Headline Murder

by Peter Bartram

  “Here it is,” she said. “But I don’t know whether she will be willing to speak to you. Memories of her father still touch a raw nerve even after all these years.”

  I took the card. Mary lived in a flat in Palmeira Square, just off Hove seafront.

  “Thank you for speaking so frankly,” I said. “I feel I know Reginald Farnsworth a little better as a result.”

  We passed back through the gloomy hall and I left.

  I climbed back in the MGB, made a U-turn in front of a builders’ lorry and screeched off along New Church Road.

  Mary Farnsworth lived in a second-floor flat on the west side of Palmeira Square.

  The entrance to the flats was through a grand portico built in a time when ladies and gentleman would have swept up in carriages and had the front door opened by a liveried footman. Inside, the hallway and stairs were lit by low-wattage light bulbs. There was a pervading smell of furniture polish.

  I climbed the stairs to the second floor. The door to Mary’s flat was on a small landing. There was an electric bell. I pressed it and heard a shrill ringing inside the flat. I waited for half a minute and pressed again. Still no answer.

  I was about to press a third time when the door on the other side of the landing opened. The head of a middle-aged woman wearing a hairnet peered round the side.

  “Do you want something?” she said.

  “I’m a friend of Mary’s from London. Just in Hove for the day and thought I’d look her up.”

  “Well, I’m afraid you’re out of luck,” she said with evident relish.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because she’s gone away for a few days. Left three days ago in a station taxi. She was carrying a holdall as well as a suitcase. And wearing those new shoes she bought at the Army & Navy Stores.”

  “Do you know where she’s gone?”

  “Of course not. Do you think I’m some kind of busybody?”

  “Not at all. Do you know when she’ll be back?”

  “Not for some time. She’s cancelled her milk and those yoghurts she has. And her Daily Telegraph.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  She frowned at me and closed the door.

  I reached in my inside pocket for one of my cards and wrote a brief note on the back. It asked Mary Farnsworth to telephone me at the Chronicle as soon as she returned. I pushed the card through her letterbox.

  Then I went back down stairs and out into the street.

  An Evening Argus delivery van drove past. The newsbill on the side read: Seafront development rumours.

  In frustration, I kicked a nearby lamppost. I had a sinking feeling that Jim Houghton was going to scoop me again.

  Chapter 12

  As I stood in the street, a church clock chimed five.

  I had one hour before I reported back to Figgis. It seemed impossible that I could locate Trumper in the time. The only long-shot was that he might have resurfaced at the Krazy Kat. I’d asked Barnet to contact me if Trumper got in touch, but I didn’t trust him. Barnet said he’d stay on until the end of the week. So he should still be on duty.

  I climbed into the MGB and roared towards the seafront.

  I knew the Krazy Kat was closed as soon as I pulled into the kerb beside the ticket office. I could see the blind drawn down at the window.

  I rummaged in my pocket and pulled out my notebook. Barnet had given me the address of the house in Kemp Town where he was staying. Perhaps he’d decided to bunk off work and stay at home. I couldn’t blame him. After all, he’d not been paid. I pulled the MGB into the late-afternoon stream of traffic on Madeira Drive.

  The clock on the top of the Aquarium showed seventeen minutes past five.

  Barnet had rented a small flat in Sokeham Street, a row of mean-looking terraced houses in a run-down part of Kemp Town.

  I pulled up outside the house and got out of the car. A young boy on roller skates shouted “Watch out, mister,” whizzed past me and disappeared round a corner. Across the street, a fat woman beat a carpet she’d hung over some railings. An old bloke wearing a rat-catcher’s cap and clips round his trouser turn-ups rode by on a butcher’s bike. The smell of chips frying wafted out of a nearby house.

  Barnet’s flat was in the basement of a three-storey tenement that looked like the kind of dilapidated old ruin Darke usually bought. A rusting iron gate opened on to steep stone steps which led down to a covered portico below street level. I pushed open the gate and went down the stairs.

