Died and Gone to Devon

Five

In the Palm Court of the Grand Hotel, two men sat looking distantly at each other. Frank Topham perched uncomfortably in a small chair with bamboo legs, balancing a cup of tea on his bony knees, while opposite sat the small but cocky figure of Rex Inkpen.

‘I really can’t do anything to help,’ the policeman said.

‘My newspaper would be very grateful to you. Cover your expenses, kind of thing.’

Inspector Topham looked blankly at him. ‘I didn’t hear that,’ he said. ‘And I think now if you’ll excuse me…’ and he started to get to his feet.

The one thing to be said about the old copper was that he was incorruptible. It wasn’t the first time Fleet Street had promised to buy him a nice holiday or a small boat – heaven knows, when Gerald Hennessy was murdered, he could have retired on the promises made by the visiting press corps!

An old soldier with a distinguished war record, Topham knew the law and believed in it. It’s just that he wasn’t very good at viewing it from the other end of the telescope – the view adopted by the criminals, large and small, who occasionally wafted through Temple Regis.

He sat there in his shiny shoes with his brilliantined hair looking very much as he was – an upright, honest, decent fellow with insufficient guile to see life the way criminals did. It made him a wonderful fellow but a poor detective.

Rex Inkpen, chief crime reporter for the News Chronicle, was probably a better sleuth, though as a human being, less upright. Behind his wire-framed spectacles lurked a devious mind only partially camouflaged by his earnest look and feigned diffidence.

Inspector Topham’s visits to the Grand were usually confined to the private bar, where he could consume a pint of Portlemouth without being bothered, but it was his duty to see what the national press were getting up to when they swung into town, and so here he sat with his cup of tea and a plate of biscuits.

Only now he was on his feet. He was too old to be bribed!

‘Sit down, sit down… sorry, I think you must have misunderstood,’ said Inkpen smoothly. ‘It’s just that many of your fellow policemen feel… undervalued, as you might say. All those hours they put in, all the danger, all the anxiety if they don’t get things right. It’s nice when someone outside the Force values what they do – and that’s all that the Chronicle’s trying to do, Frank.’

The detective did not like being addressed by his first name, but had the good manners to sit down again.

‘Look,’ Topham explained, ‘we have enough trouble from the local press. They dog my footsteps’ – he was thinking of one in particular – ‘and pass judgement on my results. Ill-informed judgement which puts up the backs of the general public.’ And the Chief Constable, too.

‘Honestly,’ said Inkpen, a word he misused often, ‘Frank, it’s a way of saying thank you. We come down here and write a feature spread about you – about how this sleepy little resort has a disproportionate number of crimes, and yet you have a fantastic success rate in clearing things up.’

It’s Christmas, thought Inkpen, when all right-minded criminals go on holiday. There’s nothing for me to write about, and my editor gets very angry if he sees me with my feet on the desk telephoning my girlfriend at the company’s expense – so please say yes, or I’ll get put on general duties.

Say yes, and I can spend a week at the Grand, buying you drinks and telling you what a nice fellow you are – and at the end of it I’ll make you a hero and at the same time make enough profit on my expenses to pay for the Christmas presents.

‘Well, maybe,’ said Topham, who hated the idea but had been getting grief recently from the Chief Constable about the size of his department. ‘But you do understand, Mr Inkpen, you may not pay me a brass farthing. You can make a contribution to the Widows and Orphans Fund.’

‘I assure you it’ll be a generous one,’ lied Inkpen. ‘And thank you.’

He picked up his notebook. ‘So, just to get started I want to talk to you about the Patrikis case. Then that double murder involving the beat group, and of course the tragic death of Gerald Hennessy – what a fine actor he was, too!’

‘It was his widow I felt sorry for,’ said Topham, relaxing. He had a soft spot for Prudence Aubrey, the widow, and it wasn’t just because she knew his old commanding officer.

‘Our greatest screen actor,’ purred Inkpen. He’d got the old boy going now.

‘Mm.’

‘But let’s start with the Patrikis case. Extraordinary to have a woman shot dead in a holiday camp. A mystery woman too – no clues – how did you unravel that one?’

