“Yes.”
“Did he say why he wanted to keep the police out of it?”
“Naw. But he don’t fool me. Doesn’t want Brighton Council’s Watch Committee sniffing round the mutoscopes. Afraid some of the pictures might be a bit too fruity for the old duchesses on the committee.”
I wondered whether Chapman hadn’t wanted the police involved because he knew there was more to the theft than met the eye – and that Chapman knew what it was. But I was just building a theory – and a theory without any supporting evidence at that. At least Tom had given me a new angle on the story – one Houghton wouldn’t have discovered.
That, at least, might redeem some of my reputation with Figgis.
I said: “Thanks for your help, Tom. I hope you get the pictures back.”
He didn’t look hopeful. “Me, too. Somehow the place doesn’t seem the same without Milady. I wish I knew where she’d gone.”
It was the same thought in my mind as I hurried towards the pier’s exit.
Chapter 3
I arrived back at the Chronicle ten minutes later to find it buzzing with deadline fever.
The pier murder was the talk of the newsroom. I heard my name mentioned a couple of times as I pushed through the swing doors. I made straight for my desk to a chorus of unwanted comments from colleagues.
“Frank Figgis has been looking for you,” said Phil Bailey.
The old buzzard would have heard about the murder. He’d be fuming that I hadn’t filed any copy for the Midday Special. Not even a par for the stop press.
“He’s been rummaging around your desk,” said Paul Goodbody.
“He’s madder than that time he dropped a new packet of Woodbines down the lavvy,” said Sally Martin.
I reached my desk and slumped onto my chair.
Susan Wheatcroft leaned over with a sympathetic smile. “If he sacks you, honeybunch, can I have your luncheon vouchers?”
Well, really. Where would we be without supportive colleagues?
I’d made a decision on my walk back from the pier. I needed a way to leap ahead of Jim Houghton on the story. He thought he’d scooped me. But he didn’t know about the theft of Marie Richmond’s pictures. I had a hunch that must be linked to the murder. The fact Reginald Chapman, the pier manager, didn’t want the police to know about it, raised questions. Even suspicions. So I decided I’d link the two crimes – the murder and the theft – in my story and then work to make the link stand up in follow-ups. If it all went right, it was a strategy that would make Houghton look like a stumblebum. If it went wrong… I would think about that when the time came.
So I rolled copy paper into my old Remington typewriter and pounded out: “The killing of Palace Pier’s night-watchman Fred Snout could be linked to the theft of saucy pictures from a What the Butler Saw machine in the amusement arcade.”
I was about to start on the second paragraph when I realised the newsroom had fallen silent. I looked up. Frank Figgis was stomping towards my desk with a face like a winter weather front.
Figgis was a short man with a wizened face which looked as though it had been made out of ancient leather. He had hard little brown marbles for eyes. He walked with a kind of jaunty bounce on account of his red braces were usually adjusted one notch too tight.
He clumped up to my desk, nodded at the copy paper in my Remington and said: “I hope that’s your resignation you’re typing.”
“’Fraid not. I’ve forgotten whether you spell ‘quit’ with a K or a Q.”
“You also seem to have forgotten how to file breaking stories.”
“Not forgotten. Read this.”
I rolled the folio out of the Remington and handed it to Figgis.
A nervous twitch in his cheek pulsed as he read it.
He said: “This changes nothing. Follow me.” He turned and marched back across the newsroom towards his office.
I stood up and tagged along behind feeling a bit like Sidney Carton heading for the guillotine.
As I passed Sally Martin’s desk she leaned over and whispered: “Good luck.”
I felt she spoilt the gesture by crossing herself like a penitent priest as she said it.
Back in his office, Figgis sat down behind his desk, reached for his fags and lit up.
He said: “The Argus will be splashing at midday with the biggest crime story in Brighton for a year. And we don’t even have a par for the stop press. I’ve sacked reporters for less. Give me one good reason why I should spare you the chop.”
