It was a week later, and all the violent deaths were safely in the past tense. The eventual body count didn’t bear thinking about, but only two of the dead deserved to be grieved over: Peter Dupont and Dickie George. Peter had indeed been killed for being the man who bally well knew too much (but not in the way anyone had suspected); Dickie George had been a victim of sheer bad luck. If Dickie’s death illustrated anything, it was the general principle that you should never sneak up on a pumped-up former member of the Special Boat Service, especially when he has easy access to heavy, pointy lumps of peppermint-flavoured confectionery.
No one will ever know precisely what Dickie George suffered during the days he was missing. All that is clear is that Tommy Drumsticks – madly possessive of Deirdre and angry because she had asked Dickie for help in getting away – coshed him and dragged him next door to the wax museum, leaving him in a basement room containing gruesome (but waxen) spare body parts. Drumsticks had gone back later to collect him and found him mysteriously missing. Why had he gone? Because in this room Dickie unfortunately spotted the real severed head of Uncle Kenneth, secretly stashed there previously by the frightened Bensons after a henchman of Terence Chambers delivered it to them. (Its miraculous state of preservation, two years after death, was thanks to a typical Chambers flourish – he’d given orders to have it specially embalmed, to make it a proper Benson family memento.)
Understandably scared for his life, Dickie must have opened a random door and found himself lost in the network of tunnels that were formerly part of the delights of the Colchester House garden – and then somehow, by awful chance, he found his way into the actual (unmaintained) sewers and up into the sweet shop. His last, croaked words were indeed, ‘Help me.’
Had he been able to report for crooner duty at the Black Cat this week, however, he would have found it dark and deserted. The very day of Deirdre’s reappearance, the building was closed up and the entire family left town. What Deirdre had found in the underground room (as Uncle Kenneth had found it before her, and paid the fateful price) was indeed shocking: knowledge of it marked the family as enemies of Terence Chambers in perpetuity. For years, Ma and the boys had managed not to know the secret they were protecting, and their ignorance had, in turn, protected them. So what was down there? Well, it was not – as previously supposed by everyone – a bloody torture chamber, a gothic ossuary or even a sparkling Aladdin’s cave. The fact that Dave the Forger was the sole person authorised to come and go was a bit of a clue. In the underground room of the Black Cat was housed Terence Chambers’s extensive and beautifully curated stamp collection.
Thus, when Deirdre had talked brokenly of ‘hundreds and hundreds of heads’, she had spoken truly while at the same time giving a seriously misleading impression. But, as Ma Benson reflected afterwards (while Frank, grim-faced, drove the northwards-speeding car past the small and – until recently – relatively unknown village of Gatwick), the reality of the stamp collection represented a far greater danger to them than anything they had imagined. Given how Chambers traded on his reputation for madness and violence, the sort of secret he would kill for was precisely what they had uncovered: that he was actually an ardent and lifelong philatelist specialising in stamps from Commonwealth dominions.
And was his secret safe, now? Well, the Bensons certainly weren’t going to tell anyone – and, oddly, nor was John Bamford, the only member of a law-enforcement organisation present when the secret was unearthed. He wasn’t going to tell anyone because he was, simply, excruciatingly embarrassed. From the law-and-order point of view, this was a tragic missed opportunity. Tell the world about (say) the entire album (in a glass-topped display case) devoted to ninepenny Australian stamps from 1910 to 1914, and Chambers would become a laughing-stock throughout the criminal fraternity. But Bamford was vain and young, and concerned far more with his own reputation; he was guided purely by the fear of becoming a laughing-stock himself. And so he returned to Interpol in Paris and he lied. He said there had been nothing in the infamous subterranean room after all, and that he resented being sent on a fool’s errand, and that in future he’d prefer the desk-job option, please, with additional extradition duties, if possible.
Mrs Groynes sat with her feet up on Twitten’s desk, and blew a thoughtful smoke ring. Beside her was the copy of Nancy Mitford’s Noblesse Oblige that she had picked up at Colchester House the last time she was there – the one from which Wall-Eye Joe had evidently learned how to sound so perfectly Non-U. Many parts of it were underlined. Looking back, she remembered how ‘Lord Melamine’ was forever turning the subject to lounges and radios and cruets and mirrors, and exclaiming ‘Lovely to meet you!’ He had evidently got it all from this annoyingly useful book.