Suddenly Topham was on his feet again. He could see where this was going, and the prospect did not please. Each of the cases Inkpen mentioned had been solved – not by him, but by the infuriating Miss Dimont and her ragbag collection of followers. Any further discussion of these famous cases could only draw attention to that.

‘Look Mr… er… Inkpen,’ he said. ‘I’d better just check with the Chief Constable that he approves of the nation’s attention being drawn to the, er… unusual level of capital crime in Temple Regis. Maybe we can talk later today, or tomorrow…’

‘That’s absolutely fine,’ smiled Inkpen. ‘I fancy a stroll along the front before tea. I’ll drop into your office tomorrow morning.’

And if I’m not there, it’ll be because of the unusual level of crime I have to attend to, thought Topham. This was a terrible idea and I don’t know why I agreed to meet you in the first place. After all, and to put it bluntly, you’re a journalist.

Both men picked up their hats.

‘Just one thing,’ said Inkpen. ‘Have you had any calls from Interpol in the past couple of weeks?’

The Inspector didn’t like to admit he’d never had a call from Interpol, and only knew of their existence by reading Inspector Maigret.

‘There’s something going on which might affect your manor,’ said Inkpen conspiratorially.

‘Is that why you’re here? Not for this so-called heartwarming feature on Temple Regis and its fearless detectives?’

‘Oh – no, no, no!’ laughed Inkpen, fluttering his notebook as though a dead moth might drop out. ‘Not at all, Inspector, I assure you – I’m here to write a wonderful piece about your great successes.’

Since when did a Sunday newspaper write anything nice about anybody? thought the copper, and jammed his trilby on his head.

‘So, Interpol?’

‘If we have, it’s a police matter,’ replied Topham gruffly, and marched off down the hotel’s thickly carpeted corridor.

His polished boots did not take him far. As Inkpen sloped off towards the front door and the bracing sea air, Topham made a sharp left wheel into the private bar.

‘Afternoon, Sid.’

‘You’re a bit early, Frank, it’s only half past four. I’m not supposed to be serving for another hour.’

‘Call it a leftover from lunch,’ said Topham, ever practical. ‘Have you had any press men in here in the last couple of days?’

‘I bleedin’ wish they would,’ said Sid, reaching for Topham’s pewter tankard. ‘Things are a bit quiet.’

‘Well, get yourself ready, I have the feeling we’re in for a visit.’

At this, Sid brightened. When something juicy happened in Temple Regis – which, to be honest, was quite often – Fleet Street’s finest would roll into his hotel, take over the bars and the restaurant, and spend money like it was going out of fashion.

‘What is it this time?’ said Sid, levelling off the Portlemouth and handing it to his old comrade.

‘Murderer on the loose, an Interpol special. Complicated story.’

‘He’s here in Temple Regis?’

‘Could be. Could be staying in the hotel. Keep your eyes peeled.’

‘Come on, Frank, you’re joking me! A murderer, here?’

‘I think it’s a wild goose chase, Sid. Chap from the News Chronicle with nothing better to do with his expenses sheet than get away from the office and loll around here for a few days. He could be in Cornwall, he says to me. Could be in Timbuktu, Sid!’

‘Yers.’

‘Even offered me money.’

‘They’re all bent,’ replied Sid disloyally, for Fleet Street’s finest had boosted his takings to record levels in the past couple of years.

‘Yes – but that’s not what he wants. He’s looking for something else.’

‘Yers.’

And I wish I knew what the hell it was.

The crisis meeting over the arrival of Mme Grace Dimont hadn’t gone well. Auriol Hedley had made a delicious supper of chicken fricassée, Uncle Arthur had brought in some exceptionally fine wine. Both were looking forward to the arrival of Judy, whom they loved dearly, but it was all a bit of a disaster.

Grumpy, evasive, unco-operative, the reporter was at her very worst. She arrived in a rainstorm and spent a disproportionate amount of time drying her hair and shaking out her mackintosh. She knew what was coming.

‘Here’s your Whisky Mac,’ said Auriol, all too aware what these signals meant.

‘Why you live all the way out here by the dockside I really don’t know,’ grumbled her old friend. ‘If you lived in town it’d be so much drier. So much more convenient.’