Figgis hadn’t invited me to sit, so I made a bit of performance of pulling out the guest chair and getting myself comfortable.
I said: “Because I’m about to break a story that will make the Argus’s coverage look as dull as a dimwit’s diary. You’ve seen the first par of my story – death by coconut linked with a sexy siren’s naughty pictures. Only the coconut was shy. It’s a combination that will sell papers in thousands.”
Figgis read my intro again and scratched his chin. “This sounds speculative to me,” he said. “I don’t want us to climb out on a limb which some smart-arse at the Argus will saw off.”
“That’s why I’ve written it in the conditional tense,” I said.
“Clever grammar doesn’t count for much when you’re wrong.”
“I don’t think I am. Call it intuition.”
“When you stand in the witness box defending a libel action, some clever-dick lawyer will be asking you for evidence, not intuition.”
“Give me time and I can find it. The evidence, that is.”
Figgis had a thoughtful drag on his ciggie. “And the police don’t know about this theft?” he asked.
“Chapman, the pier manager, didn’t want it reported. Some guff about not wanting the council’s Watch Committee reviewing the naughty pictures in the other machines.”
“And you think that wasn’t the real reason?”
“Those machines have been there since Charlie Chaplin’s time. Besides, I suspect most of the Watch Committee members have had a sneaky thrill themselves when they thought nobody was looking.”
“And all this will be in your copy for the Afternoon Extra?” Figgis said.
“Every golden word. Plus the snippets Detective Superintendent Tomkins threw me.”
“Tomkins won’t like it.”
“Since when has it been our mission to bring pleasure into the unsuper Super’s life?”
“True.”
“Besides, Chapman won’t be grinning like a goon, either,” I said. “He could have to answer some tough questions from Tomkins about why he didn’t report the theft.”
“That’s an angle we need to keep an eye on,” Figgis said.
“So, shall I follow up the lead?” I asked.
“Can I stop you?”
I smiled. “Probably not.”
I stood up and started for the door.
Figgis said: “Just a moment. There’s another matter.”
I turned and tried out my wide-eyed innocent look. “Other matter?”
Figgis wasn’t going to let me off that lightly. He’d made it plain he hadn’t liked the fact that I’d not filed copy for the Midday Special stop press. Now there’d be a price to pay. No doubt he had one of his pieces of creative revenge in store.
I sat down again.
Figgis leant across the desk, dropped his voice and said: “Keep this to yourself for now. We’ve had a tip from Dickie Waterford that a big national story’s going to break tomorrow.”
Waterford was the paper’s political correspondent. We saw little of him in Brighton. He spent most of his time schmoozing politicians around Westminster. No wonder he ran up a weekly bar bill on expenses that would have kept me in G and Ts for a year.
I said: “I cover crime. It’s more honest than politics.”
Figgis said: “If what we hear is correct, there may not be much difference between the two. The whisper is that Jack Profumo is going to resign.”
“You mean the Minister o
f War who’s caught in the scandal with call girls?”
Figgis nodded.
This sounded like the kind of political yarn I could get interested in. Rumours had been running in the nationals for weeks. Despite having a name that sounded like an air freshener, Profumo was a toff straight out of society’s top drawer. He had a good-looking wife who’d been a bit-part actress in her day. But Profumo himself couldn’t resist acting the goat with a string of strumpets, one of whom had also been dallying with the naval attaché at the Russian Embassy. Anchors aweigh, and all that. Profumo had stood up in the House of Commons and said the rumour about him and the girls was a lie. Now, if Waterford’s tip was correct, the naughty war minister was ready to hoist the white flag of surrender.
Figgis said: “Seems Profumo lied to the House of Commons about his affair. That’s why he’s got to go.”
“Not the fact he’s cheated on his wife,” I said.
“When you’re in politics, cheating is second nature.”
I said: “So when he made his call to arms at the party conference, he had the wrong arms in mind.”
