скачать книгу бесплатно
If she could, Miss Dimont would have felt pity for her editor. But long experience told her this was a vacillating, fearful man who only made problems for himself by virtue of his nervousness. If there was an important decision to make between two choices, he’d always pick the wrong one.
‘Here’s the story, Richard. The Marine Hotel knowingly allows a prostitute to ply her trade in their bar. It allows its business rival, heaven knows why, to sit drinking in the same bar until his piece of stuff topples off her high heels and exposes herself to the world, then it kicks them both out.’
‘Bunton’s not a rival,’ growled Rhys. ‘Different ends of the business – carriage-trade versus knotted handkerchief brigade.’
‘Precisely my point,’ said Miss Dimont crisply. ‘And do you think that when Fleet Steet gets down here that particular penny isn’t going to drop? The battle between upstairs and downstairs? Class war on the coast?
‘This is only Buntorama’s second season. But already you can see the resentment and rivalry building up between these two establishments – side-by-side and away from the centre of town.
‘Bobby Bunton’s a maverick, and when it suits him he’ll turn his guns on the Marine – accuse them of being snobs. Then we’ll have an all-out battle in Temple Regis, and just when the local economy was picking up nicely.’
The editor picked up a box of matches and turned it over in his hand. The room smelt of old dogs, though it was probably his overcoat which hung on the coat-rack winter and summer. The sun’s heat was coming through the window and Miss Dimont realised why in general it was better to leave the door open.
‘Don’t think I hadn’t considered this,’ he said weightily. ‘It was a mistake letting Bobby Bunton into town and I’ll be frank – but this must go no further – I saw Hugh Radipole at lunch today. He warned there were likely to be severe repercussions if Bunton steps out of line.
‘He was telling me something of Bunton’s past – d’you know he carries a cut-throat razor in his top pocket all the time? – and unless Bunton calms down and stays out of the Marine there’ll be some howitzer-fire going over the fence. Radipole’s not a man to take things lying down.’
‘Good Lord, Richard,’ said Judy happily, ‘I think you’ve got yourself a scoop there!’
FIVE (#ulink_3f75d8b1-bbad-5eab-a199-93d0027545bc)
Auriol Hedley sat waiting for her friend on the back deck of the Princess Evening Tide, an old but beautifully turned-out yacht whose sheets were white, whose brass was polished, and whose prow was sharply elegant.
Evening Tide occupied a space against the harbour wall from where Auriol could see all the way down the estuary to its mouth, while over her shoulder she could keep an eye on her place of business, the Seagull Café. It was her habit in summer to come down here for a gin and tonic, usually in the company of her dear friend, Judy Dimont, on a sunny evening.
‘She’s late,’ said Auriol to the elegant gentleman sitting across the deck, shoes twinkling in the sunlight. His eyes were half-shut.
‘Good Lord!’ said the old boy, stirring from a half-slumber. It was hot. ‘That the time?’
‘Are you going to say something to her before you go?’
‘Not if she doesn’t hurry up. I’ve that train to catch.’
‘It’s been going on too long, Arthur, this campaign to keep her mother at arm’s length. If Madame Dimont finally carries out her threat and pays a visit, we’re all in the soup.’
‘Not me,’ said Arthur, chuckling. ‘I’m off!’
Just then the sputtering and clacking which usually proclaimed the arrival of Herbert pierced the early evening air. Meandering gulls on their evening stroll scattered to make way for man and machine, lifting off into the gathering haze. Miss Dimont clambered aboard.
‘Ginger beer, no ice,’ said Auriol, shuddering as she proffered the customary glass. ‘What kept you?’
‘Tell you later,’ replied Judy, offering a cheek to the old boy. ‘Hello, Arthur, what a surprise, how lovely!’
‘Just passing,’ said her uncle lightly, though this could not conceivably be true. ‘Auriol’s gin fizzes – what a miracle!’
‘Your glass is empty.’
‘Just going.’
‘But I’ve only just got here!’
‘Taking the Pullman to London. Been here all afternoon. Hoped I’d see more of you before I went. Must dash, though.’
He was old but still had a schoolboy bounce about him. ‘I say, Huguette, will you come up to town and have lunch with me at the club? Your mother’s coming. You could help out.’
‘Bit busy at the moment,’ said Judy, guardedly. ‘Been a murder over at Buntorama.’
At the mention of the word ‘murder’, the old man’s face lengthened in a mixture of disbelief and resignation. There was a pause. ‘I do not know,’ he said, slowly, ‘even after all these years I cannot understand, what brings one man to want to do away with another.’
Miss Dimont was hoping he might go on – he usually had something very useful to say after all those years of experience – but he was eager to disembark.
‘Train to catch,’ he said. ‘If you won’t come and have lunch with Grace and me, you know she’ll come down here. I thought you wanted to avoid that.’
