The Comedy Club Mystery

by Peter Bartram

  “Enough to want to kill him?” I asked.

  “Who can say? Perhaps others have prior claim to that honour, dear boy.”

  “Such as?”

  “Billy Dean, for instance. He’s always been a basement comic.”

  “Basement comic?”

  “The one whose name is always bottom of the bill. And that hardly ever. He’s never had the kind of material that attracts the better class of variety theatre. I don’t know much about him, but what I’ve heard makes my flesh creep.”

  “That must take some doing, Sidney.”

  Pinker licked his forefinger and used it to smooth his eyebrows. “Well, really, you know I’ve always been the epitome of fastidiousness. But Dean is not our type, dear boy.”

  “None of them are our type. They’re all comics.”

  “I’d tip my Christian Dior Eau de Cologne down the toilet if Billy Dean stepped on to the London Palladium’s stage as anything other than the cleaner,” Sidney said.

  “That bad?”

  “He made what name he has as a comic who fills in between the strippers in Soho clubs.”

  “Like the Windmill Theatre?”

  “Nothing so elevated for our Billy. He trades in grubby jokes with foul language. Apparently, for the punters in these places, the fouler the better. I think I’d faint if I ever heard it.”

  “Get a grip, Sidney. You’re supposed to be a ruthless killer who plunged a sword into a man’s body.”

  Sidney’s face flushed. “Did you really have to bring that up again?”

  “It’s why we’re here.”

  Sidney tossed his head. “Anyway, if Billy Dean is to win this competition, he’d need completely new material. But where’s he going to get it? He writes his own jokes, probably while sitting on the lavatory. Now if he had the Blue Book, he’d have comic gold.”

  “And he’d kill for it?”

  “Better than dying on stage,” Sidney said. “For a comic, anything is better than the silence of a bored audience.”

  I said: “What can you tell me about Teddy Hooper?”

  “He’s a ventriloquist. He does this act with a dummy he calls the Honourable Percival Plonker. The joke, if you can call it that, is that Plonker is an upper-class twit who’d been to Eton.”

  “At least Hooper performs on the stage,” I said. “I always thought it was stupid that Peter Brough with his dummy Archie Andrews did his act on radio. What’s the point of a vent act if you can’t see whether he’s moving his lips?”

  Sidney smirked. “If that’s your test of a vent, you’d better advise Hooper to do his act at St Dunstan’s.”

  “The home for the blind?”

  “Yes. From what I’ve heard, Hooper is usually so drunk when he goes on stage, he doesn’t know whether he’s moving his lips – or any other part of his body.”

  “How does he still get bookings?”

  “Some of the managements in older variety theatres don’t even see the acts they book. They look at the takings for the week. If they’re up, they’ll book you again. Hooper has always had the good fortune to be on bills with at least one big-name draw.”

  “Still, word gets around.”

  “It does, and from what I hear Hooper has become pretty strange over the years. I’ve seen it before with vents. They start to treat their dummy like it’s a real person. They’re so used to speaking its words, they don’t know when they’re talking for the dummy or themselves. Leaves some of these guys with mixed-up heads. Like kind of two personalities rattling around in their mind fighting to come out on top.”

  “Could Hooper be mixed up enough to have killed Bernstein?”

  “If Plonker told him to,” Sidney said.

  “Get real, Sidney.”

  “I’m serious. Hooper’s personality is split between himself and Plonker. He doesn’t just take Plonker on stage. He takes him everywhere. If you have a conversation with him, you find Plonker joining in.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “It was for Bernstein, so I hear. It was a few months ago. Apparently, Hooper with Plonker on his lap was having a row with Bernstein about his fees. Hooper had Plonker doing most of the talking. The dummy was calling Bernstein a ‘smelly twister’ and a ‘mean old git’ and some even less fragrant phrases. Eventually Bernstein got so exasperated by this, he grabbed Plonker off Hooper’s lap and slung it across the room.”

  “And smashed the dummy?”

  “Put it this way, if it had been a human it would have ended up in hospital encased in plaster and suspended from the ceiling by those ropes you see in intensive care wards. As it was, Hooper managed to get the creature repaired.”

