Psycho by the Sea

by Lynne Truss

  But Twitten doesn’t want to hear this, and darts off towards the police station, glad to see the back of her.

  Why is he so cross with Pandora? Well, not just because she brought the photograph straight back to him without checking. There is also the way she blabbed to the man from the Mirror. Last night, over dinner, happening to notice Mrs Thorpe’s depressed demeanour, Pandora decided to entertain everyone with the amusing tale of her meeting with Clive Hoskisson in the tea room – how she sat down with him and described what actually happened when Terence Chambers was shot.

  ‘He was so interested, Mrs Thorpe,’ she gushed. ‘He said he would write a big article about it in his newspaper. He said mine was an outstandingly helpful first-hand account, and that they might put me on the front page. He seemed to love the detail about how the inspector didn’t actually know it was Chambers he had shot. I think no one ever mentioned that before.’

  As it turned out, Pandora had seriously overestimated how much her anecdote would amuse her fellow diners. While Twitten sat frozen in horror, the story made no impact at all on Mrs Thorpe, who continued to dwell on her humiliation at the hands of the sergeant. ‘Are you sure Sergeant Brunswick didn’t say anything to you?’ she asked Twitten for at least the fifth time. ‘And why are you gaping like that, Constable? Do close your mouth, at least.’

  As Twitten now canters downhill towards the police station, his annoyance with his ersatz girlfriend gives way to profound apprehension. If there is a dastardly plot against Mrs Groynes, there is clearly another against Inspector Steine. If a madman doesn’t cut the inspector’s head off in the very near future, Pandora’s revelations to the Mirror will destroy him anyway. This has been a bally terrible few days. First Mrs Groynes banished herself from the office and found her position as gang leader under attack; now Inspector Steine is in the firing line, both physically and in terms of reputation; and as for Sergeant Brunswick, where was he last night?

  ‘And on top of all that, I don’t even know how I really feel!’ Twitten inwardly wails, as he turns off North Street to wend his way past the big central Post Office and towards the police station. Since yesterday’s epiphanies courtesy of Adelaide Vine, he doubts the honesty of all his own reactions. His certainties are certain no more. He thinks: I am shocked by this surreal physical threat to Inspector Steine, but on the other hand don’t I secretly desire him to be out of my way? I am friends with Mrs Groynes and I bally well offered to help her, but is the so-called friendship of Mrs Groynes just a cynical device on her part for holding me back, and why was she burning these files yesterday at Inspector Steine’s house? Did she mean for me not to find out this plot against the inspector? Clive Hoskisson is the enemy, but why should I continue to collude in the lie that Inspector Steine is a flipping hero?

  Thank goodness for the reliable sergeant, he thinks, as he enters the station. At least he’s predictable to the point of irritating dullness. But then Baines the desk sergeant stops him before he can go upstairs. Looking serious, Baines indicates a distraught-looking woman in a damp silk headscarf decorated with a border of bluebells.

  ‘Auntie Violet?’ says Twitten, recognising her. ‘I mean, sorry, aren’t you the sergeant’s aunt? I’m Constable Twitten, I visited your flat once. Why are you here?’

  The woman grasps his arm, and for a moment he thinks, Sergeant Brunswick is dead ! But it isn’t as bad as that.

  ‘It seems the sergeant didn’t return home last night, Constable,’ says Baines, with a grimace. ‘From what I can gather, he left here just before six o’clock and he hasn’t been heard of since.’

  At Gosling’s, Mister Harold is extremely pleased with the new clock.

  ‘Well done, Miss Vine,’ he says.

  ‘To be honest, sir,’ she replies, ‘I didn’t expect the camels and palm trees and pyramids to be quite so prominent. Are you sure you like it?’

  He waves away her concerns. He loves everything about this new purchase. It is huge and gilded, was bought at a knock-down price and even (after an argument) installed for free! If people start referring to Gosling’s as the Camel Shop in the years to come, that will be fine by Mister Harold. Does the hoity-toity Hannington’s department store have an enormous golden camel-and-palm-tree-and-pyramid clock on its frontage, grandly chiming the hours and quarters for the benefit of all? No, he rather thinks it doesn’t. Does Hannington’s want such a clock? Well, they might not in theory, but they will be green with envy once they’ve clapped eyes on this one.

