Stop Press Murder

by Peter Bartram

  And then a fleshy arm locked around my neck. I felt my windpipe close up.

  Clarence whispered in my ear. “I hurt my head. That ruddy dog tripped me. I’ll finish it. But I’ll finish you first.”

  With the drama of the key I’d not realised that Clarence had regained consciousness.

  “Let me go,” I croaked. “Can’t you see the place is burning.”

  The arm tightened around my neck. Little stars of light flashed in my eyes. My brain felt so light I thought it would float away. Ten more seconds and the lights would go out.

  I rammed my elbow backwards as hard as it would go. I caught Clarence right in the bread basket.

  Ooooooomph!

  The flesh of his belly caved inwards and the air went out of him.

  I repeated the manoeuvre. And again.

  One. Two. Three.

  On the third thump I felt something harder. What little was left of the muscles around his solar plexus. His arm came free of my neck and he staggered backwards. I gulped a mouthful of air.

  I swung round to face him. He was bent double gasping for air.

  I said: “We have to get on deck or we die.”

  And then the couch exploded into flame.

  I dashed forward, grabbed Clarence and pulled him towards the companionway. It was like dragging a sack of coal. The earlier blow to the head and my thumps in his stomach had done for him.

  I got him on the lower steps of the companionway. Tried to push him up one at a time.

  First step.

  Second step.

  Third step.

  He was going to make it. But he had a last reserve of strength in him. He lashed back with his left leg. Caught me in the chest. Sent me sprawling on the floor. I scrambled to my feet. But Clarence had already clambered back down and dashed back into the cabin.

  “My pictures,” he screamed. “My fortune lay on the pier.”

  He headed towards the table with Milady’s Bath Night. But the main stack of photos was already alight.

  I turned back, ready to heave him out again.

  And then the gas canister exploded.

  Kerrrrrrrrpow!

  The force of the blast blew out the portholes, blasted through the ceiling. I dived behind the cover of the companionway. A ball of flame roared past me like a devil’s thunderbolt.

  My ears popped as the oxygen was sucked out of the room. I gasped for breath. But the air in my nostrils felt like fire.

  I scrambled out from behind the companionway. The flames in the cabin were now roaring white with fury. The heat forced me back. Beyond the wreckage, I could see the lifeless body of Clarence on the floor. His dead hand had clamped like a claw around Milady’s Bath Night. The old pictures were burning with a bright orange flame.

  But not all of them.

  The blast had sent the title card through the air. It had landed near me. I grabbed it and thrust it into my pocket.

  I turned and pounded up the companionway to the deck.

  Behind me the fat lady hit a final top C. The orchestra pounded out three crashing chords. And then the radio died.

  It should have been over because the fat lady had sung.

  But it wasn’t.

  It was very far from being over.

  Chapter 24

  “I have to say I’m a smidgeon disappointed,” said Frank Figgis.

  “About what?” I asked.

  “I’d have liked a picture of the interior of the boat on fire.”

  “Sorry to disappoint,” I said. “Next time I’m in a raging inferno I’ll hang around with my Box Brownie while the flames lick up my inside leg.”

  We were in Figgis’s office. It was the morning after – and for me, at least, felt like it. A proof of the front page had just come up from the compositors. The headline screamed in the largest type the paper owned:

  PIER KILLER DIES IN BOAT BLAZE

  My report was accompanied by a picture of the smoking remains of the Marie. I’d batted out the piece on my old Remington at six o’clock that morning when I’d eventually made it back to the office.

  The final events of the previous night still played through my mind like a nightmare newsreel.

  The Marie had burned like one of those fire ships Sir Francis Drake sent in among the Spanish Armada. I’d scrambled up the companionway with the inferno roasting my backside every sweating step. As I’d made it to the footpath – by jumping across three feet of water onto the adjacent houseboat – Shirley and Fanny were guiding the tender into the riverbank. Poppy had barked exultantly. I’d helped them all ashore.

