by Lynne Truss
Alone with Sergeant Brunswick at last, after dropping the Brighton Belles at their lodgings near the Clock Tower, Constable Twitten withdrew the typewritten sheet from his tunic pocket and unfolded it.
‘Sir,’ he said, ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I have some very urgent questions for you.’ He scanned the page. ‘Just to prepare you, they are mostly historical, criminological or topographical. But I think you will know the answers, so don’t feel anxious – this isn’t a test.’
Brunswick sighed. ‘Well, so long as they’re not about what I would call a flaming mirror, son, I expect I’ll manage.’
Brunswick had hoped to talk about the relative charms of Adelaide and Phyllis. Personally, he had been attracted to them both, but he had acted with restraint and not asked either for a date – years of experience on the force having taught him the extraordinary, counter-intuitive fact that women are much less receptive to romantic advances when they’ve just been traumatised by (say) the sight of a dead body soaked in its own blood.
It had taken Brunswick quite a while to learn this lesson, by the way, but in the end he’d been obliged to accept the evidence of his own experience. Over the years, he had made many enthusiastic early moves on attractive women who had a) just lost all their possessions in a robbery, or b) just found their dead father electrocuted in the bath, or c) just been rescued from a house on fire. In each case, he had been soundly (though puzzlingly) rebuffed. What he had slowly come to accept was that, at times like these, women are grateful if you don’t signal your keen sexual interest, but show selfless sympathy instead. Holding back might seem risky, but apparently it did make them think better of you as a person, and therefore increased your chances in the long run.
Thus, on the doorstep to the Brighton Belle lodgings, Brunswick had merely tipped his hat and said something about wishing it could have been under more pleasant circumstances – while Twitten tugged his sleeve, saying, ‘Sir, sir. We did it, sir. We got them home. Now can I talk to you? Please, sir?’
It was just a couple of hours since Twitten had overheard the conversation between young Deirdre and her ill-fated boyfriend in the wax museum, but he felt he’d wasted precious time. As they walked downhill through the town towards the sea, it was a huge relief to be getting his investigation finally under way.
‘The thing is, sir, the boy who died was planning to run away with a girl called Deirdre who came through a secret door in the wall from the building behind – which is what, sir? What’s the building adjoining the wax museum at the back?’
Brunswick stopped walking and screwed up his face, trying to picture the layout.
‘Well, the wax museum is in Russell Place, so the next one along is Grenville Street. So that would probably be the Black Cat, son.’
‘The Black Cat? What’s that? A casino?’
‘Night club. I know the singer there a little bit.’ Something occurred to Brunswick. ‘Here, that was a stroke of luck about Wall-Eye Joe trying to con the girls! I can’t wait to see the look on Mrs Groynes’s face!’
But Twitten wasn’t interested in Wall-Eye Joe right now. He and the sergeant were on a wide street corner with no one to overhear them – not a bad place to stand and talk. The best thing was, there was no Mrs Groynes lurking behind, pretending to be absorbed in polishing a doorknob. He needed to press on.
‘So who owns the Black Cat night club, sir?’
‘Family called Benson.’
‘Benson,’ repeated Twitten. The name was new to him. ‘So is there a Deirdre Benson?’
‘Yes, I think there is. You think that was the girl you heard talking, then?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘She’s about sixteen years old, I think – and seems younger than that, apparently. She might be a bit daft. The singer talks about her sometimes; he’s really soft on her. He’s often in the Battle of Trafalgar at lunchtime, knocking back a few pints of Watney’s before they call last orders.’
Twitten consulted his list. ‘Is the singer’s first name Dickie, by any chance, sir?’
Brunswick narrowed his eyes and huffed. Why did this always happen where Twitten was concerned? Just a few seconds ago, Brunswick had been the one airing his superior knowledge. In no time at all, Twitten had pulled that rug from under him.
Brunswick played for time. ‘Pardon?’ he said.
‘Sorry, sir. I said, is this alcoholic singer of yours called Dickie, sir?’
