A Shot in the Dark

by Lynne Truss

  Naturally, Twitten was wildly excited to see the list, but merely said, politely, ‘May I see, sir?’

  Crystal ignored the request. ‘But something new occurred to me today, Constable,’ he said, still gripping his list and gazing into the middle distance. He was evidently searching his memory. ‘I just can’t quite put my finger on it.’

  Afterwards, Twitten wished their ensuing exchange had not been quite so explicit (or so loud), considering there were strangers around them in a position to overhear. At the time, however, there seemed no reason to be more discreet; in any case, raised voices were necessary in all the hubbub.

  ‘Something of importance in the case of the Aldersgate Stick-up, sir?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You’re saying it came to you today, sir?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Might it provide a breakthrough, sir?’

  ‘Well, it might if I could remember it.’

  ‘Oh, sir. Do try.’

  ‘Well, I will attempt to visualise. Miss Sibert taught me to do that. Perhaps I should take off my coat.’

  ‘Oh, please don’t do that, sir,’ said Twitten in alarm. ‘I mean, I expect you were wearing the coat at the time, weren’t you?’

  ‘Good point. I’ll keep it on. It was after I got off the train. Between getting off the train and meeting Steine at the ice cream parlour. But what? Something took me right back to that scene in the bank! It was just a flash, but I was in the dark again, shaking with terror, with a canvas bag over my head!’

  ‘Gosh, sir. I wish you could remember what it was.’

  ‘So do I. It was momentary, but vivid.’ Crystal dropped his voice to a whisper as the lights went down. ‘Let me think. I came out of the station and I saw the posters on the wall, and then – was it a name? A voice?’

  ‘A smell perhaps,’ said Twitten. ‘Smells are very evocative.’

  ‘Shhhhh,’ someone said behind them.

  ‘Don’t shush me, madam,’ Crystal said, half turning. But then he realised that, sure enough, all the rows were full, and curtains had been swished across the exit doors by the ushers.

  ‘Tell me later, sir,’ whispered Twitten. ‘In the interval.’

  And so the play began. The stage curtains opened on a dark and crazily angled set representing a dingy basement room on a Sunday afternoon in Halifax, with a tin bath in front of a glowing gas fire. It was such an ugly sight that the well-heeled audience let out a shudder of revulsion – a communal expression of ‘Ugh!’ At its centre, however, was the beautiful, luminous Penny, smoking, one arm in a knotted sling, holding an open letter in her hand. A door slammed, offstage, and she looked about, as if deciding what to do.

  ‘Nicky?’ she called out, hastily tucking the letter under the mattress of the unmade bed. ‘Is that you, dear?’

  A door opened and a scowling youth in a donkey jacket stepped into the room. It was Todd Blair, of course. This cheered the audience up somewhat – most of them recognising him from his recent breakthrough part as the murderous juvenile delinquent in a film; even Twitten thrilled when he came on.

  ‘You still here?’ he said, menacingly, to the lovely Penny – and then, yelling, ‘You make me SICK!’, picked up a chair and hurled it across the stage. The audience gasped. Crystal groaned with displeasure.

  ‘Oh, Nicky,’ breathed Penny, with emotion. ‘I thought you’d gone and left me!’

  Twitten didn’t know quite what to make of the play, and after the first five minutes or so, it was hard to concentrate anyway with so many people getting up and leaving. It was definitely something new, he thought. But was it art? He noticed that his critic companion made no notes – as was well known about Crystal, he trusted to his excellent memory, and had never been known to misquote. He groaned repeatedly, though. He made pained noises while squirming in his seat. It was pretty clear he was not revising his original prejudices about the play.

  But about twenty minutes in, Crystal went rigid in his seat. ‘That’s it!’ he said out loud, and was shushed again from behind. Placing the piece of paper on the upholstered armrest, he excitedly scrawled something on it in the dark. Twitten, watching, was desperate to ask what had happened. Was it something in the play? Onstage the passionate Nick was lengthily berating his beautiful girlfriend Ruby for being the breadwinner (which seemed a bit rich to Twitten). The burden of Nick’s complaint was that it was emasculating for a man to see his woman working as a clippie on the bus. It seemed to Twitten that this speech was no more annoying and unconvincing than anything else in the play, and yet the effect on Crystal was extraordinary.