She’s looking for a fight, thought Auriol. ‘Let’s get this over with, then we can relax. Christmas – with your mother.’

The rest of the evening went badly. Auriol heard Judy’s arguments, but using the superior firepower of a brain which had launched a dozen successful wartime sorties, outgunned her friend’s objections. Arthur, under the thumb of his sister, pleaded her case with eloquence.

‘This is an ambush,’ said Judy after an hour. ‘No point in my saying no – you can’t hear me! Why not just let sleeping dogs lie? You know that if she comes down here she’ll only find fault, it’s in her nature!’

And so the arguments swirled: the widow, grieving the loss of her only child against the grown woman, still treated like a child. The old lady, alone in the wastes of East Anglia, versus the younger woman liberated by the freedom that only the English Riviera – and a distance of two hundred and fifty miles – could provide. Irritation pitted against deep contentment.

Next morning, with Judy back at work, Auriol and Arthur faced each other over a late breakfast.

‘It’s not going to work. They’ll be at each other’s throats from the get-go.’

‘Oh, I don’t know, old thing,’ said Arthur, ever the peacemaker. ‘Give ’em time and a nice Christmas lunch and I’m sure all will be well.’

‘Don’t you see? That’s just when things turn turtle – a heavy meal, several glasses of wine, and out come the recriminations!’

‘Six of one and half a dozen of the other,’ sighed Arthur. He looked wonderfully elegant in his brogues and flannels.

‘What she said last night about her mother! Really doesn’t bear repeating!’

‘You have to remember, her father locked up in a German prison camp, Grace still a young girl struggling to bring up her small child and everything else! She did her best – she just found it easier to order every aspect of Hugue’s life rather than allow her to make choices. And as a formula it worked so well she never saw any reason to change it.’

‘Those letters she sends her – nothing short of harassment!’

‘She’s getting old,’ said Arthur, smiling lazily, ‘we’re all getting old. She wants Hugue back at home, looking after the place. After all, what’s to be done with it when Grace goes?’

Auriol took off her apron and smoothed back her fine black hair. ‘Arthur, she’s fifty. Young enough to enjoy a long life ahead, old enough to know what she wants to do with it. She loves it here in Temple Regis and doesn’t want any more – she’s got her job, her cottage, her cat and that pestilential moped Herbert.’

‘No husband, though.’

‘Neither have I, Arthur – do I look the worse for it?’

‘My dear, the very opposite – if I were young again! But Huguette…’

‘Still loves my brother. Hero-worships him, even though he was a bit of a fool. Too devil-may-care, too Johnny-head-in-the air.’

‘She’s had her admirers.’

‘We all have, Arthur, our lives are what we choose them to be.’

The old boy looked at his hostess and smiled. If ever there was a woman in her prime it was Auriol – she was secretive about her life, but can never have been short of admirers.

‘So then, Grace,’ he said. ‘What are we to do?’

‘Christmas at the Grand,’ said Auriol firmly. ‘Then if there’s the need to escape, it can be done.’

‘Very well then,’ said Arthur, ‘and now I’m going to see a man about a dog. Back this evening.’

‘Glad you said that, I have work to do. Have a lovely day, Arthur!’

Six

Betty hated it when Judy found an excuse to skip Magistrates Court. The chief reporter’s shorthand was better, her concentration sharper, her ability to sift the contents of grey interminable proceedings and find a nugget of interest somewhere in the debris, all seemed so effortless. But for Betty, it was a penance.

Every Tuesday and Thursday since time immemorial, the duty reporter from the Express put on hat and coat and trudged across Fore Street and round the corner to the pretty redbrick Edwardian building, adorned with its nicely stained glass and rash of oak panelling – the same old journey, taken so often, you wondered why there wasn’t a groove in the pavement.

But this moment of freedom – the joy of exercise and window-shopping and bumping into friends and acquaintances – was cut short once you entered the building. There, slumped in the featureless front hall, was the menu of the day: a collection of drunks, petty thieves and nuisances – men too free with their fists and women too free with their wares (though the Express studiously ignored the latter, however fruity the case). Their misdeeds would be judged and, if only Betty could stay awake, reported in print next Friday.