‘Yes, he is,’ sighed Brunswick. ‘Dickie George, well done.’
‘Excellent,’ said Twitten, making a note. ‘Oh, don’t look so glum, sir! Now we’re getting somewhere.’
Brunswick put his hands in his pockets. He had started wondering how long the list was. He was also beginning to wish he’d had the nerve to ask Adelaide Vine for a date. Thinking about it, finding a stranger’s dead body in a deck-chair was surely nothing like as upsetting as the electrocuted-parent-in-the-bath thing. It would be tragic to find out he’d misjudged the situation.
‘Is there much more of this, Twitten? We ought to get back to the station.’
‘Just a few more. Do the following names mean anything to you, sir: Hoagland, or Blackmore?’
‘No.’
Twitten shook his head, disappointed.
‘Last one now, sir.’
‘Oh, good.’
‘But it’s quite a big one. Does Deirdre Benson have two big brothers and a scary mother, sir, who are basically thugs who literally get away with murder?’
Brunswick was outraged. ‘What?’
Twitten bit his lip. What had he said? Why was the sergeant so incensed?
‘The Bensons get away with murder, did you say?’
‘I did, yes. But – oh, I see.’ Perhaps he should have employed a less offensive form of words. He hadn’t meant to imply police incompetence, but evidently that was exactly what he’d done. ‘I’m so sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to suggest—’
‘Look, we’ve never had anything on the Bensons, not all the time they’ve had that place. I personally have never even met them! What on earth makes you say they get away with murder?’
Twitten grimaced, and apologetically held up the list. Brunswick groaned. It was clear he was about to hear some big news.
‘Oh, what?’
Twitten cleared his throat. ‘What if I told you, sir, that the torso in the suitcase famously found at Brighton Railway Station was that of Deirdre’s uncle Kenneth?’
‘The torso in the suitcase? That was ages ago!’ objected Brunswick – and then immediately regretted such a pathetic response. ‘I mean to say, what do you know about that flaming torso in that flaming suitcase?’
‘Well, more than everyone else, apparently, sir, since I know whose it was.’
This was the thing about Twitten, of course. However angry you were with him, he didn’t back down. The strength of your annoyance was lost on him. You asked him, ‘What do you know about this?’ and instead of apologising, he answered the question.
‘All right, how do you know that?’
‘The girl told the boy this morning, sir. That’s what caught my attention. She said Peter should be careful today because her family were capable of anything – she said, “Don’t forget what they did to Uncle Ken.” Then she carried on, “The police only found one bit of him in that suitcase at the station. No one’s ever found his head.” So they did get away with murder at least once, sir. And now they might be doing it again.’
Twitten folded his list and put it back in his tunic pocket while Brunswick took some steadying breaths. Half of him wanted to demand to know why Twitten hadn’t come out with this hugely important ‘Uncle Ken’ information earlier; half of him, however, was rapidly reviewing what they had known at the time about the torso and the suitcase, and praying that Clever Clogs Twitten would never hear about the initials ‘KB’ embossed in the leather. How had he not put two and two together at the time? Kenneth Benson had been quite a famous man in musical theatre, and there had been a national man
hunt for him just around the time the suitcase had turned up. His disappearance had been on the front page of the Police Gazette every day for two weeks!
‘Something wrong, sir?’ asked Twitten.
Brunswick shook his head. He felt a bit sick.
‘Look, Twitten,’ he said, at last. ‘That’s good work.’
‘Thank you, sir. So you think the body in the suitcase was this mysterious Uncle Ken?’
Brunswick made an effort to rise above his own feelings. ‘As it happens, yes.’
Twitten beamed. He’d been expecting more of a battle to be believed.
‘But listen,’ said Brunswick, ‘we can’t just barge in and arrest them on the basis of something you overheard, son; we need evidence.’
‘I know, sir. That’s the law, sir. But it did occur to me just now, when you said you’d never met any of the Benson family: might that not be useful to us? Could this be the opportunity you’ve been waiting for to go undercover amongst villains in Brighton who don’t know who you are?’
