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

‘Just goin’ on me ’olidays,’ he was saying.

‘Oh,’ said Miss Dimont, rallying. ‘Anywhere nice?’

‘Down ’oo Spain,’ said Jacky. ‘See if I can get some deckhand work.’

‘You mean – you fish all year, then when you go on holiday … you fish ?’

The wrinkled old sailor smiled at her and shifted his cap. ‘’Bout right.’

Just then Cran Conybeer came out of the Jawbones and saw his most recent crew member marooned on her bench.

‘Lan’lubber,’ he said, laughing. ‘You carn walk, can you?’ ‘Of course I can,’ said Miss Dimont in her peppery voice, rising unsteadily to her feet.

‘You come along a me,’ said the captain, hoisting Miss Dimont up gently and putting his arm through hers. ‘You come along a me, I’ll make sure you’re safe.’

At the landward end of the pier at Temple Regis stood the Pavilion Theatre, a crumbling structure with precious little life left in it whichever way you looked at it. If there was one thing the town cried out for it was a cultural centre where visitors could congregate at the end of an exhausting day’s holidaymaking to be entertained and where locals, too, could pick up some crumbs of artistic comfort at the bookends of the season. This was not it.

For years the Pavilion had been run – first successfully, then gradually less so – by Raymond Cattermole, a former actor. Occasionally, a star from London would descend for a short season in support of their old friend, but Cattermole’s homegrown fare was proving less appetising as the years went by. He looked for comfort to his current squeeze, Geraldine Phipps, and sometimes beyond – for after a lifetime of ups and downs on the stage the old Gaiety Girl would rather have a glass of gin than a spot of pillow talk. And so, after a particularly disastrous performance of his one-man show My West End Life , the actor-manager came to the conclusion there was no point in sharing his genius with the oafs in the one-and-thruppennies, and for some days now his doors had been shut.

This afternoon, however, a side door creaked open a crack and from within came a rasping but cultured voice.

‘Come in, dear. Mind the rubbish.’

The young man mooched down the long corridor towards the large back room which, though lacking home comforts, had at least the consolation of a bottle of Plymouth gin.

Mrs Phipps, who had commandeered the only glass, swilled out a mug under the cold tap and placed it before her guest. ‘Pour away to your heart’s content. He left a crate of it behind.’

Her guest made himself a cup of tea.

‘So tell me again, dear, what are they called?’

‘Danny Trouble. And The Urge.’

The ancient Mrs Phipps blenched. ‘Are you sure?’ She lit a Navy Cut and her hands shook slightly as she did so.

‘They’re cool,’ said her grandson. ‘Just what’s needed in a dead-and-alive hole like this.’

‘You know,’ said Mrs Phipps sourly – the gin had not yet mellowed the edges – ‘I learned what entertainment was more than half a century ago, but from what you tell me these young men are far from entertaining, just rude. I’ve seen their sort on TV – no finesse, no culture, no style. They may look sweet onstage in their matching suits and their shiny guitars but from the way they curl their lips and waggle about I’d say they neither seek the adulation of their audience, nor do they even try to charm them.’

‘That’s the point!’ exclaimed Gavin Armstrong. ‘It’s the love-’em-and-leave-’em principle. The girls adore it.’ Mrs Phipps took refuge in the gin.

‘You should see them – they’re positively electric! Onstage it’s like November the Fifth and the 1812 Overture all rolled into one.’

‘There’s another thing,’ said Mrs Phipps sharply, ‘the electricity. They all have these electric guitars, don’t they? That must use up an awful lot of juice. What I need to do here now Ray’s hopped it is get costs down and …’

‘What you need is The Urge, Granny.’

‘What I need , Gavin,’ continued Mrs Phipps, who in her time had experienced more urges than her grandson could possibly imagine, ‘what I need to do is keep this theatre open – and to do that I’ve got to find an act which is cheap and a guaranteed box-office success. Not something that’s going to eat up the profits with sky-high electric bills and frighten the locals away at the same time.’

‘They won’t need all those spotlights you’ve got. They don’t need a stage set. They don’t need make-up – though one or two could do to cover up their spots, I’ll admit – and the last thing they need is people ushering the punters into their seats. In fact the fans’d probably tear out the seats if they did.’

‘Disgusting,’ spat Mrs Phipps, pouring herself another. ‘Nothing but louts and Teddy boys. Don’t you see what people want on a nice night out? They want glamour, they want to be carried away on wings of song.’

‘No they don’t, Gran. These days what they want is deafening noise.’

Mrs Phipps shuddered. ‘To think we fought our way through two wars to end up like this,’ she said. ‘Once upon a time and not so long ago, gentlemen would wait at the stage door of the Adelphi with a gardenia, a bottle of perfume and a taxi waiting to whisk me off to supper at the Café Royal.’

‘Darling thing,’ sighed Gavin, ‘the days of the Gaiety Girl are long gone. The war’s been over for an age, and there’s a whole new generation that wants something different, something original. Danny Trouble and The Urge are it.’

‘They’re noisy and uncouth,’ said Mrs Phipps, who had no idea whether they were or not.

‘They’re definitely that all right,’ said Gavin, with pride.

‘But what will the townsfolk say? The council? The press?’

‘Ah,’ said Gavin, a wily smile on his lips, ‘you can’t fail with the press. They’ll have to write about them, one way or the other. That’s guaranteed! Either it’ll be “Disgrace to Temple Regis” or else “Britain’s Top Beat Group Come to Town”, and hopefully both. The theatre will be full. Every night.’

‘No,’ said Mrs Phipps, exhaling a hefty cloud of nicotine, ‘no, Gavin. It really won’t do.’

‘It’s the new religion!’

‘Then you’re a poor missionary, and I am no convert,’ said Mrs Phipps, absently peering into her glass.

‘Look,’ said Gavin, ‘we both have an opportunity here, Granny. Raymond’s scarpered and you don’t know when or if he’ll be back …’

‘Oh, he’ll be back,’ said Mrs Phipps, ‘he can’t live without me.’

‘You didn’t say that last time he ran off with Suki Raffray.’

‘Don’t mention that Jezebel’s name!’ screeched Mrs Phipps. It had been an ugly business.

‘You don’t know when or if he’ll be back,’ repeated Gavin, seizing his moment. ‘The theatre has to open for the new season next week – what are you planning to put on? I’ve got Danny and the lads on a contract until the end of the year, but that’s all. They’ve just had their first Number One and pretty soon some manager will come along who knows what they’re doing, and that’ll be curtains for me.

‘Bringing them down here, they’ll be the first beat group ever to do a summer residency in a British seaside resort. That’ll give them headlines, it’ll give Temple Regis headlines, and people will come flocking to this …’ he paused, searching sarcastically for the word ‘. . . er, delightful town.’

‘Plus,’ he added ingratiatingly. ‘you can pay them less than you paid Alma Cogan last year. They’d have a regular income, and I’d get paid.’