Blimey, he’d been a clever operator, that man; she had believed in him until (almost) the very end. Whenever she happened nowadays to glance at her secret weapons-and-loot-stashing cupboard, she felt her heart stop as she remembered actually starting to remove the cash. Because, yes, she had been prepared to stump up thirty thousand pounds to secure Captain Hoagland’s safety – until, in the nick of time, Dupont’s aunt in Eastbourne had called to speak to Twitten, and blown the entire scam wide open. It wasn’t going to be easy for the next few weeks, having to admit to two hundred individual informants, ‘I’m sorry, you were right, he was Wall-Eye Joe. Yes, I know I told you he wasn’t. Yes, I know I threatened to shoot the next person who told me that he was.’
By now, Twitten had called on Miss Stanford in Eastbourne himself, and was beginning to grasp what had compelled Captain Hoagland – of all people – to murder Peter Dupont. In Peter’s notebooks, it merely said that when they met, they talked easily about a number of things, including the fact that Peter’s father had likewise served in the Bomb Disposal service and had been killed in a blast in 1941. Peter also noted that he had shown Captain Hoagland a blurry black-and-white close-up snapshot of his father, with three other lowly sappers, taken a week or so before he died.
On his return to the office, Twitten had compared notes with Mrs G. He felt she had a right to know what he had learned. To accompany their cups of tea, they had Dundee cake, which Twitten had recently (after too little consideration) nominated as his favourite, forgetting how dry it could be. He was wondering if it was now too late to change.
‘So, what Peter’s aunt said, Mrs G,’ he began, carefully, with his notebook open on his knee, and a slight obstruction in his throat from a sugary Dundee crumb, ‘was that when Peter met Captain Hoagland, he was thrilled to meet a bomb-disposal man because his own father had been in the Engineers, and had been killed by a UXB.’
‘Right, dear.’
‘And he showed Captain Hoagland the picture of his father that he kept in his wallet – a group photo of four fellow sappers, all smiling. And of course Hoagland recognised everyone in the picture: one of them was actually him, and the other three had been killed in that explosion. And I suppose he was very worried, because the picture showed he was just a sapper in the Engineers, not a captain at all.’
Twitten paused, then added, ‘I’m sorry. I know Hoagland was your friend. I wish you would tell me, Mrs G, about how you knew him and why you trusted him.’
So she had told him as much as she could bear to disclose – about giving him up years before because she wanted to protect him; about feeling she didn’t deserve someone so good; about believing later that he’d been killed at the unfinished house. What she most hated to admit, however, was that she had spotted Hoagland’s doorman uniform hanging in the wardrobe in his room, and had not thought anything about it. For a man of Hoagland’s age, dressing as a hotel doorman in Brighton was a brilliant disguise for someone up to no good. No one looked at you. They saw the limp, perhaps, and the medals on the chest. You were just another injured veteran washed up by the war.
‘No, he was never an officer,’ she said. ‘I checked, dear. All that stuff about his “men” calling him Hoagy. I bet it was his own captain who called him that.’
She sighed. ‘Look, all you really need to know is, I thought he was a ruddy hero, dear, and I was sure he was a toff. That’s what I can’t get over: I believed he was above me in every way; that he was noble and selfless and not like me. He had it all down pat: the modesty, the selflessness, all the after-you-Claude-after-you-Cecil. He never said he loved me, you know. That was clever. Made me say I loved him, and then didn’t say it back. And you wouldn’t believe the show he put on, when I was begging him to let me supply the extortion money, about how when a man has seen death so many times, he greets it like an old friend – I was in bleeding tears, dear! Me! And of course Wall-Eye Joe was sobbing away too. How they stitched me up, dear – how the pair of them stitched me up. I can hardly stand to think about it. I even believed in the ostriches.’
‘Ostriches?’
‘Yes, dear! Bleeding ostriches!’ she said, thumping the desk – and it was clear that the shame of this particular aspect of the grand deception was so very great that she could bear to elaborate no further.
‘And so, just to be clear, you killed them both?’
‘Well, yes.’ She smiled. ‘The gun’s in that cupboard, as it happens. What am I like, eh? You don’t get many of me for ninepence.’
‘I ought to arrest you, of course.’
‘I know, dear.’ She reached and patted his hand. ‘That’s your burden.’
‘You must have been very angry with them both, then?’
‘Oh, don’t misunderstand me, dear. I didn’t kill them for the con they pulled on me.’
‘No?’
