by Lynne Truss
‘Bobby!’ she said, bursting into his dressing room – and was embarrassed to find he wasn’t alone. He had evidently been in the middle of a serious conversation with a woman – a woman who was quite a bit older than he was, and very smartly dressed with just the slightest scent of eau de cologne to her. They both reacted guiltily to Penny’s arrival.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Penny, backing out of the room. ‘I’ll go.’
‘No,’ said the other woman, smiling. ‘I have to run.’ She gave Bobby a significant look, and said, ‘Tomorrow night then?’
‘Tomorrow night,’ he agreed. ‘All fixed.’
And then the woman quickly tiptoed out of the room, closing the door behind her, and Penny stood alone in the room with Bobby. She was very confused. Should she run into his arms, or should she slap his face? She stayed where she was.
‘Bobby, the police came,’ she said. ‘They weren’t asking about Jack, they were asking about you!’
She had hoped he would be innocently surprised. But he wasn’t. Bobby put his hands to his face and sank down on a chair. ‘Oh, no,’ he groaned. Then, carefully: ‘What did you tell them?’
‘Bobby, did you kill Jack?’
‘No!’
‘Oh, but you did! You did!’
‘No! Penny, no. I swear.’
‘What about this comb?’ She tore it out of her hair. ‘I could tell when he saw it. It’s stolen, isn’t it?’
Bobby took a deep breath. ‘Yes,’ he said.
She looked like she might cry. ‘I hate this. I can’t believe it’s happening! I panicked and lied, Bobby. I lied to the police. When he asked me about the comb I said I’d “picked it up” in Brighton and he shot me such a look of disbelief, it made me feel like a thief myself. Bobby, what have you done?’
He gave her a steady look. ‘I’ve never met anyone like you before, Penny. I want to tell you everything, I ought to tell you everything, but I can’t.’
‘Just tell me. Please. Are you a thief, Bobby?’
Her eyes filled with tears.
‘Yes, I am. I’m a thief. I’m sorry.’
‘Did you kill Jack?’
‘No!’ He grabbed her hand. ‘No. No, I didn’t. I wouldn’t. I’ve never hurt anyone.’
Penny broke down in sobs. ‘I don’t believe you. You told me about the furniture and the curtains in the room where he was killed! How do you know about that if you weren’t there?’
Bobby took a deep breath. ‘Because I was there, Penny.’
‘No!’
‘I’d gone there to rob the place and Jack confronted me, and then –’
‘And then what?’
‘Oh, Penny. You’ve got to believe me. All I did with Jack was have a glass of sherry!’
* * *
At three o’clock that afternoon, the persons of interest in this story were all individually occupied in such interesting ways that an overview of what they were all doing simply cries out for description, preferably in the dramatic present tense.
For example, by 3 p.m. Penny Cavendish is rehearsing Act One of A Shilling in the Meter at the Theatre Royal, and bringing a previously unseen gravity to the part of Ruby. Her acting seems to have acquired a new dimension. The weight of her arm in its sling is perceptibly heavier; her innocent love for the loathsome Nick is profoundly touching.
The rest of the cast naturally put this development down to her shock and grief over the death of Jack, but they don’t know the half of it. She is also wrestling with the knowledge that Bobby – to whom she’s been drawn like a magnet from the moment she met him – is a professional transvestite burglar who hints that he perhaps might have prevented the violent death of her boyfriend, but adamantly refuses to explain why or how he didn’t.
Meanwhile Alec’s strange Finnish accent as Man from the Gas Board has brought real interest (and mystery) to the part, and the two mousy actors playing Nick’s parents are thoroughly energised in their roles (it turns out they just couldn’t stand working with Jack Braithwaite).
At the Hippodrome in Middle Street, in preparation for a matinée, Bobby Melba is applying his make-up with a shaking hand – praying that he has not done the wrong thing by confessing his crimes to Penny. He has just taken every item of stolen loot – including the precious comb – to Harry the Head, the pawnbroker in the Lanes whose prominent organ of Philoprogenitiveness (love of children) can’t help but draw Bobby’s professional interest every time he meets him. Bulging out of the back of his head, it’s the size and shape of a small coconut (but obviously less hairy).
Disappointingly, Harry has given Bobby less than half the money he had expected, but in the circumstances he’s just glad to be shot of everything. Bobby’s mind runs to Penny constantly, to the look of fear and revulsion on her face when she asked, ‘Did you kill Jack?’ – and the scene of the killing runs through his mind over and over again. That sword slicing into the flesh of a human being. The blood everywhere. His own screams of horror. But he also thinks deeply about tomorrow night, because tomorrow night needs an enormous amount of thinking about.
In the Royal Sussex County hospital, Harry Jupiter of the Clarion is loudly demanding to be discharged, but the doctors are refusing to let him go until he can at least remember his own name. He keeps reciting short, verbless declamatory sentences, such as: ‘Night! Moonlight on dentures! A half-set of helmets! Great men, great men!’ Rather shockingly, Inspector Steine has not come forward with information about how Harry Jupiter happened to fall in the sea.
Instead, he is in London, in a musty studio at Broadcasting House, delivering his hastily rewritten weekly talk. He is in his element. Having telephoned the hospital anonymously and enquired after the man recovered from the waves, he has been immensely encouraged to learn of the poor chap’s amnesia, which surely (for the time being, anyway) puts him in the clear.
The talk goes down well with his dandruffy producer, who afterwards particularly remarks on all the bits put in on Twitten’s recommendation. ‘More rigorous this week, Geoffrey,’ says the producer, pointing a pencil at him. ‘I like this new-found rigour.’
On the breezy seafront in Brighton, Maisie sells a red-and-green beach ball to a small child. She is sucking a multi-coloured gobstopper, and finds herself wishing she had a handsome, tall, slavish admirer to monitor the ever-changing unearthly hues of her tongue.
On the shingle, a few yards away, the Punch & Judy show is in full horrific flow, with children running screaming to their parents. There is so much violent energy to Vince’s puppet performance today that the booth itself jumps about and threatens to topple over.
‘I bash your head in, Judy ratface brass!’ The breeze blasts Maisie’s downy cheek; plastic bunting rattles above her head like distant machine-gunfire; she bares her buck teeth to the bold afternoon sun; she ponders what she has lost.
At the police station in Brighton, Sergeant Brunswick waits for a call from the Leeds City Police and wonders where everyone else has got to. He’s been looking forward to sharing his discoveries about new prime suspect Bobby Melba, but has found the place unusually empty. The inspector is, of course, in London, which is customary on recording day. But where is Twitten? Where is Mrs Groynes? Where is Harry Jupiter? And most important, what has happened to all the coconut ice?
In the Queen Adelaide public house in Ship Street, newly unemployed young reporter Ben Oliver is scanning the Situations Vacant in the newspaper, while in another corner a woman with abnormally thick wrists nurses a port and lemon. A waiter with a dodgy French accent asks her if she’d like another. He also asks if she would (‘sea-view play’) please stop breaking the glasses by gripping them so tightly. Ben Oliver, trying not to appear interested, secretly makes a note.
In the forensics lab at the police station, fingerprint analysis on Mrs Thorpe’s sherry glasses finds a set of prints from the deceased, and a set from a person unknown. The unknown prints do not match those on the murder weapon, which suggests a third individual at the
scene.
And finally, in the manager’s office at the Albion Bank in Aldersgate, Constable Twitten yawns and stretches, emerging from one of the most satisfactory but exhausting mental workouts he has ever attempted. Some of it has required real physical activity – impatiently riffling through papers and shouting, ‘Yes, yes! It all fits!’ And some of it has required him to lie back in his chair, staring at the ceiling in strenuous contemplation.
It has been an exemplary performance of muscular mental endeavour. He has cast aside lazy assumptions; interrogated evidence; skewered unhelpful prejudices; and dared to think the unthinkable. He can now proudly say he has worked out who killed A. S. Crystal at the Theatre Royal last night, and why. It is time to go back to Brighton, change into his uniform, create a small ceremonial bonfire out of Crystal’s rancid clothes and make his astonishing report.
