The Comedy Club Mystery

by Peter Bartram

  Sidney stood framed in the doorway and looked around the place. He sniffed, and his nose wrinkled, like he’d just walked through a farmyard. He stepped over a sticky bit on the carpet and headed towards me.

  I said: “What brings you here, Sidney? Is Nancy’s place being raided by the cops again?”

  Pinker frowned and brushed an imaginary piece of fluff off his jacket.

  “You can mock, dear boy. But Fancy Nancy attracts a quality clientele.”

  “So does Prinny’s Pleasure.”

  Sidney glanced around the room. “I can’t see anyone.”

  “I was referring to myself. Can I buy you a drink?”

  Pinker peered at my glass. “If that’s the standard of cleanliness in this place, I think I’ll wait until I go on somewhere.”

  “Actually, this is one of the better glasses. But if I can’t buy you a drink, what can I do for you?”

  Pinker sat down and pulled his chair closer towards mine. He leaned towards me and rubbed his hands together. For a moment, I thought he was going to give me a playful chuck under the chin. I would have returned the compliment with a friendly punch on the snout. But Pinker thought better of it.

  He looked around like there was a nest of conspirators earwigging us and said: “I think I’m onto a big story.”

  I said: “That must make a nice change from writing theatre crits.”

  “I prefer the term notices, dear boy. But never mind. The point is I’d be the first to admit I’m a little rusty on breaking hard news. I wondered whether I could confide in you.”

  “Confide away.”

  Pinker drew his chair even closer. “You’ll have heard of Max Miller, the famous music hall comedian.”

  “Of course, he was born in the east Brighton slums back at the turn of the century. Became the most highly paid entertainer in Britain. He made millions. A true rags-to-riches story. Didn’t he die a couple of years ago?”

  Pinker nodded. “And left a mystery behind him.”

  “That sounds more like my kind of story.”

  “Max was known as the Cheeky Chappie – and for good reason. Some of his jokes were risqué. In the variety theatre, this was just what the punters wanted. They lapped it up. But Max was banned by the BBC once for telling a filthy joke on the radio.”

  Sidney gave me a wary glance.

  We fell silent.

  I let the tension between us build, then said: “Well, what was it?”

  Sidney beckoned me closer and lowered his voice. “Max was going through his usual patter and said, ‘So I was walking along this cliff top path. It was so narrow you couldn’t pass anyone coming the other way. I came around a bend and there was a naked woman coming towards me. Didn’t have a stitch of clothing on. Good looking girl, too. I didn’t know whether to toss myself off or block her passage.’”

  “Hilarious,” I said in a deadpan voice. “No doubt it was the way he told them.”

  “He was never at his best on radio. He needed a live audience,” Pinker said defensively.

  “Better than a dead one.”

  Sidney frowned. “The fact is, audiences loved him. He’d come out on stage and say, ‘Now would you like a joke from my White Book or my Blue Book?’ The clean jokes were white and the dirty jokes blue. Of course, the audience always wanted the Blue Book jokes. Max would whip out the book and start telling them.”

  “Where’s this leading, Sidney?”

  “Well, Max always used to keep his Blue Book very private. Nobody got to see it apart from him. There were all sorts of rumours about it. Like it contained scores of jokes Max hadn’t yet told. No wonder that other comedians would have liked to get their hands on it. But, then, Max died – and the book vanished.”

  “So that’s your big story is it? Joke book goes missing.”

  Pinker pulled his chair nearer to me.

  I said: “If you come any closer, Sidney, you’ll be sitting on my lap.”

  “Chance would be a fine thing, dear boy. But, no, my story’s not about a missing joke book. It’s about the fact that the Blue Book has been found.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “In the last few days. And it’s a weird story. It seems that after Max died, his widow found a box of H Upmann cigars in his room. She knew Max wouldn’t be able to smoke them, so she gave them to Danny Bernstein, the agent who’d handled so many of Max’s bookings. Danny put them to one side meaning to smoke them, but forgot about them. A few days ago, he’d run out of cigars and remembered he had them and opened the box. And do you know what he found under the cigars?”