  If we’d thought the drama was over, we were wrong. The explosion of the gas canister had woken everybody who lived on the nearby houseboats. They’d crowded out onto the footpath. By the time the fire brigade arrived on the scene – they’d been called by a neighbour – there was nothing they could do to save the Marie.

  Then the police turned up. Shirley, Fanny and I – with Poppy in tow – were hauled off to Shoreham Police Station to make statements. When the cops realised that Fanny was the daughter of a government minister, they’d arranged for a police car to drive her back to Piddinghoe Grange. Shirley and I – with Poppy – were left to make our own way back to Brighton in the MGB.

  During the journey, I’d tried to ask Shirley about how the kidnap had happened. But she’d replied that she didn’t want to talk about it and all she needed was to get some shuteye. I’d offered to put Shirley up at my flat – despite what the Widow would say – but she’d insisted on checking into a small hotel where she’d made a reservation. As I dropped her off, I’d said I would contact her as soon as I’d finished at the paper.

  She said: “I guess, for you, missing a deadline is worse than missing a girlfriend.” Then she’d shuffled wearily up the steps into the hotel. I’d watched her go, cursing the day I’d first encountered Clarence Bulstrode.

  Poppy had bounded into the now-empty front seat of the

  MGB. “What do you think? Is it finally over for us?” I’d asked the mutt.

  I must’ve been too tired to think. I’d been asking a poodle for advice on my love life. I’d shrugged. “Let’s get you back to the worthy professor,” I’d said. Poppy licked my ear.

  After I’d delivered Poppy to Pettigrew’s digs, I’d snatched a couple of hours’ sleep at the flat before heading into the office for an early start.

  And, I had to admit, there was nothing like the sight of a front-page splash to raise a journalist’s spirits. I picked up the proof from Figgis’s desk and read the headline again.

  “We’ve beaten the Argus hands down on this story,” Figgis said. “But we need to keep running so they don’t catch us.”

  I said: “We’re so far ahead even Roger Bannister couldn’t catch us.”

  “You say that, but the Argus could still outsmart us on follow-up pieces if we’re not quick on our feet. It’s a pity you let those pictures of Milady’s Bath Night go up in flames.”

  “I didn’t have a fire-and-rescue squad with me at the time.”

  “Even so, we could have built a great picture spread around them.”

  “Not if you didn’t want every clergyman and the Clean Up Brighton campaign on your back.”

  “I’m sure there was nothing more offensive in them than you see on the front page of Reveille every week. Anyway, as they’re now ashes washing out to sea the question doesn’t arise.”

  “Yes, and taking whatever clues to this mystery they may have held,” I said.

  Figgis nodded thoughtfully.

  I reflected on a story lost. The content of the film would have made good copy.

  Instead, I said: “I’m planning a feature on Poppy. If she hadn’t leapt through the fire, Shirley would have died.”

  “Good idea,” Figgis said. “And we need an exclusive interview with Miss Goldsmith. We want to know everything from the moment Clarence burst into Mrs Gribble’s house to the time she was released from the Marie.”

  “Shirle
y didn’t look like a woman willing to give an exclusive interview last night,” I said.

  “I’m relying on you to make sure she speaks to us and nobody else,” Figgis said. “I don’t want rival papers muscling in on our story. The nationals with their fat cheque books will be after this one.”

  I had an idea. It could keep Shirley away from the tabloid hounds – and give me a chance of repairing my relationship with her. Everyone a winner!

  I said: “Shirley is putting up in a grotty B&B off the seafront. We could move her somewhere more comfortable – and secure. Then the nationals won’t be able to interview her.”

  Figgis scratched his forehead. “Where had you in mind?”

  “A suite at the Grand Hotel. We could get one of those gorillas that work in the circulation department – the muscle-bound blokes who load the papers onto the vans – to stand guard outside the door to prevent other journalists getting to her.”

  “Good idea – but what about the other hacks calling her on the dog and bone?”

