A Shot in the Dark

by Lynne Truss

  ‘Now, I’ve told you already, you mustn’t go blaming yourself, Mrs Thorpe,’ said Brunswick, closing his notebook.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, on the verge of tears. ‘Mr Stephenson next door said he heard shouts and screams from in here! But if he did, why didn’t he do something? Why didn’t he try to intervene? I mean to say, someone could have been murdering me!’

  ‘People generally think it’s not their place to do anything, I’m afraid. But I must have a word with Mr Stephenson, thank you. Now, I won’t be much longer, but do you think you’re up to showing me Mr Braithwaite’s room?’

  Mrs Thorpe led him upstairs to the top floor, and stood in the narrow doorway as he opened the curtains (to views of seagulls adjusting their wings on a jumble of rooftops) and then poked about, searching through drawers and picking up framed pictures.

  ‘Penny Cavendish?’ He held up a studio portrait of Braithwaite’s girlfriend.

  ‘That’s right. She’s a lovely girl. She came here once to see him. They’ve been going out about six months, I think. She must be devastated.’

  Flicking through Jack’s diary, he discovered the entry for the day before, ‘Bobby and Penny, Queen Adelaide, noon’, and made a note.

  ‘This Bobby Melba you mentioned downstairs,’ he said. ‘Any idea what he does for a living now? Presumably he’s an actor, too? Or is he a writer now, like Mr Braithwaite?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. I don’t think Jack mentioned it.’

  Brunswick noticed something else. Next to the diary was an old, faded programme for a drama school production of Noel Coward’s The Vortex, with a line of ten thin young student actors smiling at the camera in 1920s period costume, the caption including Jack’s name, and also that of ‘Robert Melba’.

  Brunswick was puzzled. He held it out for Mrs Thorpe to see. ‘Which one is Bobby here?’ he asked. ‘I can’t work this out.’

  ‘I’m afraid I haven’t met him,’ she said.

  ‘Of course. I forgot.’

  Brunswick took the picture to the window and laboriously counted along the figures in the photograph, assigning a name to each. Halfway along he was finally sure he had got to ‘Robert Melba’. What had confused him initially was that, despite the presence of real females in the cast, the woman in the middle with the shiny bobbed hair and cupid’s-bow lips and flapper-length dress was evidently played by a man.

  Brunswick felt a thrill of excitement. ‘Bobby Melba’s dressed as a woman here!’ he said. ‘Look at this!’

  ‘Well, a lot of actors do that, of course,’ said Mrs Thorpe, regretfully. (She knew a thing or two about actors.) ‘You wouldn’t believe the number of times I’ve come home unexpectedly and found them wearing my frocks and jewellery.’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  ‘Big, hairy men, some of them. Decent shoes have been completely ruined!’

  ‘Mrs Thorpe?’ Brunswick said, beckoning her to the window. Excitedly, he pointed to the picture. ‘Is there any way that the person in this photograph was the woman who called on you yesterday afternoon?’

  She took the programme from him and held it up for more light.

  ‘Yes, that’s her,’ she said, with surprise. ‘You clever man. That’s definitely her.’

  * * *

  Penny Cavendish had just received some startling news. She had been packing her things at her seafront hotel that morning when she’d learned from the Theatre Royal that, if she was willing, A Shilling in the Meter would resume its run tonight, in a show-must-go-on sort of spirit. Evidently the theatre itself was ready to reopen its doors.

  True, the carpet and seats in the stalls would smell a bit of disinfectant, and there were some unsightly stains on the flock wallpaper that had proved resistant to repeated applications of Handy Andy, but if they took the dim bulbs out of the wall-lights along there, it would look all right. Basically, there was no reason – now that the events of last night had been dealt with by the authorities – not to get back down to business. Or there was no reason other than the potentially tender emotional state of the cast – all of whom had lost their director and writer, one of whom had spent the night in a cell, and one of whom was a beautiful young woman who was grieving for her boyfriend, victim of an unusually violent homicide.

