The Comedy Club Mystery

by Peter Bartram

  “She was already a killer. When I saw her, she looked like a woman beyond devastation.”

  I told Shirley about her “comedy is over” exit line.

  “She’s got a ‘roo loose in the top paddock,” Shirl said.

  “Maybe she’ll end up in Broadmoor high security mental institution rather than Holloway women’s prison,” I said.

  Shirley lifted her glass and finished the last of her drink.

  “I feel sorry for those St Dunstan’s guys,” she said. “They’ve missed out on a million dollars.”

  “Yes. When a bearer bond disappears so does the money that goes with it.”

  “I suppose it was the bearer bond Mary-Lyn grabbed from the deposit box,” Shirley said. “After all, no-one else saw it.”

  “It must’ve been. She kept hold of it like her life depended on it. In the end, it did.”

  “There wasn’t anything else?” Shirley asked.

  “Of course!” I said. “There was. When the lights went out, I edged myself along the wall to the deposit boxes until I found the opened one. I had a feel around inside. There was another small piece of paper in there. It was pitch black at the time and I couldn’t see what it was.”

  “So that’s an end of it,” Shirley said.

  Somewhere in my tired old brain, a sleeping neuron sprang into life.

  “No. I’ve just remembered. In the confusion, I stuffed the paper into my jacket pocket.”

  I rummaged in the pocket and pulled out a handful of stuff. A small notebook, three used train tickets, a couple of restaurant bills, a press clipping I’d forgotten to return to the morgue, a receipt for my rent at the Widow’s…

  And the slip of paper I’d retrieved from the deposit box.

  I pushed the other stuff aside.

  Shirley leaned forward and looked over my shoulder. Her brow wrinkled.

  Together we read a verse four lines long.

  “What does it mean?” Shirley said.

  “It means we have to pay another visit to Hannington’s”

  Two hours later, Shirley and I walked into the safety deposit box vault at Hannington’s.

  Earlier, I’d called Ted Wilson and told him what I suspected.

  He sighed wearily. “I hope this isn’t another of your newspaper stunts.”

  “Would I pull a newspaper stunt on you?”

  “We all know the answer to that. But I’ll do what you ask – if only to tweak Tomkins’ nose.”

  Ted had been as good as his word. He was in the vault with Hannington’s manager, a plump man with a beer belly and a permanent frown, called Walter Trant. He came up and shook my hand as Shirley and I walked in.

  He said: “I hope this isn’t going to mean more bad publicity for the store.”

  “By the time this is over, you’ll want to hire me as your PR man.”

  His frown deepened at that prospect. “Well, let’s get on with it,” he said.

  I said: “Last night, we thought that deposit box 49 held a bearer bond worth one million dollars. We shall never know what the document that was supposed to be the bond said because it was burnt to cinders. But I do know that it wasn’t the real bond. There was also a note in the deposit box. I managed to retrieve it. It’s in the form of a poem. I’ll read it now.”

  The poem I read went like this:

  You’ve opened the box with the first barer bond

  But remember our friendship crosses the pond

  And its true value lies in you dear old Max

  Yes, Miller, the man with a million cracks.

  “We’ve got to remember that Brandenburg J Bekker, the donor was playing a game with Max Miller. He was challenging him to solve clues to find the bond. The first line of the poem is a clue that the bond in box 49 was not real. In it, bearer isn’t spelt as it should be. It’s spelt B A R E R. If something is barer it effectively means there’s nothing there. And the fact that Bekker describes the bond as ‘the first’ provides a clue that there’s another one. It’s in one of these deposit boxes.”

  “That’s all very well,” said Ted. “But we can’t bust them all open.”

  “I absolutely forbid it,” said Trant.

  “We don’t need to open them all. The last two lines of the poem give us the number of the box and the four-digit code we need to open it. Look what the third line says: And its true value lies in you dear old Max. The code is based on Roman numerals. There are two in the name Max. the M stands for 1,000 and X stands for 10. But as we realised yesterday, the Romans didn’t have a symbol for zero, so we need to knock out the noughts.”

