by Lynne Truss
So she took off her gloves again, put her handbag on the floor and sighed. The least she could do was to offer him a few tips.
‘Tell me again, dear. You saw me in the what?’ she said. ‘When I was pouring my tea.’
‘Oh, I see. I saw you in the mirror.’
‘And you’re a lord, you say?’
‘Again, I don’t understand.’
‘All right, we’ll come at this another way.’ She reached out a hand in a businesslike manner. ‘Let me take a butcher’s at one of those gold bricks of yours, then. Go on.’
Melamine, confused but not unhappy at this unexpected turn of events, obediently plonked a brick on the table. ‘There’s a very interesting history attached to this gold, actually. It has passed through the hands of some notable figures.’
‘Yes, yes, I’ll bet it has, dear. Now show me another one.’
He obeyed, shrugging, and produced another brick.
‘It all started with the battleship Potemkin—’
‘And a third, come on.’
‘I don’t understand,’ he said, but he opened the bag for her to make her own selection. ‘As you can see, they’re all very much alike.’
‘Oh, yes, I bet they are,’ she muttered, helping herself.
But he had stopped paying attention to Mrs Groynes. A man in a hat had just entered the tea shop and was looking round. Mrs Groynes looked up briefly, but wasn’t interested. She had examined all three bricks and was perplexed. They had turned out to differ significantly from her expectations. She tapped Melamine on the shoulder.
‘This gold, dear,’ she said. ‘Where did you really get it?’
But he wasn’t listening.
‘Captain Hoagland! Over here!’ he called.
Captain Hoagland?
‘All of this gold is bleeding real, dear,’ Mrs Groynes said.
‘I know it is.’ Melamine was evidently puzzled by the remark. ‘Why wouldn’t it be real? I described it as gold; I’m not a liar.’
Mrs Groynes, struggling to make sense of what she had heard, was still not fully aware of the man approaching their two tables. Had someone just said Hoagland? The name served only to make her impatient. What new imposture was this?
‘Sir. Hello,’ said a familiar voice.
She stopped breathing. Unable to look up, she concentrated instead on the gold brick she was unconsciously cradling in her arm like a kitten. None of this could be happening. Captain Hoagland? Emotion swelled within her. Her Hoagy had been callously murdered. He was dead.
But Melamine was still talking to this man, as if it were perfectly normal to meet him in a tea shop.
‘I know it’s your day off, Hoagy old chap, but perhaps you’d care to join us. Allow me to introduce you, although we’ve only just met. This is—’
He made a face at Mrs Groynes, hoping to prompt her to say her name, hoping to make her acknowledge the person standing in front of her. Finally, she did.
She looked up, and – well, let’s face it, this is not a surprise but it’s still lovely – it was the same Hoagy. An older, more careworn version of him, but still her noble, handsome man.
He beamed with pleasure to see her.
‘Palmeira!’ he said, smiling.
‘Hoagy?’ she croaked.
‘What a truly agreeable surprise! But what’s wrong, my dear? Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘Because – oh, my good gawd!’ There was an ominous catch in her voice. ‘Oh! Oh!’
‘Ah. Should I ask someone for a serviette?’ said Melamine.
‘Palmeira?’ said Hoagland, gently.
‘I thought you were dead, my love!’
And suddenly she was sobbing – sobbing in public, her hands to her face.
‘Wah!’ she cried, repeatedly. ‘Oh! Oh! Oh! WAA–AA–AA–AAH! Hoagy, my Hoagy, WAAAAH!’
When she came to look back on the scene afterwards, Mrs Groynes was glad she had taken no backup with her, and that the shop was full of strangers. Her sobbing was lengthy, loud and uninhibited, and Melamine could only sit and watch as the gentlemanly Hoagland took the chair beside Mrs Groynes, offered her a hanky from his pocket and put his arm round her.
You would never have put these two people together, Melamine told Mrs Rogers afterwards; but here was the posh old soldier comforting this common (and somewhat offensive) little cockney woman, as if he really cared about what she was feeling.
‘My dear Palmeira, I’m so sorry,’ Hoagland was saying. ‘I’m so sorry. I had no idea. I promise, I had no idea.’
