The Comedy Club Mystery

by Peter Bartram

  We forced ourselves tighter against the door.

  But it was hopeless. The alcove wasn’t deep enough to hide us.

  The beam of light widened.

  I whispered to Shirl: “Let’s get ready to rumble.”

  She gave my hand a confident squeeze. What a girl!

  But we couldn’t hide any more. Our backs were pressed as hard as we could on the door.

  The best method of defence was attack.

  It was fight or flight. And flight was no longer an option.

  The adrenalin surged through my body like I’d just knocked back a treble brandy.

  Then the door behind us swung open.

  And we tumbled into space.

  Chapter 15

  We screamed with terror, like a couple of pilots pushed out without a parachute.

  Our arms and legs flailed wildly as we fell.

  Our yells echoed off the walls. The echoes of the echoes filled the space with a blur of noise. We must have sounded like the screaming inmates of Bedlam.

  And then we landed. We bounced into the air and fell back again.

  I shook with relief. I was alive and uninjured. No bones broken. No cuts. And if there were going to be bruises, what the hell? It was better than becoming raspberry jam on the floor.

  My eyes flicked back and forth as I searched for Shirley.

  She was beside me, also uninjured. But both of us were winded and panting like we’d just gone ten rounds with Muhammad Ali.

  We had landed on a huge straw-filled palliasse.

  We’d fallen ten feet and were in a large room with a vaulted ceiling held up by cast-iron columns. The walls were covered with brown and blue tiles. Light fittings had been screwed into the tiles at regular intervals around the room. Each fitting was held in place by a metal grille.

  We rolled together as the weight of our bodies created a dip in the palliasse’s centre. We looked at one another with the kind of wild surmise old Cortez was supposed to have had when he first gazed upon the Pacific. But that was only John Keats’ version of the story and he wasn’t there. For all I know, Cortez might just have shrugged his shoulders and said: “I’ve seen better.”

  I gazed at Shirley. She gazed at me. We grinned at each other. They were the grins people have when they’re alive and realise they shouldn’t be. We were in danger of becoming a bit manic after this experience. Hysterical laughter was only an inch below the surface. It could bubble up at any minute. Then we’d lose control completely.

  I couldn’t think what to say. So I put my arms around Shirley. She put her arms around me. And we kissed – a long lingering smooch which could well have gone further.

  Would have gone further if a voice with a soft Irish lilt hadn’t said: “Now, now, not in front of the children.”

  We broke our embrace and stared upwards.

  A man was clinging to a metal ladder which ran up the wall towards the door we’d just fallen through. The man had a head of unruly red hair and a bushy beard. He had piercing blue eyes and a pointy nose. He had chubby red cheeks. He was dressed in a flowing green smock that came down to his thighs and brown trousers. The trousers were tied at the knee with string. He wore a pair of those short wellington boots which come up to mid-calf and which always fill up with water when you’re wading through snow.

  He’d just finished closing the door. Now he reached under the smock to a pocket in his trousers. He pulled out a large key and locked the door.

  Shirl nudged me and said: “Who’s the leprechaun?”

  I said: “I don’t know, but he’s just saved us from a beating.”

  The leprechaun replaced the key in his pocket and shinned down the ladder, as agile as a circus acrobat.

  He walked over to us and perched on the edge of the palliasse.

  He said: “They say pride comes before a fall, sure they do. You had the pride and I provided the fall.”

  I said: “Who are you?”

  He held out a hand. “Darragh Mahoney at your service.”

  I shook: “Colin Crampton.”

  Mahoney nodded towards Shirley: “Who’s the colleen?”

  Shirl’s eyes flashed. “I’m not a colleen, I’m a Sheila. And the name’s Shirley Goldsmith, cobber.”

  Mahoney grinned. “We don’t get many girls down here. Especially not ones wearing stilettos longer than their skirts.”

  Shirl tugged down the hem of her denim. “I was pretending to be a stripper.”

  “Why pretend?” Darragh said.