But before Brunswick could consider this presumptuous suggestion, they both noticed that on the corner of the next street, the light was flashing on top of the police box – a signal that (as Brunswick later reported) caused them both to proceed in a southerly direction.
‘They’ve identified the boy as Peter Dupont, son,’ said Brunswick, re-emerging from the box and locking the door. He looked excited.
‘But I told the inspector that half an hour ago! I told you both!’
‘All right, all right, clever clogs. He worked at the Town Hall, in the Borough Engineer’s department. We have to get there at once. Apparently he committed a robbery, too!’
Back at the police station, Mrs Groynes was making a fresh pot of tea. Her meeting with Ventriloquist Vince and Diamond Tony had been most satisfactory. Given the efficiency of the bush telegraph operating within Brighton, within the hour a veritable army of villains would be on the lookout for an infamous con man of middle age with eyes that looked in different directions.
What was her plan? Well, it wasn’t yet complete. But she owed it to her darling Hoagy to make this plan swingeing, permanent and sweetly perfect. This had been part of the reason for including Diamond Tony in the meeting at Luigi’s: to impress on him that once she had located Wall-Eye Joe, she didn’t just want him caught and killed in the usual way. Tony was a simple soul whose answer to everything (bless him) was a swift tug on a garrotte, a pair of concrete boots and a midnight splash off the end of the West Pier. As long as sea levels never drastically dropped (to reveal grisly stalagmites of Mrs Groynes’s enemies in skeleton-and-concrete form sticking up from the waves), Diamond Tony was a neat and permanent solution to every problem. But this time, it was vital that he restrain himself.
‘We’re going to con him, Tony, do you see? If I get it right he won’t suspect a bleeding thing. Only at the final moment when the scales fall from his eyes – when he realises how brilliantly he’s been played – that’s when you can step in and do him. This is revenge, not business. Don’t you forget that for an instant.’
It was with such happy thoughts that she now innocently dusted the picture rail around the office, and whistled a tune from Snow White.
Back at the Black Cat, Deirdre was sitting at her dressing table, writing a letter to Peter. Her bedroom was a tiny, dark space in the back corner of the building. Despite facing south, her window got no sun: the entire view was of the back of Colchester House, just a few feet away. Interestingly, in the past few days the shutters there had been opened and for the first time she’d been able to see directly inside. Admittedly, all she could see was a fragment of staircase, but it was still like something from a fairy tale, after all these years.
Yesterday, she had actually seen a person going upstairs, and another person coming down. Such excitement: the outside world visible from her room! (The narrow alleyway that ran beneath her window didn’t count: Deirdre had trained herself not to look down on it, for fear of seeing people tightly lodged there, engaged in unspeakable acts.)
Had everything gone to plan, of course, she would have been saying goodbye to this view forever tonight. At eight-forty-five, Dickie was to have opened the side door for her; fifteen minutes later she would have been holding hands with Peter on the bus, with her heart beating like wings in her chest. But now it was not to be.
Dear Peter,
Please forgive me for letting you down. I feel so bad. Mummy found out! She said they won’t harm you, they will let you go away on the bus, but that I must stay here and not be silly, and she said that I hardly knew you anyway, which was true but I didn’t like hearing her say it, and she doesn’t know about the letters you wrote to me, which are so full of love, and I will treasure my whole life. I’ve still never played the record you made for me in the little booth on the Palace Pier that time, which was the happiest day of my life. I watched you through the glass walls while you were speaking, and I saw the look in your eyes, and I know it will make me cry and cry when I do get the chance to play it.
Under her bed, Deirdre had hidden a Lilley & Skinner shoebox with all her mementos of Peter inside. It included – along with the record – a paper bag with a couple of humbugs stuck to it, to commemorate their first sight of each other, just a month ago, outside a popular rock shop on the seafront, where twice a day a man in a white confectioner’s coat demonstrated the strenuous processes of sweet manufacture to enraptured crowds. Deirdre had been out on an errand for her mother, and was expected home. Had she not stopped to watch Henry ‘Humbugs’ Hastings in the window of the shop, hard at his astonishing work twisting and rolling a striped bolster of warm molten sugar, she might not have found herself shoulder-to-shoulder with the boy from the Sewerage and Waterworks department who was there (apparently) to investigate a complaint about the drains.
