Stop Press Murder

by Peter Bartram

  The nearest and dearest would be over the shock and into deep grieving so they wouldn’t want to talk. And I wouldn’t get anywhere near the mantelpiece – even to snatch the last picture, which is usually the family dog.

  By the time I reached the seafront, I’d worked up a sweat. It was one of those June days that fool you into thinking you’re going to have a good summer. The sun was out and a few cotton-wool jobs were scudding across the sky. A light breeze wafted in from the south-east and gave the summer bunting along the prom a gentle work-out. The tide was up and waves broke with a rhythmic splosh on the pebbles.

  A Tamplin’s beer lorry, rattling with empties, drove by on its way to the Kemp Town brewery. I let it pass, then hurried across the road to the pier’s forecourt. A crowd of rubberneckers had gathered around the pier entrance. They jostled and whispered to one another and pointed at things I couldn’t see. I pushed my way through and found a couple of police squad cars parked up by the turnstiles. A flimsy blue tape – “Police line: keep out” – had been strung between Hamburger Heaven and the Popcorn Palace. I ducked under the tape and strode up to a constable who’d been posted to keep out people like me.

  He was a copper I hadn’t seen before. He was leaning on the railings next to the ticket office. I walked over, pulled out my press card and said: “If you let me through I might buy you some candyfloss later.”

  He sniffed and said: “You wouldn’t feel like candyfloss if you’d seen what we’ve seen.”

  “Bad business?” I asked.

  “Especially for the stiff.”

  “Anyone I knew?”

  He jerked his thumb towards the seaward end of the pier. “They’re all down there. Any more questions, ask Detective Superintendent Tomkins. He don’t approve of the likes of me talking to the likes of you.”

  “Then we’ll keep this tête-à-tête our little secret.”

  I gave him a conspiratorial wink, pushed through the turnstile and hurried towards the far end of the pier.

  Normally, the place would be crowded on a day like this. There’d be young lads with tattoos on their arms eyeing up pretty girls in Capri pants. There’d be old blokes with knotted handkerchiefs on their heads, snoozing in deckchairs. There’d be a barrel organ blasting out I Do Like to be Beside the Seaside. There’d be seagulls squabbling over discarded chip wrappers. The sea air would be cut by the vinegar sharpness of cockles and whelks.

  But the place was deserted. It felt a bit eerie, like a party where the host has forgotten to invite the guests. The shutters had been pulled down over the hoop-la stall. A hastily scrawled note in the window of the fortune-teller’s booth read: “Closed due to unforeseen circumstances.”

  The coconut shy was towards the seaward end of the pier facing the theatre. It was a rectangular space about fifteen-feet deep. It was surrounded on three sides with heavy netting so that wooden balls which the punters flung vainly at the coconuts didn’t bounce off and brain some hapless passer-by. The cops had rigged up a tarpaulin over the front of the shy so that nobody could view the grisly scene inside.

  I spotted Tomkins at once. He was a tall man with a thatch of black hair which he combed straight back from his forehead. He had bushy eyebrows and a prominent nose like an eagle’s beak.

  There was no sighting of Jim Houghton. But I already knew he’d had an hour’s start on me. He’d have interviewed Tomkins, then dictated his copy for the Argus midday edition from the phone box outside the pier. Even now, the comps would be setting his piece in type and the subs would be dreaming up a sensational headline.

  I frowned. I had some serious work to do if I was to catch up with the Argus on this story. So I strode towards Tomkins. He was busy barking out orders to a couple of uniformed plods. As I approached, he looked my way. Recognition clouded his eyes. The muscles around his mouth tightened. But I didn’t think I’d be greeted like an old buddy.

  I gave him what I hoped might be a disarming grin and lied: “Good to see Brighton’s finest on a big case.”

  He frowned and said: “Chuck it. You’re as irritated to see me as I am to see you. You can save your nasty little falsehoods for the Chronicle. That’s where you usually print them.”

  “A simple seeker after truth – that’s me,” I said.

  “And I’m father confessor to the Pope,” he said.