  “That leaves 11,” Shirley said.

  “Yes, we should open box 11.”

  “We need a code number to do that,” Ted said.

  I was pleased to see he was keeping up.

  I said: “The clue to that is in the final line: Yes, Miller, the man with a million cracks. In other words, the number is hidden in the name Miller. And, as it happens, there are four Roman numerals in the name – M for 1,000, I for 1, and two Ls each for 50. So, once we’ve eliminated the zeros, the code we need is 1155.”

  Trant moved forward and adjusted the rotors on the front of the box. We held our breath as he pulled on the handle.

  The box swung open. He reached inside and took out a single sheet of paper.

  He looked briefly at it, then handed it to me.

  It was a handsome document printed on thick paper designed to imitate vellum, the parchment mediaeval monks made from the skin of calves.

  There was some of that curly printing at the top which is meant to look like eighteenth century penmanship. The words Bearer Bond took up the top half of the paper. Then there was some dense type and a larger figure towards the bottom.

  “Well,” Shirley said. “Don’t keep us all in suspenders. Did old Bekker leave St Dunstan’s a million smackeroos?”

  I finished reading the small print carefully.

  I looked at them. Shirley’s mouth had dropped open with tension. Ted’s eyebrows were drawn together more tightly than usual. Trant’s frown had deepened like that crinkly cardboard they wrap round fragile items.

  “No,” I said. “Bekker hasn’t left St Dunstan’s a million dollars.

  “It’s two million.”

  “I’m struggling for a headline for this story,” Frank Figgis said.

  It was the following morning and we were in Figgis’ office at the Chronicle.

  He said: “In a way, it’s a pity that Brandenburg J Bekker with his Korn Krunchies wasn’t the murderer.”

  “So you could call him a cereal killer,” I said.

  Figgis harrumphed. I’d stolen his punchline. But then I’d been writing stories about a bunch of comedians. I thought I deserved one.

  He said: “This is the best front-page splash we’ve had since, er…”

  “My story yesterday.” I said.

  “But if we ignore that, the best since, um…”

  “The story I filed the day before that.”

  He said: “As the money was left to St Dunstan’s, I’ve been trying to think of a clever pun with ‘blind’ in the headline. How about ‘blind date’?”

  “Not relevant.”

  “Blind leading the blind?”

  “No.”

  “Blind drunk.”

  “Definitely not.”

  “Blind man’s bluff.”

  “That’s a children’s game.”

  Figgis leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling.

  I had a quick look, but there wasn’t anything up there that would help.

  I tore a sheet of paper off Figgis’ writing pad. Took the pen off his blotter and wrote something in capital letters.

  “Try this,” I said.

  I pushed the paper across the desk. It read:

  THE CHRONICLE CRACKS THE CODE

  Figgis read the paper and his mouth morphed into a smile. He looked so happy that with a bit of imagination I could have believed his yellow teeth were gold.r />
  I said: “I suppose you’ll be writing the other story yourself.”

  Figgis gave me a sharp look. “What other story?”

  “The story about how Sidney Pinker has been released from police custody without a stain on his character.”

  “Oh, that story. That might be a little difficult…”

  “I thought you’d say that. That’s why I’ve written it already. The copy is up with the subs. Cedric will bring it down for you shortly. He’s running an errand for me at the moment. I promised Sally Ashworth, the receptionist at Bernstein’s office, a new packet of tissues.”

  “She’ll need more than tissues. With Bernstein dead and Evelyn on a murder charge, she’ll need a new job.”

  “She struck me as a resourceful young woman. With a tale to tell, she won’t be out of work for long.”

  Figgis relaxed a little. “I suppose Pinker couldn’t thank you enough after you’d sprung him from the cells.”