  “As the Chronicle will be picking up the bill, we can have a quiet word with hotel reception to ensure no incoming calls are switched through to the room unless they come from us. It wouldn’t affect Shirley making outgoing calls, so she wouldn’t know.”

  “And how do we stop her leaving the room?” Figgis asked.

  “After all she’s been through, if I know Shirley, she’ll be only too happy to sample life on room service for a while.”

  Figgis reached for a Woodbine and lit up. Took a thoughtful drag. “Okay. Leave that with me. I’ll set it up from here. You concentrate on getting the interview.”

  I stood up and moved to the door. Turned back to Figgis.

  “I have an uneasy feeling this story isn’t over yet,” I said.

  Figgis blew a smoke ring and grinned. “For the sake of our circulation, I do hope so.”

  I walked back into the frenzy of a newsroom chasing a story in all directions and not quite knowing where it would lead next.

  Mark Hodges had been on the phone to the West Sussex Fire Brigade. He collared me as I passed his desk.

  “They still haven’t got the body out,” he said.

  “What’s left of it,” I said.

  Phil Bailey barged into the office and made straight for me. “Just been round to Clarence’s flat.”

  “His former flat,” I said.

  Phil nodded. “The cops are round there. Wouldn’t let me in, but I sneaked round the back and looked through a window by standing on a wall. They’re taking the place apart.”

  Sally Martin, who’d been taken off the woman’s page to join the team working on the story, called across the office: “Just tried to get a comment from Lady Piddinghoe on the death of her nephew. She put the phone down on me.”

  Susan Wheatcroft, the business reporter, folded up her Financial Times, and ambled over. “You look tired, honeybunch.”

  “I’ve had a restless night,” I said.

  “Well, if you ever want a restful one, you know where to come. But not too restful, eh?” And she left me with one her saucy winks.

  I sat down at my desk wondering what I should do next. It was true. I felt as tired as an old nag. The adrenalin of last night had drained out of me. I’d nailed the story about the murder of poor Fred Snout – and beaten the competition hands down. But I couldn’t shake off the feeling that I’d only uncovered part of the tale.

  Why had Clarence thought he’d make his fortune from an old What the Butler saw film? In fact, why had Marie told him his fortune waited for him on the pier? Had that just been the incoherent rambling of a dying woman? Or was there a deeper meaning behind it? Whatever the answer, it had produced tragic consequences.

  Then there was the puzzle over why Venetia was being blackmailed. She’d told me a story which I knew was false. But why was she hiding the real reason? Could it be that what the blackmailer had on her was something even worse? And who was the mysterious blackmailer that got a cocker spaniel to do his dirty work?

  There were too many questions. Not enough answers. Worse, I couldn’t think of any way of finding the answers. I’d already interviewed everyone who knew anything. Some had been evasive. Some had lied. I was used to that. I could usually pick my way towards the truth. In the past, I’d been able to call on the odd tip from Ted Wilson. But even he wasn’t speaking to me now. It seemed that I just had nowhere to turn.

  My old captain’s chair creaked as I leaned back in it and surveyed the newsroom.

  I smacked my forehead with my hand.

  Of course! There was one source of information I hadn’t yet investigated.

  Marie’s scrapbook.

  I’d liberated it from Clarence’s flat and stuffed it into my desk draw when I’d arrived back in the office shortly after dawn. Since then, I’d been so busy, I’d forgotten it. I yanked open the drawer and pulled out the book. The old paper crackled as I flipped through the pages.

  Most of the newspaper clippings in the book came from the nineteen-thirties, particularly around 1936, the time of the big fall-out between Marie and Venetia. It was almost as though Marie had known that she would never return to Piddinghoe but somehow wanted to retain a link to it. Perhaps keeping the scrapbook was a kind of therapy – her way of dealing with the pain of rejection by her sister and the decline of her career.

  The scrapbook was packed with ephemera about Piddinghoe life. There must have been eighty or ninety pages of it. I read one or two of the articles that caught my eye. A fire had burnt a cottage in the village and a cowman and his family were now homeless. The council was planning a new road to bypass Piddinghoe. A Mrs Tomkinson had chaired the annual parish meeting where the main item on the agenda was whether to install a street light.