  “I’ll quote you on that. Should give our readers a laugh. Might even raise a smile down at the section house. Alternatively, you can tell me what’s really going on.”

  Tomkins scowled. “I can’t tell you much, and I’m too busy for a long interview but I’ll answer three questions.”

  I pointed at the coconut shy and said: “I take it the victim is in there. Who is it?”

  “Fred Snout, the pier’s night-watchman.”

  “And how was he killed?”

  “Bludgeoned with a blunt instrument.”

  “The blunt instrument being?”

  Tomkins looked embarrassed. “A coconut.”

  “Since when has a coconut been a blunt instrument?”

  “That’s a fourth question.”

  “Treat it as my bonus query and I’ll vanish like smoke up a chimney.”

  “Don’t you get me started on smoke.”

  “I’ll take that as a ‘no comment’.”

  “Take it any way you like. I haven’t got any more time to waste on you.” Tomkins turned away and stomped off behind the tarpaulin. I could hear his muffled voice as he began barking out more orders.

  I wasn’t going to get any more out of him but at least I had the outline of the story. I glanced at my watch. It was five past ten. I’d missed the deadline for the Midday Special although I still had twenty minutes to get something into the fudge. But if the Argus ran a splash and we only had a paragraph in the stop press, it would look as though we weren’t on top of the story. Much better, I thought, to wait for the Afternoon Extra and run with a fresh angle the Argus hadn’t covered. I suspected Frank Figgis, the news editor, wouldn’t agree. But he was going to be on my back like a sackful of seaweed whatever I did.

  So I hung around by the coconut shy watching the comings and goings. After a couple of minutes, a middle-aged man emerged from behind the tarpaulin. He had greying hair which flopped over his forehead. He was dressed in a sports jacket with leather patches on the elbows. I recognised him as the doctor the cops sometimes called in when a drunk took sick in the cells. I thought his name was Barrett. His shoulders sagged and his face was grey. He’d have had grimmer work today.

  He took out a packet of cheroots, shook one out and lit up.

  I ambled over and gave him the kind of weary nod that professionals share when they’re on the same distasteful work.

  I carefully avoided mentioning I was a reporter and said: “Brained by a coconut, Superintendent Tomkins tells me.”

  “You’ve spoken to Tomkins?” He sounded surprised.

  “He’s briefed me on the essentials,” I said.

  “He doesn’t normally say much.”

  “That’s right. Usually leaves it to the hired help, eh?” I flashed him the kind of weary grin that suggested we were all in it together.

  Barrett exhaled a long stream of cheroot smoke and relaxed a little. “Meaning me, I suppose?”

  “I guess he must,” I said. “Just wondering what you’ve seen in there.”

  “Well, it wasn’t a lovely bunch of coconuts, I can tell you.”

  “How could you kill a man with a coconut?” I asked.

  “From the victim’s point of view, I’d say it was an unlucky blow. He’d been hit in the side of the head – that area just behind the eye but in front of the ear. It’s called the pterion – it’s where four parts in the skull join, so it’s the weakest spot. Doesn’t need much force with something hard to cause a severe fracture and drive bone fragments into the brain. Then it’s goodnight Vienna.”

  I nodded. “No sign of the weapon in there, I suppose?”

  “Can’t really think of
a coconut as a weapon. But, no. Would be easy to toss it off the pier into the sea.”

  “Any idea about who could have done it?” I asked.

  “I’d guess somebody fit and active from the force of the wound. I found fragments of coconut hair embedded in the flesh. Must have been a random killing. My guess is the murderer was discovered and grabbed the first thing that came to hand.”

  “Who found him?”

  “Pier manager Reginald Chapman – on his early-morning round. He’s in his office now, fretting about the money he’s losing while the pier is closed.”

  “Sounds like a charmer,” I said.

  Barrett took a final puff on his cheroot, pinched it out between his fingers and flung the dog-end into the sea.

  Behind the tarpaulin, I could hear Tomkins yelling something. It was time for a tactical retreat. I didn’t want him to see me interrogating Barrett. He’d bawl out the good doctor and that would make him less talkative in future.