Eight
Deirdre had gone missing. She had left no note. Ma Benson was so angry when she found Deirdre’s bed hadn’t been slept in that she kicked a hole in the wall.
‘Frank! Bruce!’ she shouted.
It had been a tense time for the Bensons. A week ago, the singer Dickie George had disappeared without trace; Deirdre’s little boyfriend Peter Dupont had been murdered by a person or persons unknown; to cap it all, Terence Chambers had apparently sent a trumpet player called Kevin to breathe down their necks. It wasn’t hard to identify Kevin as an imposter, first, because his shoes and hair were wrong, and second, because he clearly enjoyed making music much more than was remotely normal for a world-weary, cheesed-off professional.
But the most difficult thing had been protecting Deirdre from the knowledge of Dupont’s death, after Bruce came back from the coach stop with the unexpected news.
‘This meddling copper at Pool Valley said Weedy Pete was dead, Ma. Someone only went and cut his throat.’
‘Good God,’ she said, in genuine bafflement, puffing on her pipe. ‘Who’d want to murder Weedy Pete?’
‘I know, Ma. It don’t make sense.’
The entire Benson clan (minus Deirdre) was nonplussed. For people who were usually in control of things, this state of nonplussedness was a novel experience, and they didn’t like it.
‘And then someone only nicked Deedee’s letter, and all,’ Bruce added.
‘Who?’ said Frank and Ma together.
‘Search me,’ said Bruce, unhelpfully.
At first, Ma Benson had been in favour of telling Deirdre what had happened, but the boys had dissuaded her. Bruce said that Deirdre was too delicate to cope with the shock. Not to mention, given her tiny circle of acquaintance, she might never find out – because who would tell her?
‘But the main thing is, Ma, if we tell her he’s dead, she’s going to think we did it, ain’t she?’ said Frank. ‘She’ll never believe we didn’t. Not after – you know, Kenneth.’
Ma Benson scowled. ‘Ruddy Kenneth!’ she said, bitterly.
‘That stupid fucker,’ agreed Frank. Normally his mother demanded an apology for this type of language, but this time she let it go. That Uncle Kenneth was indeed a stupid fucker was absolutely fair comment.
But that was a week ago, and now? Well, Deirdre had gone, and what turmoil! Where was she? How had she physically got out? And why? Had she perhaps found out about Peter Dupont’s death after all, and left in despair? Or, not knowing about his death, had she run away to join him? And there was a further, much more worrying possibility: what if she had been kidnapped (possibly on behalf of Terence Chambers)?
The only thing they knew was that Deirdre had taken nothing with her. Not even her little Lilley & Skinner shoebox of childish treasures, which was still beneath her bed.
‘We’ve got to think,’ Ma Benson said. ‘Bruce, go and ask at the wax museum if they’ve seen her. And make sure you speak to the woman in the stupid frock; she seems to be in charge. Don’t use Deirdre’s bloody trysting door: they might not know it’s there. Frank, you go and talk to Hastings at the rock shop. Deirdre was always coming back with free humbugs. He must have been soft on her. And then one of you ask at the bus stop.’
‘Are you gonna tell Terence?’
‘No. Not yet. So make sure that trumpet bloke don’t hear of it.’
‘But maybe Terence could help, Ma.’
‘No, B
ruce. No heavy mob, do you hear me?’ A chilling thought struck her. ‘Has anyone checked downstairs? She couldn’t have … ?’
Bruce nodded reassuringly. ‘It’s all fine, Ma. It’s safe. No one goes in and out but Dave. Deirdre’s never set foot down there.’
Frank put an arm round his mum. ‘Deirdre might be weak and all that, Ma, but she’s not stupid. She’ll be safe, I bet you. And if anyone’s harmed her, they’ll bleeding well wish they’d never been born.’
For Twitten, it had been a trying week since Dupont was murdered. He had interviewed everyone present at the scene: he’d even been up to London’s East End to coax a story out of the little boy Nigel, who had rewarded his journey by kicking him in the shins and running away; he had spoken to Dupont’s council colleagues; he’d been shown the very manhole cover by which the murdered man had made his clever underground escape from the Marlborough House council offices (but had not been allowed to touch it). The only people so far to elude him were the two Brighton Belles, Phyllis and Adelaide, who had both been allowed a week off work to recover. Whenever he called at their lodgings, they were out.
