A Quarter Past Dead

TEN (#litres_trial_promo)

ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)

THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)

TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)

TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)

TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)

TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)

TWENTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)

TWENTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)

TWENTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)

TWENTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

Extract (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

ONE (#ulink_3f342d01-0891-5777-ba3b-a084a0aa4a8f)

The trouble with Betty was she could never say no.

‘Oh, Betty,’ sighed Miss Dimont, looking over her Remington Quiet-Riter and pushing the spectacles back up her nose. ‘Who was it this time?’

‘Dudley Fensome.’ Betty was sobbing into a creased handkerchief and was clearly not going to do much reporting this morning.

‘But you know his reputation,’ said Miss Dimont, who’d met the brute at the Constitutional Club. ‘And a Freemason as well – what were you thinking of?’

‘He said he wanted it that way and I did it to please him.’

‘Surely not!’

‘He made me.’

‘It’s a woman’s right to decide for herself!’

‘You don’t know what it’s like when they ask.’

You’re right, thought Miss Dimont, I don’t. The chief reporter pushed her notebook aside and got up to make the tea.

‘I don’t know, Betty,’ she said, ‘there was Derek. Then Claud Hannaford in that revolting pink Rolls-Royce – now Dudley Fensome. All in the last few weeks. None of them seems to show you any respect.’

‘I know,’ wailed Betty, ‘sometimes I’m just like putty in their hands…’ Not just sometimes, thought Miss D. But it was true – the burning desire of a bachelor Freemason had got the better of Betty. It might have been better if she’d got a professional to take care of the problem straight away, but Betty had to go and do it herself.

She looked wretched.

‘Platinum’s not so bad,’ said Miss Dimont finally, looking down at the disaster from above, teapot in hand. ‘There are a couple of green patches over your ears, granted, but I’ve got that nice crochet hat the Mothers’ Union gave me last winter – you can have that.’

Betty Featherstone wailed even louder.

Nobody else in the newsroom of the Riviera Express took much notice. It was press day, the usual hubbub of a busy newsroom augmented by the occasional bellow of anguish from the editor’s office. Rudyard Rhys may once have been a naval officer, but these days he was not entirely the captain of his own ship.

‘No, no, no!’ his voice echoed out of the door, sounding as agitated as if he were trying to avoid an iceberg. ‘Not Sam Brough again, I simply won’t have it!’

‘The first mayor of Temple Regis to go to Buckingham Palace,’ argued Peter Pomeroy, his deputy, perfectly reasonably, ‘to be made a Member of the Order of the British Empire. That’s a feather in the town’s cap. The readers will expect a good show on that.’

‘You mean His Worship will. Page Seven,’ said Mr Rhys dismissively, who hated Brough and his snobbish wife. He may dither about what to put on his front page, but when it came to pushy self-aggrandising town officials the editor’s decision was final.

‘There’s always Bobby Bunton,’ said Miss Dimont, who’d put her head round the door to see what the fuss was about. ‘By the way, Betty’s going to take the rest of the day off, d’you mind?’

‘Rr… rrrr,’ growled the editor, shuffling the page proofs in front of him.

‘Bunton,’ said Miss Dimont, who knew how to get a decision out of her procrastinating leader. ‘He’s in murderous mood.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ said Peter, whose responsibility it was to make sure the paper went to bed on time, and by now didn’t care much what was on Page One as long as the story fitted the gaping hole in the page.

‘Remind me,’ sighed Mr Rhys, swivelling in his chair and eyeing the seagulls circling like vultures outside his window. One of these days he’d walk out on press day and never come back. That would show them.

‘It’s the latest round in his battle with Hugh Radipole. Bunton brought in a new funfair attraction and now Mr Radipole has banned him from the Marine Hotel. It’s all-out war!’

‘Rr… rrr,’ replied Rhys and did what he always did at times of indecision. It could take a good three or four minutes for him to clean out his filthy briar pipe and load it with tobacco – precious minutes, with the newsroom clock ticking towards deadline.

Peter Pomeroy nodded urgently to Miss Dimont. ‘Do it,’ he said. ‘Four hundred words.’

‘It’s written,’ said Miss Dimont cheerily. ‘And Betty?’

‘Yes,’ nodded Peter understandingly. He’d clocked the disaster on top of her head.