Died and Gone to Devon Page 8

  The girl tore off the short missive sent from the Press Association, then took it off to the tea station, where she ostentatiously read it while waiting for the kettle to boil.

  ‘Hmm, this seems a good one,’ she said, rattling the paper, almost to herself but loud enough for Ross to hear.

  ‘Give it here, girrlie, I’ll be the judge o’ that.’

  ‘Was that one sugar or two?’ She was in no hurry to humour him.

  Finally she brought over the cup and placed it on top of the PA snapful, as it was known, gently sloshing the contents so half the message from London was obliterated. ‘Oh, sorry about that – would you like a biscuit?’

  Maybe John Ross was finally losing his power to mesmerise. He pulled out the damp communique and read:

  PA Parly snapful — Sir Frederick Hungerford MP Temple Regis has disappeared after being attacked in street near Westminster home. Broken nose, badly bruised, hands stamped on. Attacker escapes. Full story 1 hr.

  ‘Well, he’ll nae be hiding out in Temple Regis while he recuperates,’ sneered Ross. ‘Broken bones heal so much better in the South of France, one finds – doesn’t one?’ He finished the sentence in a cod upper-class accent.

  ‘Good story, though,’ he added, licking his lips. ‘Where’s Judy, for heaven’s sake!’

  Uncle Arthur was back from London. Though his home was high above a leafy garden square in a comfortable mansion-block flat, he seemed to have taken a shine to the seaside, or was it more that he’d taken a shine to his hostess, Auriol Hedley?

  ‘Out of the way, Arthur,’ she said bossily, ‘Christmas or not, this café is still open. There may not be many customers but you know that old wartime phrase we never shut – well, that’s me.’

  ‘You’ve got new coffee.’

  ‘Yes, and you can’t have any more. Haven’t you something to do – go and polish your shoes or something?’ She looked efficient this morning, the crisply laundered white apron as smart as the naval uniform she had once worn.

  ‘Chap I met in the club last night,’ said Arthur, neatly rearranging his long legs and staring at his twinkling brogues, ‘was talking to me about Freddy Hungerford – you know, you were mentioning him the other night.’

  ‘Ah yes.’ She couldn’t remember why.

  ‘Apparently a hooligan attacked him in the street. It was seen by several witnesses and someone called the police, but by the time they got there, he’d disappeared.’

  ‘Where was this?’

  ‘Near the House of Commons.’

  ‘Well, I expect he picked himself up, dusted himself down, and found his way across the road to Annie’s Bar.’

  ‘Well, yes, you would suppose that. But I heard on the radio this morning he hasn’t been seen since.’

  ‘Who? Hungerford?’

  ‘The very same.’

  ‘I’ve known many a man go missing inexplicably, Arthur. It usually only means one thing.’

  ‘Oh, hah! I suppose you’re right. He’s a rum ’un, though.’

  ‘I thought you only knew him after the First War, when you were recuperating together.’

  ‘Oh, chaps tell me things.’

  ‘What do they tell you?’ Business was slack this morning, there was time for a chat.

  ‘I don’t know if you recall but there was a fad for motor-racing at Brooklands between the wars. Huge great old Bentleys, and of course I had my Lagonda…’

  ‘I know about the Lagonda, Arthur.’ It was as well to stop him in his tracks when he started droning on about cars.

  ‘Freddy Hungerford – more money than sense – decided to impress his latest girlfriend by attempting the Blue Riband trophy. He bought himself a brand-new Sunbeam and there was an epic battle between him and Count Zborowski which Freddy lost. A bad loser, that man – the word went around. Zborowski was a complete gentleman about it, though. Even if he did drive a Bugatti.’

  ‘You’ll be talking about carburettors and double-declutching next, Arthur – anything in this for me?’

  The old boy’s face expressed mild surprise. He had a tale or two in his repertoire about double-declutching, as it happened. Most people were fascinated.

  ‘Well, Hungerford then. He got a reputation as a womaniser. Though he was married, he had girlfriends who overlapped each other like planks on a clinker-built boat. Not so much love-’em-and-leave-’em as love-’em-and-shove-’em. He was a bit brutal, don’t you know. Not many friends as a result.’

