James Brunswick had not joined the police force for the fame it might bring him. Personal celebrity was something he neither sought nor valued. Quite the reverse, in fact: as a policeman he aspired to walk in the shadows and also – one day, if Inspector Steine would ever let him – infiltrate the underworld unsuspected.
The arrival of Harry Jupiter in Brighton, however, had knocked all Brunswick’s usual good sense aside. To be immortalised by the greatest ever crime reporter! Who cared if every villain in the town recognised him after that? (To be fair, they did already.) It would all be worth it to cast off – at last – the image of himself in the film of The Middle Street Massacre fuming in Luigi’s.
Brunswick had long been a fan of Harry Jupiter. His principled stand against the Clarion – when he stopped buying it out of a sincere (but misplaced) solidarity with the acting profession – had hurt him a lot more than it had hurt the Clarion, and it had been agony to maintain. How could he live without reading those juicy crime reports? Well, it turned out that he couldn’t. Among his colleagues, he had become famous for feverishly snatching up discarded copies of the paper in the police station canteen, or from deckchairs on the beach. He had been known to fish the Clarion out of bins. On one occasion, he had confiscated a copy from a blameless holidaymaker, saying, ‘I’ll take that, sir, thank you very much’, when the chap had merely been asking him the quickest route to the railway station.
Jupiter’s stories were always so detailed. They were also very reassuring. Over the years, Brunswick had consumed all of Jupiter’s best-selling books as well, including The Art and Craft of Murder; Just an Ordinary Saturday (in Scotland Yard!) and Don’t Just Give Them Your Money. Having exhausted Jupiter’s police-based oeuvre, Brunswick had even gone on to read the less commercial – and quite surprising – autobiographical works (Fishy on a Dishy being the first and best) concerning Jupiter’s highly impoverished infancy in Stockton-on-Tees.
Finding out this morning – two days after Twitten’s first day – that such a great apologist for all upright servants of law and order was now lying in a Brighton hospital with total memory loss was therefore a profound sadness for Brunswick. It drained away all the excitement of the previous day.
‘Yes, he’s lost his memory, apparently,’ said funny old Mrs Groynes that morning, when Brunswick accepted his ritual wake-up cup of tea and sat down at his desk.
She was as cheerful as ever, of course. Thank goodness for the stability of Mrs Groynes. The day had dawned grey and overcast, with heavy rain pattering on the shop awnings, and little rivulets running down the gutters. Visitors in their guest houses would be looking out at the brooding clouds, feeling glum and cheated: the seafront shelters were comfortless places on a day like this. Most landladies insisted that their guests vacated the premises between eleven and four. Inside the police station, Mrs Groynes had switched on the garish overhead lights.
‘Shame, though,’ she carried on. ‘They’re saying it’s all gone, his memory, every bit. Seems when he fell off the pier he banged his head on the way down and now he doesn’t know his own name, bless him, let alone remember who might have stupidly pushed him off that ghost train, or whatever it was that happened, not that I know anything at all, dear, not having been there at the time, only afterwards, and then not really, only a bit. Now, that’s quite enough about Mr Jupiter, dear. Hark at me wittering. How’s your tea?’
Throughout this speech, she had been mopping the floor with sudsy water. But now she paused and laughed. ‘Yes, it’s a funny thing, life. A funny thing.’ She looked at him. ‘Oh, cheer up, love. You look like you’ve lost a half-crown and found a sixpence.’
Brunswick stirred his tea. He couldn’t smile. This news about Jupiter was appalling. What bad luck! Also, something in all Mrs Groynes’ wittering had registered in his mind, even though it had been said by her. ‘Did you say someone pushed him?’
‘Did I, dear? Well, you can’t go listening to the likes of me, now, can you? Handsome young detective like yourself. What on earth do I know?’ She laughed again. ‘But I’ll tell you this for nothing. If someone did push him, dear, I’m sure it was no one you know! No policeman would do it, would they? They’d have to be mad! Or stupid, of course. Especially a senior policeman. Oh, by the way, the inspector’s coming in a bit late this morning. Something about a haircut.’
Brunswick sat back in his chair. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said, at last.
‘Really? Oh, he definitely needs a haircut, I told him so myself. You don’t want to get taken for a dirty beatnik, I said.’
