by Lynne Truss
‘Yes. But why do you—?’
‘I was there, too!’
‘Oh, I see.’
‘You’re the first person I’ve ever told. I mean, I can hardly talk much at the station about light-hearted stage comedies about rich people. When the inspector’s about, I have to read my monthly Plays and Players on the sly, tucked inside the Police Gazette.’
‘Well, wasn’t he good? Freddie, I mean.’
‘Good? He was flaming brilliant!’
‘Apparently they’ve cast Rex Harrison for the film,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘But I can’t quite imagine that, can you?’
Brunswick stopped walking, and looked at her. What an amazing woman this was. She knew about Rex Harrison being cast in The Reluctant Debutante in the part that belonged by right to Wilfrid Hyde-White? Who else would care about this but him? Who else would have an informed opinion? Who else would refer to Wilfrid Hyde-White as Freddie?
‘James?’ she said, puzzled.
And then, on a romantic impulse, he took her in his arms. As he pulled her close, she received the full force of his pungent aftershave – Cossack (‘for Men’) – but being well versed in acceptable feminine behaviour, she cleverly masked the gag reflex.
‘James?’ she said again, raising her face to his, and not breathing.
‘Mrs Thorpe!’ he exclaimed, and kissed her.
If we have started with a pause, it is deliberate. Because, back at the police station, the days of peace are about to end. Later on, all those present will remember how agreeable things were on this seemingly humdrum rainy Tuesday in the middle of September. Mrs Groynes is having a sit-down, while Brunswick whistles softly to himself, scanning the latest Picturegoer, and Twitten makes another scholarly note with a pencil. All is well in their world. The kettle makes comforting contracting noises as it cools. A clock ticks. Everyone has forgotten about the minor mystery of Barrow-Boy Cecil’s disappearance – everyone apart from Mrs Groynes, who is reliably quick at putting two and two together.
But beyond the police station, key events are taking place – events that will require someone to put two and two together, plus two, and two, and two, and two, and two. At the tiny Polyfoto shop in Western Road, for example, the manager returns from his lunch hour and finds the door hanging open and the place ransacked. Cameras have been stolen from the portrait studio at the back; furniture has been knocked over; storage boxes tipped out on the floor.
‘Len?’ he says, a quiver in his voice. He can’t work this out. Has Len the Photographer done this? Has he gone berserk after ten years of taking pictures in here?
And then the manager turns round and sees Len lying unmoving on the marbled lino with blood puddling around his head. The sight makes him yelp and stagger. Then he picks up the telephone and asks the operator for the police.
At about the same time, Ben Oliver of the Brighton Evening Argus receives a phone call from a woman with a strong Germanic accent who refuses to give her name. She is evidently in distress, but wants to tell him something important. She says she is a psychiatrist who’s been working for several months at an unnamed hospital for the criminally insane in the county of Berkshire (clearly she means Broadmoor), attempting to treat an inmate with a history of extreme violence.
‘They von’t tell me any-zing,’ she gasps, ‘but I know some-zing hass happen. I sink he hass escape!’
Oliver raises an eyebrow. This news is interesting, but he doesn’t see what the Argus has to do with it. ‘Can you give me his name, please?’
‘Of course,’ she says, trying to calm herself. ‘His name iss Chow-tza. Geoffrey Chow-tza. C-H-A-U-C-E-R.’
Oliver, who has just switched the phone receiver to his left ear in preparation for making notes, pauses, and briefly considers just hanging up at once. Geoffrey Chaucer? ‘But that’s the name of … well, that’s the name of Geoffrey Chaucer, madam. English poet.’
‘I know! Ve talk of ziss coincidence many time, belief me.’
Bemused, Oliver picks up a pen. He has to admit it’s all been a bit slow recently in the crime-correspondent world, since the killing of Chambers by local hero Inspector Steine in August. Oliver has been so stuck for decent stories that he’s been working towards a somewhat lame feature about an American academic who’s been in town studying ‘crowd behaviour’ (whatever that is). He might as well establish the facts about this escaped Chaucer character, such as they are.
So he makes a note. ‘Broadmoor?’ he writes. ‘Escape. Geoffrey Chaucer – REALLY?’ Then he draws a circle around ‘REALLY?’
‘And why are you telling me this, exactly, madam?’ he asks.