  “In Pinker’s case, enough means not at all. I think his exact words were, ‘Took you long enough to get me out of here.’ Incidentally, I mentioned in my copy that the Chronicle has reinstated Sidney to his old job with a salary increase.”

  Figgis twitched irritably. “His Holiness won’t like that.”

  “His Holiness should learn to stick by his staff,” I said.

  Figgis fumbled through a pile of papers in his in-tray and found a packet of Woodbines. He shook out a fag and lit up.

  He said: “It was a bit of an eye-opener for me when I met that landlady of yours.”

  “She said something similar about you.”

  “It must be a bit of trial living with someone like that.”

  “We get by.”

  “Ever thought of moving?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  Figgis took a long drag on his fag. Blew out a stream of smoke. It formed a mist over his desk.

  “Mrs Figgis mentioned to me that we’ve got a spare room she’d like to let to a lodger. The right kind of person, obviously.”

  “I hope you find him.”

  “You could do worse, you know. We have toad-in-the-hole on Friday evenings and play Ludo afterwards.”

  “It sounds irresistible. But, now, I’ve got work to do. I want to write a sidebar on how that comedy club helped to unravel the mystery.”

  “Which of the comedians won that Laugh-a-thon competition?”

  “None of them. It was cancelled. So the last laugh was on them.”

  Figgis nodded. “Of course.”

  I stood up and headed for the door. I glanced back.

  Figgis looked sheepish. He wanted to say something.

  He made an elaborate show of stubbing out his dog-end.

  He gave his ashtray a hard stare as he said: “It’s good to have you back.”

  “I’m pleased to hear it,” I said. “And, by the way, your secret is safe with me.”

  Figgis’ eyes flashed in alarm. “What secret?”

  “What you were doing that afternoon you were playing hooky. The afternoon Pinker’s copy with the Bernstein libel got into the paper.”

  Figgis pointed an angry finger at me. “That must never go any further. You understand.”

  “Completely,” I said. “It’s good that we both trust one another.”

  I stepped out of Figgis’ office and closed the door behind me.

  I hadn’t a clue what Figgis had done when he’d played hooky. But the fact he thought I knew would keep him off my back.

  Well, perhaps for the rest of the day.

  Epilogue

  Pavilion Gardens, Brighton. 1 May 2005.

  The sun came out just as the man and the woman walked into the Pavilion Gardens.

  It had been one of those mornings when the sun acts like a fugitive. Sometimes hiding behind clouds, sometimes slipping all too quickly through a patch of blue sky. Now, as the last of the clouds sailed east, it looked as though the afternoon was set fair.

  The man glanced at the sky, then at the woman.

  The sun suited her. It made her blonde hair glow. She smiled with pleasure as the warmth flooded her body. She was sixty-five, but could have passed for a woman twenty years younger. There were the beginnings of laugh lines around her mouth. But otherwise her skin was as smooth as a baby’s.

  She wore a sleeveless blue and red paisley print dress. She had a pink chiffon scarf looped loosely around her neck.

  She grinned at the man in that way which still made her look like a cheeky schoolgirl. She looped her hand through his arm.

  The man was seventy-one and time had etched his face with lines around his eyes and mouth. It was like a sculptor had set out to fashion a face for eternity. He was as slim and erect as he’d always been and walked with a bounce to his step. He wore a white linen jacket over red chinos. He had a blue checked shirt and brown shoes. Nothing matched, but it never had.

  He pointed with his right hand and said: “It looks as though a crowd has gathered.”

  To one side of the gardens around fifty or so people were standing in a group.

  In the middle of the group a statue on a plinth had been covered with a large white cloth. A cord was attached so that, at the right moment, the cloth could be pulled from the statue to unveil it.

  “Let’s join them,” the man said.

  “No. Let’s sit on the bench over there and watch,” the woman said.

  “Observers rather than participants?” the man asked.

  “Makes a change for you,” the woman said.

  She nudged the man playfully and grinned.

  “Yes,” he said.

