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For

Julia Richards Ellis

– divine ancestral voice

Contents

Cover

Praise

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dedication

Part One – Winter

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Part Two – Summer

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Extract

About the Publisher

Part One – Winter

One

For a newspaper which went to such lengths to remind its readers of the forthcoming jollifications – ill-drawn holly wreaths garlanding the masthead on Page One, other pages adorned with large woodcut prints of Santas and sleighbells – the newsroom of the Riviera Express was decidedly lacking in Christmas cheer.

Above the sub-editors’ table some optimist had hung a dispirited-looking mistletoe twig, but since most of the desk’s occupants were too old or too ugly to kiss, as a gesture it seemed particularly hollow. Outside the editor’s office a despondent-looking fir tree was already shedding its needles, while from the darkroom came the sounds of Terry Eagleton murdering ‘Santa Bring My Baby Back To Me’. It wasn’t a nice thing to hear.

Betty Featherstone was sitting on John Ross’s desk, swinging her legs and listening to the old bore drone on about the glory days.

‘Ayyyyy…’ he said with a growl, ‘it was just aboot this time o’ year. The old King was dying, the worrld was waiting for the soond of muffled bells. Fleet Street had come to a standstill in anticipation. Ye’re too young to know the name Hannen Swaffer, but let me tell you, girrlie, he was the finest – the greatest columnist ever. Hannen Swaffer!’

‘Yes, I think I’ve heard the…’

‘So old Swaff was sent off to Buckingham Palace to find out how things were going. He came back to the office and told the editor: His Majesty must be slipping away. He didn’t even recognise me.’

‘Ha, ha,’ said Betty.

‘You say that, girrlie, but I can tell you don’t mean it.’

He was right. Betty was inspecting the run in her stocking, successfully dammed with a dollop of Cutex Rosy Pink nail varnish, and thinking about the WI Whist Drive report she had to finish before going-home time. Or rather, she wasn’t thinking about it, using Ross and his interminable meanderings as an excuse not to.

Nobody told her, when she joined the Riviera Express from school, it could be this dull – and in the fortnight before Christmas, too! All she had to look forward to for the rest of the afternoon was writing up the tide tables, sorting out the church brass-cleaning roster, and finally doing something about the Bedlington Crochet Club’s seasonal chef d’oeuvre, a knitted Madonna and child complete with manger, now lopsidedly adorning the font in St Margaret’s Church.

‘Ye jest don’ get the quality of writer down here, girrlie. Now Cassandra of the Daily Mirror – that’s quality for ye!’

As she half listened to the Glaswegian’s monody she struggled to think of an intro. How many thousand stitches, she drearily thought, would it take to make a knitted Madonna? Wait a minute – I could turn that into the New Year quiz!

‘Ye ever read his description of Liberace? So brilliant I know it by heart.’

‘Liberace?’

‘The singer, girrlie, the singer!’

Betty nodded absently. She was actually thinking about whether to take the train up to Exeter for the annual Pens ’n’ Lens Club party – though it usually ended, like all journalistic gatherings with added lubricant, in backstabbing and recrimination. She hated it, too, when people she hadn’t seen for a month or so asked after the wrong boyfriend. Betty got through men like a hot knife through butter, or it was the other way round.

Ross licked his lips and looked into the middle distance. ‘This deadly winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavoured, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love,’ he recited. ‘That’s Cassandra for ye! Sheer genius! Ayyyy, girrlie, have you ever tried your hand at writing something like that? Ye ought, ye know.’

‘The chap who typed that got sued. And his newspaper. And his editor. Are you suggesting we put that kind of stuff in the Riviera Express, Mr Ross?’

The chief sub suddenly found something more interesting to occupy his time.

Just then a heavy thudding noise proclaimed the approach of Rudyard Rhys, bewhiskered editor of the Rivera Express, stalking down the office in his heavy brogue shoes. You could tell that he too had yet to catch the Christmas spirit.

‘Where on earth is everybody?’ he snarled, though he knew perfectly well – they were all off doing their last-minute shopping and his newsroom was a wasteland.

‘Where is my so-called chief reporter, Miss Dim?’

‘She went off with her handbag,’ said Betty disloyally. ‘Didn’t say where.’

‘Anything in the diary for her?’

‘No,’ said Betty even more disloyally. In fact, Miss Dimont had told her before lunch, ‘I’m going over to Wistman’s Hotel to see Mrs Phipps. Back much later,’ meaning opening-time. The newsgathering was over for this week, after all.

‘Well, I’ve just had a call from Sir Frederick’s office. He’s giving a constituency workers’ party and wants someone to cover it. Says his secretary forgot to send the invitation.’

‘That’ll mean the Western Daily Press turned him down. He always favours them.’

‘Rr… rrr!’ said the editor, who hated his more powerful daily rival.

‘Anyway, Judy knows him. I don’t.’

‘It’ll have to be you, Betty, it’s on in an hour. Take that young Skinner fellow along with you.’

‘I thought you said politics was beyond me,’ said Betty, trying to get a rise out of her boss.

‘Six o’clock, Con Club.’ Rhys stumped back up the deserted newsroom. There were days when he barely held control of his newspaper and his best response to the doubters was to retreat into the office and slam the door. That showed them.

‘Better slip on your party frock,’ drawled Ross over his shoulder, ‘Sir Fred likes a pretty girrl ye ken.’

He’s seventy-five if he’s a day, thought Betty with a shudder. On the other hand there were always young people eager to get on in politics hanging around his office and the party was sure to be fun. It solved the Pens ’n’ Lens problem, too.

