The Man That Got Away

by Lynne Truss

  Feeling bucked up by her encouragement (‘I’m sure you’re doing a super job, Peregrine darling’), he pulled himself together and said, aloud, ‘To Colchester House, then.’ And five minutes later, he was standing on the opposite side of the road, taking it all in. From the front façade, it looked well maintained and very handsome. From the side, however (from both sides, in fact), it was less impressive, with that narrow alleyway immediately to the rear of the house, and then the night club reached via Grenville Street and the wax museum in Russell Place.

  He remembered the picture of the garden in Dupont’s dossier. A Regency house as grand as this would have had such a garden, surely?

  Which was why, ten minutes later, he was at the public library, looking at a copy of Historic Brighton by F. C. Grimshaw (1937). Colchester House was allotted two whole pages – the role of Nash; the Colchester lineage; a visit from the Regent in 1822, when the guests drank ‘bumpers’ of champagne. But the passage that caught Twitten’s eye related to an account, written in 1835, of the garden:

  A very curious place … full of little hills and mounds, covered with trees, shrubs and flowers, all set a dozen feet or more below the level of the street beyond the wall. Here and there are arbours shaded by ivy and clematis; in some places are little hollows surrounded by artificial rocks; in others are subterranean paths, besides railing, hedges, ponds, white tents and a magnificent enclosure for birds. Over the whole are scattered white statues and painted lamps, some on stands, others hanging from lofty arches which join the mounts. What I liked best was the ‘subterrane’. We entered a subterraneous passage, at the end of which is a little polygonal chamber, curtained all round with red and white, and carpeted with yellow-coloured sheepskin.

  Twitten copied the entry word-for-word into his notebook. It made him rather wistful. This area was now occupied by a club run by gangsters who sawed up their relations and a tawdry museum run by charlatans, one of whom was pretending to be blind, and both of whom were pretending to be French. Whereas it used to be an elegant place of statues and birds and painted lamps, not to mention an underground polygonal chamber lined with a golden fleece!

  With all these dramatic developments to think about – the Bensons frantic to find Deirdre; Mrs Groynes coping with the shock of Captain Hoagland’s miraculous return from the dead; Brunswick unwittingly working alongside representatives of internationally renowned law-enforcement agencies; Inspector Steine steadily bonding with his long-lost niece; and Constable Twitten finally getting his teeth into the Dupont case – it might seem strange to focus our attentions on the rock shop on the corner of Grenville Street. After all, it was the same scene every morning and afternoon: the little crowd standing outside the window, making admiring ‘Cor!’ and ‘Blimey!’ noises as they watched while one enormous formless humbug was expertly stretched and twisted by Henry Hastings to make hundreds of small, stripy (and completely uniform) suckable humbugs in that somehow mind-confounding three-dimensional geometric form: the regular tetrahedron.

  But today there was one small difference to the demonstration. Because about halfway through it, Hastings happened to look up from his muscular labours and see the surprising expressions on the faces looking back at him. It was bizarre. Instead of smiling like idiots, as they usually did, they all had their mouths open, and looked variously bewildered, appalled and horrified.

  He didn’t know what to make of it. The procedure was precisely the same as usual. Had he forgotten to put clothes on? A quick glance down confirmed that he had not. Had someone written a rude word on his window?

  But when he looked again at his audience, there was no mistake about it. They appeared to be witnessing a highly disturbing sight. One woman actually screamed. And now that he thought about it, he could smell those drains again. The drain smell was in the very room!

  Was there someone behind him? He suddenly felt sure that there was, not least because the people outside were pointing past him, over his left shoulder. Showing no alarm (but quickly calculating his next move), he squinted into the plate-glass window and saw in the reflection a pale figure to his left, not moving, but with one hand outstretched, as if possibly holding a weapon.

  A feeble croak reached his ears. Afterwards he thought about it often. Had the ghastly figure tried to say ‘Help me’?

