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Molly Churchstow was looking a little long in the tooth today. Her life had become a triumph of hope over experience, for the longed-for crown which came with the title Queen of the English Riviera continued to elude her. But she remained determined: so determined, in fact, that her Fred had given up hope of ever marrying her, for the rules clearly stated that a beauty pageant contestant must be single. Even the merest glimpse of an engagement ring meant she would be jettisoned in the early rounds, once the maximum publicity of her enforced departure had been squeezed out of the local newspapers. Beauty queens must forever be single and available to their adoring public!
Molly hoped to be this year’s Riviera queen, having previously triumphed in the hotly-contested title fights for Miss Dawlish, Miss Teignmouth, and Miss Dartmouth, but it had been a long struggle with diminishing rewards. It would unkind to suggest that over the years she’d become a prisoner of her ambition – for Molly had a bee in her bonnet about being loved, being admired, and becoming famous.
Most of the girls in the grey-painted hall had a similar tale to tell. Each had tasted the mixed blessing of being a beauty queen: you got your photograph in the paper, people stopped you in the street for your autograph, you got a better class of boyfriend, usually with a car, and your love life was destined always to be a disaster.
But oh the thrill! The parades with mounted police, the brass bands, the motorcades through the town! The popping flashbulbs and your name in the papers!
‘Oh Lord, my corns,’ said Eve Berry, and sat down heavily. ‘How long are Hannaford’s giving you off? Or are you havin’ to do overtime to make up for the days off?’
‘Stocktaking in the basement with that lecher Mr French. It’s never very pleasant. You?’
Molly did not reply to this but hissed back, ‘Watch out, here comes The Slug.’
Looking not unlike like his nickname, Cyril Normandy elbowed his way through a dozen girls, his heavy feet crushing girdles, make-up bags, lipsticks and anything else which had fallen to the floor in the melee. Another man of his age and girth might dream and dream of sharing a room so filled with temptation, but not Normandy. Greed was etched into every line on his fat face and he looked neither to left nor right.
‘Stuff something into that top, Dartmouth,’ he said roughly to Molly. ‘You’re flat as a pancake.’
Molly was used to this.
‘As for you Exmouth,’ he said, referring to Eve’s title – he never used Christian names – ‘those shoes!’
‘You’ll have to let me have some on tick,’ said Eve, unsurprised by this attack on her battered high heels. ‘Can’t afford a new pair.’
The fat man looked at her meanly. ‘Borrow some,’ he snapped. ‘And get a move on, you’re due out there in two minutes.’
Altogether twenty-one girls were entered in this eliminating heat. Up for grabs was not only the Riviera queen title, but also the chance to go through to the next round of Miss Great Britain. And, after that, Miss World! Here in the church hall in Temple Regis there was a lot at stake, even if most of the girls were experienced enough to predict the outcome.
Normandy moved away towards the door, blowing a whistle as he went. The prettiest girls in Devon – those at least who were prepared to take part in this fanciful charade – lined up by the door, giving each other the once-over. They were uniformly clad in one-piece bathing suits, high heels, lacquered hair and bearing a cardboard badge on their right wrist signifying their competition number. Their elbows were as sharp as their mutual appraisals.
The Slug launched into his usual pre-pageant routine like a football manager before the match.
‘Just remember,’ he barked, ‘smile. You’re all walking advertisements for Devon so smile, damn you!
‘You’re all about to become famous. And rich. Watch your lip when you’re interviewed, keep smiling, and don’t fall over. There’s expenses forms on the table in the corner you can fill in afterwards.’
‘That’s a laugh,’ whispered Eve to Molly bitterly, thinking about the shoes.
‘“Smile”,’ parrotted Molly, but she did not suit the action to the word.
Normandy was adjusting his bow tie and smoothing his hair prior to sailing forth into the sunshine. His fussy self-important entrance into the Lido would cause the gathered crowds to cease their chatter and crane their necks. This was part of the joy of seaside life, the beauty pageant – an opportunity to sit in the sun and make catty comments about the size of the contestants’ feet.
