Stop Press Murder

by Peter Bartram

  Delia glanced back at the newspaper on her desk.

  “Clerical error,” I said.

  She picked up the paper and started to fill it in. I hurried out before she had the chance to ask me anything else.

  I had a more urgent clue to follow.

  There was no chance that Miss Fanny Archer was Jim Houghton’s paid informer.

  Because Fanny Archer, aka Lady Frances Mountebank, was the Marquess of Piddinghoe’s daughter.

  I left the Town Hall with my brain buzzing like a power drill.

  I needed time to think, so I walked round to Marcello’s. The place was winding down after the breakfast rush. I ordered a coffee and took a seat towards the back.

  I’d originally planned to confront Venetia with the letter she’d written to Marie about the payments. But the revelation that Fanny was really a scion of the aristocracy – Venetia’s granddaughter – changed all that. Fanny – or should I now call her Frances? – was a nark all right. She was a posh nark with a whole canteen of silver cutlery in her mouth.

  She was Venetia’s nark.

  That convinced me more than ever that Venetia had much to hide. Perhaps she was worried about me finding out about the payments to Marie. She might have guessed I’d get in touch with Clarence. But, perhaps, there was more.

  Venetia didn’t know that I’d unmasked her spymaster. Or, rather, spy-mistress. That gave me an advantage. Despite the suspicions I’d had, I’d sensed Fanny and I had made some kind of connection over supper at the Four Aces. So I decided to confront Fanny first. What Fanny told me could put Venetia in a position where she had to reveal what she was hiding.

  But if this plan was going to work, I’d need to move fast.

  I left my coffee on the table and walked up to the counter. Marcello was busy buttering bread. He looked up and said: “No bacon sandwich this morning?”

  I said: “I’d rather have the use of your telephone, if you don’t mind.”

  Marcello shrugged. “Turned you out of the office have they?”

  “Not yet. But if I don’t get this story right, my days may be numbered.”

  Marcello grinned. “You better make the call then. Go through to the back. The telephone’s just inside the door to the kitchen.”

  I nodded thanks and walked through. Ruby was over by the sink washing up. I smiled at her, pulled out my notebook and flipped over the pages looking for the Piddinghoes’ number. I picked up the phone and dialled. Listened to it ring seven times before someone lifted the receiver.

  A voice said: “Piddinghoe Grange. Who is speaking, please?” It was Lord Snooty – Pinchbeck the butler.

  I put on a bit of a lisp and said: “Thith ith Rodney, Lady Frances’ hairdresser. May I speak to her ladythip, please?”

  “I was always given to understand that her ladyship’s hair stylist was called Peterkin.”

  I dropped the lisp. “Peterkin is my partner. At the moment, he is rather engaged with a permanent wave which seems to have become a little too temporary.”

  “I see. In what connection, did you wish to communicate with Lady Frances?”

  “We need to confirm her next appointment. If you could kindly connect me with her ladyship, I will not detain her for more than a moment.”

  “I regret to inform you that Lady Frances is not available. She is with Herbert.”

  “She’s never mentioned Herbert to Peterkin and me.”

  “Herbert is the love of her life, if I may use a rather vulgar turn of phrase.” Lord Snooty gave an apologetic little cough.

  “Perhaps you could say when Lady Frances will be free to take a call.”

  “That is hard to say. She likes to spend at least two hours a day on top of Herbert.”

  “Lucky Herbert.”

  Pinchbeck cleared his throat to signal his disapproval. “I don’t care for your insinuation, sir. Herbert is a horse. Lady Frances is hacking across the countryside. I believe towards the Cuckmere River. It is unlikely that she will return until luncheon. Kindly call later.”

  He replaced the receiver.

  I looked across at Ruby. She was drying some cups and saucers.

  “You look like a bloke who’s just been given the bum’s rush,” she said. “Not that girl I saw you chatting up yesterday, is it?”

  “From what her butler says, she’s horsing around.”

  “If she’s got a butler, you stand no chance.”