‘No! I would never kill just for money, dear! Or even out of wounded pride. No, once I’d realised Hoagy was the one who killed that boy, and why he’d done it, because he was a bleeding great fraud, dear; and once I knew for sure that his lordship was Wall-Eye Joe after all, and they were therefore in cahoots when they told their fantastical story about Hoagy escaping from that unfinished house, I knew what I had to do.
‘I left that copy of the Argus in their car and then went directly to the station to see if they turned up. Because I’d decided: if they did turn up, I would kill them. If they didn’t turn up, I would – for the time being, anyway – chalk it up to experience. They were welcome to a trunk full of torn-up Police Gazettes. I would have loved to see their faces when they opened it, but sadly it never came to that.’
‘Because they did turn up at the station.’
‘Yes, they did.’
‘It was you who came up with that “missing dossier” plan, Mrs G. Is it hard for you to think of that? That if you hadn’t come up with the scheme, Captain Hoagland would still be alive?’
‘Well, that’s very sensitive of you to ask, dear. Because, on the one hand, it was a good plan. But on the other, I thought it would catch some brutal, unstable idiot who was soppy about Deirdre Benson. I hardly expected it to catch the only man I ever bleeding loved.’
Twitten had never had such a grown-up conversation before. Hearing of Mrs Groynes’s heartache, it was as if he had waded a small way into the sea and then suddenly found the water was up to his chest and sploshing up his nose, while his feet had lifted off the bottom. He was also, to be honest, finding the Dundee cake completely unpalatable, but sensed that this was not the right moment to mention it. But mostly, he couldn’t get out of his mind the fact that, in order for Mrs Groynes to open the wardrobe in Captain Hoagland’s bedroom in the morning, she must have spent the night there.
But still, his zeal for clarification drove him on.
‘Dupont’s aunt said that the main thing about this Hoagy in the war – she said he was a secret looter, Mrs G.’
‘I know, dear,’ said Mrs Groynes, sorrowfully. ‘She told me that, too.’
‘I’m sorry. She said he’d been seen stealing from evacuated buildings. He even took jewellery from bodies.’
‘Yes. Well, people just had to clear out, didn’t they, when there was an unexploded bomb? Abandon all their worldlies. There’s a lot of scope for opportunism in wartime, dear; making hay out of other people’s distress. Looting wasn’t uncommon, exactly, but it still makes me sick to think of my Hoagy doing it.’
‘But the main thing was, he might have engineered Peter’s father’s death,’ said Twitten.
Mrs Groynes closed her eyes. ‘That’s right.’
‘Peter didn’t know any of this, of course – but Hoagland couldn’t risk exposure just when he was engaged on such a huge job with Mr Marriott and all the others. Back in 1941, Peter’s father confronted Hoagland about the looting and recorded their argument in his diary. Dupont Senior said he was going to report Hoagland; Hoagland, in turn, threatened him. And it was the last entry in the diary, because the next day Peter’s father was conveniently killed in the blast at Borough High Street, while Captain Hoagland – I mean Private Hoagland, presumably – was injured but survived.
‘The family asked for an inquiry, because onlookers at the end of the street behind the sandbags said they saw the bomb being hoisted, and Hoagland starting to run for cover a full five seconds before the explosion. But at the court martial, he came up with a convincing story for the whole thing, swore blind there was no ticking when he’d listened to the bomb, played up the extent of his own injuries – and got away with it. It was only afterwards that the diary was found, and the family suspected Hoagland of actually orchestrating an explosion that killed three people.’
Mrs Groynes listened to all this with a look of utter misery on her face. All the time she had loved Hoagland, he had been this callous fraud. He had never cared about her: to him she represented unfinished business, nothing more. She couldn’t even take comfort from the lengths he had gone to in conning her. Clearly, the main (double) purpose of Wall-Eye’s Brighton operation had been to purloin the Penrose inheritance from Inspector Steine and nick the gold from the safe in Colchester House, where the 4th Marquess (‘Lord Loopy’) had indeed left it twelve years ago and forgotten it. It was quite likely that relieving Palmeira Groynes of a few thousand while conveniently operating in the area was a mere afterthought.
‘And to think I laughed at the inspector falling for that harmless spaghetti hoax,’ she said.
‘Oh, Mrs Groynes. I’m very sorry.’
‘Well, that’s good of you, dear,’ she said, wiping a tear from her face and sniffing. ‘It doesn’t help, but it’s good of you.’