‘I hadn’t expected this on my first day,’ said Valentine Waterford. ‘A murder and a beauty competition.’
‘Don’t get too excited,’ said Judy, putting on dark glasses with a dash of imperiousness. The bench they were sitting on was extremely hard. ‘And move over, you’re sitting on my dress.’
The young man edged apologetically away. ‘Look, it’s good of you to come,’ he said, ‘I rather expected to have to fend for myself.’
‘I wanted to go out to Todhempstead Beach. Just to take a look at where they found the girl.’
‘Wasn’t anything to see,’ said Valentine. ‘I drove out there after talking to the Inspector.’ His account faltered as the bathing belles made their entrance to a round of wild applause; Eve Berry wobbled slightly in her borrowed heels but managed to avert disaster. ‘By the time I got there it was all over, bit of a waste of time.’ He was betting with himself who would win.
‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ snipped Miss Dimont. ‘If you’re going to be a journalist you must learn to use your eyes.’ Why was she behaving like this? Rude, short, when really he was very charming. It must be the girls.
‘Empty beach, almost nobody there,’ he replied. ‘Only a couple of markers where presumably they found the body, but the tide was in and so you couldn’t see the sand. What else was there to see?’
Miss Dimont considered this.
‘Your story, the one you wrote this morning, said “mystery death”’ she said. ‘If you’re going to be a reporter and you’re going to write about mysteries, don’t you think it’s part of your job to try to get to the bottom of them?’
‘I see what you’re getting at,’ replied Valentine, ‘in a way. But surely that’s the police’s job? We just sit back and report what they find, don’t we, and if they mess it up we tell the public how useless they are?’
He certainly has got a relative in the business, thought Miss Dimont. A lazy one.
‘Tell me, Valentine, who’s your uncle, the one who’s in newspapers?’
‘Gilbert Drury.’
‘Oh,’ said Miss Dimont, wrinkling her nose. ‘The gossip columnist. That makes sense.’
‘Well,’ said Valentine, beating a hasty retreat, ‘not really my uncle. More married to a cousin of my mother’s.’
A wave of applause drowned Miss Dimont’s reply as the contestants for the title of Queen of the English Riviera 1959 were introduced one by one.
The master of ceremonies introduced his menagerie. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he boomed into the microphone, ‘you do us a very great honour in being here today to help select our next queen from this wondrous array of Devon’s beauty.’
Something in his tone implied however that he, Cyril Normandy, was the one conferring the honour, not the paying public. The hot June sunlight was gradually melting the Brylcreem which held down his thinning hair and at the same time it highlighted the dandruff sprinkled across the shoulders of his navy blazer.
‘As you know, it has fallen to Temple Regis to host these important finals this year, and let me remind you, ladies and gentlemen, the winner of today’s crown will go on to compete in Miss Great Britain in the autumn. So this is a huge stepping stone for one of these fine young ladies, on their way to fame and fortune, and, ladies and gentlemen, it will be you who is to be responsible for their future happiness!
‘Just take a very close look at all these gorgeous girls, because, ladies and gentlemen, it is your vote that counts!’
‘Are you taking notes?’ said Miss Dimont crisply from behind the dark glasses.
‘I, er …’
‘You’ll find it an enormous help as you go along to have a pencil and notebook about your person. Sort of aide-memoire,’ she added with more than a hint of acid. ‘For when you’re back at the office searching your memory for people’s names. You’ll find they come in handy.’ Maybe the hot sun was reacting badly to the lost sleep and the early-morning rum, not to mention the force nine. This was not like Miss Dimont!
The well-padded MC had a microphone in his hand now and was interviewing the girls by the pool’s edge, apparently astonished by the wisdom of their answers. But while he debriefed them on how proud they were to be an ambassador for Britain’s most-favoured county, about their ambitions to do well for themselves and the world, and, most importantly, what a thrill it was to support the town whose sash they had the honour to wear, they were thinking of the free cosmetics and underwear, the trips to London, the boys they might yet meet, and how their feet hurt.