  ‘Sir, are you all right?’ whispered the constable, putting his head close to Crystal’s.

  What happened next would always be unclear. Again, it wasn’t the sort of thing that happens to most police constables on their first day – to be showered with blood and brains in seat D2 of the stalls, an ear-bursting bang making your own head ring so painfully that you can scarcely think. Afterwards he recalled that Crystal whispered urgently to him, ‘I knew it! Tell Inspector Steine from me he’s even more of a fool –’ And then, just as a shower of ‘shushes’ was sent in his direction, and Twitten was turning to apologise, there was a shot in the dark, and Crystal fell forward, dead.

  Twitten temporarily lost sight, hearing, everything, but instinct made him stand and turn to face the auditorium. The audience was still. On the stage behind him, the actors froze.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ said Blair Todd. ‘I didn’t mean –’

  Then the curtain came down, and as the audience rose like a flock of pigeons, Twitten – acting still on pure instinct – put his whistle to his lips, and blew.

  * * *

  By the time help arrived, Twitten was seriously regretting he had not had the usual first day of a police constable.

  Although he had appealed for calm, and had especially insisted that no one leave the auditorium, a hysterical stampede had ensued, and the theatre had emptied in half a minute, leaving just two still figures: a bloodied and stunned Constable Twitten, his police whistle still upraised, and beside him in the aisle seat, a slumped corpse with a crumpled piece of paper in its hand.

  The house lights were up, and Twitten could see all the litter on the floor between the seats: the programmes dropped in the frantic exodus; the abandoned boxes of Orchard Creams; the odd high-heeled shoe; a diamond earring; a slender pistol glinting against the red-patterned carpet in the aisle. It was only as he climbed over his seat to retrieve the murder weapon, taking a hankie from his pocket, that he realised he was in tears. He took a seat at the end of Row H and sat in silence until help arrived.

  The management had called for the police. In particular they had asked for Inspector Steine, who arrived quite promptly with other uniformed officers; the theatre staff who had gathered in the foyer stood aside respectfully to let the great man through. Ben Oliver of the Evening Argus flashed his press credentials and followed behind. For someone who had drawn the short straw in the office that morning, he was having an excellent, possibly career-changing day.

  ‘Constable Twitten!’ exclaimed Steine, entering the auditorium, and taking everything in. ‘So it’s true. Someone’s shot him. I knew you’d be trouble, Constable. I just knew it.’

  Twitten, one side of his face coated with blood, stood up from his seat, wobbling, and carefully held up the pistol, using the hankie. His voice, when it came out, was small.

  ‘I think this is the weapon, sir.’

  ‘Well, it’s unlikely someone did this with a popgun, Constable. Of course it’s the weapon.’

  ‘May I sit down again, sir?’

  ‘Certainly not. There’s a lot to do. And put your helmet on.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Steine turned to the three constables who’d come with him from the station. ‘Carry on,’ he said – but they just stood there awkwardly. It wasn’t clear what they should carry on with exactly, until someone with the right qualifications had come to inspect
the corpse and take it away.

  ‘What’s happened? Who is that?’ said a frightened voice behind them. All turned towards the stage. It was the actress from the play, Penelope Cavendish, peering through the curtains, and then stepping onto the apron. Her arm was out of its sling, but she looked no less fragile. Despite the circumstances, Twitten couldn’t help thinking what a beautiful girl she was. He also had another thought and acted on it while Steine’s attention was captured elsewhere. He swiftly removed the bloodstained Aldersgate Stick-up list from Crystal’s stiffening hand and slid it inside his tunic.

  ‘This man has been shot in the head, madam,’ said Steine.

  ‘Oh, no!’

  ‘The sight is not for the faint-hearted, I’m afraid. Gore and brains everywhere. Good grief, is that an eyeball down there? Don’t tread on it, Twitten.’

  Penny sensibly stayed where she was. ‘Oh my God,’ she said.

  ‘Can you account for your movements when this incident took place?’ Steine demanded.