In hospital, they had given Sergeant Brunswick his usual bed. When Twitten visited, he was surprised and gratified to find his superior officer reading Noblesse Oblige by Nancy Mitford.
‘This is fascinating, son,’ said Brunswick, proudly indicating the book. ‘You ought to read it.’
‘I have already, sir,’ said Twitten.
‘It turns out that posh people have a flaming code for recognising each other.’
‘I know, sir. Do you remember we talked about mirrors the other day, and you got quite upset?’
‘Mirrors? Was that because of this book? Well, I never. You should have explained it better, Twitten. I didn’t understand.’
‘No, sir. I rather guessed that you didn’t.’
Brunswick put down the book.
‘You’ve heard that the Bensons have scarpered, son, and that there was nothing in that underground room by the time our boys broke in? It had all been cleared out.’
‘I went to look myself, actually, sir.’
‘Did you? Knowing there was nothing there?’
‘Well, I have to confess, I was interested just to see the room itself. Dupont’s dossier led me to an account of the garden of Colchester House in the old days, you see, and I liked the description of the polygonal underground chamber, curtained in red and white and carpeted with golden sheepskins. It turned out to be just a small and oddly shaped room – but dry and well insulated, a good place for a bunker, or an archive. You could see marks on the floor where a number of items of furniture had stood, and there was an interesting smell that I found quite nostalgic.’
‘What sort of smell?’
‘I’m still trying to put my finger on it, but it reminded me of dark Saturday afternoons in front of the fire – Father reading a learned journal, Mother knitting, and me with my little magnifying glass and tweezers, carefully sorting my latest acquisitions from Stanley Gibbons, while the man on the wireless announced the football results. I wonder if I’ll ever get to the bottom of that powerful association.’
‘So you called it a wireless in your house?’
‘Yes, sir. I’m afraid we did.’
Brunswick pursed his lips. He had suspected as much.
‘The inspector sends his regards, by the way, sir.’
‘Oh, good.’
‘He’s still reeling a bit, as you can imagine, from Miss Vine turning out to be just pretending, as he puts it. He has periods when he looks very confused, but then he says, “So it was Captain Hoagland who killed young Dupont, and then someone shot him in the head, so we don’t need to prosecute?” And I say, “Yes, sir. It’s jolly convenient, sir.” And that seems to reassure him. I think the worst aspect of the whole thing for the inspector is that there won’t be a waxwork model of him at the museum. He had really set his heart on that.’
As he walked back to the station from the hospital, it occurred to Twitten that he wasn’t angry with Mrs Groynes. This was both interesting and surprising. It was like realising that a chronic pain had gone.
Standing at the clifftop railings overlooking the sea, he pondered. Had Mrs Groynes tricked him in some way? Was that why he felt differently about her? Not so long ago, he had been determined never to be alone with her in the same room, whereas nowadays, he had to confess, a tête-à-tête with Mrs G was something he positively looked forward to. The thing was, it was only in her company that he could expect a friendly and professional interest in the matters that interested him. And hadn’t she, in turn, confided in him about Captain Hoagland, almost as if she regarded him as a friend?
So, while part of him wanted to scream, ‘She shot two people in the head! She uses everyday baked products as a smokescreen! She’s bally despicable!’, another part simply didn’t, and he genuinely detested the horrible con practised on her by Hoagland and Marriott. From what she had reluctantly told him, they had not only targeted her, but played a very sophisticated hand. The way Marriott had drawn attention to himself with that inept con-man business! It had been masterly. And from whom had the police first heard about the terrible con man? From Adelaide Vine, of course.
Although it pained him, Twitten was obliged to acknowledge that it was Mrs Groynes who had explained to him every single puzzling aspect of the case. Were the two scams connected, then? Yes, of course they were, dear. Five people in total were involved: Hoagland, Marriott, plus the third, unknown male who impersonated both Monsieur Tussard and the so-called London solicitor; then Vivienne (‘Angélique’) and her daughter Adelaide Vine. They had all worked together on the unfinished-house scam; all were responsible for disgusting murders in cold blood. All but one were now disposed of. What did they hope to gain from these cons? Mainly, an enormous amount of money. Thirty thousand in notes from Mrs Groynes; then at least a million from the Penrose estate, on the tragic ‘accidental’ death of Inspector Steine; plus at least fifty thousand in gold. But the Mrs Groynes ploy had presumably contained a personal element, too: Hoagland having been furious when she dumped him (mid-con) all those years before. Did the others in the gang know about Hoagland murdering Peter Dupont to protect himself? Probably not. He no doubt realised quite quickly that he’d made a big mistake opening up to the seemingly harmless Peter. If Adelaide Vine had known about the murder, she would hardly have encouraged Phyllis to come forward to the police with her memory of the doorman with his parcel.
