Читать книгу A Quarter Past Dead - TP Fielden - Страница 11

FOUR

They were in the Minor speeding back to the office, and Terry was humming to himself.

‘Take that stupid look off your face. Not as if you haven’t seen a woman before.’

Terry kept up the tuneless noise but now his countenance melted into idiot proportions.

‘Fluffles,’ he breathed to himself, breaking into a crooked smile. The pictures he’d got of the infamous beast were clearly going to be eye-poppers.

‘Where d’you think she got that silly name?’ said Miss Dimont peevishly. ‘Fluffles Janetti?’

‘Come over from Italy,’ said Terry, who’d read up her clippings in the cuttings library before coming out. Actually he hadn’t done much reading – mostly it was looking at other people’s photographs of the minx to see how he could better the shot, for Terry was nothing if not competitive. Some of the caption information must have drizzled into his brain by a process of osmosis, though, the way that most photographers learned things.

‘So that was an Italian accent she was talking with?’

‘More sort of Birmingham,’ said Terry after a moment’s reflection.

‘Just so,’ said Judy, who’d done the same amount of homework but had concentrated on the words, not pictures. ‘And I suppose you think that’s her name, Fluffles?’

‘“FLUFFLES JANETTI – THE FIRECRACKER FROM FIRENZE,”’ Terry quoted a headline which had stuck in his brain.

‘Janet Fludd – the bosom from Brum. Famous for the wide variety of bedsprings she has tested in her time.’

Terry turned to the reporter with a look of reproval. ‘That’s not like you,’ he said, ‘to be so snooty.’

‘Oh, Terry, you’re such a fool with women,’ she replied, taking off her spectacles and giving them a good wipe.

‘I’m a photographer,’ he said, as if it were explanation enough.

Back at the office Terry parked the car and scuttled away to the darkroom to do what photographers do. Judy entered the newsroom and wandered down to her desk.

Even at a distance she could see that, as usual, it was covered with the typical avalanche of debris which forever tumbled from Betty Featherstone’s workplace opposite – the discarded copy-paper, sheets of carbon, glue pots, cuttings, old notebooks and the copious contents of a handbag.

There was also a dead cat.

Still some yards away Miss Dimont stopped and stared in horror. ‘Betty!’ she called, ‘Betty!’ She loved Mulligatawny more than life itself and could not bear the thought of poor sad corpses. And in the office, too!

The miscreant wandered over from Curse Corner where she’d been chatting to the chief sub-editor, John Ross: ‘Hello, Judy, cup of tea? Your turn.’

‘What on earth is this creature doing on my desk, Betty?’

Betty stepped forward and looked down in a vague sort of way. ‘Oh sorry, the usual debris, Judy, I’ll clear it away in a minute.’

‘Not the debris,’ seethed Miss Dimont through gritted teeth, ‘the dead animal.’

Betty laughed, but it came out bitterly.

‘I couldn’t bear it,’ she said. ‘Try wearing that on your head, Judy, the weight of it, the sense of claustrophobia. I don’t know how people do it.’

‘Do what? Wear dead cats on their heads?’

Betty picked up the offending corpse and draped it over her hair. ‘Honestly, d’you think it makes me look any better?’ she said, and flung down the bedraggled wig with disdain.

‘Gave me quite a shock,’ said Judy, catching up.

‘Not as much as the platinum blonde dye did me. Honestly, when I saw myself in the mirror after I’d done it – I wanted to kill myself. Look, there are still green patches!’

‘You should take a tip or two from Fluffles Janetti,’ said Judy, and described the frozen platinum helmet she’d recently witnessed adorning the nation’s favourite courtesan.

Betty was transfixed: ‘I must meet her!’

‘No, Betty,’ said Judy, ‘I would fear for your moral compass if left alone in Fluffles’ company for more than five minutes. You’re better off with Dud Fensome.’

‘Not any more. I sent him a wire.’

That makes a change, thought Judy. Normally it was Perce, the telegram boy, who waylaid Betty to alert her to the latest failed venture in the marriage stakes. A wire could guarantee an end to the affair without need for the inevitable exchange of recrimination and disappointment. Betty didn’t like getting them, but they were preferable to a confrontation – and always they brought with them the prospect of greener grass. She’d never had much luck in finding Mr Right.

Just then Miss D’s eye was caught by the sight of a woman dressed head to foot in deepest purple, walking across the end of the newsroom as though leading a funeral procession. Her head was bowed, her movements slowed, as if weighted down by the sorrows of the world.

‘Athene!’ Judy called, but the mourner did not hear.

The reporter rose and nipped quickly over to the furthermost corner of the room, where there was a desk secreted behind a Chinese screen, draped with silk scarves and ostrich feathers. This was the lair of Athene Madrigale, the greatest astrologer the county of Devon had ever known, the person to whom every subscriber to the Riviera Express turned first on a Friday morning to discover what the week ahead held in store.

‘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!’