  A longer cutting detailed the events of the annual Piddinghoe carnival in 1935. It had been opened by Lady Piddinghoe who’d been presented with a bouquet by ten-year-old Henrietta Houndstooth. A Mr Bert Entwhistle had won the bowling for a pig competition. And he and his wife and gone on to win the three-legged race. Miss Enid Pinchbeck, a kennel maid from Jumpers Town, had won the prize for the best-trained dog. And Mrs Gorringe from Newhaven had rounded off what the writer called “a perfectly spiffing afternoon” – where did they find reporters in those days? – by playing a selection from Ivor Novello on her piano-accordion.

  I turned the pages. There was more in the same vein. Parish council meetings. Flower shows. Weddings at the church. Vegetable growing competitions. Children’s parties at the village hall. Page after page of it. The tedium of village life.

  On the later pages, there were some cuttings about the erection of the statue to the first Marquess of Piddinghoe in Victoria Gardens. There were profiles of the sculptor – a member of the Royal Academy (no doubt the Piddinghoes would settle for nothing less) – and the engraver who’d made the plaque. He’d previously been a calligrapher who’d written the intertitles for silent films and retrained when the talkies made his task redundant. There was a photo – printed on photographic paper, so not a newspaper cutting – of him and Marie standing beside the plaque. He had his hand around her waist. She was gazing at the plaque with the kind of self-satisfied look she’d no doubt worn when taking a curtain call. She’d captioned the photo in her own hand: “Archie Cobbold and self. Job done.”

  I closed the scrapbook wondering what it all meant.

  And then a thought struck me.

  Surely there was one cutting missing? The most important cutting of all. The biggest story in the Sussex Express in 1936 would have been the apparent suicide of Susan Houndstooth. The paper would have covered the police investigation and carried a big report on the coroner’s inquest. Swiftly, I turned the pages to check that I’d not missed the pieces. Marie’s scissors had been busy but they’d clipped no news of Susan’s death.

  What a fool I’d been. I thumped my old Remington so hard I made the end-of-line bell ring.

  If the Sussex Express had carried a report on Susan’s i
nquest so would the Chronicle. In fact, I knew the paper had done so – because it was the very cutting I’d discovered Henrietta weeping over in the morgue. She’d told me about it when I visited her flat. Yet, such had been the pace of events, I hadn’t read it.

  I shoved the scrapbook back in my desk drawer, hurried across the newsroom and headed for the morgue.

  Henrietta was stacking some buff files on the shelf behind her desk.

  She turned as I entered and said: “And not a scorch mark in sight.”

  At the table, the Clipping Cousins put down their scissors and goggled.

  I said: “What were you expecting? Colin Crampton grilled medium-rare?”

  Henrietta said: “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. The experience must have been mortifying.”

  “Only for Clarence,” I said. “And he probably had a quotation or two to while away his final moments.”

  “Like ‘Oh, death, where is thy string?’,” said Mabel.

  “It’s ‘sting’,” said Elsie. “What would death be doing with a piece of string?”

  “Are you sure it isn’t ‘sling’,” said Freda. “After all, dead bodies would need something to hold them up.”

  As the Cousins started on one of their pointless squabbles, I pulled Henrietta to one side.

  “I need to see a cutting,” I said.

  “That cutting?” she asked. “Originally, filed under Piddinghoe? Now correctly filed under Houndstooth, Susan?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But I don’t want to upset you again.”

  “It’s all right now. It was the disrespect more than anything that upset me – not to file a report on my mother’s inquest under her own name. It was like carving the wrong name on her tombstone.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “Wait here.” Henrietta disappeared into the filing-cabinet stacks. She was back within thirty seconds carrying a brand new folder. She handed it to me.

  I looked at the label on the outside. Neat in Henrietta’s own handwriting. Houndstooth, Susan.

  “It’s right that she’s in the proper place,” I said.