The Tango School Mystery
A Crampton of the Chronicle adventure
Peter Bartram
Deadline Murder Series Book 1
Praise for earlier Crampton of the Chronicle mysteries…
"A fun read with humour throughout…"
Crime Thriller Hound
"An excellent novel, full of twists and turns, plenty of action scenes, crackling dialogue - and a great sense of fun."
Fully Booked 2016
"A highly enjoyable and well-crafted read, with a host of engaging characters."
Mrs Peabody Investigates
"An amiable romp through the shady back streets of 1960s Brighton."
Simon Brett
"A highly entertaining, involving mystery, narrated in a charming voice, with winning characters. Highly recommended."
In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel
"A romp of a read! Very funny and very British."
The Book Trail
"Superbly crafted and breezy as a stroll along the pier, this Brighton-based murder mystery is a delight."
Peter Lovesey
"It read like a breath of fresh air and I can't wait for the next one."
Little Bookness Lane
"By the end of page one, I knew I liked Colin Crampton and author Peter Bartram's breezy writing style."
Over My Dead Body
"A little reminiscent of [Raymond] Chandler."
Bookwitch
"A rather fun and well-written cozy mystery set in 1960s Brighton."
Northern Crime
"The story is a real whodunit in the classic mould."
M J Trow
"A fast-paced mystery, superbly plotted, and kept me guessing right until the end."
Don't Tell Me the Moon Is Shining
"Very highly recommended."
Midwest Book Review
"One night I stayed up until nearly 2.00am thinking 'I'll just read one more chapter'. This is a huge recommendation from me."
Life of a Nerdish Mum
First published by The Bartram Partnership, 2018
For contact details see website:
www.colincrampton.com
www.peterbartram.co.uk
Text copyright: Peter Bartram 2018
Cover copyright: Barnaby Skinner 2018
All characters and events in this book, other than those clearly in the public domain, are entirely fictitious and any resemblance to any persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publishers.
The rights of Peter Bartram as author have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Text and Cover Design: Barney Skinner
Also by Peter Bartram
Crampton of the Chronicle Mystery Novels
Headline Murder
Stop Press Murder
Front Page Murder
Deadline Murder Series Novels
The Tango School Murder
The Mother’s Day Murder
Novella
Murder in Capital Letters
Morning, Noon & Night Trilogy
Murder in the Morning Edition
Murder in the Afternoon Extra
Murder in the Night Final
The Morning, Noon & Night Omnibus Edition
(All four Morning, Noon & Night books are also available as audiobooks)
Short stories
Murder from the Newsdesk
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
A message from Peter Bartram
About the author
Chapter 1
My Australian girlfriend Shirley looked at her porterhouse steak and said: "That's a real beaut, Colin."
The lump of meat which overlapped Shirl's huge dinner plate was the same shape as South America - broad at the top, narrowing down to a tip. It was cooked so rare I half expected to see the thing twitch. It had a kind of fierce red which made it look as though it had been out in the sun too long rather than under a grill.
A rivulet of blood oozed from one side - roughly where Sao Paulo would be - and merged with a slice of grilled tomato. As though the steak had been served with a blood clot on the side.
I said: "Don't you Aussies believe in cooking your food?"
Shirley seized her knife and fork and made an incision in the steak close to Venezuela. "If I were back in Adelaide, I'd have slapped this on the barbie so quick it would barely have had time to brown its bum." She forked a lump of the meat into her mouth and chewed contentedly.
We were sitting at a corner table in Antoine's Sussex Grill in Brighton's Ship Street. The place had oak-panelled walls, a green carpet, and dusty chandeliers. It was like being in a baronial hall on the baron's night off. In this case, on everyone's night off. Shirl and I were the only diners.
But that suited me just fine after the day I'd had in the Evening Chronicle's newsroom. Twenty minutes before the afternoon edition deadline, the Press Association ticker spewed out the news that the Prime Minister, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, had announced that the long-awaited 1964 general election would take place on the fifteenth of October. That meant a tasty little front-page splash I'd conjured up about a jewel heist in Lewes got bounced to an inside page.
And with politics dominating the news, my byline - Colin Crampton, crime correspondent - wasn't going to appear on the front page much before polling day in just over three weeks' time.
Not that I'd have much time for proper journalism. Not with the special assignment my news editor Frank Figgis had handed me. But I wasn't going to trouble Shirley about that.
Not just yet.
Shirl wiped a dribble of blood from her chin with a napkin. She cut a slice off Ecuador and stuffed it into her mouth. She pointed at my own plate and said: "What's that? It looks like bits of a dead rat."
I said: "It's jugged hare."
"I'd rather eat a juicy steak than a mouthful of hair."
"It's not hair with an A I R. It's hare with an A R E," I said. "You must have heard the story about the creature that got beaten by the tortoise."
