by Lynne Truss
Brunswick felt embarrassed. ‘Causality, you say?’
‘If I may –? Look, could you sit on that chair for a moment and face away from me?’
Brunswick hesitated. What an amazing thing to happen! ‘Well, I shouldn’t really –’
‘It won’t hurt a bit.’
So Brunswick did as he was told, and the next thing he knew, Professor Mesmer’s fingers were massaging his cranium in precise little circles. It made him feel warm and light-headed, but in a good way. He closed his eyes. He was aware of the coloured patterns on the insides of his eyelids. Whatever Mesmer was saying to him (was he saying anything?), it was soothing, and lovely. He felt a bit like one of those blown-up plastic lilos the kiddies floated on sometimes, lying stretched out, rocking gently on a sea that buoyed him up.
‘Yes, it’s as I thought,’ said Bobby, suddenly removing his hands from Brunswick’s head, and jerking him back to reality.
Brunswick opened his eyes.
‘A large organ of Hope, Sergeant. That’s the real thing that drives you. You should rejoice in it. No one ever came to much who didn’t have a pretty big organ of Hope.’
Brunswick was happy to hear it. ‘Thank you, sir,’ he said, standing up. He felt dizzy. ‘And good luck with the show tonight.’
‘You’re very kind. And I’ve just remembered. I think I have seen Jo in a red wig once or twice. Is it important?’
* * *
When Constable Twitten woke up, he was horizontal on a trolley, travelling in a speeding ambulance with its alarm bell ringing. What was he doing here? His vision was bleary; there was a buzzing in his ears; his mouth was dry. Opening his eyes, he was puzzled to see Mrs Groynes, the station charlady, sitting beside him. She appeared to be dressed in quite smart black clothes and a fashionable turban-style hat. Was he delirious?
‘Mrs… Groynes?’ he said.
‘That’s right, dear. Only me.’ She turned and called out, ‘He’s woken up!’
‘Good!’ was the reply from the driver. ‘Nearly there!’
‘Where am I?’ Twitten croaked.
‘You’re going to the hospital, dear. The inspector packed you off, see, on account of you fainting and then babbling like an infant. In your defence, the inspector said it was a regular bloodbath in there. Imagine, in some directions the gore flew twenty feet.’
Twitten struggled to sit up.
‘I shouldn’t be here, Mrs Groynes,’ he said. ‘Could you ask them to stop the ambulance, or turn it round?’
‘I’ll do no such thing.’
‘I should be there, at the theatre. I could be jolly useful. I’m good at working things out! I won a medal for forensic observation!’
He found he couldn’t hold himself upright, and fell back with a groan.
‘Would you like some water, dear?’
‘Yes, please.’
But when Mrs Groynes asked for water, the ambulance man said Twitten ought to wait till he arrived at the hospital. It would only be a couple of minutes. So instead, she took a miniature bottle of 4711 eau de cologne from her handbag, and dabbed a drop behind each of Twitten’s ears. Bizarrely, it did make him feel a bit better.
‘But why are you here, Mrs Groynes? I don’t understand.’
‘Search me, dear. Think of me as your personal bodyguard.’
Twitten shut his eyes.
‘I really ought to be helping! The boy on the stage said something important after the shot was fired. Inspector Steine needs to know that.’
‘It’s all right. He does know that, as it happens. I told him already, dear.’
‘But how –?’
‘Because I thought it was strange myself. He said, “Effing hell, I didn’t mean –” And then he stopped.’
‘That’s right. That’s exactly what he said.’
‘And then of course the girl on the stage, she said, “Jack! You didn’t!” Inspector Steine knows all about that, dear, too. They’re looking for Jack Braithwaite as we speak. And also Alec Forrester, one of the cast. Both of them have made themselves scarce, apparently. No one saw either of them this evening before the curtain went up. He had a lot of enemies, that Crystal. You’d never guess, to look at him.’
Twitten moaned. It still didn’t make sense that the charlady was with him in this ambulance. ‘Were you there, Mrs Groynes? At the theatre?’
‘I was, dear. Row S. I led the charge out the door, dear! And I was outside with everyone else when the inspector arrived.’ She seemed mildly offended. ‘Blimey, dear, I do have a life, you know, besides making tea and dusting the inspector’s desk!’