  The clock’s casing is fully five feet across; the whole thing weighs more than a hundredweight; the Egyptian-themed decorations either side of the twenty-four-inch face are artistically not bad. Mister Harold’s clock now sits atop a lintel on the second-floor frontage, in a newly made aperture, where it will chime in glory for decades to come. The installers wanted to use expensive chains and concrete to fix it in position, but it would have taken three days for the housing to set firm, so Adelaide said no: the clock must be ready to start striking on Friday lunchtime, and besides, the cost would cancel out some of the pleasure of the bargain. Mister Harold agreed. He didn’t want to wait three days to start telling people the story of the exotic clock: how it was originally ordered for a British bank in Cairo, but then swiftly decommissioned at the time of Suez on account of its giveaway Westminster chimes.

  As the reader will have gathered, the opening of the zebra crossing at noon on Friday is destined to bring many strands of our narrative together. But one man, above all, must be there: Inspector Steine. And at the same moment that the troubled Twitten is reaching the police station and finding the office deserted, that the triumphant Adelaide Vine is looking down with satisfaction at the street below, and that Jimmy the Gimp is making his first (and much too violent) attempt at operating the Gosling’s lift, Inspector Steine is still at home and refusing to leave his house. He makes this decision when he opens his front door and finds not only the stolid Constable Jenkins already outside in the rain, but a Black Maria with its back doors open and its engine idling.

  ‘Jenkins,’ he says flatly. And then, with tears in his eyes, ‘I can’t stand this.’ And with that, he shuts the door, and leans against it.

  ‘Sir?’ calls Jenkins, knocking.

  ‘Go away, Jenkins.’

  ‘But, sir … ? I’m afraid I must insist.’

  ‘Go away.’

  Inside, Inspector Steine turns to Miss Lennon, who arrived unnoticed by the guards ten minutes ago, letting herself in quite easily by way of the back gate.

  ‘Brought the MEAT WAGON again, did he?’ she asks boomingly. ‘Oh, poor INSPECTOR.’

  He laughs, weakly. How lucky he is to have this capable woman working loyally in his interests, when everyone else is so annoying.

  ‘Constable Jenkins is not an IMAGINATIVE man, Inspector,’ she says, in an attempt to mollify him. ‘I suppose he is merely FOLLOWING ORDERS.’

  ‘Jenkins is as bad as that confounded reporter,’ he complains. ‘Every time I look round, he’s there. I feel trapped in my own home!’

  ‘Poor YOU,’ she says supportively.

  ‘And he genuinely believes I should make him tea!’

  ‘I KNOW,’ she agrees.

  ‘Sir?’ comes Jenkins’s muffled (and puzzled) voice, with some more knocking. ‘We’re just trying to protect you, sir.’

  Steine sighs and straightens his uniform. He supposes he will have to comply. He can’t stand here all day. But he will refuse to lie on the floor of the van this time. Yesterday, with all the rolling about, he got a lump behind his ear the size of a goose’s egg.

  Before he can act, however, Miss Lennon speaks up.

  ‘Inspector, I’ve had an IDEA,’ she says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why don’t we just GIVE JENKINS THE SLIP, sir?’

  ‘What? How?’

  ‘I came via the garden gate and NO ONE SAW ME. We could ESCAPE by the same route and then LIE LOW until we are due at the London Road!’

 
; He looks at her with gratitude and admiration.

  ‘Did you just think of that?’

  She blushes. ‘YES.’

  ‘Well, it’s brilliant. Shall we go now?’

  ‘Why not?’

  But then he has a rather clever thought. ‘Hold on. I’ll buy us some time.’

  He goes to the front door and knocks. ‘Jenkins?’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘I’ve changed my mind. How do you take your tea?’

  ‘Ooh, three sugars, sir. Lots of milk. That’s very kind of you. But after that we really must get you safely into the van, sir.’

  Miss Lennon gestures towards the back door and starts to tiptoe away.

  ‘All right, Jenkins,’ Steine calls through the door, as he takes an overcoat from his hatstand. ‘I’m just going to put the kettle on.’

  Meanwhile, others are, of course, working towards the same fateful deadline.