‘I’m going to make the crocheted Madonna the New Year quiz,’ she said decisively as she picked up her handbag from the desk and headed for the cloakroom.

‘Ay ye would, ye would,’ uttered Ross shaking his head and talking to his desk. If only he could pop out now for a quick drink with old Swaff and Cassandra in the Old Jawbones, what things they’d have to say to each other…

‘He did the most unspeakable things with animals,’ sighed Mrs Phipps, flipping ash into her coffee and throwing her ancient eyes up to the ceiling. ‘Quite reprehensible. We had to send him away.’

Judy Dimont – runaway chief reporter and possibly one of the most accomplished journalists in the West Country with her sizzling shorthand, rat-a-tat-tat typing and fearless interview technique – turned to face the old Gaiety Girl. She’d driven out to join her friend for lunch but now, looking out of the window and watching the snow crawl up the glass with quite alarming speed, she began to realise her chances of escape from Dartmoor were diminishing by the minute.

‘Your son-in-law, Geraldine? Guy? What did you do with him in the end?’

‘Bundled him off to Tangier. With just enough money to keep him away.’

‘Ah yes, I remember now.’

‘They don’t care how they treat their animals there. Beat their donkeys to death, then eat them. Or is it the other way round?’

‘Did it do him any good?’

‘It’s a hard life when you have no money,’ said Mrs Phipps, looking round for a waiter, ‘herding donkeys. Anyway, it prepared him for the jail sentence. Shocking for a mother to discover what a contemptible beast her daughter had married.¹ He had it coming.’

They were sitting at an upstairs window of Wistman’s Hotel and the light was fading fast. Inside, the room was suffused with a magical glow from the fire, the candles, and the reflections from the many gilded mirrors on the walls. As the massive hall clock struck the quarter and the logs settled lower in the grate, the lines in Geraldine Phipps’ old face gently evaporated until she became young again. Though approaching her eightieth year, she was still a beauty.

‘You look lovely, Geraldine,’ said Miss Dimont. ‘Must be all that success!’

‘They were barbarians,’ laughed Mrs Phipps, looking back with relish on her triumphant summer as proprietor of the Pavilion Theatre. ‘They came, they saw, they conquered! Raped and pillaged as well, I have no doubt! Come the spring, the Temple Regis birth rate will quadruple as a result.’

She said it with a joyous lilt to her voice, as if she personally had ordained the unwanted pregnancies which startled and divided Devon’s prettiest seaside resort, in the wake of Danny Trouble and The Urge’s riotous summer season at the end of the pier.

‘Shocking,’ said Miss Dimont, shaking her corkscrew curls in disbelief. Back in the holiday season, Britain’s No. 1 beat group had grabbed the town by the scruff of its neck, shaken hard, and prepared it for the 1960s in spectacular fashion. Their six-week residency at the Pavilion, though marred by an untidy death or two, had saved the theatre from closure, and turned Mrs Phipps into an unlikely national celebrity.

DOWAGER’S DRUM-BEAT DRIVES OUT THE DODOS, yodelled Fleet Street’s headline writers, though Miss Dimont’s own publication, the Riviera Express, was less forthcoming in its support. The editor disapproved of beat groups, and he especially disapproved of lively old dames turning his bailiwick upside down.

The two friends spent lunch hopping from milestone to milestone in Mrs Phipps’ eventful life, and though it was past three o’clock there seemed so much still left unsaid. Geraldine Phipps, who was spending Christmas at the hotel, was enjoying herself immensely and ordered a Whisky Mac for her reporter friend. Her own Plymouth gin had appeared as if by magic, for she was extravagant with tips.

Terry Eagleton, the chief photographer, had driven Miss Dimont out from Temple Regis in the Minor but then disappeared off to Widecombe-in-the-Moor, probably never to be seen again – the snows over Dartmoor now enveloping all and everything.

‘I have the feeling I’ll be staying the night,’ said Miss Dimont as a heavy thud of snow, driven by the Dartmoor winds, hit the window with a crash. It was getting darker by the second.

‘That’s nice,’ said Geraldine Phipps. ‘Because I’ve got something I want to discuss with you.’

‘Tell me first what you have planned for next season, Geraldine. At the Pavilion – is there something I can write about for the Express, since it looks like I’m stuck here till the snow plough comes through?’ Judy looked out of the window but by now there was even less to see, Dartmoor’s snows having seized the day and put it to bed.

The theatre’s proprietress settled more comfortably in her chair, looked around at the darkening room festooned with ivy and fat white candles, and exhaled.

‘Part of me yearns for Pearl Carr and Teddy Johnson,’ she said, ‘sweetly crooning tunesmiths. But frankly, dear, I’ve always adored a bit of danger – and those leather-jacket boys certainly provided that last summer!’

Miss Dimont recalled the singer Danny Trouble, who missed his mum terribly during the band’s turbulent residency at the end of the pier – not too much danger there!

‘But I wonder what my editor will say if you decide to throw a spanner in the works again next summer? Some people got very upset with all that racket you made, Geraldine.’

‘What? That fellow Rhys? The buffoon who calls himself Rudyard?’

‘He only changed his name when he thought he was going to be a novelist,’ explained Judy. ‘Richard Rhys has less of a zing to it. Anyway, if not Pearl Carr, then who?’

‘Before he was arrested, Gavin told me about a young man called Gene Vincent, rides on stage on his motorbike. Revs it up a bit, the girls go crazy! Then he starts to strip his leather off.’

