TP Fielden - The Riviera Express

‘You’ve been such a help, Athene,’ said Judy gratefully, but as the words formed in her mouth, she awoke to the fact that Athene had completely disappeared.

‘Still ’ere?’ barked Terry Eagleton, who had blustered into the room with a time-for-a-pint look on his face, startling Athene away.

‘Yes. And you’ve got to take me back to Bedlington to pick up Herb— the moped.’

‘Want to see what we’ve got?’ asked Terry, eager as ever to show off the fruits of his day’s labours. ‘Some great shots!’

‘Pictures of dead bodies? Printed in the Express ?’ marvelled Miss Dimont. ‘Never in a month of Sundays, Terry, not while King Rudyard sits upon his throne!’

‘Yers, well. ’ Terry sniffed. ‘I’ll keep them back for the nationals. Take a look.’

And since Judy Dimont relied on Terry for her lift back to Bedlington, she obliged. The pair walked through into the darkroom, where, hanging from little washing lines and attached by clothes pegs, hung the 10 x 8 black-and-white prints which summed up the day’s events. They were not a pretty sight.

On the other hand, they were: an eery light percolated the first-class carriage containing the body of Gerald Hennessy (‘f5.6 at 1/60th,’ chirped Terry proudly). The image was so dramatic that, honestly, it could have been a publicity still from one of his forthcoming films. Terry had caught the actor in profile, his jaw as rugged as ever, the mop of crinkly hair just slightly ruffled, the tweed suit immaculate.

The hand was raised, index finger extended in imperious fashion. Gerald’s lips appeared to be pronouncing something. It was indeed a hero’s end – until Miss Dimont noticed the litter on the carriage floor. ‘Thank heavens I got rid of that!’ she told herself.

Her eyes switched to the pictures of Arthur Shrimsley, or at least the police blanket which covered Shrimsley – very little to boast about here in pictorial terms, she thought. A blanket – that’s not going to earn Terry a bonus. But, as she moved along the washing line examining the various angles he’d taken, the reality of what she’d seen, with her own eyes, supplanted the prints hanging before her. She recalled the odd feeling she’d had when craning around the obstructive body of Sergeant Hernaford and, as her eyes slid back to Terry’s prints, she realised why. In one shot – and one shot only – Terry had captured a different angle, which showed a hand, as well as the middle-aged man’s shoes, protruding from the blanket.

The hand was clutching a note.

Miss Dimont stepped back. ‘Surely not,’ she said to herself. ‘Surely not!’

‘Surely what?’ said Terry, busy admiring his f5.6 at 1/60th. The light playing over Gerald Hennessy’s rigid form, the etching of the profile, the shaft of light on the extended forefinger . . . surely, a contender for Photographer of the Year?

‘He can’t have committed suicide. Not Arthur Shrimsley. Why, he was the most self-regarding person I ever met!’

‘Speaking ill of the dead, Miss Dim.’

‘That’s as maybe, Terry,’ she snipped, ‘but I don’t remember you ever saying anything nice about him.’

‘Man was a chump,’ but Terry looked again at the picture in question. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Looks like a note in his hand. Has to be a suicide. Unless it was a love letter to himself, of course.’

‘Terry!’

The pair emerged from the darkroom, each wreathed in their separate thoughts. That last portrait of Gerald Hennessy is indeed a work of art, marvelled Terry, which might spring me from a lifetime’s wageslavery at the Express .

Miss Dimont meanwhile was struggling to arrive at a logic which would allow the awful but never less than self-satisfied Arthur Shrimsley to do away with himself.

Then came the moment.

Miss Dim had had them before – for example when she discovered Mrs Sharpham’s long-lost cat safe and well in the airing cupboard, when she suddenly knew why Alderman Jones had really bought that farm.

‘Just a moment, Terry!’

She was back in the darkroom, staring hard at Terry’s masterpiece. Part of her had admired, the other part recoiled from, this undeniable award-winner. When she’d looked before she had concentrated on Hennessy’s face, the pointing finger, the irritating litter which nearly spoilt the picture. Now she concentrated on the light beams filtered by Terry’s use of lens – light beams flooding from outside, throwing shadows on the thick carpet beneath the actor’s feet.

‘Come back here, Terry,’ said Miss Dimont, very slowly. There was something in her tone of voice which made the photographer obey.

‘Do you have a magnifying glass?’ she asked.

‘Got one somewhere. But you don’t need—’

‘Magnifying glass, Terry,’ said Miss Dimont crisply. ‘And another for yourself if you have one.’

He obliged. Both moved forward towards the print.

‘Do you notice Gerald Hennessy’s hand – his index finger?’ she asked.

‘Yes, the way I shot it, the light does a nice job of—’

‘The finger, the finger!’ interrupted Miss Dimont urgently.

‘Yes,’ said Terry, not seeing anything at all.

‘The tip of it is dirty,’ she said slowly. ‘The rest of his hand appears clean.’

‘Ur. Ah.’

‘Now look at the window by his side. D’you see?’

‘What am I looking for?’

‘Where you have been so clever with the light. The light streaming through the window,’ said Miss Dimont. ‘The window is covered in a thin layer of dust. Your f8 at 1/30th has caught something on the window which you couldn’t see – and neither could I – when we were in the carriage. Do you see what it is?’

Terry moved closer to the print, his eyes readjusting to the moving magnifying glass. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Yes. Looks like he was writing something on the window.’

‘What does it say?’

‘Not much . . . just three letters as I can make out . . .’

‘And they are?’ asked Miss Dimont, as soft as silk.

‘M . . . U . . . R . . .’

It was the fashion to mock the overblown grandeur of Temple Regis Magistrates’ Court, though it was actually rather pretty – redbrick, Edwardian, nicely stained glass and masses of oak panelling. Its solidity added weight to the sentences handed down by the Bench.

Miss Dimont, who had spent more Tuesdays and Thursdays on the well-worn press bench than she cared to recall, approached Mr Thurlestone, the magistrates’ clerk, for a copy of the day’s charge sheet. The bewigged figure turned away his head as she neared his desk and held up the requisite document as if it had recently been recovered from a puddle. He did not acknowledge her.

Curious, because it was hard to ignore such an amiable person as Miss Dimont.

After all, Mr Thurlestone had never been the object of the angry huffing and puffing, and the hefty biffing, from which Miss Dimont’s Remington Quiet-Riter weekly delivered its judgements. He’d never had to submit to a sharp dressing-down in print like the disobliging council officials she sometimes excoriated, nor had he ever been on the receiving end of the occasional furies directed at the judges at the Horticultural Society for the self-serving way they arrived at their deliberations.

In fact, Miss Dimont had always been perfectly sweet to Mr Thurlestone, but still he snubbed her.

Perhaps it was because, though this was his court and he virtually told the magistrates what to think, no mention of his life’s work was ever made in the Express . The daily doings he oversaw in this room, with its heavy gavel and magnificent royal coat of arms, filled many pages of the newspaper, and quite often the stern words of one or other of the justices sitting on the bench behind him made headlines: