TP Fielden - The Riviera Express

This manoeuvring took some skill and required a deftness of touch in which Miss Dimont excelled. On a day like today, no such juggling was required – just an invitation to old Gerald to step inside for a moment and explain away his presence in Devon’s prettiest town.

The late holiday crowds swiftly dispersed, the guard completed the task of unloading from his van the precious goods entrusted to his care – a basket of somnolent homing pigeons, another of chicks tweeting furiously, the usual assortment of brown paper parcels. Then the engine driver climbed aboard to prepare for his next destination, Exbridge.

A moment of stillness descended. A blackbird sang. Dust settled in gentle folds and the reporter and photographer looked at each other.

‘No ruddy Hennessy,’ said Terry Eagleton.

Miss Dimont screwed up her pretty features into a scowl. In her mind was the lost scoop of Church v. Law , the clerical challenge to the authority of the redoubtable Mrs March-bank. The uncomfortable explanation to Rudyard Rhys of how she had missed not one, but two stories in an afternoon – and with press day only two days away.

Mr Rhys was unforgiving about such things.

Just then, a shout was heard from the other end of Platform 1 up by the first-class carriages. A porter was waving his hands. Inarticulate shouts spewed forth from his shaking face. He appeared, for a moment, to be running on the spot. It was as if a small tornado had descended and hit the platform where he stood.

Terry had it in an instant. Without a word he launched himself down the platform, past the bewildered guard, racing towards the porter. The urgency with which he took off sprang in Miss Dimont an inner terror and the certain knowledge that she must run too – run like the wind . . .

By the time she reached the other end of the platform Terry was already on board. She could see him racing through the first-class corridor, checking each compartment, moving swiftly on. As fast as she could, she followed alongside him on the platform.

They reached the last compartment almost simultaneously, but Terry was a pace or two ahead of Judy. There, perfectly composed, immaculately clad in country tweeds, his oxblood brogues twinkling in the sunlight, sat their interviewee, Gerald Hennessy.

You did not have to be an expert to know he was dead.

You had to hand it to Terry – no Einstein he, but in an emergency as cool as ice. He was photographing the lifeless form of a famous man barely before the reality of the situation hit home. Miss Dimont watched through the carriage window, momentarily rooted to the spot, as he went about his work efficiently, quickly, dextrously. But then, as Terry switched positions to get another angle, his eye caught her immobile form.

‘Call the office,’ he snapped through the window. ‘Call the police. In that order.’

But Judy could not take her eyes off the man who so recently had graced the Picturedrome’s silver screen. His hair, now restored to a more conventional length, flopped forward across his brow. The tweed suit was immaculate. The foulard tie lay gently across what looked like a cream silk shirt, pink socks disappeared into those twinkling brogues. She had to admit that in death Gerald Hennessy, when viewed this close, looked almost more gorgeous than in life . . .

‘The phone!’ barked Terry.

Miss Dimont started, then, recovering herself, raced to the nearby telephone box, pushed four pennies urgently into the slot and dialled the news desk. To her surprise she was met with the grim tones of Rudyard Rhys himself. It was rare for the editor to answer a phone – or do anything else useful around the office, thought Miss Dimont in a fleeting aperçu.

‘Mr Rhys,’ she hicupped, ‘Mr Rhys! Gerald Hennessy . . . the . . . dead . . .’ Then she realised she had forgotten to press Button A to connect the call. That technicality righted, she repeated her message with rather more coherence, only to be greeted by a lion-like roar from her editor.

‘Rrr-rrr-rrrr . . .’

‘What’s that, Mr Rhys?’

‘Damn fellow! Damn him, damn the man. Damn damn damn!’

‘Well, Mr Rhys, I don’t really think you can speak like that. He’s . . . dead . . . Gerald Hennessy – the actor, you know – he is dead.’

‘He’s not the only one,’ bellowed Rudyard. ‘You’ll have to come away. Something more important.’

Just for the moment Miss Dim lived up to her soubriquet, her brilliant brain grinding to a halt. What did he mean? Was she missing something? What could be more important than the country’s number-one matinée idol sitting dead in a railway carriage, here in Temple Regis?

Had Rudyard Rhys done it again? The old Vicar’s Longboat Party tale all over again? Walking away from the biggest story to come the Express ’s way in a decade? How typical of the man!

She glanced over her shoulder to see Terry, now out of the compartment of death and standing on the platform, talking to the porter. That’s my job, she thought, hotly. In a second she had dropped the phone and raced to Terry’s side, her flapping notebook ready to soak up every detail of the poor man’s testimony.

The extraordinary thing about death is it makes you repeat things, thought Miss Dimont calmly. You say it once, then you say it again – you go on saying it until you have run out of people to say it to. So though technically Terry had the scoop (a) he wasn’t taking notes and (b) he wasn’t going to be writing the tale so (c) the story would still be hers. In the sharply competitive world of Devon journalism, ownership of a scoop was all and everything.

‘There ’e was,’ said the porter, whose name was Mudge. ‘There ’e was.’

So far so good, thought Miss Dimont. This one’s a talker.

‘So then you . . .?’

‘I told ’im,’ said Mudge, pointing at Terry. ‘I already told ’im.’ And with that he clamped his uneven jaws together.

Oh Lord, thought Miss Dimont, this one’s not a talker.

But not for nothing was the Express ’s corkscrew-haired reporter renowned for charming the birds out of the trees. ‘He doesn’t listen,’ she said, nodding towards the photographer. ‘Deaf to anything but praise. You’ll need to tell me. The train came in and . . .’

‘I told ’im.’

There was a pause.

‘Mr Mudge,’ responded Miss Dimont slowly and perfectly reasonably, ‘if you’re unable to assist me, I shall have to ask Mrs Mudge when I see her at choir practice this evening.’

This surprisingly bland statement came down on the ancient porter as if a Damoclean sword had slipped its fastenings and pierced his bald head.

‘You’m no need botherin’ her,’ he said fiercely, but you could see he was on the turn. Mrs Mudge’s soprano, an eldritch screech whether in the church hall or at home, had weakened the poor man’s resolve over half a century. All he asked now was a quiet life.

‘The 4.30 come in,’ he conceded swiftly.

‘Always full,’ said Miss Dimont, jollying the old bore along. ‘Keeping you busy.’

‘People got out.’

Oh, come on , Mudge!

‘Missus Charteris arsk me to take ’er bags to the car. Gave me thruppence.’

‘That chauffeur of hers is so idle,’ observed Miss Dimont serenely. Things were moving along. ‘So then . . .?’

‘I come back to furs clars see if anyone else wanted porterin’. That’s when I saw ’im. Just like lookin’ at a photograph of ’im in the paper.’ Mr Mudge was warming to his theme. ‘’E wasn’t movin’.’

Suddenly the truth had dawned – first, who the well-dressed figure was; second, that he was very dead. The shocking combination had caused him to dance his tarantella on the platform edge.