  I grinned. “‘They also serve who only stand and wait.’”

  Ruby pulled a puzzled face. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I headed for the door. “I’ll explain it one day.”

  Outside Marcello’s, I glanced at my watch.

  If Fanny wasn’t due back at Piddinghoe Grange until lunchtime, I had time to attend the regular morning police press conference. It was due in ten minutes. So I hurried back to the police station and sprinted round to the briefing room.

  Superintendent Tomkins was just walking in flanked by a couple of his under-strappers. He was wearing a grey suit, spotted blue tie and an insufferable grin.

  The room was packed. A seaside murder just before the silly season was like an early Christmas present for the national newspapers – even though they still had the Profumo scandal to feast on. There were enough hacks from the nationals to drink a bar dry. There were rumours that some of them had. But they all looked bright enough. Tomkins made a performance of seating himself, getting comfortable and rummaging through his notes. He surveyed the assembled faces like a suffragan bishop about to preach the Good Word.

  An expectant silence fell over the room. Tomkins said: “I am going to read a statement and then I will take questions.”

  He put on his glasses, picked up a sheet of paper and read: “This morning, police officers arrested Thomas Archibald Belcher, forty-seven, of Maple Road, Coldean on suspicion of the murder of Frederick Tinkerman Snout in the early hours of June the fourth.”

  I took the statement down in perfect Pitman’s in my notebook. Then wrote a single word in capital letters after it: RUBBISH.

  As I’d discovered, Tom Belcher and Fred Snout had had a right royal row after the theft was discovered. Plenty of witnesses would have heard it. And there was no doubt that Belcher blamed Snout’s lax attitude to night-time security for the loss of Milady’s Bath Night. But Belcher’s threat to kill Snout was words spoken in anger. He’d no more kill Snout than an old seagull. It seemed to me the pair were like a couple of football fans who support opposing teams in the same city. On the surface, the worst of enemies. Underneath, united in a common love. In their case, the precious seaside pier they worked for.

  I realised Tomkins had called for questions. A forest of hands shot up in front of me. Tomkins surveyed the room. He’d be looking for a patsy to ask a simple question.

  I decided to play the rude guest who barges to the front of the queue. So I jumped to my feet and said: “Mr Tomkins, how do you explain the fact you’ve arrested the man responsible for keeping the Palace Pier What the Butler Saw machines safe when you previously said that Fred Snout’s murder had nothing to do with the theft of Milady’s Bath Night?”

  There were a few complaints around the room that I’d stepped out of turn. But everyone wanted to hear how Tomkins would wriggle out of that question. So the grumbles died to an expectant silence.

  But Tomkins positively crowed. “The arrest of Belcher proves my point. Irresponsible newspaper speculation suggested that the killing was linked to the theft. We know Belcher didn’t steal Milady’s Bath Night but, we say, he did murder Snout. Thus, the two are plainly not linked.”

  I wasn’t letting Tomkins get away with that lazy answer. So I ignored mutterings around the room and asked: “Has Mr Belcher confessed to the killing?”

  “We have not yet completed our interviews.”

  “So the answer is no.”

  “I am confident we will assemble all the evidence we need for a successful prosecution. And now, perhaps, a question f
rom a more senior journalist.” He pointed at Jim Houghton.

  I made a quick note of Tomkins’ answers to my questions as I heard Houghton ask: “Have you any forensic evidence to link Belcher to the murder?”

  Tomkins mumbled: “That is still a focus of our investigation.”

  In a word, no.

  Some of the national journalists jumped in with questions about Tom Belcher’s background. They’d be thinking that a man who had a love for What the Butler Saw machines could have an exotic past. Although I’d spent only half an hour with the man, I doubted it. His passion for the machines was largely for the technology they used rather than the content.

  I noticed one or two of the nationals trying to sneak out at the back of the room unnoticed. They’d be heading for Belcher’s house – hoping to find his wife in. In the next few days, they’d camp out on her doorstep. They’d promise to leave for just one titbit of information or an old photo of Tom. But they never would. Her life was going to be hell until the tabloids found another victim to harass.