‘Because he iss obsess wizz killing polizemen, and in particular he has grudge – “grudge”? Iss this correct?’
Oliver considers. ‘You mean, a grudge against someone?’
‘Precisely. It iss a grudge against a policeman in your own town of Brighton!’
Oliver finally sits up straight. ‘Please tell me your name, madam.’
‘Nein, nein, not important. But you must alert ze police! Geoffrey kills policemen, and not only zat! He cut off head and boil in bucket!’
‘Ugh,’ says Oliver, who is now making proper notes in shorthand. ‘Why don’t you alert the police yourself?’
‘Why? You zink I not try? Zey never answer ze telephone!’
‘And this policeman? I assume we’re talking about Inspector Steine?’
‘Jah! Natürlich! ’ says the woman. ‘His name is Steine.’
‘Oh, my goodness.’
‘Yes! And if I were zis Inspector Steine, I would run at once for ze hill!’
In the tube room at Gosling’s Department Store, it has been a very busy day, and Denise Perks is at full stretch, dealing with umpteen canisters a minute. If anyone had only heard of repetitive strain injury in the 1950s, she’d have been able to take this shop to the cleaners. The dozen girls working alongside her today are fast, too, but it speeds things up if Denise, as supervisor, takes each canister out of the basket as it arrives, unscrews it, and passes the contents to one of the others for processing.
It is just after lunch when she takes one such canister, and tips out something unexpected: a severed human finger with a ring on it, plus a small heap of crushed plastic, and a note that reads:
DON’T TELL MRS GROYNES ABOUT THIS OR SHORTY WILL BE NEXT
This is an unpleasant surprise, to say the least.
‘Oh, my God!’ Denise exclaims, unable to moderate her reaction. In her defence, you don’t see a human body part fall out of a canister every day.
‘Something wrong, Miss Perks?’ says one of the other girls, looking up.
‘No, no!’ she says quickly. ‘Keep working.’
But Denise recognises the ring. It belongs to fellow gang member Barrow-Boy Cecil! What is happening? Has someone kidnapped him? Are they truly threatening Shorty? As her mind races, she recognises the significance of the shards of brightly coloured plastic mixed with springs and a little key. They are parts of a clockwork bunny.
Unaware of all this activity elsewhere, Twitten continues to read, and is so absorbed that he hardly notices the arrival of Mr Lloyd, the station’s permanently miserable post-delivery man who daily, with a lot of wheezing and grumbling, dumps one of the large sacks of letters for Inspector Steine just inside the door. Today, Mr Lloyd pointedly pauses at the doorway, hand on handle, clearly waiting for the others to pay him attention.
It has been observed by many employees of Brighton Police Station that the notably dandruffy Mr Lloyd can never just shuffle in, make a delivery, struggle for breath a bit, collect the outgoing post from its designated pigeonhole, and shuffle out again: he always has to start a conversation. This is not because he is sociable by nature. Being the long-standing shop steward of a major union, he is a professional troublemaker who tirelessly angles for any affront or infringement (or misspoken word) worthy of protest, rebuke or even industrial action. As a consequence, people are very careful around him an
d speak little. He once attempted to call the whole branch out on strike because a boy in the pay office called him ‘Mr Death Rattle’ (in a whisper) when he was twenty yards away.
‘Now I’ve got here something for young Constable Twitten,’ he says, locating a large envelope in the top tray of his trolley but not passing it over. He wheezes a few times, while he gets his breath. ‘But I have to tell you (wheeze) this is highly irregular, and I am in two minds (wheeze) what to do about it. Deliver it or not? In fact, should I even be touching it?’
He holds the envelope and stares at it, as if deciding.
‘You see, a very pleasant and polite young lady handed it in at the front desk as I was setting out on my rounds and said it was urgent. So … (multiple wheezes, for dramatic effect). So, seeing as it was not received into the building via the agreed union-approved channels … well.’
Brunswick and Mrs Groynes look at each other, but say nothing. They know better than to interrupt this display of union muscle. Twitten opens his mouth to speak, but Mrs Groynes says ‘Shh, dear’, so he closes it again.