‘Of course. I’m so sorry.’ Emotions welled up in Twitten: contrition, helplessness, shame. She patted his hand. ‘When you were babbling back there, dear,’ she said, kindly, ‘you asked quite loudly for a “huggie from mummy”. I thought I should tell you because everyone heard it, and quite a lot of people laughed, and it’s the sort of thing you’ll probably never live down in this town, dear, no matter how hard you try, no matter how long you live.’
* * *
Sergeant Brunswick had just stepped out of the Hippodrome stage door and put his hat back on when two breathless constables caught up with him. Being informed that he had a specially large organ of Hope had really cheered him up, but he had no time to enjoy it. He was wanted at the Theatre Royal at once. The critic Crystal had been shot dead, they said; Constable Twitten was unharmed but on his way to hospital with symptoms of shock (including some very entertaining babbling); the inspector was now interviewing the cast and management. Two suspects were at large.
Pausing only to apologise to Maisie – who was still waiting outside while the rest of the queue had gone in, and duly outraged to be abandoned mid-date (and whose tongue was lemon yellow, for the record) – Brunswick raced through the Lanes to the Theatre Royal, his heart thumping loudly in his chest.
‘Ah, here you are,’ said Steine. He was up on the stage, with four-fifths of the cast in front of him – Penny, Todd Blair and the two older generic character actors whose particulars are happily immaterial. Old Alec Forrester was missing.
Brunswick recognised Todd at once as the menacing presence from the Dirk Bogarde film, and was astonished by how small he was. Todd had just confessed to spilling the beans to Alec about what he’d overheard at the ice cream parlour.
‘I told him. I said, you’ll be toast once that review comes out, mate.’
‘You didn’t!’ gasped Penny.
‘Well, he made me sick. Always playing the big I Am. Always talking about his flaming rounded vowels. All he did was carry a satchel and stagger into the room! Him and his rounded vowels.’
‘I thought I caught you listening to our private conversation,’ said Steine sternly to Todd, having finally put two and two together. ‘And let me say, I very much disapprove of such underhandedness.’ Steine spoke to Todd as if he were a hooligan, not a film star.
‘He must have been very hurt when you told him,’ said Penny. ‘He thought Crystal was his friend.’
‘He wasn’t hurt, he was livid,’ said Todd. ‘I’ll tell you what he said. And there were no rounded vowels in it. He said, “That’s it. That bastard. I’ll fucking kill him.” Sorry, Penny.’
‘No, don’t mind me.’
‘Oh, all right, good. Because then I said, “Well, you’d better do it tonight before he writes that review, mate.” And he said, and I quote, “That’s a good fucking point, Todd. I fucking will.”’
‘Oh, God,’ said Penny. ‘Why didn’t you tell someone?’
‘I didn’t think he’d actually do it!’
Steine had a thought. ‘Has any of you ever seen Mr Forrester with a gun?’
They all shook their heads. ‘No,’ said everyone.
‘Well, it can’t be him, then, can it?’ said Steine, exasperated. He tore up the piece of paper he’d been writing on. Honestly, had these people never heard of FOWPT?
Brunswick used this moment to join the inspector on the stage and produ
ce his own notebook. He tipped his hat to them all and stood to one side, respectfully.
‘So what can you tell me about this missing writer?’ said Steine. ‘What’s his name, Jack something?’
The others all deferred to Penny in a rather obvious manner.
‘I’m Jack Braithwaite’s girlfriend,’ she explained. ‘All I know is that he wasn’t here for curtain-up. I’ve been very worried. He does have a temper, and he was furious about the review Crystal was planning to write! I keep telling myself Jack couldn’t have done this –’
‘Oh, I think he could,’ said Todd Blair.
‘– but he was quite violent earlier today when he first learned about it! And he did say, “I’ll kill him”!’
Steine nodded and made a note. ‘So he was murderously angry about a review that hadn’t been written yet. In ordinary circumstances, that wouldn’t make much sense, but I happen to know personally that Crystal was planning a stinker.’
‘He certainly was,’ agreed Blair.
Brunswick took over, and addressed Penny. ‘What time did you last see Mr Braithwaite, miss?’
‘Around seven, I think,’ she said. ‘He said he needed to pop back to his digs. He said he was worried about something there, but he didn’t say what.’