  As far as I was concerned, I intended to leave them to it. Belcher’s arrest was a typical Tomkins tactic designed to grab personal headlines. It was plain from Tomkins’ answers that he didn’t have enough evidence to nail Belcher for the crime. He was hoping to turn up evidence in the next twenty-four hours. But it wasn’t there – and so he’d have to release Belcher without charge. But not before Tom and his missus had been to hell and back, courtesy the gentlemen of the press.

  But not this gentleman.

  Even so, Tomkins’ announcement left me with a problem.

  Belcher’s arrest was news – and my job was to report it. But I had to find a way to do it which didn’t undermine my own theory. Tomkins’ move could encourage Figgis to put pressure on me to drop my own line of enquiry. I had to avoid that.

  By the time I walked into the Chronicle newsroom fifteen minutes later, I’d decided what to do. I’d write a full report of Tomkins’ press conference, but I’d use my own questions at the top of the story. I’d make it clear in the first five pars that Tomkins wasn’t able to produce a single shred of hard evidence against Belcher. The story should satisfy Figgis while leaving me the option of developing it in my way over the next few days.

  At his press conference two days earlier, Tomkins had dismissed out of hand the notion there was any connection between the murder and the theft. Now he was edging towards admitting there was. I decided to check back in my notes of the first press conference to see whether there were any more contradictions I could use in my story. The notes of that were in my previous book.

  So I yanked open the top drawer where I kept my old notebooks neatly filed in date order. It’s an important discipline for reporters. If you’re ever challenged on the accuracy of a story, the evidence of a contemporary shorthand note will generally get you off the hook. It was a rule on the paper that we had to keep old notebooks for at least six months. But my neat piles of books had been disturbed. Someone had been rummaging through them. Person or persons unknown had taken out the most recent book – which also included the notes of my interview with Toupée Terry and Clarence – and rifled through it.

  I’d expressed my concern to Frank Figgis that there was a snitch in the office. This was supporting evidence. And it could also be the reason behind the mysterious removal of my old blotter. I used the thing as a handy memo pad. I’d made numerous notes of telephone numbers and addresses on it including Clarence’s address. That could explain how Jim Houghton had found Clarence’s flat so swiftly.

  But who was the snitch? I had my suspicions. Cedric the copy boy had been taking an unusually deep interest in the Snout story. Only this morning, he’d been questioning me about it. Besides, he was the one person in the office, who had a chance to read everyone’s copy as he took it up to the subs. And, I recalled, he might also have a motive. A couple of months back he’d tried to persuade Figgis to promote him to junior reporter. But Figgis had told him he wasn’t ready yet and had to spend at least another year as copy boy. But I was building a theory out of circumstantial evidence. Before I pointed the finger, I needed some proof.

  A snitch who’d been a successful blotter bandit once, might come back a second time. I made a few inconsequential notes on the blotter to make it look used. Then I wrote: “Friday 1.00pm. Bat and Ball public bar. Meet Snout witness.”

  If the snitch passed on that information, I’d thought of a way to trap him.

  Chapter 15

  It was twenty minutes shy of midday when I parked the car in a narrow lane just outside Piddinghoe.

  I’d been looking forward to getting out of Brighton into the peace of the countryside. But the gruff rumble of agricultural machinery from the other side of a sprawling hedge drowned out the twitter of the birds. No doubt a horny-handed son of the earth was ploughing the fields and scattering the good seed on the land.

  I stepped out of the car and looked up the lane. I’d circled the village and Piddinghoe Grange a couple of times trying to work out which way Fanny would return to the house. Lord Snooty had said that she’d hacked off towards the Cuckmere in the east. I’d studied the Ordnance Survey map of Sussex I kept in the car and identified three possible bridleways back. But one skirted north towards Lewes before turning south to Piddinghoe and another passed too close to the busy A27 road. I reckoned Fanny would choose the quietest – the one which passed through uninhabited countryside.