‘Geraldine!’ cried Miss Dimont with feigned horror. ‘You’ll be eighty soon! Motorbikes? Strip-tease? At your age? What’s the Mayor going to say?’

Mrs Phipps’ finely painted lips crept into a wicked smile.

‘My dear, when we Gaiety Girls appeared on stage way back when, it wasn’t always a Salvation Army rally, you know. Some of us deliberately forgot to put on our frillies.’

‘Surely not!’

‘The can-can was a special favourite, just think. Very popular.’

‘Honestly, Geraldine, you’re a disgrace!’

‘No, my dear, I’m not. I’m not pregnant.’

‘I’m told there are eleven unwanted babies on the way. Those Urges and their urges.’

‘They should have been more careful. Never happened in my days on the stage.’

‘Really not?’ said Miss Dimont. ‘You do surprise me!’

‘Well,’ said Geraldine Phipps, gently reminding her lips of the gin glass, ‘not unless it was necessary.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘My dear, in my days at the Gaiety Theatre there were possibly as many as thirty or forty girls – dancers like me, darling – who married a lord. Some of them were well-born, but an awful lot of them weren’t.’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘The well-born ones would face no difficulty from the family should milord drop to one knee and pop the question. It was the others. The rule was – if in doubt, let nature take a hand.’

‘You mean they got pregnant deliberately?’

‘Cheaper to marry the gel than to defend a breach-of-promise action in court. You know how our noble families like to cling to their small change.’

Miss Dimont shook her head and took a sip of the Mac. It breathed fire into her chest and brought a tear to her eye. The vast first-floor sitting room, stuffed with big leather chairs and polished mahogany side tables, had emptied. Either guests had retired for a nap or had wandered off to the library to find a thriller. From where she sat in the window, Miss Dimont could see that nobody was entering or leaving the hotel by the front door – indeed, the wide semi-circular drive had altogether disappeared under the snow.

‘I’d better go and see if they have a room.’

‘Don’t worry,’ smiled Geraldine. ‘I had a word with Ethel while you were powdering your nose. You’re just down the hall from me and they’ve found you some pyjamas and things.’

I ought to phone the office, Miss Dimont thought lazily. She stretched and turned towards the fire, the idea escaping her brain the second it had been formulated.

‘So what is it you wanted to ask me about, Geraldine?’

‘A murder, dear. A murder long ago. One which touched the royal family and could have created an unprecedented scandal, had it ever become known.’

‘Good Lord!’

‘It happened around Christmas time, I suppose that’s what put the thought in my head. I’d forgotten all about it – but sitting here, seeing them putting up the decorations, getting out the punchbowl, brought it all back.’

‘How fascinating, Geraldine.’

‘I was there, Judy. I was there and it has puzzled and worried me ever since. I want you to solve it. I need you to solve it!’

Two

Temple Regis, a mere twenty miles from the edge of Dartmoor, was enjoying very different seasonal weather. Here, the maritime climate meant that as the day faded, the darkening sky revealed its precious jewels one by one, stars so sharply defined you could almost pluck them and wear them round your neck. The evening was beautiful.

‘Shall we go for a walk?’ said Auriol Hedley, looking at the elegant old gentleman sitting in her kitchen chair, his legs neatly crossed and the shine on his brogues sparkling in the lamplight. ‘The air’s crisp, but if you wrap up warm it should be invigorating. We could go to the pub.’

‘I say,’ said her companion, ‘what a wonderful idea!’ as if nobody had ever thought of going to a pub before. Miss Dimont’s uncle Arthur was like that – still a boy through and through, though the occasional arthritic twinge was a reminder that he no longer was.

‘Come on, then.’ Auriol was already in her ancient fur coat and whizzing Arthur’s hat across the room. He caught it neatly and jammed it on his head. They let themselves out of the Seagull Café and set off through the deserted harbour just as the moon rose to light their way.

Out in the dark you could hear the crack of lines against the boat masts, and the sloosh of water slapping the sides of the craft anchored against the harbour wall. Towards the mouth of the estuary a few red lights moving slowly inland showed there was still life on the water, but otherwise it was silent.

‘So glad you’ve come for Christmas, Arthur, always a joy to see you.’

‘My final attempt to put Hugue and her mother together again,’ he said, using the family name for his niece. ‘After that I’ve pledged never to say another word.’ Both shared a love for Miss Dimont, both were concerned at her evasion tactics when it came to Madame Dimont, Arthur’s sister – both seemed powerless to intervene.

‘Did Grace ask you to do something about it?’

‘You know what she’s like,’ said Arthur, linking his arm through Auriol’s. ‘Grace is as difficult in her way as Huguette – two opposing forces. Grace says, My daughter never sees me, and then finds an excuse when I try to put them together. Huguette is naughty – never replies to her mother’s letters and is always on a story or solving a murder or something, just when it looks like the two of them might meet.’

From across the harbour the old man and his companion suddenly heard the piping voices of young choirboys singing, in descant, a melodious chorus of ‘Once in Royal David’s City’.

‘Cynical little brutes,’ said Auriol briskly, stepping up the pace.

‘I say, steady on,’ panted Arthur. ‘That’s the spirit of Christmas you’re giving a kicking! Where are the tidings of comfort and joy in your heart?’

‘You don’t know. I had them knocking on my door last night. When I opened up they were wearing choirboys’ ruffs and had a candle in a milk bottle. Such innocence, such sweetness!’

