Murder from the Newsdesk

by Peter Bartram

  The astringent scent of mothballs rose when I heaved the lid of the trunk up. Inside the brocaded dress which Connie had worn all those years ago was preserved in tissue paper. It had yellowed with age, but was still recognisable as the dress in the wedding photo. Carefully, I raised the dress. Underneath was a man's suit, wrapped in brown paper. I lifted the jacket out of the trunk. It smelt musty with age. I felt in the left-hand pocket. Nothing. Then in the right-hand pocket.

  My hand closed around a small piece of paper.

  ***

  “Best story we've had on the front page for several months,” Frank Figgis said.

  It was the following morning and early copies of the Midday Special edition had just come up from the machine room. The headline splashed across the top of the paper read:

  WIDOW KILLED FOR SWEEPSTAKE PRIZE

  I'd hammered out the copy for the piece on my old Remington typewriter when I'd arrived back at the office late last night. It had been a long night after I'd called the police from Connie's house. I'd spent two hours at the cop shop making a statement.

  I said to Figgis: “All this happened because Lennie felt he had to keep his flutter secret. Yet Connie knew all the time - but didn't like to let on - I suppose in case it spoiled Lennie's fun. I suspect she realised that Denzil was after the ticket and moved it to Lennie's wedding suit where she knew the lad would never find it.”

  “What will happen to the ticket now?”

  “That's hard to say. The police have taken it as evidence. Perhaps they will confiscate it as the proceeds of illegal gambling. Personally, I don't think they will as the government is talking about reforming Britain's gaming laws next year.”

  Figgis scratched his head. “So the ticket will form part of Connie's estate.”

  “I guess so. I wouldn't be surprised if she hasn't left her money to Fighters Against Gambling. How's that for an irony?”

  “No news about Denzil?” Figgis asked.

  “He wasn't at Connie's house when I got there. I'm guessing that he panicked after he'd hit Connie. When I last saw him, he looked like a man on the edge. He'll have made a run for it. Perhaps he'll never be heard of again.”

  ***

  But he was.

  Later that afternoon, I received a phone call from the cop shop.

  A body, believed that to be of Denzil, had been washed up on the beach near Rottingdean. Early indications were that he'd drowned himself.

  I didn't believe that. If Darke was behind this, he'd have been furious when he heard about Denzil's attack on Connie. It would have drawn attention to him. Darke and his henchman would have known where to find Denzil. And a drowning staged to look like suicide would have been a convenient way to dispose of what had become an awkward problem.

  If the police couldn't find evidence, there was no way that I would be able to pin Denzil's death on Darke.

  But one day I would nail Darke.

  I sat at my desk and promised myself that.

  One day.

  ***

  Colin confronts Septimus Darke in Headline Murder (Roundfire Books) available in paperback and ebook formats.

  Author's Note

  Crime writers are often asked: “Where do you get your ideas?” In the case of The Mystery of the African charity, it came from a story I was on in my early years as a reporter. My news editor sent me to follow up on a telephone call he'd received from an old man who claimed his relatives were trying to rob him. When I called at his house, he showed me a room full with old clothes. In places, the piles almost reached the ceiling. I asked him who was trying to rob him and what they were trying to steal but he was vague and evasive. I asked him whether he had contacted the police and he said they didn’t want to know. We talked for about fifteen minutes but I could get no rational explanation out of him for why all the old clothes were piled up in the room. I reported back to my news editor and he decided to drop the story. I've sometimes wondered what was behind that roomful of clothes and The Mystery of the African charity is a fictional explanation - although I've changed the principal character from a man to a woman.

  The Mystery of the Two Suitcases

  “We’ve got the evening all to ourselves.”

  My girlfriend Shirley raised her white wine. I hoisted my G&T. We clinked glasses and wished each other a happy Valentine’s Day.

  “It’s great to have a night off from the Chronicle,” I said.

  I looked admiringly at Shirley. She was every the inch the Valentine girl. Her blonde bob of hair curled round her face - and when she smiled she looked like a happy china doll.

