Smoke and Mirrors (21 page)

‘I’ll have you know that this is a respectable boarding house.’

‘But you’re still sleeping with the landlady.’

Max came back down the steps. ‘It’s a funny thing. At first I thought it was just a one-night stand, then I thought it was just for the season but the other day I realised that I’d miss her when the pantomime was over.’

‘That’s a big admission.’

‘I suppose it is really.’ Edgar had his own admission, of course, but it wasn’t one that he could share with Max.

‘When is the pantomime over?’

‘New Year. I’ve got a short break, then I’m off on the circuit again.’

Edgar thought of his New Year, getting back to work, clearing up the loose ends on this case, trying to get Ruby to accept his proposal. He realised that he’d got quite a lot to look forward to.

‘Come on then,’ said Max. ‘Let’s find Mrs M’s brandy.’

With one last look at the stars, Edgar followed his friend up the steps, humming a song from the show.

The people and the events described in this book are entirely imaginary. However, the locations are mostly real. The Pavilion, the Old Steine, Bartholomew Square, Queen’s Park, Kemp Town and Freshfield Road are all real places in Brighton. Bristol Road Juniors is fictional but it owes a lot to my old primary school, St John the Baptist, which was in Kemp Town until 1989. The grammar schools are also fictionalised but there was a Brighton Grammar School in Hove. During the First World War it was a hospital for wounded soldiers; it’s now a sixth form college. There is now, sadly, only one pier in Brighton (though you can still see the wonderful skeleton of the West Pier).

There were once shows at the ends of both piers, at the Theatre Royal and at the Hippodrome. The Hippodrome, built in 1897 and described by The Theatres Trust Guide as ‘the best surviving circus/variety theatre in Britain’, is under threat of destruction. For details of the campaign to save it, see the Facebook page ‘Save the Brighton Hippodrome’.

I’m grateful to many people for their memories of Brighton in the 1950s, including Sheila de Rosa and Marjorie Scott-Robinson. For details of gay and lesbian Brighton in the 1950s, I’m very grateful to the website ‘Brighton Our Story’ (
www.brightonourstory.co.uk
).

Special thanks to two fantastic women – my editor, Jane Wood, and my agent, Rebecca Carter. Thanks to everyone at Quercus and Janklow & Nesbit for working so hard on my behalf. Thanks, as ever, to my husband, Andrew, and our children, Alex and Juliet, for their constant support.

This book is for my dear friend Carol Dodson – so many happy memories of growing up in Brighton.

Elly Griffiths, 2015