‘No, not about the haircut. About Jupiter. I can’t believe what’s happened to him. I feel a bit sick. If someone did push him –! I mean, he’s written so much about villains, Mrs G. What if one of them got their own back on him? In Brighton, as well! The first time he ever came here. This is going to reflect badly on us. We should have been protecting him… why weren’t we protecting him?’
‘I’m sure the inspector did the best he could, dear.’
‘What? Was Inspector Steine there?’
‘Of course, dear. Oh, yes. Didn’t I say that? But don’t you go blaming him, just because he can be a bit slow on the uptake, that’s hardly his fault, is it?’
On the windowsill a bedraggled seagull chick was sheltering. It tapped its beak feebly against the glass. Brunswick stared at it. He was just saying, slowly, ‘So if Inspector Steine was there –?’ when Mrs Groynes banged the window and the bird flew off, and Brunswick’s half-formed thought went with it.
‘And in any case,’ she continued, sitting beside him and patting his hand, ‘you take too much on yourself, that’s your trouble. All this detecting you’ve been doing, and on top of that you’ve got your lovely auntie Violet to think of, and your little Maisie as well, doubtless still driving you doolally with unrequited lust. I suppose you realise she’s a minx, dear? The way she strings you along, it’s criminal.’
‘Maisie’s finished with me, Mrs G. As of yesterday.’
‘Finished with you?’ Mrs Groynes pursed her lips in sympathetic outrage. ‘Little madam!’
‘It’s all right. I was too old for her, anyway.’
‘Of course you were, but who cares about that? But I will say this. I’ve held my tongue till now, but just picture those teeth of hers in the face of a forty-five-year-old! They’re all very well when you’re a kid, but –’
‘Please, please, let’s not talk about Maisie. It’s not about her, Mrs G. I was just so excited about telling Mr Jupiter about the case.’
‘Going well, then, is it?’
Brunswick smiled. ‘It’s going very well. Do you want to hear?’
She took a seat.
‘Oh, go on, then. I don’t mind. Tell old Mrs Groynes. My life can’t be all Vim and Squeezy, can it, now? I’d have to top myself.’
He laughed. This had been their early-morning routine for several years now. The nice sergeant kindly spicing up the day of the funny cockney charlady with stories of exactly how his enquiries were going, vis-à-vis fur-shop robberies or the tracing of stolen goods. And to her credit, the charlady always took such a respectful interest – even when the enquiries eventually (and oddly) came to nothing, after all.
What he appreciated about Mrs Groynes was her selfless enthusiasm. Where Inspector Steine refused to see the point of most detective work, Mrs Groynes was sometimes genuinely agog. On one or two occasions, when he’d told her specifics about banks or post offices with faulty security arrangements, she had even asked him to stop for a minute, produced a pencil from behind her ear and made a little note.
And so Brunswick told her all about Bobby Melba being his prime suspect in the Jack Braithwaite murder. He described how he first discovered Bobby Melba’s existence; he showed her the picture of Bobby in female attire (at which she marvelled); he told her about Penny Cavendish awkwardly covering for him, and about the clinching evidence of the stolen jewelled comb, and Penny’s second-hand knowledge of the crime scene. He said he was sure Bobby was in show business.
‘My belief is that he’s never killed before,’ Brunswick concluded, ‘but he was cornered, do you see?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘And a cornered narcissist can be very dangerous.’
‘A cornered what, dear?’
‘Narcissist.’ Brunswick looked grave and lowered his voice. ‘To be honest, I’m not completely sure what a narcissist is, but I think it’s someone who does drugs.’
Mrs Groynes pulled a face of horror, while Brunswick nodded, as if to say, ‘I know.’
‘So who is this Bobby Melba, dear?’ she asked, helpfully steering the conversation back to a safer channel. ‘I mean, how do you go about finding him, that’s what I’d like to know?’
Brunswick grinned. ‘I’m very close, Mrs G.’
‘Well, that’s marvellous!’ She was all admiration. ‘But specifically, dear. I’m curious. What I meant just then was, how do you go about finding him, that’s what I’d like to know.’
‘Oh, I see. You mean, you’d like to know actually how I’m going about it?’
‘Yes, dear. If it’s no trouble.’