The editor, Mr Rhys, had a difficult battle on his hands. Often a story of great national interest would emerge from these proceedings, but any article which suggested in some way that Temple Regis had lost its moral compass was instantly strangled to death, consigned to an obscure corner of the Express somewhere below the gardening column.

This led some, his staff included, to protest that Rudyard Rhys had no right to call himself a journalist, and should have stuck to his previous career as a failed novelist. But in fairness to the bewhiskered old procrastinator, he was subject to the desire of the city fathers and especially their sovereign, the Mayor Sam Brough, to keep things clean. This was a view shared by his proprietor, who owned a lot of property in Temple Regis and didn’t wish to see its value fall through injurious headlines. If men fought in the streets, if ladies of the night beckoned you into the murky depths of Bosun’s Alley, these were matters for municipal self-regulation – not national fascination.

It made life difficult for Miss Dimont who, since her arrival fresh from secret Cold War duties a few years back, had seen journalism as a refreshing way of shedding light on a community, good or bad. In Temple Regis there’d been a number of questionable deaths – but the Coroner, Dr Rudkin, often managed to pass these off as ‘accidental’. He too believed in the Temple Regis idyll.

In court, however, justice still had to be done – and seen to be done. Since the departure of the Hon Mrs Marchbank and her habit of detaining anyone with so much as a nasty look on their face, the magistrates’ bench had behaved itself pretty well. But a dreary long day in their presence was not dissimilar to a jail sentence, and Betty sat down on the reporters’ bench with a desolate thump.

The door behind the bench burst open and Mr Thurlestone, the magistrates’ clerk, issued his clarion call, ‘Be upstanding!’ as he swished down to his desk, all black gown and tabs and disreputable wig.

In filed a bewildered-looking couple of Worships who should surely be spending their days in a rest home, and the chief magistrate, Colonel de Saumaurez, who at least looked as though he knew which day of the week it was.

Proceedings got under way with the usual squabbles between publicans who wanted to extend their licensing hours and the magistrates, who didn’t go to pubs but drank wine in their dining rooms at home. To them, the idea of a man putting a glass to his lips after 10.30 p.m. was a crime in itself.

Then it was onto the main course.

‘Call Hector Sirraway.’

A tall white-haired man was led up the steps from the cells and entered the dock.

‘Are you Hector Ransome Sirraway?’

‘I am.’

‘Hector Sirraway, you are charged that on the night of the twelfth of December you did cause a public nuisance in Harberton Square. You are further charged that in resisting arrest you assaulted a police officer. How do you plead?’

‘Not guilty.’

‘Sit down. Sergeant?’

The comfortably proportioned Sergeant Stanbridge rose to his feet and prepared to deliver a damning indictment of Mr Sirraway’s inexcusable behaviour.

‘Did the constable get his helmet back?’ asked Colonel de Saumarez, fatally disclosing prior knowledge of the case. Nobody took a blind bit of notice.

‘I believe so, Your Worship,’ said Stanbridge, nodding.

‘Very well. Proceed.’

‘Your Worships, this is a simple case. On the night in question, the accused took up position outside the Conservative Association building in Harberton Square on the occasion of Sir Frederick Hungerford’s annual Christmas party. As guests arrived, he began shouting and carrying on and despite a polite request to pipe down, he took no notice and shouted even louder.

‘Police Constable Staverton arrived at the scene and warned the accused that he would be causing a public order offence if he did not immediately stop. That’s when the accused knocked off his helmet.’

The magistrates were still sufficiently awake to smile at this.

‘The accused was arrested and bailed to appear today before Your Worships.’

Colonel de Saumaurez eyed the man in the dock. He did not look like the usual sort of ruffian the town had to put up with.

‘Mr Sirraway, you have pleaded not guilty to these charges. What have you to say?’

‘I have a statement to make to the court.’

‘No, no!’ barked Thurlestone, the magistrates’ clerk. ‘No statement! You are being given an opportunity to speak in your own defence. Do, I pray, stick to that!’

Sirraway stared at the clerk’s ancient wig and, unblinking, pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket.

‘As I was saying,’ he continued firmly.

‘No, no, no! No statement!’

‘Your Worships, last night I spent a good hour checking the position with Stone’s Justices Manual, and I am within my rights, in responding to the clerk’s question, to make a statement.’

