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Pernilla nodded. ‘All those old men,’ she sighed. ‘All wanting to be young again. All thinking, with the Rejuvenator I can have a younger model.’
Gus raised an eyebrow and smiled. Didn’t his mother become the fourth Mrs Larsson for precisely that reason?
‘Oh yes!’ she said, catching his meaning. Her cigarette holder described an elegant parabola as she laughed, her salt-and-pepper hair glowed, and her jewellery flashed in the sunlight. She looked expensive.
‘We still have to find a way to kill the kind of publicity we’re getting in the press,’ said Gus. ‘Have to announce the new model. Different name, fresh start.’
He warmed to his theme. ‘Got to stop those attack dogs at the Medical Journal. It would make sense for us to tell them, look, the Rejuvenator is a thing of the past, a creature of its time, whatever they want to hear – stopping short, of course, of saying that it never actually worked.’
Wetherby broke his biscuit in half but left its tumbling crumbs to disappear into the folds of the sofa while he thought. ‘We say it’s a new idea with a new inventor – me. Push Ben back into the shadows. For heaven’s sake, he’s eighty. Time to take a back seat!’
‘It’s been his whole life.’
‘Let him enjoy what’s left of it. Look,’ said Wetherby, standing up, ‘this is possibly the most idyllic place anywhere in the world – this house, these gardens, this climate. Back seat!’
‘He won’t agree.’
‘He’ll have to agree,’ said Gus Wetherby harshly, ‘or we’re all dead.’
The sun made its slow descent behind the Temple Regis skyline, gilding the rooftops, casting long black shadows across the greensward towards the broad open sands.
‘There are five hundred stars,’ sighed Athene Madrigale, the famous astrologer, looking upwards, ‘all competing with each other for my attention.’
Her companion did not take much notice of this. Athene often spoke like that.
‘I have been listening to the waves shuffling the stones. I have been watching the moon pulling the waves. Can you hear?’
There was a pause.
‘A shame about the dead girl,’ said Judy Dimont slowly. ‘Horrible, really.’
Athene nodded. They understood each other’s preoccupations.
Night was Athene’s daytime. It allowed her the space to clear her mind for the impossible task of telling Temple Regents what lay ahead in their lives. Her column in the Riviera Express was the most important part of the newspaper, foretelling events in readers’ lives with startling accuracy:
Pisces: an event of great joy is about to occur – to you, or your loved ones.
Sagittarius: look around and see new things today! They are glorious!
Cancer: never forget how kind a friend can be to you. Do the same for them and you will be rewarded threefold!
People read her column and felt better. Those very few who had been privileged to actually meet Athene were struck by her special radiance, and it was only a fool who dismissed her outpourings as ingenuous nonsense.
Tonight, she was wearing a lemon top, pink skirt and purple trousers. The plimsolls on her feet were quite worn and of differing hues, but one of them matched perfectly the blue paper rose she wore in the bun on the back of her head. In the half-light the overall effect was strangely soothing.
‘I can’t believe it was an accident,’ said Miss Dimont. They had walked over to a bench on the promenade and sat to watch the last golden light slowly disappear from the horizon.
‘The girl?’ asked Athene.
‘Yes, the girl.’
‘I was there,’ said Athene. ‘On the beach.’
‘Todhempstead Sands?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good Lord, why didn’t you say sooner, Athene? This could be murder, you know.’
Athene turned her head slowly to her companion. ‘She didn’t die there.’
Miss Dimont, the veteran of many a similar inquiry, was bemused. How could Athene Madrigale be witness to a murder – or an accidental death, whichever it was – and not tell anyone?
‘Why …?’ she started.
‘I was counting the clouds, dear. It’s very difficult – have you ever tried? Altostratus, cumulonimbus, dear sweet cirrus – I was too busy to really see what happened.’
‘But …’
‘I only noticed when those policemen came down onto the beach. Then I saw the girl’s body.’
‘So how could you know whether she died there or not?’
‘The clouds told me.’
Miss Dimont kicked her raffia bag in frustration. On the one hand she had an eyewitness, on the other she did not. Then again, most things Athene said turned out to be true – but if this was a murder, if the girl had died on or near the beach, as evidence it was valueless.
For the time being, at least.
‘I’m going back to the office,’ said Judy. ‘Coming?’ Home and Mulligatawny were going to have to wait tonight.
