by Lynne Truss
Twitten, taken by surprise, snorted derisively.
‘Twitten, could you not make that noise, please?’
‘Sorry, sir.’
‘You’ve been told about it enough times.’
‘I have, sir.’ In the past month, Mrs Groynes had cautioned the constable more than once about how this particular noise was guaranteed to ‘put people’s backs up’ and could one day earn him ‘a right old punch up the bracket’ (which apparently meant a punch on the nose!).
‘But the notion of him committing suicide, sir! Well, let’s just say suicide was a problematic inference from the start. I mean, gosh, this man was surely murdered, sir – and presumably for noticing something going on in this store, which I am convinced is hiding all manner of secrets. It’s like a bally Aladdin’s Cave, isn’t it, sir? An Aladdin’s Cave of clues. I bally love it here.’
While Twitten had thoroughly enjoyed his month of quiet sociological study, this was more like it.
Brunswick shook his head. ‘I don’t understand. What do you love here, son? It’s a shop.’
‘But look, sir!’ Twitten gestured expansively. ‘It’s so jolly stimulating! The bustle, the commerce, the lift going up and down, the senseless jumble of unrelated goods. A known criminal working as the manager’s assistant, and staff who are conspicuously observant. And have you talked to anyone about the vacuum system they use to move the cash around the building? The lady doing the cookery demonstrations – the one with the pencilled eyebrows – told me how Mr Gosling got a cut-price local engineer to put it in, and consequently it’s much too fierce. She allowed me to pop one of the canisters in the tube in the wall, and it nearly ripped my sleeve off!’
Brunswick laughed. Twitten’s enthusiasm for solving crimes was the sole facet of his personality that wasn’t irritating. ‘Well, all right. But we should be going now, son. Milhouse’s hotel next, I think.’
‘Yes, sir. Of course, sir. It’s right near the old wax museum, did you realise? Isn’t that where you were last shot in the leg?’
Without discussing their options for descent, they headed for the stairs. The lift (to all floors) might be part of the jolly stimulating landscape of the store, but on the only occasion they had chosen to ride it, the elderly operator had refused to slide open the metal gates until he’d aligned the floor levels perfectly, and it had taken him six tries.
‘Ooh, by the way,’ said Twitten, as they trotted down to the second floor, ‘I warned Mr Gosling to be wary of Miss Vine, sir.’
‘You did what?’
‘Look, I know she’s jolly pretty when she’s crying, sir, but that’s no reason to forget what we already know about her dangerously devious nature.’
Brunswick stopped on the first-floor landing and glared at him. ‘Twitten—’ he began.
‘No, really, sir. I’ve been thinking back to events earlier in the summer, and it occurs to me that you were never perhaps aware of the whole story.’
‘Look, she said she sent letters explaining everything.’
‘But that was obviously a lie, sir!’
‘You can’t say that. She cried her eyes out when she found out I never got them.’
They set off down the next flight of stairs, Brunswick taking the lead.
‘Oh, sir,’ begged Twitten, as he trotted behind. ‘Please see reason. Miss Vine is a trained con artist with years of experience. I happen to know that as a child she helped in the callous deception and murder of at least half a dozen wealthy women.’
‘Perhaps she didn’t know what was going on. Like you said, she was a kid.’
‘You shouldn’t trust a single word from her, sir. Especially, if I may say so, when she’s assuring you how bally wonderful you are.’
They had reached the ground floor, and Brunswick turned. ‘Well, I notice she didn’t say anything to you at all, Twitten. She didn’t even look at you.’
‘That’s true, sir. And I won’t pretend it wasn’t hurtful.’
‘Ha!’
‘But perhaps she ignored me,’ said Twitten, lowering his voice, ‘because she knew that trying to trap me with her damsel-in-distress act would be a waste of time, sir.’
‘How do you reckon that, then?’
‘Well, sir, luckily for our investigations, I am proof against her; I am impervious to her charms.’
