TP Fielden - Died and Gone to Devon

‘Peak comfort read has been achieved’

Red

‘One of the best in the genre’

The Sun

‘Unashamedly cosy, with gentle humour and a pleasingly eccentric amateur sleuth’

The Guardian

‘A fabulously satisfying addition to the canon of vintage crime’

Daily Express

‘Highly amusing’

Evening Standard

‘TP Fielden is a fabulous new voice and his dignified, clever heroine is a compelling new character’

Daily Mail

‘A golden age mystery’

Sunday Express

‘Tremendous fun’

The Independent

TP FIELDENis a leading author, broadcaster and journalist. This is the fourth novel in the Miss Dimont Mystery series.

TP Fielden

ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2019

Copyright © TP Fielden 2019

TP Fielden asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © November 2019 ISBN: 9780008243739

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Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008243722

For

Julia Richards Ellis

– divine ancestral voice

Cover

Praise

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dedication

Part One – Winter

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Part Two – Summer

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Extract

About the Publisher

For a newspaper which went to such lengths to remind its readers of the forthcoming jollifications – ill-drawn holly wreaths garlanding the masthead on Page One, other pages adorned with large woodcut prints of Santas and sleighbells – the newsroom of the Riviera Express was decidedly lacking in Christmas cheer.

Above the sub-editors’ table some optimist had hung a dispirited-looking mistletoe twig, but since most of the desk’s occupants were too old or too ugly to kiss, as a gesture it seemed particularly hollow. Outside the editor’s office a despondent-looking fir tree was already shedding its needles, while from the darkroom came the sounds of Terry Eagleton murdering ‘Santa Bring My Baby Back To Me’. It wasn’t a nice thing to hear.

Betty Featherstone was sitting on John Ross’s desk, swinging her legs and listening to the old bore drone on about the glory days.

‘Ayyyyy…’ he said with a growl, ‘it was just aboot this time o’ year. The old King was dying, the worrld was waiting for the soond of muffled bells. Fleet Street had come to a standstill in anticipation. Ye’re too young to know the name Hannen Swaffer, but let me tell you, girrlie, he was the finest – the greatest columnist ever. Hannen Swaffer !’

‘Yes, I think I’ve heard the…’

‘So old Swaff was sent off to Buckingham Palace to find out how things were going. He came back to the office and told the editor: His Majesty must be slipping away. He didn’t even recognise me .’

‘Ha, ha,’ said Betty.

‘You say that, girrlie, but I can tell you don’t mean it.’

He was right. Betty was inspecting the run in her stocking, successfully dammed with a dollop of Cutex Rosy Pink nail varnish, and thinking about the WI Whist Drive report she had to finish before going-home time. Or rather, she wasn’t thinking about it, using Ross and his interminable meanderings as an excuse not to.

Nobody told her, when she joined the Riviera Express from school, it could be this dull – and in the fortnight before Christmas, too! All she had to look forward to for the rest of the afternoon was writing up the tide tables, sorting out the church brass-cleaning roster, and finally doing something about the Bedlington Crochet Club’s seasonal chef d’oeuvre , a knitted Madonna and child complete with manger, now lopsidedly adorning the font in St Margaret’s Church.

‘Ye jest don’ get the quality of writer down here, girrlie. Now Cassandra of the Daily Mirror – that’s quality for ye!’

As she half listened to the Glaswegian’s monody she struggled to think of an intro. How many thousand stitches, she drearily thought, would it take to make a knitted Madonna? Wait a minute – I could turn that into the New Year quiz!

‘Ye ever read his description of Liberace? So brilliant I know it by heart.’

‘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.