  But he would never be able to answer that question, because all of Hastings’s commando training came back to him in this time of imagined threat. In a single move, he spun on the spot, grabbed a half-pound humbug from a shelf and used it to strike the side of the head of the ghastly, spectral and deeply smelly figure that had appeared behind him. To screams from the people outside, the man fell straight to the ground, dead.

  It was Dickie George. The poor man had survived a week in the sewers only to be killed by a humbug. As the papers were to report over the coming months, this was the first case of manslaughter-by-humbug ever to be recorded anywhere in the world.

  Nine

  Sergeant Brunswick was beginning to realise that perhaps, before launching into an undercover career as a night-club trumpeter, he should have thought things through a little more carefully. Playing in the band every night was all very well (and his impressive solo breaks drew gratifying applause), but he was all too aware that the rest of the guys were watching his every movement; also that he had stupidly failed to establish a system for communicating safely with the station. Meanwhile it was clear that the Bensons suspected him, because Frank Benson – in between escorting portly male customers and their bejewelled wives to tables nearest to the stage – was always leaning across from the dance floor to pat him on the sleeve of his tuxedo and say, meaningfully, ‘Settling in all right, Kevin?’ or ‘Look, Kevin, just tell him it’ll never happen again, would you?’ or (somehow most unsettling of all), ‘Kevin! Nice shoes.’

  The worst aspect of any undercover job, however, was simply the identity crisis that invariably came with it. Why did he not anticipate this? Why did he never remember that infiltrating criminal gangs threw up in him not just the obvious problems of loneliness and fear, but existential questions about who he really was?

  ‘I am playing a part,’ he would repeat to himself. ‘I am not Kevin the trumpet player. I was a paratrooper in the war. I have advanced police driving skills, a desk waiting for me at the police station with a week’s worth of Police Gazettes piling up on it, and I have been wounded several times in the line of duty. I am not Kevin the trumpet player.’

  But still, shutting his eyes onstage some nights, lost in the glorious dance music, seeing all the little lamps on the tables and the flash of diamonds on the necks of the women – and trying not to obsess about the alluring curves of Delores Dee’s satin-clad posterior – he could believe for a moment that he was a professional trumpet player for whom it was utterly normal to work until the small hours of the morning for a few bob a week, and to share tawdry digs in Grenville Street with a laconic pianist who affected a pork pie hat and kept a sharpened machete under his bed. Brunswick’s other world – his auntie’s bright little flat; Mrs Groynes bringing him a nice hot cup of tea and asking him supportively for the latest news from the big bad world beyond the police station – was swiftly slipping away from him, seeming every day more fanciful and unreal.

  Still, there were a few things he kept a grip on. For a start, he took note of Frank Benson’s mystifying message: ‘Just tell him it will never happen again.’ Tell who? About what? Was this something to do with killing Kenneth? Had the Bensons been told not to kill him by someone? Could Clever Clogs Twitten shed any light on this? But on the three occasions when he’d made a dash to the public call-box opposite the rock shop and dialled the number for the police station, there had been no answer from Twitten or Steine, or even Mrs G; the phone just rang and rang, unanswered, as if the whole place were deserted.

  At least his shared room was the first-floor front, so he could pull up a chair to the bay window and observe the interesting foot traffic in the neighbourho
od of the Black Cat. At least he could do some surveillance. Luckily the piano player used the room solely for sleeping, and made himself scarce in the afternoons. It meant that, for a short while each day, Kevin-on-the-valves could experience the thankful return of his full and proper Sergeant Brunswick-ness, because when he stared out of that window, and observed all the Hogarthian shenanigans in the busy, noisy street below, it reminded him that he not only knew all about Brighton, but in particular he knew all about Brighton’s unattractive lowlife, in particular its exotically named (but lesser) villains.