‘Was he fetching a gun, perhaps?’ said Steine. ‘That would fit in nicely, if it was a gun. Did he mention a gun?’
‘No, of course not.’
Steine made a note. ‘Shame,’ he said. ‘I thought we had him, then.’
‘My point is, he never came back.’
‘Do you have the address of these digs, miss?’ said Brunswick. ‘I can go there immediately, sir.’
‘I think we should both go, Brunswick.’ Steine looked at his watch and sighed. ‘I’ve missed half the concert on the Light Service already. Picking it up at the interval is rarely satisfactory. So, in for a penny, in for a pound, I suppose.’
Ten minutes later, accompanied by uniformed officers, Steine and Brunswick arrived at Jack Braithwaite’s digs, in the Clifton Hill area of the town. Braithwaite had been staying with a Mrs Thorpe, a rich widow who kept a spare room for visiting theatricals in a nice Regency house painted white, with views across trees, gardens and rooftops to the glittering sea beyond. It was nearly sunset and the sky in the west was flaring with pinks and oranges. Starlings in their thousands were massing and swooping aerobatically above the West Pier.
As Steine and Brunswick approached the house, the inspector tried to remember the exact form of words used when making an arrest, but for some reason they wouldn’t come easily to mind. So he gave up.
‘You take over from here, Brunswick,’ he said, magnanimously.
‘Really, sir? Thank you, sir.’
‘You remember the exact form of words used when making an arrest, I hope?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then carry on.’
Brunswick knocked at the door, and they waited for a response. He knocked again, without success. Steine felt that by now someone should have answered. Brunswick evidently felt it too.
‘I feel a bit deflated, Sergeant,’ said Steine. ‘You have my permission to find a side window and break in.’
But before Brunswick could act on this instruction, a middle-aged, blue-rinsed woman in an expensive fur stole arrived at the gate and asked them what they were doing. It was Mrs Thorpe. She had been in the audience for A Shilling in the Meter, using a ticket provided by her lodger, Jack Braithwaite. Like everyone else, she’d arrived home a lot earlier than expected (although she had stopped for a stiffening drink or two en route). Unfortunately, she hadn’t been able to help the police taking statements outside the theatre; she’d been so fixated on the play, she said – which she had found raw and original and full of promise – that she really hadn’t noticed anything untoward until the shot. She and the inspector discussed all this on the doorstep, and then she asked him again why he was there.
‘To arrest Mr Braithwaite for the cold-blooded murder of A. S. Crystal, of course,’ said Steine.
‘What?’ she exclaimed. ‘But Mr Braithwaite would never –!’
Brunswick chipped in, reassuringly, ‘Or possibly to eliminate him from our enquiries, sir. We don’t actually know he’s guilty yet. If he has an alibi, he could be in the clear.’
Steine shrugged. That wasn’t how he saw matters at all.
‘But why would he be here?’ asked the landlady. ‘Surely he was at the theatre?’
Brunswick explained that Jack had told his girlfriend earlier in the evening that he needed to pop home to his digs. ‘She said he seemed worried about something here. He wouldn’t tell her what.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Mrs Thorpe, crossly, producing a key from her handbag. ‘And I begged him not to! Not on his special night!’
She opened the door. ‘Mr Braithwaite?’ she called, as she stepped inside. ‘Mr Braithwaite, the police want to talk to you! It’s very important! Are you here?’
In the hallway, she turned back. ‘I don’t think he’s in. But if it’s helpful, I think I can clear up why he might have come back here this evening. This afternoon I had a visitor from the national Public Opinion Poll – an absolutely charming young woman.’
‘You did?’ exclaimed Steine. He sounded slightly aggrieved. ‘Was it fascinating?’
‘Well, yes. I suppose it was. But –’
‘Wide range of topics?’
‘Yes, very.’
‘Did you feel you were doing something of civic importance?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘I knew it!’
‘But the point is –’
‘What colour hair did she have?’ interrupted Brunswick.
‘Oh.’ Mrs Thorpe didn’t have to think about it. ‘Red,’ she said, ‘bright red.’
‘Bingo!’ said Brunswick. ‘Sorry, do go on.’
