Murder Takes the Stage (3 page)

‘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

K
en 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.'

‘How long does it take you to write up the cases?'

This was a familiar question to Georgia, but it seemed an odd one, coming from a journalist. ‘About nine months, once all the evidence is in place.'

‘Right,' he said slowly. The matter seemed to have been settled to his satisfaction, because he added, ‘Don't see why I shouldn't help you then.' He gave a nervous laugh. ‘Just in case Tom gets to be one of your few. Sounds like the Battle of Britain, doesn't it?' Another laugh. ‘You wrote one on that too, didn't you?'

‘Something like that,' Peter said politely. ‘We'd appreciate anything you could tell us about the case, even at this early stage.'

Georgia was beginning to warm to Ken. He might appear to ramble on, heading nowhere in particular, but she thought there was more to him than that. He seemed a kindly man but not one to whom life would offer many unexpected boosts in his career, or one with the power to fight his way to success. As a result, however, he seemed far more contented than many journalists she had met.

‘Local stories are my cup of tea.' He chuckled. ‘I can reel them off till the cows come home. How about this for an idea? I'll give you the background to Tom's story, every blinking detail you want, but not my pet angle. Not till it's published. If you do decide to take the story on after I've had my scoop, we can pool resources. It will be in the
Broadstairs Chronicle
very shortly.'

‘That sounds good,' Peter agreed. A white lie, if ever she had heard one, Georgia thought, even if in a good cause. Peter wouldn't be against sharing information, but he would think long and hard before working with a third party on a book project. Such an arrangement was too open to conflict. A big thank you in the acknowledgements was more usual for Marsh & Daughter.

‘I need to get my story out on the street quickly.' Ken gave a nervous laugh.

‘The enemy on your trail?' Peter joked.

It didn't go down too well. ‘You never know,' Ken muttered, and Georgia was afraid he would clam up just as she had hoped they were getting somewhere. Did he really fear retribution?

She held her breath as Peter tried to rescue the situation. ‘You're right. All we'd like from you today is the basic story.'

‘Nineteen fifty-two then,' Ken began, settling back in his garden chair like an ombudsman now that the situation was clarified to his satisfaction. ‘Night of Saturday the sixteenth of August, when Joan Watson was found murdered. Stabbed with a kitchen knife.'

‘Did you know her?' Georgia could have kicked herself for asking such a stupid question.

Ken grinned. ‘Do you mind? I was two years old then, and didn't have my future profession in mind; otherwise I'd have taken notes. Most of what I know about Joan, I've learnt from my dad Micky, or from the press – and of course there's Sandy; he was the third Joey. And Cherry. Know about her, do you?'

‘Yes. Christine mentioned her. It must have been very hard for her.'

‘She was a nice kid, Dad said. Still is, though not a kid any more. She was over the shock by the time I got to know her, though she's never got over Tom. She stayed on here for a year or two after Tom's trial, so Dad said, then married Harold Staines, the producer of the show, went up to London with him and disappeared off the radar. Then the marriage vanished too, and back she came. No kids. Never had much luck, did Cherry. Got a job as a dancer at the Margate Lido for a year or two, then married again. Then
he
died. Anyway, best start at the beginning,' he said guiltily. ‘I always put my big feet in before my head, so my dad always said.'

‘First,' Peter said quickly, ‘could you tell us whether there was any doubt over who murdered Joan? Any suspects other than Tom?'