Back at the police station, Inspector Steine sat alone in his office with the door closed. It was deathly quiet. From time to time he heard the muffled ring of a telephone, and the muffled soft-soft-LOUD-soft-soft tones of Miss Lennon speaking on it. On each occasion a brief spark of hope would light within him (did someone want to speak to him?), but then be dolefully extinguished when the phone was hung up, and silence – punctuated with short Gatling-gun bursts of high-speed typing – resumed.
He was surprised by how much he missed Mrs Groynes. All these years he had mainly ignored her, especially when she was wittering, but the office was bleak and sunless without her. When she wasn’t swabbing, she was dusting; when she wasn’t whistling tunes from popular musicals, she was popping a nice cup of tea on the desk; when she wasn’t avidly studying the Police Gazette and making careful notes (what a peculiar little woman she was!), she was laughing her throaty, cackling laugh. What was it she always said? ‘Well, dear, all this standing around jawing won’t buy the baby a quarter pound of peanut brittle, now, will it?’ Or sometimes it was, ‘All this standing around jawing won’t get poor Rosalind Franklin the recognition she deserves for helping to discover Deoxyribonucleic Acid.’ All these years he had meant to ask her what she meant by the word ‘jawing’, and now the opportunity had gone for ever.
Thankfully, there were pressing police matters to address. On his desk was a sheaf of papers, organised for him by his efficient new secretary, with a helpful note pinned to each. All of these might help, Miss Lennon had said in a kindly tone, to distract him from thoughts of the ESCAPED MANIAC who was apparently FIXATED on CUTTING HIS HEAD OFF.
‘Pull yourself together, Geoffrey,’ he said, and picked them up, determined to give them his full attention. First was a letter from a concerned citizen demanding urgent road safety action at an accident black spot on the London Road (‘I believe this could be a good publicity opportunity,’ said Miss Lennon’s accompanying note); then, a less-than-glowing report from Twitten’s police driving instructor (‘Our dear young constable is not a natural at the wheel, alas’); an official police docket authorising the purchase of a new car for personal use, up to the value of £750 (‘Congratulations, Inspector! I will research the models available at this price, always remembering that purchase tax on such an item is a shocking 50%’); three notes from Clive Hoskisson of the Mirror, demanding an interview (‘I’m very sorry. This ghastly man won’t take no for an answer’); and lastly, a letter – out of the blue – from Adelaide Vine, whose very name it pained him to see (‘This looks private, so I did not read’).
Adelaide Vine? The beautiful young Brighton Belle who had wormed her way into his affections by pretending to be his niece only to be exposed as a con artist? He shuffled the papers’ order. It didn’t help. Despite the serious draw of the new car, he extracted her letter and began to read.
Dear Uncle Geoffrey,
I expect you are surprised to hear from me after all the things that happened in the summer. You probably blame me for everything – but I assure you, you can’t blame me more than I blame myself. I’m afraid I allowed myself to be influenced by some VERY bad people who knew about my true connection to you even before I knew of it myself.
But they are gone now; I am free from them. And I am working at Gosling’s, the department store, in quite a good position. As you know, being a Brighton Belle was only a seasonal—
The inspector put down the letter, horrified. Was this artful young woman still claiming a family connection? Why else would she address him as ‘Uncle Geoffrey’? Good heavens, this woman had quite recently threatened his life! And Twitten had made it very clear to him after
Miss Vine’s swift disappearance that she was not his niece, and had only pretended to be because she hoped to swindle him out of an inheritance.
He really must give no further thought to Miss Vine. But when he picked up the material about traffic accidents, the news that three shop employees had been knocked down at the same spot in the course of one weekend outside Gosling’s did surprisingly little to take his mind off her. He picked up Adelaide’s letter again and turned it over.
You will ask why I didn’t leave Brighton. The thing is, I couldn’t. It broke my heart to think how I had been persuaded by others to abuse your trust and our close family relationship. Would it be possible for us to meet, dear Uncle? Mother always said you had a forgiving nature. Even if you can’t forgive me, I would love to return to you a brooch of hers with the Penrose family crest on it. She left it to me, but since meeting you and getting to know you, I feel it should be yours.
He didn’t know what to think. The painful subject of the Penrose family fortune was one he had firmly put behind him. But when he closed his eyes, he could picture that old cameo brooch. His sister had indeed purloined it when she ran away, all those years ago. If Adelaide Vine really had it in her possession, didn’t that mean … ?
