Resort to Murder: A must-read vintage crime mystery

‘Bringing them down here, they’ll be the first beat group ever to do a summer residency in a British seaside resort. That’ll give them headlines, it’ll give Temple Regis headlines, and people will come flocking to this …’ he paused, searching sarcastically for the word ‘. . . er, delightful town.’

‘Plus,’ he added ingratiatingly. ‘you can pay them less than you paid Alma Cogan last year. They’d have a regular income, and I’d get paid.’

Mrs Phipps looked across at her grandson and shook her head. ‘You father had such hopes for you, Gavin. The Brigade … maybe the Foreign Office afterwards …’ She sighed. ‘But since you ask, what I had in mind was Sidney Torch and his Light Orchestra. I know Sidney, and he’d come down here for me in an instant, I feel sure of that. They have such beguiling music, darling, just the sort of thing to attract the traditional holidaymaker. He came down here once before, years ago, and you know, they even got up in the aisles and danced!’

‘With Danny Trouble they’ll never sit down,’ said Gavin tartly. ‘What this place desperately needs is something for the younger crowd.

‘You know, Granny’ he went on, ‘this is 1959 – people don’t want to dance cheek to cheek any more, they want rock and roll!’

‘I suppose you may be right,’ conceded his grandmother, who was becoming alarmed at the prospect of having to confess to Temple Regis that the Pavilion Theatre would remain dark through the summer season. ‘We do need something new. People got fed up with Arthur doing his West End Life – that’s why he ran away, you know. They got up and started catcalling.’

‘It wasn’t Suki Raffray, then? Why he ran away?’

‘IT WAS NOT SUKI RAFFRAY!’ shouted Mrs Phipps. ‘Don’t mention that name again!’

‘Then you agree, Granny? That Danny and the boys can come for the six-week season?’

‘What else can I do?’ said Mrs Phipps, shaking her head so hard her fine silvery hair escaped its pinnings. ‘I have no alternative.’

‘You won’t regret it, Gran.’

Mrs Phipps shuddered as she reached again for Plymouth’s most famous export.

‘I feel as though someone just walked over my grave,’ she said.

THREE

The atmosphere in the editor’s office at the Riviera Express was as it always was – dusty – but the moment the newspaper’s chief reporter walked in it got dustier.

Judy Dimont was everything an editor could wish for – a brilliant mind, a dazzling shorthand note and charm enough to entice whole flocks from the trees. Yet, as Rudyard Rhys raised his eyes from the task in hand, a particularly recalcitrant briar pipe, he could see none of this. Before him stood a striking woman of indeterminate age dressed vaguely in a macintosh with its belt pulled tight at the waist, and with a waft of corkscrew curls slipping joyously from the restraints of a silk scarf. A faint scent of rum entered the room with her.

‘Got the fishermen,’ said Judy Dimont, a trifle dreamily. ‘What extraordinary men they are! Why, do you know …’

‘Rr … rrrr,’ growled her editor, whether by way of approval or dissent it was hard to tell, but enough to douse Miss Dimont’s tribute to those in peril on the sea.

Rhys returned to his pipe. ‘There was a murder while you were out on your jolly boating trip,’ he said, a nasty edge to his voice. ‘As my chief reporter I should have liked you there.’

‘There was a force nine out beyond the headland,’ said Miss Dimont, not a little proud of her early morning exploits. ‘Rather difficult to spot a murder from there. Anyway, who …’

‘Had to send him,’ said Rhys, nodding towards a corner of the room. A young man half rose from his seat and, with a slight smile, gently inclined his head. In a second the chief reporter had it summed up – wet-behind-the-ears recruit, probably the son of a friend of the managing director, going to be useless, a dead weight, another failed experiment in attracting the nation’s young talent into local journalism.

Miss Dimont was not without prejudice but in general she was kind. She did not feel kind this morning.

‘Well then, let him write it up,’ she said, eyeing not without prejudice the item which hung round his neck and which looked suspiciously like an old school tie. ‘I’ve got this feature to write and then, if it’s OK with you, Mr Rhys, I’m going home. I was up at three this morning to catch the tide.’

For a man who once had worn Royal Navy uniform himself, Rhys showed a surprising lack of interest over the vicissitudes of the ocean. ‘Give him a hand,’ he ordered, and dismissed them both with the swish of a damp page-proof.

Pushing up the spectacles which adorned her glorious nose, Miss Dimont stepped, with an audible sigh, out into the corridor. The last thing she wanted – another trainee reporter dumped on her!

