Stop Press Murder

by Peter Bartram

  “That vanished as well?” I asked.

  “I passed out again at the hospital when they lifted me off the stretcher onto a trolley. I suppose they must have taken my pinny off while I was out. Never saw it again. Mind you, by the time I’d been scrambling around in the road trying to get the letter it wasn’t fit to wear. Covered with oil, mud, and dog shit. Pardon my French. I suppose they thought it wasn’t hygienic enough for a hospital.”

  “Did they keep you in hospital long?”

  “A few hours. I was x-rayed, prodded, bandaged and generally patched up and brought home with a couple of crutches. Not that I’ve used them. I told the ambulance men to shove them in the coat cupboard under the stairs with the other stuff.”

  “That’s been very helpful. I’ll pass on your co-operation to the appropriate authorities.” I stood up. “Don’t get up. I can see myself out.”

  I walked back down the narrow hall and out of the door. So Marie’s death had been an accident, after all. Mrs Bailey was definite about that. But what was the letter Marie had been reading in the phone box? It was clear the letter had been important. And the fact she’d taken it to the phone box suggested she’d needed to call somebody about the information it contained. It looked as though whoever she’d spoken to had had bad news. At any rate, she’d been preoccupied enough not to see the van bearing down on her.

  I walked back to my car thinking about it. And stopped so suddenly a young woman pushing a pram behind nearly ran into me. I grinned an apology and stepped aside.

  I wasn’t thinking. More to the point, I hadn’t been listening. What had Mrs Bailey said about the ambulance men who had brought her home with the crutches? “I told them to shove them in the coat cupboard with the other stuff.”

  The other stuff.

  What other stuff? Could it have included the letter?

  I marched back to Mrs Bailey’s and rang the doorbell. She came to the door carrying her glass of gin.

  I said: “Sorry to interrupt the pain relief. I forgot to ask if I could check the crutches the ambulance men left in your coat cupboard.”

  She swayed slightly. Put out a hand to steady herself and said: “Why do you need to check that?”

  I said: “The crutches remain hospital property. It’s just a question of stock control. Keeps my boss off my back.”

  She stepped back. “You better take a look. But be quick.”

  I followed her up the hall. Nodded at her glass. “Looks as though you’ve got an empty there.”

  She let out a soft belch. “I’ll just have another small one. Call me when you’re finished.” She limped off to the kitchen.

  I opened the coat-cupboard door. The cramped space was filled with the kind stuff you find under the stairs – an old rug, a picture of the Royal Pavilion in a cracked frame, a rusting biscuit tin, a bicycle pump. No coats. The crutches were neatly propped in the corner. A brown paper bag was resting on them. I picked it up, looked inside. And there was the pinny Mrs Bailey said she’d been missing.

  But no letter.

  I took a quick glance down the hall. I could hear Mrs Bailey shuffling around in the kitchen, no doubt pouring herself a small one. I took the pinny out of the bag and unfolded it. Mrs Bailey has been right. It was covered with street muck and smelt rank. There was a pocket in the front. I felt inside.

  My fingers closed around an envelope.

  I felt a flush in my neck as my heart beat faster. I took out the envelope, looked at it. It was addressed to Miss Sybil Clackett.

  I pictured the scene in my mind. Mrs Bailey was lying unconscious in the road, the envelope clutched in her hand. The ambulance men would have concluded it was hers. They’d have plucked it from her hand and shoved into her pinny’s pocket before heaving her body onto the stretcher.

  I took another glance down the hall. Mrs Bailey was no doubt administering another dose of the pain-relieving gin. I thrust the envelope into my inside pocket. Closed the cupboard door.

  I stepped towards the kitchen just as Mrs Bailey came through the door.

  “Look what I’ve found – your pinny.”

  She pulled a face. “Did you have to? Now I feel sober again.”

  I handed her the apron, nodded goodbye and headed towards the door. I tried not to run.

  I sat in the MGB and took the envelope out of my pocket.