  We were at a corner table in the Railway Bell, a pub just outside Brighton station. The Dave Clark Five were belting out Glad All Over on the juke box. A smoochie couple on the next table looked as though they would be by the end of the night.

  “So what would you like for your Valentine’s treat?” Shirley said.

  I grinned.

  “Before that,” she said. Shirley came from Australia and had a very direct way with her. She said what she meant - even if the guy on the receiving end didn't like it. But I usually did.

  “I thought we’d have a quiet dinner at the Four Aces, then home for an early night,” I said.

  This time, Shirley grinned.

  I was about to suggest another drink before we moved on when a heavy hand rested on my shoulder. I looked round. A thin man with a whiskery chin and watery eyes was looking down at me.

  “Colin Crampton, isn’t it?” he said. “You’re that crime correspondent. Remember me? Charlie Dixon. From the left luggage office in Brighton station. You interviewed me six months ago about the body in the cabin trunk.”

  I hadn’t forgotten. I had briefly thought I'd uncovered another trunk murder. The first trunk murders had taken place way back in 1934, long before my time. The dismembered torso of a woman turned up in a trunk deposited in the left luggage office at Brighton station. It was the first of a string of grisly murders the police uncovered.

  This time around, the body turned out to be a shop-window mannequin. It'd been ordered by a dress shop in the town and they'd forgotten to collect it. I’d been the real dummy for wasting time on a bum tip-off.

  Charlie pulled up a chair. “Don’t mind if I join you? Only, I’ve got another hot tip.”

  I glanced at Shirley and shrugged.

  Charlie missed the body language and ploughed on. “Well, it goes like this,” he said. “Yesterday morning, a tall geezer comes into the left luggage office and hands over his reclaim ticket for a blue suitcase. Battered job it was, with a stain on one side.”

  I winked at Shirley. “Man claims luggage sensation. Hold the front page!”

  Charlie ignored that and said: “Two hours later, he’s back with a red suitcase – brand new – and deposits it.”

  “Man leaves suitcase scandal,” I said.

  “I know what you’re thinking. Waste of time. But listen to this bit. This morning, the geezer’s wife comes in with the same battered old blue suitcase and asks us whether we’ve handed over the wrong one. Well, we hadn’t. But she makes a song and dance about it and eventually clears off in high dudgeon.”

  “Angry woman in suitcase muddle,” I said.

  “Thirty minutes later, the tall geezer is back to claim the red suitcase.”

  I took a strengthening pull at my G&T. “No doubt you could write a book about luggage movements at the station, Charlie. But where’s all this leading?” I said.

  “Well, here’s the point,” Charlie said. “I happen to know that they live just up the hill from the station in Buckingham Road. I’ve seen the wife come out of the corner house with the bright red door. While I’m on my way to work, you understand. So why should they want to leave suitcases in the left luggage when they live so close nearby?”

  “Did you ask them?” I said.

  Charlie’s lips pursed in a disapproving moue. “Couldn’t do that. More than my…”

  “…job's worth,” I said. “S
o we’ll never know.”

  “There’s something else. I work early shifts. But I mentioned it to Arthur Grover who does lates. He remembers the blue suitcase being handed in by a posh bloke two days ago. Pulled up outside in a Bentley. Big maroon job. He wondered why a bloke with a flash car should have such a cheap case.”

  “Because he spent all his money on the car?” Shirley chipped in her two pennyworth.

  “Well, just thought I’d let you know.” He sloped off to the bar to buy another pint.

  Shirley’s eyes narrowed. “You’re thinking of something,” she said.

  “It was Charlie’s last point,” I said. “Could be just a coincidence. But the only maroon Bentley I’ve ever seen in Brighton belongs to Hector Summerfield.”

  “You mean the slimeball who owns the Majestic hotel?”

  “The very same.”

  “I knew a chambermaid who worked there. Word among the female staff was you kept your back to the wall when he was around. More arms than a Mexican wave – know what I mean?”