  This had always been Brunswick’s fatal flaw: priding himself on his extensive knowledge of the small fry, of the blokes who chucked bricks through windows, or were caught red-handed jemmying a skylight, or lived off the earnings of tarts. For him, Brighton was packed with wide boys called Guido the Fish, Ronnie the Nerk, Dave the Forger – most of whom he had nicked in person on numerous occasions. He saw these people everywhere; they blinded him to the bigger picture. Because when a member of the true Brighton criminal aristocracy walked past the window in Grenville Street – such as the cold-blooded assassin-for-hire Diamond Tony, cleaning his nails with a long, pointy blade – Brunswick recognised him merely as a flashily dressed man often to be observed drinking whisky macs in the residents’ bar at the Metropole.

  Sometimes, sitting at the window was torture, his natural urge to nick wrongdoers being too great. After just a couple of afternoons in position, for example, he became aware of a pair of pickpockets working the street below – and he watched them with increasing frustration. But then something strange happened, as he continued to observe the operation: he began to feel a degree of awe as well. Their MO was so simple: Irene from the Pretty Puss Club bumped into clueless holiday-makers, lifted their wallets and slipped them to Jimmy the Gimp, who (with impressive timing) was always at that precise moment sauntering past the other way. And that was all there was to it. On one afternoon, they did six wallets in an hour. It got so that Brunswick could spot the instant when each lift started. Irene would quicken her pace to draw alongside the mark, and Jimmy (leaning always against the same convenient sea-green lamp-post) would fold his newspaper and start his walk. ‘Now,’ Brunswick would whisper, and feel a strange mixture of triumph and despair when the job was executed flawlessly yet again. Just once their trick nearly failed, when Jimmy slightly fumbled the hand-over, and as the wallet slipped from his fingers, Brunswick embarrassed himself by jumping up and shouting (unheard), ‘Watch out!’

  On one afternoon, he took a look at the pianist’s machete. But it was so terrifyingly sharp and heavy that he quickly put it back. He felt uncomfortable searching through his room-mate’s stuff. Gerry was his name, apparently. Or ‘Gerry on the ivories!’ as Delores introduced him each night. Brunswick was glad Gerry-on-the-ivories chose to go out all day, but he did wish he’d be more forthcoming – about music, if nothing else. Searching through Gerry-on-the-ivories’s chest of drawers, Brunswick found sheet music for The King and I that was not only stamped ‘Theatre Royal Drury Lane’ but was signed by Richard Rodgers ‘With thanks’. It was very exciting. Thanks for what? Had Gerry-on-the-ivories played in the orchestra of the show? Brunswick longed to know. The King and I was one of his favourite scores and he had seen the film three times.

  Sometimes he had the window open, sometimes not. But one day when the window was up, he saw a remarkable thing: an off-guard Mrs Groynes. This was on the same day she met Lord Melamine in the tea shop, and was taken to recuperate in Colchester House. She was walking up the street from the seafront end, nicely dressed in a neat little suit and a pretty silk headscarf, arm in arm with a tall gent who stooped a little, and had a limp. It was the hardest thing for Brunswick not to shout, ‘Hello, Mrs G! Up here!’

  What stopped him was that the couple paused, right across the road from his window. And then the unknown man put his hand in his raincoat pocket and withdrew a paper bag of sweets, and when he offered it to her, she looked up into his face, shook her head and said something (Brunswick strained to hear the words) about how there were special moments in life that required more than a bleeding humbug. At which they both laughed.

  And then – oh, flaming heck – the man bent down and slowly kissed her.

  Brunswick watched, amazed. He thought Mrs Groynes would kick him and run off yelling for the police. But instead she positively melted in his arms!

  ‘Mrs Groynes?’ said Twitten.

  ‘Yes, dear?’

  Mrs Groynes was just hanging her coat up. It was the morning after Sergeant Brunswick had seen her locked in the arms of Captain Hoagland, and she was surprised to find anyone already in the office at half-past seven in the morning. Normally she had at least half an hour by herself to fire up the water boiler, rub a duster over the doorknobs, have a quick cigarette and (most importantly) unlock her loot cupboard and stash anything incriminating from jobs the night before.

  ‘Blimey,’ she said. ‘You been here all night? You look like something the cat spewed up.’