  This was getting out of hand. So I said: “Who are you?”

  Mahoney said: “You’ve heard that old saying: the luck of the Irish. I’m the one who provides it down here. I like to think of myself as king of the underground kingdom. But I’m really just the sewers’ head of security.”

  “Did you know we were behind that door when you opened it?” I asked.

  “Do you think I floated up the Liffey in a matchbox? Of course, I knew. Just as I knew you were being hunted by bad people.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “When you’ve been here as long as the stones have stood in Knocknakilla, you know when something is wrong. When someone opens a manhole cover, you can sense a change in the air. And if you know how to listen, you can hear the sounds vibrate along the walls as clear as if that fine Mr Marconi were sending them. And him being Italian, too, and not of the favoured race.”

  Shirl slid off the palliasse, hitched her skirt down a bit more, and said: “I guess we should thank you. We were in a tight corner and you saved our arses.”

  Mahoney took rather too close a look at Shirley’s and said: “And well worth the trouble, too.”

  I said sharply: “The trouble is that those two goons are still roaming around the tunnels. I’m not sure how we get out of here without the risk of running into them again.”

  Mahoney hurried across the room to a wooden panel which held the ends of a dozen tubes each stopped with a thick cork.

  He said: “These are speaking tubes. They help me hear what’s happening in different places underground as clearly as if a fair colleen were singing Danny Boy in front of me.”

  “Are they like the speaking tubes they have on ships?” I asked.

  “Yes, and installed long ago. That would be in the days when that fine Queen Victoria had put on so much weight they could have rolled her down Parnell Street in Dublin like a barrel.”

  Mahoney removed one of the corks and stuck his ear to the tube.

  He shook his head. “As peaceful as a baby’s dream.”

  He tried another tube. Listened for a moment. Then beckoned me over.

  I put my ear to the tube. I could hear a low threnody of wind, but above it the sound of voices. I could make out two voices – Bert and Den’s. Their voices were raised in anger.

  I stepped aside and let Mahoney put his ear to the tube again. He grinned. “Fighting like Kilkenny cats,” he said. “They’re in the junction chamber under Madeira Place.”

  “Is that bad?” Shirley asked.

  “It will be. Worse for them than if that black-hearted scoundrel Lord Randolph Churchill’s sock suspenders snapped while he was making a speech in that fine House of Commons.”

  He moved to another tube and took out the cork. He beckoned us over.

  “We can be as cunning as a Tipperary tinker,” he said. “If we speak into the tube it carries the sound to the other end. Talk now and they will hear it in a tunnel near to them.”

  Shirley and I stepped up to the tube.

  “I wonder where we are,” I said into it loudly

  “I think we must be lost, whacker,” Shirley shouted.

  “I do hope those goons don’t find us,” I yelled down the tube.

  Mahoney put his ear to the tube and listened. He drew his eyebrows together in a serious frown.

  “Has it worked?” I asked.

  “No… yes. I can hear running feet. They’ve reached the tunnel connected to this tube.”

 
He crossed the room. Pulled a lever on a control panel.

  He said: “They won’t stay in the sewers now.”

  “What have you done?” Shirley asked.

  “Further up the hill, there’s a holding tank. It would be a terrible place to be, right now, that’s for sure. Three thousand gallons from the good people of Brighton – curry suppers and all - and not yet flowed out to sea.”

  “And you’ve just released it,” I said.

  “Sure as there are no snakes in Ireland, I have to let the natural flows take place. It’s too bad our friends are now standing right in its path.”

  I said: “I hope they won’t drown.”

  “Goodness no. It’ll be much worse than that. You could fillet all the fish in the Irish Sea and then shovel all the horse shit from Leopardstown races and still not smell as bad as our two friends will in ten minutes time.”

  “They won’t move in decent company for weeks,” I said.

  “Those whackers wouldn’t know decent company if it bit their knackers off,” Shirley said.

