by Lynne Truss
‘But how did you know the police wouldn’t arrive and stop it? Wasn’t it a spur-of-the-moment decision by the inspector to take all the men for an ice cream?’
‘No, dear. It wasn’t. But I’ll always be perfectly happy for him to claim that it was.’
Now, it is one thing to work out logically – lying on the floor of a bank manager’s office with your eyes closed – that a harmless-looking charlady of your acquaintance is actually a callous master-criminal; it is quite another to have her admit to everything face-to-face in a dark-panelled room with a loudly ticking clock and a loaded gun in the equation. Especially when it occurs to you that you are unarmed, your feet are agony, you stink to high heaven of someone else’s body odour, and that no one – aside from the person who might murder you – has the faintest clue where you are.
‘But you’re wrong about me and Chambers. I mean, you’re right that we used to be close. You’re right he was planning a robbery on the seventeenth. But I’m not worried he’ll connect me to the Stick-up, dear. Chambers already knows perfectly well it was me.’
‘He does?’ Twitten exclaimed in disappointment. ‘Oh, flip.’
‘Yes, sorry, dear. He’s always known. I left him in 1950 after eight years together as a team; he knew I was leaving; he knew I did the Stick-up; he knows I set up the Middle Street Massacre and made those idiots shoot one another. And if he ever wants to find me, he knows exactly where I am.’
Twitten was naturally upset that his excellent theory contained such flaws, but it was impossible to deny that his main emotion here was excitement. What Mrs Groynes was confessing was amazing.
‘Well, I have to say, Mrs Groynes, you are an absolutely enormous villain.’
‘Thank you, dear.’
‘I can’t believe how enormous you are.’
‘You’ll get used to it.’
‘And no one has ever suspected?’
‘That’s right. I’m invisible, dear.’
‘How many people work for you?’
‘That’s a good question. I’d say two hundred, give or take.’
‘Well, you’re a bally genius!’
This wasn’t quite the way the conversation ought to be going, Twitten realised. He ought to be attempting to arrest Mrs Groynes, or at least denouncing her.
‘The clinching thing for me,’ he went on (because he couldn’t stop himself), ‘was the way Crystal reacted to the words in the play, when they talk about Ruby being a bus conductress, saying Any more for any more?’
‘He clocked it then, didn’t he, dear?’
‘Yes! That’s when he got really agitated and started writing something down. He’d been desperately trying to remember an incident that had jogged his memory earlier in the day, you see, and he knew it had happened between getting off the train and meeting Inspector Steine at the ice cream parlour. At first I thought it might have been a thought triggered by the posters outside the station. I wasted a lot of time on that.’
‘You wondered if it might have been the bunnies on Barrow-boy Cecil’s tray.’
‘Yes. I did.’ He stopped. ‘Barrow-boy Cecil? Is that his name?’
‘It is, dear. He’s a good boy, Cecil.’
‘Oh. But anyway, then I thought again about where else he’d been, and I remembered that, of course, he came to the police station first, and was “redirected by a charlady”. And then you let slip to me that you’d seen him, when you said the words, You’d never guess, to look at him. He recognised your voice, Mrs Groynes, didn’t he?’
‘Yes, dear. And I saw it in his face. A flicker. I’d heard that Chambers had been working on him to remember the day of the Stick-up. Arnott here had telephoned me about the woman with the accent turning up with Crystal at the bank and yelling at him to “bring it back”. But I wasn’t too worried. I reckoned if all that failed, Chambers would have to give up on it.
‘And then there he was, A. S. Crystal, in my very own police station, asking me where Inspector Steine was! I’d never expected to see that man again in my life. I said as little as I could, of course, but I saw that something clicked. So that’s why I bought the ticket for the seat behind you in the Theatre Royal – the bloke made me give him fifteen quid, cheeky sod – and I listened to everything you said, the pair of you. And then, when that line came up – well, it was the very words I’d said on the day of the Stick-up, dear, and that’s when he almost jumped to his feet, wasn’t it?’
‘It was.’