‘Well,’ said the old boy, pulling his leather gloves tighter into his palms, ‘think yourself lucky. In London I get nobody knocking on my door this time of year. No point in leaving a mince pie on the doorstep when you’re on the eleventh floor of a mansion block. Personally, I think it’s charming.’

Auriol did not agree. ‘They stand there, singing and singing, looking at you with goo-goo grins, begging with their eyes to give them a hefty tip. And when you do, they don’t stop singing, they keep on going in the hope you’ll give ’em a bit more.’

‘Good heavens, Auriol, are you by chance related to Ebenezer Scrooge?’

‘Choirboys?’ came the snorted reply. ‘Extortionists!’

They pushed their way into the saloon bar of the Belvedere. Inside, there was a sense of repressed celebration – this was, after all, Bedlington, lordly neighbour of Temple Regis where beer is served only in half pints (and then with some disdain) while there were at least half a dozen different kinds of sherry on offer.

‘Sherry?’

‘Good lord, no!’ said Arthur. ‘A nice glass of whisky to keep the cold out, if you please. And you, Auriol?’

‘Same.’

Since her retirement from Naval Intelligence, Auriol Hedley had made her home, and a thriving business, in the Seagull Café, perched enchantingly on the edge of Bedlington Harbour, and a magnet for the more genteel seaside visitor.

Auriol had put on a pound or two since her uniform days, but it suited her. ‘La patronne mange ici,’ she explained airily to friends who came to try out her lardy cake and Welsh scones – and anyway, who was counting calories?

In winter, and especially around Christmas, there was little trade and plenty of time to think of other things.

‘That’s why I’m glad you’re here, Arthur,’ she said as her companion returned from the bar. ‘I wanted to ask you about Sir Frederick Hungerford.’

‘Freddy? We’re both old Seale-Haynians, you know. Haven’t seen him for years. He’s your MP, isn’t he?’

‘Not for much longer. Standing down at the next election. Been here for yonks. You’re not friends?’

‘Far from it. We met only briefly, forty years ago, when I came back from the Front. Seale Hayne was an agricultural college but it was used as a hospital for chaps suffering from shell-shock. Well, we both had a bit of that. Freddy and I spent a few weeks in bath chairs lying next to each other, though we didn’t get on awfully well.’

‘Rich, truculent, and litigious said one newspaper when he announced his retirement,’ said Auriol.

‘Obviously no friend of yours either, then,’ laughed Arthur.

‘Well, he’s charming enough when you meet him, that I will say. But soon to be replaced by an absolute poppet. It’ll be something of a relief to have a real person as our MP instead of that…’

‘Shall we have another?’

‘Bit soon for me – you go on.’

‘I wanted to talk to you about Huguette before she gets here. Keen to ask your advice. If we’ve finished with Freddy?’

‘Well, that can wait. What about her?’

‘You know her better than anyone.’

‘Yes.’

‘Her closest friend.’

‘Yes.’

‘Auriol, she’s going round in circles. Her life seems to have become one long chase after the next sensation. It’s this story, it’s that headline. It’s this crime and that murder. I feel she was made for better things.’

‘Well, Arthur, I wonder whether I can agree with you about that. She distinguished herself in war service. She had a second career during the Cold War. She found a third career down here, working in local newspapers, away from the combat zone you might say. You might argue she has a fourth career solving the crimes she has since she started working on the Express. Is there something wrong with that? I should have thought you would have been proud of her.’

‘Well, old girl, I am, I am! But…’

‘Aha! This is Madame Dimont talking, Arthur, isn’t it? You’ve been nobbled!’

Arthur looked at his empty glass and then up at the bar. He looked at the glass again but made no attempt to get up.

‘Look, Auriol,’ he said, ‘you know that one day Huguette will be very well off. Her father left everything to her mother when he died, but she is the eventual heir – after all, when Monsieur Dimont became ill she took over the diamond business and did wonders with it. Wonders! You might almost say she made more money than her father, and he was a shrewd one.’

‘She knows all that. She doesn’t need money, Arthur, she needs peace of mind. She found it working at the Riviera Express. She’s got her cottage, her cat, her career.’

‘Grace wants her to change her life. Give up the journalism business. Go to live in Essex and enjoy what is rightly hers.’

‘Not Essex, Arthur!’

‘You’ve been there, it’s a lovely house. Right on the edge of the marshes. It needs to be lived in, have some life brought back to it.’

‘But it’s huge. She doesn’t need all that – how many bedrooms, for heaven’s sake!’

‘Grace hates the thought of it going out of the family. She always hoped Hugue would marry.’

‘Well,’ said Auriol, ‘you can tell her all this yourself when she gets here.’

The old boy looked shyly at his companion. ‘I was rather hoping you’d say it for me. I do so hate rubbing her up the wrong way,’ he said.

‘And you – awarded the military Order of the British Empire!’ laughed Auriol, planting an imaginary medal on his lapel. ‘Sir Arthur Cowardy Custard!’

The old soldier rose to his feet and headed towards the bar looking perhaps a trifle green round the gills.

Hector Sirraway made quite a fuss when he first arrived in the public library on Fore Street. It was a small building, no bigger than the size of a large terraced house, but perfect for the needs of Temple Regis – during the summer months the residents were far too busy serving their guests, refugees from less attractive parts of Britain, to sit around reading. And in winter they were too busy repairing, and preparing, for the next season.

To say Temple Regents weren’t bookish would do them an injustice, but it followed that their modest library needed only the smallest area reserved for reference work – and even then its one desk remained empty most of the year. Was it any surprise that this is where the Christmas tree should be placed when Advent came around?

