A Quarter Past Dead

TP FIELDEN is a leading author, broadcaster and journalist. This is the third novel in the Miss Dimont Mystery series.

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © TP Fielden 2018

TP Fielden asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © November 2018 ISBN: 9780008193799

Version: 2018-09-13

PRAISE FOR TP FIELDEN

‘Peak comfort read has been achieved’

Red

‘One of the best in the genre’

The Sun

‘This is a fabulously satisfying addition to the canon of vintage crime. No wonder the author has already been signed up to produce more adventures starring the indefatigable Miss Dimont’

Daily Express

‘Unashamedly cosy, with gentle humour and a pleasingly eccentric amateur sleuth, this solid old-fashioned whodunit is the first in what promises to be an entertaining series’

The Guardian

‘Highly amusing’

Evening Standard

‘TP Fielden is a fabulous new voice and his dignified, clever heroine is a compelling new character. This delicious adventure is the first of a series and I can’t wait for the next one’ Wendy Holden, Daily Mail

‘A golden age mystery’

Sunday Express

‘Tremendous fun’

The Independent

For

Bo Wilson

Of every creature’s best

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

Extract

About the Publisher

ONE

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.