Died and Gone to Devon Page 13

  Miss Dimont put down her teacup. ‘I don’t know about that,’ she said, ‘but in my experience he’s not a man you’d leave your handbag with.’ She was still seething over being scooped by the Daily Herald.

  Mirabel Clifford reached into a drawer and brought out a sheaf of letters. ‘He names names, and these are quite well-known women, those that are still alive.’ She scratched her head. ‘There seem to be an awful lot of them.’

  ‘I wonder how he found all that out? Probably not even true – he just seems intent on stirring up trouble for Sir Freddy, by the sound of it.’

  ‘I agree. But it puts me in a difficult position. You could say Sirraway has a bee in his bonnet, you might also say he’s a bit of a crackpot, but he seems determined to bring all this into the open. And he’s leaning on me to denounce Sir Freddy.’

  ‘Can’t you just ignore him?’

  ‘Not altogether. If, when the election is announced, he comes out in public and says that Sir Freddy’s successor – me – is hiding secrets about his murky past, how’s that going to look? As if in some way I am in collusion with him. And you know what some people think – that all politicians are corrupt. As I explained the other night, I’ve got an uphill struggle as it is to convince the electorate they should vote for me.’

  Miss Dimont smiled. ‘I have the feeling you’re going to ask me for help,’ she said.

  Mirabel’s eyelids flickered. ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ she said shortly. ‘I just asked you in for a cup of tea because of that chance meeting at Westminster the other night. I thought we might get along.

  ‘But,’ she added, ‘since you mention it, I confess I’m not sure what to do. This man seems determined to ruin Sir Freddy’s reputation, and he wants to use me as the weapon to destroy him. By giving me all this information he’s drawing me in, implicating me somehow. As a solicitor I can handle it; as a politician it makes me vulnerable.’

  ‘You could complain to the police.’

  ‘That would be very unwise. He’s not threatening me in any way that you could put your finger on, though I do feel threatened, I must confess. And of course he can say what he likes in court – about me, about Sir Freddy, using court privilege.’

  ‘Which he’s already done.’

  ‘So I gather. The man’s a loose cannon, quite likely to cause a great deal of damage.’

  ‘Look,’ said Judy, ‘I’m not quite sure how to put this. You know me – well, you hardly know me at all – but what you do know is that I’m a reporter. But I also have certain other, um, skills. It seems to me that you need to discover whether what Professor Sirraway is claiming is actually true. I might be able to help there. If it is true, you might like to see that set in print before the election’s announced so as to put as much distance as possible between you and the sitting MP.’

  ‘Dangerous,’ said Mirabel, ‘if it comes back to me – Prospective candidate stabs her predecessor in the back – I can see the headlines now. And anyway I can’t see the Riviera Express ever wanting to wash Sir Freddy’s dirty linen in public.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Miss Dimont. ‘That is where our Fleet Street brethren come in. We give the story to someone like Guy Brace on the Daily Herald or a chap called Inkpen on the News Chronicle – both of them would lap it up. I agree, my editor would never attack our sitting MP.’

  ‘And the purpose of all this would be?’

  ‘I think you’ve been put in a very difficult position. You hold information on your predecessor which, if it became known, could damage your chances at the election. If you do nothing, you risk being blackened by Professor Sirraway – has he got some kind of down on you?’

  ‘I have no idea. I do know, or I believe, that he is slightly unhinged.’

  ‘Well,’ said Miss Dimont. ‘It looks as though he means to let out all this information into the public domain. If he does it, he could accuse you of being part of the cover-up. If on the other hand my Fleet Street friends Mr Brace and Mr Inkpen get the story, Sirraway’s goal is achieved without implicating you.’

  ‘So to save my own skin I stab Sir Freddy in the back? I’m not that kind of person.’

  ‘It’s going to happen anyway.’

  Mirabel got up and walked to the window. Out in the Market Square the Christmas festivities were under way with a group of Morris dancers kicking up their heels to some squeezebox music, but when she turned back her face was puckered with indecision.

  ‘There may be nothing to all this,’ said Judy. ‘Why don’t you let me take these letters away and do some digging, see whether I can find anything out?’

  ‘Oh, will you?’