  It was the Theatre Royal’s manager himself who had come to see her, which was an interesting concession on his part as he had always been very offhand with her up to now, being someone who openly hated Jack’s work, and couldn’t stand Jack, either. A Shilling in the Meter was the sort of dramatic offering he personally loathed. Once, while the play was in rehearsal, Penny happened to pass the box office, and overheard him advising a would-be ticket-buyer to save her money. ‘Come back next week, Mrs Plumley,’ he told her. ‘We’ve got The Desert Song.’

  But today the manager was singing a different tune. Last night’s sensational events had led to an unprecedented rush for tickets – especially for Row D in the stalls, where Crystal had been sitting – and although he still couldn’t bring himself to say anything nice about the play, he said that the rest of the cast were up for it, even Alec Forrester, and that A Shilling in the Meter might now be a huge theatrical success (instead of the failure it so obviously deserved to be). But it all depended on Penny. Would she agree to appear?

  Penny wasn’t sure. She had already been interviewed by Harry Jupiter that morning, and photographed for the press, which had been horrible. She felt raw and numb, and she felt angry with Jack, whom she irrationally held responsible for the whole thing. She wished he were alive just so that she could tell him how furious she was with him for being dead.

  But mostly she felt that she had let him down by allowing herself to have feelings, so quickly, for his old friend Bobby. It was irrational to think this way, but she couldn’t help it. If she had never met Bobby, Jack’s death would somehow be easier to bear.

  What she wanted right now was to run home to her parents in Wiltshire and sleep for a month. But what would Jack think of her if she ran away?

  ‘Can I think about it?’ she’d asked, but the manager said no, sorry, box-office staff were standing by, with cash drawers open in readiness.

  All that mattered was whether Jack would have wanted it. Would Jack have wanted the show to go on and be a success, even if it was a success for the wrong reasons? Penny knew that the answer to this question was yes.

  And so she had consented, and the manager had sped back to the Theatre Royal, literally rubbing his hands. There would be a rehearsal at 2.30, he called back over his shoulder as he left the room. And she could change anything she liked in the script, by the way: now that the cat was away, the mice could play. Alec Forrester was already working on making his Man from the Gas Board hail from Finland.

  * * *

  To Twitten’s disappointment, there was no reply when he buzzed the communicating doorbell of Crystal’s service-flat in Great Russell Street later that morning.

  ‘Miss Sibert!’ he called up from the street. ‘It’s Constable Twitten from the Brighton Constabulary!’

  So he buzzed for the caretaker instead and was soon admitted to the rather wonderful (but curiously empty) flat, with its inspiring view of the blackened pillars of the British Museum’s portico. He was pretty pleased with himself for taking the initiative of coming up by train in this way. However, if truth be told, it was a rare day when Twitten didn’t feel pleased with himself.

  But where was Miss Sibert? He looked round quickly. It wasn’t a large flat: just one big room with floor-to-ceiling bookcases and two old desks, and a bedroom/dressing room to the side, with tiny bathroom beyond. No kitchen, of course, because with this sort of flat the meals were brought in. Briefly, he pictured Crystal and Miss Sibert seated at their respective desks, working on the great memoir. He also tried to picture them making their dangerous experiments with regression, down on the carpet on all fours, ‘howling like wolves’. And now Crystal was dead, and Miss Sibert wasn’t here (she’d left with two men, the caretaker
said – which sounded ominous), and there was nothing here to help him with this Aldersgate Stick-up theory, after all. Just one thing was clear: someone really didn’t want to be exposed for their part in that robbery of the Albion Bank all those years ago.

  But why? As Twitten closed the door firmly against the rather nosy caretaker (who had tried to come in), he realised he was asking himself this question for the first time. What could the significance of the Aldersgate Stick-up possibly be? True, it had been a successful bank raid, but despite shots being fired, no one had been injured or killed. The public had not clamoured for justice. Inspector Steine had not been vilified – or even much criticised – for failing to solve it. In police circles, the job was always assumed to be the work of Terence Chambers. The present cover-up was so ruthless and well organised that it implied a large criminal network – which again pointed to Chambers himself.

