Murder Takes the Stage Read online

  ‘Who was she?’ Peter picked up sharply.

  Christine looked taken aback. ‘I’d forgotten about her,’ she said in astonishment. ‘You’ve just brought it back to me.’

  Thank goodness they had come in person, Georgia rejoiced. The telephone could never have brought this unexpected revelation – if that’s what it was. Please . . . please . . . let it be, she prayed.

  ‘I suppose I was very single-minded then,’ Christine added apologetically. ‘I was so intent on my PhD, I must have put her to the back of my mind.’

  ‘Who? What?’ Georgia tried to control her excitement, and she could see Peter trying to do the same. Every vein in his hands stood out in tension as he clutched the arms of the wheelchair.

  ‘He told me –’ Christine frowned in concentration – ‘about this girl he’d met the previous week. She’d been staying in Carnac-Plage, the resort part of Carnac. She was a singer – a real singer, I understood. That’s where the Mozart came in, of course. Rick had stars in his eyes about her. He insisted on showing me a picture of her – well, I might not have been interested in Rick that way, but I was hardly going to be bowled over at another girl’s photo, so I didn’t take much notice. I began to call her Miss Blondie to tease him. She was fair-haired obviously, and he talked of her as if she was a sort of fairy princess. I had this fellow of my own, so no problem there. Rick used to retort by teasing me about Colin. I’m married to him now, but that summer I was planning to meet him in Cape Town for the great romantic world trip.’

  ‘Did you meet this princess?’ Georgia asked hopefully.

  ‘No. She’d just left when I met Rick.’

  ‘Do you remember her name?’

  Christine looked doubtful. ‘Pamela, or something like that? No, it was something to do with Mozart—’

  ‘Pamina?’ Peter asked quickly.

  ‘Could have been. Yes, I think it was.’

  Georgia could read the disappointment on Peter’s face – indeed it must have been mirrored on her own. Pamina could just have been a nickname if she and Rick were devotees of The Magic Flute.

  ‘What was Pamina doing in Brittany?’ Peter prompted, as Christine seemed to have come to a halt. ‘Giving a concert, or on holiday?’

  ‘No idea. Probably holiday, because so far as I recall Rick didn’t mention having been to any musical events. Though I could well have forgotten, of course,’ she added apologetically.

  That wouldn’t be surprising, Georgia thought, given that it was fourteen years earlier, and in fact, Christine was doing brilliantly in remembering even this.

  ‘But there was something else,’ Christine added, just as Georgia was giving up hope. ‘I got the impression it was an ongoing thing – that she had left Brittany but not vanished from the scene, if you see what I mean. I think Rick said she was on her way to some Mozart do and had asked why didn’t he come too. I’ve no idea where. It could have been nearby or in Timbuctoo.’

  Christine looked from one to the other, obviously still worried that they were disappointed. But Georgia couldn’t speak for fear that Peter was not thinking as she was. Suppose it wasn’t a local event. Suppose it was somewhere else entirely – and suppose that’s why the police could get no lead on Rick?

  ‘How long were you with him?’ Peter sounded as if he were trying desperately to seem normal, but he wasn’t. Georgia could see that now. He was trying not to get too hopeful.

  ‘A few days longer. Then I left and he stayed on – I don’t remember how long he intended to do so. This was all within the time span of four or five days, as far as I remember.’ She still looked apologetic. ‘I’m sorry you’ve had this long hunt for me. I’ve only been back in Broadstairs six months. My dad lives here, my mum’s dead, and it seemed a good plan to return to the ancestral hometown. My dad’s a journalist,’ she chatted on. ‘He enjoys it – I think he reckons he’s another Charles Dickens. There’s not much excitement round here though. That’s what Colin and I like about it.’

  ‘No excitement? We ran into a murderer at lunchtime,’ Georgia tried to joke for politeness’ sake, surprised that the fish-bar ghost was lingering so close to Rick in her mind.

  ‘What?’ Christine looked startled.

  ‘The ghost at Gary’s Fish Bar at the corner of this road. You must know it.’

  Christine didn’t answer for a moment, but then she replied awkwardly, ‘Yes, you’re right. They do say it’s haunted.’