  Terry was in the darkroom, where all photographers hide when they want to avoid being sent out on a story. There is something mystical about the dark black space which brings a cathedral, or monastery, to mind – a place where, when the door was shut and the red light on, journalists of the writing variety are wise to keep away.

  He was disappointed that the Pansy Westerham pictures, borrowed from his chum at the Press Association, had stirred so little interest in Miss Dimont. And after all that effort! Now he sat, once again, at the print table with a large magnifying glass staring at the ancient prints, willing them to speak to him.

  Terry was usually very good at interpreting still images, recreating in his mind the circumstances which led up to that moment, frozen in time now, when these disparate people were drawn together at the photographer’s behest. But today he could get nothing from these assorted tableaux – it was as if the dead hand of Pansy had killed all clues stone dead.

  She looks gorgeous, he thought, but she looks troubled. He went through the prints once more, but they refused to communicate. Idly he turned them over and read out the typed captions, but each gave no more than a bald statement of who the figures were, left to right, with a date and the venue. Some had a rubber stamp – PUBLISHED, DAILY EXPRESS or PUBLISHED, THE TIMES COURT PAGE – but there was nothing else.

  ‘Nothing,’ grunted Terry, picking up the envelope and shovelling the prints back in – they’d have to go back to Fleet Street this afternoon. As he was doing so, he spotted a small piece of paper which had got itself stuck in the gum on the envelope flap. Obviously it had been shovelled into the package with the prints and got stuck to the interior. He pulled it out gently and saw it was a clipping from the London Gazette, the daily register of important matters whose only readers were newspaper librarians.

  WESTERHAM, Mrs E.L.P. of 6 Hans Crescent, London SW1, and Paris. Personal bankruptcy etc., etc., etc.

  The Gazette clipping was dated 15 July 1934. On the back was a rubber stamp:

  DEAD 15 July 1934.

  Fourteen

  ‘So if we all pull together,’ said Auriol briskly, ‘we should see this through.’

  She was greeted with blank stares; Miss Dimont and Uncle Arthur did not share her optimism.

  ‘You sound just like you did in that Admiralty basement, all those years ago,’ snipped Judy. ‘Ready to consign others to a risky enterprise, giving them the cheery pat on the back before you parachuted them off into oblivion.’

  ‘That’s a bit harsh,’ said Arthur deprecatingly. ‘It’s only your mother coming for Christmas. And she’s not even staying with you.’

  ‘All right,’ said Judy, her eyes flicking from side to side, ‘as long as we’re all in this together.’

  ‘Couldn’t be easier,’ said Auriol authoritatively. ‘She’s coming down on the afternoon train on Wednesday. Arthur will meet her and take her to the Grand Hotel, see her to her room and have a cup of tea and a chat. At six o’clock you and I arrive and we have cocktails and dinner. An early night.

  ‘Then, on Christmas Day we meet for drinks in the Palm Court, exchange of presents, lunch, Grace goes off for a snooze. Arthur picks her up at six, she comes here for a light supper, then back to the hotel.’

  ‘You’ve got this beautifully organised, Auriol,’ said Arthur admiringly. Despite the minefield ahead he was rather
looking forward to the family get-together. Since the death of his wife, his was a rather solitary existence.

  ‘Then,’ continued Auriol, ‘on Boxing Day we collect her up, give her a glass of sherry and bundle her back on the train. Job done.’

  ‘Let’s have a drink,’ said Judy quickly, picking up the whisky decanter. They were in Auriol’s sitting room and it looked like the worst was over, for now. Thanks to Auriol, Grace Dimont’s state visit would go like clockwork, as long as nobody said the wrong thing.

  ‘Why is Christmas so stressful?’ asked Judy plaintively. ‘I feel as though I want to murder somebody.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ urged Auriol. ‘You’re so brilliant you could solve the case all by yourself.’

  They all laughed; the pressure was easing but hadn’t completely disappeared. ‘What have you been doing, Hugue?’ asked Arthur, as a way of changing the subject.

  ‘More digging on Sir Freddy Hungerford,’ said Judy. ‘I had an interesting chat this morning with someone – apparently, he had a reputation in the early days for fleecing rich women.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Arthur, ‘I know all about that.’

