Praise for TP Fielden

‘Peak comfort read has been achieved’

Red

‘One of the best in the genre’

The Sun

‘Unashamedly cosy, with gentle humour and a pleasingly eccentric amateur sleuth’

The Guardian

‘A fabulously satisfying addition to the canon of vintage crime’

Daily Express

‘Highly amusing’

Evening Standard

‘TP Fielden is a fabulous new voice and his dignified, clever heroine is a compelling new character’

Daily Mail

‘A golden age mystery’

Sunday Express

‘Tremendous fun’

The Independent

TP FIELDEN is a leading author, broadcaster and journalist. This is the fourth novel in the Miss Dimont Mystery series.

Died and Gone to Devon

TP Fielden

ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2019

Copyright © TP Fielden 2019

TP Fielden asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © November 2019 ISBN: 9780008243739

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 Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008243722

For

Julia Richards Ellis

– divine ancestral voice

Contents

Cover

Praise

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dedication

Part One – Winter

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Part Two – Summer

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Extract

About the Publisher

Part One – Winter

One

For a newspaper which went to such lengths to remind its readers of the forthcoming jollifications – ill-drawn holly wreaths garlanding the masthead on Page One, other pages adorned with large woodcut prints of Santas and sleighbells – the newsroom of the Riviera Express was decidedly lacking in Christmas cheer.

Above the sub-editors’ table some optimist had hung a dispirited-looking mistletoe twig, but since most of the desk’s occupants were too old or too ugly to kiss, as a gesture it seemed particularly hollow. Outside the editor’s office a despondent-looking fir tree was already shedding its needles, while from the darkroom came the sounds of Terry Eagleton murdering ‘Santa Bring My Baby Back To Me’. It wasn’t a nice thing to hear.

Betty Featherstone was sitting on John Ross’s desk, swinging her legs and listening to the old bore drone on about the glory days.

‘Ayyyyy…’ he said with a growl, ‘it was just aboot this time o’ year. The old King was dying, the worrld was waiting for the soond of muffled bells. Fleet Street had come to a standstill in anticipation. Ye’re too young to know the name Hannen Swaffer, but let me tell you, girrlie, he was the finest – the greatest columnist ever. Hannen Swaffer!’

‘Yes, I think I’ve heard the…’

‘So old Swaff was sent off to Buckingham Palace to find out how things were going. He came back to the office and told the editor: His Majesty must be slipping away. He didn’t even recognise me.’

‘Ha, ha,’ said Betty.

‘You say that, girrlie, but I can tell you don’t mean it.’

He was right. Betty was inspecting the run in her stocking, successfully dammed with a dollop of Cutex Rosy Pink nail varnish, and thinking about the WI Whist Drive report she had to finish before going-home time. Or rather, she wasn’t thinking about it, using Ross and his interminable meanderings as an excuse not to.

Nobody told her, when she joined the Riviera Express from school, it could be this dull – and in the fortnight before Christmas, too! All she had to look forward to for the rest of the afternoon was writing up the tide tables, sorting out the church brass-cleaning roster, and finally doing something about the Bedlington Crochet Club’s seasonal chef d’oeuvre, a knitted Madonna and child complete with manger, now lopsidedly adorning the font in St Margaret’s Church.

‘Ye jest don’ get the quality of writer down here, girrlie. Now Cassandra of the Daily Mirror – that’s quality for ye!’

As she half listened to the Glaswegian’s monody she struggled to think of an intro. How many thousand stitches, she drearily thought, would it take to make a knitted Madonna? Wait a minute – I could turn that into the New Year quiz!

‘Ye ever read his description of Liberace? So brilliant I know it by heart.’

‘Liberace?’

‘The singer, girrlie, the singer!’

Betty nodded absently. She was actually thinking about whether to take the train up to Exeter for the annual Pens ’n’ Lens Club party – though it usually ended, like all journalistic gatherings with added lubricant, in backstabbing and recrimination. She hated it, too, when people she hadn’t seen for a month or so asked after the wrong boyfriend. Betty got through men like a hot knife through butter, or it was the other way round.

Ross licked his lips and looked into the middle distance. ‘This deadly winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavoured, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love,’ he recited. ‘That’s Cassandra for ye! Sheer genius! Ayyyy, girrlie, have you ever tried your hand at writing something like that? Ye ought, ye know.’

‘The chap who typed that got sued. And his newspaper. And his editor. Are you suggesting we put that kind of stuff in the Riviera Express, Mr Ross?’

The chief sub suddenly found something more interesting to occupy his time.

Just then a heavy thudding noise proclaimed the approach of Rudyard Rhys, bewhiskered editor of the Rivera Express, stalking down the office in his heavy brogue shoes. You could tell that he too had yet to catch the Christmas spirit.

‘Where on earth is everybody?’ he snarled, though he knew perfectly well – they were all off doing their last-minute shopping and his newsroom was a wasteland.

‘Where is my so-called chief reporter, Miss Dim?’

‘She went off with her handbag,’ said Betty disloyally. ‘Didn’t say where.’

‘Anything in the diary for her?’

‘No,’ said Betty even more disloyally. In fact, Miss Dimont had told her before lunch, ‘I’m going over to Wistman’s Hotel to see Mrs Phipps. Back much later,’ meaning opening-time. The newsgathering was over for this week, after all.

‘Well, I’ve just had a call from Sir Frederick’s office. He’s giving a constituency workers’ party and wants someone to cover it. Says his secretary forgot to send the invitation.’

‘That’ll mean the Western Daily Press turned him down. He always favours them.’

‘Rr… rrr!’ said the editor, who hated his more powerful daily rival.

‘Anyway, Judy knows him. I don’t.’

‘It’ll have to be you, Betty, it’s on in an hour. Take that young Skinner fellow along with you.’

‘I thought you said politics was beyond me,’ said Betty, trying to get a rise out of her boss.

‘Six o’clock, Con Club.’ Rhys stumped back up the deserted newsroom. There were days when he barely held control of his newspaper and his best response to the doubters was to retreat into the office and slam the door. That showed them.

‘Better slip on your party frock,’ drawled Ross over his shoulder, ‘Sir Fred likes a pretty girrl ye ken.’

He’s seventy-five if he’s a day, thought Betty with a shudder. On the other hand there were always young people eager to get on in politics hanging around his office and the party was sure to be fun. It solved the Pens ’n’ Lens problem, too.

‘I’m going to make the crocheted Madonna the New Year quiz,’ she said decisively as she picked up her handbag from the desk and headed for the cloakroom.

‘Ay ye would, ye would,’ uttered Ross shaking his head and talking to his desk. If only he could pop out now for a quick drink with old Swaff and Cassandra in the Old Jawbones, what things they’d have to say to each other…

‘He did the most unspeakable things with animals,’ sighed Mrs Phipps, flipping ash into her coffee and throwing her ancient eyes up to the ceiling. ‘Quite reprehensible. We had to send him away.’

Judy Dimont – runaway chief reporter and possibly one of the most accomplished journalists in the West Country with her sizzling shorthand, rat-a-tat-tat typing and fearless interview technique – turned to face the old Gaiety Girl. She’d driven out to join her friend for lunch but now, looking out of the window and watching the snow crawl up the glass with quite alarming speed, she began to realise her chances of escape from Dartmoor were diminishing by the minute.

‘Your son-in-law, Geraldine? Guy? What did you do with him in the end?’

‘Bundled him off to Tangier. With just enough money to keep him away.’

‘Ah yes, I remember now.’

‘They don’t care how they treat their animals there. Beat their donkeys to death, then eat them. Or is it the other way round?’

‘Did it do him any good?’

‘It’s a hard life when you have no money,’ said Mrs Phipps, looking round for a waiter, ‘herding donkeys. Anyway, it prepared him for the jail sentence. Shocking for a mother to discover what a contemptible beast her daughter had married.¹ He had it coming.’

They were sitting at an upstairs window of Wistman’s Hotel and the light was fading fast. Inside, the room was suffused with a magical glow from the fire, the candles, and the reflections from the many gilded mirrors on the walls. As the massive hall clock struck the quarter and the logs settled lower in the grate, the lines in Geraldine Phipps’ old face gently evaporated until she became young again. Though approaching her eightieth year, she was still a beauty.

‘You look lovely, Geraldine,’ said Miss Dimont. ‘Must be all that success!’

‘They were barbarians,’ laughed Mrs Phipps, looking back with relish on her triumphant summer as proprietor of the Pavilion Theatre. ‘They came, they saw, they conquered! Raped and pillaged as well, I have no doubt! Come the spring, the Temple Regis birth rate will quadruple as a result.’

She said it with a joyous lilt to her voice, as if she personally had ordained the unwanted pregnancies which startled and divided Devon’s prettiest seaside resort, in the wake of Danny Trouble and The Urge’s riotous summer season at the end of the pier.

‘Shocking,’ said Miss Dimont, shaking her corkscrew curls in disbelief. Back in the holiday season, Britain’s No. 1 beat group had grabbed the town by the scruff of its neck, shaken hard, and prepared it for the 1960s in spectacular fashion. Their six-week residency at the Pavilion, though marred by an untidy death or two, had saved the theatre from closure, and turned Mrs Phipps into an unlikely national celebrity.

DOWAGER’S DRUM-BEAT DRIVES OUT THE DODOS, yodelled Fleet Street’s headline writers, though Miss Dimont’s own publication, the Riviera Express, was less forthcoming in its support. The editor disapproved of beat groups, and he especially disapproved of lively old dames turning his bailiwick upside down.

The two friends spent lunch hopping from milestone to milestone in Mrs Phipps’ eventful life, and though it was past three o’clock there seemed so much still left unsaid. Geraldine Phipps, who was spending Christmas at the hotel, was enjoying herself immensely and ordered a Whisky Mac for her reporter friend. Her own Plymouth gin had appeared as if by magic, for she was extravagant with tips.

Terry Eagleton, the chief photographer, had driven Miss Dimont out from Temple Regis in the Minor but then disappeared off to Widecombe-in-the-Moor, probably never to be seen again – the snows over Dartmoor now enveloping all and everything.

‘I have the feeling I’ll be staying the night,’ said Miss Dimont as a heavy thud of snow, driven by the Dartmoor winds, hit the window with a crash. It was getting darker by the second.

‘That’s nice,’ said Geraldine Phipps. ‘Because I’ve got something I want to discuss with you.’

‘Tell me first what you have planned for next season, Geraldine. At the Pavilion – is there something I can write about for the Express, since it looks like I’m stuck here till the snow plough comes through?’ Judy looked out of the window but by now there was even less to see, Dartmoor’s snows having seized the day and put it to bed.

The theatre’s proprietress settled more comfortably in her chair, looked around at the darkening room festooned with ivy and fat white candles, and exhaled.

‘Part of me yearns for Pearl Carr and Teddy Johnson,’ she said, ‘sweetly crooning tunesmiths. But frankly, dear, I’ve always adored a bit of danger – and those leather-jacket boys certainly provided that last summer!’

Miss Dimont recalled the singer Danny Trouble, who missed his mum terribly during the band’s turbulent residency at the end of the pier – not too much danger there!

‘But I wonder what my editor will say if you decide to throw a spanner in the works again next summer? Some people got very upset with all that racket you made, Geraldine.’

‘What? That fellow Rhys? The buffoon who calls himself Rudyard?’

‘He only changed his name when he thought he was going to be a novelist,’ explained Judy. ‘Richard Rhys has less of a zing to it. Anyway, if not Pearl Carr, then who?’

‘Before he was arrested, Gavin told me about a young man called Gene Vincent, rides on stage on his motorbike. Revs it up a bit, the girls go crazy! Then he starts to strip his leather off.’

‘Geraldine!’ cried Miss Dimont with feigned horror. ‘You’ll be eighty soon! Motorbikes? Strip-tease? At your age? What’s the Mayor going to say?’

Mrs Phipps’ finely painted lips crept into a wicked smile.

‘My dear, when we Gaiety Girls appeared on stage way back when, it wasn’t always a Salvation Army rally, you know. Some of us deliberately forgot to put on our frillies.’