  ‘Do you know the story?’ Peter asked. It was obvious that she did, but he was clearly too far back in the past with Rick to have his usual alertness in working order.

  ‘His name was Tom Watson. He was a clown.’ Christine looked almost defiant.

  ‘Oh, a real one?’ Georgia exclaimed. She had assumed Gary had been using the word in a general sense. With the thought of a real clown, in hat, paint and white Pierrot’s costume, the ghost began to take the stage in her mind. Ghosts traditionally appeared where there was unfinished business, and perhaps this was true of the clown. Clowns wore effective masks with their painted faces, and who could tell what the real face beneath portrayed? Had this clown been a vicious killer, or as jolly as his painted public face, or had he wept underneath that concealing paint?

  ‘Very real indeed. The Three Joeys they called themselves. They were one of the resident acts in the summer show at the end of the pier. Those were the days, of course,’ Christine added, ‘when Broadstairs was very much top of the list for exclusive summer holidays in the late nineteen forties and fifties, after the war.’

  ‘Who was Tom Watson’s victim?’ Peter asked with every sign of great interest, although Georgia could see this was still an effort with Rick’s shadow very much present.

  ‘The usual. His wife, Joan. She was murdered in the early fifties.’

  ‘So he was hung then?’ Peter asked. ‘Or did he escape that?’ The death penalty had not been abolished until the nineteen sixties, but there must have been a changeover period, Georgia thought, when capital punishment was on hold.

  ‘He did. In fact he was acquitted, although everyone was sure he did it. Except his girlfriend, but then she wouldn’t believe it, would she?’

  ‘What happened to Tom Watson after that?’ Georgia persevered, trying to concentrate on what Christine was saying. Poor man. Assumed guilty despite the verdict.

  ‘He stayed on in the flat for a while, and then he disappeared. No one heard from him again, and it was generally reckoned he killed himself. Probably walked out into the sea and drowned himself one night.’

  ‘But the body has never been found?’

  ‘No, but Tom hasn’t reappeared alive in all these years, and he’d be a fair age now.’

  ‘I suppose there’s little doubt he killed her?’ Peter asked.

  ‘None at all, apparently. His wife was a flighty lady, so I gather, and he killed her out of jealousy. Crime passionnel, as they say.’

  Peter glanced at Georgia, and she knew that he was thinking as she did: why the fingerprints on time if he had been acquitted? There seemed no unfinished business about that. Not like Rick . . . Unfinished business often dovetailed with injustice, but did being deemed guilty without proof add up to injustice?

  ‘Have you ever seen this ghost?’ she asked Christine.

  ‘No, and I don’t know anyone who has. It’s just a load of crap, I reckon. Keeps the story going, that’s all.’

  ‘Who would want to keep the story going?’ If the Watsons had children, Georgia reasoned, they would surely want the story forgotten.

  Christine smiled. ‘Well, my dad has a go at it every now and then.’

  ‘A murder fifty years ago? There can’t be much to find out now,’ Peter said, clearly hoping there was.

  ‘Dad says there’s always something if you look hard enough. But he has a special interest,’ Christine added. ‘My grandad was one of the other Joeys. They were Tom, Sandy Smith and Micky Winton – Micky’s gone now, but Sandy is still going strong. My dad is Ken Winton, Micky’s so
n. Oh, and there’s Cherry Harding, of course.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ Georgia’s interest was growing.

  ‘Tom’s girlfriend. She still lives in hope that one day Tom will come marching back, poor old soul.’

  Georgia understood all too well. She and Peter both secretly hoped that Rick would come marching in through the door again, even though rationally they knew he must be dead. She suspected that was one reason her father had stayed in the same house in Haden Shaw in which he had lived with Elena, Rick and herself for many years. It was Rick’s home when he disappeared, despite his university years, and to Peter it still was. She knew the hope that Rick was alive was illogical, but if one lived by logic alone, life could be unbearable. Some people coped one way, some another. If and when Peter found out what had happened to Rick, the pain might eventually heal, however. Is that how Cherry felt? Christine had spoken of her in the present tense. She’d therefore been hoping for well over fifty years, poor woman.