  A faded sign next to the front door said “Garden Flat”. The garden consisted of a tiny yard paved with chipped red bricks. There were a couple of large flowerpots which held dead geraniums. The area had filled up with litter that people had thrown over from the street. The place smelt of mildew and mangy cats.

  I knocked on the door and waited. Nobody answered. I knocked again. Silence. And again. Nothing.

  The flat had a small window which looked out over the yard. I moved across and peered through. It was a bedroom. The bed hadn’t been made. The contents of the room were strewn about over the bed and the floor. Books from a shelf were scattered about, some lying opened. The bedside lamp was on its side. Drawers had been pulled open and the contents roughly thrown around. The room had been turned over.

  I grabbed one of the flowerpots, upended it and stood on the top to get a better view into the room. I could now see the bed more clearly. The floor on the far side of the room was still obscured by the bed. But I could see a shoe protruding from behind the bed. The shoe was at a forty-five degree angle with the sole partly off the ground. It couldn’t possibly rest in that position by itself without falling one way or the other to rest either on its sole or its uppers.

  Unless it had a foot inside it.

  I needed to get inside the flat. A fanlight window was ajar at the top. I checked to see whether I could open it wider. I could. But even if I could stick my whole arm through, I wouldn’t be able to reach the handle that opened the main window.

  I took the basement steps two at a time up to the street. I opened the MGB’s boot and rummaged inside. I took out an adjustable spanner and pair of gloves – both part of my wheel-changing kit. I took a quick look up and down the street and slipped back down the stairs.

  I put on the gloves and hoisted myself up on the flowerpot. I adjusted the claw of the spanner and eased it through the window. I didn’t think it was going to be long enough. But by standing on tip-toe I could just reach the window handle. I worked the claw of the spanner round the handle and pulled gently upwards. The handle didn’t move.

  I pressed myself as close to the window as I could, gained an extra half inch and tried again. The handle shifted a little and then stuck. Carefully, I eased my hand a little down the spanner handle, gripped it more tightly and pulled again. The handle moved a little. Then it flew upwards in a sudden jolt. I slipped on the flowerpot and almost lost my footing. I grabbed the windowsill and held on. I manoeuvred the spanner out through the fanlight, stepped off the flowerpot and laid the spanner on the ground.

  I pushed open the window and climbed inside, taking care not to disturb anything. A bluebottle rose from behind the bed and buzzed angrily around the room. I took a deep breath, steeled myself for what I might find, and looked behind the bed.

  Barnet was lying there.

  He was dead.

  There was a patch of purple blood on the threadbare carpet beside his head. The blood had leaked from a deep cut on Barnet’s forehead just above his right temple. His head was thrown back at an unnatural angle. There was a vivid welt round his neck, left by something that had been pulled so tight it had cut into the skin. It wasn’t going to take Sherlock Holmes to work out how he died. He was knocked out by the blow to the head and then strangled.

  I could feel my heart beating faster. I felt hot and flushed. My stomach churned and I belched. I didn’t think I was going to be sick, but I turned away from the body and forced myself to breathe evenly.

  I hadn’t liked Barne
t but he hadn’t deserved to end up like this. Left for the bluebottles in a shabby little basement lodgings. It was a sickening end. For a moment, I wondered whether Trumper was also lying dead somewhere. But that was pure speculation. I needed to remember that I was a reporter – that my task was to collect facts.

  I looked around the room. The place had been searched hurriedly. There was no doubt about that. I couldn’t tell whether anything had been taken and I wasn’t going to start moving things around and disturbing evidence.

  Carefully, I stepped round Barnet’s body and looked at his bedside table. There were a couple of books there – a law textbook on court procedure and a paperback western. There was a mug containing the dregs of some cocoa. And there was a bunch of keys. I recognised them from when Barnet had let me into the office at the Krazy Kat on Sunday morning. There was a Yale key, which I guessed might open the front door to the flat, a mortice which might be for Barnet’s student digs and a third key which I’d seen him use to open the padlock which secured the door at the Krazy Kat.