‘It’s quite simple, really. Miss Cavendish said that Melba was in Leeds last year at the same time as Braithwaite was in a play there. I’ve asked the Leeds City police to look through the papers for that week and tell me about any other entertainers advertised. They were supposed to call yesterday but they didn’t. So today I’m not leaving this desk until I get that call.’
He thumped the desk three times, to show how much he meant it. ‘I’m not moving an inch! Which reminds me, where were you yesterday afternoon, Mrs G? I was here all by myself for hours.’
Mrs Groynes ignored the question. ‘Well, I think you’re a bleeding genius, dear.’
‘Oh, not really, Mrs Groynes.’
‘Yes, you are. Putting all that together, while the rest of us are only good for cleaning windowpanes with vinegar and newspaper!’
She gave him an affectionate push.
‘But what’s his motive?’ she said. ‘That’s what I don’t understand.’
‘Motive, Mrs G?’
‘Well, say he’s at the house, and stealing the jewels, and his friend Jack jumps out and says, “Bobby! It’s you!” I don’t understand why he then goes berserk and all but slices the man’s head off.’
‘Perhaps Braithwaite threatened to turn him in, Mrs G. Braithwaite says, “I’m shocked at what you’re doing and I’ve got to turn you in,” and Bobby turns nasty. Criminals will stop at nothing when they think they’ll be exposed.’
Mrs Groynes tutted. ‘Well, I’m shocked. What, you mean they’d kill someone rather than risk facing the music?’
‘It happens all the time, I’m afraid. You’re lucky you don’t know about this kind of thing. People being silenced. There are supposed to be at least half a dozen bodies built into the new runway up at Gatwick already, did you know that? And as for the people given concrete boots every Friday night by the likes of Terence Chambers and dropped in the Thames…’
He looked round, remembering something. ‘Where’s Twitten?’
Mrs Groynes frowned. ‘Who, dear?’
‘The new constable. I haven’t seen him since – well, since his first day, the night of the murders. Last I saw, he was being lifted into an ambulance. Where’s he flaming got to? I know he must have had a shock, but he should still be here, helping.’
‘Do you know what I think?’ she said, getting up. ‘I don’t know where he is, and I don’t care. I think he wasn’t cut out for police work at all.’
‘Really? Too clever, you mean?’
‘My point exactly, dear! Too clever. No, I wouldn’t be surprised if we never saw him again. Now, another cup of tea?’
‘I wouldn’t mind, thank you.’
Brunswick was happy. Listening to his own case against the mysterious Bobby Melba, he found it very satisfactory. The gruesome murder of a promising playwright would soon be avenged. And now he could have a pleasant morning at his desk, having cups of tea with Mrs Groynes while the rest of the world got soaked to the skin outside.
He opened a copy of the Police Gazette at the ‘Your Star Sign’ page and found that today’s lucky colour for Scorpios was dark blue, and today’s lucky word was ‘handcuffs’. Lucky direction to be proceeding in was ‘westerly’. Outside, on the windowsill, the sodden baby seagull had come back.
He was just sighing contentedly while Mrs Groynes put down a small saucer of biscuits beside him, when she suddenly stopped dead and slapped her hand to her mouth.
‘Oh, my good gawd, I’ve just remembered something.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The telephone call.’
‘What telephone call?’
‘Vince! Vince whatever-his-name-is, that Punch & Judy man who’s always threatening people. He called just before you arrived.’
‘What?’
Mrs Groynes banged the window and the poor wet bird flew off again.
‘He sounded very upset, dear! Oh, how could I have forgotten, I’m so sorry, dear! And we were just talking about her! I said awful things about her teeth!’
Brunswick froze. ‘Maisie?’
‘I called her a minx.’
‘Maisie?’ repeated Brunswick, this time more like a squeak.
‘Yes, dear! It was about Maisie. I made a note… oh, where did I put it?’
She started searching the room, going through her pockets, while Brunswick followed her about, very agitated. ‘Has he hurt her? Oh, please no, has he hurt Maisie? Mrs G, just tell me!’
‘I can’t find it, dear.’
‘It doesn’t matter about the note. Just tell me.’
‘He said she’s disappeared.’
‘What?’
‘She didn’t go home last night, apparently.’
‘Oh, no!’