‘Surely not!’

‘The can-can was a special favourite, just think. Very popular.’

‘Honestly, Geraldine, you’re a disgrace!’

‘No, my dear, I’m not. I’m not pregnant.’

‘I’m told there are eleven unwanted babies on the way. Those Urges and their urges.’

‘They should have been more careful. Never happened in my days on the stage.’

‘Really not?’ said Miss Dimont. ‘You do surprise me!’

‘Well,’ said Geraldine Phipps, gently reminding her lips of the gin glass, ‘not unless it was necessary.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘My dear, in my days at the Gaiety Theatre there were possibly as many as thirty or forty girls – dancers like me, darling – who married a lord. Some of them were well-born, but an awful lot of them weren’t.’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘The well-born ones would face no difficulty from the family should milord drop to one knee and pop the question. It was the others. The rule was – if in doubt, let nature take a hand.’

‘You mean they got pregnant deliberately?’

‘Cheaper to marry the gel than to defend a breach-of-promise action in court. You know how our noble families like to cling to their small change.’

Miss Dimont shook her head and took a sip of the Mac. It breathed fire into her chest and brought a tear to her eye. The vast first-floor sitting room, stuffed with big leather chairs and polished mahogany side tables, had emptied. Either guests had retired for a nap or had wandered off to the library to find a thriller. From where she sat in the window, Miss Dimont could see that nobody was entering or leaving the hotel by the front door – indeed, the wide semi-circular drive had altogether disappeared under the snow.

‘I’d better go and see if they have a room.’

‘Don’t worry,’ smiled Geraldine. ‘I had a word with Ethel while you were powdering your nose. You’re just down the hall from me and they’ve found you some pyjamas and things.’

I ought to phone the office, Miss Dimont thought lazily. She stretched and turned towards the fire, the idea escaping her brain the second it had been formulated.

‘So what is it you wanted to ask me about, Geraldine?’

‘A murder, dear. A murder long ago. One which touched the royal family and could have created an unprecedented scandal, had it ever become known.’

‘Good Lord!’

‘It happened around Christmas time, I suppose that’s what put the thought in my head. I’d forgotten all about it – but sitting here, seeing them putting up the decorations, getting out the punchbowl, brought it all back.’

‘How fascinating, Geraldine.’

‘I was there, Judy. I was there and it has puzzled and worried me ever since. I want you to solve it. I need you to solve it!’

Two

Temple Regis, a mere twenty miles from the edge of Dartmoor, was enjoying very different seasonal weather. Here, the maritime climate meant that as the day faded, the darkening sky revealed its precious jewels one by one, stars so sharply defined you could almost pluck them and wear them round your neck. The evening was beautiful.

‘Shall we go for a walk?’ said Auriol Hedley, looking at the elegant old gentleman sitting in her kitchen chair, his legs neatly crossed and the shine on his brogues sparkling in the lamplight. ‘The air’s crisp, but if you wrap up warm it should be invigorating. We could go to the pub.’

‘I say,’ said her companion, ‘what a wonderful idea!’ as if nobody had ever thought of going to a pub before. Miss Dimont’s uncle Arthur was like that – still a boy through and through, though the occasional arthritic twinge was a reminder that he no longer was.

‘Come on, then.’ Auriol was already in her ancient fur coat and whizzing Arthur’s hat across the room. He caught it neatly and jammed it on his head. They let themselves out of the Seagull Café and set off through the deserted harbour just as the moon rose to light their way.

Out in the dark you could hear the crack of lines against the boat masts, and the sloosh of water slapping the sides of the craft anchored against the harbour wall. Towards the mouth of the estuary a few red lights moving slowly inland showed there was still life on the water, but otherwise it was silent.

‘So glad you’ve come for Christmas, Arthur, always a joy to see you.’

‘My final attempt to put Hugue and her mother together again,’ he said, using the family name for his niece. ‘After that I’ve pledged never to say another word.’ Both shared a love for Miss Dimont, both were concerned at her evasion tactics when it came to Madame Dimont, Arthur’s sister – both seemed powerless to intervene.

‘Did Grace ask you to do something about it?’

‘You know what she’s like,’ said Arthur, linking his arm through Auriol’s. ‘Grace is as difficult in her way as Huguette – two opposing forces. Grace says, My daughter never sees me, and then finds an excuse when I try to put them together. Huguette is naughty – never replies to her mother’s letters and is always on a story or solving a murder or something, just when it looks like the two of them might meet.’

From across the harbour the old man and his companion suddenly heard the piping voices of young choirboys singing, in descant, a melodious chorus of ‘Once in Royal David’s City’.

‘Cynical little brutes,’ said Auriol briskly, stepping up the pace.

‘I say, steady on,’ panted Arthur. ‘That’s the spirit of Christmas you’re giving a kicking! Where are the tidings of comfort and joy in your heart?’

‘You don’t know. I had them knocking on my door last night. When I opened up they were wearing choirboys’ ruffs and had a candle in a milk bottle. Such innocence, such sweetness!’

‘Well,’ said the old boy, pulling his leather gloves tighter into his palms, ‘think yourself lucky. In London I get nobody knocking on my door this time of year. No point in leaving a mince pie on the doorstep when you’re on the eleventh floor of a mansion block. Personally, I think it’s charming.’

Auriol did not agree. ‘They stand there, singing and singing, looking at you with goo-goo grins, begging with their eyes to give them a hefty tip. And when you do, they don’t stop singing, they keep on going in the hope you’ll give ’em a bit more.’

‘Good heavens, Auriol, are you by chance related to Ebenezer Scrooge?’

‘Choirboys?’ came the snorted reply. ‘Extortionists!’

They pushed their way into the saloon bar of the Belvedere. Inside, there was a sense of repressed celebration – this was, after all, Bedlington, lordly neighbour of Temple Regis where beer is served only in half pints (and then with some disdain) while there were at least half a dozen different kinds of sherry on offer.

‘Sherry?’

‘Good lord, no!’ said Arthur. ‘A nice glass of whisky to keep the cold out, if you please. And you, Auriol?’

‘Same.’

Since her retirement from Naval Intelligence, Auriol Hedley had made her home, and a thriving business, in the Seagull Café, perched enchantingly on the edge of Bedlington Harbour, and a magnet for the more genteel seaside visitor.

Auriol had put on a pound or two since her uniform days, but it suited her. ‘La patronne mange ici,’ she explained airily to friends who came to try out her lardy cake and Welsh scones – and anyway, who was counting calories?

In winter, and especially around Christmas, there was little trade and plenty of time to think of other things.

‘That’s why I’m glad you’re here, Arthur,’ she said as her companion returned from the bar. ‘I wanted to ask you about Sir Frederick Hungerford.’

‘Freddy? We’re both old Seale-Haynians, you know. Haven’t seen him for years. He’s your MP, isn’t he?’

‘Not for much longer. Standing down at the next election. Been here for yonks. You’re not friends?’

‘Far from it. We met only briefly, forty years ago, when I came back from the Front. Seale Hayne was an agricultural college but it was used as a hospital for chaps suffering from shell-shock. Well, we both had a bit of that. Freddy and I spent a few weeks in bath chairs lying next to each other, though we didn’t get on awfully well.’

‘Rich, truculent, and litigious said one newspaper when he announced his retirement,’ said Auriol.

‘Obviously no friend of yours either, then,’ laughed Arthur.

‘Well, he’s charming enough when you meet him, that I will say. But soon to be replaced by an absolute poppet. It’ll be something of a relief to have a real person as our MP instead of that…’

‘Shall we have another?’

‘Bit soon for me – you go on.’

‘I wanted to talk to you about Huguette before she gets here. Keen to ask your advice. If we’ve finished with Freddy?’

‘Well, that can wait. What about her?’

‘You know her better than anyone.’

‘Yes.’

‘Her closest friend.’

‘Yes.’

‘Auriol, she’s going round in circles. Her life seems to have become one long chase after the next sensation. It’s this story, it’s that headline. It’s this crime and that murder. I feel she was made for better things.’

‘Well, Arthur, I wonder whether I can agree with you about that. She distinguished herself in war service. She had a second career during the Cold War. She found a third career down here, working in local newspapers, away from the combat zone you might say. You might argue she has a fourth career solving the crimes she has since she started working on the Express. Is there something wrong with that? I should have thought you would have been proud of her.’

‘Well, old girl, I am, I am! But…’

‘Aha! This is Madame Dimont talking, Arthur, isn’t it? You’ve been nobbled!’

Arthur looked at his empty glass and then up at the bar. He looked at the glass again but made no attempt to get up.

‘Look, Auriol,’ he said, ‘you know that one day Huguette will be very well off. Her father left everything to her mother when he died, but she is the eventual heir – after all, when Monsieur Dimont became ill she took over the diamond business and did wonders with it. Wonders! You might almost say she made more money than her father, and he was a shrewd one.’

‘She knows all that. She doesn’t need money, Arthur, she needs peace of mind. She found it working at the Riviera Express. She’s got her cottage, her cat, her career.’

‘Grace wants her to change her life. Give up the journalism business. Go to live in Essex and enjoy what is rightly hers.’

‘Not Essex, Arthur!’

‘You’ve been there, it’s a lovely house. Right on the edge of the marshes. It needs to be lived in, have some life brought back to it.’

‘But it’s huge. She doesn’t need all that – how many bedrooms, for heaven’s sake!’

‘Grace hates the thought of it going out of the family. She always hoped Hugue would marry.’

‘Well,’ said Auriol, ‘you can tell her all this yourself when she gets here.’

The old boy looked shyly at his companion. ‘I was rather hoping you’d say it for me. I do so hate rubbing her up the wrong way,’ he said.

‘And you – awarded the military Order of the British Empire!’ laughed Auriol, planting an imaginary medal on his lapel. ‘Sir Arthur Cowardy Custard!’

The old soldier rose to his feet and headed towards the bar looking perhaps a trifle green round the gills.

Hector Sirraway made quite a fuss when he first arrived in the public library on Fore Street. It was a small building, no bigger than the size of a large terraced house, but perfect for the needs of Temple Regis – during the summer months the residents were far too busy serving their guests, refugees from less attractive parts of Britain, to sit around reading. And in winter they were too busy repairing, and preparing, for the next season.

To say Temple Regents weren’t bookish would do them an injustice, but it followed that their modest library needed only the smallest area reserved for reference work – and even then its one desk remained empty most of the year. Was it any surprise that this is where the Christmas tree should be placed when Advent came around?

Given their modest budget, Miss Greenway and Miss Atherton had done a wonderful job, lavishing the lofty conifer with love and, it might be said, the necessary splash of vulgarity. Everyone said what a marvellous sight it presented, with the exception of Mr Sirraway.

‘What have you got that thing there for?’ he asked starchily when he first showed up a month before Christmas. ‘Can’t you get rid of it?’

Since then, he’d been in every day, and his temper never seemed to improve. Miss Greenway had offered him her desk if he needed somewhere to sit, and even made him a nice cup of tea. But nothing budged Mr Sirraway from his hatred of the tree.

Or it could have been something else that bothered him, it was hard to tell. Tall, white-haired, with a pinched face and a permanent dewdrop at the end of his nose, it emerged from the few sentences he uttered that he was researching a book on the industrial buildings of Dartmoor.

‘Fine time to come in and make a nuisance of himself,’ muttered Miss Atherton on the fourth day. ‘Why couldn’t he wait till after Christmas?’ But Miss Greenway loved to see her library used, whether by schoolchildren, housewives or scholars like Mr Sirraway. In fact, she especially liked Mr Sirraway’s presence because very few asked much of the library, apart from a light novel or a Jane Austen and the occasional Shakespeare.

‘We must show him what we’re capable of,’ she told her assistant, and so they did.

The two librarians watched with interest the growing pile of books their visitor ordered from the shelves. From an ancient leather satchel he drew large sheets of paper which looked like plans of some kind, spreading them out on an adjacent table, grunting and whispering to himself and only occasionally remembering to reach for a handkerchief for his nose.