  Come on, thought Auriol, haven’t got all day.

  ‘What made me think of it was back in those days, one of his girlfriends went missing. Now he’s gone missing. Bit of a coincidence, that.’

  Auriol sat down opposite him. Much water had flowed under the bridge since she quit her post in Naval Intelligence, but though sometimes she was called on in an unofficial capacity to help her ex-bosses, there was nothing much going on at the moment. A mystery always intrigued her, just as it did her best friend.

  ‘Tell me more.’

  ‘Wish I could remember her name, something to do with Kent – Maidstone? Dover? Anyhow it was long ago – doesn’t really matter now. What my chap at the club told me in confidence was that Hungerford won’t be getting his peerage.’

  ‘Peerage?’

  ‘Apparently he only agreed to step down as your MP in return for getting a seat in the House of Lords. My chap,’ added Arthur, just a shade boastfully, ‘is already there. In fact, his family, for generations…’

  ‘Yes, yes, Arthur, you have friends in high places. But what about Hungerford’s peerage?’

  ‘Well, he likes being in Parliament and had no intention of standing down. The local party are fed up with him and fixed it so he would get a peerage; that way he’d be out of their hair and they could get a proper person to represent them in Parliament, and he could snooze away the rest of his life in the Lords.’

  Auriol made a snort of disgust.

  ‘Everything was fixed up and he even chose his title – Lord Downpark – while they chose a new candidate. I hear she’s a woman,’ added Arthur with a slightly amused chuckle.

  ‘And a wonderful one, too. You should see what she’s said and done since she became the candidate.’

  ‘Well, you would know,’ said Arthur, retreating hastily. ‘Anyway, here’s what I wanted to tell you – everything was going ahead quite smoothly when a royal personage got to hear about it and suddenly – pouf! – no more Lord Downpark.’

  ‘Heavens!’ exclaimed Auriol. ‘I didn’t know the royal family interfered in politics!’

  ‘They don’t,’ said Arthur quickly, though his expression seemed to say different. ‘Anyway, Sir Freddy he will now remain and he can kiss goodbye to the old ermine.’

  ‘But why, if it’d all been fixed up?’

  ‘I was told it went this way. Hungerford qualified on all counts – long service as an MP, no divorce, no criminal record, no bankruptcy, general support for the government when his party was in power. All that sort of thing – should have been a dead cert.’

  ‘So what went wrong?’

  ‘I think probably because he’s a dislikeable fellow.’

  ‘That hasn’t stopped others from becoming lords, in fact I’d say the vast majority are a bunch of—’

  ‘Now, now, Auriol! Anyway, it finally got to the ears of a Certain Person. The Person heard that Hungerford was having his head measured for a coronet, and the Person put their foot down.’

  ‘Her foot.’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘So what now?’

  ‘Well,’ said Arthur, getting up and walking over to the window. The day had suddenly gone, and though it was barely four o’clock it was almost pitch-black. The lights of a late fishing boat bounced across the water as it came to rest on the harbour pontoon.

  ‘Well,’ he repeated, ‘I wonder whether this disappearance isn’t something to do with losing his peerage. He can be an ugly customer when he wants – I remember the way he treated those lovely nurs
es back at Seale Hayne. We’d all come back from the Front, all of us in a pretty poor shape and delighted to have the attention of these lovely angelic beings looking after us. But he was awful to them, bullying them around, shocking behaviour – I wonder if he isn’t a bit free with his fists.’

  ‘You said it was Hungerford who was attacked.’

  ‘Takes two to start a fight, Auriol.’

  ‘How would you know, Arthur? I bet you’ve never hit anybody in your life.’

  ‘Just saying,’ came the reply. He was inspecting the polish on his brogues. ‘It all fits together.’

  ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ said Auriol after a moment’s thought. ‘Look, I’m shutting up shop now, why don’t we go back to the cottage? You can put your feet up for an hour before supper.’

  As the couple strolled companionably back through the deserted harbour, the conversation swung round to Miss Dimont again.