‘Her mum’s in a right two and eight. He said, could you meet him by the bandstand as soon as possible? I’m so sorry I forgot!’
Brunswick already had his hat and coat on, and his hand on the door handle. So much for his lovely morning in a warm, dry office.
‘But what about your very important message from them Leeds City people, dear?’
Brunswick groaned. ‘Can you take it for me, Mrs G? I’ve got to go.’
She smiled. ‘Of course I can.’
He wanted to give her a kiss, but there was no time to lose. If something had happened to Maisie…
‘Here, hold on,’ she said. ‘I’ve just had a thought about this case of yours.’
‘Can’t it wait, Mrs G?’
‘If this Bobby is the guilty party, then that strong lady you arrested – was she framed, then?’
Brunswick frowned, confused. Now that he came to think of it, he supposed she was.
‘So won’t she be out to get the person who did it? All I’m saying is, I hope you find this Bobby bloke before she does. He might need protecting.’
After Brunswick had left, Mrs Groynes locked the door to the office and looked around. The bird had come back, but she didn’t care. She quite liked seeing it there, dripping on the sill. She propped her mop against the wall, sat down at Brunswick’s desk and lit a cigarette, narrowing her eyes in thought. Then she picked up the phone and asked to be put through to a Brighton number. While she waited for an answer, she tipped ash from the cigarette into the pocket of her floral overall.
‘Ronnie? We’re on,’ she said. Having hung up, she crossed to a large, double-doored built-in cupboard, producing a key from a string round her neck. This cupboard was a favourite topic of conversation for Inspector Steine, who had often been heard to complain, ‘What’s the point of this cupboard? It’s locked all the time and no one can find the key!’
Opening it now, she checked its contents: a shelf containing some gold bullion, another shelf with a neat pile of stolen postal orders to the value of £1,500, two coshes, a jemmy, three balaclavas and half a dozen sets of skeleton keys; hanging from hangers, a variety of female outfits and three full-length sable coats with exorbitant price tags still attached; and on the floor, an unconscious young constable in uniform, tied and gagged, along with two recently purchased canvas holdalls.
She regarded all these items with equal satisfaction, then relocked the cupboard, picked up the phone again and asked for another number.
‘Bobby?’ she said. ‘Thanks for picking up, dear. It’s me.’
* * *
‘Who was that on the telephone?’ asked Penny, as Bobby took off his silky dressing gown and got back into bed. The digs had a phone in the dingy hallway, and he had sprinted downstairs to answer it barefoot. This was known to be a good time to ring. It was common knowledge that the landlady at Bobby’s theatrical digs took herself shopping between nine and eleven every weekday morning. If her lodgers missed the short, allotted breakfast time (8.15–8.30 a.m.), that was their lookout. (No actor was ever up before 8.30. It saved her a fortune in eggs.)
‘Just an aunt of mine,’ he said. ‘She’s my sort-of godmother, too, as a matter of fact. She’s going to help me with something.’
He made a face, indicating that this was all he was going to say. Penny put her arms around him. Rain lashed against the windows.
‘I’m scared, Bobby.’
‘Well, you’re not the only one.’
She stroked his hair. ‘I’ve just found you and you’re going to leave me.’
There was no answer to this. They both knew it was true. If Bobby didn’t flee the town in the next day or two, he would be arrested for the burglaries at least. His fingerprints were on that sherry glass: on such evidence alone, unless someone else was arrested for Jack’s murder, Bobby might even hang.
‘Tell me what happened,’ she had asked him, again and again. She had asked it gently; she had asked it firmly; she had asked it, finally (and weirdly), while performing a marital act. Penny was highly confused; sleeping with Bobby had hardly made things better. In the night, he had twice woken them both up by screaming in terror. The first time, he’d shouted, ‘Jack, look out!’ The second time, it was, ‘So much blood!’
There was no getting away from it. The fact of Jack’s death was so present in both their minds that they might as well have been making love in the same room as the corpse. But they say that every cloud has a silver lining, and in later years, when Penny was cast as a highly sexed Gertrude in an acclaimed Hamlet at the Haymarket, she was able to draw, quite consciously, on this fleeting time with Bobby back in 1957 – when intense shock, grief, guilt and overpowering physical attraction had combined and mutated into fire.
When Bobby now kissed her with passion, she responded in kind.