‘Don’t seem to have the full complement,’ puzzled Valentine, looking down the flimsy programme.
‘What was going on back at the police station,’ pondered Miss Dimont, ignoring this and returning to her earlier theme, ‘about whether it was murder or misadventure?’
‘One missing. Erm, what?’
‘Inspector Topham.’
‘He was definite it was accidental.’
‘Something has to account for the fact that Sergeant Gull told you it was murder. I’ve never known him wrong.’
‘But the Inspector outranks him. It was the Inspector who went out to view the scene. So it must be the inspector who’s right.’
‘Never that simple in Temple Regis,’ murmured Miss Dimont, thinking of Dr Rudkin, the coroner, and how he always liked to sweep things under the carpet. ‘No, for the word to have got back to the sergeant that it could be murder must mean that’s what the first call back to the station said.’
‘But why were the body markers so far away from the railway embankment?’ Valentine was suddenly more interested in this conversation than he was in the girls who were parading up and down the pool edge. ‘She couldn’t have fallen, or been pushed, that far away from the railway line.’
‘There you have it—’ Miss Dimont smiled and, lifting her dark glasses, turned to face the trainee reporter ‘—in a nutshell. A mystery death. Needs looking into, wouldn’t you say?’
Valentine Waterford smiled back. He had no idea what a time he was in for.
FOUR (#ulink_c9240db8-1d13-511d-b046-eccb2b2ca1ea)
Perched high on the cliffs at the tip of the estuary, Ransome’s Retreat boasted the most beautiful gardens in the west of England, its terraces tumbling over the rocks into apparent infinity and its borders filled with a dazzling year-round display.
Palm trees wafted. Magnolias, a century old, lined the paths between terraces and from the branches above hung heavy Angel’s Trumpets. The glasshouses were filled with ripening peaches and pineapples, and the newly shaved lawns gave off a honeyed scent which made visitors feel they had arrived at the gates of Eden.
‘Some more tea, Mr Larsson?’ ‘I’m exhausted.’
‘No more visitors today, sir,’ the manservant said soothingly. ‘All gone now.’
‘Just too tiring,’ complained the old man. ‘Debilitating. And such a bore.’
The world-famous inventor of Larsson’s Life Rejuvenator looked as if he could use a touch of his own medicine. Though the contraption had made him a rich man, keeping it before the public eye these days sapped his energy. His hand fluttered slightly as he reached for the teacup.
There was a time, before the War, when his factory could not make enough of them. The little leather-covered boxes containing a complex electrical device had been shipped all over the world. Larsson’s clients included royalty, film stars, cabinet ministers, and a wide range of society figures, especially ladies of a certain age. It was guaranteed to put a spring back in everyone’s step.
Post-war, however, when most people felt lucky just to be alive, there seemed to be less of a thirst to have one’s life rejuvenated – maybe just waking up and finding one was breathing was enough. And certainly, in these straitened times, even the rich were finding better things to do with their money.
‘No more phone calls, Lamb,’ he said. ‘I’m going to take a nap.’ Bengt Larsson – Ben to that small circle who called themselves his friends – was rich. Very. But his estate in Argentina bled money, the Cote d’Azur mansion similarly, and his two private airplanes – one in Deauville, one in Devon – cost a packet to keep going. Fame is a furnace which needs constant stoking.
Fame can also be a fickle friend: left half-hidden among the pillows on the terrace bench the great man had just vacated was a crumpled copy of the Daily Herald the dutiful Lamb had tried his best to hide at breakfast. Larsson’s face, still handsome after all these years, stared out from a page whose headline screamed:
THE LARSSON LEGACY:
DEATH, DEPRESSION, DEGRADATION
– this is what you can expect
when you buy his famous Rejuvenator
This morning the Daily Herald exposes the truth behind the world-famous Larsson Life Rejuvenator, which has made its Swedish-born inventor one of the country’s richest men.An investigation by this newspaper proves beyond all doubt that Bengt Larsson’s promises that yourlife will be healthier, longer and livelier by the use of his machine are false.The inventor, who started his career in a chemist’s shop in Hull, has made repeated promises about the efficacy of the Rejuvenator. It has been endorsed by actors, radio stars and other famous figures, but a laboratory trial conducted by the (turn to p.5)
From the sun-dappled lawns blackbirds collected their worms and flew up into the eucalyptus trees to nourish their young, oblivious to the crisis unfolding beneath. The manservant Lamb collected the tea things and moved indoors out of the hot sun. Calm, of a sort, descended.