Given their modest budget, Miss Greenway and Miss Atherton had done a wonderful job, lavishing the lofty conifer with love and, it might be said, the necessary splash of vulgarity. Everyone said what a marvellous sight it presented, with the exception of Mr Sirraway.

‘What have you got that thing there for?’ he asked starchily when he first showed up a month before Christmas. ‘Can’t you get rid of it?’

Since then, he’d been in every day, and his temper never seemed to improve. Miss Greenway had offered him her desk if he needed somewhere to sit, and even made him a nice cup of tea. But nothing budged Mr Sirraway from his hatred of the tree.

Or it could have been something else that bothered him, it was hard to tell. Tall, white-haired, with a pinched face and a permanent dewdrop at the end of his nose, it emerged from the few sentences he uttered that he was researching a book on the industrial buildings of Dartmoor.

‘Fine time to come in and make a nuisance of himself,’ muttered Miss Atherton on the fourth day. ‘Why couldn’t he wait till after Christmas?’ But Miss Greenway loved to see her library used, whether by schoolchildren, housewives or scholars like Mr Sirraway. In fact, she especially liked Mr Sirraway’s presence because very few asked much of the library, apart from a light novel or a Jane Austen and the occasional Shakespeare.

‘We must show him what we’re capable of,’ she told her assistant, and so they did.

The two librarians watched with interest the growing pile of books their visitor ordered from the shelves. From an ancient leather satchel he drew large sheets of paper which looked like plans of some kind, spreading them out on an adjacent table, grunting and whispering to himself and only occasionally remembering to reach for a handkerchief for his nose.

Miss Greenway was inclined to look up to him – she adored learned people! – but Miss M had taken against.

‘Rude, secretive – and you can tell he doesn’t have a wife. Look at those socks!’ One red, one grey – what wife would allow their man to go out dressed like that?

Mr Sirraway was oblivious to these whisperings. Though he originally demanded books on buildings from all over the moor, he seemed after the first couple of days to be concentrating on an area towards the eastern edge, nearest to Temple Regis. His interest stretched from tin mines to corn mills to peat cutting and even granite blasting – for such a large and barren place as the moor, it was extraordinary how many different ways there were to earn a living from it. He’d even demanded, and got, a book on warrening, the mass farming of rabbits.

But he remained unimpressed with the raw material he was being fed. ‘Look at these charts – crude, outdated, and frankly inaccurate,’ he barked, waving a lanky finger at some ancient roll of papers Miss Greensleeves had unearthed after considerable effort. ‘How can you possibly present a case – an important case – using erroneous data like this?’ But he seemed more to be arguing with himself than complaining about the service the librarians provided.

Over by the desk the occasional last-minuter would wander in, returning books before they collected a penny-ha’penny fine, but nobody lingered over the shelves – they were far too busy preparing for the festive season. As each one entered there would come through the door a mournful sound offering a reminder of the approach of Christmas.

‘There’s old Wilf, left behind again,’ said Miss Greenway to Miss Atherton. ‘I’d better take him a cup.’

The noise, like a cow calling for her calf, also wafted through the high window and irritated Mr Sirraway no end, but it wasn’t likely to cease any time soon – Old Wilf was a stalwart of the Salvation Army silver band, whose gentle harmonies stirred up the Christmas spirit in the marketplace and encouraged everyone to dip into their pockets.

Wilf was old and lame now, and could no longer wander through the town with his bandmates, so they would set him up on a chair outside the library with his euphonium and leave him to it. Somehow ‘Away In A Manger’ tootled through his silver tubes lacked joy and encouraged sorrow. You could get tired of it pretty quickly.

‘Thank heavens,’ sighed Mr Sirraway finally, pushing his plans and his books away from him. ‘That’s that done!’

‘Have you finished, sir?’

The scholar leaned back in his chair, stretched his legs and put his hands behind his neck. ‘Finished.’

‘Is there anything else we can get you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Cup of tea?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Well, I hope we’ve been of service.’ Miss Greenway wouldn’t have minded if her little library got a mention in the author’s acknowledgements when Mr Sirraway’s book came out, but was too shy to ask what its title would be.

‘Well, I’ll be wishing you a Happy Christmas, then. May I ask when your book will be published?’

‘I don’t think a fir tree covered in tinsel has a place in an establishment of learning,’ replied Sirraway, and with that walked out. As he opened the door they got a blast of Wilf’s ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’. It sounded more like someone sitting on a whoopee cushion.

‘He’s left a carrier bag behind,’ said Miss Greenway later, tidying up the desk and taking the books back to their shelves. It was all a bit of a let-down, it had been quite exciting having someone so – well, academic – about the place.

‘Let him come back for it, the miserable so-and-so,’ said Miss Atherton. ‘I’m not chasing after him.’

Miss Greenway was unconvinced. Maybe, too, she was still thinking about that mention in the acknowledgements. She picked up the carrier bag and put it on the desk. ‘I’ll just look and see if there’s an address. Though you could tell he’s not local.’

‘Not with those manners.’

There was little to give away the identity of the man who had colonised their small world over the past four days. Because he was conducting research and not taking books away from the library, there was no requirement for him to provide a driving licence or similar. And all there was in the bag was a large notebook with no name inside and a folder containing a large number of press cuttings.

‘Mostly about Sir Freddy Hungerford,’ said Miss Greenway, leafing through them. ‘Maybe he works for him. Oh, and look, quite a few on Mirabel Clifford.’