Miss Greenway was inclined to look up to him – she adored learned people! – but Miss M had taken against.

‘Rude, secretive – and you can tell he doesn’t have a wife. Look at those socks!’ One red, one grey – what wife would allow their man to go out dressed like that?

Mr Sirraway was oblivious to these whisperings. Though he originally demanded books on buildings from all over the moor, he seemed after the first couple of days to be concentrating on an area towards the eastern edge, nearest to Temple Regis. His interest stretched from tin mines to corn mills to peat cutting and even granite blasting – for such a large and barren place as the moor, it was extraordinary how many different ways there were to earn a living from it. He’d even demanded, and got, a book on warrening, the mass farming of rabbits.

But he remained unimpressed with the raw material he was being fed. ‘Look at these charts – crude, outdated, and frankly inaccurate,’ he barked, waving a lanky finger at some ancient roll of papers Miss Greensleeves had unearthed after considerable effort. ‘How can you possibly present a case – an important case – using erroneous data like this?’ But he seemed more to be arguing with himself than complaining about the service the librarians provided.

Over by the desk the occasional last-minuter would wander in, returning books before they collected a penny-ha’penny fine, but nobody lingered over the shelves – they were far too busy preparing for the festive season. As each one entered there would come through the door a mournful sound offering a reminder of the approach of Christmas.

‘There’s old Wilf, left behind again,’ said Miss Greenway to Miss Atherton. ‘I’d better take him a cup.’

The noise, like a cow calling for her calf, also wafted through the high window and irritated Mr Sirraway no end, but it wasn’t likely to cease any time soon – Old Wilf was a stalwart of the Salvation Army silver band, whose gentle harmonies stirred up the Christmas spirit in the marketplace and encouraged everyone to dip into their pockets.

Wilf was old and lame now, and could no longer wander through the town with his bandmates, so they would set him up on a chair outside the library with his euphonium and leave him to it. Somehow ‘Away In A Manger’ tootled through his silver tubes lacked joy and encouraged sorrow. You could get tired of it pretty quickly.

‘Thank heavens,’ sighed Mr Sirraway finally, pushing his plans and his books away from him. ‘That’s that done!’

‘Have you finished, sir?’

The scholar leaned back in his chair, stretched his legs and put his hands behind his neck. ‘Finished.’

‘Is there anything else we can get you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Cup of tea?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Well, I hope we’ve been of service.’ Miss Greenway wouldn’t have minded if her little library got a mention in the author’s acknowledgements when Mr Sirraway’s book came out, but was too shy to ask what its title would be.

‘Well, I’ll be wishing you a Happy Christmas, then. May I ask when your book will be published?’

‘I don’t think a fir tree covered in tinsel has a place in an establishment of learning,’ replied Sirraway, and with that walked out. As he opened the door they got a blast of Wilf’s ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’. It sounded more like someone sitting on a whoopee cushion.

‘He’s left a carrier bag behind,’ said Miss Greenway later, tidying up the desk and taking the books back to their shelves. It was all a bit of a let-down, it had been quite exciting having someone so – well, academic – about the place.

‘Let him come back for it, the miserable so-and-so,’ said Miss Atherton. ‘I’m not chasing after him.’

Miss Greenway was unconvinced. Maybe, too, she was still thinking about that mention in the acknowledgements. She picked up the carrier bag and put it on the desk. ‘I’ll just look and see if there’s an address. Though you could tell he’s not local.’

‘Not with those manners.’

There was little to give away the identity of the man who had colonised their small world over the past four days. Because he was conducting research and not taking books away from the library, there was no requirement for him to provide a driving licence or similar. And all there was in the bag was a large notebook with no name inside and a folder containing a large number of press cuttings.

‘Mostly about Sir Freddy Hungerford,’ said Miss Greenway, leafing through them. ‘Maybe he works for him. Oh, and look, quite a few on Mirabel Clifford.’

‘The one who’s going to take over from Sir Freddy?’

There’d been quite a lot in the Riviera Express about Mrs Clifford. The decision to field a female candidate in the forthcoming general election had been a controversial one, mainly because women were rarely allowed to stand in winnable parliamentary seats. There were plenty of no-hope constituencies where they could go and stand on a soapbox, if that was their thing.

But the Liberal candidate, Helena Copplestone, had made a huge impression on a populus that was growing tired of a self-congratulatory MP with a preference for the cigar and brandy to be found in his St James’s club; and there were real fears that when he retired, the Liberal would win the seat.

‘She’s prettier,’ Miss Atherton said one lunchtime. ‘She’ll win it.’

‘It’s a bit more complicated than that,’ countered Miss Greenway, though with precious little authority to back up her argument, for she had never voted. ‘Think of all the good things Mirabel Clifford has done for Temple Regis!’

‘Well,’ said Miss Atherton, who could take a bleak view when she wanted, ‘I can tell you if there are three women contesting this seat, it’ll be a fight to the death. The death!’

Three

There was something faintly ridiculous about Terry when he put a hat on. Obviously he never looked at himself in the mirror or he wouldn’t do it.

The item in question was a deerstalker and he was wearing it with the flaps down. Out in Widecombe it had caused little comment – moorland folk have no dress code and offer little in the way of advice to incomers – but back in the office it was greeted with hilarity.

‘’Ello, Sherlock!’

‘Found your way back from the North Pole, Terry? Dog-sled drawn by the hounds of the Baskervilles?’

Shopping done, the newsroom had filled up again just ahead of opening time. Most would be taking their Christmas cheer with them down to the Fortescue Arms, and Betty promised she’d come to join them as soon as she’d got the Con Club drinks party out of the way.

‘Don’t wear that if you’re coming with me,’ she sniped at Terry. ‘It looks daft.’

‘You wouldn’t say that if you’d just been where I’ve been,’ snipped the snapper. ‘Three-foot drifts. Had to leave Judy behind – she’s snowed in.’

Betty was unimpressed. She rarely left Temple Regis, whose Riviera climate seldom permitted snow to fall on its rooftops; indeed it would be fair to say she never willingly exposed herself to the wilder elements – a tropical umbrella in her cocktail was more her idea of wet-weather gear.

‘Bet she could have got back if she wanted,’ she sniffed, cross at having to deputise for Judy. ‘Come on!’

They walked over to the Con Club in silence. Terry was marvelling at the new lens he’d bought for his Leica, which promised to do some amazing things with snowflakes – he couldn’t wait to get into the darkroom to see how well it’d done. Betty meanwhile was thinking about Graham Platt, who’d chucked her last week, saying he was thinking of taking holy orders.

Holy orders! If the bishop only knew what Graham…

‘Let’s make this snappy,’ said Terry. With Betty on a job, it was he who issued the orders; with Miss Dimont things were a bit different. ‘Friday Night Is Music Night’s on the wireless.’

‘Not half,’ she agreed, ‘fifteen minutes, tops. Then home for your programme.’

She knew Terry had a tin ear and couldn’t even whistle the national anthem in tune, so obviously there was a girl waiting. You knew very little about Terry’s private life – altogether a Mystery, as Betty labelled them when they didn’t make a pass.

‘Got a date, Ter?’

‘Over there,’ he rapped, heading through the crowd to where the sitting Member of Parliament for Temple Regis was, indeed, sitting.

Around Sir Frederick Hungerford were gathered the simple and the sycophantic of his party workers; everyone else with any sense had herded round the bar. A small but polite audience, they sat with vacant looks on their faces as the parliamentarian recalled a wartime exploit by which he’d single-handedly cut short the conflict by at least five years.

The old boy was looking tired, but then who could blame him? There’d been the lengthy business of being introduced to a lot of people he didn’t know because his visits to the constituency were so severely rationed, and the tiresome ritual of shaking everybody’s hand. Despite this, he put on a good show – well-practised in the art of flattery, he would repeat their names as if drinking in their identity, and then offer a whispered word. They went away on Cloud Nine.

‘Don’t think we’ve seen you here since last year,’ challenged Betty; she voted Labour when she could be bothered. ‘Of course, under your government, rail fares have increased so much people can’t afford to travel down to Temple Regis like they used to. I expect you have the same difficulty – affording it, I mean.’

‘Come over here and sit down,’ smarmed Sir Frederick, ‘I do like a woman with an independent mind.’ He reached out and tickled her knee. ‘Featherstone, you say? Related to the Featherstonehaughs of Arundel, by any chance?’ He knew how to patronise a person all right – he could tell by her shoes that Betty had gone to the local secondary.

‘How does it feel to be giving your last party?’ riposted Betty, notebook flapping and eyes blazing. ‘And don’t do that, Sir Frederick. If you don’t mind.’

The old boy settled back and eyed her with amusement.

‘Must be a relief to be retiring,’ went on Betty. ‘So many calls on your time in London, so many people to see. You missed the annual fête back in the summer, I recall – they had to get Sam Brough to make the speech. You were very much missed.’

Sir Frederick’s eyes were on Betty’s knees. ‘I think you must play tennis rather well,’ he smiled, as if this were a compliment.

‘Are you making the speech tonight? Or will it be Mrs Clifford? We’ve only got a moment,’ she said, nodding towards her photographer, ‘then we’re off on a real story.’

This was unlike Betty – sharp, rude, insubordinate – maybe she was hoping there’d be a complaint and she wouldn’t have to cover politics any more. After all, they were still talking about what Judy Dimont said and did at the Annual Conservative Ball two years ago!

‘Clifford?’ pondered Sir Frederick. ‘That name seems familiar. Could swear I’ve heard it before somewhere.’

Betty fell for it. ‘She’s your successor, Sir Frederick! You’re retiring, she’s the new candidate. A much-respected figure…’

The MP’s gaze turned to scorn. It said, of course I know who the woman is, I’m not a complete idiot. But one does not, in the presence of an honourable Member who has served his community loyally, unflinchingly, tirelessly, for thirty years mention some pipsqueak piece of fluff who’s only been selected because she has nice curly hair and wears a skirt.

FLASH! Terry got a nice one in, Sir Fred’s face a death-mask tinged with contempt. Of course the editor wouldn’t put it in the paper – no chance. But it would make a nice addition to the Thank Heavens! board, usually reserved for the photos of less attractive bridal couples (as in ‘Thank Heavens they found each other – nobody else would have them’).

A pretty girl wandered by, heading for the bar. ‘Over here!’ ordered the MP. ‘Just the sort!’ The girl smiled vaguely but walked on.

‘Over here!’ he repeated, louder. ‘Sit down, put your arm round my shoulder, smile at the camera!’ The girl blushed timidly and tried to say something, but the MP was edging forward in his seat and sticking a fiendish grin on his face. ‘Want your picture in the paper, don’t you, sweetie?’ he said through his practised smile. ‘Look at the camera now. Young adoring party worker looks up to her hero Member!’

His victim did not directly respond but said to Terry. ‘I… I… shouldn’t be here. Don’t put my picture in the paper, please!’

‘Why ever not!’ roared Sir Frederick.

‘I’m not one of your party workers,’ she said, getting up. ‘I work behind the bar. And I vote Liberal.’

Unabashed, the old boy managed to get a tickle to the back of her knees before she scooted away.

‘We’ve got all we need,’ said Terry, who always maintained a cheerful demeanour no matter the circumstances – good photographers never sulk on duty.

‘Can’t stay for the speech,’ said Betty to Sir Freddy. ‘But I’ll write that our outgoing MP hasn’t a clue who his successor will be.’

‘No you won’t,’ replied Sir Frederick with confidence. ‘I’ve got your editor’s home number.’

Good, thought Betty. No more politics for me, then.

‘So you see,’ Mrs Phipps was drawing on a Player’s Navy Cut and her quite astonishing memory, both at the same time, ‘Eglantine’s only ambition was to marry a moat.’

Miss Dimont shook her head slightly, as if to clear it. They were sitting in the coffee room after breakfast, and her old friend’s endless flood of reminiscence gushed on like a mountain stream.

‘She had a thing about castles – there were one or two in her family, you know – and she thought the only way to show you’d married well was if, when you went home, you were surrounded by a moat. Preferably with a drawbridge to pull up.