Although Deirdre ought to have been on his list of witnesses, he had held back from calling at the Black Cat to speak to her. This was a tad unprofessional of him, but he was torn: it was unlikely she could help him, and he was genuinely concerned about the unnecessary distress his questions might cause. And now that Brunswick was undercover, wasn’t that enough? But both these reasons were masking the real one: he was just reacting to Deirdre’s dreamy, faraway helplessness the way everyone else did, by feeling it was his job to protect her.
What an extraordinary effect this girl had. Everyone from the Bensons themselves, through Dickie George and all the boys in the band, through the Humbug Man, through Weedy Pete, through Constable Peregrine Twitten – somehow she put them all in touch with their inner Sir Galahad. Even as a baby, people had cooed into her pram, ‘Hello, baby, come home with me, I’ll look after you.’ Captain Hoagland had spotted her just once from across the back alley at Colchester House (she was sitting like Rapunzel at her window), and he had instantly thought, I ought to rescue that young lady.
So to sum up, Twitten had done his best with the information available, but as he described it to himself, it was like trying to build a sandcastle with three parts water to one part sand. With the discovery of Peter Dupont’s mysterious missing parcel at Brighton railway station’s Left Luggage office, however, the sand-to-water ratio was suddenly drastically improved. Because what had looked at first glance like just the bloodstained stolen contents of a Borough Engineer’s safe was in fact a bloodstained dossier intended for the press.
Which raised an important question in Twitten’s mind.
‘Tell me why this package is addressed to you, Mr Oliver. Did you know about it?’
Oliver bit his lip. ‘I did, yes.’
‘You did?’
Twitten was shocked.
‘The thing is,’ Oliver continued, ‘I had an appointment to meet Dupont on the seafront that day.’
‘Then why don’t the police know this? Why didn’t you come forward?’
Oliver shrugged and pulled a face.
‘Well, to be fair,’ he said, ‘I did think about it. But look, Constable, Dupont meant nothing to me. He said he had a story, but he wouldn’t tell me much on the telephone. He said he would bring the proof. And then he got murdered!’
‘So?’
‘Well, it suggests the story is quite big.’
‘Which is all the more reason to come forward.’
Never having dealt with a reporter before, Twitten was at sea about Oliver’s reasoning.
‘Mr Oliver, can’t you see this changes the official investigation completely? I could actually arrest you for choosing to keep this to yourself.’
Oliver put his hands up as if to apologise, and smiled for support at Old Ted – but Ted wasn’t really listening. His main thought at this moment was that the doors to the Left Luggage office were still locked, and he could hear the telltale hubbub of disgruntled people gathering outside. So much for his tips. It was the universal law of the Left Luggage office: the longer the queue, the more meagre the haul.
Twitten was still far from satisfied with what Oliver had told him. He thought back to his training at Hendon, where he had repeatedly come top in tests for never accepting the first explanation from a witness. ‘Look, Mr Oliver. The reason you didn’t come forward … I know this might sound an ungenerous assessment of your character, so please forgive me if I’m wrong, but were you perhaps just scared that you’d be murdered too?’
‘Of course I was scared I’d be murdered too!’
‘Ha! I thought so!’
‘They cut his throat, for heaven’s sake.’
‘Exactly. Ha!’
Twitten folded his arms and rocked back on his heels. He felt jolly pleased with himself. He had the package Dupont had been carrying; he now knew it to be a dossier, bound to contain important clues; he also knew why Dupont had been carrying it; he had remembered to put gloves on, so as not to leave his own fingerprints on the bag or its contents; and he had guessed correctly that even a crime reporter will risk breaking the law when apprehensive about being slit from ear to ear. All this represented a terrific breakthrough. If only Ted could remember the person who had left the bag.
‘Will you try to remember, sir? And call me at the station if anything comes to you?’
Ted said he would apply himself, but couldn’t promise anything.
‘And may I use your telephone for a moment, sir?’
