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‘You just don’t get the quality of local corr any more,’ he said, churning hopelessly through the paper mountain on Betty’s desk as if panning for gold. ‘The stupidity of the village correspondents. You ask them to give you a story and all they can come up with is – oh, Christ!’
Betty abruptly put down the hand-mirror. She’d given up typing and was inspecting her green and platinum stripes. ‘What is it, Mr Ross?’
‘Girrlie, girrlie, oh girrlie…’ he whispered as if he had struck the mother lode, ‘ye canna believe… look at this week’s Umbrella!’
This was not an invitation to step out into the rain but to scrutinise the cage-droppings of a chum of the editor, a man who once made a half-funny speech at Rotary and was immediately snapped up to do a weekly column.
This half-wit called his column ‘Between Ourselves’ and signed himself ‘Umbrella Man’. Nobody knew why.
‘What’s it about?’ said Betty listlessly.
‘Dog bowls in pubs,’ replied Ross, his voice hoarser than an undertaker’s.
‘Well, look,’ said Betty, trying to break the mood. ‘Just think, next week I’m off to meet Moomie. We’ll get something wonderful out of that!’
The chief sub looked at her suspiciously. ‘Mommie?’
‘No, Moomie – Moomie Etta-Shaw, the jazz singer. She’s doing the summer season at the Marine.’
‘Ay,’ said Ross. ‘I know who you mean now. She and Alma Cogan used to work together at the Blue Lagoon in Soho.’
‘Didn’t she start out as a cloakroom attendant?’ asked Betty, who’d been doing her homework.
‘Nah,’ said Ross caustically, walking away. ‘She only took people’s coats.’
If this was supposed to be a joke it went over Betty’s head and she returned to the fuss over the building of a bus shelter in Exbridge – nobody wanted it outside their house yet everyone agreed it was vital in winter to stop villagers being splashed by passing traffic. Betty’s fingers were flying, the copy-paper was emerging from the top of her machine, but you couldn’t call it writing.
‘Time for a quick one,’ said Terry, who’d emerged from the darkroom and was looking for a drinking partner. Betty touched her hair – she wouldn’t be seen dead in the Fort or the Jawbones in her present state.
Unless, of course, she put the dead cat on her head again.
‘Won’t be a moment,’ she said, nippily pushing her typewriter away.
SIX (#ulink_db9e0556-e1ce-5faf-a103-41d083565b5f)
Frank Topham sat solidly in his chair at the head of the table while his detectives hunched over their notes, waiting uneasily for the inquisition ahead.
‘So,’ said the Inspector without the slightest hint of hope in his voice, ‘what have we got?’
One of the grey-faced assistants cleared his throat. ‘I checked on Bunton’s movements at the time of the shooting and it couldn’t have been him – he was at the Buntorama in Clacton, just like he said.’
‘Well, you had to ask. But he’s hardly likely to go round shooting his own customers, is he? Not good for business.’
‘You never know, sir.’
‘His piece of Fluff?’
The man managed a weary smile. ‘She was with him when the woman was shot, she’s always with him – she won’t let him out of her sight. She’s going to have that man for breakfast, lunch and dinner.’
‘Bunton’s under the impression she’s just his latest piece of stuff,’ said the other copper. ‘He has no idea that she’s his next wife who’ll take him for every last farthing before she spits him out.’
‘Splits him out,’ said the first, referring to the regrettable incident in the Primrose Bar. They both laughed, in a tired sort of way.
Topham was not so amused. ‘The victim? What new information do we have?’
‘Address in Chelsea she gave to the reception people at Buntorama turned out to be false. It’s a chemist’s shop.’
‘How did she pay?’
‘Cash, they prefer it that way in holiday camps.’
‘I daresay the Inland Revenue might have something to say about that,’ said Topham, a decent man who believed in people paying their taxes. It would be a useful bargaining chip when trying to get more information out of the clamlike Bunton.
‘And you didn’t get any more from any of the punters over at the holiday camp?’
‘One or two of them said they saw her. Posh, is what most of them say, in spite of her cheap clothes – the way she smiled but said nothing. Polite but condescending in that us-and-them sort of way.’
‘But are you saying she spoke to nobody at Buntorama? Didn’t go to the dances, sit in the bar? Wasn’t she missed at mealtimes?’
‘She was single so she was put on the long table where all the odds and sods end up. Everybody moves around – it’s not like being given a table for four in a hotel or on a liner where you know everybody’s business by the end of the fish course. She was on what you might call a moveable feast.’
If that was a joke it fell flat.
‘So,’ said Topham, ‘she was noticeable enough to be noticed, as it were, but nobody’s missed her.’
‘One woman said she didn’t smell right.’
‘And you checked back on her possessions?’