  “And Hooper now hates Bernstein enough to kill him?” I asked.

  “That’s the spooky part about it. Whenever Hooper has the dummy with him, it’s Plonker who spouts stuff about breaking every bone in Bernstein’s body. It’s as though it wants to see Bernstein dead.”

  “But Percival Plonker didn’t stick a sword into Bernstein.”

  “No,” said Sidney. “But Peter Kitchen has a violent temper.”

  “He’s the satirist. I’d heard he was the new wave of comedy.”

  “If you can call poking fun at public figures comedy. But since that BBC TV programme That Was The Week That Was, there’s been more of them around.”

  “I don’t recall ever seeing Kitchen on the show or any of the others that started up after it.”

  “That’s because he never got chosen – and he blames Bernstein. And Kitchen doesn’t only have a vicious tongue. One night he was doing his act in a London pub. One of the audience got a bit mouthy. Heckled him. Comics should be able to handle that. The best have a stock of put-downs. You know – ‘If you don’t like my act, there’s a bus leaving outside in five minutes. Be under it.’ It turned out Kitchen’s put-down was to step off the stage and thump the heckler. It ended the show and Kitchen was never booked at the pub again.”

  “And that ended his career?”

  “It would take worse than that in showbiz to finish a man. But it was enough for Bernstein to turn him down as a client. I hear other agents followed Bernstein’s lead. So Kitchen works alone – taking his own bookings when he can get them. Without an agent, he blames Bernstein for the fact he’s never made it big on TV.”

  I thought about that for a moment. “When did Bernstein turn Kitchen down as a client?”

  “I think it was after the first season of That Was The Week That Was finished. Kitchen hoped to get booked for the second season.”

  “That was two years ago. If Kitchen wanted to teach Bernstein a lesson, surely he’d have done so then? When he was most angry.”

  “Who knows how the mind of a satirist works?” Sidney said. “But you haven’t asked me about the comic with the strongest motive.”

  “Ernie Winkle,” I said.

  “He never got over missing out on Max Miller’s Blue Book.”

  “I know. I’ve seen his act – and interviewed him.”

  “More than I ever did, dear boy. You must have a strong stomach.”

  “I need to speak to the others. Where will I find them?”

  “You can try Gloria’s Rehearsal Rooms. You’ll find it in Trafalgar Street.”

  “And ask for Gloria, I presume?”

  “Yes, the place is run by Gloria Randle. She’s known as Gloria the Crab. But I wouldn’t mention that.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  Sidney filled in the detail. “Gloria used to be a magician’s assistant – the Great Gilberto. But Gilberto wasn’t so great when he came to the old trick of sawing a woman in half. Well, Gloria picked up the crab soubriquet afterwards.”

  Chapter 9

  I decided I needed a strengthening cup of coffee before coming face-to-face with Gloria the Crab.

  Besides, I needed time to think about what Sidney had told me.

  Marcello’s was quiet after the early morning breakfast rush. A fug of cigarette smoke and bacon fumes hung in t
he air. A couple of bus drivers from the depot munched on toast and marmalade at a table in the corner.

  Marcello was behind the counter polishing up his smart new espresso coffee machine. It had long handles and knobs and a steam pipe. It had sleek lines and a fancy chrome finish. Add some wheels and it could probably have hauled a train.

  I walked up to the counter and said: “If you can get a cup of strong white coffee out of that, I’ll have one.”

  Marcello grinned. “This machine do everything but drink it.”

  “If you can fix that I won’t even need to come in here.”

  Marcello pulled a sour face and turned to the machine. He heaved on some handles, twiddled some knobs, and passed me a glass cup and saucer with a pale brown liquid.

  I took my coffee to a table well away from the drivers. The last thing I needed right now was an earnest discussion about bus timetables.

  I sat at the table and took a sip of the coffee. I glanced up and saw Marcello watching me intently. The coffee was a bit weak and there was too much milk. But I gave him a thumbs-up and he beamed back a smile like a sunburst.