What caught his attention was Deirdre’s exceptional pallor. What caught hers was the same.
I love you, Peter. I know you think it’s silly that I always have a song in my head, but if you want to think about me, or think about the happy couple we might have been, listen to ‘It Had to Be You’. I keep thinking of the line, over and over – it does make me feel glad, even being sad, thinking of you.
I don’t know how she found out. I’m sure Dickie wouldn’t have said anything. He’s always been my friend. The thing about Mummy is that people always want to be on her good side for obvious reasons, so it could have been anyone here tittle-tattling, one of the girls in the show perhaps, or someone behind the bar. Even the Humbug Man!
It was true that candidates for ‘Deirdre Confidant’ were few and far between at the Black Cat. The bar staff were lively people, but they reported directly to Frank and Bruce, which was as much as to say that they lived in fear; most of them Deirdre knew only by sight. The hat-check lady (Mimi) was a constant presence, but was not a friend. Obsessed with her own appearance, in particular her drawn-on eyebrows, she spent all her leisure moments checking their symmetry in a pocket mirror. The showgirls – a shifting population of bottle-blonde models and dancers, all much older than Deirdre, and inhabiting a different universe – concentrated entirely on keeping their hair in place, tweezing their moles in the communal dressing-room mirror and using their basilisk qualities onstage to bewitch/entrap any eligible male member of the audience.
This left only the band, who were (mostly) disgusting deadbeats with Brylcreemed hair and BO; she wouldn’t have touched any of them with a barge pole. No wonder she’d chosen Dickie to help her. He was by far the most human person she knew, and she was aware he was a little bit in love with her. Tommy (the resident drummer) had been friendly to Deirdre a couple of times, but she found him creepy. Nothing about Tommy Drumsticks – as he insisted on being called – rang true, somehow. Even his gold tooth looked fake. He puzzled her. He asked odd questions about things that were none of his business. While everyone else seemed hardly to notice what was going on at the Black Cat, Tommy Drumsticks gave the impression of kno
wing much more than he ought to.
But I’m sorry if it’s my fault and I hope you get away on the bus as planned, and live in Earl’s Court and everything, and BLOW THE LID like you said you would, and I hope you will think kindly of me in later life and forgive me. You are a lovely person, Peter, with a good heart and a conscience. But I fear for you because of the weediness – you are not physically very strong. I wonder if your reporter friend tipped Mummy off? They are always working both sides, those people, like the police.
The reporter in question was young crime correspondent Ben Oliver, of the local Argus, who had made his name covering the shooting of critic A. S. Crystal at the Theatre Royal a month or so ago. Deirdre was wrong to point the finger at him. While seasoned crime reporters with famous bylines did indeed ingratiate themselves with criminals in order to get stories (which paradoxically enhanced their standing with their readers), Oliver was too young and honourable to have started compromising his integrity in this way.
Peter, I promised myself I wouldn’t cry when I wrote this, but the thought of carrying on here without the hope of being with you – I’m not sure I can bear
But she didn’t complete the sentence, because at this moment there was a knock at the door. Deirdre looked up, her eyes swimming with tears. She had never felt more wretched in her life.
‘It’s me, Deedee,’ said Ma Benson, entering without waiting for an answer. ‘Are you all right? What’s that you’re writing? Show me.’
Deirdre put the letter behind her back.
‘It’s just my letter to Peter. You said I could write one. You promised. And you said you wouldn’t hurt him.’
Ma Benson frowned, puffed on her pipe and tried to remember. Had she really said that? It was sometimes difficult to keep track of all the lies she told.
‘Of course, yes. Your letter to Peter. He’s leaving without you, that’s it. On the bus tonight. And we’re not going to lay a finger on him. Have you finished?’