‘Have you found yourself a desk?’ she inquired shortly, not even bothering to look over her shoulder as she strode into the newsroom.

‘They … they told me to sit opposite you,’ said the young man. ‘The other lady, er …’

‘Betty.’

‘Yes, Betty’s … um … I think she’s … er, not quite sure. I think she’s been sent elsewhere.’ The words seemed hesitant but he appeared pretty self-assured. ‘Newbury something.’

‘Newton Abbot?’ she said.

‘That’s about the size of it,’ said the young man. ‘She didn’t seem too happy.’

This did not please Miss Dimont one bit. Betty Featherstone was effectively her number two and, though uninspired, was a useful reporter who did her share of filling the copious news pages which made up the weekly digest of events in Devon’s prettiest town. Having her dispatched to the district office was a blow. It would increase the chief reporter’s workload and, at the same time, require her to shepherd this innocent lamb through his first weeks on the paper until he got the hang of it.

Or disappeared.

The young man sat down opposite her. ‘Erm, we haven’t been introduced. Valentine is the name.’

‘Judy Dimont, Mr Valentine. Welcome to the Riviera Express.’ The words didn’t have quite the cheery ring they might, but then she was not used to rum for breakfast. She felt tired and wanted to go home to Mulligatawny.

‘Er, Valentine’s the first name,’ the boy said.

‘Surname?’

‘Waterford.’

‘Well, that’ll look pretty as a front-page byline,’ she said, not entirely kindly. ‘Raise the tone a bit.’

‘I was thinking of shortening it to Ford. It’s a bit of a mouthful,’ he said apologetically.

‘Well, you won’t need to do anything with it if you don’t write up your murder,’ said Miss Dimont crisply. ‘No story, no byline. You do know what a byline is?’

‘Window dressing,’ said Waterford. ‘For the reporter, it’s compensation for not being paid properly. A bun to the starving bear.’

His words caused Miss Dimont to look at him again. Could, for once, the management have recruited some young cannon fodder who actually had a few brains?

‘Makes the page look nice, makes the reading public think they know who wrote the story,’ he went on, smiling. ‘A byline makes everybody happy.’

Good Lord, thought Miss Dimont, her head clearing rapidly. He’s what, twenty-two? Obviously just finished National Service. How come he knows so much about journalism?

‘How come you seem to know so much about …’

‘Uncle in the business,’ said Valentine, looking with unease at the large Remington Standard typewriter in front of him. He carefully folded a sheet of copy paper into the machine, took out a brand-new notebook and started to tap. Very slowly.

Obviously he does not need my help, thought Miss Dimont, and set about her own preparations to bring to life the world of Cran Conybeer and his lion-hearted friends.

Just then Betty Featherstone wafted by, attracted by the mop of tousled hair atop Valentine Waterford’s handsome young head. Despite her marching orders she was evidently in no hurry to catch the bus to Newton Abbot.

It was a sight to behold when Miss Dimont got to work. She hunched over her Quiet-Riter and the words just flowed from her flying fingers. Her corkscrew hair wobbled from side to side, her right hand turned the pages of the notebook while the left continued to tap away, and her lovely features sometimes pinched into an unattractive scowl when she found herself momentarily lost for a word or phrase. But as the paper in her typewriter smoothly ratcheted up, line by line, the story of the extraordinary events of her pre-dawn foray in the English Channel came gracefully to life.

‘. . . single?’ Betty was saying, adjusting the broad belt which held in her billowing skirt – how lovely he looked with his slim figure, borrowed suit and polished shoes! She was not one to waste time on irrelevancies.

‘Been in the Army,’ said the young man, ‘not much time for all that.’ It was clear to Miss Dimont, though not to Betty, that this was not the moment to turn on her headlights.

‘Can I help?’ Judy interrupted, nodding Betty away.

‘Matter of nomenclature,’ said Valentine.

‘What’s the difficulty?’

‘It’s supposed to be a murder. But it’s an accidental death. Though it could be a murder,’ he said. He went on to explain his arrival at Temple Regis Police Station, his briefing by the ever-garrulous Sergeant Gull (murder) followed by a second briefing by the taciturn Topham (accidental).

‘Which do I call it? Murder? Or accidental?’

‘Well, just wait a minute now,’ said Miss Dimont, suddenly very interested. ‘Who is it who’s supposed to have been murdered?’ She had, after all, some experience in such matters.