  ‘You know, I do agree with Grace that she should give up this reporting lark,’ said Arthur. ‘She has responsibilities to face up to. There’s the house, the business, the investments, all that to think about. She’s having a lot of fun down here, I know, and of course there’s you as her friend. But, you know, there’s always room for you up there in Essex – wouldn’t you fancy a change of scene?’

  Auriol stopped in a pool of watery light cast by a harbour wall lantern. She looked up and smiled. ‘Your sister is very persuasive, Arthur, but this is one battle she won’t win – Hugue will never leave Temple Regis.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘It’s her safe haven. While I stayed on in Naval Intelligence after the war she, as you know, shifted to another branch.’

  ‘Military Intelligence.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘A little birdy told me,’ laughed Arthur. ‘Oh, come off it! Of course it was – all that capering about in Europe.’

  ‘It wasn’t capering, Arthur. It was pretty awful – the Cold War was a war just as much as 1939–45 had been. She went through some gruelling times, I can tell you.’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘In the end, she had to leave. She had to change her way of life.’

  ‘Well, yes, I…’

  ‘You remember she came down here to stay with me.’

  ‘That was when I was in South America.’

  ‘Well, I can tell you now, it took a year before she could get up with a smile on her face. After that she started to look around and found this vacancy on the Express. They were taking just about anybody on then, and certainly she knew nothing about journalism – but she got down to it and turned herself into a brilliant reporter.

  ‘Temple Regis is her safety blanket, her happy home, the place where she feels safe. Mme Dimont can huff and puff as much as she likes, but Hugue will stay here, I guarantee you that.

  ‘And anyway, what would that chap Terry do without her?’

  Nine

  The sudden disappearance of Sir Frederick Hungerford got a mixed reception from his constituents. For a start it was too close to Christmas for anybody to really concentrate, just when there was shopping to be done and preparations made.

  Then again, though Sir Freddy may have claimed to represent Devon’s prettiest resort, not everybody voted for him. Indeed, securing only twenty-nine per cent of the electorate’s votes could hardly be called a landslide victory when seventy-one per cent of townsfolk remained opposed or indifferent to his languid charm. Furthermore, there was a whole generation who’d never even seen him, his travel arrangements being what they were – ample sunshine on the beaches of his town, but for some reason preferring the sands of Monte Carlo.

  There were those like Betty who’d come too close to the old boy, only to step swiftly away from his nimble fingers. And others who had tried but failed to get Hungerford interested in some dispute or local issue.

  But not everyone felt this way. The party faithful liked his patrician look, his superior manner, his Rolls-Royce and his cigars. They liked the party he stood for, even if they didn’t much care for him, and such was their atavistic loathing of all other political parties they put their faith in him.

  To these, it came as a great shock to hear that such a beloved figure – one so distinguished, one so dedicated! – could be subjected to a hooligan’s attack in broad daylight. And then to disappear! What could it mean? Who could have abducted him? And why?

  These thoughts eventually crossed the mind of the Chief Constable and, summoning Inspector Topham, ordered the detective to get on a train to London and find out first-hand from Scotland Yard what had happened, what was happening now, and what their plans were in the immediate future.

  ‘Don’t take any nonsense from them this time,’ said his boss, leaning back in his chair and stirring his tea. ‘You remember the Digby Jenkinson affair where they led you up the garden path.’

  ‘I could have solved it twice over,’ protested Topham, ‘if I’d been given the information they had.’

  ‘My very point,’ said the CC. ‘They didn’t tell you anything. Not a sausage. And they won’t tell you anything now, down the end of the telephone. Get up there and badger them – Sir Freddy is our property, not theirs!’

  ‘Happened on their manor.’

  ‘Get the 4.30, and keep me informed!’

  Over at the Express the journalistic machine sprang into action. With a creaking sound the door of the editor’s office opened and Rudyard Rhys peered out onto the editorial floor.

  ‘Conference!’ he bellowed and turned back into his den.

  ‘Where’s Judy? Where’s Renishaw?’ he barked when all were assembled. ‘Where are my highly paid reporters when I need them!’

