TP Fielden - A Quarter Past Dead

‘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.’