  From the look of things, Twitten had indeed been in the office all night. He was sitting at his desk, with a dossier open beside him, the typewriter in front and papers all over the floor. There was ink on his face. He was bug-eyed. Three of his tunic buttons were undone. It was unsettling to see him like this. He looked positively off his rocker.

  ‘Look, Mrs G, I know I said I didn’t want any help from you ever,’ he said, with a slightly hysterical edge to his voice. Was he shaking? ‘And when I said that I bally well meant it.’

  ‘I’m sure you did, dear. And there’s no need to raise your voice to me, is there? I’m just here.’

  ‘But … But I need to ask you something. Just one thing.’

  ‘All right. Fire away.’

  ‘I ought to warn you, I’m a bit tired.’

  ‘I can see that.’

  ‘I’m not myself. I think I’m experiencing the reality of the expression at one’s wits’ end. In fact, the phrase keeps going round and round in my head, and it’s jolly unpleasant when you can’t do anything to stop it. At one’s wits’ end; at one’s wits’ end; at one’s wits’ end.’

  ‘I get the picture, dear. Poor you. Or poor one, if you prefer.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He took a deep breath. ‘So my question is: when I briefly left the station to get a breath of air early this morning and take a look at Colchester House for the umpteenth time, did I happen to see you emerging from the front door at around half-past six?’

  Mrs Groynes smiled and blushed slightly. ‘I don’t know, dear. Did you?’

  ‘Yes, I did!’ he wailed. In his inexplicable anguish, he roughly undid two more buttons on his tunic. ‘Oh, Mrs G!’

  ‘Oh, my gawd, what’s wrong, dear? Who’s upset you? What do you want me to do about it?’ She seemed genuinely concerned.

  Twitten’s face all but dissolved in misery. He had evidently been closer to his wits’ end than either of them realised (despite the clues).

  ‘Look. This isn’t easy for me to say, Mrs G,’ he snivelled, ‘but I saw you coming out of Colchester House this morning, and it was just the final straw for me; it was the bally final straw!’

  ‘Why, dear? I don’t understand.’

  ‘Because I had no idea why you were there!’

  Mrs Groynes pulled up a chair beside his desk and put her arms round him. He did not pull away.

  ‘There, there,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve only just found out that Colchester House is significant in my inquiries, and you’re already bally living there!’

  ‘Oh, you poor thing,’ she said. ‘Give old Mrs Groynes a hug, then. Come on. This is the problem with your being so bleeding clever, dear; I’ve warned you, and I’ve warned you.’

  ‘But I need to know things like that!’ he cried. ‘If I don’t even know your connection to Colchester House, how am I ever going to solve this bally case? Is it Wall-Eye Joe that’s living there?’

  She smiled. ‘No,
dear. It isn’t.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s the real Lord Melamine. I thought it was Wall-Eye, I grant you, but I was wrong. Even the fake gold he’s been trying to flog is the real bleeding McCoy.’

  ‘There are so many things going on, Mrs G! I think it might be literally impossible to sort them all out!’

  ‘That’s silly talk, dear. I won’t hear of it.’

  ‘No, but really, Mrs G, what if I’m not clever enough? You see, we’ve got not just a council conspiracy and an absconded Borough Engineer and a dead council clerk – which is one thing; but then there’s a historic sawn-up West End musical director – which is connected, I’m sure, but I don’t know how. And now this Dickie George person who went missing from the Black Cat has come up through the floor of the rock shop and been killed with a bally humbug, which I’m sure is tragic for him but even worse for me because now he can’t tell me what he knew!’

  ‘He was killed how, dear?’ laughed Mrs Groynes.

  ‘It’s not funny! None of this is funny, Mrs G!’

  ‘No, of course not.’ Mrs Groynes pulled a serious face, but she had rarely been more entertained. Twitten had been right. This was a demonstration of what someone at their wits’ end looked like. It was pitiful, but at the same time absolutely hilarious.

  ‘Mr Hastings at the sweet shop killed him with a big humbug and then immediately fled the scene of the crime, and I don’t blame him, but who’s going to look for him? Me? On top of all this?’