  I nodded. “So why,” I said, “was he depositing a tatty blue suitcase in the left luggage?”

  ***

  “There are three characters in this mystery – Summerfield, the tall geezer and the geezer’s wife,” I said. “But the only one who’s handled both blue and red suitcases is the tall geezer.”

  “So that’s why we’re starting with him?” Shirley said.

  I nodded. We were huffing and puffing our way up the hill to Buckingham road. The street lights were on. The evening was cool. Dinner was postponed.

  “There’s another puzzle,” I said. “Why did Summerfield never come back to reclaim the blue suitcase?”

  ***

  It wasn’t difficult to spot the house with the vermillion door.

  We walked up some steps. A helpful card beside the doorbell read: “Mr and Mrs Bert Protheroe”.

  I pressed the bell. Footsteps hurried up the hall and the door was opened by a man who could definitely be described as a tall geezer. Six foot three in his socks, I’d have said.

  He’d had a welcoming smile on his face, but that faded when he saw we weren’t who he was expecting.

  “Who are you?” he said.

  I smiled. “My name is Arthur Grover from the left luggage office at Brighton station. And this,” I stood to one side to let him see Shirley, “is my assistant, Miss Sowerbutts.”

  Shirley kicked me in the ankle. I winced.

  “We’d just like to clear up a discrepancy in our paperwork,” I said. “Shouldn’t take a minute. May we come in?”

  Indecision on Protheroe’s face turned to concern. He glanced at his watch. “I can spare you five minutes. I’m expecting somebody.”

  He turned and marched down the hall. We followed. I closed the door behind me but left it on the latch.

  Protheroe led us into a small sitting room crammed with dowdy furniture. He gestured us to a sofa behind the door. We sat.

  “Is your wife in?” I asked.

  “She’s out. Works as a waitress at the Majestic hotel. Never gets back until gone eleven. Besides, what’s this got to do with her?”

  “It’s about the blue suitcase she brought to the left luggage office yesterday morning.”

  “Sadie took the suitcase to the left luggage?” It was clear from his puzzled frown that he hadn’t known about her visit.

  “Seemed she thought the blue suitcase you’d collected was the wrong one. Just so we can check, could you confirm what was in it?”

  “I don’t know that’s got anything to do…”

  The front door slammed shut and high heels clicked their way up the hall. A large woman with beehive hair burst into the room.

  She was wearing a long and sumptuous mink coat.

  She flashed heavily mascaraed eyes at Protheroe. Didn’t notice Shirley and me on the sofa.

  “Bertie, I love it, I love it,” she cried. She hugged the coat to herself in an ecstasy of delight. “A perfect Valentine’s present.”

  Protheroe started to speak: “Candace…”

  But Candace was brooking no interruptions. This was her moment in the limelight. Nothing was going to stop her being the star of this show.

  “And to show how much I love you, you’ll never guess what I’m wearing underneath it.”

  Her hands deftly slipped the mink from her shoulders and it fell to the floor.

  “Jeez,” said Shirley, “I’ve not seen a bum like that since the hippo house at the zoo.”

  ***

  “When Candace walked in with the mink, it all became clear,” I said.

  Shirley and I were sitting at the window alcove table at the Four Aces. The lights were low. The music was soft. We were eating lobster Newburg and drinking champagne.

  We’d hastily made our excuses and left while Protheroe was recovering his composure and Candace what remained of her modesty.

  “When Protheroe told me that Sadie worked at the Majestic, I realised Summerfield must have given her the ticket for the blue suitcase he’d deposited in the left luggage,” I said.

  “But why?” Shirley asked

  “She’s been having an affair with Summerfield,” I said. “He wanted to give her a mink as a Valentine's present.”

  “Expensive present,” Shirley said. “The bloke must be loaded.”

  “He is. But plainly Sadie couldn’t take home an expensive coat without Protheroe asking some awkward questions.