But how had Adelaide known the story of Inspector Steine’s parents? Because, as a juvenile accomplice in the unfinished-house scam, she had travelled in the car with the victims, chit-chatting with them to set any doubts to rest. And one of the victims was Gillian, Inspector Steine’s sister. Oh, no. That’s horrible. Yes, it is bleeding horrible. Gillian must have told the eager little girl the story of that romantic meeting in Bloomsbury; and also told her that because old Penrose would never forgive his daughter for what she’d done, one day the estate would be left to the grandchildren – meaning herself and the inspector, who as yet knew nothing about it, because of the grandfather’s irrational loathing for the police. Are you absolutely sure, Mrs G, that the inspector’s sister was one of the victims? Well, yes, dear. I checked and she went missing at just this time. She withdrew her life savings. She told friends she had found a wonderful man through a dating agency. She even mentioned the unfinished house. And when Vivienne was arrested, she was wearing a brooch with the Penrose coat of arms on it – you could see it in the news pictures of her. But, of course, no one at the time put two and two together.
Twitten sighed. Would he (or could he) have worked out everything on his own? Perhaps he could, given time. But he was beginning to think that, quick as he was, his own imagination had limits – too many of the crimes in the background to this story were virtually unimaginable to him. While Mrs G saw the world of crime in all its venal reality, his own mind rebelled at the idea of people like Joseph Marriott and Captain Hoagland, who would scheme and lie like this – and actually murder fellow human beings – just for pecuniary ends. And as for the beautiful Adelaide (who had got away in the fog), she was almost the worst of the bunch. To think of that little girl riding in a car with Inspector Steine’s sister, sweetly begging for more family stories – while knowing full well that when the car arrived at its destination, the nice lady would be instantly killed and her body disposed of. He couldn’t get it out of his head. It made him want to cry.
Best not to explain this to Inspector Steine, Mrs G? That his sister was murdered? Absolutely. He must never know.
‘And looking on the bright side, dear,’ she had added, ‘we can safely assume he’ll never work it out for himself. He would never work it out in a million bleeding years.’
On Brunswick’s first day back at the office, Inspector Steine burst out of his room, carrying a letter and beaming.
‘Great news,’ he said. ‘According to this, I have inherited an estate in the West Country!’
‘Blimey,’ marvelled Mrs Groynes, convincingly. ‘Good for you, dear.’
Brunswick and Twitten offered their congratulations.
‘What a bally surprise, sir,’ said Twitten – which gained a nod of approval from Mrs Groynes.
‘And I don’t know how this happened,’ Steine continued, ‘but there were some papers I signed concerning Miss Vine, and I’ve been a bit worried about what had happened to them, but here they are!’
He held up some legal-looking documents.
‘They turned up on my desk this morning, along with my original will, which I’d lent to her solicitor. I suppose he returned them all to me.’
Twitten raised an eyebrow at Mrs Groynes. He would never dare to ask what had been done with ‘Angélique’ and ‘Monsieur Tussard’ at the wax museum by the terrifying-sounding Diamond Tony, but presumably Mrs G had retrieved these documents before their bodies were dumped off the West Pier. He didn’t ask what had happened to the missing gold, either – but he felt sure he could guess the answer to that one. (Incidentally, with her excellent instinct for tying up loose ends, Mrs Groynes would also intercept the return letter from Steine’s mother in Africa when it turned up a few days later. ‘Whatever it says, it will only confuse him, poor thing,’ she said to herself, as she dropped it in the bin.)
‘Oh, my goodness, it’s just occurred to me,’ said Steine. ‘What if that man was just pretending, too, and wasn’t a real solicitor?’
‘Oh, I’m sure he was,’ said Mrs G, laughing. ‘You’ve got a suspicious mind, Inspector.’
‘Well, I suppose I do, that’s true. It comes with the job, unfortunately!’
‘But about the estate, sir?’ said Twitten.
‘Well, I now discover that my grandfather died around a year ago. To be honest, I hadn’t expected anyone to tell me when he died, as I assumed I’d never inherit anything. He wasn’t at all happy at the match my mother made, you see; and he particularly hated the fact she’d married into the police. They’ve been looking for my sister, because she was the first-named sole beneficiary.’
