The Comedy Club Mystery

by Peter Bartram

  My stomach rumbled. Thinking about breakfast reminded me that I hadn’t yet had any.

  Ten minutes later I walked into Marcello’s.

  The breakfast rush was in full swing. A couple of beefy builders in overalls and hard hats scoffed bacon sandwiches. A nurse dipped a toast soldier into a boiled egg. A bank manager type in a grey suit and striped tie picked the bones out of his kipper. The red stripes in his tie matched the veins in his nose.

  I walked up to the counter. Ruby, Marcello’s assistant, was standing by the griddle frying bacon. She used a pair of tongs to turn the rashers.

  She winked at me and said: “Your usual order? A bacon sandwich – but no sauce ‘coz you’ve already got enough?”

  I said: “Do you stock Korn Krunchies?”

  “You gone weird or vegetarian or something?”

  “None of the above. I just felt like something different for breakfast.”

  “You’ve been watching those adverts.”

  “Bekkers for Breakers? No, but I’ve heard about them.”

  Ruby put down the tongs and leaned on the counter.

  She said: “Well, you can forget Korn Krunchies. I’d rather eat the cardboard box they come in.”

  “But I’d heard they were popular.”

  “Yeah! But mostly with kids. You see each box comes complete with a little plastic animal.”

  “What for?”

  “They’re for the kids to collect. There’s a set of six – lion, tiger, antelope, hippo, giraffe and wildebeest. For kids, having a full set is a huge status symbol. But there’s a catch. There are roughly an equal number of the first five animals. So the law of averages says you’ll get them after buying a dozen or so packets of Korn Krunchies. But you won’t have the wildebeest. They’re very rare. I’ve heard rumours there’s only one wildebeest for every ten thousand packets. So kids go crazy if they don’t have the full set. They nag their mums to keep buying more Korn Krunchies until a wildebeest pops out of one.”

  “Sneaky marketing,” I said.

  “Yeah! But I hear that Bekker guy who runs the company has made zillions.”

  I nodded. “You know, you’ve talked me into a bacon sandwich after all. But make sure the bacon’s hot.”

  Ruby grinned. “As hot as me?”

  “I’m not sure I can handle that.”

  Ruby laughed and made the sandwich. I took it to a table near the front of the café.

  I took a bite of the sandwich and chewed thoughtfully. From what Ruby had told me, Bekker was a shrewd tycoon.

  But aside from the fact he’d thought of a sneaky way to sell his cereal I knew nothing about him. If I could find out more, perhaps I could make a link with Bernstein.

  Normally, that would be easy. I’d waltz into the morgue at the Chronicle and plead for Henrietta’s help. Even if she had nothing about Bekker in the Chronicle’s morgue, she’d know people who had.

  I was now banned from the Chronicle’s building. But there was one way I might dig out the facts I needed.

  Jeff Purkiss leaned on the bar and said: “It’s not often you’re in here as soon as the doors open.”

  I was in Prinny’s Pleasure. I’d perched on a bar stool and ordered a gin and tonic.

  I said: “I’m meeting someone.”

  “Man or woman?” Jeff asked.

  “Mind your own business.”

  “So it’s a woman.”

  “There’s a fifty per cent chance of that.”

  “Is it your girlfriend Shirley?”

  “No.”

  “So it’s a bit on the side.”

  “No, she’s not a bit of the side. Nobody would describe the woman I’m meeting as a bit on the side.”

  At that moment, the pub’s double doors opened and Susan Wheatcroft, the Chronicle’s business reporter, appeared. She stood framed in the doorway - all seventeen stone of her, and proud of every ounce. Her frizzy brown hair had been blown about by the wind. Her cheeks were pink from the cold. She was wearing a huge cape arrangement which rested extravagantly over her shoulders like a giant bat and flowed down to her knees. She had a large brown handbag looped over her left arm.

  Susan spotted me and her eyes lit up with a smile. She hurried across the bar grinning with pleasure.

  She greeted me with a kiss on both cheeks, just like the French. I returned the compliment.

