is that part of a journalist’s job?

‘You mentioned Geraldine Phipps.’ She wasn’t going to do this, it felt as if she was handing Renishaw an advantage, allowing him to extract more information from her than she’d get from him, but she couldn’t resist.

‘Isn’t she wonderful?’

‘It does seem strange you know her and Mr Rhys. You, all the way from Calgary via Fleet Street, knowing two people who to my certain knowledge have never met. That’s an extraordinary coincidence wouldn’t you say, David?’

‘Not really. She knew my mother. I was walking past the pier on my first day here and she was just coming out of the theatre door. Hadn’t seen her for years.’

How strange, thought Miss Dimont. How strange that two women whom I call my close friends – Geraldine, and Lovely Mary – both know about you, and yet don’t mention your name to me. I know we as human beings have a habit of making and keeping secrets but really, I work on the same paper as David Renishaw! I’m his chief reporter! Why haven’t they mentioned him to me? What is the mystery about this man?

Pushing these thoughts to one side, she ploughed on. ‘And then, Pansy Westerham. I was a bit surprised about that – that you knew her name, and when I’d just been talking to Geraldine about her.’

‘Simple. My mother knew her too. They were all thick as thieves back in the old days. I brought up her name and it set Geraldine reminiscing. She does that quite a lot, doesn’t she?’

And why ever not, she’s had an extraordinary life. And now the prospect of Gene Vincent, roaring his motorbike on stage next summer – there’s no stopping her!

‘She’s adorable,’ Judy agreed. ‘Well, I think I ought to be going.’

‘Oh, come on, we’ve only just got here. It’s fun – forget the fisticuffs earlier, they were just horsing around. You’ll find there’s real life here at The Nelson.’

‘I think that’s why we don’t come here.’

‘Then I’ve got a wonderful surprise for you,’ said Renishaw, getting up and taking her hand. ‘Come along!’

Inside the pub, the crammed bar where they’d arrived an hour before was now empty. ‘Come on,’ said her fellow reporter, and pushed her through a side door. In this room, once a coach shed, cobwebs swung from the ceiling. An overpowering smell of dust and horse dung came up from under the feet of a crowd gathered in one corner.

Nearby, a makeshift bar was making light work of replenishing people’s glasses, while next to it an old fellow stood on a chair shouting. There was a tall box on a bench with half a dozen shelves, around which a group of men, their sleeves rolled up, were busying themselves. What with the dust and the jostling crowd, it was difficult to gather what was going on.

‘What is this?’ asked Judy. He hadn’t let go of her hand.

‘Wait and see,’ he said and strode forward to the bar.

‘FYVTAWUNNERTHESIX,’ bellowed the man, red-faced and clearly loving every moment. ‘AAAAAYVANSTHETOOOO.’

In a moment Renishaw was back with a ginger beer for Judy and one for himself.

‘What is this?’ he heard her shout, the noise was getting beyond a joke.

‘You’ve never seen this before? It’s mouse-racing.’

‘It’s what?’

‘MOUSE-RACING,’ yelled Renishaw, but his words disappeared into thin air.

Miss Dimont had bolted.

Eight

Though adored by many, there were a few who disliked Athene Madrigale intensely; and they tended to be the ones who worked closest to her.

This wasn’t to say that Devon’s finest soothsayer was anything other than lovely. Miss Dimont felt instantly better if she could spot Athene across the newsroom, half hidden behind her lopsided bamboo screen adorned with ostrich feathers and silk scarves, staring at the ceiling for inspiration and puffing gently on a Craven ‘A’. She lit up the room with her clouds of smoke, her oddity and originality.

No, it was the sub-editors, the down-table reporters, the photographers and, of course, the printers, whose lordly attitude towards all was a bit of a disgrace – these were the ones who sneered at her ethereal presence.

‘Call that work?’ one would say to another. ‘Dreaming up rubbish like Capricorn is rising – oh what a glorious week you’ll have! To think we struggle to fill the newspaper with real news and she just sits there making it up.’

It was no coincidence that in the newsroom the editor’s placard, near to Athene’s desk, had had its message:

MAKE IT FAST

MAKE IT ACCURATE

Augmented thus:

… MAKE IT UP

Mercifully, serene Miss Madrigale was above such common slights, and anyway at the moment she had too much on her hands to worry about trifles. Apart from her weekly column – the first item everyone turned to when they paid their sixpence for the Express on Friday mornings – there was her children’s page.

