Camellia (51 page)

Nick took a cigarette. He was confused now. There had been nothing sensational in the accounts he'd seen – in fact they had made very dull reading. 'I think you've got me all wrong,' he said. 'I'm an actor, not a journalist.'

'Don't say someone's decided to make a film of it,' the policeman groaned.

'I'm not writing a story or making a film,' Nick said. 'I'm just trying to find Camellia Norton, the dead woman's daughter. I hoped I might get a little help here in her home town, but it seems I was mistaken.'

'Camellia? Do you know her?'

'Of course,' Nick said. 1 wouldn't be looking for her otherwise. She's been working for my father for the past two years.'

He took an Oaklands card from his wallet and handed it over. Then as an afterthought he pulled out a snapshot of himself and Mel taken by his father in Weston-super-Mare last summer.

'Does that satisfy you,' he asked with a touch of sarcasm. 'Now, I wonder if you could tell me whether you know if she's been here in the last three or four months?'

Bert Simmonds looked at the snapshot. The pretty dark-haired girl was willowy and suntanned, wearing a simple cotton dress. 'This is Camellia?' he asked.

Nick's irritation grew. 'I take it you've never met her.'

'That's just where you're wrong,' Bert said in a sharp tone. 'I knew Camellia right from when she was a baby. I just wouldn't have known her from this picture. As to whether she's been here or not, I doubt anyone in Rye would recognise this girl as Bonny Norton's daughter.'

Nick could see he had got off on the wrong footing. 'Look, Mr Simmonds,' he said more gently. 'Let me put you in the picture. This girl came to work for my father as Amelia Corbett. Both of us grew very fond of her, but it was only when she disappeared from Oaklands that I discovered her real name was Camellia Norton.'

'What did she do?'

Nick frowned. 'Do? What do you mean? Her position in our hotel?'

'No, I mean did she rob you? Or was it fraud or something?'

'Why should you think that?' Nick asked, scandalised. 'Mel isn't that sort of girl!'

For a moment the older man looked as confused as Nick felt. 'I'm sorry, it's just after all that last lot about her in the papers I guess I'm becoming as cynical as everyone else.'

Nick felt an unpleasant prickling down his spine. 'It seems to me, Mr Simmonds,' he said, 'that you and I are on different chapters of the same book. As you tracked me down here for some purpose and you've known Mel longer than I have, I think you should tell me all you know about her.'

Bert felt uneasy. He had come here tonight simply to try and make sure that there would be no repetition of the journalistic madness which had occurred three or four years before. There had been troupes of scavenging press men in town then, looking for a new angle to keep their squalid stories about Camellia's attack in Chelsea and the subsequent death of her friend going – and they found it when they discovered about Bonny Norton.

Town councillors, professional and tradespeople were appalled then to find their picturesque town suddenly linked with drugs, pornography and prostitution. They had panicked as they saw journalists photographing the Nortons' old home in Mermaid Street and the river where Bonny's body was found. Earlier today when Bert heard that questions were being asked again, he feared Camellia was involved in a new scandal.

His main aim had been to prevent any more adverse publicity for the town, but as a man who had once taken a paternal interest in Camellia he was deeply curious about her too. A sixth sense told him this young man was in love with her. Bert guessed that if he didn't tell Nick the truth, someone else would, and their version might not be as accurate or as unbiased as his own.

He told the story simply – the plain facts without any hearsay or embroidery – but just the same Nick turned pale.

'I'm sorry to be the one to break this to you.' Bert put one hand on Nick's forearm in sympathy. He wished he'd stayed at home by the fire. 'You see I was very fond of Camellia when she was little. I was the one who found Bonny's body, and broke the news to Camellia. No one in Rye knows her family history better than me, and I have to say, after the example she was set by her mother, it wasn't really surprising that she fell by the wayside for a while.'

'I'm not upset by it.' Nick had a lump in his throat. 'Mel warned me she'd had a past – she said she worked in a nightclub, she even told me about her friend dying of an overdose. What's got me now is that I remember that case in the papers. I just never connected it with her.'