He shuffled his papers again. How about this road safety thing? There was no scope for wistful thoughts of sham nieces to intrude on that. ‘Concentrate, Geoffrey,’ he told himself, taking a deep breath. Attached to the concerned-citizen letter was a file of cuttings on the effectiveness of zebra crossings, presumably supplied by Miss Lennon. He was glad to read the entire contents of the file, and for a while successfully banished all thought of pulchritudinous young female relatives from his mind. But then – oh, no! Visions of beautiful Adelaide getting knocked down by a car! Beautiful Adelaide shrieking: ‘Uncle Geoffrey! You could have prevented this!’ as a small child stands in the path of a speeding lorry! – and he thought, No, no, stop this now, and went out to consult with Miss Lennon, whom he found arranging his various trophies on the shelves of the large built-in cupboard. The surprise of this, given that the cupboard had been mysteriously locked for many years, did momentarily take his mind off everything else.
‘Miss Lennon, it’s open!’ he said, delighted. ‘I was always asking why this cupboard was locked, but no one could tell me.’
She smiled at him. ‘I am so pleased you are GLAD, Inspector. I threatened to demand a CARPENTER, and the next morning the key was in the LOCK and the shelves were EMPTY. I wonder what was in here before?’
He had honestly never thought about it. When you couldn’t see inside a thing, why would you speculate on its contents?
‘I have no idea,’ he said.
‘But you MUST have been CURIOUS?’
‘Well, I always assumed … ’ He furrowed his brow. ‘Helmets?’
‘Helmets?’ Her smile became somewhat glassy, as she tried to mask her reaction to this terrible guess.
He thought about it. ‘Yes. Old helmets, if anything.’
Briskly changing the subject, she pointed to the file he was carrying. ‘Ah, you saw the CUTTINGS I located.’
‘Yes.’
‘Now, you might think this IMPERTINENT of me, Inspector, but I have experience in this area. I was working in the police station in SLOUGH when the very first zebra crossing was inaugurated six years ago, outside BOOTS THE CHEMIST. Once people understood what it WAS, it was a LIFESAVER. I have been PASSIONATE about them ever since.’
‘We do have zebra crossings in Brighton already, Miss Lennon. This isn’t darkest Africa.’
‘Well, of course—’
‘And we found, at first, that they actually caused more accidents than they prevented. People dithered on the kerb, making cars run into one another, or they just marched out expecting cars to stop and got knocked down. I wrote one of my entertaining BBC talks on the subject. It was reprinted in The Listener, as I recall, with an amusing illustration. I received five pounds.’
‘Yes, but people have become accustomed to the crossings by now, Inspector. And, you see, what I’m thinking is that if you opened it YOURSELF, in a well-publicised CEREMONY, it would show the public that you aren’t intimidated by this HOMICIDAL MANIAC who is on the loose. I mean to say, you surely AREN’T intimidated, Inspector?’
He hesitated to respond to such a leading question, partly because the honest answer was, Of course I am.
‘Come! You are too MODEST, Inspector!’
‘Am I?’
‘Of course you are not intimidated!’
‘Aren’t I?’ He was wavering. When Miss Lennon stated the case with such conviction, for a moment he could almost believe it was true. On the other hand, while this Chaucer man was still indisputably at large, wasn’t it prudent to keep out of sight?
‘But allow me to suggest another reason, a FAR more important one,’ she carried on, cutting off all negative thoughts of maniacs. ‘Your appearance at such an opening would also help quash your current unfortunate image in Brighton as a MAN OF VIOLENCE!’
‘What?’
‘Yes,’ she continued. ‘Instead of being the hard-boiled policeman of popular MYTH, REVILED in the newspapers for indiscriminately shooting people at close quarters, you will be seen as the kind of CARING policeman who uses his powers to SAVE LIVES.’
Steine was stung. Man of violence? He had always supposed that the public regarded him as a kindly authority figure, thanks to his relaxed, informative talks about law on the Home Service. He was sure he’d been introduced on Desert Island Discs in precisely such endearing terms. ‘Are you saying I’m known as a sort of authorised assassin, Miss Lennon?’