‘The one who’s going to take over from Sir Freddy?’

There’d been quite a lot in the Riviera Express about Mrs Clifford. The decision to field a female candidate in the forthcoming general election had been a controversial one, mainly because women were rarely allowed to stand in winnable parliamentary seats. There were plenty of no-hope constituencies where they could go and stand on a soapbox, if that was their thing.

But the Liberal candidate, Helena Copplestone, had made a huge impression on a populus that was growing tired of a self-congratulatory MP with a preference for the cigar and brandy to be found in his St James’s club; and there were real fears that when he retired, the Liberal would win the seat.

‘She’s prettier,’ Miss Atherton said one lunchtime. ‘She’ll win it.’

‘It’s a bit more complicated than that,’ countered Miss Greenway, though with precious little authority to back up her argument, for she had never voted. ‘Think of all the good things Mirabel Clifford has done for Temple Regis!’

‘Well,’ said Miss Atherton, who could take a bleak view when she wanted, ‘I can tell you if there are three women contesting this seat, it’ll be a fight to the death. The death!’

Three

There was something faintly ridiculous about Terry when he put a hat on. Obviously he never looked at himself in the mirror or he wouldn’t do it.

The item in question was a deerstalker and he was wearing it with the flaps down. Out in Widecombe it had caused little comment – moorland folk have no dress code and offer little in the way of advice to incomers – but back in the office it was greeted with hilarity.

‘’Ello, Sherlock!’

‘Found your way back from the North Pole, Terry? Dog-sled drawn by the hounds of the Baskervilles?’

Shopping done, the newsroom had filled up again just ahead of opening time. Most would be taking their Christmas cheer with them down to the Fortescue Arms, and Betty promised she’d come to join them as soon as she’d got the Con Club drinks party out of the way.

‘Don’t wear that if you’re coming with me,’ she sniped at Terry. ‘It looks daft.’

‘You wouldn’t say that if you’d just been where I’ve been,’ snipped the snapper. ‘Three-foot drifts. Had to leave Judy behind – she’s snowed in.’

Betty was unimpressed. She rarely left Temple Regis, whose Riviera climate seldom permitted snow to fall on its rooftops; indeed it would be fair to say she never willingly exposed herself to the wilder elements – a tropical umbrella in her cocktail was more her idea of wet-weather gear.

‘Bet she could have got back if she wanted,’ she sniffed, cross at having to deputise for Judy. ‘Come on!’

They walked over to the Con Club in silence. Terry was marvelling at the new lens he’d bought for his Leica, which promised to do some amazing things with snowflakes – he couldn’t wait to get into the darkroom to see how well it’d done. Betty meanwhile was thinking about Graham Platt, who’d chucked her last week, saying he was thinking of taking holy orders.

Holy orders! If the bishop only knew what Graham…

‘Let’s make this snappy,’ said Terry. With Betty on a job, it was he who issued the orders; with Miss Dimont things were a bit different. ‘Friday Night Is Music Night’s on the wireless.’

‘Not half,’ she agreed, ‘fifteen minutes, tops. Then home for your programme.’

She knew Terry had a tin ear and couldn’t even whistle the national anthem in tune, so obviously there was a girl waiting. You knew very little about Terry’s private life – altogether a Mystery, as Betty labelled them when they didn’t make a pass.

‘Got a date, Ter?’

‘Over there,’ he rapped, heading through the crowd to where the sitting Member of Parliament for Temple Regis was, indeed, sitting.

Around Sir Frederick Hungerford were gathered the simple and the sycophantic of his party workers; everyone else with any sense had herded round the bar. A small but polite audience, they sat with vacant looks on their faces as the parliamentarian recalled a wartime exploit by which he’d single-handedly cut short the conflict by at least five years.

The old boy was looking tired, but then who could blame him? There’d been the lengthy business of being introduced to a lot of people he didn’t know because his visits to the constituency were so severely rationed, and the tiresome ritual of shaking everybody’s hand. Despite this, he put on a good show – well-practised in the art of flattery, he would repeat their names as if drinking in their identity, and then offer a whispered word. They went away on Cloud Nine.

‘Don’t think we’ve seen you here since last year,’ challenged Betty; she voted Labour when she could be bothered. ‘Of course, under your government, rail fares have increased so much people can’t afford to travel down to Temple Regis like they used to. I expect you have the same difficulty – affording it, I mean.’

‘Come over here and sit down,’ smarmed Sir Frederick, ‘I do like a woman with an independent mind.’ He reached out and tickled her knee. ‘Featherstone, you say? Related to the Featherstonehaughs of Arundel, by any chance?’ He knew how to patronise a person all right – he could tell by her shoes that Betty had gone to the local secondary.

‘How does it feel to be giving your last party?’ riposted Betty, notebook flapping and eyes blazing. ‘And don’t do that, Sir Frederick. If you don’t mind.’

The old boy settled back and eyed her with amusement.

‘Must be a relief to be retiring,’ went on Betty. ‘So many calls on your time in London, so many people to see. You missed the annual fête back in the summer, I recall – they had to get Sam Brough to make the speech. You were very much missed.’

Sir Frederick’s eyes were on Betty’s knees. ‘I think you must play tennis rather well,’ he smiled, as if this were a compliment.

‘Are you making the speech tonight? Or will it be Mrs Clifford? We’ve only got a moment,’ she said, nodding towards her photographer, ‘then we’re off on a real story.’

