TP Fielden - The Riviera Express

‘JP ORDERS MISSIONARY “GO BACK TO AFRICA”’ (at the conclusion of a lengthy case concerning an unfortunate mix-up in the public lavatories behind the Market Square).

‘MOTHER OF SIX TOLD “ONE’S ENOUGH” BY THE BENCH’ (the joys of bigamy).

‘“YOU BRING SHAME TO TEMPLE REGIS,” RULES JP’ (something about Boy Scouts; Miss Dimont rose above).

Mr Thurlestone, for all his legal training, his starched wing collar and tabs, and his ancient and rather disreputable wig, yearned for recognition. But he would wait in vain, for he was no match for the vaulted egos, the would-be hangmen and the retired businessmen who made up his cadre of Justices of the Peace – for they it was who made the headlines.

Chief among their Worships, though not cast in quite the same mould, was Mrs Marchbank, the chairman of the Bench, or, to give her the full roll-call, The Hon. Mrs Adelaide Marchbank, MBE, JP.

In many ways Mrs March, as she was generally known, summed up the aspirations of the town – hard-working, exquisitely turned out, ready always with a smile and an encouraging word. Fortunate enough to be married to the brother of Lord Mount Regis, she gave back to life far more than she ever took. Her tall, grey-haired good looks were tempered by a sharply regal streak, the combination of which went down well in a part of the country largely deprived of real Society. Everyone agreed she wore a hat exquisitely.

Her serene countenance often graced the pages of the Riviera Express , whether as chairman of this, a subscriber to that, or simply for being an Honourable. A lacklustre fashion show, staged by the Women’s Institute in a determined bid to hold down the town’s hemlines, would be sure of coverage if the smiling Mrs March were to grace the front row (though – poor models! – the photograph which accompanied the article would invariably feature the magistrate, not the matrons).

But Miss Dimont found it hard to like her.

And Mrs March did not much like Miss Dimont.

There was something scholarly about the corkscrew-haired reporter, something passionate, something humane – qualities Mrs March, as she peered down into the court, recognised that she herself did not possess. Apogee of correctness and charm though she was, the steely inner core which made her a most excellent magistrate (if too firm on occasion) disallowed her the luxury of these finer attributes.

For her part Miss Dimont hardly helped matters; she did not care for the unquestioning submission to privilege. On a number of occasions, she had pointed out in print where the Bench, under the leadership of Mrs March, had forgotten that old Gilbertian thing of letting the punishment fit the crime. Handing down a week’s custodial sentence simply for having supped too deep in the Cap’n Fortescue did not find favour with this fair-minded reporter, and she did not mind saying so on the Opinion page.

For some reason Mrs March took these lightly worded criticisms badly. Were she less the Queen of Temple Regis, one might almost suppose that she felt threatened, but that could not be – her position in the town outranked the mayor, the rector, the chairman of Rotary, even the chief constable. A lowly reporter on the local rag presented no threat to her standing, no matter what appeared in print, and yet the unfinished business between the pair often had the power to lower the temperature in court by a good few degrees.

‘All rise,’ barked Mr Thurlestone. ‘The court is in session.’

This morning there were usual crop of licensee applications – a form of morning prayers during which one could allow one’s mind to wander – before the main business of the day began. Miss Dimont’s eyes ran down the charge sheet automatically registering the petty thefts, drunken misdemeanours, traffic infringements and insults to civic pride which did nothing to diminish Temple Regis in the eyes of the world, but did not exactly shore up her faith in man’s capacity to find that higher path.

‘Call Albert Lamb!’

A furtive-looking fellow stepped forward, eyeing the court suspiciously as if one of them had stolen his bicycle clips.

‘Are you Albert John Walker Lamb?’

‘Yus.’

‘Albert Lamb, you are charged with drunkenness in a public place. How do you plead?’

‘Just a shmall one, shank you.’

Miss Dimont found, with her combination of immaculate shorthand and a sense of when to rest her pencil, that court reporting was a bit like lying on a lumpy sofa with a box of chocolates – the seating was uncomfortable but the work largely enjoyable. Gradually, as one traffic accident after another resolved itself, she allowed her mind to wander back to the events of the previous day.

All in all, it had been rather wonderful, snatching success as she had from the jaws of defeat – one moment no stories, the next, two – on Page One!

‘Call Ezra Poundale.’

‘Call Gloria Monday.’

‘Call . . .’

What kept coming back to her, however, was the startling discovery she had made with Terry’s magnifying glass. The pointed finger blackened by dust, the secret message left by the dying actor! The thrill of an even better story!! But what seemed certain at first examination seemed less so at second glance, and despite Terry obligingly putting another print through the bath to see if it came up more clearly, it was impossible to say that what was scrawled in the window-dust really was M . . . U . . . R . . .

She had ridden the trusty Herbert back to the railway station this morning in the hope of examining the carriage more closely, but the Pullman coach had been detached from the rest of the train and shunted into a siding where the Temple Regis police had thrown a barrier around it. She was forcefully reminded she was not allowed anywhere near – Hernaford’s revenge for yesterday’s small triumph in Bedlington.

There was no sense, she felt, that the police were treating this as anything other than a routine inquiry. She wondered, not for the first time in her eventful life, whether she wasn’t reading too much into it all, jumping at shadows.

This morning the cases seemed to drag on, and the luncheon recess came as a merciful release. Normally, Miss Dimont joined like-minded members of the court proceedings for lunch in their unofficial canteen, the Signal Box Café, but she needed time to think. She boarded one of Temple’s green and cream tourist buses and took a threepenny ride down to the promenade.

She alighted at her favourite spot by the bandstand and walked towards the shore. Bathed now in late summer sunlight, the turquoise sea stretched out to infinity, its wave-tops like glass beads glittering and cascading over the horizon. The sky was cloudless and a shade of innocent blue. Through the haze she could see fishing boats sliding out to meet the incoming tide while wise old seagulls circled in the heat, lazily awaiting their opportunity.

‘This is why I am here,’ said Miss Dimont, only half to herself. ‘This is paradise.’

When compared to the fusty atmosphere of the Magistrates’ Court, she was right. The irritants which go with any seaside town – late holidaymakers fussing over the price of an ice cream, Teddy boys with nothing better to do than comb their greasy hair and hang about with intent, or the eternal scourge of bottles abandoned on the beach – these things Miss Dimont did not see. The air was still, the only sound that eternal two-part harmony of surf and gulls.

She sat quite still on a bench and dragooned the various components of her considerable intellect into focusing on the events of the past twenty-four hours.

Last night there had been the shock, still with her, of confronting one of the most famous faces in the land so close upon the moment of his death. What she saw, what she had not seen . . . what did it amount to? In the bright hot sun it was hard to believe that in the darkroom with Terry by her side, both with magnifying glasses to their noses, she could smell murder. Apart from anything else there were no signs of violence, nothing to disturb the pristine tranquillity of that Pullman coach compartment – nothing sinister in the atmosphere, nothing disturbed.