"Guess the bludger should have spent less time snoozing by the road. Then he wouldn't have ended up in the pot with all those vegetables."
I reached for the bottle of Burgundy we'd ordered and refilled our glasses.
Shirley hoisted her glass and had a generous slurp.
"Still, this is ace tucker. I'll hand you that," she said.
I cut some of the hare's tender stewed flesh from a leg bone.
"It should be," I said. "This place is owned by a bloke who used to be head waiter at the Ritz hotel in London before the war. Made a name for himself by cooking crêpe Suzette at the table for Winston Churchill."
Shirl made a long cut in her steak somewhere near the Atacama Desert.
"I bet the old boy's never eaten here, though," she said.
"Not likely to now. He's retiring from Parliament at this election. But he may have eaten near here when he was a kid."
"How come?" Shirley asked.
"He was at a school in Hove for two years. Sent there by his mum and dad after they'd discovered he'd been savagely beaten by a sadistic headmaster at his previous school. Never happened to him here, though. The Hove school was run by two maiden ladies - they were sisters. I think someone told me their name was Thompson. According to the stories, Winston loved it here. I suppose anywhere would seem good after your bum had been whipped until the blood ran down your thighs. Anyway, he later went on to Harrow, the posh public school, so I guess the Misses Thompson must have done him some good."
"Guess so," Shirley said.
"Anyway, speaking of blood, I don't remember seeing that blob before." I pointed at Shirley's steak. A little red lake had formed in the Amazonian rain forest.
Shirl brushed it to one side with her knife. "Probably released from inside as the meat cools," she said.
Plop.
A fresh drop of blood landed in the Argentinian Pampas.
"But that wasn't," I said.
"Jeez," Shirley said. "I've never seen that before."
We looked at each other for a couple of seconds. Together, our necks swivelled back. Our gaze travelled up to the ceiling.
A round crimson patch, like a carnation in bloom, flowered on the plaster. Our eyes widened and our jaws dropped. We watched blood ooze through the ceiling. It formed into the shape of a teardrop. For a moment it swayed gently from side to side. Then it detached itself, slowly as though reluctant to leave its resting place.
It fell like a solitary raindrop. A scarlet raindrop.
Plop.
It landed on the tablecloth and splattered like a gunshot wound.
"Antoine's not going to be thrilled by the laundry bill," Shirl said.
I switched my attention back to her. "It may be a laundry bill down here, but what's the damage upstairs?"
Shirley dropped her knife and her hand flew to her mouth. "I must be as dumb as a box of rocks. What's up there?"
"It's an apartment over the restaurant. Nothing to do with Antoine. I don't know who lives there."
"And I guess he hasn't just dropped a raw steak on the floor. Not for that amount of blood."
"No. I'm going up there to find out what's happened."
I pushed my chair back from the table and stood up.
I looked at Shirley. Her eyes had glazed with concern.
"What a way to end the day," she said. "It couldn't be worse."
"Not worse?" I said. "I'm not so sure. Not after what happened earlier today at the Chronicle."
Chapter 2
The worst thing had happened that morning.
I was sitting at my desk in the newsroom at the Evening Chronicle. I was eating a bacon sandwich and a blob of brown sauce had dripped on my tie. My wardrobe held seven ties with brown sauce stains and I was pondering whether it might prove cheaper to buy a tie with a brown blob pattern. Or give up bacon sandwiches with HP sauce.
My telephone rang. I lifted the receiver.
A voice like compressed air escaping from a busted piston said: "I need to see you now."
Frank Figgis sounded unusually tense.
I said: "This need to see me - is it merely a whim or part of a deep-seated addiction?"
"I'm in no mood for your cracks."
The line went dead. I put down the telephone, stood up, and headed for Figgis's office.
I opened his door without knocking and barged in. Figgis was sitting behind his desk fumbling with the silver wrapping paper on a tube of Trebor extra strong mints.
I said: "You do know you can't smoke those?"
He looked up with defeated eyes. "Unless I can get this paper off, I won't even be able to eat them."
"Give them here," I said.
He handed over the tube. I inserted a fingernail under the paper and ripped it away. A couple of the mints tumbled onto Figgis's blotter. He picked them up, popped them in his mouth, and sucked like his life depended on it. His cheeks moved in and out like a set of bellows.
He said: "Keep the rest of the packet. I've got plenty more."
I shoved it into my jacket pocket, pulled up the guest chair, and sat down.
"What happened to the Woodbines?" I asked.
"Apparently, I've given up smoking."
"Who says?"
"Mrs Figgis. And my doctor. They said I was wheezing."
"Were you?"
"Only when I breathed."
"So the condition was well under control."
"I thought so, but Mrs Figgis has still hidden my ciggies."
"I hope you haven't asked me in here because you want me to find them," I said.