  ‘Really?’ said Judy archly. ‘You do surprise me, Arthur! When we talked about him before, you said you’d had nothing to do with him after your spell in hospital together.’

  ‘You asked if I knew him,’ said Arthur defensively. ‘I rightly said I didn’t. You didn’t ask if I knew about him.’

  Judy topped up his glass grudgingly. ‘So…?’

  ‘Man was a rascal,’ said Arthur. ‘He married that German woman but always had someone else on the go – always rich, always a bit daft, usually a widow. He used to encourage them to buy racehorses, or invest in some get-rich-quick scheme. He’d use them and then drop them once he’d squeezed them dry. His wife had no money; he made his fortune out of all those others.’

  ‘Were there lots of them? I’ve been given a document which lists some of them – haven’t had a chance to look it over yet. I wonder if you’d have a squint and see whether any of it sounds familiar. There’s a man who seems hellbent on ruining Hungerford’s reputation.’

  ‘Too late for that,’ said Arthur complacently. ‘Man was a rotter from the day he was born.’

  ‘And he’s dragging his replacement, Mirabel Clifford, into it as well,’ said Judy.

  ‘Really?’ said Auriol, her ears pricking up. ‘I’ve known her for years. Did some conveyancing for me when I first came down here. Very reliable, very charming, and just the sort of person we should have representing us in Parliament, no matter what your political preferences are. A terribly good egg.’

  Isn’t it marvellous how we all live inside our own little world, thought Miss Dimont. First Lovely Mary not telling me about Renishaw being her lodger. And now Auriol! I’ve known Auriol since the days of war, she has been my truest friend, we share secrets that nobody else could ever know – and yet I didn’t know she knew Mirabel Clifford.

  ‘I didn’t know you knew—’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Auriol in the slightly bossy way she occasionally deployed back in the Admiralty days. ‘Haven’t seen her recently but we were quite close once.’

  ‘Well, since you’re such good friends,’ said Judy with a touch of asperity, ‘it may interest you to know this eccentric figure, Professor Sirraway, appears to be determined to torpedo Mirabel Clifford and Freddy Hungerford, both at the same time.

  ‘I mean, Sir Freddy’s probably fair game – but Mirabel? Maybe he’s got a bee in his bonnet about politicians, I don’t know – but this campaign of his seems to be more than just getting back some old buildings Sir Freddy snitched years and years ago.’

  ‘Poor Mirabel!’ Auriol shook her head.

  Arthur was loving this – here he was, in the thick of it once again! At his age, much of what went on in the world was beginning to pass him by. Often, though he had The Times delivered every day, he’d do no more than scan the Court Circular to see which of his friends had died, and check the runners and riders in the 2.30 at Newmarket. The birth of beat music had eluded him, and he had yet to travel on a jet plane. But when it came to Freddy Hungerford, suddenly he was the fount of all knowledge – the gossip in the back bar at his club had made sure of that.

  ‘Eloise Cavendish,’ he said with a beam.

  ‘Yes?’ said Judy and Auriol in unison.

  ‘You remember – her husband was Governor-General of Australia. He might have been prime minister, only people are so dashed dismissive of titles when it comes to politics.’

  ‘She was much younger,’ recalled Auriol, ‘Eloise.’

  ‘A beauty,’ nodded Arthur, ‘but a bit dim. When her husband died he left her two houses, a safe full of jewels, and a tidy sum in the bank. Freddy Hungerford swallowed the lot.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘His harebrained schemes for making money – I know a chap who knows a chap who can double your fortune kind of thing, and of course Eloise fell for it. Usually it was someone who Freddy owed money to who’d end up rich, while he and his lady friend sunk slowly further in the mud.

  ‘He had a house and a wife to keep up. And being an MP costs a packet, too. So he fleeced Eloise for all she’d got, then dropped her. I believe she lives in a bungalow in Bexhill now.’

  ‘Bexhill!’ chorused his audience, shuddering.

  ‘She wasn’t the only one. So I think probably your man – what’s his name, Solloway? – has got it right.’

  ‘Looks like Freddy got his hands on several fortunes, then. What a beast!’ said Auriol. ‘Supper, everyone? Or we could go out.’