  ‘She was on the stage, sir,’ said Twitten, faintly. He felt increasingly disorientated. The auditorium appeared to be spinning. Perhaps the adrenalin was wearing off. The bang still rang in his ears; he had witnessed his first murder; flesh and chips of bone from another man’s head were in his hair under the helmet; worst of all, he had knowingly removed evidence from a crime scene, an offence so serious it was punishable by imprisonment.

  But true to his nature, he carried on talking. ‘When the shot rang out, sir, she was being told off for being a bus conductress, for reasons I didn’t quite understand.’

  Then he piped up for Penny’s benefit, ‘It needn’t concern you, I’m sure, madam. He was an aggravating man, admittedly, but at the same time one of the great theatre critics of our time.’

  The effect of this news on the beautiful Penny was curious. ‘An aggravating theatre critic?’ she said.

  ‘An extremely aggravating theatre critic,’ said Steine. ‘And quite smelly, too.’

  ‘Not… Crystal?’ she whispered.

  ‘Yes, that’s the man,’ said Steine, surprised. ‘Did you know him?’

  She recoiled as if she’d walked into a plate-glass door. ‘Jack! You didn’t!’ she gasped. And then she fainted onstage – just as Twitten said, ‘So sorry, sir’, and fell to the floor as well.

  Four

  At just about the time Twitten and Crystal met at the Theatre Royal, Brunswick and Maisie were outside the Hippodrome, halfway back in a loud, excited queue of holidaymakers, most of them swaying unsteadily, already the worse for wear. Brunswick himself had consumed three halves of Watney’s in twenty minutes at the Queen Adelaide; Maisie might be only nineteen years old, but she had easily kept pace with her disgusting port-and-Tizers.

  It’s an aspect of old-school Variety that is often overlooked in respectful academic accounts of the genre’s sad and lonely death-by-television in the 1950s – that what made the weak comedy routines sound so funny in the halls (and the tawdry ‘glamour’ even passable), was the audience’s prior consumption of alcohol in quantities that would nowadays be considered catastrophically injurious to health.

  So Brunswick wasn’t at his sharpest, perhaps, when he saw an elegantly dressed woman with striking red hair cross the road to the Hippodrome and enter through the stage door. What caught his attention was how fast she was moving: trotting in her high heels, head forwards – and holding a gloved hand to her face, as if in some distress. She was also wearing an extra-large raincoat, which was odd given the balminess of the evening. Brunswick looked back down the street. Was someone chasing her? For a while he did nothing, knowing that Maisie would strongly object if he abandoned her; but in the end, he just had to make a move. Instructing Maisie to keep his place in the queue, and promising to be quick, he raced to the stage door, cursing himself for not following the suspect instantly.

  Curiously, the thought flashed through his mind, ‘Wait till I tell Twitten!’ – which he realised ought to be grounds for concern. He wanted Constable Twitten to be pleased with him? And yet, there was no doubt about it. If this woman turned out to be the Opinion Poll lady, he glowed with pride at the thought of young Twitten patting him on the back and saying, ‘Jolly well done, sir. I think you’ve solved the case!’

  Stage Door Albert greeted him. Albert was seventy-five years old, chesty and as deaf as a post. He was also one of Brunswick’s hopeless ‘irregulars’ who happily received ten bob from time to time, and in return never came up with the goods.

  ‘Albert, did you see a woman come through here? Five minutes ago? Red hair?’

  Albert coughed. ‘Pardon?’ he said.

  ‘A woman! Red hair!’

  ‘Went down there,’ said Albert, pointing to the dressing rooms. ‘Been here a few times. Someone’s bit on the side, most likely,’ he said.

  ‘Whose?’

  Albert shrugged. He’d seen it all, of course. The animal acts were the worst. Through force of habit, Brunswick slipped him a florin, and made his way down the foul-smelling distempered corridor lined with closed dressing-room doors. Every name was thrilling to him: Buster Brown the human cannon-ball! Tommy Tricks the magician (probably not his real name)! Joanne Carver the strong woman!

  Was Carver possibly the Opinion Poll lady? Having seen her perform, Brunswick had noticed how feminine she could make herself look, despite the amazing power in her hands. Onstage, to emphasise her feminine assets (and to draw attention away from her manly wrists), she dressed in fishnet stockings, high heels and a strapless bodice; she spoke beautifully to the audience, like Lady Isobel Barnett on What’s My Line?; and then to general amazement she would pick up a table by just one leg and hold it high above her head.