  ‘If we wanted to find out more about Tom Watson, could we talk to your father?’ Where had that come from? Georgia had surprised even herself by the question.

  ‘Go round whenever you like. He’s at number fifty-nine. You should find him home at this hour; if not, he’s probably in a pub somewhere,’ Christine said drily, then quickly added, ‘Not that he’s a soak, but they’re a good source of information.’

  ‘Which way?’ Peter asked as they left the house.

  ‘Literally?’ she asked as she unlatched the gate. Her mind was still reeling both from the unexpected lead on Rick – if lead it could be called – and from the coincidence of Christine’s family being associated with Tom Watson. It was a push in the direction of further investigation into the ghostly clown – if only to keep their minds from too much hope about Rick. Nevertheless she was not at all sure whether Peter was going to be of the same mind.

  ‘Yes, literally,’ he answered. ‘One way leads to the car, the other to the home of Christine’s dad.’

  ‘We can’t do anything here and now about Rick, so—’

  A look halted her. ‘Would you prefer to go haring off after this Miss Blondie right away?’

  ‘Of course,’ she admitted. ‘But we can’t expect a crock of gold at the rainbow’s end, and meanwhile—’

  ‘We can try.’

  ‘Certainly. But we might need another Marsh & Daughter enterprise to keep us sane while we do so.’

  ‘That’s not a good enough reason to take one on,’ he objected at once, ‘let alone with a story like that of Tom Watson and sweetheart Cherry at stake. The case has to stand on its own feet, not simply be a diversion from thinking about Rick. And we don’t know if the Watson story is strong enough, or even if there is one. We’ve a shelf full of cases at home that it would be interesting to follow up. What’s the motivation for choosing this one?’

  ‘We’re here, and we don’t know how strong it is until we look a little further,’ Georgia retorted, defending her uncertain wicket. ‘Like Rick, Tom Watson disappeared. Unlike Rick, he probably committed suicide, but there’s no proof. We don’t know whether there were other suspects for the murder of his wife, but we could find out right now.’

  ‘Most people thought he did it.’

  ‘Most people can be awfully wrong.’

  ‘We should do more work on it,’ Peter objected, ‘before we talk to this journalist.’

  She knew he was right. Background research was usually the first essential in order not to plant possibly biased viewpoints in their minds by speaking prematurely to interested parties. Marsh & Daughter not only investigated such cold cases, but they also wrote books about them afterwards, which meant they had to be full of fact, not fingerprints. Moreover, these books were published by Frost & Co, the owner of which, Luke Frost, was now her husband, and he was a stickler for fact being sacred: facts, all the facts and nothing but the facts, was his dictum, as well as an insistence on a good writing style.

  Nevertheless, a decision about Marsh & Daughter’s next book subject was overdue. Georgia’s honeymoon, which had delayed the decision, was over, however – and a good one it had been. Rome, Venice, Tuscany in spring had been a marvellous antidote to work, but when she and Luke had returned they had found Peter champing at the bit with impatience, longing to share the news of the answer to his advertisement about Rick.

  Now the danger was that the harder they threw themselves into the hunt for Rick, the greater the disappointment if it failed. Surely Peter could see that the sooner they started on a case such as Tom Watson’s the better? It seemed as if for the survivors it carried all the same sense of wasted life and anguish at lack of resolution as Rick’s disappearance did. What she and Peter might not be able to do for themselves, they might achieve for Cherry. Why could Peter not see that?

  ‘We’re right here on his doorstep,’ she said firmly, ‘and we have the relevant facts already. Tom Watson disappeared – and one person at least believes him to be innocent. No body has ever been found. Basic questions: did he flee because he was unable to take the pressure of most people believing him to be guilty? Did he commit suicide? Or was he guilty all along? How does Cherry feel about it?’

  ‘Or felt about it,’ Peter amended. ‘We don’t know that Christine is right in saying that she still feels the same way.’

  ‘But perhaps she does. That’s just what we’re doing with Rick. Let’s take a risk and visit Ken Winton right now. At least we’ll have made one positive move towards solving Tom Watson’s fingerprints, even if we never track down this elusive Miss Blondie of Rick’s. If we give up other work while we’re waiting, we could be shutting our eyes to helping other people solve their own problems – such as Cherry Harding.’