Mr Thurlestone did not like this one bit.

‘On the night in question it is true I stood outside the Conservative Hall in order to make a peaceful protest. I alerted the party faithful entering the building that their Member of Parliament is guilty of a number of illegal acts which…’

‘No, no, no!’ shouted an infuriated Thurleston, the wig on his head waggling. ‘You can’t say anything like that!’

‘Court privilege,’ said Sirraway, reaching for a handkerchief to wipe his nose. He’d certainly done his homework.

‘I really don’t think we need…’ said the Colonel, who’d had dinner with Sir Freddy only the other week.

‘… guilty of a number of malfeasances inconsistent with the public office he has held for the past forty years. In simple terms I pointed out to the party workers that their MP was a crook, is a crook, has always been a crook.’

‘That’s enough!’ snapped de Saumaurez. ‘I’m ordering you to put that piece of paper away! Anything else to say?’

‘It’s jolly easy to knock a copper’s hat off his napper. Have you ever tried, Your Worship?’

The chief magistrate growled through gritted teeth. ‘Anything known?’

‘Nothing, sir,’ said Sergeant Stanbridge.

‘Fined ten shillings. Bound over to keep the peace – and I mean that, Mr Sirraway, keep the peace – for a year.’

‘It’s Professor Sirraway,’ warbled the man joyously over his shoulder as he was bundled away.

Such a moment is always a testing time for the reporter. Your duty is both to cover the rest of the court proceedings, but also to chase up anything that could make a bigger story which might shine its light from under the hedge clippings of the gardening column. An impossible dilemma for Betty when, as on this occasion, there was no other reporter in court. Should she go out and chase the professor, if that’s what he was, and lose the next three cases while she interviewed him and called the office to get a photographer round, or should she carry on drooping over her notebook, inspecting her split ends and waiting for the endless day to be over?

Boldly, she decided on action. Gathering up her things she made for the door under the furious gaze of Mr Thurlestone, who knew his proceedings had been abandoned by the Fourth Estate and that whatever secrets the man Sirraway had been prevented from airing by the Colonel would now go before a greater court, that of public opinion.

‘Just a moment!’ called Betty as she emerged into the front hall. Sirraway was making a quick-march out of the building. ‘Mr… er… Professor…!’

‘Can I help?’ The man who’d been so beastly about the Christmas tree in the public library seemed perfectly charming, if more than a little odd.

‘Betty Featherstone, Riviera Express. I was there at the Conservative Hall the other night. I didn’t see you, though.’

‘You arrived at approximately 5.39 p.m.,’ said the Prof. ‘With a photographer.’

‘Yes, yes I did. But I didn’t…’

‘I thought I recognised you while I was in the dock,’ he went on. ‘But I wasn’t sure. You’ve changed your hair.’

‘Oh,’ blushed Betty, ‘d’you like it?’

The professor did not say. Instead he explained that he started his protest almost as soon as Betty entered the building, then went on until about 6 p.m., by which time his throat was hoarse, his wrists were bound, and a police constable was chasing his helmet down the gutter.

‘It gave me time enough to let the party faithful know the worst.’

‘And what is it they need to know?’ She had her notebook out and nodded with her head to a nearby bench.

‘I came to give Sir Frederick Hungerford a bloody nose for Christmas,’ said Sirraway in lordly fashion. ‘Perhaps you’d like to help me do that.’

‘Oh!’ said Betty. She could smell a big exclusive, even though she didn’t know the details yet, and how she loved to see her name in big print on Page One!

‘Won’t you come and have a cup of tea in Lovely Mary’s?’ she smiled, touching her newly permed hair and secretly blessing M’sieur Alphonse for his finesse.

‘Will ya no’ look at this rubbish,’ spat John Ross. He’d adopted his customary posture in the chief sub-editor’s chair, lolling sideways and flipping bits of copy paper over his shoulder as he read and rejected them. His foot pushed the bottom drawer of his desk back and forth, and from within you could hear the rattle of a half-empty bottle of Black and White whisky.

A couple of junior reporters looked up, then hastily down again. They may only have been here since leaving school in the summer, but already they’d learned the perils of being sucked into Ross’s vortex of cynicism and derision.