  I thought about that for a moment. There were boxes of old papers at the Krazy Kat. Perhaps there were papers that could throw light on Trumper’s disappearance. I’d hoped to talk Barnet into letting me look through them. That wouldn’t be possible now. But I felt I had to get back into the Krazy Kat office somehow. I thought about taking the padlock key but that would be too risky. It would be tampering with evidence. A serious criminal offence. No, the key would have to remain with the others.

  I crossed the room and gently pushed open the bedroom door. The door led into a dark passageway with another door on the other side. I opened it and went in. It was Barnet’s bathroom. There was a small bathtub with a greasy ring round it, a lavatory with a broken seat and a small wash basin. A razor and shaving stick were on a small shelf beside the basin. There was a half-used bar of Lifebuoy soap on the basin. I picked up the soap and went back into the bedroom.

  I crossed to the bedside cabinet and carefully picked up the key ring. I separated the padlock key from the rest and pressed it carefully into the bar of soap. I turned the bar of soap over and made a second impression with the other side of the key. I took out my handkerchief and carefully wiped the surplus soap off the key. Then I wrapped the bar of soap in my handkerchief and put it in my pocket.

  I walked over to the window and closed it. I pushed back the fanlight so that it was in its original position. Then I went into the passageway and turned towards the front door. I glanced back to make sure I’d left the room exactly as I found it.

  And noticed something I’d not seen before.

  Lying on the floor beside the bed, partly covered by a blanket, was a small card.

  I crossed the room, stooped to look at it. And almost slipped backwards in shock.

  It was a business card. Printed in embossed ink. In gothic type. With a gold border. And announcing that its owner had been Septimus Darke, chairman, Darke Enterprises.

  Carefully, I lifted the edge of the blanket to see whether there was anything else underneath. There was only the card.

  My mind was buzzing like a chainsaw. What did it mean? Had Darke killed Barnet? Perhaps to make him reveal Trumper’s whereabouts? Surely, he wouldn’t leave his calling card? Not even a man as arrogant as Darke. But perhaps he thought he was untouchable. Maybe it was a warning to others who were thinking of crossing him. Or, perhaps, more mundanely, he had simply lost the card in the struggle with Barnet. Or maybe he had dropped it without realising.

  I didn’t think so. Darke was not the kind of man who did things without realising.

  The bluebottle which had settled somewhere started circling the room again. It landed on Barnet’s forehead. Crawled towards where the blood had clotted. I turned away in disgust and made for the door.

  I opened the door and went out. I collected the adjustable spanner from outside the window and slipped up the basement steps. I went through the iron gate and closed it. I glanced up and down the street to see if anybody was taking special notice of me. No one gave me a suspicious look.

  I went over to my car, opened the boot, took off my gloves and put them and the spanner back with the wheel-changing kit. I took the handkerchief-wrapped soap out of my pocket and hid it in the kit. I rummaged among the other stuff in the boot and found a printed card I needed. Then I closed the boot and walked briskly up the street.

  I checked my watch. It was quarter past six.

  There was a telephone booth on the corner at the far end of the street. I went in, dialled the operator. I asked for a reverse-charge call to be put through to the Evening Chronicle. When the Chronicle switchboard answered, I asked for Figgis.

  I had to hold the phone for a couple of minutes before he came on the line.

  When he did, he sounded angry. “Where in the name of effing misprints do you think you’ve been?”

  I said: “That front-page story you’ve been pressing me for.”

  “What about it?”

  “It’ll be a murder headline.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m just about to telephone Ted Wilson at Brighton Police and tell him that I think Robert Barnet, Trumper’s hired help, may be dead?”

  “What do you mean you ‘think’ he might be dead?”