  I ran the envelope through my finger and thumb and felt the quality. It was made out of thick vellum-style paper, in a pale-cream colour and way above the blue Basildon Bond stationery my mum used to write to her sister on. The envelope carried a couple of brown smears which I didn’t investigate too closely. No doubt it had picked them up as it blew across the road.

  There was a neat slit along the top of the envelope where it had been opened with respect by a sharp knife. The envelope had been addressed in blue ink with a pen which had a thin nib. I’m no graphologist but the handwriting looked like a woman’s – and a woman with a strong character.

  I pulled out the letter. It was written on the same kind of thick paper and folded twice. I unfolded it.

  The paper was headed Piddinghoe Grange. There was an impressive crest with the motto underneath: Cave latet anguis in herba. I read:

  Dear Sister,

  I am writing with news that is no less disagreeable to me than it will be to you. As you know, for some considerable time now, I have been able to make a modest subvention every month from the personal allowance I receive from the Marquess. I regret that circumstances have arisen which make it impossible for me to continue this arrangement. I appreciate that this will cause you no little difficulty but I can assure you that I would not be taking the decision were it not absolutely necessary.

  I am only too painfully aware that the circumstances which led to this arrangement have not changed. But they are now far in the past and I beg you to let matters rest. There is nothing either of us can do to change what has been. We can only struggle to survive in what is to come and pray for God’s help in doing so.

  Please, sister, believe me that my decision is not open to question so that I plead earnestly with you to accept it for what it is – a reluctant choice made in less-than-happy circumstances, but made with unchangeable finality.

  Yours ever,

  Venetia.

  So when Venetia had looked down her nose and told me she’d not been in contact with Marie, she’d been lying through her aristocratic teeth. In the French Revolution, they sent aristos to Madame Guillotine for less than that.

  But I was forgetting. In this tale, it was Marie who played the part of Milady. Even if she hadn’t managed, like her sister, to become the real thing. I can smell extortion like a rotting haddock. And this notepaper may have had a faint hint of expensive scent, but it reeked with a tale of blackmail.

  I suspected Venetia had been paying Marie for years. Henrietta Houndstooth had told me about the row the two sisters had had before the war – the row witnessed by her mother. I wondered whether these payments could have had anything to do with that. After all, Venetia’s letter said that the payments started because of something that happened many years ago. But there was no clue what it could be.

  I reread the letter. The tone suggested to me that Venetia was ending the arrangement with genuine regret. Perhaps she was in financial difficulty. I had certainly seen evidence of that at the Grange. Or maybe there was another reason why the payments had to stop. In any event, the letter explained why Marie and Clarence had been able to live a life of modest comfort when they had little apparent income.

  Venetia had told Marie that her decision was final. But I doubted Marie would have accepted that. I suspected that was why she was in the telephone box. She’d been to call Venetia and plead for the payments to continue. Or, perhaps, it was to threaten rather than plead. In any event, she was so distracted when she came out of the box, she’d walked straight into the path of the van.

  I was feeling hot. I wound down a window. A bus drove by belching out grey exhaust sm
oke. I coughed.

  It surely couldn’t be coincidence Milady’s Bath Night was stolen from the pier a few days after Marie had received the letter. So, could the crimes on the pier be linked to whatever Marie had apparently been blackmailing Venetia about?

  I had no answer to that question. And finding one would have to wait.

  I had a date at the Hippodrome. And a job to do for Sidney Pinker. I pressed the starter button, put the car into gear, and pulled out into the traffic.

  Chapter 12

  Crowds were already gathering in Middle Street by the time I arrived at the Hippodrome.

  I scanned faces looking for Fanny. I hoped I’d recognise her from our brief meeting earlier in the day. I shoved through a scrum of people pushing their way into the theatre. But I couldn’t see her.

  Perhaps it was just as well. I was feeling a bit like a pimple-faced teenager on a first date. The truth was that I hadn’t been on a proper date since my erstwhile girlfriend Shirley Goldsmith had left me ten months ago to hitchhike to India.