  The two sat on the bench and watched as someone important approached the statue. He stood on a small dais and made a speech.

  A few words drifted across to the pair on the bench. “One of the greats of comedy… a star like we shall never see again… the pure gold of the music hall.”

  At last the man on the dais pulled on the cord and the cloth slid silently from the statue.

  It showed a man dressed in a jacket that flapped around his body like a tent. He wore plus-four trousers which ended at the knee and stockings on his lower legs. He had a kipper tie and a homburg hat. He was pointing and his animated face looked like he was about to deliver the punchline of a joke.

  The man on the bench said: “The sculptor has caught his subject well. Max Miller used to look just like that when he was performing his stage act.”

  “But he’s not holding his Blue Book.”

  “Max always had a secret about that. The book was only a stage prop. There were never any jokes in it. Just blank pages.”

  The woman said. “I often wondered whether Max Miller was as great as they said. I mean if all you do with your life is tell jokes, is that really worthwhile?”

  The man leaned back and smiled.

  He said: “That question reminds me of a similar one in an Arnold Bennett novel called The Card.”

  “Card?” said the woman. “I don’t get it.”

  “It’s an old-fashioned slang term for someone who’s clever, audacious – a bit of a character.”

  “In other words, someone like you?”

  “You said that, not me. Anyway, in the novel, the Card is a person called Denry Machin. At one point, two characters are talking about him. The first says, ‘What’s he done? What great cause is he identified with?’ And the second says, ‘He’s identified with the great cause of cheering us all up.’ You could’ve said the same about Max Miller. The point is there’s plenty of trouble in the world and we all get our share of it.”

  “You more than most,” the woman said.

  “Perhaps. In every life some troubles and tears will come our way. But no matter how many of them we get, we all need someone to cheer us up. That’s why laughter is so important. It’s the elixir which chases away worry and sadness. It’s the magic mushroom which makes us want to live life.”

  The woman nodded thoughtfully.

  “Yes,” she said. “Lau
ghter is important. But love is also important.”

  She leaned over and kissed the man tenderly on his lips. His hand reached out and took hers.

  “Yes,” the man said. “Love is very important, too.”

  Crampton of the Chronicle will be back in a new adventure

  published in Autumn 2019

  Bonus chapter: The Tango School Mystery

  Now read chapter 1 of The Tango School Mystery, Book 1 in the Deadline Murder Series…

  The Tango School Mystery

  A Crampton of the Chronicle adventure

  Chapter 1

  My Australian girlfriend Shirley looked at her porterhouse steak and said: "That's a real beaut, Colin."

  The lump of meat which overlapped Shirl's huge dinner plate was the same shape as South America - broad at the top, narrowing down to a tip. It was cooked so rare I half expected to see the thing twitch. It had a kind of fierce red which made it look as though it had been out in the sun too long rather than under a grill.

  A rivulet of blood oozed from one side - roughly where Sao Paulo would be - and merged with a slice of grilled tomato. As though the steak had been served with a blood clot on the side.

  I said: "Don't you Aussies believe in cooking your food?"

  Shirley seized her knife and fork and made an incision in the steak close to Venezuela. "If I were back in Adelaide, I'd have slapped this on the barbie so quick it would barely have had time to brown its bum." She forked a lump of the meat into her mouth and chewed contentedly.

  We were sitting at a corner table in Antoine's Sussex Grill in Brighton's Ship Street. The place had oak-panelled walls, a green carpet, and dusty chandeliers. It was like being in a baronial hall on the baron's night off. In this case, on everyone's night off. Shirl and I were the only diners.

  But that suited me just fine after the day I'd had in the Evening Chronicle's newsroom. Twenty minutes before the afternoon edition deadline, the Press Association ticker spewed out the news that the Prime Minister, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, had announced that the long-awaited 1964 general election would take place on the fifteenth of October. That meant a tasty little front-page splash I'd conjured up about a jewel heist in Lewes got bounced to an inside page.