  After all, she was a girl with a lot on her mind. She’d been playing double-agent on behalf of her grandmother. Throughout British history, the aristocratic classes had kept the upper hand through a mixture of subterfuge and trickery. It ran through their veins as much as their blue blood. But Fanny didn’t strike me as a natural at the dark arts of the double-cross. Perhaps that’s why she’d chosen to spend the morning riding across isolated country. Perhaps she needed time by herself to think. Or, perhaps, as Lord Snooty had pointed out, she just liked spending time on top of Herbert.

  I’d parked the MGB about a half a mile from the village. I didn’t want curious yokels spotting an unfamiliar car and asking awkward questions. I also wanted a spot where I could surprise Fanny before she saw me. The combination of an ancient oak tree and a bend in the lane meant I’d be able to leap out like Dick Turpin as Fanny appeared. Whether she would stand and deliver remained to be seen. I could drive my MGB fast, but it would be no match for a horse across country. I’d cornered on two wheels, but I’d yet to get the car to jump a hedge.

  It turned out Lord Snooty had been correct almost to the minute.

  At five to twelve, Fanny clip-clopped round the bend in the lane. Herbert turned out to be a handsome bay. Perhaps not sleek enough to win the Derby but much too posh to pull a milk-float. His flanks glistened with sweat. Fanny had evidently spurred the animal through some hard gallops. Perhaps another sign she had frustrations to work out.

  She was dressed in brown jodhpurs, a tight-fitting riding jacket and one of those peaked horse-riding caps that straps under the chin. Her high black riding boots had a shine that I could’ve seen my face in had I been close enough to look. Fanny saw the car before me. Annoyance clouded her eyes. As though it were a damned cheek for four wheels to intrude where only four legs should go. But that look vanished when I stepped out from behind the oak tree. I caught a flash of fear in her eyes.

  I said: “It’s a long ride back to Woodingdean. But I suppose you could always tie the horse up to a lamp-post when you get there.”

  Fanny pursed her lips – glanced anxiously around as though looking for a way to escape. Then she shrugged in a resigned sort of gesture – her way of registering that she’d been rumbled and didn’t really care.

  She said: “It was the shorthand, wasn’t it? You tricked me with the shorthand.”

  I nodded. “Once I knew you were playing a part, it was just a case of following you. I saw the Aston Martin, took the registration plate and traced you from there.”

  “But you don’t kn
ow why I tricked you.”

  “I think I know some of it.”

  “And you expect me to tell you the rest?”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” she said.

  I stepped towards the horse. “Then let me tell you the half I do know.”

  She dismounted, led Herbert forward and looped his rein around the branch of a bush.

  I said: “When I saw your grandmother a few days ago, she told me she’d had no contact with her sister for many years.”

  “And so she hasn’t. Do you think I could have lived with Grandmama for so long without knowing where she went and whom she saw? She’s the closest friend I’ve ever had.”

  “Lady Piddinghoe refused to tell me why she was estranged from her sister.” For a moment, I considered telling Fanny that Venetia had been sending Marie money every month for years. But I decided to keep that information in reserve.

  Instead I said: “When I spoke to the daughter of one her former servants, I was told the two sisters had broken up after a furious row.”

  Fanny’s eyes blazed with anger. “So you’re prying behind my family’s back.”

  “And you were playing Mata Hari without the sequins behind mine.”

  “You think I don’t have good reason, when all you’re concerned with is to dig up as much dirt as you can.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not in the dirt-digging business. Never have been. But I am trying to find the truth. A dead man lies behind my enquiries – and I want to find out how he was murdered and why.”

  “So now you’re a detective.”

  “No, I’m a journalist. And when I find the truth, I will write about it, no matter what effect it has on the noble escutcheon of the Piddinghoes.”

  Fanny turned away. Walked over to where Herbert was quietly browsing on some grass. Patted the horse’s neck. Whispered something in his ear. She turned back to me. The anger had vanished from her face. “I told Grandmama that no good would come of it.”

  “You mean spying on me?”