  But why would such a big cheese work so hard to keep secret the details of this relatively peaceful historic bank robbery? Chambers had allegedly done far worse things in his life than the Aldersgate Stick-up: he’d got away with torturing his rivals by electrocution and dismemberment; he’d once done something unspeakable to a pet proboscis monkey; and he was known to carve up the faces of his own gang members if they forgot his mother’s birthday. A routine successful bank raid from seven years ago was hardly the thing to stop Terence Chambers from getting to sleep at night.

  Twitten decided he would ponder this matter properly later – assuming he made it alive out of Bloomsbury. But he wasn’t leaving his survival entirely to chance. On the way to the flat, he had cleverly purchased two brown canvas holdalls from a shop on Shaftesbury Avenue. Into one of these bags he now stuffed every scrap of paper from Crystal’s desk, including telephone pads, typed theatre reviews and bulging notebooks. Then he tackled what was clearly Miss Sibert’s desk (it had a silk scarf tragically draped over the back of the button-backed swivel chair).

  Sadly, there was no trace of the autobiographical manuscript in any of the drawers; no trace of the carbon copy this secretary had so efficiently made. But Twitten refused to be downhearted: he just took everything remaining, including her battered volumes of Sigmund Freud’s works in German, and (an inspiration) all the used carbon paper in her desk.

  It was while he was doing this that he glanced out of the window and saw that amid the throng of excited antiquity enthusiasts heading towards the gates of the British Museum, two men in raincoats and hats across the street were standing worryingly still, smoking cigarettes and taking turns to glance up at the building.

  He darted back out of sight and then carefully looked again. They might be police, in which case he was probably safe (although who knew how far the conspiracy reached?); on the other hand, they might be villains planning to come in; or villains waiting for him to come out.

  Again, he was not unprepared for this eventuality. Opening the other bag, he quickly put his helmet in it, and began to undress. The main thing was not to be wearing the boots, of course – any criminal could spot a policeman’s footwear a mile off. Heavy as they were, he placed his boots in the second bag along with his uniform. In the tiny dressing room, Crystal’s closets contained more than enough outfits for him to choose from, but for obvious reasons, putting them on was not going to be easy. Just opening the closet had brought on another attack of breathlessness. But after some diligent searching, accompanied by deep breathing, Twitten found items that appeared to have just come back from the laundry, on which the taint was less vile. He also found some shoes that were only a tad too small, and finally a hat and coat.

  The whole outfit, when complete, made him look like an unkempt travelling salesman – which was perfect, since he would be carrying the two bags. Dressing with speed, he tried not to admit he was frightened (and a bit nauseated), but he noticed, when he finally closed up the bags, that his hands were shaking.

  Looking again out of the window, he was at first alarmed: the men had gone! Were they already on their way up the stairs? But then he saw they had moved to a telephone box on the corner of Montague Place. This was his chance. He took one last glance round Crystal’s study, and opened the door.

  ‘Who are you?’ said the caretaker, who’d been waiting outside. Twitten jumped in the air.

  ‘Here, what are you wearing? What’s going on?’

  Twitten grasped the man’s arm. ‘Don’t let anyone else in,’ he instructed. ‘Once I’m out of the building, you must call the police and ask for protection.’

  ‘I thought you were the police.’

  ‘I am,’ said Twitten firmly. ‘But I’m just one man and I can’t do everything.’

  * * *

  Back at the Palace Pier, Inspector Steine was feeling a bit dazed. Holidaymakers pushed past him to board the ghost train; someone dropped an ice cream cone on his foot; a child stumbled into him and wiped candyfloss on the knee of his trousers. All this he failed to notice. A piercing hoot meant the train was trundling off again. At this baleful sound, he actually placed his hands over his ears.

  ‘You all right, dear?’ said a friendly voice (muffled). ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost!’

  He took his hands away again, and focused on the person speaking; he was surprised to see it was Mrs Groynes. Or was it? She looked different without the usual comforting ensemble of overall, turban, thick stockings, tin of Vim and plate of fancy biscuits. Regrettably, she looked less motherly.

  ‘Mrs Groynes? Oh my God. Am I… dead?’

  ‘I don’t think so, dear,’ she laughed. But then she saw how stricken he looked. ‘Sorry, Inspector. Ghost train too much for you, was it?’