Nobody knew where Athene came from; she seemed to pre-date most of the shifting population which made up the Express’s editorial staff. To be fair to Rudyard Rhys, when he took the editor’s chair he started to promote his astrologer, printing little teases on Page One, and found himself rewarded by an increase in circulation. For him, Athene could do no wrong.

Even the sunny-natured Miss Dimont found this vexing while out and about in town plying her trade, to be confronted by townsfolk eagerly demanding – ‘Do you actually know Athene? Could you give her a message from me?’ – just at the point where she, Judy, was breaking a murder or worse. There was a special magic about Athene; and it was just as well they were friends, for there was quite a lot to be jealous about when the plaudits came to be handed out.

One of the unbelievers was John Ross, whose job it was to make up the Athene Predicts… page. His rugged Gorbals childhood had not permitted glimpses of an azure-coloured future.

‘What’s this?’ he growled, holding a sheet of Athene’s lightly scented copy paper at arm’s length.

CAPRICORN – FULL STEAM AHEAD

The frustrations of last month will resolve themselves. Those things you tried to restore to some semblance of beauty from their shabby former selves will now look radiant, even if that means yourself. And – whatever you do – watch your aura!

‘What’s that mean?’

‘It’s rather nice,’ said Denise Hopton, a new sub-editor fresh from university, speaking from the bottom end of the huge wooden desk they occupied. ‘She writes well, doesn’t she?’

Ross looked up sharply at the newcomer, and from under his foot came the agitated rattling of the whisky bottle.

‘This,’ he said with a contemptuous sneer, as if he need add no further explanation.

PISCES – HARMONY replaces the nasty little rash-like irritations of November. Personal achievement, expression and success are all on the cards, undoubtedly as the result of the special effort you made to say what you think. Satisfactory adjustments will be made. Some aspects you thought you’d put in a drawer need minor adjustment, but this really is the last of them. Postpone new projects until after Christmas.

‘I give that A for Admirable,’ said the young girl, who was not in the slightest bit frightened of the old warhorse.

‘I give it G for Gobbledegook. Or mebbe S for—’

‘She’s lovely. And the wonderful tea she makes!’

‘Aaaaayyy…’ growled Ross, ‘ye wouldnae know. Ye’re young, ye didna have to break windows and rip out phones to get your space in the paper. Ye didna have to lie and cheat and rob because your news editor told ye to. But now here we are with this… this… gobbledegook filling one of our best pages, week after week. When we have important news to impart.’

‘News? Like this?’ said Denise, faintly lifting the copy paper she was subbing.

At the November meeting of Regis WI, Mrs Inchbald gave a thrilling demonstration of seven new ways to make wallpaper lampshades, and just in time for Christmas! She…

‘Ayyy, ye may mock, but that’s what sells our newspaper, girrlie – real life! Not made up fiffle-faffle!’

‘These lampshades look pretty fiffly-faffly to me, Mr Ross.’ There was a keen intelligence about the girl. She wouldn’t last long.

Just then the teleprinter behind Ross’s desk sprang into life. Its rattle was rarely heard except when an away football match was played and no reporter sent to cover it; or, less often, when the Sovereign died. Apart from that it usually slumbered in the corner, an expensive piece of journalistic vanity which convinced all that the Express was not only in touch with the rest of the country, but the rest of the world.

‘Denise,’ said Ross without lifting his head. He could easily have reached the paper spitting its way out of the machine, whereas she had to get up and walk from the other end of the desk – but that’s the price you pay for contradicting your chief sub-editor. ‘And – milk, two sugars, while you’re about it.’

The girl tore off the short missive sent from the Press Association, then took it off to the tea station, where she ostentatiously read it while waiting for the kettle to boil.

‘Hmm, this seems a good one,’ she said, rattling the paper, almost to herself but loud enough for Ross to hear.

‘Give it here, girrlie, I’ll be the judge o’ that.’

‘Was that one sugar or two?’ She was in no hurry to humour him.

Finally she brought over the cup and placed it on top of the PA snapful, as it was known, gently sloshing the contents so half the message from London was obliterated. ‘Oh, sorry about that – would you like a biscuit?’

Maybe John Ross was finally losing his power to mesmerise. He pulled out the damp communique and read:

PA Parly snapful — Sir Frederick Hungerford MP Temple Regis has disappeared after being attacked in street near Westminster home. Broken nose, badly bruised, hands stamped on. Attacker escapes. Full story 1 hr.