‘You saw yourself, sir, there was almost nothing in her suitcase. Cheap clothes, newly bought. Old suitcase. Two pairs of shoes in the wardrobe, make-up bag but no handbag. Clothes she was wearing when she was killed were the same make as the ones in the suitcase, no clues whatsoever. She was wearing expensive earrings, very yellow gold, no hallmark. Gold bracelet, also no hallmark. Very odd, that. Wedding ring on her third finger, right hand – old.’
‘How old?’
‘Older than her. Could have been her mother’s. Could’ve been a hand-me-down from a marriage which failed.’
‘She could be French,’ hazarded the other detective, but this fell on stony ground. He didn’t have a clue really.
‘No question, then,’ said Topham with conviction. ‘A mystery woman with expensive jewellery and cheap clothes. If that isn’t a disguise I’m a Chinaman’s uncle.’
Not having heard of any oriental relations in the Topham tribe, his men nodded in affirmation.
‘What next, sir?’
‘I have absolutely no idea,’ said the Detective Inspector with finality, gathering his papers and standing up. ‘You just carry on.’
Dear Hermione,
I am known among my friends for having a generous nature but now I feel the milk of human kindness has drained away and may never return. Please help.
Every year I am fortunate enough to have a bumper crop of strawberries. Last year I gave some to my best friend to make jam. She has now won First Prize for her strawberry jam at the Mothers’ Union and has been boasting to everyone how clever she is, without once mentioning that it was my strawberries that done it.
She has been my friend for years but now I feel I hate her. What can I do?
Miss Dimont looked again at the letter, took off her glasses, polished them, and replaced them on her deliciously curved nose. After a pause she got up to make a cup of tea. The letter was waiting when she got back, looking up pleadingly and urgently demanding Hermione’s adjudication. Miss Dimont stared at her Remington Quiet-Riter for quite some time then decided its ribbon needed changing.
A sub-editor wandered by and for a good ten minutes they discussed the latest film starring Dirk Bogarde at the Picturedrome. It turned out neither had seen it, but both had heard good reports.
The letter remained. There was, in fact, no answer to the agonising dilemma it presented and yet the heartfelt plea to Hermione cried out for a response, and Miss Dimont’s sense of duty told her she must answer, truthfully, and to the best of her ability.
She pushed the letter to one side and picked up another.
Dear Hermione,
I am in tears as I write this. I feel my son has been poisoned against me by my daughter-in-law and no longer wishes to see me. I am seventy next birthday and a widow.
I fail to understand why things should be this way when I have always gone out of my way to help my daughter-in-law with her children. I am always on hand to give good advice, even going to the trouble of writing her long letters advising her of better ways of managing things. I pop in at odd times to give the children a surprise – also it gives me a chance to help with the cleaning, going through the cupboards and so on.
I feel for some reason this annoys her, though why I can’t…
Miss Dimont looked up at the big clock down the other end of the newsroom. Almost lunchtime!
Dear Hermione,
I have been happily married for five years, but recently my husband has been suggesting that we…
Instinctively Miss Dimont told herself to read no further. Some problems are best left unexplored, certainly in a family newspaper like the Riviera Express, and without further ado she let the letter float gently into the wicker wastepaper basket by her ankle.
Just then she spotted the ethereal figure of Athene Madrigale flitting through a door and she beckoned her over. Devon’s most celebrated astrologer negotiated her way over to Judy’s desk and sat down.
‘Yes, dear?’
‘I see what you mean,’ said Judy.
‘What’s that?’
‘This wretched agony column, Athene. Since I got you off writing it, I’ve become Hermione.’
Athene blushed. ‘I never meant for that to happen, dear.’
You might have predicted it if you’d looked in your crystal ball, thought Judy unkindly, but aloud she said, ‘It’s impossible to answer these cries for help, isn’t it? Impossible!’
‘They made me quite upset,’ said Athene. ‘I had to go and lie down. There was one from a happily married woman whose husband had been suggesting…’
‘Yes, I threw that one in the bin. But Athene, how tangled people’s lives become! A woman who interferes in her daughter-in-law’s child-rearing, two old friends falling out over a pot of jam…’
‘You see why I couldn’t do it,’ said Athene. She was plaiting her hair into the bright blue paper rose which was her favourite adornment.
‘Well, I can’t do it either,’ said Judy. ‘And anyway what a rotten idea to have an agony column in the first place.’
‘Mr Rhys. His idea. Only a heartless man could wish to expose other people’s misery to the world.’
‘It’s called journalism, Athene,’ sighed Miss Dimont. ‘It’s called journalism.’