‘So I had no choice. Luckily for me, people were leaving at such a rate, I could just get in among them and fire. Then I dropped the gun and joined the stampede for the exit. I had quite a bit of blood on me, but I’d made sure to wear black – and then I gave you a cuddle as soon as I could, dear, to explain away any marks on my face and whatnot.’
She produced a note from her pocket. It was Crystal’s bloodstained list. Twitten gasped at her boldness in showing it to him. ‘What do you think he was trying to write? The last word, there?’
Twitten swallowed. The last shred of doubt was now gone. If she was holding this list, she had engineered everything. If she was showing him the list, she didn’t care what he knew.
He looked at the three letters. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘he was going to write “daily”, as in charwoman.’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Daily. You’re very good at this, you know.’
‘Oh. Thank you.’
They both drank their tea, and Twitten took another biscuit. He looked at the clock: it was nearly 4 p.m. ‘I am so glad we’ve had this conversation,’ he said, carefully.
‘Me too, dear. Clears the air.’
‘I’ve just realised that the word “massacre” in the name Middle Street Massacre wasn’t quite the misnomer I always thought it was. I’d been unhappy with it before.’
‘No, it was perfectly well named, in fact. It was literally a massacre, really, you see.’
Twitten felt he had a million questions to ask, but at the same time had run out of things to say. Perhaps it was because of the gun, and the fact that he had uncovered the identity of an absolutely enormous female villain with two hundred people working for her, one of whom poor deluded Sergeant Brunswick actually paid for information.
‘Have you decided yet, by the way? About killing me?’
She made a ‘tsk’ noise. ‘Not yet.’
‘The thing is, you see, I am a policeman. And you are a cunning criminal. And while I am incredibly proud to have worked everything out, obviously that’s not enough for me. It’s now my duty to take you back to Brighton and turn you in.’
He opened the bag with this uniform in. ‘I’ve got some handcuffs in here, I think.’
‘Ha!’ she said. ‘I’d like to see you try.’
‘Look, you did kill a man in cold blood, Mrs Groynes! I can’t let you get away with that, can I?’
‘And I say, ha. I thought you understood, dear.’
‘Understood what?’
‘Well, for one thing, that I can tell you all this because no one will believe you.’
‘But it’s the truth, Mrs G. I’ll make them believe me.’
Mrs Groynes shook her head. ‘Look, dear, all this talk of the charlady involved in stick-ups and massacres? They’ll just think you’ve gone stark staring mad. Where’s your evidence for any of it?’
‘Well –’
‘The inspector already dislikes you for being too clever; even the sergeant’s in two minds. You’ve got nothing on me, dear. And you cannot underestimate how much those two love me and trust me and think nothing of the simple cockney woman who makes the tea and remembers to make them pink blancmange on a Friday.’
‘Yes, but you can’t –’
‘They think that anything said by a woman can be classed as wittering.’
‘Yes, but you just can’t –’
‘Now, listen, dear. I want to prevent you saying “But you can’t get away with this”, because it will make you sound very silly.’
‘But you can’t get away with this!’
‘I’ve been getting away with it for seven years!’ Her voice was raised. ‘You said it yourself. They’re idiots! I’ve removed evidence from their very hands! I talked them into having an ice cream instead of stopping a shoot-out. It’s incredibly easy. All I have to do is give them a plate of biscuits and they will discuss anything right in front of me. How do you think Fat Victor got caught in Littlehampton? I told them where he was. They will never suspect me because I’m a woman, dear. And because, on top of that, I’m working class. The inspector once said to someone on the phone, “Yes, I am completely alone”, and I was standing right next to his desk with my feather duster. You can’t beat me, dear. You just can’t.’
Twitten attempted an expression of defiance. It failed.
‘Now, as it happens, dear, I like you.’
‘Do you?’
‘I do. And I’ve got an idea that might save you. In fact it might give us all a solution. Listen to this. It’s clever. This is what I think happened to Mr Crystal. I think he was killed by that playwright, Jack Braithwaite.’
‘What? But he wasn’t. You killed him, Mrs Groynes!’
This annoyed her. She picked up the gun and stood up. ‘I said, Listen, Mister Smelly, I’m doing you a bleeding favour! And the timing works out, just. Braithwaite could have done it, you see.’