  At the wax museum, Miss Sibert tells Chaucer that they will soon be heading to France on the ferry from Newhaven, but must first collect their tickets from the travel agency in Gosling’s Department Store. As a kind of inconsequential afterthought, she suggests bringing the executioner’s axe from the old Mary, Queen of Scots exhibit.

  ‘Why?’ he asks, suspicious.

  ‘No reason!’ she replies.

  But as she places it in a convenient cricket bag, Chaucer notices that its blade glints in the low light, as if it has recently been sharpened and oiled.

  Up in London’s Regent’s Park Zoo, the keeper of penguins makes a last-minute executive decision and starts packing a basket of raw fish for the journey.

  Outside the police station, Clive Hoskisson bumps into Ben Oliver from the local paper, and learns the useful news that Inspector Steine will be appearing in public later outside Gosling’s Department Store.

  Inside the police station, Constable Twitten discovers there is absolutely no one to talk to about ein, zwei, drei. No Miss Lennon, even. Oh, flipping heck, is the inspector dead already? he thinks, at first. But then Constable Jenkins arrives and informs him that Steine has given him the slip, and that a person answering the inspector’s description was seen clambering over a garden gate in the Queen’s Park area in the company of a large woman who sounds very much like Miss Lennon. So he is alive, thinks Twitten (who isn’t called a clever-clogs for nothing). And thankfully he has the formidable Miss Lennon to protect him.

  But then, at ten o’clock, the telephone rings and – since he is the only person present – he answers it. The operator tells him it’s a call for Miss Lennon from someone in the accounts department of London Zoo.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he says.

  ‘Shall I put her through?’

  ‘Um … ’ Twitten doesn’t quite know what to do. Taking messages isn’t really his forte (or his job). On the other hand, Miss Lennon is exemplary in this regard, so he supposes he can for once return the favour. As he stands at her desk waiting to be put through, his eye is caught by the picture in the little frame that Miss Lennon sometimes pats so affectionately: it shows a brother and sister dressed in the fashions of the 1930s and it is dedicated ‘To Bobby, the best sister in the world’.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he asks the mysterious person from the Zoological Gardens in Regent’s Park.

  ‘It’s about the penguins Miss Lennon ordered for today,’ says a brisk voice. ‘Should we make the charge out to her personally or to Mr Chambers as we did last time?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘The thing is, we’ve heard that Mr Chambers is unfortunately deceased, so we weren’t sure what to do.’

  ‘Ooh, can you hold, please?’ asks Twitten, his mind racing. Penguins? London Zoo? Mr Chambers?

  He sits down. He stands up again.

  ‘Hello? Hello?’ says the person from London Zoo. ‘It’s just that Mr Chambers paid for the commissioner’s elephant last year, so I thought … ’

  But Twitten isn’t listening. He has just noticed that underneath the dedication to ‘Bobby’ on the photograph is a signature that looks like ‘Terry’.

  Finally, at the railway station, four burly men with hold-alls step off the London train together and head for the Gentlemen’s lavatories, where they proceed to bar the door and change their clothes. From the bags they produce multiple strings of onions, black-and-white striped jumpers, stick-on dark moustaches and black berets. If you are thinking these must be the genuine French onion-sellers hired by Miss Lennon, however, you are only half right.

  ‘Remember,’ says one, who appears to be the leader. (He has a cauliflower ear and a broken nose.) ‘We’re only backup.’

  ‘Yes, boss,’ says another, tucking a gun into his waistband.

  ‘Bobby’ll give us the signal if she needs us to step in.’

  Each man shows his gun.

  ‘We’re going to get the bastard one way or the other, then? The bastard what shot Terry?’

  ‘One way or the other, mate. Yes, we are.’

  When, oh, when will Constable Twitten learn of the zebra crossing? As he sits at his desk, typing an urgent note to the inspector explaining his suspicions about Miss Lennon (‘I fear she is Mr Chambers’s elder sister, sir, and therefore not to be trusted’), he is not asking this question, of course, but he knows there is something going on that he’s not privy to, if only because of the surreal fact of the London Zoo penguins. It is not until half-past eleven, when he resignedly reports to the front desk for his daily driving lesson, that he hears the news – but not from the usual Sergeant Masefield. It seems that Masefield has suffered enough and at the insistence of his superiors has checked into a clinic for nervous exhaustion, so the lesson today will be conducted by the redoubtable Sergeant Baines.

