Death of a Beauty Queen Read Online Free PDF Page A

Beattie, the ‘art’ photographer, as he liked to call himself, who had been specially invited by the management to take photographs of the most popular competitors, singly and in groups.
    â€˜Called me a pumpkin-pated foozledum,’ bitterly complained Wood, who measured an insult more by syllable than by significance. ‘How was I to know he was here legitimate? – and not like half the rest of ’em, letting on to be fathers or uncles or brothers of girls they’ve never seen before except to cuddle in a corner. Why, there was one tough looking bloke said he was pa to a Carrie Quin, or some such name, and, before I could look at the list and make sure there wasn’t any Carrie Quin, he did a bunk past.’
    â€˜Can’t you fetch ’em out again when they try that on?’ asked the crony.
    â€˜In a general way,’ answered Wood, ‘that’s what I do – so quick they never know what’s happening till they’re outside again smarter than ninepence. But to-night, if I got busy after one, half a dozen more would be slipping in. Besides, this bloke wasn’t a young smartie, so I didn’t worry; looked more like it was handbags he was after than hugging and kissing round the corner.’
    â€˜Does seem, to-night,’ agreed the other sympathetically, ‘like a special crazy evening at Bedlam more than anything else.’
    â€˜Here’s the photographic bloke again,’ said Wood, bristling. ‘I’m not going to take any more of his pumpkin-pated-foozledum language, even if it costs me my job.’
    â€˜Sock him one in the jaw,’ urged the crony, traitorously thinking that, if thus Wood did lose his job, then there might be a chance for anyone happening to be on the spot at the moment.
    But Roy Beattie’s intentions were quite peaceable and friendly. He was a tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed youngster, good-looking and powerfully built, more like, in appearance, the typical athletic ‘hearty’ than an ‘art’ photographer whose work tended to be somewhat finicky and precious.
    â€˜Just look after that for me, will you?’ he said, handing Wood a small dispatch-case. ‘Take care of it – I’ve just got some ripping studies of Miss Mears I don’t want mixed with the others.’
    Wood took the dispatch-case, and at the same time glanced at a paper by his side.
    â€˜She’s the favourite, at evens,’ he announced. ‘Lilian Ellis was runner up, but she’s done herself in the way she bunked off the stage.’
    Beattie went red. He was, in fact, a somewhat ingenuous young man, with little in his life but ‘studies’ and ‘exposures’ and ‘effects,’ even though he believed himself most sophisticated, and, on the strength of a stay in Paris and a little chatter about new theories of art, in the very forefront of contemporary thought, with a profound experience of life. At the moment, or rather during such rare moments as he could spare from photography, he was, like other ingenuous and innocent young men of his type, an enthusiastic Fascist, just as he might have been an enthusiastic Communist had their fairy-tales been the first he had chanced to hear. But perhaps in any case the dark ominous threat of the black shirt would always have appealed more to his sense of drama than the Communist red he thought rather commonplace and gaudy – and then you can do so much more in photography with blacks and shadows than you can with reds. Now, though, he went red himself, as he stretched out a long arm, terminating in an enormous hand, and took possession of the paper Wood had referred to.
    â€˜Do you mean you’ve been making a book about the girls’ chances?’ he demanded. ‘Infernal cheek – I’ve a jolly good mind to show it to Mr Sargent.’ He put the paper in his pocket. ‘If anyone wants it,’ he said, ‘they can come