‘Well, he’ll nae be hiding out in Temple Regis while he recuperates,’ sneered Ross. ‘Broken bones heal so much better in the South of France, one finds – doesn’t one?’ He finished the sentence in a cod upper-class accent.

‘Good story, though,’ he added, licking his lips. ‘Where’s Judy, for heaven’s sake!’

Uncle Arthur was back from London. Though his home was high above a leafy garden square in a comfortable mansion-block flat, he seemed to have taken a shine to the seaside, or was it more that he’d taken a shine to his hostess, Auriol Hedley?

‘Out of the way, Arthur,’ she said bossily, ‘Christmas or not, this café is still open. There may not be many customers but you know that old wartime phrase we never shut – well, that’s me.’

‘You’ve got new coffee.’

‘Yes, and you can’t have any more. Haven’t you something to do – go and polish your shoes or something?’ She looked efficient this morning, the crisply laundered white apron as smart as the naval uniform she had once worn.

‘Chap I met in the club last night,’ said Arthur, neatly rearranging his long legs and staring at his twinkling brogues, ‘was talking to me about Freddy Hungerford – you know, you were mentioning him the other night.’

‘Ah yes.’ She couldn’t remember why.

‘Apparently a hooligan attacked him in the street. It was seen by several witnesses and someone called the police, but by the time they got there, he’d disappeared.’

‘Where was this?’

‘Near the House of Commons.’

‘Well, I expect he picked himself up, dusted himself down, and found his way across the road to Annie’s Bar.’

‘Well, yes, you would suppose that. But I heard on the radio this morning he hasn’t been seen since.’

‘Who? Hungerford?’

‘The very same.’

‘I’ve known many a man go missing inexplicably, Arthur. It usually only means one thing.’

‘Oh, hah! I suppose you’re right. He’s a rum ’un, though.’

‘I thought you only knew him after the First War, when you were recuperating together.’

‘Oh, chaps tell me things.’

‘What do they tell you?’ Business was slack this morning, there was time for a chat.

‘I don’t know if you recall but there was a fad for motor-racing at Brooklands between the wars. Huge great old Bentleys, and of course I had my Lagonda…’

‘I know about the Lagonda, Arthur.’ It was as well to stop him in his tracks when he started droning on about cars.

‘Freddy Hungerford – more money than sense – decided to impress his latest girlfriend by attempting the Blue Riband trophy. He bought himself a brand-new Sunbeam and there was an epic battle between him and Count Zborowski which Freddy lost. A bad loser, that man – the word went around. Zborowski was a complete gentleman about it, though. Even if he did drive a Bugatti.’

‘You’ll be talking about carburettors and double-declutching next, Arthur – anything in this for me?’

The old boy’s face expressed mild surprise. He had a tale or two in his repertoire about double-declutching, as it happened. Most people were fascinated.

‘Well, Hungerford then. He got a reputation as a womaniser. Though he was married, he had girlfriends who overlapped each other like planks on a clinker-built boat. Not so much love-’em-and-leave-’em as love-’em-and-shove-’em. He was a bit brutal, don’t you know. Not many friends as a result.’

Come on, thought Auriol, haven’t got all day.

‘What made me think of it was back in those days, one of his girlfriends went missing. Now he’s gone missing. Bit of a coincidence, that.’

Auriol sat down opposite him. Much water had flowed under the bridge since she quit her post in Naval Intelligence, but though sometimes she was called on in an unofficial capacity to help her ex-bosses, there was nothing much going on at the moment. A mystery always intrigued her, just as it did her best friend.

‘Tell me more.’

‘Wish I could remember her name, something to do with Kent – Maidstone? Dover? Anyhow it was long ago – doesn’t really matter now. What my chap at the club told me in confidence was that Hungerford won’t be getting his peerage.’

‘Peerage?’

‘Apparently he only agreed to step down as your MP in return for getting a seat in the House of Lords. My chap,’ added Arthur, just a shade boastfully, ‘is already there. In fact, his family, for generations…’

‘Yes, yes, Arthur, you have friends in high places. But what about Hungerford’s peerage?’

‘Well, he likes being in Parliament and had no intention of standing down. The local party are fed up with him and fixed it so he would get a peerage; that way he’d be out of their hair and they could get a proper person to represent them in Parliament, and he could snooze away the rest of his life in the Lords.’