  My affair with Shirley had come to a head late one night in Prinny’s Pleasure, just after I’d solved the case of Arnold Trumper, the disappeared golf man who left his balls behind.

  The story had won me plaudits on the paper. But at Shirley’s expense.

  She hadn’t been happy that I’d stood her up on a date when I went to interview a contact, which helped me crack the story.

  Well, to be strictly accurate, it was two dates. The second time I was taking an unscheduled trip to France when I was supposed to be meeting her at Piccadilly Circus for a night on the town in London.

  And then there was the time she was arrested by the police while acting as a lookout for me. I was searching the dustbins of a suspect.

  I suppose it was inevitable that Shirley would rebel. We’d had one of those arguments that get out of control.

  I said that my work was important to me and she needed to understand that.

  And she said that I spent more time chasing stories than chasing her.

  And I said I was chasing her because I thought I loved her.

  And she said she didn’t know what to believe, but she needed to understand more about what she wanted out of life, and she’d heard there was this guy in India called the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who was the fount of all wisdom and could see into your innermost soul.

  And I said that sounded like the mental equivalent of rummaging in her knicker drawer.

  And she said it was typical of me to make crude jokes about something serious and she needed advice from somebody she could trust to help her understand what she wanted out of life.

  And I said why couldn’t she write to agony aunt Marje Proops on the Daily Mirror like everybody else.

  And she said she wasn’t baring her soul in a newspaper even though it seemed I didn’t care what I wrote in them.

  And then we sat silently for twenty minutes, nursing our drinks, and hating ourselves for letting this happen.

  And then she said she was going to India and if she missed me she’d come back and if she didn’t she wouldn’t.

  And then she left.

  Since then, I’d had two postcards from her.

  The first from Jabalpur, India: “Weather hot. Curries hotter.”

  The second from Istanbul, Turkey: “Rained. Got soaked in the souk. Not a Turkish delight.”

  But she didn’t mention her future plans.

  Or whether she missed me.

  Or whether she’d be coming back.

  I looked up and down the street but there was no sign of Fanny.

  Since Shirley had left, my love life disqualified me from entering a monastery but left me well short of being nominated as Stud of the Year. So it wasn’t surprising, I told myself, that I was uneasy about the evening ahead.

  I was musing on this when a mocking voice in my ear said: “One is awfully pleased to see you again.”

  I turned suddenly. Fanny grinned at my surprise.

  “One is delighted,” I said.

  Fanny was wearing a stylish yellow check A-line dress that looked as though it would set a shorthand typist back a good week’s wages. Her blonde hair was styled in a bob with a kind of half fringe and for just a split second when I’d turned I’d thought she was Shirley. Perhaps it was just because I’d been thinking about Shirley. But now that I looked at Fanny, I could see a resemblance. If I’d been the introspective type, I’d have started to question my motives for inviting her to the show this evening. But Fanny didn’t give me time for that.

  She leaned closer and gave me a peck on the cheek. I caught the fragrance of some French perfume, perhaps Chanel No. 5. (Whatever happened to the first four, I wondered).

  Fanny said uncertainly: “You were expecting me?”

  I grinned. “I’ve got the two tickets right here. It’s great that you came.”

  I glanced at my watch. “There’s fifteen minutes before curtain-up. Shall we have a drink in the bar?”

  Fanny nodded. We pushed our way through the crowd into the theatre. We ordered our drinks – vermouth and soda for Fanny, G and T with one ice cube and two slices of lemon for me – and made for a corner of the crush bar.

  I raised my glass: “Should I congratulate you?”

  “Congratulate?” Fanny’s brow furrowed.

  “On the interview. You were hoping for a job at the knicker factory.”

  She grinned. “Of course, as a shorthand-typist. I start next Monday.”

  We clinked glasses and drank.

  I said: “I’m pleased that you could come, but I should’ve warned you that this isn’t a completely social evening for me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m a reporter on the Evening Chronicle and I’ve got to review the show we’re going to see.”