In the garden room Pernilla Larsson was writing a letter. Or, more exactly, not writing a letter. This latest press attack on her husband was not only bad for business, it unsettled life at Ransome’s Retreat. And though as the inventor’s fourth wife, she had brought a new stability to his restless life, Larsson was an unpredictable man given to violent mood swings and she could never be sure where things would go with him. It made concentrating very difficult.
‘Lamb.’
‘Yes, madam?’
‘Have you given my husband his sedative?’
‘In the second cup, madam.’ Mistress and servant looked steadily at each other.
‘Ask Gus to come in.’
‘Very well, m’m.’
Just then an array of ancient clocks positioned across the ground floor of the ancient house raggedly signalled their agreement that it was four o’clock, and a confident-looking young man entered with a sheaf of papers in his hand.
‘What worries me,’ he said, ‘is not the Herald. It’s those idiots at the Doctors’ Medical Journal. They’re determined to get him.’
‘They’ve always hated him. Ever since he published A New Electronic Theory of Life.’
‘Quacks,’ uttered Gus Wetherby with a sneer. ‘Just because they’ve got medical qualifications they think they know everything. There are people on that journal who are out to get him, no matter what. Medics! Wouldn’t surprise me if they weren’t behind this latest press attack.’
Pernilla Larsson took off her glasses and looked at her son. ‘There are a lot of people,’ she said slowly, ‘who might be behind this latest attack. People have turned against Ben, they really have.’
‘Not altogether – we still have the daily visitors. The pilgrims to the shrine.’
‘I wish he hadn’t started that movement. It’s an embarrassment in the present circumstances – it was supposed to be about health and vitality, but they turned it into a religion! It’s one thing to say your invention can extend human life, quite another to allow people to believe there’s something mystical attached to it.’
‘They’re nuts. They think his book is the Bible.’
Wetherby picked up a biscuit off the tea tray. ‘That was all before the War,’ he went on. ‘People looking for something that couldn’t be found. Hoping to contact loved ones, trying to make sense of that lost generation after the First War. People who didn’t believe in spiritualism and Ouija boards and all that junk, but were looking for something …’
‘That couldn’t be found,’ said Pernilla, completing his sentence. The two often thought as one, it was uncanny.
‘So where are we?’ she said, collecting her thoughts. ‘Are the specifications right?’
‘I had them checked. We can go ahead.’
‘There’s just the matter of convincing Ben.’
The conspirators paused. ‘Look,’ said Gus, ‘even Ben knows the game’s up. Once upon a time people believed the Rejuvenator really did what it’s supposed to do but …’
‘You know he won’t accept criticism,’ warned Pernilla. ‘And he can’t accept the idea of change.’
‘That’s the problem, he’s a one-trick pony. All that publicity at the beginning – “Hope for the Aged – Electricity to Make Old Folk Young” – that kind of thing, it went to his head. And all he’d invented was a dolled-up and very expensive box of tricks, something that you plugged yourself into when you felt low which delivered a weak electric current and made you think you felt better.’
‘Don’t be disloyal!’ snapped Pernilla, though her response seemed automatic rather than anything else. ‘HE believed in it, THEY believed in it, therefore we must believe in it too.’ She paused for a moment, pulled in two directions. ‘Though I must confess the letters which are rolling in these days – people don’t want to believe any more. They want their money back.’
‘He shouldn’t have charged so much.’
Pernilla looked around the long, low room, its walls dotted with Impressionist paintings. ‘It bought all this,’ she reminded him quietly.
‘It can be done again,’ said Gus forcefully. ‘Now that we’ve found the formula for a Rejuvenator which really does work.’