  She said: “Great to see you, honeybunch.” She nudged me in the ribs. “And just because I kissed you like the continentals, doesn’t mean I wouldn’t prefer a proper snog.”

  I laughed. “It’s good of you to come.”

  “Now that I’m here I’ll have what you’re drinking, but twice the size,” she said.

  We took our drinks to the corner table at the back of the bar. We clinked glasses and drank.

  Susan said: “The newsroom has changed since you left.”

  I said: “I only quit yesterday. Hardly any time at all.”

  “Figgis is in a foul mood.”

  “He’s always in a mood.”

  “This is the worst one ever, honeybunch. He sits in his office smoking and growls at anyone who comes near him.”

  “It wasn’t a good time for me to call you then?” I said.

  “It didn’t matter. But you understand why I couldn’t talk on the phone.”

  “Too many twitchy ears in a newsroom.”

  Susan nodded and had a good pull at her drink.

  I said: “I badly need some help on a story I’m working on.”

  “Is this to do with Sidney Pinker?”

  “Yes. But I can’t yet figure out what the angle is. That’s why I need your help.”

  I told Susan about Brandenburg J Bekker. I said: “I need to know more about him. But I can’t go into the morgue.”

  Susan chuckled. “And you’d like me to do it for you?”

  “I’d be eternally grateful,” I said.

  “Eternal gratitude. Now that sounds like a deal I could go with,” Susan said. “What exactly do you want to know?”

  “I need to know more about how Bekker came to set up his breakfast cereal company and whether he’s ever had any connection with Brighton. Or with Danny Bernstein. Or Max Miller,” I added as an afterthought.

  Susan took out a small notebook and made a couple of jottings.

  I said: “If you find a connection, I want you to follow it up in the files and find out as much as you can.”

  “Henrietta in the morgue will want to know why I’ve suddenly taken an interest in this guy.”

  “I’m on good terms with Henrietta. You can tell her what you’re doing. She’ll help you out and keep it to herself.”

  “And if others stick their noses in?” Susan asked.

  “Tell them you’re researching background for a feature on the breakfast cereals market. After all, you are the business reporter.”

  Susan made a couple more notes.

  She said: “This won’t be easy.”

  “I know. And it gets worse. I need the information this afternoon.”

  Susan put the book and pen back in her bag. She looked at me. Her eyes were sad. The edges of her lips turned down. Her double chin sagged lower than usual.

  “Of course, I’ll do this. But will you come back to the Chronicle? We all miss you.” She took a last sip of her drink. In a tiny voice, she said: “I miss you.”

  I leant forward and kissed her on the cheek. “Consider that a down payment on a proper snog.”

  Susan brightened up and smiled. “You’ll need a bigger payment than that for what I’ve got in mind.”

  She stood up. “Meet me back here at five.”

  She wrapped her cape more tightly around her and stomped towards the door. She looked like a vampire queen on the hunt for a neck to bite.

  The door closed behind Susan and an icy chill descended on the room.

  I felt goose bumps rise on my back and I shivered. I buttoned my jacket and folded my arms around myself. I hadn’t felt like this earlier. But
seeing Susan reminded me what I’d left behind at the Chronicle. I’d loved life in the newsroom. Susan had been one of my many friends there. Now I’d see them from time to time around town, but I’d be the outsider. I’d be the one who wasn’t in on all the latest gossip. I’d be the one who didn’t know which hot stories the newsroom was chasing.

  But there was no going back. I’d cut myself loose and I had two choices. I could drift aimlessly like an old rowboat caught on the tide and carried out to sea. Or I could set a determined course for the horizon and discover what was over it. I only hoped it wasn’t an iceberg.

  The trouble was my horizon analogy was a bit like the Bernstein case. When you’re in the middle of an ocean, the horizon isn’t only what you see ahead. It’s what you’ve left behind. And what you’ve never encountered on either side.

  The harsh reality was that so much had happened, I felt lost. I couldn’t make the connections between Bernstein’s murder, the missing Blue Book, the Laugh-a-thon comics, the Hardmann brothers, Mary-Lyn Monroe – and a breakfast cereal zillionaire. It was like heading into a maze where there was only a way in – but no way out.