‘I didn’t even know you had a sister, dear,’ said Mrs Groynes, straight-faced.
‘Oh, I suppose not. I hadn’t seen her since I was fourteen, I’m afraid. It was a great sadness to Mother when Gillian cut herself off from us all. Now that I think about it, someone did ask me last year whether I knew her whereabouts, and they mentioned something about her having lived in Newmarket, but they didn’t say why they were looking.’
‘And they found her?’
‘No. Sadly, they drew a blank. That awful Miss Vine woman told me Gillian had died, of course, and now I must accept that it’s probably true.’
Steine’s face clouded over. Mrs Groynes and Twitten were both careful not to look at each other.
‘But it seems that after such a search proves fruitless,’ said Steine, brightening, ‘the law allows them to turn to the next option. So they did, and the second option was me! Apparently they have a small test for me (set by Grandfather) but, assuming I pass it, I will acquire a large country house and at least a million pounds!’
Colchester House had been boarded up. The real Lord Melamine (at home in Herefordshire, as he had always been throughout these weeks, if anyone had bothered to check) had been contacted by the new planning committee of the council in Brighton, to check his wishes concerning its future, and he told them they had his blessing to knock it down. Lord Loopy’s famous dislike for Brighton had been passed on to his eccentric son, and when he was informed that the whole site belonged to him, including the (former, now evacuated) wax museum and the (former, now evacuated) Black Cat, he said he’d be happy for them to raze the whole lot and build either a nice modern car park or a box-like conference centre, whichever was the less aesthetically in tune with the surrounding architecture.
At the railway station, Old Ted in the Left Luggage office was informed he would receive a small medal for bravery from the Evening Argus, which was the paper’s way of acknowledging it had put him through yet another nightmare experience (and please don’t sue). The ruse worked: he was thrilled to bits. A medal was really something, and the ceremony was recorded on the front page of the paper. His wife cheered up for the first time since 1939.
Meanwhile Ben Oliver (who had been anxious about his future, given how badly the operation at the station turned out) was surprised to find himself lauded as a hero by the editor, and given a pay rise. His grisly first-hand accounts of the two Mafia-style executions at the station sent circulation figures through the roof. It transpired that the more Oliver warned the people of Brighton that cold-blooded killers stalked their streets, the more they lapped it up. It was decided not to credit Inspector Steine with the whole idea of the ‘missing dossier’ story, however. Given the way things had gone, he would not have been pleased with this honour. Instead, Oliver gave the impression it had mostly been his own idea. For this, Twitten was very grateful, and a kind of friendship was forged.
‘So who do you think was responsible for those shootings, Constable?’ Oliver asked him one day.
‘Oh, you know what I think, Mr Oliver. Mrs Groynes is usually responsible for everything.’
At which Oliver had pulled an amusing face and said, ‘Ah. And one day I and everyone else will think it too?’
And Twitten said, ‘You will, Mr Oliver. You will.’
Meanwhile, what else had happened? Henry Hastings gave himself up for the accidental killing of Dickie George, but luckily for him, no one was remotely interested, so he went back to the sweet shop to clear up the mess left by molten humbug (it involved using a pneumatic drill). A small crowd watched him do it. It turns out that people will gather to watch anything whatsoever when they’re on holiday, especially when it’s free.
Tommy Drumsticks, finding himself without a band to play for – and guessing correctly that Mrs Groynes was not particularly impressed by his record at the Black Cat – sensibly skipped town and got a job (briefly) backing the eminent skiffle star Lonnie Donegan.
Mr Reinhardt, in France, gave way to regrets of various kinds: for his career, for his good name, for the way he’d allowed wicked criminals to corrupt him. He also regretted that there were uncashed cheques to the value of seven thousand pounds in his safe when it was cleared out by Peter Dupont.
At the council offices, Lillian the disillusioned secretary applied for the job left open by Dupont’s death. But at the interview she was told that, even if she got it, she would be paid nothing like as much as the teenaged Peter had been. She resigned.
Phyllis, disenchanted with the Brighton Belles, began the process for enrolment with the police.
Mrs Rogers received a confusingly businesslike letter from the real Lord Melamine, informing her that Colchester House was to be emptied of its contents and then demolished, and that she should vacate as soon as convenient. She never discussed those short, happy weeks at Colchester House with anyone. Thus, she never found out that the two posh men who had shared such thrilling confidences with her were actually unscrupulous villains and liars, who had met violent deaths within minutes of leaving the house. Years later, she still regarded Captain Hoagland as the nicest and most decent man she had ever met.