  So I swiftly said: “Well, must get on.” I turned and headed back down the pier.

  Barrett had filled in some of the gaps in the story. But I needed background so, as I walked down the pier, I kept an eye open for any members of staff who might be able to tell me more about Fred Snout. Perhaps somebody might even have a theory about what was behind this killing. But the place was deserted.

  I walked on thinking hard how I could catch up with the lead Houghton had on the story. With a murder story, you need to answer four questions – who was murdered, how they were murdered, why they were murdered, and who did it? Both Houghton and I had answers to the first two of those questions. I was sure Houghton hadn’t cracked the last two. If I could get a lead on them first, I would be able to out-scoop him.

  I was musing on this as I came around the corner by the amusement arcade and almost cannoned into a large man. He was kneeling down fumbling with a heavy bunch of keys. He was unlocking the door of the arcade.

  He looked up. He had a fleshy face, a bulbous nose and a faint scar about an inch long which ran along the line of his jaw just below his right ear. He had heavy arms, a broad chest and four-pint beer belly. He was wearing blue overalls.

  He narrowed his eyes, decided I didn’t represent a threat and said: “You here about the trouble?”

  I said: “Yes. Bad business.”

  “The worst.”

  “Know much about it?”

  His fat fingers fumbled the keys as he searched for the one he needed. “Only that she’s gone.”

  I said: “Don’t you mean ‘he’s gone’?”

  “You’re thinking of Fred.” He shook his head. “Yes, that’s bad. But I wasn’t thinking of Fred.”

  “Then who?”

  “I was talking about Marie Richmond. She’s disappeared – and I blame that Fred Snout.”

  I glanced down the pier towards the turnstiles.

  A couple of uniformed cops pushed through and headed our way. The last thing I needed now was a pair of plods telling me to move along.

  So I said: “Why don’t we go in?”

  The Key Man said: “That’s what I’ve been trying to do.”

  He selected a large mortise key, unlocked the door and we stepped inside the arcade.

  It was dark but the Key Man flicked a couple of switches and fluorescent light flooded the place.

  He said: “Sent you from the office, did they?”

  I thought about that for a moment. Decided there’d be no harm playing along with the conversation to see where it led.

  So I said: “It’s good to get out of the office once in a while.”

  The Key Man seemed satisfied with the answer. “Come to view the damage, I suppose. Insurance claim, is it?”

  “Could be,” I said. “By the way, I forgot to ask your name.”

  “Tom Belcher,” he said.

  “Trevor Hardcastle,” I said.

  We shook hands.

  Tom said: “I’m the superintendent caretaker for the amusement arcade. So I handle the maintenance of these machines.” He waved his arm expansively around the place. “Classics some of these. Have you seen the hangman’s noose? Fiendishly clever. I tell you, this ain’t an amusement arcade – it’s a slice of engineering history.”

  I couldn’t tell where this was leading. So I said: “And Marie Richmond – does she work here as well?”

  “In a manner of speaking, she did. In spirit at least.”

  “You’ll have to explain that.”

  Tom pointed to the other side of the arcade. “Miss Richmond was the star of one our finest films.”

  Tom had indicated a row of What the Butler Saw machines lined up against the arcade’s wall. Each consisted of a metal cylinder with an eyepiece viewer. The contraption was mounted on metal legs. The machines showed short films, normally of young women in some kind of trouble with their clothes. The trouble being that they didn’t have them on.

  “You mean the What the Butler Saw machines?” I said.

  “I don’t like the expression. It makes their art seem cheap,” he said. “Their inventor – Herman Casler, an American gentleman, but he couldn’t help that – called them mutoscopes. Strange name. Never known why he chose it.”

  “I expect it’s because the muto bit comes from mutare, a Latin verb meaning ‘to change’.”

  Tom nodded. “That makes sense. The pictures in the machine change as you turn the handle.”