‘When she comes, uncle, she straightens up my house. Goes through my drawers. Reads my correspondence. Looks down her nose at the neighbours. Dislikes intensely what I do for a living. But still she comes and sits in the Express front hall every lunchtime expecting to be taken out. She absolutely despises Terry and…’
‘You often have a word or two to say about Terry yourself,’ chipped in Auriol. ‘And not always complimentary, Hugue.’
‘She’s your mother,’ sighed the old man patiently. ‘Be kind, Huguette.’
‘If only she could be kind to me!’
All three stepped onto the quayside and Auriol wandered back to the café, leaving uncle and niece together by the waiting taxi.
‘Auriol sent for you, Arthur.’
‘I say, that sounds a bit accusatory!’
‘To do her dirty work for her. She’s been on at me for months to have Maman come and stay.’
‘Wouldn’t it be better? Get it over and done with?’
Miss Dimont shook her curls impatiently. ‘She’s your sister, uncle, can’t you do something about it?’
‘You know how odd she is. Running away to the Continent all those years ago, insisting even after your father died she should still be addressed as Madame Dimont. Talking in that affected Frenchified way.’
‘Still you named your daughter after her.’
‘She made me,’ said the old boy with a conspiratorial smile – they were in this together. ‘Come to the Club. Get me out of a hole.’
‘Oh – all right then.’
‘Don’t sound so dashed. It’ll save her coming down here and rifling through your things.’
They embraced, and the taxi sped away up Bedlington hill towards the station. The reporter walked slowly back to the Seagull Café to rejoin her friend.
‘A shame you missed him,’ said Auriol, cracking eggs into a bowl. ‘He was on wonderful form, telling me lots of things about the old days. Really, some of his adventures!’
‘Permanent schoolboy,’ said Judy.
‘Your mother has him under her thumb.’
‘Did you get him to come all the way down here just to tell me I must have Maman to stay? That seems a bit steep.’
‘He was passing through on his way from Dartmouth. Bit of a reunion, by the sound of it.’
Auriol turned to face her friend. She was still gloriously attractive, thought Miss Dimont, almost unchanged since their days in the underground corridors of the Admiralty building all those years ago. Everyone from able seaman to Admiral of the Fleet had been stunned by Auriol’s dark hair, coal-black eyes, perfect deportment and beautiful figure. Moreover, in a branch of the armed services almost completely peopled by men, she had the commanding presence to issue orders which they were happy to obey.
More than that, Auriol was the perfect sounding board – you could throw facts at her and she would size them up, turn them round, look at them upside-down and deliver them back to you in such an orderly fashion they were almost unrecognisable. Often when she was stuck with a problem, Miss Dimont would hand a bundle of information over to her friend and watch her go through it like a costermonger feeling up the apples and putting the best ones at the front of the stall.
‘. . . so you see,’ Miss Dimont was saying, ‘Bobby, Fluffles, then this woman Rouchos.’
‘That name sounds familiar.’
‘Does it?’ She was slicing up tomatoes to go in the omelette, their sharp sweet odour pricking her nostrils.
‘Can’t think why. Keep going, it’ll come to me.’
‘I just feel in my bones there’s something very odd about this set-up. Why in the first place did Hugh Radipole allow Bobby Bunton to loll about in the Marine making trouble when, really, his presence was a pain in the proverbial?’
‘His money is as good as anyone else’s. And it sounds like that piece of stuff of his is a thirsty one.’
‘And how! But the point is these two men were at each other’s throats. There’s Radipole on the one hand, urbane and sophisticated, who’s had that end of the beach all to himself ever since he arrived here years ago. Builds up a reputation for his hotel as a rich man’s hideaway – I mean, he doesn’t even want the Express in there to publicise the place, I always get a nasty look when I go in. He’s snooty, his guests are snooty!
‘Then,’ said Judy, laying out the knives and forks and freshly laundered napkins, ‘there’s the King of the Holiday Camps.’ She uttered the words satirically. ‘He’s noisy, he’s brash, he lacks polish and wears horrible clothes. And the way he talks!’
‘Never had you for a snob, Hugue.’
‘I don’t mean that – he talks like a spiv, always slightly threatening in the way he says things. Smarmy one minute, would take a cut-throat razor to you the next. And that frightful woman!’
‘The fancy piece? What did you call her – the courtesan?’
‘I was being polite. She’s the worst kind of advert for our gender you could ever imagine.’
‘Men seem to like her,’ said Auriol evenly, serving on to the plates, ‘a lot. By that I mean, a lot of men like her a lot.’
‘What I feel is that there’s something toxic about her – you could see that men might kill over her, however worthless she may be. Goodness, even Terry…!’
Auriol often heard complaints about Terry. Judy didn’t always mean what she said.