  He smiled weakly. ‘You could say that.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, giving him an encouraging pat on the elbow, ‘all this standing around jawing won’t call a halt to the unfortunate myxomatosis epidemic, now, will it? Forget that silly old ghost train. I was looking for Mr Jupiter. Is he here?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘That Mr Jupiter from the newspaper, dear. Little bloke shaped like a ball. Is he here? They sent me out to look for him. He’s wanted by his office in London and there wasn’t anyone else to come: the sergeant’s out getting statements and that new young constable of yours seems to have disappeared off the face of the Earth!’

  Steine chewed his lip. ‘I think there’s been an accident,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean? What sort of accident? To the young constable? Oh, I do hope not.’

  ‘No. To Mr Jupiter. Quite a serious sort of accident.’

  Mrs Groynes laughed and looked round. ‘I’m sure there hasn’t, dear. You’re imagining things. Now, where is he?’

  But then, from the beach came shrieks – not the general happy shrieks that one tends to hear every day at a popular British seaside resort; the sort that come when freezing cold water slaps suddenly against sun-warmed human flesh in the sensitive top-of-the-inside-leg area; no, these were more the incredulous and horrified shrieks of people on a pebbly beach noticing a fully dressed, unconscious male body with a head injury bobbing on the waves in the shadow of a famous south-coast recreational pier.

  Mrs Groynes ran to the railings and looked down. Steine followed.

  ‘There’s someone down there,’ she reported. ‘Oh, my good gawd, is it Mr Jupiter?’ She looked at Steine, confused. ‘Did he fall in?’

  Steine said nothing. He still wasn’t entirely sure what had occurred on the ghost train. He remembered horrible laughter, and the suffocating pressure of hands round his throat. All he knew was that he had acted in self-defence.

  ‘People are swimming out to reach him, dear,’ said Mrs Groynes. ‘Look, dear. Wading, then swimming. There’s a lot of splashing, anyway. But is it Mr Jupiter, dear? I hardly met him. Look, dear. Is it him? He does float well, I’ll give him that.’

  But Steine did not look. While public-spirited members of the public struck out to reach the poor man in the water below, and then started to pull his body back to shore
– and while St John’s Ambulance men scuttled down the shingle with a stretcher – Steine determinedly looked the other way. What if Harry Jupiter turned out to be dead? This was an intolerable situation. None of this was his fault! He had done nothing. But should he give himself up? Should he at least come clean to Mrs Groynes?

  ‘What happened?’ she said.

  Steine shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. I don’t know.’

  ‘Did he jump?’

  ‘No. No, he didn’t jump.’

  ‘Did he fall?’

  Steine hesitated. Technically speaking, Jupiter had definitely fallen. Otherwise he wouldn’t be in the water.

  ‘Did you push him, dear?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You pushed him!’

  ‘I said, I don’t know. We were on that ghost train thing, and it was dark and noisy, and he suddenly attacked me. And then – he was gone.’

  By now the body had reached the shore and was being lifted onto the stretcher on the beach.

  ‘Look, there’s an ambulance coming,’ Mrs Groynes reported. ‘It’s nearly over, dear. What you need is a nice cup of tea.’

  She wasn’t wrong there. Inspector Steine had never wanted a nice cup of tea more in his life. What if the man was dead?

  ‘They’ve got him safe,’ she said. ‘Someone’s giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation!’

  And then she let out a little scream – which was echoed in a collective cry of alarm from the people on the beach.

  ‘What happened?’ said Steine, finally forcing himself to look landward towards the centre of the commotion, where, on the stretcher, the distant figure of Harry Jupiter was suddenly sitting up, pale as a ghost, and pointing an accusing finger in the direction of the pier.

  * * *

  Penny Cavendish had just finished her unpacking when there was a knock on the door (which was still open) and Sergeant Brunswick entered with his notebook, asking if she could answer some questions. He had come via interviewing Mr Stephenson – the nosy neighbour up in Clifton Hill – who had been able to provide not only the time of the fracas in Mrs Thorpe’s house, but a description of a figure who had fled the scene.