  Mahoney’s brow wrinkled in a frown. “There’s you talking of decent company, and me not even offering you the hospitality of the house. You’ll take a draught of the Liffey water before you go?”

  He led us across the floor to an area on the far side of the room. Three or four chairs were grouped around an electric fire whose bars burnt bright red. A worn old Wilton carpet on the floor attempted to make the area look homely. A standard lamp threw a mellow glow over the rug.

  He gestured at the chairs and we sat. He crossed to a small cupboard and took out some bottles and glasses. He poured three creamy glasses of Guinness.

  He handed round the drinks.

  He raised his glass in a toast. “Confusion to our enemies,” he said.

  Shirley and I chorused the words together and drank.

  “That’s good,” I said. I waved my arm around at the room. “What is this place?” I asked. “And why is the door high up in the wall? And why have you got a palliasse on the floor?”

  Mahoney put down his glass and threw up his hands.

  “More questions than a priest in a confessional. But I can tell you what it was then and what it is now,” he said. “When those Victorian gentleman with their fine silk top hats built these sewers, this was a holding chamber.”

  “To hold what?”

  “Water. When the town has a soft day with the blessing of God’s gracious rain, the water has to go somewhere.”

  “Along the gutters and down the drain,” Shirley said.

  “But where does it go when it’s in the drain?”

  “Search me,” Shirl said.

  Mahoney grinned. “I may take you up on that kind offer another time. But to answer your very fair question. It goes into the storm drains and these very fine sewers. But those clever Victorian gents knew they couldn’t allow rainwater to overwhelm the natural flows. By the blessing of the good Saint Patrick, no. Our friends up the tunnels will now be feeling as mucky as a shamrock under a fresh cowpat. So the engineers set to work and built this fine chamber to hold the sweet rain until it was a fit time to let it out into the sea. The rainwaters came down the tunnel you walked through and when they threatened to overwhelm the natural flows, the doors opened and the waters rushed into here with a force that would have shocked that good Noah with his ark.”

  “But not anymore?” I asked.

  “No, there’s a big new holding tank. Bigger than that great St Paul’s cathedral in London town, I’m told.”

  “But why the palliasse?” I reminded Mahoney.

  “Oh, we can’t have people falling ten feet to the floor. The place would look like Dublin’s fair city after the Easter Rising, sure it would.”

  I downed the last of my Guinness.

  I said: “We have a lot to thank you for – and not just for the drinks.”

  “It’s been a pleasure to help a young gentleman with such a fine countenance.” He nodded towards Shirley. “And the lady – even though she’d make a priest say a hundred Hail Marys just for the pleasure of looking at her.”

  “Can you show us how we can regain the world above ground?”

  “It would be a pleasure. And you’ll pop out of a manhole in the Old Steine like the Devil and his wife.

  “Jeez, that guy had more chat than a Wagga Wagga washerwoman,” Shirley said.

  We’d climbed out of the manhole cover in the Old Steine just as Mahoney had predicted. Nobody took a second look at us. As if seeing a couple of people coming up from the sewers was part of the natural order of things. Perhaps it was in this part of town. After all, enough tourists did it.

  We were walking back to the street where I’d parked the MGB.

  I said: “Yes, he was certainly a classic example of the stage Irishman. I haven’t heard so much paddywhackery since I saw The Playboy of the Western World at the Theatre Royal.”

  “Playboy? Not that magazine with nude bunny girls?”

  “No, this was a play by an Irish playwright called John Millington Synge. It’s a serious play but not all the Irish like it because it shows them as caricatures.”

  “So what’s your point, mastermind?”

  “He was just too Irish.”

  “He was just pleased with our company. Can’t be much fun spending your life in a sewer.”

  “But did you notice, most of his Irish references were to traditions or things that had happened years ago? He never mentioned anything about today’s Ireland.”

  “Why does that matter?” Shirl asked.

  “Because I think he hadn’t been there. At least, not for many years.”

  “And what was all that cock and bull about the palliasse? The simple way to stop people falling through the door is to keep it locked.”