  “The Blue Book.”

  Pinker looked at me with wounded eyes. I’d stolen his punchline.

  “You knew,” he said.

  “It was obvious,” I said. “How did you hear about this?”

  “Through a source.”

  “Which, quite rightly, you won’t reveal.”

  “But I would like your advice.”

  “What about?”

  “I haven’t seen the book, but the journalist who breaks this story will have the show business scoop of the year.”

  “So tell Bernstein you know he’s got the book and you’ll give him favourable coverage if he lets you see it.”

  “That’s the trouble. Bernstein and I have never got along. He’s a lush who drinks heavily at lunchtimes and then sleeps in his office in the afternoon.”

  “How does he run his agency like that?”

  “He’s got an assistant – Evelyn Stamford – she knows more about the business than Bernstein does,” Sidney said. “But Bernstein is a mean-spirited old cuss and he swindles his clients. I’m sure he even took Max for a tidy sum. He’ll know the Blue Book would be worth a prince’s ransom to another comedian. I don’t think he’ll see me.”

  “Then that’s your way to trap Bernstein into letting you see the book,” I said. “Write the story based on what you know so far – the cigar box tale is a neat twist. But give the story a downbeat angle – you know, Miller’s been dead for a year, television is killing off variety theatres, blue jokes aren’t suitable for the telly. You’ll be able to think of other reasons. Then let Bernstein see your copy, but make it clear you’re happy to spike it if you can write a better story. He’ll want to show you the book. He won’t want the paper printing a piece that talks down the Blue Book’s value.”

  Pinker’s mouth had dropped open as I spoke. He hugged himself with excitement.

  He said: “I don’t know whether I’ve got the bare-faced cheek to do that.”

  “Of course, you have. Be strong and you’ll act strong.”

  Pinker sat up straighter. “Yes, I will,” he said. “I can be strong. When that horrid Rupert Ponsonby-Jones said my new cravat looked like a distress signal at half-mast, I didn’t shed a tear. I just looked him in the eye and said ‘And your fly buttons are undone, but it looks like no-one’s at home.’ If his face had turned any redder, it would have caught fire.”

  “So you can do it,” I said.

  But I wasn’t sure that he could.

  Even so, Pinker clapped his hands like a delighted child.

  “I’d kill to be the reporter who breaks the Blue Book story,” he said.

  In Marcello’s, Ted Wilson said: “You haven’t been listening to a word I’ve said.”

  I summoned up my steely gaze and focused it on Ted. “Sorry, I was thinking about something.”

  He said: “You looked as though you were light years away.”

  “No, only one year. But don’t let it worry you.”

  Ted had a slurp of his second coffee. “I was telling you it looks as though Bernstein was murdered by a thief and his accomplice made off with Max Miller’s Blue Book.”

  This wasn’t the time to reveal what Pinker had told me a year earlier. That he’d be willing to kill to get his hands on the Blue Book. Besides, people use that ‘I’d kill’ expression all the time. It doesn’t mean they will.

  But I realised this new informat
ion meant I’d have to think again about Pinker’s innocence – or guilt.

  Ted said: “I can’t sit here all day watching you moon about.”

  I said: “Thanks for the tip-off about the Blue Book. Usual non-attributable terms of course.”

  “Of course,” said Ted.

  I said: “One other point. Where was Bernstein’s assistant Evelyn Stamford when all this happened?”

  “She arrived about half past nine, a good half hour after the receptionist Sally found Pinker with the body.”

  “I’d like to talk to her.”

  “We’ve had to keep her out of her office this morning. She has a separate room from Bernstein at the front. But we’ve said she can come back in this afternoon. Mind you, if it were me, I’d never set foot in the place again.”

  Chapter 5

  I used Marcello’s telephone to call in an update on the story to a copytaker at the Chronicle.

  Then I ordered another coffee – strong and black – and sat thinking about Pinker.