It is only as he tries to put the shoes back on that he realises the bank is now very quiet and that he hasn’t seen anyone for more than two hours. Well, he must summon Mr Arnott and thank him for his wonderful co-operation! But when he tries the door, it doesn’t open.
‘Hello?’ he calls. ‘Mr Arnott? Hello!’
He rattles the handle again, and looks round the room. There are no other exits.
He puts his ear to the door, and hears a muffled conversation which fills him with alarm. Can he also smell eau de cologne?
Oh, no. The door is unlocked and he braces himself. A waft of 4711 assails him.
‘Now, there you are, dear,’ says Mrs Groynes, entering with a rattling tray covered with cups and saucers, a little plate of biscuits, and a gun. ‘I thought I’d find you in here. How about a nice cup of tea?’
* * *
It was Mr Arnott who had called her. Just as he had called her when A. S. Crystal had turned up at the bank two weeks before with his so-called assistant.
‘I know it was you, Mrs Groynes,’ said Twitten now, brazenly. ‘I know it was you who killed Crystal. I worked it out.’
She didn’t seem to mind. ‘Good for you, dear,’ she said, taking the gun from the tray and placing it on the desk. ‘I rather guessed you would.’ She smiled. ‘You look a lot less impressive out of uniform, dear.’
They sat across the desk from each other. She rested her chin on her hands, expectantly. Had female bank managers been a remote possibility in 1957, the scene might have been Twitten asking nervously for a loan to start a bookshop. Instead of which he was a newish policeman in a dead man’s clothes, who had deduced from scrappy evidence that the woman opposite, who had masqueraded brilliantly as a charlady in a police station for several years, was a hardened criminal who didn’t stop short of murder.
‘But to be honest,’ Twitten admitted, ‘I hadn’t yet worked out what I was going to do after telling you that I had worked out it was you.’
‘I appreciate your honesty, dear,’ she said, and sipped her cup of tea.
Twitten drew a steadying breath. ‘Look, it would help if I knew,’ he said. ‘Are you planning to kill me?’
‘I don’t know yet. I’m deciding.’
‘Oh, good,’ he squeaked, and then coughed to get his voice back to normal. ‘Oh, good. So, when you’ve decided, will you let me know?’
‘Oh, you’ll know, dear. Don’t worry.’
Twitten bit his lip. He felt he was blushing; he couldn’t control it. ‘May I tell you how I worked it out, Mrs Groynes?’
‘If you like.’
‘There might be a few holes.’
Holding the gun, Mrs Groynes leaned back in her seat, gesturing for him to go ahead regardless of the few holes.
‘Thank you.’ Twitten took a deep breath, as if to start a recital. ‘Now, I’m sure you won’t believe this, but I think I suspected you from the very start.’
She shook her head. ‘No, you bleeding didn’t!’
‘I mean, not consciously, of course. But there were some little things that did catch my attention. For example, you were so keen to tell the others about my qualifications from Hendon – which personally I would never have mentioned. You had somehow wheedled them out of me. He won a prize for forensic observation, you said. He came top of his year. These were matters that would of course mean nothing to Inspector Steine; you mentioned them, you see, only because they meant something to you. It’s a classic psychological “tell”, Mrs Groynes. A real charlady wouldn’t have taken any interest in my academic achievements, do you see?’
Mrs Groynes narrowed her eyes. ‘Go on, dear.’
‘Well, then of course it was bizarre that you were present at the Theatre Royal for the first performance of a controversial modern play, wasn’t it? And that you then volunteered to look after me in the ambulance – but that was because you wanted to know what I had found out from Mr Crystal.’
‘I was very nice to you, as I recall. Very kind and motherly.’
‘Yes, you were. That’s true. Perhaps I didn’t suspect you then, actually. I started to think of you as a friend. But the main thing was that you tried to talk me out of exploring the Aldersgate Stick-up angle once I’d lost the list – and of course it was no coincidence that once you knew I had Mr Crystal’s list, it was snatched from my hand by a boy on a bike at midnight. And once you knew I wanted to read Mr Crystal’s memoir, it was stolen from his flat, and now poor Miss Sibert has disappeared too!’
Mrs Groynes tried to interrupt, but he pressed on.