Athene was, in a county undoubtedly blessed with more sunlight hours than any other, the one ray of sunshine which never hid behind a cloud. People who read her words felt infinitely strengthened, while her page in the newspaper carried more weight than any sensational news from the town council or the magistrates’ court.

Those few who were privileged to meet Athene – and there weren’t many, for their day was her night – saw the astrologer as if through a glass prism infused by the colours of the rainbow. She might wear a lemon top, pink skirt, mauve trousers with plimsolls of differing hues on each foot. Her wispy grey-blonde hair would be pinned back by a blue paper rose, and the glasses suspended on the end of her nose radiated a delectable glow of Seville orange. She was remarkable.

Today, though, her clothing and countenance were the colour of death, and her voice sounded as though it came from beneath the grave.

‘Athene, dear,’ said Judy with concern as she sidled around the screen, ‘what on earth is it?’ She adored Miss Madrigale for all the good things she imparted, and would do anything to spare her even the slightest discomfort.

‘It’s impossible,’ said Athene in a broken voice, ‘I thought by doing this in daylight it might make things better, but it doesn’t.’ She picked up an ostrich feather and fanned the air as if to soothe it, or herself.

‘What is it? Why are you dressed like this? Has someone died?’

‘I have died, dearest. My soul has been thrown overboard.’

‘What can you mean, Athene?’

‘You were away last week. The editor came over to see me and said I had a wonderful new job, one that would bring me even more adoring letters.’

‘Oh yes?’ said Judy suspiciously, ‘did he now.’

‘I do so love an educated hand, don’t you? Look at this lovely letter from Bedlington this morning – what a wonderful person this must be – and she takes the time to write! You should see the delightful things she…’

‘Athene,’ said Judy, ‘what did Mr Rhys ask you to do?’

The astrologer laid her hands palm upwards on the desk and stared wretchedly into their empty wastes.

‘He has made me an agony aunt. And now for the first time I understand the meaning of the phrase for, Judy, I am in agony. The sorrows of the world! All here! On this desk!’

‘He didn’t tell me he was going to do that.’

‘He wanted it to be a secret. He said he had been keeping back letters from readers who had special problems. He said he knew that if anybody could solve their woes it would be me! But I can’t, Judy, I can’t!’

In an instant Miss Dimont had grasped the problem. Agony aunts dispense their wisdom with breezy disdain, exhibiting a dangerous lack of contact with human misery, safe in their comfy chair and with a loving husband in the kitchen making them a cup of tea. They are secure, emotionally and financially, and disengaged from the plights and problems of ordinary folk. It is these very qualities which allow them to issue lifesaving instructions to those pitched into life’s ocean without a hope.

Athene possessed none of these attributes. Gentle, sensitive, the merest shadow of a being, she was too fragile to sustain a marriage, too unsure to issue instructions, too caring to dismiss the cries for help. Her great triumph was her personal joyousness, her upbeat message, told simply, carried from the stars, to every Sagittarian and Capricorn and Piscean in Temple Regis. To ask more of her was to ask too much.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll talk to Mr Rhys,’ said Judy decisively. ‘I can’t have you upset. And for heaven’s sake, Athene, drop the purple – nobody died!’

‘Only me, Judy. Only me.’

The editor was back from lunch and wrestling with his disgusting briar pipe. His wardrobe was particularly ambitious today – rumpled tweed suit, old brogues, grey shirt and woollen tie. The suit was ancient and its exposure to the elements over the years meant the trousers had shrunk and no longer reached his ankles.

Miss Dimont shut the door. An ominous sign, for Rudyard Rhys preferred it left open.

‘Richard, a word about Athene.’

‘Rr… rrr!’ came from behind the briar pipe. The great man did not like to be reminded he’d been born with a less glamorous first name than the one he now bore.

‘She can’t do it. The agony column. It’s making her unwell.’

‘Rr… rrr.’

‘Richard, why didn’t you ask me? I could have told you she’s not up to it – she’s in despair.’

‘We have to move with the times. Everybody’s got an agony column these days. We have to keep up-to-date.’

Miss Dimont looked down at her wartime comrade and wondered whether, in the thirteen years since peace was declared, he’d entertained a single ‘up-to-date’ thought.

‘Well, Athene can’t do it. You’ll make her ill.’

‘Somebody has to.’

‘There’s a crowded newsroom out there brimming with talent. Pick one of your reporters or sub-editors and let them have a go at the column. Any one of them would love to do it.’

Rhys looked out of the window at the circling gulls as if they were waiting for his corpse to be tossed on to the promenade.

‘Betty then.’

Judy blinked. Rhys’s capacity for making the wrong judgement knew no bounds.

‘Well, she’d love it. But consider this – is a woman who’s never been able to sustain a relationship with the opposite sex qualified to tell others how to sort out their love lives? Should someone who never knows what time of day it is tell people how to live a more orderly life? Is a person who wears a dead cat on her head qualified to hand out fashion advice?’