  Brunswick knocked on Miss Carver’s door, but there was no answer. He tried the handle. It was locked. He was sure he was on to something. Hadn’t one of the break-in victims reported that a heavy bookcase had been moved by the robber? Previously this had seemed to indicate the Opinion Poll lady wasn’t working alone. Well, maybe not. Maybe the lady and the intruder were one and the same. In the corridor, Brunswick could smell lavender, make-up and explosives. He was sure he was on the right lines.

  But besides knocking and trying the handle, he could do nothing more at present. Breaking in would require a warrant. It was frustrating, but there it was. In the meantime, he couldn’t help noticing, at the end of the corridor – with the biggest star on the door – was Professor Mesmer’s room. Brunswick, gripped by a desire to meet his hero (and emboldened by the Watney’s), knocked on it impulsively.

  ‘Not now, Albert!’ came a pleasant call from within, but Brunswick’s beer continued to work its magic: he grasped the handle and entered. And there he found the great Mesmer sitting at his mirror with his back to the door, applying a fake beard. The room was a mess of costumes and paraphernalia, and overflowing linen baskets, and on the wall were large coloured charts of the human head. There was a full tumbler of whisky near Bobby’s hand, with the half-drunk bottle beside it.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt you, sir.’

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ said Bobby, with an easy smile. ‘I’m sorry but members of the public aren’t allowed in here, you know.’

  ‘Police, sir.’ Hat in hand, Brunswick produced his identity card. Bobby raised his eyebrows to acknowledge it, but still didn’t look round from the mirror. The beard now secured, he started work on his eyeliner.

  ‘I still don’t know why you’re here,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry, sir. I’m looking for a woman,’ said Brunswick. ‘Would you happen to know a woman with red hair? She came down here a few minutes ago, you see, sir. And as far as I’m aware, she hasn’t left.’

  ‘Well, she’s not in here,’ said Bobby. ‘You’re welcome to search. Try Tommy Tricks. He has females coming and going all day, lucky devil. He makes them laugh, apparently.’

  ‘That’s very helpful, sir. But can I ask – Miss Carver, sir. Have you ever seen her in a red wig?’

  Bo
bby frowned and took a sip of his whisky. ‘Miss Carver? You mean Jo? Not that I can remember. But she’s not here all the time.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Not many people know this, but she holds down a very lucrative day job as a brickie. Doing shifts on building sites. Hod carrier extraordinaire.’

  ‘Well, thank you, sir.’ Brunswick turned to go and then couldn’t help himself. When would he ever get the chance again to tell Professor Mesmer how brilliant he was?

  ‘I’m a great fan of your abilities, sir,’ he gushed. ‘I hope you don’t mind my saying. What you do is astonishing, absolutely flaming well astonishing.’

  Bobby smiled, and at last swung round to look at Brunswick. He waggled the beard, which made Brunswick laugh.

  ‘I’ve seen you three times, sir.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘You’re a genius, sir. I wouldn’t ever want you feeling my head bumps, that’s for sure. By the way, you’re much, much younger than I imagined.’

  Brunswick realised he was quite nervous now that he and Professor Mesmer were face to face.

  ‘What was your name, officer?’

  Brunswick was overcome. ‘Sergeant Brunswick, sir. Jim.’ He swallowed. ‘Jim Brunswick,’ he clarified. ‘Jim. Or Jimmy, if you like. Well, thank you, sir. Sorry to bother you. I’d better go, there’s someone waiting.’

  ‘And you’re looking for a red-haired woman, for some reason?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘May I ask why?’

  ‘It’s in connection with some break-ins. Police business, that’s all. Someone answering her description came in here.’

  ‘You saw her yourself?’

  ‘I did, sir.’

  ‘Well, I wish you luck in finding her, Sergeant.’ Bobby stood up and pointed at Brunswick’s forehead. ‘But before you go, I feel I ought to tell you that you show a very well-developed organ of Causality. Though I expect you know that. It’s what you use as a detective, tracing things back to their causes.’