‘Have to think carefully about my column,’ said Athene. ‘I’ll make you some of my special tea if you’re still there later.’
Miss Dimont walked over to the kerbside where Herbert, her faithful moped, stood expectantly awaiting their next expedition. At the kick of a pedal, he sprang cheerfully into action and together they made their way back up the promenade towards the Riviera Express.
Though during the day the newspaper office was like a ship’s engine room, a positive maelstrom of movement and drama, by the time dusk fell the place was usually empty – as if news only happened during the day! She walked up the long corridor to the newsroom, past the mousetraps laid down to capture nocturnal visitors, but as she approached she could hear the slow, almost ghostly, tapping of a typewriter.
She pushed open the door and looked down the long office to her desk. Seated with his back to her was the new boy, Valentine whatsisname. He appeared to be writing something up, and was taking his time about it.
Miss Dimont was not pleased. She wanted the place to herself.
‘Hello, Valentine,’ she said, not entirely kindly. ‘Don’t you have a home to go to?’
The young man swung round and delivered a rueful smile. ‘Actually there was a bit of a palaver over accom,’ he replied. ‘They parked me in the oddest place – a bed and breakfast done up to look like a castle, only the inside walls of the house were painted like the outside of the castle. Not quite the home from home.’
From this light mockery might be deduced the young Waterford once actually lived in a castle. He’d been quite evasive about where he came from.
‘They all go there,’ said Judy. ‘Usually last longer than you before making a bolt for it.’
‘Actually there’s a cottage belonging to the family. Thought it better to go there. Bedlington.’
Miss Dimont looked over his shoulder at the paper in Valentine’s typewriter. ‘So what are you writing now?’
‘I was given a word of advice by Mr Ross,’ he said, nodding amiably towards the old Scotsman. ‘He said the first thing you should do when you join a newspaper is write your own obituary.’
‘Are you thinking of dying any time soon, Valentine?’
‘You never know.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty-three soon.’
Miss Dimont sat down at her desk. It had been her intention to write a Comment piece about the award-winning fishermen – brave, hardy men bringing lustre to Temple Regis along with their rich daily harvest – but it was getting late and she’d had an early start. Her return to the office was more a delaying tactic because by now she was exhausted – and the thought of kick-starting Herbert, who could be obstructive if left waiting too long in the dark, suddenly drained her of the will to go home.
‘How are you getting on?’ she asked, more out of good manners than with any real interest.
‘It’s difficult. School, army, one day on the newspaper. Not a lot to write about. Then I thought, well, I could add a bit about my family background so I started doing that. But then it seemed rather boastful so I …’
Miss Dimont’s eyes travelled down to the wicker bin by Valentine’s ankle and saw that he must have been at his task for some time – it was overflowing with rejected copy paper, scrumpled and torn and trodden on. This young man is very keen, she observed.
‘What is there of interest about your, er, the Waterfords?’ she asked.
‘Well, rather ancient. Been around a long time, quite a few of us. None of them journalists.’
‘Except your uncle.’
‘Mmm. Wish I’d never mentioned him. I can see he’s not popular down here. In London, of course …’
‘People down here don’t often go to Mayfair,’ said Judy, quite sharply. ‘Your uncle Gilbert never seems to leave it if you believe what he writes in his column.’
‘I shan’t be following in his footsteps.’
‘I’m going home,’ she said. ‘Don’t take all night with the obituary. It’s helpful if you set yourself a deadline and then stick to it. Look,’ she said, pointing at the great newsroom clock, ‘it’s 8.30. Give yourself until 9.30.’
The young man ran his hands despairingly through his wavy blond hair. He was going to be a handful to train up, she could see.
On the other hand, he really was quite pleasant to look at.
FIVE (#ulink_69227a5a-117d-5e19-adc4-3279852d6b38)
‘Morning, Mr Rhys.’ It was nine o’clock and the sun’s rays were already unbearably hot through the newsroom windows. The journey into town atop the trusty Herbert, hair blowing in the breeze, had been sheer joy for Miss Dimont, but indoors the atmosphere seemed suddenly oppressive.
‘I said, good morning, Mr Rhys.’
‘Rr …rrr.’ The editor did not even have a briar pipe to argue with this morning; instead the point of contention had apparently been the Daily Herald on the telephone.