“Trouble is, we’ll have to splash on this. I hate running with a national story on the front page without a local twist. That’s why I want a backgrounder – we need a Sussex angle to the story.”
“Anything in mind?” I asked.
“Harold Macmillan has a house at Birch Grove, near Horsted Keynes. As Prime Minister, he’ll have to handle the crisis. Let’s use the PM’s residence as the local angle. Perhaps Profumo visited there. Or maybe Macmillan will be retreating there to decide how to handle the crisis.”
So this was Figgis’s revenge. He wanted me to manufacture a non-existent angle for a national story which every other paper would have anyway.
“Sounds thin to me,” I said.
“Not the way you handle it, I’m sure,” Figgis said. “There must be some other local peg you can find.”
I nodded thoughtfully. Smiled helpfully. “Trouble is, I won’t have time – given that I’ve got a big running story in the pier murder,” I said. “There are several angles I need to follow on that story. It’ll keep me busy for at least a couple of days.”
“Perhaps I should put somebody else on the Snout story,” he said. “Somebody who knows how to file copy for the stop press on time.”
Figgis had me cornered and he knew it. I furrowed my brow to make it look as though I was giving the matter some deep thought. “As it happens,” I said, “I think I may be able to fit in both jobs.”
“I thought you would,” Figgis said. “We don’t want you making an ignominious exit like old Profumo.”
I was now under pressure to write the murder story for the Afternoon Extra and have the backgrounder ready to roll when the Profumo story broke. I glanced at my watch: five to eleven. The copy deadline was twelve-thirty. So I headed straight for the morgue – the paper’s library where thousands of press cuttings were filed.
Figgis had out-manoeuvred me but there was no point in getting angry about it. Journalism is a bit like war – but without guns or medals. Sometimes you make a tactical retreat so you can plan a new advance.
So I breezed into the morgue with a cheery cry of “Morning, ladies.”
Henrietta Houndstooth, the paper’s librarian who ran the morgue, looked up from a file she was studying, frowned and said: “What are you so cheerful about? We’d heard a rumour you were about to be fired.”
Nothing much escaped Henrietta. She had more ears than a field of corn.
I said: “As Mark Twain might have put it, reports of my firing have been greatly exaggerated.”
At a large table in the centre of the room, the Clipping Cousins stopped squabbling over the last toffee in a paper bag.
Elsie said: “That’s a relief.”
Mabel said: “You won’t be on the streets.”
Freda said: “Would you like the last toffee to celebrate?”
The other two glared at her.
I said: “Perhaps another time. I’m on deadline.”
The Clipping Cousins were a trio of middle-aged matrons who were related more by a love of gossip than by blood. They spent their days cutting and filing press cuttings and chattering among themselves. They’d helped me on many a story.
I turned to Henrietta. “I’ve got to write a backgrounder on the Profumo affair.”
She said: “He’s not a Sussex Member of Parliament so I don’t think we have a file on him.”
I said: “I thought so, but Macmillan has a Sussex home and I’ll use that as the peg for my story.”
“So you want the file on Birch Grove. Give me a minute.”
Henrietta disappeared through the door into the filing stacks. I waited.
Elsie looked up from her cuttings and said: “That Profumo is no gentleman.”
Mabel said: “Cavorting with those common women.”
Freda said: “And him being a big knob, too.”
The other two stared at Freda and her cheeks coloured.
“I think a big knob was the cause of his problems,” Mabel said.
Henrietta came back into the room carrying a thick buff file. She handed it to me. “Everything you could ever want to know about Birch Grove,” she said.
I opened the file and flicked through the cuttings. There were more than fifty. I said: “Figgis wanted a cuttings job and he’s going to get it.”
Henrietta said: “Have you journalists no shame?”
I said: “We save it for the editorials. But there’s another story where I need your help.”
“The murder on the pier?” Henrietta said.
“I thought you would’ve heard about that. But you might not have heard about a strange incident a couple of nights ago.” I told her about the theft of the What the Butler Saw film.