  A year earlier, Pinker had taken my advice about the Blue Book. He’d written a negative story playing down the book’s value. He’d shown it to Bernstein. He’d hinted that if Bernstein let him see the book, he’d write an upbeat piece about it.

  But when you’re playing that kind of scam to get a story, you need to radiate confidence. Your target needs to believe you really mean what you say. And Pinker would’ve had doubt written all over him. In big black letters.

  He’d told me all about it afterwards.

  Pinker had handed Bernstein the negative story typed out on copy paper. Bernstein had read it. His eyebrows had knitted together like he couldn’t believe what he was reading. His gaze lifted from the paper and he gave Pinker a death stare. He ripped the paper in half and tossed it in his waste bin. Then he threatened to throw Pinker into the street if he wasn’t out of his office in ten seconds.

  Pinker arrived back in the newsroom quivering like a shell shock survivor from the First World War trenches.

  Afterwards, I’d tried to persuade Pinker to use the carbon of his story he’d kept at the office in his regular showbiz column. But his heart was no longer in it. A few days later, the Evening Argus ran a flattering piece about the Blue Book. They’d had no more information than Pinker.

  And then the story seemed to die.

  Pinker had never had much respect for Bernstein. But now he hated him with a passion. Despite that, I firmly believed Pinker would never make a murderer. I didn’t think he had it in him.

  Now I wasn’t so sure.

  Suppose the killer did have an accomplice, as Ted Wilson had suggested. If Pinker had a sidekick, could he have put enough fire in Pinker’s belly to turn him into a killer?

  I didn’t have an answer to the question.

  I picked up my coffee mug. The dregs of my coffee were cold. But I drank them anyway.

  It was mid-afternoon by the time I made it back to the building where Bernstein had his office.

  A uniformed plod was playing the sentry role outside the front door. But he’d been briefed by Ted to let me in.

  The cops were still busy collecting forensics in Bernstein’s chamber of horrors. But Evelyn Stamford’s room at the front of the building hadn’t been affected by the drama.

  The door to Evelyn’s office was closed. I knocked lightly, opened it and looked inside.

  There was no-one at home.

  There was a desk in the centre of the room piled with files. I thought of having a quick shufti but that would be too big a risk even for me.

  But I pushed the door so it opened wider.

  And then a voice behind me said: “Where do you think you’re going?”

  I spun around. A woman had appeared at the far end of the corridor. She had a slim figure like an athlete’s. She was wearing a dark blue skirt and a checked jacket over a cream blouse. She had a fancy bow arrangement around her neck. She had brown hair trimmed to the nape of her neck. Her hair was held back from her face by two tortoise-shell combs. She had a firm chin, a broad nose, and thin lips. She reminded me of the kind of librarian who gives you a nasty look if you start talking in the reference section. The first crow’s feet had begun to appear around her hazel eyes. I put her age at about fifty.

  She gave me a look she wouldn’t use on a bloke who’d come to tell her she’d won a thousand quid on the Premium Bonds.

  I switched on a hundred-watt grin and said: “You must be Evelyn Stamford. I knocked politely on your door but answer came there none.”

  “Most people would have assumed the room was empty and left the door closed.”

  “I thought I’d better check to make sure there wasn’t another dead body on the floor.”

  “I can assure you I’m very much alive and have every intention of staying that way. And your remark is in poor taste.”

  “Sorry. I blame my rough upbringing.”

  She strode towards me. I stuck out my hand for a friendly shake. She ignored it and walked into her office.

  She moved over to her desk. I followed her into the room.

  I had a quick look around while she fumbled with buttons on her jacket. She took it off and hung it on a coat hanger in the corner of the room.

  The place wasn’t exactly a home from home. Three metal filing cabinets were lined up along one wall. A large pinboard filled with notes hung from another. A bookcase next to the door held copies of Spotlight, the tome that lists theatricals looking for work, plus some street directories, and a couple of old railway timetables. There were few of the softer touches you’d often see in a woman’s office. No stylish curtains – just a dusty Venetian blind at the window. No vase with cut flowers. No dish of pot-pourri. No photo of hubby with the kids.

