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‘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.
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 (#ulink_dcc7cb9f-c28c-5a1a-8afb-ac1e365f3965)
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.