This was unlike Betty – sharp, rude, insubordinate – maybe she was hoping there’d be a complaint and she wouldn’t have to cover politics any more. After all, they were still talking about what Judy Dimont said and did at the Annual Conservative Ball two years ago!

‘Clifford?’ pondered Sir Frederick. ‘That name seems familiar. Could swear I’ve heard it before somewhere.’

Betty fell for it. ‘She’s your successor, Sir Frederick! You’re retiring, she’s the new candidate. A much-respected figure…’

The MP’s gaze turned to scorn. It said, of course I know who the woman is, I’m not a complete idiot. But one does not, in the presence of an honourable Member who has served his community loyally, unflinchingly, tirelessly, for thirty years mention some pipsqueak piece of fluff who’s only been selected because she has nice curly hair and wears a skirt.

FLASH! Terry got a nice one in, Sir Fred’s face a death-mask tinged with contempt. Of course the editor wouldn’t put it in the paper – no chance. But it would make a nice addition to the Thank Heavens! board, usually reserved for the photos of less attractive bridal couples (as in ‘Thank Heavens they found each other – nobody else would have them’).

A pretty girl wandered by, heading for the bar. ‘Over here!’ ordered the MP. ‘Just the sort!’ The girl smiled vaguely but walked on.

‘Over here!’ he repeated, louder. ‘Sit down, put your arm round my shoulder, smile at the camera!’ The girl blushed timidly and tried to say something, but the MP was edging forward in his seat and sticking a fiendish grin on his face. ‘Want your picture in the paper, don’t you, sweetie?’ he said through his practised smile. ‘Look at the camera now. Young adoring party worker looks up to her hero Member!’

His victim did not directly respond but said to Terry. ‘I… I… shouldn’t be here. Don’t put my picture in the paper, please!’

‘Why ever not!’ roared Sir Frederick.

‘I’m not one of your party workers,’ she said, getting up. ‘I work behind the bar. And I vote Liberal.’

Unabashed, the old boy managed to get a tickle to the back of her knees before she scooted away.

‘We’ve got all we need,’ said Terry, who always maintained a cheerful demeanour no matter the circumstances – good photographers never sulk on duty.

‘Can’t stay for the speech,’ said Betty to Sir Freddy. ‘But I’ll write that our outgoing MP hasn’t a clue who his successor will be.’

‘No you won’t,’ replied Sir Frederick with confidence. ‘I’ve got your editor’s home number.’

Good, thought Betty. No more politics for me, then.

‘So you see,’ Mrs Phipps was drawing on a Player’s Navy Cut and her quite astonishing memory, both at the same time, ‘Eglantine’s only ambition was to marry a moat.’

Miss Dimont shook her head slightly, as if to clear it. They were sitting in the coffee room after breakfast, and her old friend’s endless flood of reminiscence gushed on like a mountain stream.

‘She had a thing about castles – there were one or two in her family, you know – and she thought the only way to show you’d married well was if, when you went home, you were surrounded by a moat. Preferably with a drawbridge to pull up.

‘So she did – marry a moat, that is. She collared Sir Jefrye Waterford, but little did she know that in the wink of an eye he’d lose the lot – too many wagers, too much crème de menthe. Too many popsies.’

And were you one of those, thought Judy, and would that have been while he was married to Eglantine? She changed the subject.

‘You were going to tell me, last night, your royal story.’

‘I wonder how that particular tale escaped,’ said Mrs Phipps, her eye travelling around the room to check if the drinks waiter was out of bed yet. ‘We got talking about other things, I suppose. You really are terribly good company, Judy, it’s such a pleasure to have the time to chat.’

‘Why don’t you call me Hugue, Geraldine? My close friends do.’

‘Hugue?’

‘Short for Huguette. I stopped using it at school because they used to call me Huge – I wasn’t! Well, just a little bit, and only then sometimes… Judy’s really a work name.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’ asked Mrs Phipps. ‘We’ve known each other for years.’

Because most of the time we’re talking about you, and there never seems to be the opportunity, Miss Dimont thought, but not unkindly. Mrs Phipps’ stories were worth a guinea a minute and anyway, she was an actress – and who else do actresses talk about but themselves?

‘I like it,’ opined Mrs Phipps. ‘French, of course.’

‘Actually Belgian. My father was a diamond merchant in Antwerp, though my mother’s English. I grew up there until I was four but what with the war… we moved to England when my father was imprisoned by the Germans.’

‘Did he escape?’

‘No, he couldn’t. He was treated very badly and was never quite the same again. I did a year or two at university but then I took over a lot of the business from him – travelling around Europe, buying and selling. The diamond business is like a club for men – they think you know nothing. As a result I was quite successful.’

‘Good Lord,’ said Mrs Phipps. ‘Then you must be quite well off.’

‘Well,’ said Miss Dimont, reflecting. ‘There’s a nice house in the Essex marshes, and we still have a tiny home in Ellezelles – that’s where we come from – but I’m very happy down here.’ And a million miles away from my overbearing mother, she thought with relief.

‘So you…?’

‘Let’s talk about you. You were going to tell me a royal story.’

‘It’s rather a long one.’

‘That’s all right, it’s my Saturday off. I’ll get the bus back to Temple Regis after lunch, if the snow allows. What’s it all about?’

A petite breakfast waitress was clearing away the coffee things, and Mrs Phipps fixed her with a commanding gaze, borrowed from when she played Lady Bracknell in, oh, 1934, was it? The Adelphi. And wonderful reviews, naturally…

‘Would you kindly bring me a large Plymouth gin?’ she said. It didn’t sound like a request. The girl blinked, looked at the clock over the mantelpiece and the lifting morning light through the window, then bobbed and moved away.