  “Yes. And he did have a comfy set-up round the electric fire with Guinness on tap. Almost like it was a home from home.”

  “You think he lives there?” Shirley said.

  “For the time being, I think he does. Just behind the cupboard I noticed a sleeping bag. It was rolled up tight, so I guess he thought we wouldn’t see it.”

  “So he wasn’t the security guy in the sewers?” Shirley said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “If he wasn’t, I can’t think what he was doing there.”

  We passed a couple of drunks staggering towards their next pub.

  “Hey, did you see the way that guy looked at me?”

  “He’s drunk,” I said.

  “And you’re saying I wouldn’t be worth a look if he were sober?”

  “You’re worth a look drunk or sober.” I jumped into the MGB before Shirl could answer back.

  She climbed into the passenger seat and tugged down the hem of her skirt.

  “I guess strippers wear a long coat to cover their assets when they go out,” she said.

  I fired the ignition, put the car into gear, and we took off towards Shirley’s flat.

  When I pulled up outside, I leaned over and kissed her.

  I said: “I’m bushed and I’ve got an even busier day tomorrow.”

  Shirley kissed me – a real gold standard plonker.

  “Don’t you want to finish what we started on the palliasse?” she said.

  “Well, if you put it like that…” I said.

  It was two hours before I left Shirley’s flat.

  And I felt like I could conquer the world. But perhaps after a good night’s sleep.

  It was gone one in the morning by the time I parked in the mews behind the Widow’s lodging house. The Widow would be long abed in her winceyette jim-jams and snoring like a gored bull.

  So I breezed through the front door and headed for the stairs.

  The Widow shot out of her parlour before I could get a foot on the first tread.

  She said: “What time do you call this?”

  “Time you got a watch.”

  The Widow stepped closer. I could smell the Horlicks on her breath.

  She said: “Do
n’t get sarcastic with me.”

  “There was no-one else around.”

  “As it happens, you’re wrong. You’ve had a visitor.”

  “I’m not at home.”

  “You are now. And so is your visitor.”

  I gave the Widow a stern stare. Had she been slipping Drambuie into her bedtime drink again?

  I said: “Which visitor?”

  “Your cousin from the United States. As you’re so late and she’s near family, I said she could wait in your rooms. She’s up there now.”

  The Widow turned on her heel and stomped back into her parlour.

  I looked up the stairs wondering what the hell had happened now.

  I didn’t have a cousin in the United States.

  Chapter 16

  I pounded up the stairs and barged into my room.

  My so-called cousin was sitting in my best chair. She had poured herself a gin and tonic and cut a slice off my last lemon.

  She was about my age, had blonde hair, and an hour-glass figure. Her face was a little too thin to get her on the front cover of Playboy, but the rest of her would have looked good on the magazine’s fold-out centre spread.

  She looked up as I charged in and grinned.

  She said: “Hi, I’m your long-lost cousin.” She spoke with a strong New York accent.

  I said: “Sure you are. You’ve got everything I look for in a long-lost cousin except one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re not lost.”

  Her lips pulled a disappointed moue. “Don’t be like that.”

  She stood up and stuck out a petite hand. “I’m Mary-Lyn Monroe.”

  “A close relation, no doubt, as well as being a long-lost cousin.”

  I didn’t want to look like a dog in a manger, so I took her hand and gave a brief shake. It was soft and limp. (Her hand, I mean, not my shake.)

  “No, I ain’t related to the late, great Marilyn. Although I guess I might be if I traced my family tree far enough back.”

  “Except her real name wasn’t Monroe. It was Norma Mortenson.”

  “Sure it was, honey. But I was saying my Pa was called Monroe. He worked in a steel yard in Newark, New Jersey. He wanted to call me Mary but my Ma, who used to be a croupier in the Lucky Casino in Atlantic City, wanted to call me Lyn. Apparently, they decided to settle the matter on one spin of the ball on the roulette table. If it came up black, I’d be Mary. If it was red, Lyn.”