As for young Shorty, he was finally able to catch up with his reading. In fact, it was rather lovely. He arrived at his usual leaning-spot one morning to find a string bag tied to the lamp-post stuffed with fresh copies of the Dandy, Beano, Topper, Wizard, Beezer and Chips (which featured a dog detective). He couldn’t believe it. ‘Well done, love. I couldn’t have managed without you,’ said an accompanying note from Mrs Groynes. He felt so proud, he thought he would burst.
‘I’ve been thinking, Mrs Groynes,’ said Twitten, one day when they were alone.
‘About what, dear?’
‘I’ve been thinking that I don’t seem to be as angry with you as I was before.’
‘Really, dear?’
‘Yes. I’ve got used to it – that you are what you are, and that the others don’t have a bally clue. I used to find it hard to grasp, for some reason, but I don’t any more. I even quite enjoy it.’
‘Well, well.’
‘I mean, this morning, when Sergeant Brunswick came in and said that on the Palace Pier last night a large hole had been sawn in the planks just below the accounts office and their safe had gone through it, I didn’t even have to look at you. I knew you’d done it. I just said, “Oh, who would do such a bally thing? I expect we’ll never know”, and got on with eating my lovely sugary Dundee cake.’
‘I saw you, dear. Cool as a cucumber.’
‘And I expect you’d been planning it for weeks, Mrs G?’
‘Try years, dear.’
‘Really? Well, in that case, jolly well done.’
‘Thank you, dear. It means a lot. I’d thought about postponing it, but in the end I told the boys to go ahead. They’d been learning underwater safe-cracking techniques and what not; hired all the equipment. The trick, as you can imagine, was to deal with the obvious problem of the safe dropping straight to the seabed, on account of being so heavy. But you don’t want to hear about my problems with anti-gravitational magnetic pull, now do you, dear?’
‘No, indeed. Although a huge electromagnet was stolen not long ago from the Royal Observatory, I believe. But I expect that was a coincidence.’
She came and sat beside him.
‘What I said to the lads, dear, was that I needed something to cheer me up right now. I know I don’t show it, but I do have feelings, you know.’
Twitten bit his lip. He wasn’t sure what he was expected to say.
‘Are you perhaps still upset about Captain Hoagland, Mrs G?’
‘Of course I’m still bleeding upset about Captain Hoagland!’
Twitten hesitated.
‘Look, this might not be the right time to mention it, but about the Dundee cake, which is absolutely super—’
But Mrs Groynes signalled to him to stop talking. To his alarm, she went to the door and locked it. She evidently wanted another serious talk.
‘Look, it’s nice what you said just now, dear. About not being angry any more. But it’s not enough. What I’m wondering is, have you reconsidered my offer, dear? Because I’m serious. We really could help each other out.’
‘I wouldn’t say I had reconsidered it, exactly.’
‘I mean, I did help you, didn’t I, with your Dupont thing? I don’t like to blow my own trumpet, but it was me that had the idea about the “missing dossier” story that flushed out the murderer – even if I wasn’t ecstatic with who it flushed out. It was me that explained to you that people like the Bensons don’t go around slicing people’s throats in broad daylight, and helped you get off the wrong track. The thing is, dear, I’m very interested in helping you; I almost can’t stop myself. Crime is my life, you see, and it always has been. So what do you say?’
‘What I mainly say is, could you unlock the door, please, Mrs Groynes?’
‘Oh. All right.’
She did so.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘And what do you say now, dear?’
‘I’m thinking, Mrs Groynes. I’m thinking.’
The following day, a strange, hushed atmosphere greeted Sergeant Brunswick as he limped into the station with his walking stick. Beyond the door to Inspector Steine’s room could be heard odd noises of furniture being moved about and moaning noises that sounded animal – rather than human – in origin.
‘What’s happened?’ he hissed.
‘We don’t know,’ whispered Twitten. ‘But we’re guessing it’s bad news about the money.’
Mrs Groynes knocked softly on the door.
There was no answer. She knocked again.
‘What is it?’ came a small voice.
‘Bit of lovely Dundee cake, dear?’