They all look at each other. Twitten looks (quite hard) at Mr Lloyd; Mr Lloyd looks challengingly at Mrs Groynes; Mrs Groynes looks steadily at Brunswick; Brunswick looks at Twitten. It’s like a stand-off without the guns, and then – in a flash – it’s all over. Because the telephone in the inspector’s office loudly rings (‘Oh, my good gawd,’ yelps Mrs G, clutching her chest), and an unknown woman of grave proportions, in a mauve tweed suit and small bottle-green felt hat, appears in the open doorway, blocking it entirely. Mr Lloyd slings the envelope at Twitten, and smartly turns to go.
‘Steine’s office?’ demands the dragoness, entering.
Confusion reigns. This woman is very intimidating. ‘Um, yes,’ says Twitten, standing up. ‘May I help you?’
‘I’m the inspector’s new SECRETARY. Miss LENNON. And I have brought whistles as a gift.’
Stopping only to slam two silver-plated whistles in front of the startled Brunswick and Twitten, she strides into Steine’s office and answers his phone.
‘The office of Inspector STEINE,’ she booms. ‘Miss LENNON speaking. How may I HELP you?’
While the postman quickly wheels his trolley out, Brunswick and Mrs Groynes exchange anxious glances while Twitten, absent-mindedly, opens the envelope, unaware that the contents will threaten to alter the course of his life.
‘What just happened?’ hisses Brunswick. ‘Who’s Miss flaming Lennon? Why is the phone ringing again?’
‘I don’t know, sir,’ says Twitten, bewildered.
He draws out the contents of the envelope and is bewildered further. It seems to be a photograph of Terence Chambers outside the Metropole Hotel in the company of Mrs Groynes. Twitten gapes. He says, ‘Oh, crikey.’ He looks up at Mrs G and then back at the picture. This is enormous. He has in his hand incontrovertible evidence of Mrs Groynes’s true criminal nature! He can use this to expose her, at last! Oh, crikey, he thinks. Oh-crikey-crikey-flip!
‘What have you got there, dear?’ says Mrs Groynes, moving closer.
‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘Nothing.’ Quickly sliding the photograph back into the envelope, he pathetically picks up the whistle, saying, ‘Gosh, look, Mrs G.’
‘At what? It’s a bleeding whistle, dear. You said “crikey”.’
‘Yes, but … oh, look, it’s engraved in tiny letters. Is yours the same, Sergeant Brunswick, sir?’
Miss Lennon emerges from Steine’s office and stands looking at them all, big hands on ample hips. They all shrink back; they can’t help it.
‘I’d like a cup of tea with TWO SUGARS, please, Mrs Char. But you must get rid of that kettle, it’s against regulations and a serious FIRE HAZARD.’
No one says anything. They are too shocked. Did this woman just call Mrs Groynes ‘Mrs Char’?
She pulls on the locked door of Mrs Groynes’s stash-cupboard.
‘And I’d like the key to this AT ONCE, or I’ll get the station carpenter to come up tomorrow and open it BY FORCE.’
Two
In some ways the attack on Len the Photographer was a godsend. Not to Len himself, perhaps (he nursed the headache for weeks). But the call to investigate the Polyfoto shop break-in gave Brunswick and Twitten a perfect pretext for fleeing the awkwardness of the police station: awkwardness that had arrived in the shape – the emphatically tall and well-upholstered shape – of Miss Roberta Lennon, MCAPS (Member of the Chartered Association of Police Secretaries).
‘I can’t quite believe what just happened, sir,’ said Twitten, as the two men trotted with relief down the stairs to the entrance hall.
‘Nor can I, son. Did you notice how she made the room look smaller? She’s like flaming King Kong.’
‘In fairness, I suppose the inspector was very much in need of clerical assistance, but still … ’ Twitten frowned. He really didn’t know what to make of this development. A fifth person landing on them without warning was hard to process, although he had to admit that the look on Mrs Groynes’s face – of sheer, slack-jawed discombobulation – had been delightful to observe. In his three months on the job, he had never seen her even slightly wrong-footed before, let alone discombobulated.
But talking of things that were too hard to take in, what about this incendiary picture?
‘You’re not bringing that with us, Twitten?’ Brunswick indicated the envelope Twitten was holding to his chest.
‘Ah.’ He looked down at it. ‘No, sir. I suppose not.’
‘What is it, anyway? Who’s it from?’