Bert went to the bar and Nick sank back into old memories. In 1970 he too had been living in Chelsea and used to drink in the Elm, a pub just around the corner from Beaufort Street. The case of the American and the nightclub hostess he brutalised had been the butt of many jokes: 'What do you call a tied-up tart?' The answer being 'Free and Easy'. Or 'What's a tied-up tart's favourite song?' 'Wriggle while you work.'

He felt absolute horror now that in those days he had found it funny. He hadn't had even a shred of sympathy for the girl. Even her unusual name hadn't registered; all he remembered clearly was thinking she probably deserved all she got.

As Bert came back with two whiskies he took one look at Nick's stricken face and felt a surge of sympathy. He'd been equally horrified when he discovered the girl was Camellia and felt so sad that life hadn't been kinder to her.

'Get this down you,' he said, passing over one of the whiskies. 'I can't take back what I've told you, and neither can I tell you where she is now, but I might be able to give you some useful background information. Suppose you tell me your side of the story first? And call me Bert, everyone else does.'

Nick hesitated for a moment or two. Aside from not wishing to admit Mel had withheld evidence at the time of her mother's death, he was also concerned for his father's reputation. But the policeman seemed to have integrity and a genuine affection for Mel. He had to trust him if he wanted to find out more.

He took a big gulp of whisky and launched into telling everything he knew. Bert listened carefully, his manner entirely sympathetic.

'Well, first off,' Bert said once Nick was through. 'I find it hard to believe Camellia wasn't John Norton's flesh and blood. She was dark like him, and she had his grave manner too. They were an ideal father and daughter, and he doted on her. Back in the fifties it was unusual for a man to be really involved with his children, but John was. Although he was away on business a great deal, when he was home he was always out walking with her, or down at the swings on The Salts. She was an old-fashioned little thing. She could tell you just where her dad was in the world, and he'd taught her to read long before she started school.'

Bert went on to tell Nick how the Nortons were always entertaining when he first came to Rye as a young constable, and how he used to stop to speak to Camellia when she was sitting on the steps outside their house. He blushed a little as he spoke of Bonny and Nick guessed he'd been sweet on her.

'Everyone was shocked when John died,' he went on. 'Presumably you've walked up Mermaid Street and seen how close the houses are to one another? Almost all of them are owned now by rich people, but back in the fifties there were ordinary folk living in many of them. Everyone knew one another, and the Nortons were liked – even if they were newcomers and a great deal better off than their neighbours. Death is acceptable when someone is old or sick, but John was only just forty, and he left a beautiful young wife and a six-year-old daughter.'

'Did Bonny grieve for him?' Nick asked.

'Oh yes, for a month or so she was distraught. I believe Bonny never quite got over losing John. She certainly never found another man able to take his place.' He paused for a moment as if torn between his own opinion and those of others. 'But she didn't grieve openly long enough for some people. There are some who would tell you she appeared in a pink frock before John was hardly cold. As the years went by her behaviour made her a target for gossip. I'd have been hard pressed to find one person who didn't think she was glad to be a widow.'

'And Camellia, how did she take it?'

'On the surface, quite well. But even before her father's death she was a quiet solitary child, so it was difficult to know what was going on in her head. I was in a difficult position, being a young man then. I would have liked to have been able to pop in as I did when John was alive, but small towns being what they are, I had to keep my distance.'

Nick fell silent for a moment, digesting what he'd heard and adding it to information received from Magnus and Jack.

'I've got reason to believe Bonny had some sort of problem in the summer of 1954,' he said eventually. "That was the time she met up with my father accidentally again, and contacted the other two men. Can you remember anything about that year?'

Bert frowned, trying to think back. 'Roger Bannister ran the four-minute mile and sweets came off the ration,' he smirked. 'I remember the first because I was a keen runner in those days, but he halved my speed record. As for the second I called round one day to the Nortons and Bonny was gloating over a huge bar of chocolate she'd just bought. She told me a story about a friend of hers who stole one like it in a village shop during the war and how she blackmailed him with it to let her join his all-boys gang. That brought her on to telling me about the time she nearly drowned.'