Just look at her, thought Miss Dimont. She’s eighty but her eyes are clear, her voice is strong, she carries herself in a commanding manner, and she oozes charm. What an extraordinary woman!

‘I was too tall for the Prince of Wales,’ began Mrs Phipps. ‘He could be quite charming but he was such a pipsqueak. And he bleated if he didn’t get his way – very unattractive in a man, don’t you know.

‘We were at the Embassy Club – it’s where we all used to go, everyone knew everyone, of course. And I could see he’d been eyeing me up. His popsy at the time was Thelma Furness, though she wasn’t there that night.

‘He sent someone over to ask me to dance, which really is not the way to go about things, but he was the future king so I suppose he could please himself. We both got up and moved towards the dance floor but the moment we met, you could tell it would be a humiliation for him – I was nearly a foot taller, or so it seemed. We managed to scrape around the floor but he was very unhappy – never liked people showing up how short he was.’

‘Did you lead, or did he?’ asked Miss Dimont mischievously.

‘Ha! Ha! I will say this, he had the grace to ask me back to his table and that’s when it all began.’

‘What, exactly?’

‘Well, there was a group there, possibly ten, can’t remember them all but Prince George was there – you know, the Duke of Kent, the one killed in the war – and he had some American girl in tow. There was Diana Cooper and her husband, as well as Lord Dudley, Lord Sefton, a few others and this girl Pansy Westerham.’

Mrs Phipps looked around the room but so far there was no sign of the gin. She plunged on.

‘Pansy and I hit it off immediately – she raised one eyebrow as if to say, who’s your short friend? We both started laughing and that was it. She was wonderful company, didn’t care a hoot about anybody or anything – big blue eyes, wonderful figure, and funny as all get-out. We had lunch the next day and we were best friends from the word go.

‘She was having a fling with one of the men at that table but wouldn’t say who – she said it was complicated. But she told me everything else, I even knew his inside-leg measurement, dear!

‘After we’d known each other a few weeks she confessed there was someone else – someone she didn’t even like but was drawn to, fascinated by – he sounded quite nasty, actually. We’d meet most nights at the Embassy and she’d tell me little bits and pieces but actually, darling, I was only half listening – that nightclub was the most dazzling place on earth. Everybody who was anybody was there, and slap bang in the middle of it all were the Prince of Wales and Prince George and their côterie. Your eyes were out on stalks and of course, you were on the qui vive – I was between husbands at the time and you never knew who might come over and ask you to dance.’

‘Apart from the Prince of Wales.’

‘Ha! We never danced again – but I did have a go with Prince George – a lovely dancer and very manly with it. But he knew it, my dear, always a bit of a put-off.’

‘Not always.’

‘No, not always.’

There was a pause as they pursued their separate, pleasurable thoughts.

‘So,’ said Miss Dimont after a moment or two, ‘was it Pansy you wanted to talk to me about?’

‘I was just coming to that,’ said Mrs Phipps, beaming as the waitress slid into view with a glass on a silver salver. ‘Won’t you have one?’ The question was rhetorical.

‘After a bit Pansy got very down. It was man-trouble all right, you can always tell, but she didn’t want to discuss it. She just looked very strained and talked about the weather, that sort of thing.

‘Then one day she wasn’t there – pouf! Disappeared like I don’t know what. She had a little house off Knightsbridge, and I called round a couple of times but there was never an answer. I telephoned, left messages, but nothing.

‘I wondered if she’d run away with her bad man, but gossip soon got around our circle and nobody that we knew had left their wife, or absconded, done a bunk, so we were up a gumtree.’

‘I think I know what’s coming,’ said Miss Dimont, leaning forward with interest.

‘I expect you do, dear, what with your background in sleuthing. Anyway, they found her a fortnight later – dead in the street. She’d fallen from the top of her house – just behind Harrods, you know – and it was all very distressing. It turned out she had a husband who loved her dearly, she never told me about him, who lived in Paris. And there was a child she never mentioned either.’

‘Sounds like you never knew her after all.’

‘You’re right, of course. Later I discovered she developed pashes on people but after a bit got bored and moved on. When I thought about it afterwards, I realised she must have been running away in her mind from something – the abandoned husband and child, I suppose. And what she wanted to do was to live inside other people’s worlds. She wanted to open the door and take refuge in your house, as it were. She was delightful company, adorable, but all it covered up was unhappiness.’

‘You think she killed herself?’

‘Well, people took quite a lot of drugs back then – not like today, dear.’ Mrs Phipps looked ruminatively into her gin glass. ‘Morphine and cocaine and so on. Quite a lot of people killed themselves back then – but no.

‘No, that’s why I wanted to talk to you about her, Huguette – shall I call you that? I think she was murdered, and something inside me – even thirty years later – wants to find out what exactly happened.’

There were tears in her eyes. ‘Will you help me? Do you think you could get to the bottom of it? Find out the truth?’

‘Geraldine, think about it – how could I find anything out after all these years? There’s been a world war, an atom bomb, who knows what.’

‘But my dear, you’re so clever! All those things you’ve seen and done!’

Judy Dimont got up. ‘After all this time?’ she repeated, gathering up her raffia bag. ‘Geraldine, I would love to, but there’s not a chance. Too much water under the bridge.’

The old woman looked forlornly into her gin.

‘But now you’ve told me, I won’t be able to think about anything else.’