  “So they devised a sneaky plan. Summerfield stashed the mink in the blue suitcase and deposited it in the left luggage office. He gave the reclaim ticket to Sadie. But she pretended to Protheroe she’d found the ticket by chance – perhaps in the street.”

  “Sneaky. But why didn't Protheroe insist on handing the ticket in as lost property.”

  “I imagine any woman who's attracted Summerfield's interest has a strong mind of her own. She probably used the finders-keepers argument on Protheroe. He looked like the kind of bloke who'd agree to anything to avoid an argument.”

  “Yeah. Let us in didn't he?” Shirley said.

  “The really sneaky bit of Sadie's plan was to persuade Protheroe to go and collect the case. If he believed she'd never seen the case before, Sadie could have had nothing to do with the contents.”

  “All the time thinking that when he got the case home, opened it and found it contained a mink, he wouldn’t be able to resist giving the coat to her,” Shirley said.

  “Exactly. But she’d overlooked one important point.”

  “Other women love mink coats,” said Shirley.

  “And Protheroe obviously opened the case before he took it home. He discovered the mink and decided that it would make the perfect gift for his own mistress, Candace.” I said.

  “So he transferred the mink to the red suitcase and stashed it in the left luggage office while he arranged to have it delivered to her as a Valentine’s gift.”

  “And probably filled the blue suitcase with some cheap cast-offs from Mangy Mabel’s second-hand clothes shop before giving it to Sadie,” I said.

  “She must have been furious when she opened the case,” Shirley said.

  “But she couldn’t say so. She can’t be sure what’s happened to the coat. Perhaps she wonders whether someone in the lost property office took it. And she can’t raise the matter with Protheroe without blowing open her affair with Summerfield.”

  “And he won’t want to alert his own wife that he’s been playing away from home.”

  “Trouble is I don’t have a story. None of them are going to own up to what’s really happened.”

  “So no big scoop,” Shirley said.

  “Not entirely. We’ve learnt something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “There’s a lot of truth in that old proverb ‘love will find a way’.”

  Shirley smiled. “And I suppose you’re going to show me the way you had in mind,”

  “I’ll raise a toast to that,” I said.

  We cl
inked glasses and drank a Valentine's toast to lovers everywhere.

  The Mystery of the Single Red Sock

  As a crime reporter, it's my job to find stories for my paper, the Brighton Evening Chronicle.

  But just sometimes the story finds me.

  And the mystery of the single red sock began in a violent way while I was buying a bottle of Gordon's gin.

  I was in old Fred Cartland’s off-licence on the corner of Dyke Road and Chatham Place. It was a grey day, the first Thursday in November.

  Fred didn’t get a lot of customers. He was a wizened old bloke, who walked with a stoop. All of his hair had fallen out except for one lanky strand which he wrapped round his bald pate in ever decreasing circles. It made his head look like a walnut whip. His false teeth squeaked when he talked. And he tended to dribble. So there were usually damp patches on his shirt.

  Not surprisingly, a lot of people found all of this a bit of challenge to cope with the first time they went into the shop. So not many came back a second time.

  I wouldn’t have bothered making the uphill hike from the Chronicle offices myself if it wasn’t for the fact that Fred traded in something other than gin.

  He’d had an ill-spent youth that had extended well into middle-age. Which meant he knew most of the wrong people in Brighton. He picked up a lot of the gossip about who was supposed to be planning the next crime of the century. At least, that was his boast.

  Actually, the people Fred knew never were planning the big one. They were normally street crooks with a quick scam. But sometimes Fred would hear a nugget of useful intelligence. He’d slipped me the odd useful snippet of information with my gin from time to time.

  Anyway, Fred had just handed me the green bottle and was telling me about a new crew who were planning a betting scam up at the racecourse when the shop bell tinkled. I turned round.

  The figure framed in the doorway looked like an all-in wrestler. He was six feet tall with broad shoulders and the kind of chunky torso that would run to fat before he was fifty. He was wearing a grey checked sports jacket and an old pair of jeans which looked as though they'd been stained with something.