‘So she did – marry a moat, that is. She collared Sir Jefrye Waterford, but little did she know that in the wink of an eye he’d lose the lot – too many wagers, too much crème de menthe. Too many popsies.’

And were you one of those, thought Judy, and would that have been while he was married to Eglantine? She changed the subject.

‘You were going to tell me, last night, your royal story.’

‘I wonder how that particular tale escaped,’ said Mrs Phipps, her eye travelling around the room to check if the drinks waiter was out of bed yet. ‘We got talking about other things, I suppose. You really are terribly good company, Judy, it’s such a pleasure to have the time to chat.’

‘Why don’t you call me Hugue, Geraldine? My close friends do.’

‘Hugue?’

‘Short for Huguette. I stopped using it at school because they used to call me Huge – I wasn’t! Well, just a little bit, and only then sometimes… Judy’s really a work name.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’ asked Mrs Phipps. ‘We’ve known each other for years.’

Because most of the time we’re talking about you, and there never seems to be the opportunity, Miss Dimont thought, but not unkindly. Mrs Phipps’ stories were worth a guinea a minute and anyway, she was an actress – and who else do actresses talk about but themselves?

‘I like it,’ opined Mrs Phipps. ‘French, of course.’

‘Actually Belgian. My father was a diamond merchant in Antwerp, though my mother’s English. I grew up there until I was four but what with the war… we moved to England when my father was imprisoned by the Germans.’

‘Did he escape?’

‘No, he couldn’t. He was treated very badly and was never quite the same again. I did a year or two at university but then I took over a lot of the business from him – travelling around Europe, buying and selling. The diamond business is like a club for men – they think you know nothing. As a result I was quite successful.’

‘Good Lord,’ said Mrs Phipps. ‘Then you must be quite well off.’

‘Well,’ said Miss Dimont, reflecting. ‘There’s a nice house in the Essex marshes, and we still have a tiny home in Ellezelles – that’s where we come from – but I’m very happy down here.’ And a million miles away from my overbearing mother, she thought with relief.

‘So you…?’

‘Let’s talk about you. You were going to tell me a royal story.’

‘It’s rather a long one.’

‘That’s all right, it’s my Saturday off. I’ll get the bus back to Temple Regis after lunch, if the snow allows. What’s it all about?’

A petite breakfast waitress was clearing away the coffee things, and Mrs Phipps fixed her with a commanding gaze, borrowed from when she played Lady Bracknell in, oh, 1934, was it? The Adelphi. And wonderful reviews, naturally…

‘Would you kindly bring me a large Plymouth gin?’ she said. It didn’t sound like a request. The girl blinked, looked at the clock over the mantelpiece and the lifting morning light through the window, then bobbed and moved away.

Just look at her, thought Miss Dimont. She’s eighty but her eyes are clear, her voice is strong, she carries herself in a commanding manner, and she oozes charm. What an extraordinary woman!

‘I was too tall for the Prince of Wales,’ began Mrs Phipps. ‘He could be quite charming but he was such a pipsqueak. And he bleated if he didn’t get his way – very unattractive in a man, don’t you know.

‘We were at the Embassy Club – it’s where we all used to go, everyone knew everyone, of course. And I could see he’d been eyeing me up. His popsy at the time was Thelma Furness, though she wasn’t there that night.

‘He sent someone over to ask me to dance, which really is not the way to go about things, but he was the future king so I suppose he could please himself. We both got up and moved towards the dance floor but the moment we met, you could tell it would be a humiliation for him – I was nearly a foot taller, or so it seemed. We managed to scrape around the floor but he was very unhappy – never liked people showing up how short he was.’

‘Did you lead, or did he?’ asked Miss Dimont mischievously.

‘Ha! Ha! I will say this, he had the grace to ask me back to his table and that’s when it all began.’

‘What, exactly?’

‘Well, there was a group there, possibly ten, can’t remember them all but Prince George was there – you know, the Duke of Kent, the one killed in the war – and he had some American girl in tow. There was Diana Cooper and her husband, as well as Lord Dudley, Lord Sefton, a few others and this girl Pansy Westerham.’

Mrs Phipps looked around the room but so far there was no sign of the gin. She plunged on.

‘Pansy and I hit it off immediately – she raised one eyebrow as if to say, who’s your short friend? We both started laughing and that was it. She was wonderful company, didn’t care a hoot about anybody or anything – big blue eyes, wonderful figure, and funny as all get-out. We had lunch the next day and we were best friends from the word go.

‘She was having a fling with one of the men at that table but wouldn’t say who – she said it was complicated. But she told me everything else, I even knew his inside-leg measurement, dear!

‘After we’d known each other a few weeks she confessed there was someone else – someone she didn’t even like but was drawn to, fascinated by – he sounded quite nasty, actually. We’d meet most nights at the Embassy and she’d tell me little bits and pieces but actually, darling, I was only half listening – that nightclub was the most dazzling place on earth. Everybody who was anybody was there, and slap bang in the middle of it all were the Prince of Wales and Prince George and their côterie. Your eyes were out on stalks and of course, you were on the qui vive – I was between husbands at the time and you never knew who might come over and ask you to dance.’

‘Apart from the Prince of Wales.’

‘Ha! We never danced again – but I did have a go with Prince George – a lovely dancer and very manly with it. But he knew it, my dear, always a bit of a put-off.’

‘Not always.’

‘No, not always.’

There was a pause as they pursued their separate, pleasurable thoughts.

‘So,’ said Miss Dimont after a moment or two, ‘was it Pansy you wanted to talk to me about?’

‘I was just coming to that,’ said Mrs Phipps, beaming as the waitress slid into view with a glass on a silver salver. ‘Won’t you have one?’ The question was rhetorical.

‘After a bit Pansy got very down. It was man-trouble all right, you can always tell, but she didn’t want to discuss it. She just looked very strained and talked about the weather, that sort of thing.

‘Then one day she wasn’t there – pouf! Disappeared like I don’t know what. She had a little house off Knightsbridge, and I called round a couple of times but there was never an answer. I telephoned, left messages, but nothing.

‘I wondered if she’d run away with her bad man, but gossip soon got around our circle and nobody that we knew had left their wife, or absconded, done a bunk, so we were up a gumtree.’

‘I think I know what’s coming,’ said Miss Dimont, leaning forward with interest.

‘I expect you do, dear, what with your background in sleuthing. Anyway, they found her a fortnight later – dead in the street. She’d fallen from the top of her house – just behind Harrods, you know – and it was all very distressing. It turned out she had a husband who loved her dearly, she never told me about him, who lived in Paris. And there was a child she never mentioned either.’

‘Sounds like you never knew her after all.’

‘You’re right, of course. Later I discovered she developed pashes on people but after a bit got bored and moved on. When I thought about it afterwards, I realised she must have been running away in her mind from something – the abandoned husband and child, I suppose. And what she wanted to do was to live inside other people’s worlds. She wanted to open the door and take refuge in your house, as it were. She was delightful company, adorable, but all it covered up was unhappiness.’

‘You think she killed herself?’

‘Well, people took quite a lot of drugs back then – not like today, dear.’ Mrs Phipps looked ruminatively into her gin glass. ‘Morphine and cocaine and so on. Quite a lot of people killed themselves back then – but no.

‘No, that’s why I wanted to talk to you about her, Huguette – shall I call you that? I think she was murdered, and something inside me – even thirty years later – wants to find out what exactly happened.’

There were tears in her eyes. ‘Will you help me? Do you think you could get to the bottom of it? Find out the truth?’

‘Geraldine, think about it – how could I find anything out after all these years? There’s been a world war, an atom bomb, who knows what.’

‘But my dear, you’re so clever! All those things you’ve seen and done!’

Judy Dimont got up. ‘After all this time?’ she repeated, gathering up her raffia bag. ‘Geraldine, I would love to, but there’s not a chance. Too much water under the bridge.’

The old woman looked forlornly into her gin.

‘But now you’ve told me, I won’t be able to think about anything else.’

Four

Monday morning was always unnerving at the Riviera Express. The weekend had gone by in a flash, and now there were only four days left to press day. An ancient accounts book, importantly renamed ‘the diary’, sat on a rickety table outside the editor’s office and its entries were a strong indicator of the excitements ahead for the newspaper’s readers on Friday.

MONDAY | Townswomen’s Guild rededication
TR rent Tribunal
Bell-ringers’ AGM, St Margaret’s
TUESDAY | Mag Court
Highways Committee
Rural District Council
WEDNESDAY |
THURSDAY | Mag Court
Mothers Union jumble sale Lifeboat lift-out

The blank space against Wednesday was not unusual – it was early closing day and probably for that reason alone the world came to a halt in Temple Regis. Maybe it was the day people stayed at home for Ray’s A Laugh on the wireless, but whatever the reason, it was unnerving to see how little news there was to harvest in the coming days – hence the nervous 11 a.m. weekly assembly over which the editor, Rudyard Rhys, grumpily presided.

His room was crowded with the flotsam and jetsam which staffed the editorial departments of local newspapers everywhere – retired servicemen, young hopefuls, failed theatricals like Ray Bennett, the arts editor, and people into whose background it was as well not to inquire too closely. They were a shifting community with little in common outside a good shorthand note.

One recent addition stood out a little uncomfortably. David Renishaw had appeared out of nowhere with an impressive sheaf of cuttings, an urgent self-confidence, impeccable manners, and the apparent capacity to oil his way through locked doors. As journalists went, he was a cut above.

Miss Dimont took against him in an instant.

‘Too good to be true,’ she said to her friend Auriol as they’d walked back from church the previous day. ‘He’s handsome, accomplished, go-getting – I don’t understand what he’s doing in Temple Regis when he should be in Fleet Street.’

‘Woman trouble,’ judged Auriol shrewdly.

‘Apparently there’s a wife in Canada. She’s going to join him once he’s settled in.’

‘We’ll see. How long’s he been here?’

‘Three weeks.’

‘Going home for Christmas?’

‘Can’t afford it.’

‘There, I told you.’

Miss Dimont ignored this. ‘He’s volunteered to do the Christmas rounds.’ These entailed the reporter visiting the resort’s hospital and hostel and nursing homes, then returning to the office to paint a rosy Yuletide picture of those less fortunate than himself. Normally Ray Bennett, lonely confirmed bachelor, did the job with loud moans of self-sacrifice, but he’d been ousted by Renishaw and was very upset about it. This Christmas he would have nothing to complain about.

Renishaw was sitting next to John Ross in the editor’s office, with Peter Pomeroy as usual serving up the tea. There was a gaggle of other reporters, including one or two from the district offices, as well as Judy and Betty, until the room was full to the brim with journalistic talent. Why, then, with so many people, was it so difficult to fill the paper each week?

‘What have you got, Judy?’ Mr Rhys was in typically gangrenous form.

‘Caring volunteers,’ she said, absently – she was thinking about the long-dead Pansy Westerham.

‘Rr… rrr.’ The growl coming from behind the editor’s whiskers indicating disapproval, disappointment, disbelief at so feeble an offering. It was no different to any Monday – if the town hall had burned down and His Worshipful had been caught halfway up the flagpole in his longjohns, it would have drawn the same reaction. If Brigitte Bardot had blown in and landed a kiss on Rudyard’s cheek with the news she was moving to Temple Regis, it would have been no different. Nothing was ever good enough for the editor.

‘Caring volunteers crisis,’ Judy soldiered on, though she could tell he wasn’t listening. ‘This round of flu has meant that there’s nobody fit enough, or free enough of germs, to visit those who need calling on over the Christmas period.’

‘A wee job there for Ray, then,’ said John Ross acidly, out of the corner of his mouth. ‘He’s been bellyachin’ ever since you gave the Christmas calls to young Renishaw here.’ He approved of the new arrival, whose copy came perfectly typed with no mistakes and an extra carbon included, just in case.

‘OK,’ agreed the editor. If he’d said the other thing there’d be nothing in the paper. ‘Betty?’

Betty was doing a crossword and didn’t realise immediately it was her turn. Judy gave her a nudge.