  “I know he’s dead because I’ve been inside his flat using means you may not want to hear about. I’ve left everything as it was and I don’t think the police will reason they’re not the first on the scene.”

  Figgis said: “You take some chances.”

  I said: “I’ll delay my call to Wilson for ten minutes to give you time to get a photographer and back-up reporters down here before the cops arrive. I’m going to need someone to monitor the comings and goings at Barnet’s flat and someone to go round the neighbours and ask them whether they saw anything. They won’t have done, but we have to make sure.”

  “I’ll get on that right away. And, as soon as you can reasonably do so, get back here. I want the copy for a front-page lead and an inside-page backgrounder on my desk by seven tomorrow morning.”

  I hung about in the phone box for a few minutes pretending to be looking up numbers in the telephone directory. Then I dialled Ted Wilson’s personal number.

  “Got a minute?” I said.

  “It’s you,” he said. “Make anything of that disappeared golf man?”

  “I think I might do. If you bring a team down to Sokeham Street in Kemp Town, I think you may find that Robert Barnet, the lad who reported him missing, is dead in his flat.”

  There was a brief silence while Wilson absorbed the information. Then he said: “I hope this is not one of your newspaper stunts.”

  “If it were a stunt, it would be in appallingly bad taste.”

  “Since when has that bothered newspapers?”

  “Since it involved dead bodies,” I said. “Are you going to get a team down here?”

  “I’m on my way,” he said. “Stay in the street.”

  He put the phone down.

  I put down the receiver and took the printed card I’d retrieved from the boot of my car out of my pocket. I stuck it in the window of the phone booth. It read: “Post Office. We apologise that this telephone box is temporarily out of order.” When the news got out, the locals would want to make calls to their friends to tell them about all the excitement and the box would get busy. But I’d need a ready line through to the Chronicle to phone in copy and I didn’t want to hang around while the street gossip fed in four pence after four pence to spread the word.

  The team from the Chronicle arrived a few minutes later in a taxi.

  There was Freddie Barkworth, the paper’s chief photographer, and two general reporters, Mark Hodges and Phil Bailey. We huddled in the street while I briefed them. Freddie would wait outside the house and get shots of the police going in and the body being brought out and driven away. Mark would stay with Freddie. He’d try to pick up odd snippets of information from cops coming and going
about what they’d found inside. Phil was going on the knocker. He’d ask whether the neighbours had seen anything or whether any of them had got to know Barnet in the brief time he’d been lodging in the street.

  The first of seven police cars arrived just as we were finishing our briefing. Wilson was in the third. He came over to me and looked at Freddie, Mark and Phil. “You seem remarkably well prepared,” he said. “If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought you’d have set this up before you called us.”

  “We just happened to be in the area,” I said.

  “And I just happen to have floated in on the high tide perched on top of a digestive biscuit,” Wilson said. “I’m going inside. Stay there, I shall want to talk to you.”

  By now the locals had realised that something was up. They poured out of their houses into the street. Women whispered fearfully to one another. Men pushed forward to get a better look. Mothers ushered children back indoors. Police stretched out tape and put a cordon round the house.

  From the basement came the sound of splintering wood as Wilson and his team broke their way into the flat.

  I spent a few minutes watching the movements up and down the basement steps. Then I walked back down to the phone box and called the Chronicle.

  I asked for a copy-taker and dictated some notes to use in the story I’d write for the front page. I’d need to get Wilson’s formal statement about the killing before I could write the peg, but it would save time to have the background ready to roll.

  As I came out of the booth, I ran into Jim Houghton.

  “I knew you were on to something,” he said.

  “Pure chance,” I said.

  “Sure. About the same as the chance of me editing The Times.”

  “Anyway, we’re both on the same story now,” I said.

  “Are we?” he said. “I wonder. And you can take that notice out of the telephone box. I’ve got one of my own.”

  I walked back up the street and found that Wilson had just come up the basement steps.

  He walked over to me and said: “I’ve been looking for you.”