‘Oh, it’s just from, um … ’ Panic rose in his chest. There was no way he could explain the importance of this photograph to the sergeant. ‘It’s from … I think it’s from bally Miss Holden, sir,’ he said. ‘I think. I mean, yes, of course it is, what am I saying? Ha-ha, I mean it is definitely from Miss Holden because it’s … um … ’ He held up the envelope as if in proof. ‘Because it’s … definitely … from her.’
‘The Milk Girl?’
‘You remember her, sir! Well, that’s excellent.’
‘It was only a few weeks ago, son.’
‘Ha! You’re right. So, yes, I mean the lovely, lovely ex-Milk Girl who promoted milk consumption by appearing at beauty contests and opening milk bars, and is a bit self-involved, and is going up to Oxford to study classics, and calls me Peregrine all the time when I wish she bally wouldn’t, and lives in Norfolk.’
Brunswick made a face and nudged him. ‘I told you she fancied you, didn’t I?’ he said.
‘Yes, sir. You did tell me that – several times, in fact, despite my heartfelt protests. But I have to admit, to judge by the contents of this, I think she jolly well does.’
‘Red-hot love letter, then, is it?’
Twitten reddened. Why not? He was already in so deep. ‘It bally is, sir, yes. Scorchingly so. Miss Holden is a very, very passionate young lady.’
‘Well, good for you.’
Relations between Twitten and Brunswick had recovered somewhat since the dramatic happenings in August. On Mrs Groynes’s firm advice, Twitten had stopped openly psychoanalysing the sergeant (helpfully pointing out his deep-seated problem with ‘self-esteem’ and so on), and this development alone had improved their relationship no end.
Twitten assumed a brave expression. ‘But given how very red-hot this letter is, sir, I think I’ll just pop it in my locker, if you don’t mind waiting.’ And with that, he took the stairs to the basement.
But once safely in the locker room, with his little silver key already in the lock, he paused. Was this sensible? It was true that Mrs Groynes had not seen the contents of this envelope, but she had obviously sensed something significant – not least from the way he’d unguardedly gasped ‘Oh, crikey’, and looked from the picture up to her, and then back again. Leaving it locked in a flimsy metal box downstairs on the premises would hardly serve to foil a genius master criminal, especially one with zero conscience, everything to lose, and easy access to exp
losives.
He sneaked another look at the picture, and felt a thrill. Golly, it was so incriminating! It must have been taken just before last Bank Holiday Monday. He imagined it being presented in court at the Old Bailey, and Mrs Groynes fainting in the dock. He imagined it emblazoned on a dozen national newspaper front pages, under the headline ‘EVIL POLICE STATION CHARWOMAN BROUGHT TO JUSTICE’. Obviously, he briefly wondered who had sent it to him, but there wasn’t time to think about that. Right now, the only important issue was how to keep the evidence beyond the reach of Mrs Groynes. He left the locker room and stood outside it, breathing hard.
And then he heard her voice.
Flipping hedgehogs! Mrs G was already coming for him! And he was cornered! There was no exit down here in the basement except through the post room, which was, firmly, Postal Workers Only. From the top of the stairs, he heard her ask, ‘Down here, Sergeant, dear? Popped to the latrines, has he?’
Twitten chewed his lip and whimpered. Should he tuck the envelope into his tunic, perhaps? Or put it in his helmet? But then, what if Mrs Groynes simply killed him? She might murder him in cold blood, just to get her hands on the photograph! If only he hadn’t said ‘crikey’!
‘You all right there, son?’ called Brunswick, down the stairs. ‘We ought to talk to this Len bloke before he gets carted off to hospital. And Mrs G wants a word; she’s coming down.’
‘Right, sir,’ he called back, his voice unsteady. ‘Thank you, sir. Nearly done!’
And then Twitten spotted Mr Lloyd’s trolley. It was standing just outside the nearby WCs. A few yards further on was the entrance to the post room with the forbiddingly unpunctuated notice ‘POST ROOM PERSONNEL ONLY THIS MEANS YOU KEEP OUT’ roughly glued to the door. A light trail of dandruff led towards it on the shiny tiled floor, indicating (in case there was any doubt) that this was Mr Lloyd’s regular route. Taking a pen from his tunic pocket, Twitten quickly readdressed the envelope to the first person who came to mind: Pandora Holden, The Old Rectory, Waffham, North Norfolk, and slid it in with the outgoing post.