  Peter Pomeroy, his deputy, said soothingly: ‘Remember Betty did an interview with Hungerford only the other day.’

  Betty, sitting at the back of the gathering, instinctively ducked her head and started scribbling in her notebook. Her recent brush with the MP meant that she had, by default, become the ‘expert’ on him – everyone in the building would now look to her to answer all the unanswerable questions about what happened and why.

  She hadn’t a clue.

  ‘I barely spoke to him,’ she said defiantly into her notebook.

  ‘Rr… rrr,’ growled Rhys, ‘this is Page One stuff, Betty. I want everything you’ve got!’

  ‘You mean how he tickled my knees?’

  ‘Rr… rrrrrr!’ growled the editor, reaching for his filthy pipe and scraping at it viciously with a pencil. ‘Just remember, Betty, Freddy Hungerford has served this town with distinction for forty years. Why, only the other night – the celebrations for all that he’s done – you were there, Betty. Give me lots of that!’

  ‘And the fellow who did the one-man protest? Can I add that in? How he wanted to give Sir Freddy a bloody nose for Christmas? How Sir Freddy…’ she quickly whizzed back through her notebook to find the court proceedings. ‘How he is… guilty of a number of malfeasances inconsistent with the public office he has held for the past forty years? How he was a crook, is a crook, has always been a crook?’

  ‘Just a minute,’ said a commanding voice from the doorway, ‘can you say that again?’ It was David Renishaw, just back from a job with Terry.

  Betty repeated the quotation, adding the background to the court case she’d attended only yesterday morning. ‘I don’t know how true any of it is,’ she added, looking at Renishaw’s hair and wanting to give it a pat. ‘We went and had a cup of tea in Lovely Mary’s and he may have a point, but I warn you, Mr Rhys, he’s definitely odd.’

  ‘What’s this man’s name?’ Renishaw’s voice carried such authority you might swear that he was the editor, not Rhys.

  ‘Hector Sirraway.’

  ‘Never heard of him.’

  Well, no surprise there, thought Betty, you’ve only been here five minutes. You may have discovered a plot to charge people to visit Temple Regis but that doesn’t make you the Oracle.

  ‘Is he local?’

 
‘He’s a foreigner. Lives in North Devon.’

  This drew a titter from the assembled journalists, none of whom had a clue what was going on with Sir Freddy and sat in fear of being asked their opinion of how to develop the story. Mostly, like Betty, they kept their eyes down, though now Renishaw was showing an interest Betty herself had perked up quite a bit.

  ‘So what’s his beef? What’s he got against our beloved MP?’

  This was more like it! Betty had the information that nobody else had – and maybe suddenly she was the ‘expert’ – even if what was in her notebook was just hearsay ramblings from a man not entirely of this planet.

  ‘He’s a Professor of Industrial Archaeology. He specialises in the potteries of Staffordshire, but his family has lived in Hatherleigh for generations,’ she began, importantly. ‘Still has a house there.’

  ‘He was arrested for causing a disturbance outside Sir Freddy’s party last Friday. He was in court yesterday and bound over to keep the peace – I didn’t write the story up because we don’t do bound-overs.’

  ‘Rr… rrr,’ uttered the editor dustily. Clearly this edict needed to be reviewed.

  ‘I took him for a cup of tea after the court let him go, but nothing he told me could be used in a piece. Mostly angry ramblings about Sir Freddy’s corrupt ways, as he saw them. I didn’t stay long, he’s definitely a bit peculiar.’

  Renishaw now sat himself down on the edge of the editor’s hallowed desk. The room waited for an explosion which never came – what was it about this man which allowed him to bulldoze his way through all that was sacrosanct?

  ‘What, specifically, were his allegations?’ asked the reporter.

  Betty consulted her notes. ‘He said, and here I quote, that Dartmoor is a vast tract of land which remained untouched for centuries. But then they discovered tin. Slowly other things in the moor were discovered and exploited – granite, china clay, peat, warrening. And every time someone discovered a new way of making money out of what people had viewed as a worthless piece of countryside, portions of the moor were bought up or stolen to build factories on.’