‘I still can’t believe that you came to me last night,’ he said, when they finally broke apart again.
‘I know. I know.’
‘This isn’t disloyal to Jack, Penny.’
She looked miserably unconvinced. ‘Isn’t it?’
‘This is all about him, Penny! You’re in his play. You loved him. You got four… five curtain calls, all for him.’
‘I know.’
‘The success of that play is all for him.’
‘I know. But all the time last night, as I was taking my bows, I wasn’t thinking about Jack at all.’
‘No?’
‘I kept thinking: Bobby was there, he might be a murderer, yet I want Bobby. Oh, what am I going to do?’
‘I’m not a murderer, Penny.’
‘I want you so much. Can’t we just run away?’
‘It’s too late,’ he said, sitting up with his back to her. ‘Seriously, too late. Wheels are in motion.’
‘Let’s come clean, then. Tell them what happened.’
‘I can’t, though.’
‘Tell me what happened! Please!’
‘I can’t. I really can’t.’
Bobby reached for his cigarettes on the dressing table, then lit one and got back under the covers. He plumped up a pillow and leaned back.
‘Let me tell you about phrenology,’ he said.
‘What, now?’ She let out a little shriek of frustration.
‘It’s relevant, I promise.’
‘But Bobby –’
‘The thing is, everyone thinks it’s Victorian mumbo-jumbo, don’t they? I suppose when I started learning how to do it, I thought of it as a kind of trick myself – a reliable trick, but still basically a trick. Up to then, I’d learned all sort of card tricks and stuff – did you notice my fingers, Penny? You’ve never said.’
‘Of course I have. You don’t hide them.’
‘They started out quite normal; we think it was playing the piano so much as a child that changed them.’
He held them up – the top knuckle of each finger permanently bent, giving his digits the shape of little hammers.
‘Anyway, I was sure I wanted to practise some sort of sleight of hand as a profession, and I was brilliant at card magic, but it was frustrating: these strange fingers of mine drew too much attention to what I was doing. And then someone told me about the “defunct” art of phrenology and I suppose I just saw the attraction.
‘For one thing, it’s a profession that requires dexterity, which I already had; for another, I’d be able to dress as a bearded Victorian, so people would think I was much older than I am, and not recognise me out of costume – and I always saw the value of that; and last, whenever there was a lull in the audience’s interest, I could remark on the size of a person’s “organs”, because it always – and I mean always – gets a laugh.
‘What I didn’t anticipate was the genuine insight it would give me into people. It’s like having X-ray eyes, Penny; like being the one-eyed man in the land of the blind. Because when most people look at each other, they just don’t see. Whereas when I look at a new person – even without laying my hands on their head – I instantly know something of their flaws, their strengths, and even their destiny. Jack, for example, had bulges behind his ears – did you notice?’
‘Well, yes. His glasses kept falling off.’
‘That was his organ of Destructiveness, Penny. It was very pronounced. But I didn’t mean to talk about Jack. The thing is, at first, I just latched on to the broader truths: a high forehead goes with a perceptive mind; a low brow literally indicates less intelligence; the instinctive stuff is at the base of the skull and the more spiritual and perceptive stuff is on the top.
‘But the more I continued to study, the more I learned not just about the system of phrenology, but about the richness of human nature. It’s an incredible thing, Penny. To see how powerful instincts are either kept in check, or given free rein. When I lay my hands on a person’s head and feel for the bumps, it’s like the entire personality travels directly into my mind. It’s not a trick at all.’
‘And then you hypnotise people?’
‘That’s the other bit of the act. They used to call it phreno-magnetism. Audiences lap it up. But I have to admit, six or seven curtain calls like yours I’ve never had.’
‘What? Six or seven? Oh, you.’
He was teasing her.
‘It was four, Bobby.’
‘I’m sure you said nine.’
‘It was four!’
Penny wondered whether he was about to practise his phrenology on her. She braced herself to resist. So she was surprised when he said, ‘So what I’m saying is, I want you to put your hands on the back of my head. Just here.’
‘Me?’
He turned his face away and indicated an area of his skull.
‘But I can’t. I don’t know what I’m doing.’
‘Just here,’ he said, gently. ‘I’ll talk you through it. I want you to understand.’
Blushing, she placed her fingertips tentatively on the back of his head.