‘Young lady, possibly early twenties. Bad head injuries, found in the middle of a big wide beach.’

This sounded very odd.

‘Mystery death,’ ordered Miss Dimont crisply. ‘If even the police can’t find the word for it, then it’s a mystery. Tell me more.’

Waterford described the discovery of the body, details kindly supplied by Sergeant Gull. Then he reported the deliberate downplaying by Inspector Topham: ‘Rather angry about it he was, actually. Reminded me of my sergeant-major.’

‘He was a sergeant-major.’

‘That would explain it.’

‘When’s the inquest?’ ‘Inquest?’

He’s rather sweet, thought Miss Dimont, but he knows nothing. ‘Anything unusual about a death,’ she explained, ‘there’s a post-mortem. The coroner opens a public investigation into the circs.’

‘Excellent. There’s a lot to learn, isn’t there? And my journalism training course doesn’t start until I’ve been here three months.’

So you’re going to be a dead weight until then, thought Miss Dimont. ‘You know how to make a cup of tea?’

‘Er, yes.’

‘Jolly good,’ she said briskly. The boy wonder took the hint and slid away.

Miss Dimont paused for a moment to consider what she’d just been told. Though she made little of it, she was no stranger to death; and since her arrival in Temple Regis she’d figured significantly in the detection of a number of serious crimes. Within recent memory there was the case of Mrs Marchbank, the magistrate, who had managed to do away with her cousin in the most ingenious fashion. The fact that the police couldn’t make up their minds whether this new case was murder or accidental set the alarm bells ringing, but first she must finish the job in hand.

It took less than an hour to turn out six hundred words on the Lass O’Doune’s battles against nature, her triumphant victory in bringing food to the mouths of the nation, and the safe return from tumultuous seas. Miss Dimont made no mention of her own part in hauling in the rough and seething nets, her drenching by the ocean deep, the souvenir piece of turbot which she and Mulligatawny would share tonight – she did not believe in writing about herself.

Betty had no such qualms: she was always ready to illustrate her stories with a photograph or two of her digging a hole, baking a cake, riding a bicycle or anything else the photographer demanded. Actually she had one of those faces which looked nicer in photographs than in real life, and her editor often took advantage of her thirst for self-publicity. By comparison Judy Dimont was disinclined to make a display of herself: her elusive beauty was more difficult to capture, though Terry Eagleton, the chief photographer, had taken some gorgeous portraits of her only recently.

While she’d been finishing the fishermen piece, Valentine Waterford was having his copy rewritten by the chief sub-editor. He returned to discover Miss Dimont’s tea cold and untouched. ‘Perhaps a cup of coffee instead?’ he asked anxiously. ‘I’ll get the hang of it, I expect.’

‘Well,’ said Miss Dimont, ‘you better had. We all take turns to make the tea and,’ she added pointedly, ‘some people round here are quite fussy.’

‘I’ve decided on Ford,’ he replied, looking again as all young reporters do at his first story in print, and marvelling. ‘It fits into a column better.’

‘Good idea. Now come and tell me more about this dead body.’

The drab, bare hall behind St Margaret’s Church had never seen anything like it. Where normally baize-topped card tables were laid out for the Mothers’ Union weekly whist drive there were racks of clothes and a number of long mirrors. The hooks containing the choir’s cassocks and surplices had been cleared, in their place a selection of skimpy bathing costumes. Hat boxes littered the floor, the smell of face powder filled the air, and a number of young ladies in various states of undress could be seen bad-temperedly foraging for clothing, hairpins and inspiration.

‘Season gets earlier and earlier,’ said one grumpily. ‘Ain’t going down well with my Fred.’

‘Lend us your Mum rolette, dear.’

‘Certimly not. That’s personal.’

‘Oh go on, Molly, I always pong otherwise. Nerves, you know.’

‘Shouldn’t have nerves, the length of time you’ve been at this malarkey.’

They’d all been at it too long, if truth be told. But fame is a drug, and the acquisition of fame just as addictive. You had to look – and smell – your best at all times.

Molly Churchstow was looking a little long in the tooth today. Her life had become a triumph of hope over experience, for the longed-for crown which came with the title Queen of the English Riviera continued to elude her. But she remained determined: so determined, in fact, that her Fred had given up hope of ever marrying her, for the rules clearly stated that a beauty pageant contestant must be single. Even the merest glimpse of an engagement ring meant she would be jettisoned in the early rounds, once the maximum publicity of her enforced departure had been squeezed out of the local newspapers. Beauty queens must forever be single and available to their adoring public!