“I’m sure we’ve never clipped cuttings about those machines,” Henrietta said.
“I thought so. But you may have cuttings about one of the actresses that appeared in the stolen one – Marie Richmond.”
“Who?”
Henrietta had stiffened before she answered. She had a ruddy complexion from healthy walks on the Downs. But I could have sworn she’d turned a shade paler.
“Richmond,” I said. “Marie Richmond.”
Henrietta fiddled with the brooch – a sort of flower arrangement – on her tweed jacket. “I’ll take a look,” she said. “Wait here.”
She hurried through the door into the filing stacks.
For want of something to lighten the atmosphere, I waved the Birch Grove file at the Cousins and said: “This should keep me busy.”
Elsie said: “That Profumo is a dirty dog.”
Mabel said: “An alley cat, if you ask me.”
Freda said: “I’d call him an old goat to his face.”
I said: “You make him sound like a one-man menagerie.”
The Cousins started to squabble over which term of abuse most suited Profumo. I flipped through the file. Minutes passed. I glanced at my watch.
Something wasn’t right. Henrietta had been startled when I’d mentioned Marie Richmond. But I didn’t know why.
Quietly, I left the Clipping Cousins scissoring their way through old newspapers and crept into the filing stacks. The place was a maze of dusty corridors lit by flickering forty-watt bulbs. The air smelt musty with damp paper dust. Stick a few hieroglyphics on the wall and you could imagine you were creeping into some long-lost Pharaoh’s tomb.
As Henrietta was looking for a file on Marie Richmond, she’d be in the corridor with the letter R files. I stumbled along searching for it. I tried one or two of the corridors but couldn’t see Henrietta. I stood still and listened. The sounds of the outside world somehow became muted inside the file archive. It was like a parallel universe. As though the presence of so many old press cuttings acted like a kind of time machine dragging you back to the past.
I strained my ears but heard only the sound of silence.
Then I heard a sniffle.
Not the kind of little sniff you might hear if somebody had forgotten her birthday. No, this was a deep visceral wail of grief. The kind that comes from someone who realises that a deep love has been lost for ever and will never return.
I crept forward and peered around a stack of cabinets. Henrietta was standing by an open drawer in the P to R corridor. She had a buff file, aged with dust, in her hands. She was turning over the clippings in it – and tears were streaming down her face.
Her misery was so profound I didn’t know what to do.
My first instinct was to hurry forward and comfort her. To embrace her and give her a shoulder to cry on. To ask her what had caused her grief. But I checked myself. Henrietta was a private woman. She never talked about her personal life. Never displayed powerful emotions. She would hate having to explain what had upset her. Hate anybody even knowing about her sorrow. The horror of that would live with her long after the grief had passed.
I stepped back silently – out of sight.
I wasn’t sure what to do next. Questions were running round my mind like ferrets at a fanciers’ meet. What was the file Henrietta was holding? Was it something to do with Marie Richmond? And why had it reduced her to tears? I had no answers. And, for the time being at least, Henrietta was the very last person to ask.
I tiptoed quietly out of the filing stacks back into the clippings room and picked up the Birch Grove file. The Clipping Cousins, for once, were absorbed in their newspapers.
I headed back to the newsroom with much on my mind.
Chapter 4
I was so deep in thought about Henrietta when I stepped into the newsroom, I crashed straight into Sidney Pinker on his way out.
“My dear boy, there’s no need to be so rough with me,” Pinker said. “At least not here.” He arched his left eyebrow and made it wiggle like a caterpillar.
Pinker was the paper’s theatre critic. He spent most of his time lounging in an end-of-row seat in the Theatre Royal stalls sneering at the latest drawing-room comedy. He had an aquiline face, cat-like eyes and an extravagant bouffant haircut. He was wearing a white jacket and pink slacks. He’d tied a flowery cravat around his neck in a raffish way so that its ends trailed over his collar.
Stop Press Murder Page 3