'I've heard that one, and met the chap who saved her,' Nick smiled. It was encouraging when stories he had heard were confirmed; it made the pictures more vivid. 'But can you remember anything more pertinent to the Nortons?'

Bert thought for a moment. 'Yes.' Suddenly he was very animated. 'Helena Forester, the Hollywood actress came to stay with them. Everyone was talking about it, she was red hot in those days, huge queues for her films everywhere and it was the first time a big star had come to Rye. I saw her and Bonny together in a big black Daimler, they were going off towards Hastings with Camellia standing up in the back waving like royalty.'

Nick leaned forward eagerly. 'Did Bonny tell you about this visit?'

'Did she!' he laughed. 'I don't think there was one person in Rye who didn't know Helena Forester was coming.'

'I meant afterwards,' Nick said.

'No, she didn't,' Bert shook his head. 'Now you come to mention it, she never said a word. Odd really, considering how she was always talking about the things they'd done together in the past and how she'd thrown up a part in a film herself to marry John.'

Nick smiled. Bonny had created quite a legend for herself with her tall stories, but this was the first he'd heard of a film part! 'Why do you suppose she didn't talk about it?'

Bert shrugged. 'Who knows! Maybe they fell out. I don't actually remember Bonny ever mentioning her again now I come to think about it. Helena certainly never came back to Rye. I'd remember if she had.'

'I've been told by an old boyfriend she contacted that summer that she claimed her life was about to fall apart. Have you got any ideas about that?'

Bert's clear blue eyes looked very knowing. 'She never said anything like that to me. Most women get a bit low sometimes for reasons us men can't fathom. Bonny liked to be centre stage, maybe Helena visiting made her feel a bit grey and dull.'

Nick felt there must have been a far bigger reason for Bonny suddenly wanting attention that summer than feeling 'a bit grey' – but as Bert didn't seem able to expand on it, he moved on to ask about the later years after John died.

'She just got wilder and wilder,' Bert said sadly. 'She spent money on clothes like she'd just won the Pools. She'd invite great parties of people in here to eat and footed the bills. Sometimes she took herself off to London and stayed in a posh hotel. Of course in those days we believed John had left her a fortune, but I found it strange that all the London friends she'd had while John was alive gradually dropped her. The rumours about her were rife – according to gossip no man was safe with her – and then the serious drinking began. I've seen her in here so drunk she couldn't stand. She used to joke that it was good she lived so close!'

'Poor Camellia had to watch this happening then?'

"That was the worst of it,' Bert sighed deeply. 'The poor kid grew fatter and fatter, more and more withdrawn. She had no friends – other mothers wouldn't allow their kids to play with her.'

As Bert went on Nick felt sickened. It was all so much worse than Mel had implied to his father. He heard about the bailiffs coming in to take the furniture from the house in Mermaid Street; the seedy drunken parties in the squalid house in Fishmarket Street; the men who came and went. When Bert graphically described the night he'd found Camellia walking home from Hastings, Nick felt tears prickling his eyes.

He felt ashamed too for the way he'd rebelled after his mother died. Magnus might have been distant for a time, and maybe he didn't attend every sportsday, but in comparison to what Mel had been through, his teenage years looked like one glorious picnic.

'My mother befriended her after that,' Bert went on. 'She taught her a bit of cooking, how to iron things properly, sewing and knitting, the sort of things her own mother should've seen to. Camellia never complained about Bonny though, she just accepted that was the way Bonny was. The moment she was old enough she got a Saturday and holiday job at the bakery and it was that summer that Bonny died. When I said no one in Rye could recognise Camellia from that picture, I meant as she was then. She was grossly fat, Nick. I'd say at fifteen she weighed perhaps thirteen stone.'

'Really?' Nick couldn't imagine Mel anyway but slim. Yet he remembered her encouraging one of the waitresses to diet, making a chart of her weight loss, and complimenting her at every lost pound. Now he understood why she took it so personally.

'What do I do now?' he asked. 'I don't have a clue where to look for her.'

'I wish I could offer some advice.' Bert looked glum. 'But it's been my experience that people who run away, stay hidden until they feel ready to be found, whatever lengths we go to. If I were you son, I'd go home, get on with your career and just wait.'