She gave him a sideways look. ‘You didn’t KNOW?’
‘No.’ This was terrible. He sat down at Brunswick’s desk and put his head in his hands. ‘I mean … hard-boiled?’
‘Oh, dear INSPECTOR,’ she laughed, ‘I talk only of public PERCEPTION, not of your true character. People simply believe what they are told! And thanks to the enormous publicity surrounding the shooting of Mr Chambers – well, you can hardly be SURPRISED?’
But Inspector Steine was surprised. In fact, he was stunned. The injustice of it! But he saw the solution clearly. He must endorse this suggestion of Miss Lennon’s!
‘Look. Miss Lennon. How do we go about this zebra-crossing business? Do I talk to someone at the council?’
‘Would you like me to set things UP, Inspector? It will be a simple matter for me. Given your ENTHUSIASM, I think we should act IMMEDIATELY.’
‘Yes, do that, Miss Lennon. Right away.’
‘Very good. Despite the lunatic still being at large?’
A moment’s hesitation, then a decision. ‘Yes. Yes, there are important matters at stake here. It’s worth the risk. Just don’t tell Twitten or Brunswick; they’ll only argue with me about it.’
‘Oh, good. Well DONE, sir. That’s the SPIRIT!’ She smiled conspiratorially. ‘MUM’s the WORD.’
The inspector felt quite excited now that the London Road zebra crossing was going to become a reality.
‘Tell them I’d like – you know, those flashing beacon things.’
She picked up a notepad and pencil. ‘Of course, sir.’
‘Each end of the crossing, with stripy poles.’
‘I think the Belishas are standard, Inspector.’
‘Yes, but flashing?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘All right, but do the tops have to be orange? Is that the law? Can we have pink? It seems more of a Brighton colour.’
She made a note. ‘I’ll check.’
‘Excellent.’ Steine felt better. He had enjoyed making decisions again. And Miss Lennon was so agreeable! ‘I had no idea how marvellous it would be to have a secretary,’ he said. ‘But I have to say it, Miss Lennon: you are a pearl.’
She blushed. ‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Oh, and you can leave the trophies for now.’
‘Very well.’ She went back to her desk. She had been strangely softened by
his words of praise. When she added, ‘You’ve made a very good decision, sir,’ she noticeably didn’t bellow any of the words.
Sitting down, she remembered something. ‘Oh, and by the way, Inspector—’ She held up a small, sparkling gemstone. ‘I found this valuable diamond at the back of that cupboard. So if it really was helmets being stored in there, they were of an unusually opulent variety.’
Their inquiries complete at the department store, Brunswick and Twitten were just setting off (in the rain) for Professor Milhouse’s hotel when they spotted Mrs Groynes in the weekday shopping crowd. It would have been easy to miss her, especially through the thicket of umbrellas. She was coming towards them, dressed like a normal housewife, complete with unflattering concertina see-through rain-bonnet, with its tapes tied firmly in a bow beneath her chin. They knew her at once, however. Something about her lightness of tread; something about the intelligent angle of her head. Beside her – being carefully shepherded along – was a blond boy in shorts who was familiar to both of them as the child normally seen leaning against walls in the centre of town, absorbed in the Beano.
‘Mrs G!’ shouted Twitten, excitedly waving at her. ‘Look, it’s us!’
He expected her to be pleased to see them. But when she looked up and registered the situation, she shot Twitten a dark look of such fear and loathing that he stopped in his tracks. Then she turned her head and spoke quickly to the boy, who nodded.
Twitten was puzzled. ‘Mrs G?’ he called.
She did not respond. Instead, she grabbed the boy’s hand and ran across the road, narrowly avoiding being hit by a Number 46 trolley-bus, while traffic tooted and brakes screeched.
‘What the—?’ exclaimed Brunswick. ‘Why the flaming heck did she run off like that?’
‘I honestly don’t know, sir.’
‘She could have got herself run over.’
‘I know.’
‘And the way she looked at you. Here, have you been accusing the poor woman of being a female Al Capone again? Was that why she upped and left us, because if I find out it was—’