  It warmed me more than the coffee. There hadn’t been many smiles around since Sidney had walked in on Danny Bernstein’s dead eyes looking down the business end of a sword.

  And from what Sidney had told me, there wasn’t going to be an excess of hilarity when I met the comedians. If Bernstein had been killed in order to steal the Blue Book, two of the comics would be prime suspects. Ernie Winkle thought Max Miller had promised him the book and was angry that Bernstein had gained it by chance. Billy Dean desperately needed some new jokes without four-letter words if he were to stand a chance of winning the Laugh-a-thon.

  So did that mean I should concentrate on them and ignore the other three comedians? I took another sip of the coffee while I thought about that. The empty cigar box which had held the Blue Book had been found outside Bernstein’s office window. So the book had been stolen at the time of the murder.

  But that didn’t mean it had been the motive for the murder. Jessie O’Mara, Teddy Hooper or Peter Kitchen had different motives for wanting Bernstein dead. If one of them had killed Bernstein, stealing the Blue Book would be a great way to misdirect the cops. It would distract attention from the killer’s true motive. It wouldn’t take much to have Tomkins chasing after the wrong clues.

  So I had to consider all of them as possible murderers.

  And, I reminded myself, Sidney Pinker also had a motive.

  I drained the last of my coffee, stood up, and said “ciao” to Marcello.

  Outside, the sun peeped out from behind November clouds. But the air seemed colder. Or perhaps it was just my mood.

  Gloria’s Rehearsal Rooms were halfway between two of Trafalgar Street’s pubs – the Lord Nelson and the Prince Albert.

  The place was an old Victorian building with soot-blackened bricks and small windows. There was a metal plaque with the name of the place beside the front door. The plaque could have done with some vigorous work with a tin of Brasso.

  I opened the door and stepped into a surprisingly spacious entrance hall. The hall led into a corridor which ran towards the back of the building. There was a small desk with a bell and a notice which read “If I’m not here, ring the bell and wait, you impatient bugger.”

  I rang and lounged against the desk. I showed the kind of insouciance that would get me tagged as an infinitely patient bugger.

  Somewhere down the corridor a door opened and closed. I listened for footsteps but there weren’t any. But there was a kind of shuffling sound like a stiff brush being dragged over a rough carpet.

  The sound became louder as the figure came closer.

  And then Gloria the Crab edged around the corner. Her left shoulder came first, then her head. Her right shoulder followed. Gloria shuffled sideways rather like a climber edges along a cliff ledge. She shuffled one leg sideways, planted it firmly, then dragged the other alongside. It should have looked unnatural. But strangely it didn’t. It just looked as though she were practising some dance steps. Not so much quick, quick, slow as shuffle, shuffle, stop.

  Yet if Gloria moved sideways like a crab, that was where the resemblance stopped. I’d say she was in her early forties, but it was easy to see how with make-up under stage lights she’d have looked ten years younger. At least, as long as you weren’t sitting in the front row of the stalls.

  She’d have made a perfect magician’s assistant with her full lips stretched in a broad smile and a what-happens-now look lighting up her eyes. Except right now she was glowering at me with a who-the-hell-are-you stare.

  She said: “Have you been waiting long?”

  “No.”

  “Pity.”

  Gloria shuffled over to her desk and sat down. She was wearing a yellow polo-neck sweater and some stripy stretch pants. She had carpet slippers on her feet.

  I said: “Do I have the pleasure of speaking to Gloria Randle?”

  “Who said it was ever going to be a pleasure?”

  “Actually, my colleague Sidney Pinker, theatre critic of the Evening Chronicle. He’s a big fan.”

  “Yeah, I know Sidney. Can’t say I reciprocate. I thought Sidney was in the cooler on a murder rap.”

  “He’s innocent.”

  “Aren’t they all? Anyway, what brings you to my palace for practising performers?”

  “I understand some of the comics in the Laugh-a-thon are rehearsing here.”

  “Yeah. Jessie O’Mara, Teddy Hooper and Peter Kitchen are all here. Ernie Winkle rehearses at his own club. Don’t ask me where Billy Dean goes to try out his act. The nearest gutter probably.”