This last question briefly stirred the editor out of his post-prandial torpor. Friday lunch at the Con Club was the high point of the week, a moment when Rhys could sit as an equal with the city fathers while they discussed matters far too important ever to get an airing in next week’s paper. The lunches were heavy and long.

‘Rr… rrr, dead cat? What’re you talking about?’

‘A figure of speech, Richard.’

‘You’d better write it this afternoon for next week’s paper. I’ll get someone else on Monday.’ His body language intimated there was not enough room in his spacious office for two.

‘Another thing, Richard.’

‘Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.’

‘The murder over at Buntorama. I doubt we’ll be able to keep it to ourselves until next Thursday. You’d better prepare yourself for the usual Fleet Street hue and cry.’

Rhys looked desolate. If there was one thing he couldn’t bear it was an invasion of the national press into Temple Regis – shouldering and bullying their way around, noisily filling up the Palm Court at the Grand Hotel, bribing people to tell half-truths which made his own printed version of events seem tame – inaccurate, even – when the versions delivered by the national and local press were compared by the readers.

‘What have you got?’

‘I saw Bobby Bunton this morning and that dreadful woman he tugs around – Fluffles.’

‘The one who was thrown out of the Marine?’

‘Yes. She’s the latest sweetie-pie. That woman who was shot over at Buntorama was part of that incident. There was a dust-up in the Primrose Bar involving her and Bunton and Fluffles. Bunton spent the evening talking to her and ignoring Fluffles, and there was a fight. Then two days later, the woman was dead.’

‘She was a holidaymaker at Buntorama but drinking in the Marine? That’s unheard of. Two different classes of people altogether. The Marine doesn’t allow Buntorama customers inside their doors if they can possibly avoid it.’

‘She was a prostitute, according to Bunton.’

‘A prostitute? And he spent the evening talking to her? We can’t have that in the paper.’

‘Why ever not?’

‘Because,’ said the editor wearily, ‘first, he’s an important employer in Temple Regis and we don’t want the town thinking he’s a wrong ’un. They may start questioning why he was allowed to start up the camp in the first place.’

‘Ah, the Express backed those plans, of course.’ The faintest drop of acid in her voice.

The editor ignored this. ‘Second, I want no mention of prostitutes in Temple Regis. It will only encourage the others to flock back. Third, I’m really not keen on suggesting there’s been a fight at the Marine, given its remarkable reputation, and fourth, I think the least said about the dead body in Buntorama the better. It’ll soon go away.’

‘Not if Fleet Street gets hold of it.’

Rudyard Rhys groaned horribly.

‘Look, all I’m saying is – use the soft pedal, Miss Dimont.’ He did not like to use her first name. ‘The summer season’s starting up, and there are those new attractions over in Paignton and Torquay. Heavens, people are even going to Totnes now – and Salcombe! Soon they’ll have deserted Temple Regis altogether!’

If she could, Miss Dimont would have felt pity for her editor. But long experience told her this was a vacillating, fearful man who only made problems for himself by virtue of his nervousness. If there was an important decision to make between two choices, he’d always pick the wrong one.

‘Here’s the story, Richard. The Marine Hotel knowingly allows a prostitute to ply her trade in their bar. It allows its business rival, heaven knows why, to sit drinking in the same bar until his piece of stuff topples off her high heels and exposes herself to the world, then it kicks them both out.’

‘Bunton’s not a rival,’ growled Rhys. ‘Different ends of the business – carriage-trade versus knotted handkerchief brigade.’

‘Precisely my point,’ said Miss Dimont crisply. ‘And do you think that when Fleet Steet gets down here that particular penny isn’t going to drop? The battle between upstairs and downstairs? Class war on the coast?

‘This is only Buntorama’s second season. But already you can see the resentment and rivalry building up between these two establishments – side-by-side and away from the centre of town.

‘Bobby Bunton’s a maverick, and when it suits him he’ll turn his guns on the Marine – accuse them of being snobs. Then we’ll have an all-out battle in Temple Regis, and just when the local economy was picking up nicely.’

The editor picked up a box of matches and turned it over in his hand. The room smelt of old dogs, though it was probably his overcoat which hung on the coat-rack winter and summer. The sun’s heat was coming through the window and Miss Dimont realised why in general it was better to leave the door open.

‘Don’t think I hadn’t considered this,’ he said weightily. ‘It was a mistake letting Bobby Bunton into town and I’ll be frank – but this must go no further – I saw Hugh Radipole at lunch today. He warned there were likely to be severe repercussions if Bunton steps out of line.

‘He was telling me something of Bunton’s past – d’you know he carries a cut-throat razor in his top pocket all the time? – and unless Bunton calms down and stays out of the Marine there’ll be some howitzer-fire going over the fence. Radipole’s not a man to take things lying down.’

‘Good Lord, Richard,’ said Judy happily, ‘I think you’ve got yourself a scoop there!’