  “You’re a critic. So you have the power to make or break actors’ careers. That’s awesome. And a bit frightening.”

  “Not really. I’m not the paper’s regular theatre critic. That’s a vision of loveliness called Sidney Pinker.”

  Fanny giggled.

  “Besides, this isn’t straight theatre – it’s just music hall,” I said. “A serious play with star actors might get half a page in the paper. This will get half a column. But I’ve also agreed to interview one of the acts. So we’ll need to go backstage during the interval.”

  “Wow! That’ll be a first for me. Have you been before?”

  “A couple of times. I don’t know about the roar of the crowd, but if you’ve got a sensitive nose, you’ll recognise the smell of the greasepaint.”

  Fanny smiled. “Can’t wait. So who will we be rubbing shoulders with backstage? Anyone famous?”

  I shrugged. “Apart from Professor Pettigrew and his Pixilated Poodles – I’m interviewing the professor not the poodles – I’ve been too busy to find out who’s on the rest of the bill. Wait here a minute and I’ll buy a programme.”

  I left Fanny nursing her drink and made my way back to the programme sellers in the foyer. I bought a couple of programmes, then hurried back. Walked into the bar and goggled with shock.

  Fanny was talking to Jim Houghton of the Argus.

  I edged into the room. Jim was wearing his trademark baggy grey suit. His hair was longer than usual. It flopped over his forehead. He leaned towards Fanny talking in an animated way with lots of hand movement. She was nodding thoughtfully. Then she said something and Jim laughed.

  I walked towards them. Came up behind Jim and said: “Not trying to steal my date off me?”

  He whirled round and I thought I caught a glimpse of concern in his eyes. But Jim was too wily an operator to be thrown off his stride for long.

  He grinned. “Saw you talking to this charming young lady a few minutes ago. Just thought I’d come over and introduce myself as your hated rival.”

  “Mr Houghton…” Fanny began.

  “Jim, please.”

  “Jim was telling me that you’re both crime correspondents.”


  “Both, apparently, with a love of the theatre,” I said.

  “Mine’s pure leisure,” Jim said. “I don’t do notices on the side.”

  I glanced at Fanny. She’d obviously been busy while I was buying the programme, regaling Jim with my business at the theatre. Jim may have been an old boy who walked with a limp, but he had a way with him that could tease intimacies out of people he’d just met. So I could hardly blame Fanny for giving the game away.

  “Versatility. It’s how to get on in journalism, Jim,” I said. “And talking of getting on, you’ll have to hurry if you want a drink before the show.”

  Houghton nodded at Fanny: “Nice to have met you.”

  Fanny smiled. “You, too, Jim.”

  I was about to say something, but at that moment the two-minute bell rang and we hurried through to take our seats.

  The curtain rose on six chorus girls dressed as liberty horses.

  They wore white plumes on their heads, piebald leotards and fishnet tights. They kicked their legs up in unison as the band belted out There’s No Business Like Show Business. That finally segued into a frantic chorus of the Post Horn Gallop as they trotted frantically around the stage.

  I don’t go for girls dressed as horses but I would’ve normally sat back and let myself enjoy this. Instead, I couldn’t shake off the notion that Fanny and Jim hadn’t met by chance.

  That they knew one another.

  Jim had rubbished the line I’d taken on the Snout murder story, but he was a man to keep his options open. He’d been caught out before by sticking to one theory and ignoring other possibilities.

  I wondered whether Fanny was his plant – a tame spy sent to befriend me and winkle out my own ideas about the case. She’d seemed very eager to get to know me in Marcello’s. On the other hand, if Fanny was Jim’s stool-pigeon, would he have risked speaking to her in the bar? Perhaps he’d hoped to give her some last-minute instructions before I returned with the programmes. Or perhaps he was playing a cleverer game – thinking that I wouldn’t suspect a plot if the pair had pretended to meet for the first time. It was just the kind of double bluff Houghton would cook up.