Molly hoped to be this year’s Riviera queen, having previously triumphed in the hotly-contested title fights for Miss Dawlish, Miss Teignmouth, and Miss Dartmouth, but it had been a long struggle with diminishing rewards. It would unkind to suggest that over the years she’d become a prisoner of her ambition – for Molly had a bee in her bonnet about being loved, being admired, and becoming famous.

Most of the girls in the grey-painted hall had a similar tale to tell. Each had tasted the mixed blessing of being a beauty queen: you got your photograph in the paper, people stopped you in the street for your autograph, you got a better class of boyfriend, usually with a car, and your love life was destined always to be a disaster.

But oh the thrill! The parades with mounted police, the brass bands, the motorcades through the town! The popping flashbulbs and your name in the papers!

‘Oh Lord, my corns,’ said Eve Berry, and sat down heavily. ‘How long are Hannaford’s giving you off? Or are you havin’ to do overtime to make up for the days off?’

‘Stocktaking in the basement with that lecher Mr French. It’s never very pleasant. You?’

Molly did not reply to this but hissed back, ‘Watch out, here comes The Slug.’

Looking not unlike like his nickname, Cyril Normandy elbowed his way through a dozen girls, his heavy feet crushing girdles, make-up bags, lipsticks and anything else which had fallen to the floor in the melee. Another man of his age and girth might dream and dream of sharing a room so filled with temptation, but not Normandy. Greed was etched into every line on his fat face and he looked neither to left nor right.

‘Stuff something into that top, Dartmouth,’ he said roughly to Molly. ‘You’re flat as a pancake.’

Molly was used to this.

‘As for you Exmouth,’ he said, referring to Eve’s title – he never used Christian names – ‘those shoes!’

‘You’ll have to let me have some on tick,’ said Eve, unsurprised by this attack on her battered high heels. ‘Can’t afford a new pair.’

The fat man looked at her meanly. ‘Borrow some,’ he snapped. ‘And get a move on, you’re due out there in two minutes.’

Altogether twenty-one girls were entered in this eliminating heat. Up for grabs was not only the Riviera queen title, but also the chance to go through to the next round of Miss Great Britain. And, after that, Miss World! Here in the church hall in Temple Regis there was a lot at stake, even if most of the girls were experienced enough to predict the outcome.

Normandy moved away towards the door, blowing a whistle as he went. The prettiest girls in Devon – those at least who were prepared to take part in this fanciful charade – lined up by the door, giving each other the once-over. They were uniformly clad in one-piece bathing suits, high heels, lacquered hair and bearing a cardboard badge on their right wrist signifying their competition number. Their elbows were as sharp as their mutual appraisals.

The Slug launched into his usual pre-pageant routine like a football manager before the match.

‘Just remember,’ he barked, ‘smile. You’re all walking advertisements for Devon so smile, damn you!

‘You’re all about to become famous. And rich. Watch your lip when you’re interviewed, keep smiling, and don’t fall over. There’s expenses forms on the table in the corner you can fill in afterwards.’

‘That’s a laugh,’ whispered Eve to Molly bitterly, thinking about the shoes.

‘“Smile”,’ parrotted Molly, but she did not suit the action to the word.

Normandy was adjusting his bow tie and smoothing his hair prior to sailing forth into the sunshine. His fussy self-important entrance into the Lido would cause the gathered crowds to cease their chatter and crane their necks. This was part of the joy of seaside life, the beauty pageant – an opportunity to sit in the sun and make catty comments about the size of the contestants’ feet.

‘I hadn’t expected this on my first day,’ said Valentine Waterford. ‘A murder and a beauty competition.’

‘Don’t get too excited,’ said Judy, putting on dark glasses with a dash of imperiousness. The bench they were sitting on was extremely hard. ‘And move over, you’re sitting on my dress.’

The young man edged apologetically away. ‘Look, it’s good of you to come,’ he said, ‘I rather expected to have to fend for myself.’

‘I wanted to go out to Todhempstead Beach. Just to take a look at where they found the girl.’

‘Wasn’t anything to see,’ said Valentine. ‘I drove out there after talking to the Inspector.’ His account faltered as the bathing belles made their entrance to a round of wild applause; Eve Berry wobbled slightly in her borrowed heels but managed to avert disaster. ‘By the time I got there it was all over, bit of a waste of time.’ He was betting with himself who would win.

‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ snipped Miss Dimont. ‘If you’re going to be a journalist you must learn to use your eyes.’ Why was she behaving like this? Rude, short, when really he was very charming. It must be the girls.

‘Empty beach, almost nobody there,’ he replied. ‘Only a couple of markers where presumably they found the body, but the tide was in and so you couldn’t see the sand. What else was there to see?’

Miss Dimont considered this.

‘Your story, the one you wrote this morning, said “mystery death”’ she said. ‘If you’re going to be a reporter and you’re going to write about mysteries, don’t you think it’s part of your job to try to get to the bottom of them?’

‘I see what you’re getting at,’ replied Valentine, ‘in a way. But surely that’s the police’s job? We just sit back and report what they find, don’t we, and if they mess it up we tell the public how useless they are?’

He certainly has got a relative in the business, thought Miss Dimont. A lazy one.

‘Tell me, Valentine, who’s your uncle, the one who’s in newspapers?’

‘Gilbert Drury.’

‘Oh,’ said Miss Dimont, wrinkling her nose. ‘The gossip columnist. That makes sense.’

‘Well,’ said Valentine, beating a hasty retreat, ‘not really my uncle. More married to a cousin of my mother’s.’

A wave of applause drowned Miss Dimont’s reply as the contestants for the title of Queen of the English Riviera 1959 were introduced one by one.

The master of ceremonies introduced his menagerie. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he boomed into the microphone, ‘you do us a very great honour in being here today to help select our next queen from this wondrous array of Devon’s beauty.’

Something in his tone implied however that he, Cyril Normandy, was the one conferring the honour, not the paying public. The hot June sunlight was gradually melting the Brylcreem which held down his thinning hair and at the same time it highlighted the dandruff sprinkled across the shoulders of his navy blazer.

‘As you know, it has fallen to Temple Regis to host these important finals this year, and let me remind you, ladies and gentlemen, the winner of today’s crown will go on to compete in Miss Great Britain in the autumn. So this is a huge stepping stone for one of these fine young ladies, on their way to fame and fortune, and, ladies and gentlemen, it will be you who is to be responsible for their future happiness!

‘Just take a very close look at all these gorgeous girls, because, ladies and gentlemen, it is your vote that counts!’

‘Are you taking notes?’ said Miss Dimont crisply from behind the dark glasses.

‘I, er …’

‘You’ll find it an enormous help as you go along to have a pencil and notebook about your person. Sort of aide-memoire,’ she added with more than a hint of acid. ‘For when you’re back at the office searching your memory for people’s names. You’ll find they come in handy.’ Maybe the hot sun was reacting badly to the lost sleep and the early-morning rum, not to mention the force nine. This was not like Miss Dimont!

The well-padded MC had a microphone in his hand now and was interviewing the girls by the pool’s edge, apparently astonished by the wisdom of their answers. But while he debriefed them on how proud they were to be an ambassador for Britain’s most-favoured county, about their ambitions to do well for themselves and the world, and, most importantly, what a thrill it was to support the town whose sash they had the honour to wear, they were thinking of the free cosmetics and underwear, the trips to London, the boys they might yet meet, and how their feet hurt.

‘Don’t seem to have the full complement,’ puzzled Valentine, looking down the flimsy programme.

‘What was going on back at the police station,’ pondered Miss Dimont, ignoring this and returning to her earlier theme, ‘about whether it was murder or misadventure?’

‘One missing. Erm, what?’

‘Inspector Topham.’

‘He was definite it was accidental.’

‘Something has to account for the fact that Sergeant Gull told you it was murder. I’ve never known him wrong.’

‘But the Inspector outranks him. It was the Inspector who went out to view the scene. So it must be the inspector who’s right.’

‘Never that simple in Temple Regis,’ murmured Miss Dimont, thinking of Dr Rudkin, the coroner, and how he always liked to sweep things under the carpet. ‘No, for the word to have got back to the sergeant that it could be murder must mean that’s what the first call back to the station said.’

‘But why were the body markers so far away from the railway embankment?’ Valentine was suddenly more interested in this conversation than he was in the girls who were parading up and down the pool edge. ‘She couldn’t have fallen, or been pushed, that far away from the railway line.’

‘There you have it—’ Miss Dimont smiled and, lifting her dark glasses, turned to face the trainee reporter ‘—in a nutshell. A mystery death. Needs looking into, wouldn’t you say?’

Valentine Waterford smiled back. He had no idea what a time he was in for.