Ted sighed. Restive customers were actually knocking on the doors now, and the hubbub was growing louder. He could almost hear the snap and jingle of purses as the pennies and threepenny bits went back into them. But like a good citizen, he passed the instrument to Twitten.
This was the conversation with Inspector Steine, of course, in which an excited Twitten managed to alarm Steine by mentioning dynamite, but not to interest him in the Peter Dupont case in any other way. And it would be fair to say that Steine’s total lack of enthusiasm for uncovering the murderer of Peter Dupont not only annoyed and shocked Twitten, but caused him to make an uncharacteristic decision.
‘Something wrong, Constable?’ said Oliver, when they were outside on the busy concourse, and the hordes of frustrated customers had finally flooded into Ted’s domain.
‘I’m just thinking about what to do next.’
‘Look. You know I really want to see what’s in that dossier?’
Twitten’s gloved hand gripped the handles of the holdall more tightly as he said, ‘I’m sure you do.’
‘Is there any way you could … ?’
‘Of course not, Mr Oliver. It has to go directly to forensics.’
‘Right.’
‘They’ll photograph everything, and dust for fingerprints, and test the blood against Dupont’s. This material was taken by the murderer from the scene of the crime.’
‘Of course. Of course. Forget I asked.’
But Twitten kept on thinking. He looked at the bag and he looked at Oliver, and then back at the bag, and then back at Oliver. This young reporter seemed to be the only person apart from himself actually interested in finding out what had happened to Dupont. He was also the sort of person who would understand that a reference to ‘dynamite’ could be metaphorical as well as literal.
So, as they were leaving the station, Twitten said, ‘Look, Mr Oliver. Perhaps we could take a brief look at this dossier together at your office.’
Oliver, excited, said nothing. But he raised a questioning eyebrow.
‘The way I see it,’ Twitten carried on, ‘much as I cannot condone your attitude to public duty, you are now an official witness in this inquiry, and this is a good opportunity to interview you accordingly. Moreover, I’ve only been working in Brighton for the past three weeks, and you live here and know lots of things I don’t. Mr Oliver, would this perhaps be a good time to conduct th
e interview?’
And Ben Oliver said, ‘Constable Twitten, I’m sure I can fit you in.’
Young Shorty was having a busy week. There had been very little slouching-against-walls time. He was seriously slipping behind with the adventures of Desperate Dan and Korky the Cat. Every day saw another message to be run around town. Today (the same day Mrs Groynes and Captain Hoagland were so dramatically reunited) the general alert was, ‘The job’s off. Everyone stand down. The mark is NOT Wall-Eye Joe, repeat NOT Wall-Eye Joe.’
As he dashed about, dodging between the shoppers and holiday-makers on the busy main streets, he sometimes felt like a character from one of his comics. The words ‘DART!’ and ‘ZOOM!’ ought to be visible in a little dark cloud trailing behind his heels.
‘Hey, Shorty, got a minute?’ he heard, as he was passing the rock shop on the corner of Grenville Street. He skidded to a halt. (‘SKID-D-D!’)
Looking round, he saw a familiar face. It was that bloke who played drums at the night club along here. He was standing in a patch of shadow, but his gold tooth glinted in the dark.
‘Tommy?’
‘Shorty, come here.’
‘I’m on a job, Tom.’
‘Look, it’s important. It’s worth a tanner. Tell the boss, there’s things afoot at the Black Cat. That dodgy trumpeter Mrs G got me to vouch for – the Bensons tumbled to him right away, but they’ve got it in their heads he works for Chambers.’
‘Oh, blimey.’ (Shorty liked to pretend he understood what was going on.)
‘And now the girl Deirdre has disappeared.’
Shorty closed his eyes and repeated the list: ‘Dodgy trumpeter. Works for Chambers. Missing girl.’
‘But the girl’s the main thing, right? She needs protecting, and I can’t protect her if I don’t know where she is, can I? And I don’t know where she is!’
‘OK, OK. I’ll tell the boss. But I gotta get on, Tommy.’
‘All right. Good boy. Here.’ Tommy pulled a bag of sweets out of his pocket. ‘Humbug?’
‘Oh, ta.’
Tommy helped the boy prise the sweet from the paper, then took one for himself.