  I needed some help. And, at the moment, the only person who could provide it was locked in a cell.

  I drained the last of my gin and tonic and headed for the door.

  I had a bit of badly needed luck when I reached Brighton police station.

  Tomkins had left for a Rotary Club lunch where he was the guest speaker. I couldn’t think of anything more likely to bring on a mass attack of indigestion.

  I called in a final favour from Ted Wilson. He had Sidney Pinker brought up from the cells. He locked us in an interview room and told me I had fifteen minutes. I doubted a quarter of an hour would be enough time to unravel this puzzle.

  Sidney looked thin and pasty-faced as he was brought into the room. Stubble sprouted on his chin and his hair had tangled.

  He sat down on the chair screwed to the floor and said: “Now I know how Oscar felt, dear boy.”

  “Oscar?” I queried.

  “Oscar Wilde. He was in jail, too, you know. Reading Jail. He wrote a poem about it. ‘I never saw a man who looked, With such a wistful eye, Upon that little tent of blue, Which prisoners call the sky.’”

  I said: “There hasn’t been any blue sky all week. This is November.”

  “There’s no poetry in your soul, dear boy. You don’t know what it’s like here. Last night, the duty officer brought me a bowl of soup that was like washing up water. And it had a fly in it. I said, ‘What’s this fly doing in my soup?’”

  “And he said, ‘I think it’s the breaststroke.’”

  Sidney scowled. “How did you know that?”

  “It’s the oldest joke in the book and you gave him the feeder line. It was probably in Max Miller’s Blue Book.”

  Sidney managed a thin grin. “He’d have accentuated the breast part when he told it.”

  “Yes. A laugh a minute. But not for me. This case has lost me my job – and I’m nowhere near coming up with answers or even a story. I need you to delve deeper. I must know more about Bernstein. For a start, did you ever hear of him having anything to do with a Yank called Brandenburg J Bekker?”

  Sidney pulled a puzzled frown. “The man behind Korn Krunchies?”

  “Behind them, in front of them, in them for all I know.”

  Sidney shook his head. “No.”

  He fell silent. He scratched his head, tugged his right earlobe, looked hard at the blank wall.

  “I’ve just remembered something else about Bernstein.” He tugged his left earlobe.

  “Well, what is it, Sidney?”

  “You know how he fell out with Ernie Winkle over the ownership of the Blue Book?”

  “Yes. What about it?”

  “Well, about three weeks ago, I was having a drink with a few nice boys in Fancy Nancy’s. Dirty Denis said he’d heard a rumour that Bernstein had been seen a few times at the Last Laugh.”

  “Ernie Winkle’s club. I thought the two never met after they’d fallen out over the Blue Book.”

  “Not according to Denis who heard the rumour from Bruce the Boxer.”

  “Flyweight, no doubt.”

  “Actually, the boxer bit is a nickname.” Sidney leaned towards me and winked. “It’s a reference to his underwear. Shorts. Silk, I can personally confirm. Anyway, it was Bruce who’d seen Bernstein coming and going from the club when it was closed.”

  “How did Bruce manage that?”

  “He runs the small newsagent’s just on the other side of the street. It’s the one with the special magazines in the back room. But you wouldn’t be interested in them. Anyway, Bruce wasn’t in the back room when he saw Bernstein. He actually saw Ernie waving him off one day. Very pally they looked together.”

  I thought about that for a moment. When I’d interviewed Winkle, he’d not told me that he’d recently been seeing Bernstein. Could the pair have been negotiating about the ownership of the Blue Book? If they were, it looked like the talks were going well.

  At least, until the Blue Book was stolen and Bernstein killed.

  I said: “Both Bernstein and Winkle knew Max Miller, didn’t they?”

  Sidney nodded.

  “Could it have been shared memories of him that brought them together?”

  Sidney shrugged.

  I said: “How much do you suppose the Blue Book is worth?”

  Sidney thought about that. “Hard to say,” he said. “Could be thousands. It could provide a comic with a stage act that would keep him in bookings for years. Then there’s the publicity. Not to mention radio and TV spin-offs.”

