TP Fielden - A Quarter Past Dead

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

FIVE

Auriol Hedley sat waiting for her friend on the back deck of the Princess Evening Tide , an old but beautifully turned-out yacht whose sheets were white, whose brass was polished, and whose prow was sharply elegant.

Evening Tide occupied a space against the harbour wall from where Auriol could see all the way down the estuary to its mouth, while over her shoulder she could keep an eye on her place of business, the Seagull Café. It was her habit in summer to come down here for a gin and tonic, usually in the company of her dear friend, Judy Dimont, on a sunny evening.

‘She’s late,’ said Auriol to the elegant gentleman sitting across the deck, shoes twinkling in the sunlight. His eyes were half-shut.

‘Good Lord!’ said the old boy, stirring from a half-slumber. It was hot. ‘That the time?’

‘Are you going to say something to her before you go?’

‘Not if she doesn’t hurry up. I’ve that train to catch.’

‘It’s been going on too long, Arthur, this campaign to keep her mother at arm’s length. If Madame Dimont finally carries out her threat and pays a visit, we’re all in the soup.’

‘Not me,’ said Arthur, chuckling. ‘I’m off!’

Just then the sputtering and clacking which usually proclaimed the arrival of Herbert pierced the early evening air. Meandering gulls on their evening stroll scattered to make way for man and machine, lifting off into the gathering haze. Miss Dimont clambered aboard.

‘Ginger beer, no ice,’ said Auriol, shuddering as she proffered the customary glass. ‘What kept you?’

‘Tell you later,’ replied Judy, offering a cheek to the old boy. ‘Hello, Arthur, what a surprise, how lovely!’

‘Just passing,’ said her uncle lightly, though this could not conceivably be true. ‘Auriol’s gin fizzes – what a miracle!’

‘Your glass is empty.’

‘Just going.’

‘But I’ve only just got here!’

‘Taking the Pullman to London. Been here all afternoon. Hoped I’d see more of you before I went. Must dash, though.’

He was old but still had a schoolboy bounce about him. ‘I say, Huguette, will you come up to town and have lunch with me at the club? Your mother’s coming. You could help out.’

‘Bit busy at the moment,’ said Judy, guardedly. ‘Been a murder over at Buntorama.’

At the mention of the word ‘murder’, the old man’s face lengthened in a mixture of disbelief and resignation. There was a pause. ‘I do not know,’ he said, slowly, ‘even after all these years I cannot understand , what brings one man to want to do away with another.’

Miss Dimont was hoping he might go on – he usually had something very useful to say after all those years of experience – but he was eager to disembark.

‘Train to catch,’ he said. ‘If you won’t come and have lunch with Grace and me, you know she’ll come down here. I thought you wanted to avoid that.’

‘When she comes, uncle, she straightens up my house. Goes through my drawers. Reads my correspondence. Looks down her nose at the neighbours. Dislikes intensely what I do for a living. But still she comes and sits in the Express front hall every lunchtime expecting to be taken out. She absolutely despises Terry and…’

‘You often have a word or two to say about Terry yourself,’ chipped in Auriol. ‘And not always complimentary, Hugue.’

‘She’s your mother,’ sighed the old man patiently. ‘Be kind, Huguette.’

‘If only she could be kind to me!’

All three stepped onto the quayside and Auriol wandered back to the café, leaving uncle and niece together by the waiting taxi.

‘Auriol sent for you, Arthur.’

‘I say, that sounds a bit accusatory!’

‘To do her dirty work for her. She’s been on at me for months to have Maman come and stay.’

‘Wouldn’t it be better? Get it over and done with?’

Miss Dimont shook her curls impatiently. ‘She’s your sister, uncle, can’t you do something about it?’

‘You know how odd she is. Running away to the Continent all those years ago, insisting even after your father died she should still be addressed as Madame Dimont. Talking in that affected Frenchified way.’

‘Still you named your daughter after her.’

‘She made me,’ said the old boy with a conspiratorial smile – they were in this together. ‘Come to the Club. Get me out of a hole.’

‘Oh – all right then.’

‘Don’t sound so dashed. It’ll save her coming down here and rifling through your things.’

They embraced, and the taxi sped away up Bedlington hill towards the station. The reporter walked slowly back to the Seagull Café to rejoin her friend.

‘A shame you missed him,’ said Auriol, cracking eggs into a bowl. ‘He was on wonderful form, telling me lots of things about the old days. Really, some of his adventures!’

‘Permanent schoolboy,’ said Judy.

‘Your mother has him under her thumb.’

‘Did you get him to come all the way down here just to tell me I must have Maman to stay? That seems a bit steep.’

‘He was passing through on his way from Dartmouth. Bit of a reunion, by the sound of it.’

Auriol turned to face her friend. She was still gloriously attractive, thought Miss Dimont, almost unchanged since their days in the underground corridors of the Admiralty building all those years ago. Everyone from able seaman to Admiral of the Fleet had been stunned by Auriol’s dark hair, coal-black eyes, perfect deportment and beautiful figure. Moreover, in a branch of the armed services almost completely peopled by men, she had the commanding presence to issue orders which they were happy to obey.

More than that, Auriol was the perfect sounding board – you could throw facts at her and she would size them up, turn them round, look at them upside-down and deliver them back to you in such an orderly fashion they were almost unrecognisable. Often when she was stuck with a problem, Miss Dimont would hand a bundle of information over to her friend and watch her go through it like a costermonger feeling up the apples and putting the best ones at the front of the stall.

‘. . . so you see,’ Miss Dimont was saying, ‘Bobby, Fluffles, then this woman Rouchos.’

‘That name sounds familiar.’

‘Does it?’ She was slicing up tomatoes to go in the omelette, their sharp sweet odour pricking her nostrils.

‘Can’t think why. Keep going, it’ll come to me.’

‘I just feel in my bones there’s something very odd about this set-up. Why in the first place did Hugh Radipole allow Bobby Bunton to loll about in the Marine making trouble when, really, his presence was a pain in the proverbial?’

‘His money is as good as anyone else’s. And it sounds like that piece of stuff of his is a thirsty one.’

‘And how! But the point is these two men were at each other’s throats. There’s Radipole on the one hand, urbane and sophisticated, who’s had that end of the beach all to himself ever since he arrived here years ago. Builds up a reputation for his hotel as a rich man’s hideaway – I mean, he doesn’t even want the Express in there to publicise the place, I always get a nasty look when I go in. He’s snooty, his guests are snooty!

‘Then,’ said Judy, laying out the knives and forks and freshly laundered napkins, ‘there’s the King of the Holiday Camps.’ She uttered the words satirically. ‘He’s noisy, he’s brash, he lacks polish and wears horrible clothes. And the way he talks!’

‘Never had you for a snob, Hugue.’

‘I don’t mean that – he talks like a spiv, always slightly threatening in the way he says things. Smarmy one minute, would take a cut-throat razor to you the next. And that frightful woman!’