SEVEN (#ulink_9784bdd3-cb98-5b11-bbc6-22e8fc2e6fb1)
It was never quite the same, doing a job with Betty. She was efficient, she asked the right questions, she had a good shorthand note and was usually charming enough to winkle that extra cup of tea out of the grieving widow, football pools winner, or someone whose young Einstein had just won a place at university.
Terry liked her, but that was it – she did not infuriate him like Judy did. She never told an interviewee what to think, which Judy sometimes did. She didn’t make a nuisance of herself by challenging heavy-handed authority, which Judy always did.
She had a lovely smile but often it was spoilt by the wrong choice of lipstick, and the haphazard way it was applied at her desk without the benefit of a mirror did her no favours. And then her clothes! Lime green seemed to be the favourite of the moment, but teaming it with royal blue or pink, as she did, verged on the downright reckless.
Terry snatched a glimpse of her as they drove in the Minor out to the Marine Hotel, Betty looking out at the grey listless sands stretching for miles to the rainy horizon. Temple Regis boasted the most sunshine hours anywhere in Britain, but just a mile or two down the road at Ruggleswick, there seemed to be a micro-climate which favoured grey over blue, wind over stillness, stratified clouds over a clear blue sky.
To the well-heeled patrons of the Marine, this was a bonus – their view of the sands and sea remained largely uncluttered by the human form. For the inmates of Buntorama it was proof, yet again, that British holidays were a washout. They dreamed instead of joining the exodus to Benidorm where they could drink cheap brandy and get a nice all-over sunburn.
‘This makes a change,’ Betty said half-heartedly, but she was not her usual chatty self. Terry didn’t interest himself in her love life, but she’d brought him up to speed on the matter of Dud Fensome and his thing for platinum.
This morning she was wearing a silk scarf on her head, so it was difficult to see what had been achieved over the weekend by way of damage-control but Terry, with his photographer’s instinct for the ways of women, guessed it had probably not been a great success. At least she wasn’t wearing the ruddy cat.
‘She’s got an amazing voice,’ Terry was saying. ‘You could hear it all the way down in the lobby when we went to see Bobby Bunton last week.’
Betty wasn’t listening. Instead she said, ‘I wanted to ask her about – well, she’s quite stout, isn’t she? I thought our lady readers would be interested in what she wore, you know, underneath – to keep it all under control.’
Terry looked at her disbelievingly. ‘Woman’s angle, is it? Crikey, Betty, Moomie Etta-Shaw is one of the greatest jazz singers this country has ever been lucky enough to host.’ He sounded a bit like the advertising handout he’d glanced at before leaving the office. ‘She’s had hit records! Been on the Billy Cotton Band Show! You must have heard her singing “Volare” on the radio!
‘Stout! You don’t know the meaning of the word!’
Betty did. Dud had used it quite recently.
‘I prefer a dance band myself,’ she said, quickly changing the subject, but Terry was ahead of her. Maybe she had put on a little weight.
‘Almost there,’ he said. ‘Pictures first, Betty, then you can have as long as you like with her.’
Here was the perennial struggle between snappers and scribblers, as to who went first. Terry usually got his way, but with celebrity set-ups like this one he could take up to half an hour getting what he wanted, leaving little time for the reporter to get to grips with her subject. It was often a point of dispute between Terry and Judy, but Betty was more flexible and didn’t mind much who did what – it was just a relief to be out of the office. And the great thing was that if it was a picture story, she could always get a ride in the photographer’s car rather than catch the bus, which is what reporters were supposed to do.
Again this was something which could elicit a peppery remark or two from Miss Dimont, but Betty was more pliable. The photographer looked at her once more and realised that, whatever else happened over the weekend, she’d been let down again.
‘Good weekend?’ he asked, hoping to draw her out.
‘We’re here,’ sighed Betty with just a touch of tragedy coating her voice. ‘Don’t take too long!’
It probably didn’t improve things that Moomie was singing ‘Lover Come Back To Me’ as they entered the ballroom. Wrapped in a figure-hugging silk dress, she looked ready to entertain a thousand fans at the London Palladium, not rehearse a one-hour set for her debut tonight. Terry thrilled at the colour combination of her dark brown skin, dazzling white teeth and midnight blue wrapping – even though his newspaper still only printed in black and white.
‘Wonderful,’ he breathed, reaching into his bag for his Leica. Just for a moment he shared Betty’s curiosity about the strength of Moomie’s underpinnings – her figure was as huge as her voice – but at that moment the song finished and Betty stepped forward to make the introductions.
‘You must know,’ said Moomie with a serene smile and a wave of her arm, ‘these lovely musicians it is my privilege to work with. Mike Manifold on guitar, Cornish Pete on bass, Sticks Karanikis, drums.’
The trio nodded, absently. Professional musicians rarely look up above their score-sheets and then only to talk to each other – there wasn’t any point in wasting time getting to know them.