‘Come in, Miss Dim.’
He would call her that, and really there was no need – especially on such a fine day, so full of promise.
‘Please don’t.’
‘Miss Dimont. What are you doing this morning?’
‘In court,’ said his chief reporter. ‘Do you want me to take along Mr, er, Ford?’
‘Ford? Who’s Ford?’
‘The new recruit. Wants to shorten his name for byline purposes.’
‘There’ll be no bylines round here,’ snorted the editor, ‘until he starts pulling in some stories. Anyway that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.’
Uninvited, Miss Dimont sat down opposite her employer. There was, after all, a time when he’d stood before her desk while she sat and issued instructions, but that had been long ago. It was one of life’s ironies that the War had a way of changing things for the better and the peace, for the worse. Life was peculiar that way.
‘Ben Larsson,’ said the editor. ‘You saw the piece in the national press yesterday.’
‘Well deserved. The man’s a mountebank,’ said Miss Dimont firmly. ‘A fraud. I thought they treated him with kid gloves, considering.’
‘He is – without doubt Miss Dimont, without a shadow of a doubt – the most famous resident of Temple Regis,’ hissed the editor. ‘While he remains at Ransome’s Retreat we treat him with the respect that position demands.’
Miss Dimont laughed aloud. ‘Oh yes!’ she hooted, ‘just think of the number of complaints we’ve had in the past couple of years about the Rejuvenator – how it claims to do everything, and manages to do nothing! How people have been diddled out of their money. That’s quite apart from all those sad souls who make their pilgrimage to the Retreat because they believe Larsson is somehow skippering the advance party of the Second Coming. They make Temple Regis a laughing stock.’
‘That’s not the point.’ If Rhys sought a quiet life, sheltered from controversy, he really had chosen the wrong profession, thought Miss Dimont. ‘I don’t want anything about Larsson in the paper, d’you understand, and if the Daily Herald calls again asking for more details, as they did just now, just say we are not at home to sensationalism.’
‘It was a perfectly legitimate story. They did an investigation and it proved beyond all doubt that …’
‘I know what the paper did,’ snapped Rhys. ‘I can read, Miss Dim! I just don’t want that rubbish in my pages so I called you in here – because you can stir up trouble, once you get going – to tell you to leave this one alone. No stories about Larsson in the paper, and no help to Fleet Street.’
‘They’ll come down here anyway and camp in your office, like they always do when there’s a big story.’
Her words hit home. When in the past the national press had paid a call, they invariably left the good people of Temple Regis thinking what a weak and flabby offering they had for a weekly newspaper – even if it did have Athene Madrigale as its star columnist. Rhys hated the Fleet Street pressmen with their trilby hats and big coats and lingering cologne and expense accounts taking up the desks in his newsroom, a privilege he could not deny them if he were still to call himself a newspaperman. They came like cuckoos to the nest, sucking up the nourishment, making a nuisance, and destroying the sense of calm and harmony Mr Rhys tried hard to maintain throughout the year. He really should have chosen another job, but there it was; a failed novelist doesn’t have that many career choices.
The windows in his office were wide open and you could hear the swooping seagulls mocking him outside.
‘Stay away from the Retreat and get on with what you’re supposed to be doing,’ warned the editor. ‘Hear me?’
‘This murder,’ Judy said, artfully changing tack. ‘The girl on the beach.’
‘Rr … rrrr. Accident, the police are saying. Don’t go mucking about in things. You know what people will say.’
Indeed Miss Dimont did know. On the one hand the townsfolk lapped up anything a bit unusual in their weekly newspaper, and a murder certainly made a nice change, on the other, the city fathers hated it: bad for business. If Temple Regis was to maintain its claim to being the handsomest resort in Devon, the last thing they wanted was holidaymakers thinking they might trip over a body or two on the beach. Rudyard Rhys unequivocally sided with this position.
Miss Dimont sat back and said nothing more. To a large extent Rhys had to rely on what he was given, editorially, by his staff – and if his chief reporter came up with something newsworthy, it would inevitably find its way into the paper. Newspapers are like that: they don’t want you doing things but when you do them, they’re grateful.
Only they never say so.
‘However,’ said Rhys, for he felt he had to show initiative as a leader, ‘this piece of Betty’s, about the woman and the Six Point Group.’