  He was right. Each machine held a kind of flip-book of pictures which you looked at through the viewer. You cranked a handle to make the flip-book pages turn and created a jerky moving image usually of the half-naked woman struggling with her clothing difficulty. It was a bit like watching a peep show through a periscope.

  But we were straying from the point. I said: “And what has happened to Marie Richmond’s pictures?”

  “Someone has nicked them.”

  “Stolen?”

  “That’s what I said. Half-inched.”

  “Pinched?”

  “You’ve got it.”

  We crossed the arcade and Tom stopped in front of one of the machines. A playbill in a frame on top of the machine announced it was showing Milady’s Bath Night. The others had similar titles on their playbills. The machine to the left featured Lucy Loses Her Inhibitions.

  I said: “Why would anyone want to steal the pictures from a What… mutoscope?”

  Tom tapped the side of his nose. “When you look at these through the viewer, the machine never gets to show you the last few pictures. Something to do with the way the mechanism has worn down over the years. Now, with Milady, the film ends at a particularly interesting moment.” He nudged me in the ribs. “I’ve heard it say that if you could see the last few pictures, they would be very revealing. Know what I mean?”

  He nudged me again.

  “So you think the machine has been emptied just so that a member of the dirty-mac brigade can drool over the pictures he couldn’t see,” I said.

  Tom winked. “I don’t miss much. Can’t afford to here. Morning before the pictures went missing – that was three days ago – there was a bloke in. Saw him watch it three times in a row. Thought it was going to need more pennies from the change booth the way he was going. Anyway, he sloped off out of it. Haven’t seen him since.”

  “And do you think he stole the pictures?”

  “Don’t see how he could. Last I saw of him, he was walking towards the exit.”

  “Do you know who he was?”

  “Never seen him in here before.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Tall, well dressed in an old-fashioned sort of way. Not the sort we normally get hunched over the mutoscopes.”

  I inspected the Milady’s Bath Night mutoscope more closely. “This doesn’t look damaged,” I said. “How could someone steal the pictures? They’re locked inside.”

  “You open a hinged door round the back to remove them. There’s a key, but you can do it with a pair of pliers. If you know how.”


  “Do many know how?”

  “Not many.”

  I thought about that for a minute and then asked: “When did the pictures disappear?”

  “Two nights ago.”

  “And why do you blame Fred Snout. The late Fred Snout.”

  Tom looked away. Standard reaction for someone with a guilty conscience. “He’s the night-watchman. Supposed to keep the place safe at night. But it’s common knowledge he used to make his-self a cup of cocoa, drink it and then fall asleep in one of the deckchairs.”

  “Not last night,” I said.

  Tom shrugged.

  “No, not last night. I’m sorry about that. And I didn’t mean what I said when we had that row.”

  “You had a row?”

  “Morning after the theft. Right royal barney it was. You could hear us as far down the pier as the helter-skelter.”

  “Hard words were spoken?”

  “Yeah, well, I said Fred was a past-it old lump of uselessness. Blamed him for the theft. Said I’d kill him if it happened again.” Tom shrugged. “Heat of the moment. I didn’t mean it. And I didn’t kill him. Of course.”

  I studied him for a moment. He was a big man who’d hold his own in a fight. The muscles in his arms had turned to fat. Yet they would still pack some force if they wielded a coconut as an offensive weapon. But for all his bluster, he was easily cowed. Besides, he had a real passion for these arcade machines – especially, it seemed, the mutoscopes.

  No, I didn’t think Tom had killed Fred.

  But had the person who’d stolen Milady’s Bath Night? Had the killer returned to the pier again? Was it Fred’s bad luck that he wasn’t asleep in a deckchair after his night-time cocoa? And had his uncustomary wakefulness led to a confrontation – and a smashed skull?

  I said: “Do you suppose the theft could be connected to Fred Snout’s murder?”

  Tom said: “How could it? Happened two nights earlier.”

  “Have you mentioned the theft to the police?”

  “Naw. The big boss said not to.”

  “The big boss being?”

  “Reginald Chapman.”

  “The pier’s manager,” I said.