  Peter considered this for a moment and surrendered. ‘Agreed. We break our usual rules. Onward, Georgia, to number fifty-nine and Tom Watson.’

  Peter considered this for a moment and surrendered. ‘Agreed. We break our usual rules. Onward, Georgia, to number fifty-nine and Tom Watson.’

  TWO

  Ken Winton, to Georgia’s relief, was at home. She hadn’t fancied trying to communicate about relatively delicate matters in a pub. He appeared to be a casual sort of man – perhaps that was why Christine looked so worried about him – and seemed to think it quite natural that two people, one in a wheelchair, should turn up at his door asking for information about a murder case over fifty years old.

  In fact far from looking annoyed, he looked pleased. ‘Come in,’ he said.

  You could tell a lot from two words, Georgia thought: did Ken’s really mean ‘Go away, but I can’t say so with politeness’, or did they stem from loneliness or was it a straightforward ‘that rings a bell. I’ll see if I can help’? She thought the last of them in Ken’s case.

  ‘On second thoughts, don’t come in,’ Ken promptly added. ‘We’ll make for the garden. Easier for the wheelchair.’ He was right. The wheelchair would not have passed easily through the house, as his hallway looked even more clogged with furniture than Christine’s had been.

  The house was a lookalike for Christine’s, at least structurally, and with seagulls calling overhead and the freshness of the sea breeze, there seemed to be a slight air of unreality hanging over this visit. It was almost as though she and Peter had stepped temporarily into the world of Narnia, Georgia thought. Perhaps, however, that was less due to Ken’s home than to the fact that her surge of hope over Rick’s disappearance was insidiously draining away. They would almost certainly be on another hiding to nothing if they pursued this, and perhaps the same would be true of the fish-bar clown.

  Ken Winton was about sixty or perhaps in his late fifties, and his pleasant, rather insipid face and blue eyes seemed to look trustfully out upon a world that had failed to offer him his big scoop but might remedy that at any moment.

  Where had that thought come from? Georgia was amused as she and Peter followed him through the side entrance into the garden at the rear. Much nicer to be outside on a reasonably nice
day such as this. One look around her told her that Ken was a keen gardener. Pots of flowers were dotted at strategic intervals and different heights for maximum effect, and what bulb leaves could still be seen blended happily into the new greenery of May leaves and the army of blooms preparing its march to blossom.

  ‘We visited your daughter,’ Peter explained, after Ken had established Georgia and himself in garden chairs, ‘about another matter, and we got to talking about Tom Watson. She said you had written about his case. The nineteen fifties, wasn’t it?’

  Ken had no hesitation in replying. ‘Nineteen fifty-two was the murder. Trial the next year. It doesn’t get as much coverage as some other cases because it ended in acquittal. Less scope for lurid speculation, even though poor old Tom did himself in. Disappeared in autumn 1953, officially presumed dead in 1963. No libel risk therefore, but his case still gets overlooked. Not by me though. Chris probably told you my dad worked with Tom.’

  ‘She did. The Three Joeys.’

  ‘Right. My dad doesn’t bother to pop back to see me, like Tom’s ghost. I take it that’s what you’re after? The ghost story? We have lots of you folks down here from time to time. Lunch at the haunted house, that sort of thing. You’d think Gary would make a fortune, but he just doesn’t get it. Make a feature of it, old boy, I tell him, but will he? He will not. So it’s ghosts that you’re after?’

  ‘No,’ Peter said. ‘We leave that to the Society for Psychical Research. We’re interested in the murder case itself.’

  Ken looked taken aback. ‘Who did you say you were?’

  ‘Georgia and Peter Marsh.’

  He reacted with some alarm. ‘You write true crime books, don’t you? I read the one about the Goblet. So that’s why you’re interested in old Tom? Well . . .’ He was backing off fast and the situation had to be remedied.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Georgia said hastily, afraid that he foresaw a conflict of interest as the journalist in him began to hear alarm bells. ‘We listen to a lot of interesting stories, but we can’t look into them all. Only a few make that stage.’