TP Fielden - Resort to Murder - A must-read vintage crime mystery

‘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

‘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 Dim ont . 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 Dim ont , 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.’

‘Yes, Mr Rhys?’

‘I think we can do better than that. Go and see this Miss de Mauny. For heaven’s sake, how many women do you know who fix clocks for a living?’

‘None,’ said Miss Dimont frostily. For heaven’s sake , a nice article on clock-mending when you could have a murder? And a national scandal about old Ben Larsson as well? Had he lost all sense?

Valentine was waiting when she got back to her desk. ‘I’m with you again today,’ he said shyly. ‘Hope you don’t mind.’

‘Magistrates’ court,’ said Judy, as if it were a punishment. ‘That’ll mean a notebook . And a pencil . How’s your shorthand?’ She knew he didn’t have any.