‘Also, when we spoke of Mr Crystal, you made the telling remark, “He had a lot of enemies, that Crystal. You’d never guess, to look at him” – a remark to which I will return. But if I may say so, it’s all part of a much more interesting broader picture, you see; a broader picture which is even more –’ He stopped. Unfortunately, he couldn’t think of a better word. ‘Which is even more interesting.’
‘Is it, dear? Do tell.’
‘Oh, yes. You see, ever since the Middle Street Massacre, there have been so-called “nebulous” forces running crime in Brighton. Sergeant Brunswick speculated that since the original Italian and Casino Gangs had so stupidly wiped each other out, the famous Terence Chambers must somehow be doing it from London – “through an unknown deputy”, the sergeant said. Of course, Inspector Steine denies that anyone is running crime in Brighton, but that’s because he holds a sadly irresponsible attitude, so his perspective can be set aside for the purposes of this argument as largely immaterial.’
Twitten took a breath. That last sentence had been rather beautifully put together, given the immense pressure he was under, so he wanted to leave it hanging there. He also wanted to pause before his big finish.
‘It’s my belief,’ he announced, proudly, ‘that the person who’s been in charge of all things criminal in Brighton since 1951 is in fact you, Mrs Groynes.’
Mrs Groynes put her head on one side. ‘Me?’
‘Yes! Bally well, yes! And you have been operating from the very heart of the police station, where bally well no one takes any notice of you!’
‘I thought Terence Chambers was supposed to be behind everything, dear. Am I working for him, then?’
‘No. Not at all!’
‘No?’
‘That’s all part of how clever you’ve been. Letting people think Terence Chambers is behind everything. I put it to you that you are not working for Terence Chambers; but that you used to be in cahoots with him. My suspicion is that you were at one time very close. But then – and here I haven’t got a lot of hard evidence to go on, but I think this makes sense – in 1950, when Chambers was planning to rob the Albion Bank in Aldersgate – this very bank – on the seventeenth of the month, when large sums of cash would have been in the safe, it is my belief that for reasons unknown you led your own small gang here the day before, thus scuppering his plans and earning his everlasting enmity!’
‘You’ve got nothing to back this up, have you, dear?’
‘Not really, no. But please don’t interrupt, Mrs Groynes, because I’ve only just worked this out, and if I lose the flow
I’ll have to go back to the bally beginning. Now, I was talking about earning Terence Chambers’ everlasting enmity. So, the thing is, earning Terence Chambers’ everlasting enmity is such a terrible thing, Mrs Groynes, that no sane person would do it without a very good reason, and for the moment I have to admit that I don’t know what your very good reason might have been. However, all this does explain why you have gone to such lengths to cover up your role in the Stick-up, and to prevent Mr Crystal remembering any incriminating details. It’s not that you fear police arrest; it’s that you fear what Terence Chambers will do!’
Mrs Groynes picked up the gun and weighed it in her palm. She was impressed, but she had to correct him on a couple of things.
‘May I speak now?’
Twitten reflected on whether there was anything more for him to say. ‘All right.’
‘Have a biscuit, dear.’
‘Ooh, thank you.’ He took a garibaldi.
‘Now, for one thing, Sibert wasn’t snatched,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about her. Poor Miss Sibert? She was working for Terry all along. If anyone took that manuscript, it was her.’
‘Good heavens.’ Twitten held his head at an angle while re-processing a few things. ‘She was a plant?’
‘She was. If she’s who I think she is, she’s not even from Vienna. But you’re right about a lot of the other things, so well done.’
It occurred to Twitten that his father would have loved to meet Mrs Groynes. In all his extensive investigations of the deviant mind, he had never studied a female master-criminal, not once. To look at her now – a small, respectable middle-aged woman with a nice leather handbag, smelling of eau de cologne with an undertone of ammonia – you would simply never guess what she was capable of.
‘So it was you who deliberately called the existing Brighton gangs together on the day of the Middle Street Massacre? Why?’
‘Well, mainly because it was so easy, dear! They were spoiling for a shoot-out. All I had to do was make sure none of them got out alive, and that Inspector Steine came out a hero. Then I could have the place to myself.’