  ‘All right, lad,’ Baines says, opening the passenger door of the regular training vehicle. ‘Show me what you can do. It will be a different route today, though, what with London Road being blocked at midday for that blooming road safety event.’

  ‘What road safety event would that be, sir?’ says Twitten, politely, as he slides into the driver’s seat and adjusts his rear-view mirror.

  ‘Wipers,’ says Baines.

  ‘Pardon?’ says Twitten.

  ‘Turn on your ruddy windscreen wipers, son. It’s raining.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’ Twitten switches them on. The windscreen is already fogging up inside, though. ‘Would you talk me through the pedals, please, sir?’

  ‘No. You should know the blooming pedals by now, son.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘You’ve got the test next week.’

  ‘I know, sir. But Sergeant Masefield always talks me though them again and I find it very helpful. But never mind, I expect it will come back to me. You mentioned a road safety event?’

  ‘Needn’t concern us, lad. So, we will make our way to Elm Grove and practise hill starts. I’d like you to drive to the end of the road here and then indicate left.’

  Twitten checks his mirror, starts the engine, depresses the clutch, selects first gear and slowly applies the accelerator. As he eases the clutch, the gear engages and the car judders without moving, so he depresses the clutch again.

  ‘I think it’s broken, sir,’ says Twitten, helplessly looking down at the pedals, as if they will provide an explanation.

  ‘Don’t look at your feet, son.’

  ‘Right, sir. No, sir.’

  ‘Handbrake, Twitten!’

  ‘Oh, gosh, yes. Sorry, sir.’ With his foot on the accelerator, and the clutch eased up, he releases the handbrake and the car shoots forward, grazing a lamp-post, and then ricochets back onto the roadway, where it stalls.

  ‘Oh, flipping hedgehogs,’ says Twitten. ‘Shall I get out and see if there’s any damage?’

  ‘No, don’t.’ Baines rubs his forehead where it has just struck the windscreen.

  ‘Look,’ says Twitten, ‘I don’t mind admitting that driving doesn’t come perfectly naturally to me, sir.’

  Baines isn’t sure if thi
s is a joke.

  ‘So I really wouldn’t mind if you wanted to abandon this as a bad job. I can wait for Sergeant Masefield to get better. And you still haven’t told me what’s happening on the London Road.’

  ‘Well,’ says Baines, ‘it was all Steine’s new secretary’s idea, as far as I can discover. That big woman with the booming voice.’

  ‘Miss Lennon? What was?’ In Twitten’s mind, the word ‘penguins’ starts to loom.

  ‘Well, this Miss Lennon said a new pedestrian crossing would be just the ticket for Inspector Steine’s reputation. They painted it last night outside Gosling’s. I just sent Constable Jenkins off there, actually. They’re doing the grand opening at noon on the dot. Jenkins was furious about the inspector giving him the slip, you should have seen him!’

  Twitten’s mind races. ‘When you say pedestrian crossing, sir, do you mean zebra crossing?’

  ‘Well, yes. Of course.’

  Twitten feels like screaming. A black-and-white crossing? In black-and-white stripes? With penguins?

  ‘Now,’ says Baines, with a sigh. ‘I’d like you to restart the car, checking it is in neutral, and – what’s happening? Twitten? What are you doing?’

  ‘What’s the flipping time, sir?’

  ‘About twenty to twelve.’

  ‘I’m afraid we are not doing hill starts in Elm Grove today, sir,’ says Twitten, as he drives off – painfully – in first gear, indicating right when he is intending to turn left. ‘We’ve got to get to Gosling’s.’

  The penguins prove to be a huge hit with the gathering crowd. They are birds who enjoy a bit of applause, and always act up to it. It is a tragedy of natural history, really, that their habitat in Antarctica is so entirely deficient in this regard.

  ‘So good of you to change your mind, Mr Geneva,’ Miss Lennon says to the penguin-keeper quietly.

  ‘Well, I remembered how much you got Mr Chambers to pay for that elephant. Between you and me, it kept her in buns for a year.’

  He tosses a silver fish to each of the two penguins, who waddle on the closed road, making little charges this way and that, and occasionally drop down and bodysurf across the wet tarmac on their tummies.