‘Hairdressing night,’ she said finally.

Everyone groaned.

‘All the hairdressers are doing late-night opening so everyone can get their perms done for Christmas. I thought I could get mine done this week – picture story – help drum up trade.’

There was the traditional rustling of notebooks which accompanied stinkers like this, a vicious indicator that buried somewhere in their scribbled pages they had a better idea. But the editor nodded and the moment passed. ‘Mr Renishaw?’

Miss Dimont looked up from her notebook and watched the newcomer’s profile as he started to speak. His words came without hesitation in a low, urgent murmur and with no recourse to notes.

‘I’ve been speaking to a member of the Chamber of Commerce,’ he said. ‘They’re thinking of charging an entry fee to holidaymakers coming into Temple Regis – thruppence in the box at Regis Junction when you get out of the train, or one per cent on the bill in the hotels and guesthouses. He reckons that in three years it will have generated enough income to build a bridge from Todhempstead Sands out to Nether Island – which would then generate even more income from toll charges. It will bring a massive new wealth to Temple Regis and steal a march on Torquay and Paignton and all the others.’

You could have heard a pin drop. This was actually a very good story, brought in by a reporter who’d been here so little time he’d hadn’t yet had the opportunity to find the Oddfellows’ Hall. How on earth had he pulled it off?

‘Rr… rrr,’ rumbled Rudyard Rhys, ‘first I’ve heard of it.’ He usually got all the best stories down at the Con Club at lunch on Fridays, after the paper had been published. ‘Who told you that?’

‘Confidential source,’ said Renishaw. This was not a phrase you ever heard at the Express – Temple Regis being the kind of town where everybody knew everybody else’s business. And how had this newcomer, in so short a space of time, managed to find a contact prepared to confide a piece of information which could radically alter the town’s fortunes and set it apart from its rivals on the English Riviera?

It beggared belief.

‘So… are you saying people will be forced to pay to be allowed into Temple Regis?’

‘That’s about it,’ replied Renishaw. He didn’t seem to think it that peculiar.

‘I can’t think of another place in Britain that does that.’

‘My source is an innovator, thinks differently from the rest of us. Says the town needs shaking up, or it’s going to lose its custom to the bigger resorts. Look at what Teignmouth has been doing recently!’

‘But – it’s like paying to go into a shop!’ said Peter Pomeroy scornfully. ‘Who’d want to do that?’

Others in the conference, perhaps less forward-thinking, nodded in agreement. But Renishaw was unruffled: ‘You all agree Temple Regis is the prettiest resort in Devon. Now’s the time to test that theory. If people really do want to come here, what’s an extra thruppence?’

There was a silence which could only be described as hostile.

‘Very well,’ said the editor, and just for a moment a wintry smile broke out on his bewhiskered face. Persuading young Renishaw to join the Express was the best thing he’d done in years. His choice, his decision, his triumph!

‘See,’ he crowed, turning to the bunch of deadbeats he’d also employed over the years, ‘see how it’s done? All you have to do is put yourselves out there, make your contacts, and they come running to you with their best stories. That’s journalism for you!’

‘Have you noticed that he has a bit of hair that springs up on the back of his head?’ whispered Betty to Judy. ‘It could do with a bit of smoothing down and I bet if he let me I could—’

‘Married,’ reminded Judy.

That shut Betty up. She had Certain Rules – though they didn’t prevent her looking.

‘How old is he, d’you think?’

‘Mid-thirties. Still married, Betty.’

The news conference trundled on, with a depressing amount of time devoted to the fortunes of Regis Rangers, the local football team, and Plymouth Argyle, nearby giants of the turf. Betty went back to her crossword and Judy briefly focused her attention on the rogue curl on the back of David Renishaw’s head.

She wasn’t thinking about him, however – she’d already formed certain conclusions about this genius in their midst – she was thinking about Pansy Westerham.

‘You wouldn’t believe it,’ Terry was saying, shaking his head in disbelief.

They were in the Minor, the only editorial vehicle the Riviera Express possessed. Mostly if you were a reporter you had to catch the bus or use Shanks’s pony, though Miss Dimont was something of a legend in Temple Regis the way she manoeuvred Herbert, her trusty moped, around the town.

For a time she’d enjoyed the novelty of young reporter Valentine Waterford’s tinny red bubble car – indeed, enjoyed the novelty of Valentine himself – but local newspapers have the careless habit of losing those most talented or attractive and one day he’d gone, never to be heard of again.

There was always Terry, though. He had a strong, sturdy profile, an enviable work ethic, an agile mind and a lust for perfection. He could also burble on about the most dreary topics, and his taste in clothes – witness the deerstalker – was nothing short of a crying shame.

‘D’you know he spent forty years photographing snowflakes,’ droned Terry. ‘The pictures are incredible – specially when you consider they were taken using a plate camera attached to a microscope.’ They were off to the cottage hospital to see what they could work up on the Caring Volunteers crisis.

‘Mm,’ responded Miss Dimont, the sound from her closed lips a dipthong of apparent interest and barely concealed boredom. She was careful never to encourage him.

‘The only way he could capture them – this is the 1890s, Judy – was by catching the flakes on a piece of black velvet. Wilson Bentley – what a genius! That’s why I got the new filter for the Leica and, Judy, while you were holed up with that old biddy in Wistman’s Hotel I managed to capture a few.’

‘Oh?’ A fleeting moment of interest.

‘Didn’t really work – too much sunlight. You see, when you photograph snow there are no shadows…’ and on he rambled. Judy looked out of the window as they climbed the hill and came down the other side to Ruggleswick, where the cottage hospital was to be found.

At the lookout point halfway down the hill, Terry stopped the Minor and switched off the engine. He quite often did this when they came out this way, just to stare in amazement at the view. For Terry, the shifting light on the water was a technical challenge never to be mastered, and this morning’s brilliant sunshine, despite the proximity of Christmas, threw up extra hurdles.

For Miss Dimont the seascape recalled memories and moments, captured like flowers pressed into a book, forgotten, only to be rediscovered by chance. The inexorable roll of the waves diminished life’s hurts and filled one’s heart with new hope. There would come a moment, when the sun shone on water on a winter’s day like this, when she would forget about Eric Hedley. But not quite yet.

‘This chap Renishaw,’ said Terry, breaking into her thoughts. ‘’E’s good.’

Miss Dimont swivelled her head round to look at the photographer. ‘You think so?’

‘We went out last week and I’ve never seen anyone work so fast. Brilliant. ’E won’t last long at the Express, far too good for the likes of us.’

Judy took this personally. She had a sharp eye for a story and was – until Mr Renishaw appeared – the best interviewer in the West Country. She could create a story out of a handful of dust.

‘Did he tell you what he’s doing down here, sharing that towering talent with us lesser mortals?’

‘Something about wanting a change. I think he worked in Fleet Street for a bit. Or maybe he was on one of the nationals in Canada. A bit vague. We spent most of the time talking about ballroom dancing.’

‘What would you know about that,’ snapped Judy, memories of bruised toes flooding back.

‘You’d be surprised.’

‘Coffee?’ They often brought a Thermos on trips away from the office – it was nice, once you were out, to stay out.

‘I wanted to ask you something – but Terry, don’t go all technical on me. Just a simple answer.’ She poured the coffee into two tin mugs and the Minor’s windows started to steam up. Glimpsing the silhouette of their heads together, a passer-by might think they were lovers.

‘What?’

‘I’d like to find some photographs of a woman who died, oh, thirty years ago. She was a socialite, very glamorous, but only appeared on the scene for a very short time before she fell off a roof and was killed.’

Terry looked at her keenly. ‘Killed? D’you mean murdered?’

‘I have no idea. But yes, it could be. On the other hand she may just have been depressed, or taken drugs – I don’t know. But I want to know more about her, and to do that I need to see what she looked like.’

‘Socialite, you say?’

‘Yes.’

‘Two places you go, then. The Illustrated London News has the best society picture library. Failing that, the Press Association. Or possibly Tatler.’

‘I thought of that – but how do you ask?’

‘Leave it to me. Hadn’t we better get on?’

They rolled down the hill into Ruggleswick, parked outside the cottage hospital and were greeted by the Matron, Miss Stanway.

What followed was standard fare for the Express and any other local newspaper – a sad tale of the current flu epidemic leaving the town shorn of its crop of volunteers who traditionally swarmed in around Christmas to cheer up the lonely or those abandoned by their families.

In forthright tones Miss Stanway issued the plea that those more comfortably placed in the community might put their seasonal priorities to one side and step forward to fill the gap, while Miss Dimont’s flawless shorthand took down every word. Terry took a picture of Matron standing in her hospital ward, and managed to capture the poignancy of the story by snapping her with a shaft of light behind her left shoulder, pouring down onto a bed whose occupant had turned her head away, as if in despair.

It’s what made Terry brilliant. He may not be able to do The Times crossword and heaven knows when he last opened a book. His love of music was eccentric, and as for his dancing! It infuriated Miss Dimont that someone who wandered through life so immune to its glories could come up with the perfect picture to illustrate her story. How did he manage it?

When they came outside the sun had gone. The seascape had turned grey and nightfall was marching rapidly towards them, even though it was not yet four o’clock. A flock of seagulls suddenly took an interest and circled overhead, noisily beseeching these two isolated human beings to eat something and leave behind the remains.

Miss Dimont felt unnerved by how close they dared to come and rapidly got back in the Minor. Terry stopped to take a shot of them, but when he got in the car started complaining he’d got his stop wrong, or something. When he’d finished whinnying Miss Dimont asked if he’d drive her over to Bedlington.

‘Not going back to the office to type it up? That’s not like you, Judy.’

‘My uncle’s staying with Auriol. We’re all going to have a not-so-nice evening together.’

‘Isn’t he staying with you?’

‘He doesn’t like cats.’ Mulligatawny would have to do without her tonight.

‘Why not-so-nice?’ Terry was full of questions today.

‘Because he’s doing his best – yet again – to get my mother and I together in the same room.’

Terry knew a lot about the redoubtable Madame Dimont, who despite her English birth still insisted on being addressed that way, supporting her demand with a flimsy Belgian accent. Ever since her arrival at the Riviera Express Judy had filled empty conversational moments in the Minor regaling Terry with the Madame’s awfulness and the avalanche of reproving letters with which Grace Dimont bombarded her only child.

‘She’s coming for Christmas,’ she confessed. ‘Staying at the Grand. Won’t stay with me because there’s no room service and no flock of adoring servants. She hates cats, too, just like Arthur – between them they must have had a sadly deprived childhood.’

‘But you’ll give her Christmas lunch at your house?’

‘That’s what we’re going to discuss. How to make the best of a bad job. You don’t want to come and join the party on Christmas Day, Terry?’ For a moment she looked almost vulnerable.

‘Not ruddy likely,’ said Terry, starting up the motor. ‘How long is it since you saw her? Your mother?’

‘Oh…’ answered Miss Dimont looking out of the window, not wanting to think about it anymore. ‘Look, those seagulls are following us.’

‘Nothin’ better to do.’

‘Get a move on, then!’ She didn’t like the way they tracked the car’s progress, like enemy bombers.

‘I’ll talk to some mates when I get back to the office,’ said Terry, sensing her alarm, changing the subject. ‘See if we can find some pics of that woman you was interested in. What’s her name by the way?’

‘Pansy Westerham.’

‘Say again?’

‘Pansy Westerham.’

‘That’s odd,’ said Terry. ‘That’s the very name David Renishaw mentioned in this car the other day. There can’t be two of them, surely?’

‘What? Can you say that again Terry? Very slowly?’

Five

In the Palm Court of the Grand Hotel, two men sat looking distantly at each other. Frank Topham perched uncomfortably in a small chair with bamboo legs, balancing a cup of tea on his bony knees, while opposite sat the small but cocky figure of Rex Inkpen.

‘I really can’t do anything to help,’ the policeman said.

‘My newspaper would be very grateful to you. Cover your expenses, kind of thing.’