  ‘Let’s stay here,’ said Judy, ‘it’s a lovely fire.’

  Auriol lit candles and fished out cutlery. Judy was delving in her raffia bag for the document Mrs Clifford had handed over earlier. Pausing to sip her drink, she laid it on the table and pushed her spectacles up her nose.

  ‘You’re right,’ she said to Arthur, riffling through its numerous pages. ‘Sirraway names Eloise Cavendish. He seems to agree pretty much with what you were saying.’

  She looked up. ‘I wonder what he’s trying to achieve? Either he has a case against Hungerford with regard to those buildings, or he doesn’t. I can’t see why he’s bothering with all this.’

  ‘It’s personal,’ said Auriol. ‘Who else has he got in there?’

  Judy took a sip of her whisky and flipped the pages. ‘Half of the ladies in Debrett’s, by the look of it. But there’s too much here to go through just when we’re about to have supper. It’s mostly handwritten and I’ll need a magnifying glass.’

  ‘I’ve got one in the drawer.’

  ‘No, Auriol, it can wait. I have the feeling that it’ll be the same old story, several times over.’

  Uncle Arthur clinched it. ‘Top up, anyone?’ he said.

  Despite the editor’s insistence that work should not be abandoned simply because there wasn’t a paper this week, the newsroom was deserted. It was Betty’s moment to pounce.

  ‘What are you doing for Christmas, David?’ she asked, turning her headlights on the reporter who, judging by the look on his face, was busy typing something terribly important.

  ‘Mm-huh?’ he said, looking up briefly. Before Betty could answer, his head was back down and he was hammering away again.

  ‘Mrs Renishaw coming to join you? Or will you be going away?’ The thing you could always say about Betty, she was dogged.

  He finished his typing with a flourish, and pulled the paper noisily out from the Imperial Standard.

  ‘Oh,’ he said vaguely. ‘The, er…’

  ‘Mrs Renishaw,’ pressed Betty.

  ‘Ah, yes.’

  I wonder what that can mean thought Betty, but didn’t pursue it. She had other questions to ask.

  ‘Some tea? I’m just making a pot.’

  ‘No, thanks,’ said Renishaw. ‘Do you know Inspector Topham, the CID man?’

  ‘Yes, a lovely old thing. Due for retirement soon.’

&n
bsp; ‘I wonder what’s the best way to approach him. I’ve just been writing out a report on this Professor Sirraway. I think I’ve discovered something which… well, let me put it this way,’ he said, as if Betty wasn’t bright enough to grasp the import of his findings, ‘I think the man poses a risk to public safety and something should be done about him.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ said Betty, giving the matter her full consideration for all of two seconds. ‘He’s a bit odd, but safe enough. I had a long chat with him, you see. He keeps bees – I think that’s always a good sign, don’t you?’

  ‘Betty,’ said Renishaw, ‘the man’s got a screw loose! You didn’t give him your address, did you?’

  Betty couldn’t remember. She gave it to most gentlemen who asked.

  ‘I… I think you’re wrong, David. I think he’s got a grievance against our MP, that’s all. And from what he told me it sounds like he has a point.

  She paused, gathering herself for the onslaught ahead.

  ‘I think, in this case,’ she finally continued, ‘that’s it’s the Prof who’s the underdog here. And our paper should be looking into his claims and giving him the support he clearly wants. I’m all for the underdog, aren’t you, David?’

  A wintry smile spread over Renishaw’s face. ‘You’re cleverer than I thought, Betty,’ he replied slowly.

  Was that an insult or a compliment? And – what exactly did it mean? She’d chosen her words carefully to show she knew something about him – maybe. But not so much as to give away the fact she’d been going through his drawers and making a note of his bank account details.

  ‘Ha, ha!’ she said eventually.

  Renishaw got up and came around to sit on the corner of her desk, swinging his leg and looking down at her. ‘What do you know about underdogs?’ he asked sweetly, but his eyes had narrowed.

  ‘Well,’ said Betty, who was not easily intimidated, ‘I’d say in that man Sirraway, you have a case in point. He’s been pushed around by a man who has all the power and all the connections.