‘What interests me is this other woman, Rouchos,’ said Auriol, switching tack. ‘Clearly not the kind of person you’d normally find in a Buntorama. Disguised herself with her choice of clothes, but the jewellery gave her away, didn’t it? What the devil was she doing there? And more importantly, where was she when she wasn’t in the camp?’
Miss Dimont thought about this. ‘Bunton said she was a prostitute, but I don’t believe it. The clothes she left behind, the make-up, the perfume – all wrong for a woman in that line of business.’
Auriol arched an eyebrow. ‘And you’d know?’
‘I would assume,’ added Judy quickly. ‘OK, she’s sitting on her bed fully dressed, she might have been waiting for a client, but when you think about it she hadn’t been seen around the place all week so she wasn’t using the chalet as a place of work. Why would she suddenly change tack?’
‘According to what you say, Bunton claimed she was going to the Marine Hotel to grab a client or two. Maybe she had a room there.’
‘What, a room in Buntorama and one in the Marine? Why on earth would she do that?’
‘I’d check,’ said Auriol with that sliver of authority which once had junior naval officers scurrying to make her a pot of tea, no sugar, two digestives.
‘I will. Now what about Does the Team Think? – it must almost be time.’
Auriol switched on the radio and they sat with a glass of wine listening to silly jokes from the mouths of Jimmy Edwards, Ted Ray and Arthur Askey, a world away from the sinister doings in Ruggleswick. Both were listening, both were laughing, but both were thinking at the same time.
However, as a rat-tat of audience applause signalled the end of the show, the conversation did not immediately return to murder but to another kind of death. On the wall above the bakelite wireless hung the same photograph each woman displayed in her home, a black-and-white portrait of a man they both had loved – Auriol as a sister, Miss Dimont as his fiancée.
‘Not his kind of humour,’ said Auriol, switching off the radio. ‘Coffee?’
‘I think he’d have enjoyed The Goon Show more.’
‘Yes, madcap. Like Johnny Ramensky.’
It was always painful steering the conversation round to Eric Hedley, almost like picking at a scab, but most times they did. Both bitterly felt his loss, his heroic sacrifice in the last days of war when really he could have been spared. Auriol and Judy were friends, but Eric was what made their friendship eternal.
‘Johnny was a terror.’
‘It’s why Eric adored him so much. And, Hugue, you have to admit, the neatest safe-cracker you ever came across.’
‘To be honest,’ said Miss Dimont, ‘I never knew that many men with a passion for gelignite.’
Back in the office Betty Featherstone was making up for time off prompted by the hair debacle. She was doing the early pages, her desk overflowing with scraps of paper sent in by correspondents with a greater passion for the minutiae of village life than Betty could ever muster.
But her mind was on the colossal sense of entitlement Dud Fensome seemed to have. What Dud wanted, Dud got. The green patches among the platinum were, after all, just the tip of the iceberg when it came to his demands.
She dithered for half-an-hour over the Ashburton Sheep Sale market report, with its complex, interwoven, arcane and utterly boring detail on greyface ewes, whiteface ewes, clun ewes, kerrys, hoggets, wether lambs and registered greyface lambs. To turn into readable prose the pencilled notes scribbled on the back of a sale bill – was that the poor sheep’s last drop of blood tainting the dispatch? – required more concentration than she could cope with at the end of a long day. She lifted the paper to one side but it stuck to her fingers, the blood not quite dry.
‘Ew!’ Betty squeaked, as John Ross strolled by.
‘Ay, lassie,’ growled the Glaswegian. ‘Ewes indeed – they got you on the early pages, eh? Try to get it right this week.’
‘I simply haven’t the energy,’ said Betty, thinking about cycling home to have another go at her hair.
The chief sub-editor leaned over and started shuffling through the confetti on her desk.
‘Good one here,’ he grunted, voice tinged with venom. ‘Women’s Institute announcing their new competition – “A SALAD FOR ONE.”
‘And look! The winner of last week’s lampshade-making contest! Gloooorious…’ he added bitterly. Once he’d been a football reporter on a Fleet Street newspaper, now he was reduced to inventing headlines for the pitiful scraps of information sent in from the far-flung extremities of the newspaper’s circulation area. Dispatches from places where reporters never trod.
‘Och!’ he said, shaking his ugly head at a missive written in block capitals, ‘WAR DECLARED ON THE RABBIT POPULATION.’
‘And this! “DRAMATIC RESCUE ON MUDFORD CLIFFS”,’ he intoned, adding with heavy irony, ‘“NOT MANY DEAD”.’
One more caught his jaded eye. ‘That old chestnut about no public lavs down at Bedlington. Again. Oh mother Mary, save me now!’
Once upon a time Ross would be consoling himself in the pub by this hour, but since he was sworn off the booze these days he took it out on anybody left in the office after opening-time.