‘But he didn’t!’ Twitten squeaked, unable to stop himself.
‘For crying out loud, dear! Look, Braithwaite had a motive, didn’t he? You remember that actress saying: Jack, you didn’t?’
‘Yes, but it wasn’t a very strong motive – just something about a play he’d been in getting a bad review.’
‘Fair enough, but something else has come to light. Something that might help you change your mind. Did you know that an old friend of Braithwaite’s killed himself yesterday in a fridge at Luigi’s?’
Twitten recoiled. ‘No. What? In a fridge? Oh, please put the gun down, Mrs Groynes. Please. I’m finding it very hard to concentrate, and it’s also making the smell much, much worse!’
But Mrs Groynes was enjoying waving the gun around.
‘This man in the fridge was the man who wrote the play that Jack Braithwaite appeared in, and that your Mr Crystal destroyed with one of his nasty reviews. Seeing Crystal again tipped this bloke over the edge of despair and he took his own life. Now, what I think happened is this: Braithwaite hears about his friend’s sad, cold death, and is furious. He also has a history of violence, did you know that?’
‘No.’
‘Well, he does.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I just do. So he turns up at the theatre and shoots Crystal –’
‘Oh, this is preposterous.’
‘Then, having killed Crystal, he rushes home to his digs,’ said Mrs Groynes, raising her voice in triumph, ‘and in a frenzy of remorse, cuts his own throat with that regimental sword!’
Twitten stared at her. ‘What?’
‘It can be done, dear, I checked.’
‘It can be done?’
‘I mean, in the time. I’m not saying it’s psychologically feasible, dear, I’m just saying it can be done in the time. He could have done it. Technically.’
‘But no one would ever believe that!’
‘That’s what happened, though. Trust me. And think how neat it is. If Braithwaite did it all – well, sadly, he’s dead, he’s killed himself; so there’s no need for further enquiries. And I have to say, given the choice between your explanation of what happened to Mr Crystal – involving London gangs, long-ago bank robberies and Freudian memory retrieval, not to mention the police having to admit to being outwitted for years by a mere woman – and my explanation – putting everything down to Braithwaite who won’t even need to go to trial – I think we know which solution the inspector would prefer, don’t we?’
‘But your explanation is beyond preposterous, Mrs Groynes.’
‘I admit it. But it’s no more preposterous than that the station charlady is a master criminal, dear. And much less paperwork, do you see?’
Twitten understood what she was doing by proposing this bizarre alternative solution. She was saving herself but also offering to save him as well. If he was prepared to go along with it, it was a lifeline.
She looked at him expectantly. ‘What do you say, dear?’
By way of helping him decide, she performed a quick comic mime of a person leaning over backwards, sawing at their own throat with a sword, while rolling their eyes with their tongue hanging out. It wasn’t funny in the slightest.
‘Oh, come on, dear,’ she said. ‘Do yourself a favour.’
He closed his eyes. It was no use. ‘No, I’m sorry. I can’t go along with that. Not in a million years.’
She sat down, disappointed. ‘Well, I’m sorry too. I don’t mind admitting it was really nice to meet someone clever for a change.’
Twitten acknowledged the compliment. Perhaps it could be engraved on his headstone. There was just one last question he felt compelled to ask.
‘Since I might be dead soon, Mrs G, are you going to tell me your real reason for covering up the Stick-up?’
She froze. ‘No, I’m not.’
‘I’m guessing you’re protecting someone else from the wrath of Terence Chambers. But who?’
‘That’s enough!’
Mrs Groynes’ manner had changed significantly. The little window of opportunity she had offered him was closing very swiftly.
‘Lads!’ she shouted. Three large men entered the room. One of them was Barrow-boy Cecil. ‘See the bunny run?’ he said, with a wink.
Twitten quailed.
She gave him a last, steady look. ‘The Braithwaite Version, dear?’
Regretfully, Twitten shook his head, and sniffed. ‘Never,’ he said.
‘All right, boys,’ she said, turning away. ‘You know what you have to do.’