  “It must be fun having comedians in the place. A laugh a minute?”

  Gloria nodded thoughtfully. “You don’t know much about show business, do you?”

  “Crime reporting is my beat.”

  “Yeah. Well, let me tell you of all the actors and variety performers you can have in your place, comedians are the worst. If you want to see neuroses walking around on legs, just go see comedians off-stage. If you want to feel a bruised ego surge into a room even before its owner’s stepped over the threshold, look for a comedian. It’s bad enough when they’ve just got a regular performance. But with this competition coming off, it’s like having a convention of prima donnas in the joint.”

  “Tell them to go rehearse somewhere else.”

  Gloria gave a mirthless laugh. “You know I was a magician’s assistant. Not a magician but I could make people disappear in a stage act. The trouble is in real life you see people you’d like to get rid of. The people you don’t want around. But it’s not so easy. You click your fingers and say abracadabra – but they’re still there.”

  “For a quick ‘hey presto’, I’d disappear and go to speak with your prima donnas.”

  Gloria pointed to the corridor. “Jessie’s in room one at the end of the passage. You’ll find Peter Kitchen upstairs, first door on the right, room four. Teddy Hooper hasn’t turned up yet. Perhaps Percival had a late breakfast.”

  I smiled a thank-you and turned for the corridor.

  Gloria called after me. “By the way, thanks for not mentioning that thing.”

  “What thing is that?”

  “You know… that crustacean thing.”

  “Never entered my mind,” I said and hurried down the corridor.

  I reached rehearsal room one and raised my fist to knock – but then I heard a woman talking inside.

  Gloria hadn’t mentioned that Jessie had someone with her.

  Silently, I put my ear to the door and listened.

  Eavesdropping – more value to journalists than shorthand.

  A woman’s voice said: “You know, girls, men are a bit like those new Kenwood Chef food mixers that have just come into the shops. You need one, but you’re not sure why.”

  Ah-ha! Jessie didn’t have anyone with her. She was rehearsing her act.

  I settled my ear comfortably against the door t
o earwig the show.

  “Say, girls, do you have as much trouble with your husbands as I have with mine. I said to him the other day, ‘Why don’t you help with the housework?’ He said, ‘I lift up my legs when you want to vacuum under them.’ Typical! A girlfriend asked me ‘what’s the difference between a man and a bottle of Chateau Lafite?’ ‘That’s easy,’ I said, ‘the wine matures.’ My friend was asking me what she should give her husband for his birthday. ‘What do you give a man who has everything?’ she said. ‘Penicillin,’ I said. Anyway, I mustn’t complain. I’d like to thank my husband for a wonderful year of marriage. I’ll let you know when it happens. So that’s it, girls. Here’s a final piece of advice. There’s one certain place where you can always find a committed man. A mental institution. See ya!”

  The room went silent. Then two hands clapped. Jessie was giving herself a round of applause.

  I opened the door and walked in.

  Jessie was standing in front of a full-length mirror giving herself a quizzical look. She was wondering whether her act would raise many laughs in an audience of men and women.

  I said: “If I were in the audience I’d be laughing and applauding. And my girlfriend Shirley would probably let out a whoop or two.”

  Jessie spun round to face me. She was a tall girl with the kind of full figure that gets many women looking anxiously at the bathroom scales. She had a full face with high cheek bones and big eyes that had a permanent surprised look. Her shoulder-length brown hair was frizzed and tied back with a red ribbon. She was wearing a Sloppy Joe sweater with the words “Proud Scouser” printed on the front and jeans.

  She said: “Were you geggin’ in on my act?”

  I said: “Couldn’t help catching the last minute of it. It was great.”

  “Yeah! I just can’t get enough fans to listen at keyholes. Who are you?”

  I pulled out a card and handed it to her. She looked at it and handed it back.

  “Journalist. At least you’re not some gobshite of an agent trying to steal my act.”

  I said: “That act is a one-off.”

  For the first time, Jessie grinned. “Yeah! I get to do it once and then I’m off.”