‘Thank you. The point is, I happened to tell Mr Braithwaite about this visit, and the effect on him was extraordinary. He was outraged on my behalf! He said he was sure she wasn’t genuine; that she was really some criminal or other doing research for a crime! He said he was worried someone would break in this evening to burgle the house and take my pearls! I said he was being ridiculous and not to give it another thought, but he said, no, he had come across this exact scam before.
‘Mr Braithwaite has quite a temper, it’s true – well, it’s the wonderful magnetic passion one saw in his play tonight. But he does mean well. I’m sure you’ll find he’s perfectly innocent. May I offer you a sherry before you go?’
And then she opened the door to her front living room, and let out a scream of horror. Furniture was in disarray; ornaments shattered, curtains torn; blood dripped from the fireplace and was sprayed in arcs across the walls. There was no doubt that a life-and-death struggle had taken place inside this room – the biggest giveaway being the lifeless remains, on the best Persian rug, of the magnetic young playwright Jack Braithwaite, whose own personal Gas Man had arrived unexpectedly to read his meter and collect his dues.
* * *
That evening, while Constable Twitten begged to be released from hospital, and the sympathetic Mrs Groynes insisted on soothing his brow with refreshing dabs of eau de cologne, two arrests for murder were promptly made in Brighton.
Steine was in no mood to hang about; the concert on the wireless was by now a completely lost cause; why string things out longer than was necessary? Thus, at 9.38 p.m., the veteran actor Alec Forrester was arrested in the saloon bar of a discreet, all-gentlemen pub in Hove. He was virtually unconscious by the time he was tracked down, having been drinking there for several hours – some witnesses said he had been there since mid-afternoon, long before the shooting at the Theatre Royal had occurred. But since these witnesses were legless themselves, Steine saw no reason to take account of their testimony.
On standing up to hear the charge, the swaying, blinking Alec adopted a profoundly confused expression, and then visibly brightened.
‘He’s
dead?’ he said, as the information sank in. His face was a picture of pure relief. ‘Thank fuck!’ he cried (an ejaculation that was recorded by Brunswick in his notebook with a certain amount of awkwardness).
On motive alone, Alec Forrester might have faced two charges of murder had it not been so obvious he was physically incapable of overpowering Jack Braithwaite in hand-to-hand combat, and finally slitting his throat with a regimental sword (once the property of General Thorpe, and displayed above the fireplace in Mrs Thorpe’s front room). Even Inspector Steine was forced to conclude that the murder of Jack Braithwaite had clearly been committed by an interrupted intruder.
The absence of all Mrs Thorpe’s pearls was a pretty big clue here, not to mention the way a back window had been forced from the outside. The most likely explanation was that the regular accomplice of the Opinion Poll lady must have arrived at the house expecting it to be empty, and found Jack Braithwaite waiting for him. They had fought, and Braithwaite had copped it.
Just one detail didn’t fit this theory: two sherry glasses in the room had been used. Mrs Thorpe was adamant that when she left the house, all the glasses had been clean, and that there had been a good two inches more of sherry in the decanter. Had the two men shared a couple of genteel glasses of fortified wine and then tried to kill each other? Steine allowed Brunswick to make a note of this inconvenient piece of evidence, but remained firmly married to the surprised-intruder hypothesis. It pained him to do it, but he now felt obliged to concede that perhaps the Opinion Poll lady was not the real McCoy, after all.
‘But who was the intruder, Brunswick? Have you got any closer to identifying even the bogus Opinion Poll lady? I mean, what have you and Clever Clogs Twitten been doing all day?’
‘I have reason to believe that the Opinion Poll lady and the intruder are one and the same, sir.’
‘It would have to be a very strong lady, Sergeant!’
Brunswick beamed. ‘It is, sir.’
Which is why, at 10.20 p.m., at the Hippodrome Theatre, policemen led by Inspector Steine of the Brighton Constabulary raided the dressing room of professional strong lady Joanne Carver. They found her in a silk dressing-gown with her wrists in little baths of iced water and her feet up, a women’s magazine in her lap; she screamed as they burst in. While two men restrained her, Brunswick conducted a superficial search, which proved fruitful. In among her costumes, he found not only a carefully hidden red wig in an old canvas money-bag but also a briefcase full of pearls. She looked shocked.