  “But Miller never tried to sell it,” I said.

  “Why should he? He’d already earned millions.”

  “But he only left £27,000 in his will.”

  Sidney moved closer, like someone who’s got a secret to impart. “Max was always very careful with money. People who’ve come from poverty often are. I’ve heard rumours that Max squirreled money away in safety deposit boxes. There could be thousands of pounds out there undiscovered, even two years after his death.”

  “He was a bit of a miser, then?”

  “Not at all. Big-hearted Max. He bought that big house out at Ovingdean – Woodland Grange. That woman, Mrs Van der Elst, who ran the anti-hanging campaigns, used to live there. Anyway, when the Second World War broke out, Max lent the Grange to St Dunstan’s. No rent – absolutely free. They used it as a hospital for soldiers who’d been blinded in battle. Thousands of veterans were grateful for what Max did.”

  I sat back and thought about that. There was something about what Sidney had said which stirred a memory. But I couldn’t recall what it was.

  And then the door rattled as it was unlocked. Ted Wilson stuck his head round.

  He said: “You’ve had half an hour. Tomkins will be back soon. Best for all of us if he doesn’t find you here.”

  I stood up and nodded at Sidney.

  “Don’t give up,” I said. “If you feel a bit down, think of old Oscar. A spell in clink didn’t stop him entering the literary giants’ hall of fame.”

  Sidney looked up and dabbed his eyes with the handkerchief.

  “I’m not sure even that is worth what I’m going through.”

  Chapter 18

  An hour later, I met Shirley for lunch.

  We sat on a bench in a shelter on the seafront and ate fish and chips wrapped in newspaper.

  The bench was hard, the shelter was draughty, and our moods were sombre.

  Grey clouds scudded across the sky. The tide was up and waves broke with a noisy roar on the shingle.

  An old boy wrapped against the cold in a duffle coat walked by. He had a cocker spaniel on a lead. The dog was straining for a run on the beach.

  Shirley said: “This newspaper is all soggy and it’s sticking to my chips.”

  I said: “You’ve put on too much vinegar.”

  “Yuk! You really know how to show a girl a
good time.”

  “Get used to it. This is the freelance life. No more expense account lunches.”

  “So next time we’ll be huddled in a shop doorway eating stale cheese sandwiches?”

  “Who said anything about there being cheese?” I said.

  Shirley looked at me and grinned.

  She said: “Perhaps we’ll end up dressed as tramps and stroll along the prom singing that movie song, We’re a Couple of Swells.”

  “What? With me as Fred Astaire and you as Judy Garland? I don’t think we’re ready to play the hobo yet.”

  Shirley ate a last chip and screwed up her newspaper.

  “You will be if you can’t make it as a freelance.”

  “I’m on a great story now. If I can crack it, I’ll make some serious money.”

  Shirley took my arm. “Why don’t we walk and talk?”

  We stood up, tossed our chippy papers into a waste basket, and strolled towards the West Pier.

  “I’ve had an idea,” she said. “Why don’t we move up to London?”

  I looked at Shirl open-eyed. “What’s brought this on?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it for some time. My modelling work down here is going well, but the big opportunities are in London.”

  “I thought you liked the location fashion shoots around Brighton.”

  “I do, but you don’t make it big in fashion unless you can crack the London studios. I think I’m ready to try that now. I didn’t mention it before, because I knew you were committed to the Chronicle. But now you’re footloose there’s no reason we shouldn’t both go to London. That’s where the glittering prizes are in journalism, too. A cocky bastard like you would soon land a top job on a Fleet Street paper. Probably be editing it within five years.”

  I laughed. “Thanks for the vote of confidence. But I need to crack the Bernstein murder first.”

  “And spring your theatre critic friend from the can?”

  “No-one else will.”

  “If you do get him off, he won’t thank you.”

  I stopped, turned to face Shirl. “No, he won’t. Most people complain when you knock them down but don’t thank you when you pick them up. I expect Sidney is no different. But you shouldn’t do the right thing just to win gratitude. You should do it so you can look yourself in the bathroom mirror of a morning and know you’re looking at a decent human being.”