  The one artistic touch was a set of three large playbills hanging behind Evelyn’s desk. One was for Vesta Tilley, an Edwardian music hall performer. She’d dressed in trousers, top hat and tailcoat as an upper-class toff called Burlington Bertie. She sang a popular song about a day in the life of the character.

  A second playbill featured Hetty King who dressed in a seaman’s uniform to sing All the Nice Girls Love a Sailor. And the third featured Valentine Redcar who didn’t seem to have made it into the hit parade. But she’d appeared as Dick Whittington in a pantomime back in 1936.

  Evelyn settled herself behind her desk and said: “If you’re here about a job, you’re too late.”

  “Yes, I know Danny Bernstein has taken his final curtain call. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “I’ve already been interviewed by the police.”

  “I’m Colin Crampton from the Evening Chronicle.”

  “Then you can turn around and exit stage right, out of that door.”

  “Before I do, would you like to hear why it wouldn’t be in your interests for me to do that?”

  Evelyn shot me a sly sideways glance. “I’m listening, but make it brief.”

  “I have to write an obituary on Mr Bernstein for the Chronicle,” I lied. “I can do this by talking to the friends and colleagues who knew him best. And my obit will reflect the warm words they had to say about him. I’m guessing that none knew him better than you. But if you don’t want to talk, I’ll have to speak to other people whose opinion of him might not be so high. Which group do you think Mr Bernstein would have preferred?”

  Evelyn frowned and fidgeted in her chair. She picked up a handful of files and put them on top of some others.

  She said: “All right. Sit down. I’ll give you ten minutes.”

  I grabbed a spare chair and pulled it up to the desk.

  I took out my notebook and said: “How long had Mr Bernstein been running his agency here?”

  “Since before the Second World War. He had the luck to sign Max Miller as an early client. Of course, Max was just beginning to make his name in the nineteen-thirties. Mr Bernstein booked him into variety theatres all over the country. Soon Max was playing the biggest theatres like the London Palladium and the
Holborn Empire. With Max on the books, it wasn’t difficult to recruit other clients.”

  “When did you join the firm?”

  “Immediately after the war. I’d toured in variety in the nineteen-thirties and been in ENSA during the conflict.”

  “That would be the Entertainments National Service Association. The body that organised shows for the troops.”

  Evelyn sniffed. “ENSA signed me up as a singer. I performed in the Middle East, and in Europe after D-day.”

  I made a note in my book. I didn’t mention that ENSA was known by its audiences as Every Night Something Awful.

  Crampton, master of tact.

  I asked: “Did you continue in show business after the war?”

  “I didn’t think I’d make it any further as a performer. There were too many wartime stars like Vera Lynn filling the theatres.”

  “And that’s when you joined the agency here?”

  “Yes, I’d met Mr Bernstein on one of my tours and he asked me to become his assistant.”

  “Apart from Max Miller, did Mr Bernstein have other big-name clients?”

  “He had many clients including a lot of speciality acts – jugglers, escapologists, magicians, acrobats, unicyclists – even a performing dog act, Professor Pettigrew and his Pixilated Poodles. It was enough to keep us busy for many years.”

  I didn’t mention Suleiman the Sword Swallower whose blade had done for Bernstein.

  Tact. It was becoming a bad habit. I’d have to do something about it.

  I said: “I’d heard that traditional variety theatre is dying now that everyone watches television.”

  Evelyn shook her head. “We’re not as busy as we were in those years immediately after the war. But we still manage some good acts.”

  “But Max Miller’s death two years ago must’ve been a blow,” I said.

  Evelyn nodded. “Yes. The agency has missed him. And not just for financial reasons. When he was in Brighton, Max often used to pop into the office. He’d sit in the back room with Danny and a bottle of whisky. They’d jaw about the triumphs they’d had in the theatre.”