The door opened, and Steine stood before them all. He looked bug-eyed and distraught. While arguably the other people in the room had been through more than he had recently – getting shot, for example, or having their hearts broken by the only man they ever bleeding loved – this had been a terrible period for him. It had been up and down, up and down. First he had a lovely niece, but then he didn’t have a lovely niece. Then he had a fortune, but then he didn’t have a fortune. And to top it all, a heavy safe on the Palace Pier had apparently fallen through the boards into the sea, and the pier’s owners were insisting it was a police matter, when it might equally be a case of woodworm.
Distractedly, he sat in Twitten’s chair and started to drink Twitten’s cup of tea. The others discreetly looked away.
‘What happened, sir?’ asked the sergeant, politely. ‘You look flaming fed up, if you don’t mind my saying so.’
Steine steadied himself.
‘Look, Brunswick, I don’t suppose you’ve heard of a book called Noblesse Oblige?’
‘But I have, sir.’
Steine looked outraged. ‘Have you?’
‘Yes. I read it the other day. I found it very interesting.’
This was not the answer Steine had hoped for.
‘I’ve read it, too, dear,’ volunteered Mrs Groynes. ‘In fact, I got everyone down the Princess Alice to read it, too, and blow me, we’ve talked of little else in the evenings these past weeks. Phone for the fish-knives, Norman! It was a real eye-opener, that’s what we all thought. Looking-glass, indeed!’
Steine groaned. ‘And Twitten? Need I ask?’
‘Well, I don’t know what to say, sir. Noblesse Oblige was the book I was telling you about when we first visited the Maison du Wax. When I asked you about mirrors and so on, and you got so upset.’
Steine narrowed his eyes. ‘So you’re telling me you’ve all read this blasted book?’
‘Seems like we have,’ said Mrs Groynes. ‘But as Miss Mitford would probably never find herself saying, dear, what’s that got to do with the price of fish?’
‘Well, everything, unfortunately. As you may remember, my grandfather had left one small stipulation in his will.’
‘The test you mentioned?’ said Twitten.
‘Yes, the test I mentioned. Having read this blasted book when it was published last year, just before he died, my grandfather saw a perfect way of determining whether his socially contaminated descendants were up to snuff – by testing their vocabulary!’
‘But we can all help you with that, sir,’ said Twitten, delighted. ‘If he wanted to check that you knew the U words and not the Non-U words, we could all help. Because, as we’ve already established, we’ve all read the book.’
‘Too late, I’m afraid, Twitten. There was just one question, and it was this: did I own a cruet set?’
‘Ouch,’ said Brunswick.
‘Oh, no!’ gasped Mrs G.
‘And what did you say, sir?’ asked Twitten, anxiously.
‘Naturally, I answered yes, thank you, I owned two cruet sets, as it happened. I had a very nice home.’
The others recoiled in horror.
‘Oh, sir. I’m so sorry,’ said Twitten.
‘And as a consequence, I will continue to live in my nice home with my two cruet sets, and not own Penrose House with its legendary knot garden, grotto, polo ponies and extensive private beach!’
He looked so sorry for himself that they all felt sorry for him, too – but only up to a point.
‘The constable did keep telling you to read that bleeding book, dear,’ said Mrs Groynes. She turned to Twitten, who was trying to remonstrate with her. ‘Well, you did!’
They all sat in silence for a moment – Brunswick in pain from multiple injuries; Twitten experiencing the mixed delights of being proved right; Mrs Groynes enjoying the discomfort of everyone else; and Inspector Steine wishing he had never heard of the Maison du Wax, or Adelaide Vine, or Penrose House, or (come to that) the Brighton Constabulary.
‘Can anyone say anything to cheer me up?’ he said, at last.
‘Yes, sir,’ volunteered Twitten. ‘I believe I can.’
They all looked at him.
‘How?’ said Steine.
‘Ask me about Mrs Groynes, sir. Do the question-and-response thing.’
Steine narrowed his eyes. ‘This isn’t a trap?’ he said.
‘No, sir.’
‘Should I ask her to leave the room?’
‘No, sir.’
‘All right.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Constable Twitten, tell me your thoughts concerning Mrs Groynes, our lovable cockney charlady.’
‘I believe she is a wicked criminal capable of cold-blooded murder, sir.’
There was a general ‘tsk’ and groan of disappointment from the other three, but Steine continued.
‘And on a scale of one to ten, how convinced are you of this?’
Twitten took a deep breath. It was his big moment.
‘Nine,’ he said.
And while the others said, ‘Well done, Twitten’ and ‘Good lad’, Mrs Groynes came over and hugged him, and actually burst into tears.