Figgis's teeth crunched on one of the mints. "It's worse than that," he said. "It's the worst thing since I joined the paper. Do you know when that was?"
"Thirty years ago, wasn't it? You told me you joined just before the Trunk Murders up at Brighton Station. That was in 1934."
"And do you know how many editors I've served under in that time?"
"Let me see. There was old Charlie Unsworth when you joined. But he died in a bombing raid in the war. Then there was Victor Granger, but he slipped down the stairs to the print room and broke his neck. And, finally, Gerald Pope - His Holiness to you and me - pitched up around eight years ago."
"Do you know how many of them have asked me for personal favours?"
I said: "What is this? Twenty Questions?"
Figgis's lips twisted into a moue of annoyance. He reached for a paper on the top of his in-tray. Removed his hand like the paper was infected with smallpox.
He said: "His Holiness has a problem."
"Just the one? Life must be looking up for him."
"This is a big problem. Big with a capital B. And he's dumped it on me."
I shifted in my chair. Sat up a bit straighter. I didn't like the sound of this. If Pope had a problem and landed it on Figgis, there could be only one reason why I was now sitting in his office.
I said: "Has the problem got anything to do with that sheet of paper in your in-tray? The one you're treating like a leper's bandage."
I craned my neck to get a better look. The paper was packed with tight typing. It was too far on Figgis's side of the desk for me to read.
Figgis glanced at the paper again. "Everything," he said. "Did you know that His Holiness has a brother? Gervase."
"A name like that is a problem," I said.
"If only. The real problem is that he's vanished."
"Like a magician's bunny rabbit in a top hat?"
"I might have known you'd treat this as a joke."
"As it's about vanishing, I'd prefer to treat it as an example. For Pope himself. Besides, what's this got to do with me? The Salvation Army deals with missing persons."
The wrinkles on Figgis's forehead scrunched up like an old sponge being squeezed. He took another packet of mints out of his desk drawer and began to fumble them open.
He said: "It's why Gervase has vanished that makes it so bad. His Holiness thinks his brother is planning to kill someone."
My body jolted like I'd just been touched up with the business end of a cattle prod.
I said: "Now that has to be a joke. A bad joke."
Figgis shook his head. Popped another mint into his mouth and sucked. "Afraid not. Pope is deadly serious."
"No pun intended, I suppose."
Figgis's lips twisted into a rueful grimace.
I said: "Is Gervase planning to kill anyone at random or has he got someone special in mind?"
"That's where we come to the difficult bit," Figgis said.
My eyebrows lifted at that - like they'd just been launched in a rocket from Cape Canaveral.
I said: "I thought we'd already had the difficult bit. There's something worse?"
"Yes. It's who he's planning to kill that's the really difficult bit. Or
should that be whom?"
I said: "I don't suppose it will matter to the bloke by the time he's lying in his coffin."
Figgis shuffled in his seat. Harrumphed a couple of times. Looked out the window and back at me.
"According to Pope, Gervase's intended victim is Sir Oscar Maundsley," Figgis said.
"Not the old fascist leader from the nineteen-thirties? 'Hurrah for Hitler' and all that. The one that was interned by Churchill at the start of the Second World War. I thought he was dead."
"No, not dead. Only shortly about to be if Gervase gets his way."
"So if Maundsley's not dead, where is he?" I asked.
"After the war, Maundsley realised he wasn't welcome in Britain any more, and shipped himself off to Spain," Figgis said. "Plenty of old fascist mates over there to keep him company. Not least the Generalissimo himself."
"You mean Franco?"
"Yes, Franco had been a big help to Hitler during the war so Maundsley probably felt at home over there. And Franco was easily seduced by Maundsley's upper-crust charm. He even loaned him a villa outside Marbella. Maundsley has lived there since the nineteen-forties."
"But no longer?" I asked.
"Apparently, Maundsley came back to Britain earlier in the summer. According to Pope, Maundsley reckons enough time has passed for people to forgive his previous indiscretions. I can't see it. But then public school toffs like Maundsley - he went to Harrow School, you know - always have a high opinion of themselves."
"So supporting a man who launched a world war that killed tens of millions is an indiscretion to Maundsley, like forgetting to tip a waiter?"
"The man trades on his upper-class blarney, but underneath he's a monster," Figgis said. "In any event, the main reason he's returned to Britain is that he knows there has to be a general election soon. He always had an inflated opinion of his own right to lead. You're too young to remember all that 'man of the moment' nonsense. He thought he should have been in charge during the war instead of Churchill. He wanted to negotiate a peace settlement with Hitler. Never got the chance, of course, but there were plenty in the upper reaches of the establishment who would've backed him. Now he's planning one last attempt at getting into parliament. He's set up a new political group. They call themselves the British Patriot Party. He's going to be a candidate in the election when it comes."
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