The Day After That
Nine
James Brunswick had not joined the police force for the fame it might bring him. Personal celebrity was something he neither sought nor valued. Quite the reverse, in fact: as a policeman he aspired to walk in the shadows and also – one day, if Inspector Steine would ever let him – infiltrate the underworld unsuspected.
The arrival of Harry Jupiter in Brighton, however, had knocked all Brunswick’s usual good sense aside. To be immortalised by the greatest ever crime reporter! Who cared if every villain in the town recognised him after that? (To be fair, they did already.) It would all be worth it to cast off – at last – the image of himself in the film of The Middle Street Massacre fuming in Luigi’s.
Brunswick had long been a fan of Harry Jupiter. His principled stand against the Clarion – when he stopped buying it out of a sincere (but misplaced) solidarity with the acting profession – had hurt him a lot more than it had hurt the Clarion, and it had been agony to maintain. How could he live without reading those juicy crime reports? Well, it turned out that he couldn’t. Among his colleagues, he had become famous for feverishly snatching up discarded copies of the paper in the police station canteen, or from deckchairs on the beach. He had been known to fish the Clarion out of bins. On one occasion, he had confiscated a copy from a blameless holidaymaker, saying, ‘I’ll take that, sir, thank you very much’, when the chap had merely been asking him the quickest route to the railway station.
Jupiter’s stories were always so detailed. They were also very reassuring. Over the years, Brunswick had consumed all of Jupiter’s best-selling books as well, including The Art and Craft of Murder; Just an Ordinary Saturday (in Scotland Yard!) and Don’t Just Give Them Your Money. Having exhausted Jupiter’s police-based oeuvre, Brunswick had even gone on to read the less commercial – and quite surprising – autobiographical works (Fishy on a Dishy being the first and best) concerning Jupiter’s highly impoverished infancy in Stockton-on-Tees.
Finding out this morning – two days after Twitten’s first day – that suc
h a great apologist for all upright servants of law and order was now lying in a Brighton hospital with total memory loss was therefore a profound sadness for Brunswick. It drained away all the excitement of the previous day.
‘Yes, he’s lost his memory, apparently,’ said funny old Mrs Groynes that morning, when Brunswick accepted his ritual wake-up cup of tea and sat down at his desk.
She was as cheerful as ever, of course. Thank goodness for the stability of Mrs Groynes. The day had dawned grey and overcast, with heavy rain pattering on the shop awnings, and little rivulets running down the gutters. Visitors in their guest houses would be looking out at the brooding clouds, feeling glum and cheated: the seafront shelters were comfortless places on a day like this. Most landladies insisted that their guests vacated the premises between eleven and four. Inside the police station, Mrs Groynes had switched on the garish overhead lights.
‘Shame, though,’ she carried on. ‘They’re saying it’s all gone, his memory, every bit. Seems when he fell off the pier he banged his head on the way down and now he doesn’t know his own name, bless him, let alone remember who might have stupidly pushed him off that ghost train, or whatever it was that happened, not that I know anything at all, dear, not having been there at the time, only afterwards, and then not really, only a bit. Now, that’s quite enough about Mr Jupiter, dear. Hark at me wittering. How’s your tea?’
Throughout this speech, she had been mopping the floor with sudsy water. But now she paused and laughed. ‘Yes, it’s a funny thing, life. A funny thing.’ She looked at him. ‘Oh, cheer up, love. You look like you’ve lost a half-crown and found a sixpence.’
Brunswick stirred his tea. He couldn’t smile. This news about Jupiter was appalling. What bad luck! Also, something in all Mrs Groynes’ wittering had registered in his mind, even though it had been said by her. ‘Did you say someone pushed him?’
‘Did I, dear? Well, you can’t go listening to the likes of me, now, can you? Handsome young detective like yourself. What on earth do I know?’ She laughed again. ‘But I’ll tell you this for nothing. If someone did push him, dear, I’m sure it was no one you know! No policeman would do it, would they? They’d have to be mad! Or stupid, of course. Especially a senior policeman. Oh, by the way, the inspector’s coming in a bit late this morning. Something about a haircut.’