Inspector Topham looked blankly at him. ‘I didn’t hear that,’ he said. ‘And I think now if you’ll excuse me…’ and he started to get to his feet.

The one thing to be said about the old copper was that he was incorruptible. It wasn’t the first time Fleet Street had promised to buy him a nice holiday or a small boat – heaven knows, when Gerald Hennessy was murdered, he could have retired on the promises made by the visiting press corps!

An old soldier with a distinguished war record, Topham knew the law and believed in it. It’s just that he wasn’t very good at viewing it from the other end of the telescope – the view adopted by the criminals, large and small, who occasionally wafted through Temple Regis.

He sat there in his shiny shoes with his brilliantined hair looking very much as he was – an upright, honest, decent fellow with insufficient guile to see life the way criminals did. It made him a wonderful fellow but a poor detective.

Rex Inkpen, chief crime reporter for the News Chronicle, was probably a better sleuth, though as a human being, less upright. Behind his wire-framed spectacles lurked a devious mind only partially camouflaged by his earnest look and feigned diffidence.

Inspector Topham’s visits to the Grand were usually confined to the private bar, where he could consume a pint of Portlemouth without being bothered, but it was his duty to see what the national press were getting up to when they swung into town, and so here he sat with his cup of tea and a plate of biscuits.

Only now he was on his feet. He was too old to be bribed!

‘Sit down, sit down… sorry, I think you must have misunderstood,’ said Inkpen smoothly. ‘It’s just that many of your fellow policemen feel… undervalued, as you might say. All those hours they put in, all the danger, all the anxiety if they don’t get things right. It’s nice when someone outside the Force values what they do – and that’s all that the Chronicle’s trying to do, Frank.’

The detective did not like being addressed by his first name, but had the good manners to sit down again.

‘Look,’ Topham explained, ‘we have enough trouble from the local press. They dog my footsteps’ – he was thinking of one in particular – ‘and pass judgement on my results. Ill-informed judgement which puts up the backs of the general public.’ And the Chief Constable, too.

‘Honestly,’ said Inkpen, a word he misused often, ‘Frank, it’s a way of saying thank you. We come down here and write a feature spread about you – about how this sleepy little resort has a disproportionate number of crimes, and yet you have a fantastic success rate in clearing things up.’

It’s Christmas, thought Inkpen, when all right-minded criminals go on holiday. There’s nothing for me to write about, and my editor gets very angry if he sees me with my feet on the desk telephoning my girlfriend at the company’s expense – so please say yes, or I’ll get put on general duties.

Say yes, and I can spend a week at the Grand, buying you drinks and telling you what a nice fellow you are – and at the end of it I’ll make you a hero and at the same time make enough profit on my expenses to pay for the Christmas presents.

‘Well, maybe,’ said Topham, who hated the idea but had been getting grief recently from the Chief Constable about the size of his department. ‘But you do understand, Mr Inkpen, you may not pay me a brass farthing. You can make a contribution to the Widows and Orphans Fund.’

‘I assure you it’ll be a generous one,’ lied Inkpen. ‘And thank you.’

He picked up his notebook. ‘So, just to get started I want to talk to you about the Patrikis case. Then that double murder involving the beat group, and of course the tragic death of Gerald Hennessy – what a fine actor he was, too!’

‘It was his widow I felt sorry for,’ said Topham, relaxing. He had a soft spot for Prudence Aubrey, the widow, and it wasn’t just because she knew his old commanding officer.

‘Our greatest screen actor,’ purred Inkpen. He’d got the old boy going now.

‘Mm.’

‘But let’s start with the Patrikis case. Extraordinary to have a woman shot dead in a holiday camp. A mystery woman too – no clues – how did you unravel that one?’

Suddenly Topham was on his feet again. He could see where this was going, and the prospect did not please. Each of the cases Inkpen mentioned had been solved – not by him, but by the infuriating Miss Dimont and her ragbag collection of followers. Any further discussion of these famous cases could only draw attention to that.

‘Look Mr… er… Inkpen,’ he said. ‘I’d better just check with the Chief Constable that he approves of the nation’s attention being drawn to the, er… unusual level of capital crime in Temple Regis. Maybe we can talk later today, or tomorrow…’

‘That’s absolutely fine,’ smiled Inkpen. ‘I fancy a stroll along the front before tea. I’ll drop into your office tomorrow morning.’

And if I’m not there, it’ll be because of the unusual level of crime I have to attend to, thought Topham. This was a terrible idea and I don’t know why I agreed to meet you in the first place. After all, and to put it bluntly, you’re a journalist.

Both men picked up their hats.

‘Just one thing,’ said Inkpen. ‘Have you had any calls from Interpol in the past couple of weeks?’

The Inspector didn’t like to admit he’d never had a call from Interpol, and only knew of their existence by reading Inspector Maigret.

‘There’s something going on which might affect your manor,’ said Inkpen conspiratorially.

‘Is that why you’re here? Not for this so-called heartwarming feature on Temple Regis and its fearless detectives?’

‘Oh – no, no, no!’ laughed Inkpen, fluttering his notebook as though a dead moth might drop out. ‘Not at all, Inspector, I assure you – I’m here to write a wonderful piece about your great successes.’

Since when did a Sunday newspaper write anything nice about anybody? thought the copper, and jammed his trilby on his head.

‘So, Interpol?’

‘If we have, it’s a police matter,’ replied Topham gruffly, and marched off down the hotel’s thickly carpeted corridor.

His polished boots did not take him far. As Inkpen sloped off towards the front door and the bracing sea air, Topham made a sharp left wheel into the private bar.

‘Afternoon, Sid.’

‘You’re a bit early, Frank, it’s only half past four. I’m not supposed to be serving for another hour.’

‘Call it a leftover from lunch,’ said Topham, ever practical. ‘Have you had any press men in here in the last couple of days?’

‘I bleedin’ wish they would,’ said Sid, reaching for Topham’s pewter tankard. ‘Things are a bit quiet.’

‘Well, get yourself ready, I have the feeling we’re in for a visit.’

At this, Sid brightened. When something juicy happened in Temple Regis – which, to be honest, was quite often – Fleet Street’s finest would roll into his hotel, take over the bars and the restaurant, and spend money like it was going out of fashion.

‘What is it this time?’ said Sid, levelling off the Portlemouth and handing it to his old comrade.

‘Murderer on the loose, an Interpol special. Complicated story.’

‘He’s here in Temple Regis?’

‘Could be. Could be staying in the hotel. Keep your eyes peeled.’

‘Come on, Frank, you’re joking me! A murderer, here?’

‘I think it’s a wild goose chase, Sid. Chap from the News Chronicle with nothing better to do with his expenses sheet than get away from the office and loll around here for a few days. He could be in Cornwall, he says to me. Could be in Timbuktu, Sid!’

‘Yers.’

‘Even offered me money.’

‘They’re all bent,’ replied Sid disloyally, for Fleet Street’s finest had boosted his takings to record levels in the past couple of years.

‘Yes – but that’s not what he wants. He’s looking for something else.’

‘Yers.’

And I wish I knew what the hell it was.

The crisis meeting over the arrival of Mme Grace Dimont hadn’t gone well. Auriol Hedley had made a delicious supper of chicken fricassée, Uncle Arthur had brought in some exceptionally fine wine. Both were looking forward to the arrival of Judy, whom they loved dearly, but it was all a bit of a disaster.

Grumpy, evasive, unco-operative, the reporter was at her very worst. She arrived in a rainstorm and spent a disproportionate amount of time drying her hair and shaking out her mackintosh. She knew what was coming.

‘Here’s your Whisky Mac,’ said Auriol, all too aware what these signals meant.

‘Why you live all the way out here by the dockside I really don’t know,’ grumbled her old friend. ‘If you lived in town it’d be so much drier. So much more convenient.’

She’s looking for a fight, thought Auriol. ‘Let’s get this over with, then we can relax. Christmas – with your mother.’

The rest of the evening went badly. Auriol heard Judy’s arguments, but using the superior firepower of a brain which had launched a dozen successful wartime sorties, outgunned her friend’s objections. Arthur, under the thumb of his sister, pleaded her case with eloquence.

‘This is an ambush,’ said Judy after an hour. ‘No point in my saying no – you can’t hear me! Why not just let sleeping dogs lie? You know that if she comes down here she’ll only find fault, it’s in her nature!’

And so the arguments swirled: the widow, grieving the loss of her only child against the grown woman, still treated like a child. The old lady, alone in the wastes of East Anglia, versus the younger woman liberated by the freedom that only the English Riviera – and a distance of two hundred and fifty miles – could provide. Irritation pitted against deep contentment.

Next morning, with Judy back at work, Auriol and Arthur faced each other over a late breakfast.

‘It’s not going to work. They’ll be at each other’s throats from the get-go.’

‘Oh, I don’t know, old thing,’ said Arthur, ever the peacemaker. ‘Give ’em time and a nice Christmas lunch and I’m sure all will be well.’

‘Don’t you see? That’s just when things turn turtle – a heavy meal, several glasses of wine, and out come the recriminations!’

‘Six of one and half a dozen of the other,’ sighed Arthur. He looked wonderfully elegant in his brogues and flannels.

‘What she said last night about her mother! Really doesn’t bear repeating!’

‘You have to remember, her father locked up in a German prison camp, Grace still a young girl struggling to bring up her small child and everything else! She did her best – she just found it easier to order every aspect of Hugue’s life rather than allow her to make choices. And as a formula it worked so well she never saw any reason to change it.’

‘Those letters she sends her – nothing short of harassment!’

‘She’s getting old,’ said Arthur, smiling lazily, ‘we’re all getting old. She wants Hugue back at home, looking after the place. After all, what’s to be done with it when Grace goes?’

Auriol took off her apron and smoothed back her fine black hair. ‘Arthur, she’s fifty. Young enough to enjoy a long life ahead, old enough to know what she wants to do with it. She loves it here in Temple Regis and doesn’t want any more – she’s got her job, her cottage, her cat and that pestilential moped Herbert.’

‘No husband, though.’

‘Neither have I, Arthur – do I look the worse for it?’

‘My dear, the very opposite – if I were young again! But Huguette…’

‘Still loves my brother. Hero-worships him, even though he was a bit of a fool. Too devil-may-care, too Johnny-head-in-the air.’

‘She’s had her admirers.’

‘We all have, Arthur, our lives are what we choose them to be.’

The old boy looked at his hostess and smiled. If ever there was a woman in her prime it was Auriol – she was secretive about her life, but can never have been short of admirers.

‘So then, Grace,’ he said. ‘What are we to do?’

‘Christmas at the Grand,’ said Auriol firmly. ‘Then if there’s the need to escape, it can be done.’

‘Very well then,’ said Arthur, ‘and now I’m going to see a man about a dog. Back this evening.’

‘Glad you said that, I have work to do. Have a lovely day, Arthur!’

Six

Betty hated it when Judy found an excuse to skip Magistrates Court. The chief reporter’s shorthand was better, her concentration sharper, her ability to sift the contents of grey interminable proceedings and find a nugget of interest somewhere in the debris, all seemed so effortless. But for Betty, it was a penance.

Every Tuesday and Thursday since time immemorial, the duty reporter from the Express put on hat and coat and trudged across Fore Street and round the corner to the pretty redbrick Edwardian building, adorned with its nicely stained glass and rash of oak panelling – the same old journey, taken so often, you wondered why there wasn’t a groove in the pavement.

But this moment of freedom – the joy of exercise and window-shopping and bumping into friends and acquaintances – was cut short once you entered the building. There, slumped in the featureless front hall, was the menu of the day: a collection of drunks, petty thieves and nuisances – men too free with their fists and women too free with their wares (though the Express studiously ignored the latter, however fruity the case). Their misdeeds would be judged and, if only Betty could stay awake, reported in print next Friday.

The editor, Mr Rhys, had a difficult battle on his hands. Often a story of great national interest would emerge from these proceedings, but any article which suggested in some way that Temple Regis had lost its moral compass was instantly strangled to death, consigned to an obscure corner of the Express somewhere below the gardening column.