‘I’m not sure, Bobby.’
‘But that’s it. That’s good. Now press with –’ (he had to work it out) ‘– the forefingers.’
She followed his instructions, and felt his head grow responsively heavy in her hands.
‘That’s it. Perfect. Now, that’s the area of the head concerned specifically with family relationships, home, loyalty and closeness. In the language of phrenology, it’s my organ of Consanguinity. Now, feel about, go on. Gently, that’s right. That’s very good. What can you tell about it?’
‘It’s raised.’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s like a bump!’
‘Yes.’
She explored some more.
‘Yes, there’s a definite bump there. Does everyone have it?’
‘Not at all. Some people have nothing there; some people actually have a dent.’
He turned his head to face her.
‘Penny, you know when people say, “You put your finger on it”?’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, you just literally had your finger on it. On what drives me. My enlarged organ of Consanguinity. Everything I do starts there.’
* * *
Jo Carver, better known as the Strong Lady, had not left town. But aside from unthinkingly crushing the glassware in pubs in the Lanes, she had done little to draw attention to herself. She was no freakishly massive woman, in any case: part of her stage appeal was that she looked and dressed like a perky, wasp-waisted dancer but at the same time could chop a breeze block in half with one blow from the back of her hand. She easily disappeared into the crowd, just so long as she resisted the impulse to use her superpowers.
Sometimes this wasn’t easy, though. Just a few hours ago, sheltering under a tree, she had seen three men – outside the police station, around sunrise – transferring a large, heavy sack from a van and carrying it up the steps, and she had very nearly called out, ‘Need a hand with that?’
But, for obvious reasons, she had not been much in the vicinity of the police station. Her main focus had been keeping tabs on Bobby Melba. The scene was still vivid in her memory: police bursting into her dressing room; the sergeant triumphantly holding aloft a red wig and a string of stolen pearls; above all, the sergeant thanking Bobby for his helpful tip-off.
Since her arrest and escape on Wednesday night, she had watched Melba’s every move from the shadows. She had seen him with his new actress girlfriend: the girlfriend who was with him right now in his digs in Ship Street, where the terrifying landlady was famously out each day between nine and eleven, leaving the place otherwise empty, and where an anonymous, slender young woman with a grievance – and with the useful ability to break down a side entrance with just her bare hands – could get in, and get out again, without anyone being the wiser.
* * *
Back at the station, Mrs Groynes was sitting at the typewriter. It was evident that typing was nothing new to her. She sandwiched a piece of carbon paper between two sheets, rolled them efficiently into the machine and was just about to start composing when she realised what she’d done.
‘Oh, my good gawd,’ she laughed. What a mistake! Confident as she was that she could talk her way out of most things, it would be very silly to have a carbon copy of this letter lying around in the police station. So she began again with one sheet, and wrote the following:
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
5 June, 1957
I, Jack Braithwaite, hereby confess to the murder of the critic A. S. Crystal, which I intend to commit later this evening. I do not regret what I am about to do. My
dear friend Arthur
Mrs Groynes stopped typing. She couldn’t remember the name of the playwright who had committed suicide in Luigi’s. ‘Arthur’ didn’t sound right. She adjusted the carriage of the typewriter and blocked out the last four words with heavy applications of the capital X.
what I am about to do. XX XXXX XXXXX XXXXXX A dear friend of mine was driven to suicide by Crystal, just ask Luigi, and I personally feel a deep and abiding grudge against the vile man which I can never overcome, coming as I do from Yorkshire where we can’t help it. I am confessing because I do not want police time wasted in following up other fanciful lines of enquiry, however plausible they might look at first glance. The killer is me, and I act alone, using a gun that no one knows I’ve got. And damn the man to hell, I say, because I am known not to mince my words and to write hard-hitting northern plays and so on.