Auriol made a snort of disgust.

‘Everything was fixed up and he even chose his title – Lord Downpark – while they chose a new candidate. I hear she’s a woman,’ added Arthur with a slightly amused chuckle.

‘And a wonderful one, too. You should see what she’s said and done since she became the candidate.’

‘Well, you would know,’ said Arthur, retreating hastily. ‘Anyway, here’s what I wanted to tell you – everything was going ahead quite smoothly when a royal personage got to hear about it and suddenly – pouf! – no more Lord Downpark.’

‘Heavens!’ exclaimed Auriol. ‘I didn’t know the royal family interfered in politics!’

‘They don’t,’ said Arthur quickly, though his expression seemed to say different. ‘Anyway, Sir Freddy he will now remain and he can kiss goodbye to the old ermine.’

‘But why, if it’d all been fixed up?’

‘I was told it went this way. Hungerford qualified on all counts – long service as an MP, no divorce, no criminal record, no bankruptcy, general support for the government when his party was in power. All that sort of thing – should have been a dead cert.’

‘So what went wrong?’

‘I think probably because he’s a dislikeable fellow.’

‘That hasn’t stopped others from becoming lords, in fact I’d say the vast majority are a bunch of—’

‘Now, now, Auriol! Anyway, it finally got to the ears of a Certain Person. The Person heard that Hungerford was having his head measured for a coronet, and the Person put their foot down.’

‘Her foot.’

‘If you like.’

‘So what now?’

‘Well,’ said Arthur, getting up and walking over to the window. The day had suddenly gone, and though it was barely four o’clock it was almost pitch-black. The lights of a late fishing boat bounced across the water as it came to rest on the harbour pontoon.

‘Well,’ he repeated, ‘I wonder whether this disappearance isn’t something to do with losing his peerage. He can be an ugly customer when he wants – I remember the way he treated those lovely nurses back at Seale Hayne. We’d all come back from the Front, all of us in a pretty poor shape and delighted to have the attention of these lovely angelic beings looking after us. But he was awful to them, bullying them around, shocking behaviour – I wonder if he isn’t a bit free with his fists.’

‘You said it was Hungerford who was attacked.’

‘Takes two to start a fight, Auriol.’

‘How would you know, Arthur? I bet you’ve never hit anybody in your life.’

‘Just saying,’ came the reply. He was inspecting the polish on his brogues. ‘It all fits together.’

‘It doesn’t make sense,’ said Auriol after a moment’s thought. ‘Look, I’m shutting up shop now, why don’t we go back to the cottage? You can put your feet up for an hour before supper.’

As the couple strolled companionably back through the deserted harbour, the conversation swung round to Miss Dimont again.

‘You know, I do agree with Grace that she should give up this reporting lark,’ said Arthur. ‘She has responsibilities to face up to. There’s the house, the business, the investments, all that to think about. She’s having a lot of fun down here, I know, and of course there’s you as her friend. But, you know, there’s always room for you up there in Essex – wouldn’t you fancy a change of scene?’

Auriol stopped in a pool of watery light cast by a harbour wall lantern. She looked up and smiled. ‘Your sister is very persuasive, Arthur, but this is one battle she won’t win – Hugue will never leave Temple Regis.’

‘Never?’

‘It’s her safe haven. While I stayed on in Naval Intelligence after the war she, as you know, shifted to another branch.’

‘Military Intelligence.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘A little birdy told me,’ laughed Arthur. ‘Oh, come off it! Of course it was – all that capering about in Europe.’

‘It wasn’t capering, Arthur. It was pretty awful – the Cold War was a war just as much as 1939–45 had been. She went through some gruelling times, I can tell you.’

‘Well, yes.’

‘In the end, she had to leave. She had to change her way of life.’

‘Well, yes, I…’

‘You remember she came down here to stay with me.’

‘That was when I was in South America.’

‘Well, I can tell you now, it took a year before she could get up with a smile on her face. After that she started to look around and found this vacancy on the Express. They were taking just about anybody on then, and certainly she knew nothing about journalism – but she got down to it and turned herself into a brilliant reporter.

‘Temple Regis is her safety blanket, her happy home, the place where she feels safe. Mme Dimont can huff and puff as much as she likes, but Hugue will stay here, I guarantee you that.

‘And anyway, what would that chap Terry do without her?’