This led some, his staff included, to protest that Rudyard Rhys had no right to call himself a journalist, and should have stuck to his previous career as a failed novelist. But in fairness to the bewhiskered old procrastinator, he was subject to the desire of the city fathers and especially their sovereign, the Mayor Sam Brough, to keep things clean. This was a view shared by his proprietor, who owned a lot of property in Temple Regis and didn’t wish to see its value fall through injurious headlines. If men fought in the streets, if ladies of the night beckoned you into the murky depths of Bosun’s Alley, these were matters for municipal self-regulation – not national fascination.

It made life difficult for Miss Dimont who, since her arrival fresh from secret Cold War duties a few years back, had seen journalism as a refreshing way of shedding light on a community, good or bad. In Temple Regis there’d been a number of questionable deaths – but the Coroner, Dr Rudkin, often managed to pass these off as ‘accidental’. He too believed in the Temple Regis idyll.

In court, however, justice still had to be done – and seen to be done. Since the departure of the Hon Mrs Marchbank and her habit of detaining anyone with so much as a nasty look on their face, the magistrates’ bench had behaved itself pretty well. But a dreary long day in their presence was not dissimilar to a jail sentence, and Betty sat down on the reporters’ bench with a desolate thump.

The door behind the bench burst open and Mr Thurlestone, the magistrates’ clerk, issued his clarion call, ‘Be upstanding!’ as he swished down to his desk, all black gown and tabs and disreputable wig.

In filed a bewildered-looking couple of Worships who should surely be spending their days in a rest home, and the chief magistrate, Colonel de Saumaurez, who at least looked as though he knew which day of the week it was.

Proceedings got under way with the usual squabbles between publicans who wanted to extend their licensing hours and the magistrates, who didn’t go to pubs but drank wine in their dining rooms at home. To them, the idea of a man putting a glass to his lips after 10.30 p.m. was a crime in itself.

Then it was onto the main course.

‘Call Hector Sirraway.’

A tall white-haired man was led up the steps from the cells and entered the dock.

‘Are you Hector Ransome Sirraway?’

‘I am.’

‘Hector Sirraway, you are charged that on the night of the twelfth of December you did cause a public nuisance in Harberton Square. You are further charged that in resisting arrest you assaulted a police officer. How do you plead?’

‘Not guilty.’

‘Sit down. Sergeant?’

The comfortably proportioned Sergeant Stanbridge rose to his feet and prepared to deliver a damning indictment of Mr Sirraway’s inexcusable behaviour.

‘Did the constable get his helmet back?’ asked Colonel de Saumarez, fatally disclosing prior knowledge of the case. Nobody took a blind bit of notice.

‘I believe so, Your Worship,’ said Stanbridge, nodding.

‘Very well. Proceed.’

‘Your Worships, this is a simple case. On the night in question, the accused took up position outside the Conservative Association building in Harberton Square on the occasion of Sir Frederick Hungerford’s annual Christmas party. As guests arrived, he began shouting and carrying on and despite a polite request to pipe down, he took no notice and shouted even louder.

‘Police Constable Staverton arrived at the scene and warned the accused that he would be causing a public order offence if he did not immediately stop. That’s when the accused knocked off his helmet.’

The magistrates were still sufficiently awake to smile at this.

‘The accused was arrested and bailed to appear today before Your Worships.’

Colonel de Saumaurez eyed the man in the dock. He did not look like the usual sort of ruffian the town had to put up with.

‘Mr Sirraway, you have pleaded not guilty to these charges. What have you to say?’

‘I have a statement to make to the court.’

‘No, no!’ barked Thurlestone, the magistrates’ clerk. ‘No statement! You are being given an opportunity to speak in your own defence. Do, I pray, stick to that!’

Sirraway stared at the clerk’s ancient wig and, unblinking, pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket.

‘As I was saying,’ he continued firmly.

‘No, no, no! No statement!’

‘Your Worships, last night I spent a good hour checking the position with Stone’s Justices Manual, and I am within my rights, in responding to the clerk’s question, to make a statement.’

Mr Thurlestone did not like this one bit.

‘On the night in question it is true I stood outside the Conservative Hall in order to make a peaceful protest. I alerted the party faithful entering the building that their Member of Parliament is guilty of a number of illegal acts which…’

‘No, no, no!’ shouted an infuriated Thurleston, the wig on his head waggling. ‘You can’t say anything like that!’

‘Court privilege,’ said Sirraway, reaching for a handkerchief to wipe his nose. He’d certainly done his homework.

‘I really don’t think we need…’ said the Colonel, who’d had dinner with Sir Freddy only the other week.

‘… guilty of a number of malfeasances inconsistent with the public office he has held for the past forty years. In simple terms I pointed out to the party workers that their MP was a crook, is a crook, has always been a crook.’

‘That’s enough!’ snapped de Saumaurez. ‘I’m ordering you to put that piece of paper away! Anything else to say?’

‘It’s jolly easy to knock a copper’s hat off his napper. Have you ever tried, Your Worship?’

The chief magistrate growled through gritted teeth. ‘Anything known?’

‘Nothing, sir,’ said Sergeant Stanbridge.

‘Fined ten shillings. Bound over to keep the peace – and I mean that, Mr Sirraway, keep the peace – for a year.’

‘It’s Professor Sirraway,’ warbled the man joyously over his shoulder as he was bundled away.

Such a moment is always a testing time for the reporter. Your duty is both to cover the rest of the court proceedings, but also to chase up anything that could make a bigger story which might shine its light from under the hedge clippings of the gardening column. An impossible dilemma for Betty when, as on this occasion, there was no other reporter in court. Should she go out and chase the professor, if that’s what he was, and lose the next three cases while she interviewed him and called the office to get a photographer round, or should she carry on drooping over her notebook, inspecting her split ends and waiting for the endless day to be over?

Boldly, she decided on action. Gathering up her things she made for the door under the furious gaze of Mr Thurlestone, who knew his proceedings had been abandoned by the Fourth Estate and that whatever secrets the man Sirraway had been prevented from airing by the Colonel would now go before a greater court, that of public opinion.

‘Just a moment!’ called Betty as she emerged into the front hall. Sirraway was making a quick-march out of the building. ‘Mr… er… Professor…!’

‘Can I help?’ The man who’d been so beastly about the Christmas tree in the public library seemed perfectly charming, if more than a little odd.

‘Betty Featherstone, Riviera Express. I was there at the Conservative Hall the other night. I didn’t see you, though.’

‘You arrived at approximately 5.39 p.m.,’ said the Prof. ‘With a photographer.’

‘Yes, yes I did. But I didn’t…’

‘I thought I recognised you while I was in the dock,’ he went on. ‘But I wasn’t sure. You’ve changed your hair.’

‘Oh,’ blushed Betty, ‘d’you like it?’

The professor did not say. Instead he explained that he started his protest almost as soon as Betty entered the building, then went on until about 6 p.m., by which time his throat was hoarse, his wrists were bound, and a police constable was chasing his helmet down the gutter.

‘It gave me time enough to let the party faithful know the worst.’

‘And what is it they need to know?’ She had her notebook out and nodded with her head to a nearby bench.

‘I came to give Sir Frederick Hungerford a bloody nose for Christmas,’ said Sirraway in lordly fashion. ‘Perhaps you’d like to help me do that.’

‘Oh!’ said Betty. She could smell a big exclusive, even though she didn’t know the details yet, and how she loved to see her name in big print on Page One!

‘Won’t you come and have a cup of tea in Lovely Mary’s?’ she smiled, touching her newly permed hair and secretly blessing M’sieur Alphonse for his finesse.

‘Will ya no’ look at this rubbish,’ spat John Ross. He’d adopted his customary posture in the chief sub-editor’s chair, lolling sideways and flipping bits of copy paper over his shoulder as he read and rejected them. His foot pushed the bottom drawer of his desk back and forth, and from within you could hear the rattle of a half-empty bottle of Black and White whisky.

A couple of junior reporters looked up, then hastily down again. They may only have been here since leaving school in the summer, but already they’d learned the perils of being sucked into Ross’s vortex of cynicism and derision.

‘Betty Featherstone at her vairy worrrst! Listen to this:

FOND FAREWELL TO TEMPLE’S

TREMENDOUS SIR FREDDY.

‘Friends, admirers and well-wishers gathered at the Temple Regis Conservative Club at the weekend to give a rousing send-off to Sir Frederick Hungerford, who steps down as the town’s MP next spring.

‘Sir Freddy, as he is known, has for forty years served the constituency with distinction and dedication. His place as Conservative candidate at the general election will be taken by Mrs Mirabel Clifford, a prominent Temple Regis solicitor whose Market Square practice was established in 1950.

‘A much-loved figure in the…

‘I canna go orn,’ wailed the chief sub-editor. ‘Did the man write it himself? I canna imagine anyone else getting it so wrong!’

He got up and stalked over to the juniors’ desk. ‘I’ll expect better of ye when it’s yeur turn to write about politics. This man – he’s turned himself into a saint.’

There followed a lengthy monologue along the lines of how this businessman’s son had reinvented himself as a member of the aristocracy, and even now was awaiting the call to the House of Lords as reward for the years of his devoted service in the bars of Westminster and Whitehall.

Hungerford, ranted Ross, never visited the constituency, discouraged visitors to the House of Commons, served on no parliamentary committees, and spent a lot of time toadying round the fringes of royalty. His service to self-promotion was exemplary, however.

‘Betty!’ he yelled, but to no avail – she was having her hair done. Again. She’d taken the wiser course of action and written a chunk of syrupy prose rather than the mutinous squib she’d threatened Sir Freddy with on Friday night. The editor liked Betty and gave her extra big bylines on Page One – why rock that particular boat?

With a grunt Ross picked up the pieces of copy paper he’d scattered to the four winds and shoved them viciously on the spike. ‘Picture caption only,’ he ordered one of his underlings. If Freddy Hungerford lived by the oxygen of publicity, he could suffocate as far as John Ross was concerned.

‘Next!’

It was Tuesday morning, and though the Riviera Express described itself as a ‘news’ paper, most of what would appear on its pages this coming weekend was already sewn up – Renishaw’s entry-fee piece for Page One and a small picture of Betty having her hair done with a turn to Page Two. Page Three top, Judy’s hospital crisis. Then, through the rest of the newspaper, the customary smorgasboard of inconsequence and run-of-the-mill which each week was lapped up by the readership.

There was a piece on a new operating table at the local vet’s, an item about lost anchors in Bedlington Harbour, and a picture story on an irritating child prodigy who would go far (and the sooner the better). The centrepiece, as always, was Athene Madrigale’s glorious page of predictions for the coming week:

Sagittarius – Oh, how lucky you were to be born under this sign. Nothing but sunshine for you all week!

Cancer – Someone has prepared a big surprise for you. Be patient, it may take a while to appear, but what pleasure it will bring!

Capricorn – All your troubles are behind you now. Start thinking about your holidays!

If there was a ring of familiarity to these soothing phrases – indeed, if any reader had a sharp enough memory – Athene might easily be accused of self-plagiarism. But no right-minded Temple Regent would do that, for she was a much-loved figure in the town with her long flowing robes a kaleidoscope of colours, her iron-grey hair tied back with a blue paper flower and, often as not, odd shoes on her feet. When Athene spoke – whether in print or on the rare occasions she granted an audience – the world slowed its frantic spin and everything in it seemed all right again.

Only slowly had Rudyard Rhys come to realise what an asset this ethereal figure was to his publication, but when he tried to make Athene his agony aunt – offering tea and sympathy, solving problems, restarting people’s lives – she was driven to despair. For Athene discovered, when given her first batch of readers’ letters, that there is no solution to some problems – indeed, to most problems. And being Athene, she could not bear to face that eternal truth.

So instead she now doubled as Aunty Jill, writing the Kiddies’ Korner which featured the birthday photographs of some of the ugliest children in the West Country. This, too, was a great success – they loved her and, having no children of her own, she loved them.