After the murder I will take my own life, as I am a coward and would prefer not to hang, or go to trial or anything. I have spotted a sharp-edged sword at my landlady’s digs that will be just the ticket if I happen to drop the gun at the scene of the crime and therefore can’t use that to take my own life. Again, I am telling you this so that you don’t pursue other angles pointlessly. Honestly, you police are busy enough catching people cycling without their lights on. I cannot emphasise enough that although I am planning to commit a grave offence
Again, Mrs Groynes stopped and backspaced.
although I am planning to commit X XXXXX XXXXXX two grave offences, I do respect the police and would hate to be the cause of unnecessary detective efforts. I am a big fan in particular of Inspector Steine of the Brighton Constabulary, so if by chance this letter should fall into his hands, I will just say that what you do, sir, with your weekly broadcasts is brilliant, and that you should by rights be decorated as soon as convenient by our lovely young Queen. You seem to me to represent everything upright and honourable in our country today. Also, the public loves you.
But now I must
The phone rang. Mrs Groynes was torn. There were only a couple of minutes before Inspector Steine was due to arrive sporting his new haircut. But she had to answer. It might be the Leeds Police. She must take that message, even if in passing it on she got some of the details askew, being but a harmless, uneducated charlady with limited understanding.
‘Brighton Police Station. Miss Fitzherbert speaking,’ she said into the receiver, in a bright voice.
A voice on the other end announced, slowly, that it was a Detective Constable Ollerenshaw and could he speak to Sergeant… “oh, what was it, hang on, I’ve got it here somewhere –” But she interrupted. She didn’t have time.
‘You’d like to speak to Sergeant Brunswick?’
There was a pause. The pause got longer. ‘That’s right, love. Who were you again?’
‘I’m Inspector Steine’s secretary. Miss Fitzherbert. I’m afraid I’m alone in the office right now, but I have been fully briefed. I believe Sergeant Brunswick just wanted to check that in the week of August the eighth last year in Leeds, a certain act was playing at the City Varieties, the act being –’ she pretended to be quoting from a note ‘– a Professor Mesmer, Last of the Phrenologists.’
In the distance, Mrs Groynes heard the telltale noises of Steine’s arrival at the police station. She could hear his voice downstairs at the front desk, chatting with the desk sergeant. If only this man on the phone would hurry up.
‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘I’ve got the paper here. I’ll have to put the phone down. Only got one pair of hands.’
‘Well, do be quick, please,’ she said. ‘It’s of the utmost importance to the case.’ For the first time in all this, she was anxious. Steine was not the brightest of men, but if he arrived to find her impersonating a secretary, with a half-written murder confession from Jack Braithwaite sticking out of the office typewriter, even he might be a bit suspicious.
At the other end of the line, she could hear broadsheet pages being slowly turned, while the man hummed nonchalantly. Laughter from the hall below meant that at least the inspector hadn’t yet started on the stairs.
‘Hello?’ she said urgently, into the phone. ‘Hello? Oh, come on, come on.’
There was the sound of the receiver being picked up at the other end, then a pause.
‘Hello? You still there, lass?’ said the voice, at last.
‘Of course I’m still here!’
‘Well, there’s no need to be like that, young lady. Now, was it Mesmer, you said?’
‘Yes!’
‘Yes, I can confirm Professor Mesmer, Last of the Phrenologists, was performing at the City Varieties, on the bill with Frankie Lane, Arthur Askey, strong woman Jo Carver –’
Mrs Groynes hung up and raced back to the typewriter. Was there time for a final paragraph? But then she saw what she had written.
But now I must
She looked at the words, baffled. She had no recollection of what she had intended to write next. Now I must what? She couldn’t imagine. So again, she backspaced. She could hear Inspector Steine’s footsteps on the stairs. She ran quietly to the door and unlocked it. Then she rattled out the last few words.
XXX XXX X XXXX That’s it. Sorry about the mess, if I make a mess, that is. I’ll try not to. Bang bang, ta-ta,
Jack Braithwaite
She tore the sheet out of the typewriter, folded it and put it in the pocket of her overall. Why on earth had she written ‘Bang bang, ta-ta’ and all that stuff about the mess? Well, it was too late to change it now. As the inspector reached the door, she grabbed her mop and started to sing ‘Getting to Know You’ from the recent hit musical The King and I.
‘Morning, Mrs Groynes,’ said Inspector Steine, entering.
‘Ooh. Morning, dear. You startled me. That’s a lovely haircut, if I may say so.’
He looked around. ‘Where is everybody?’ he said.
‘No idea,’ she said. ‘They don’t tell me anything, and why should they?’
She reached into her pocket and drew out the letter. ‘But before I forget, I thought you’d like to know that this came for you.’