A centre-spread of photographs sent in by readers, a welter of wedding reports, a raft of local district news, and pages and pages of football reports, made up the rest of the wholesome mix which constituted the Riviera Express. That was enough for its readership – leave the scandal to the Sunday papers!

Temple Flower Club – Our demonstrator for the evening was Mrs Lydia Sabey, a florist from Dartmouth, and her exhibit was titled Going Dutch. She started off with a copper urn and created an arrangement depicting the Dutch artists using coral and red dahlias, cosmos, red trailing amaranthus, berries and grapes…

Riviera Writers’ Group – Mrs Bellairs read her first piece since joining the group and held us spellbound with her account of a Christmas party with a twist – she took us on a visit to a stately home with dark-panelled walls, hidden chambers and relics belonging to a persecuted Catholic priest. She then proceeded to find herself trapped between time dimensions…

Bedlington Social Club – Mrs Bantham led the meeting and introduced our speaker, Mrs Havering from Torquay. Her first recital was the Devon Alphabet, never heard by any of us before!

Occasionally there was room in the Express for something meatier, and certainly the goings-on down at the Magistrates Court could provide enough spice to fill the paper several times over. But as an editor Rhys lived cautiously, caught between angry city fathers desperate that nothing should besmirch the town’s reputation, and underlings desperate to tap out the truth on their Olivettis and Remingtons. It was the city fathers who invariably prevailed.

In the far corner of the newsroom by the window overlooking the brewery, a tremendous thundering could be heard. It was the newcomer David Renishaw, evidently putting the finishing touches to what was destined to be the bombshell Page One splash – that Temple Regis would soon be charging holidaymakers for the privilege of walking its gilded streets.

The rate at which you could hear the ‘ting’ from the carriage return showed just how rapidly Renishaw worked, with barely a pause to consult his shorthand notes. Such industry in a weekly newspaper was unusual and, to be frank, unnerving: if you were lucky enough to get the splash, you could save up writing it till Thursday morning – this was only Tuesday!

Seven

With a final flourish, Renishaw wrenched out the last sheet of copy paper and walked it over to the subs’ desk. Just then Miss Dimont came through the door and they engaged in that embarrassed sidestepping dance which comes from two people bent on achieving their destination without giving way to the other.

‘After you,’ said Renishaw finally. There wasn’t much of a smile on his face.

‘How are you getting on, David? We haven’t had a chance for a chat. You’re a very busy man.’

‘Fine, thank you, Miss Dimont.’

‘Judy.’

‘Actually isn’t it – Huguette?’

How the hell does he know that? thought Miss Dimont but replied with a forced smile, ‘Most people find it easier to call me Judy.’

‘I’m just handing this in and then perhaps there’s time for a chinwag,’ said Renishaw.

‘Come and have a cup of tea, I’ll put the kettle on.’

As Miss Dimont spooned Lipton’s best Pekoe Tips into the pot, she watched the reporter and John Ross in earnest discussion. Ross was smiling, nodding, fingering the copy paper – quite a contrast from his usual Arctic welcome to a new piece of news. Then the two men laughed and Renishaw walked over to Judy’s desk.

‘Just talking about the old days. Great to find a kindred spirit,’ he said.

‘You worked in Fleet Street?’

‘Oh, all over the place,’ said Renishaw, his eyes skimming over Judy’s notebook, unashamedly attempting to translate the upside-down shorthand.

‘You’re enjoying Temple Regis? Have you got somewhere nice to stay?’

‘Staying with Lovely Mary – you know, the Signal Box Café lady.’

I know her very well, thought Miss Dimont – but obviously not that well. Why didn’t she tell me she’d got a lodger? One whose desk is not ten yards away from mine? I’ve only spent most lunchtimes at her place over the past five years, why didn’t she tell me?

‘How lovely,’ she said, not meaning it. ‘And then… Mrs Renishaw? Is she coming to join you down here?’

Her question really was – are you planning to stay in Temple Regis, Mr Cuckoo? What are you really doing here? What are you hoping to achieve?

‘Why don’t we have a drink later?’ he replied. ‘I don’t much myself, but since I’ve been here I discover that most social activity takes place in close proximity to liquor.’

His body was wiry, eyes clear, complexion fresh – so unlike most local reporters of his age who were already allowing the middle-age spread to develop, learning new ways to comb their receding hair. He really is quite handsome, thought Miss Dimont, the eyes are a very sharp blue.

‘Why not?’ said Judy. Maybe then I can ask you about Pansy Westerham – or is it you who’s going to be asking me about her? What a strange fellow you are.

‘The Nelson, at six?’

‘We usually go to the Old Jawbones or the Fort.’

‘The Nelson’s very comfortable. But then you know that, of course – you were in there at Easter.’

How on earth would you know that, thought Miss Dimont – Easter was months and months ago, long before you arrived in Temple Regis, and who would you ask in there who knew me, and how would they remember from all that time ago?

Renishaw smiled knowingly. ‘Man called Lamb,’ he explained. ‘You took pity on him. Bit of an old soak – well, that’s putting it mildly – hadn’t quite got enough change to buy his whisky. You got out your purse and coughed up. He hasn’t forgotten.’

It still doesn’t make sense, thought Judy. Why would a man, who clearly doesn’t drink, spend time in a pub in the company of a sad old down-and-out long enough to learn I once gave him ninepence so he could make it a double?

‘See you there at six,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to write up the Caring Volunteers story.’

‘If you need any help,’ said Renishaw, and sat down in Betty’s chair opposite.

‘Er, no thank you. I think I’ve got all I…’

‘Did you talk to Hugh Radipole?’

‘No, I did not,’ said Judy, taking out her crossness by ratcheting copy paper viciously into the Remington QuietRiter. She banged the space bar several times as if to say, go away, I’m busy now.

‘Only I think you should,’ said Renishaw, smoothly. ‘I told him about the crisis and he responded very positively. He said he’d put on a party at the Marine Hotel for all those who volunteer this year. Pop in and see an oldie, get rewarded with a cocktail. That should take care of the problem.’

Dammit, thought Miss D, this is my story – go away and leave me to it!

‘See you at six, David,’ she said, as sweetly as she could, and shoving her spectacles up her nose, began to type furiously.

The Caring Volunteers piece should have come easily. She’d already thought of the introductory paragraph – always the hardest bit – but suddenly it didn’t seem to work any more. She decided to carry on typing in the hope the story would come good – she’d have to retype the whole thing, but better for the moment to press on – but eventually after rapping out a few more paragraphs she ground to a halt.

Renishaw! The smug way he’d sat himself down and told her how to do her job! He hadn’t been rude, hadn’t been patronising, but now she knew she’d have to ring up Hugh Radipole, get a couple of extra quotes, include the whole thing about cocktails in return for care, and rewrite the entire story just as Renishaw had dictated. The cheek of the man!

At the same time, at the back of her mind was the unsettling matter of Pansy Westerham. And then again, that old soak Lamb. When you collected these together with the Caring Volunteers, it suddenly seemed as if Renishaw had deliberately plugged himself into her life.

But why?

‘Miss Dim!’ the editor’s voice trailed out from his office, a combination of tired regret and impending retribution. ‘Here please!’

She walked, not particularly quickly, across the office.

‘Yes, Richard?’ She addressed him just as she’d done during those intense days in the War Office. No matter he now called himself Rudyard after a failed attempt to reinvent himself as a novelist; he would always remain the erratic naval officer who, though older, was junior to her in the spying game they conducted from that cold uncarpeted basement deep below Whitehall.

They’d known each other for twenty years but now their roles were reversed, and Judy worked for Rudyard – Richard – Rhys. It was not an arrangement which suited either.

‘Freddy Hungerford,’ grunted her editor. ‘There’s been a complaint. Where were you on Friday?’

Drinking cocktails with a fascinating old lady, a lady who at a very late stage in life decided to make herself a fortune by putting young men on a stage who stripped themselves to the waist and shouted into microphones. Who went around getting young girls in the family way, and then left town.

‘I got stuck out at Wistman’s Hotel. Snowed in – had to spend the night.’

‘I hope you’re not thinking of putting that on your expenses. There’s nothing in the diary to say you should’ve been out there.’

‘I went to interview Mrs Phipps to see if I could get a piece out of her about next year’s season at the Pavilion Theatre.’ It was a lie, but lies never count when it’s the editor.

‘I don’t want any more rubbish about noisy beat groups – look at all the trouble they caused last summer,’ grumbled Rhys.

‘She’s thinking of Pearl Carr and Teddy Johnson.’

‘Who?’

‘Pasty-faced woman, man with a straw boater and bow tie. They croon sickly songs at each other.’

‘That sounds a bit more like it.’

Actually, Mr Editor, she’s going to have Gene Vincent – ripping off his leather jacket as he mounts the stage at full revs on his Triumph Bonneville. That’ll increase your heart rate a bit when he hits town.

‘Rr… rrr. Anyway, Freddy Hungerford – apparently Betty rubbed him up the wrong way at the Con Club on Friday night – when you should have been there, Miss Dim – and he wants an apology.’

‘Don’t call me that! I’ve told you, Richard, I am Miss Dimont, or I am Judy. I am not the other thing, and well you know it. Anyway, Betty’s at M’sieur Alphonse having her perm done, she can pop over to the club the moment she’s finished, it’s only round the corner.’

‘No,’ said Rhys, fishing in his pocket for a box of matches and not meeting her gaze, ‘I want you to go.’

‘And apologise for something Betty said?’

‘You can do it better than her.’

‘For heaven’s sake, Richard! What did she say, anyway, to upset the old goat?’

‘I have no idea. Just get round there and smooth him down.’

‘And have his hand up my skirt? No thanks! He’s retiring in the spring and finally we’re going to be represented by a woman who’s diligent, caring, and knows what she’s doing.’

‘Not necessarily. Could be the Liberal who wins.’

‘Same thing – she’s a good candidate too.’

‘I suppose you would say that of the Labour contender as well.’

‘Certainly! It would just be nice to have an MP who actually turned up here occasionally and cared what went on in the constituency.’

Rhys lit his pipe and a foul smell instantly filled the room. ‘Off you go. Smooth him down. Find some story to write. I see John Ross spiked the piece Betty wrote; there has to be something else worth saying.’

‘I suppose you mean his forthcoming peerage? That the lazy good-for-nothing has bought himself a coronet and an ermine robe?’

‘Don’t be so impertinent!’ snapped the editor. ‘You’re the chief reporter on this newspaper and my personal representative – an apology from you will go a long way. Hop round there now!’

‘Just got to finish the Caring Volunteers story first, Richard.’

‘Oh bugger the volunteers and their blithering care. Get round to the Con Club and get down on your knees!’

‘I don’t sleep much, do you?’ he was saying.

Miss Dimont could take it or leave it, but it was Mulligatawny who needed the requisite seven-and-a-half hours, trapping her feet under the eiderdown and prompting dreams of having been manacled and thrown into a dungeon.

‘I have the usual quota.’

They’d met in The Nelson but there was a bit of a scuffle going on so they’d come outside until it was sorted out. Apparently, the Tuesday night crowd tended to get a bit excitable.

‘I find the thoughts keep coming and it seems a waste not to get them down on paper,’ David Renishaw went on. ‘How about you?’

Miss Dimont found his conversational style a little alarming. Though he offered nuggets about his life, each sentence ended with an interrogative, as if he were trying to break into her house and steal her valuables.

‘Rest is essential in our job,’ she said, firmly. ‘Otherwise you lose concentration.’

She didn’t know why she was saying this, but Renishaw unnerved her. She was trying to get to the bottom of why he was here in Temple Regis, what he was running away from (that surely had to be the case?), and why he was interested in Pansy Westerham and her violent death all those years ago.

They were sitting outside The Nelson on a wooden bench. A small green square hemmed by fishermen’s cottages lay in front of them, illuminated by the winking lights of the neighbourhood Christmas tree. It was extraordinarily warm and as she unbuttoned her coat, Judy thought of dear Geraldine Phipps, still up on Dartmoor in Wistman’s Hotel, looking out of her window towards the snow-capped Hell’s Tor a mile distant.

‘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

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