by Lynne Truss
Twitten and Oliver went straight to Brighton Station. The ‘chaps’ Twitten had recruited were allocated their positions. The hands on the big station clock showed ten-past-one. But if you looked at them intently enough (as Twitten did), you could watch the minute slowly pass.
Captain Hoagland had a lot to say about Palmeira coming up with the money for the extortionists, but the main thing he said was an angry ‘no’.
Meanwhile the main thing Lord Melamine said was an astonished, ‘But I thought you had a job as a charwoman!’
‘It’s a long story, dear,’ said Mrs G. ‘I’ve got the money, that’s the main thing.’
Together, they all looked at the wheelable trunk she had just breathlessly arrived with.
‘But where … ?’
‘Just don’t ask. And don’t tell that housekeeper of yours, either, for gawd’s sake. You’ve let her get much too close, Lord M; you’ve both told her far too much about yourselves. Hasn’t it occurred to you that she might have written that letter?’
‘What, Mrs Rogers?’ laughed Hoagland.
‘Look, let me do this, Hoagy. I want to. I have to.’
‘But you don’t, my dear,’ he argued, calmly. ‘That’s where you’re wrong. You seem to be under some illusion that you owe me something, but it wasn’t your fault I fell in with those awful people. It had nothing to do with you. It wasn’t your fault that I failed to notice a bomb near London Bridge had started ticking again either.’
‘We haven’t got time for this, my darling,’ she said. ‘The money needs to be put in position, and soon.’
Hoagland shook his head.
‘If you won’t take it, I’ll bleeding well go and put the money there myself.’ She indicated the trunk that had, interestingly, been recently used for a very similar purpose – when the thirty thousand had been removed from the basement of a bank in North Street.
‘No, you won’t.’
‘Just watch me.’
She started lugging it towards the stairs to the side door.
‘Oh, please take it from her, Hoagy,’ said Melamine. ‘I don’t quite understand what’s going on here, but surely we should never knowingly let a woman put herself in the way of danger?’
Captain Hoagland shot her an accusing look.
‘This really offends me, Palmeira,’ he said, coolly.
‘Oh, just take it,’ said Melamine. ‘Please.’
And so Captain Hoagland, furious, disappeared down the staircase, heaving the trunk behind him.
‘I’ll help,’ called Melamine. Then he turned to Mrs Groynes and said, ‘You wait there, promise me?’
‘I promise.’
Mrs Groynes watched them both struggle with the trunk to the bottom of the short flight of stairs, where they opened the door and went outside.
‘Take care, Hoagy!’ she called. ‘Please take care!’
And then she heard a car engine start, and two car doors slam, and a jubilant cry of ‘We did it!’ as the car drove quickly off.
Brunswick had rarely been inside the Black Cat during daylight hours, but Ma Benson accepted his story that he needed to get something from the dressing room; believing him to be an employee of Terence Chambers, she felt she’d better not stand in his way.
‘The boys are out, Kevin,’ she said. ‘We’ve – we’ve had a bit of trouble. My daughter Deirdre seems to have run away.’
‘So I heard,’ said Brunswick. It was very strange to realise that Ma Benson was partly afraid of him. It was also very strange to look at her and see a woman worried out of her mind. She was puffing away on her churchwarden pipe like nobody’s business.
‘Look, Kevin. It’s not you, is it, that took Deirdre? Do you know where she is?’
‘No, I’m sorry. But I’ll gladly help you find her.’
‘Tell me what you’re looking for.’
‘A record,’ he said. A few minutes ago, the idea of telling Ma Benson why he was here would have been unthinkable. But now it just seemed the quickest way to achieve results.
‘Come with me,’ she said, and led him up to Deirdre’s bedroom. On the way, he explained that the record had been made by young Peter Dupont in the Voice-o-Graph on the Palace Pier.
‘Really? In one of those machines?’ She pulled a face. ‘You’d think Brighton Rock would have put paid to those completely, wouldn’t you?’
‘I know,’ laughed Brunswick. ‘That’s what I said.’
In the Lilley & Skinner shoebox under the bed, there it was.
‘We’d better play it,’ said Ma Benson. And downstairs to the club they went, record in hand.
At ten to three, Tommy Drumsticks bought the Argus and read the story about the missing dossier. So did Henry Hastings and Frank Benson, along with hundreds of holiday-makers and railway passengers alighting from the trains. From Twitten’s hiding place behind the W. H. Smith bookstall, he watched as the paper dispersed in a hundred directions. It was like a News Cinema ‘Look at Life’ on how the newspaper industry worked. He signalled to Ben Oliver, who was leaning against the fruit stall, pretending to peel an orange. They grinned at each other. This really was thrilling. Every time a new person went into the Left Luggage office, they held their breath. Twitten had a moment of confusion when he thought he saw Mrs Groynes going in – but then he decided it must have been his own tiredness tricking him, as the woman didn’t come out again.
Everyone had been briefed about the holdall. The moment they saw the man emerge with it, they were to pounce. More papers flowed from the news-stand in the station.
‘Git yor own arse!’ yelled vendors from street corners all over town. ‘Git yor own arse!’
People were reading it in deck-chairs, in the library, in pubs, in Luigi’s ice-cream parlour and at the police station. On their way to see Inspector Steine, Phyllis and Adelaide bought a copy, which made them quicken their step.
Brunswick and Ma Benson were listening together to Peter Dupont’s record in the bar-room of the Black Cat. They were both in tears.
‘What a sweet boy!’ Ma Benson sobbed.
‘He does sound very nice, yes!’ sniffed Brunswick. ‘And so scared!’
They had listened as Peter said how much he loved Deirdre and how he was anxious about whether he was old enough to cope with everything that was happening: the outrageous bribing of the council officials not to investigate problems with the drains (Ma Benson looked a bit worried that he knew about that), and prising Deirdre away from her scary relations (Ma Benson looked shifty). But then, when he started talking about how he’d been threatened and nearly run over, Ma Benson looked simply confused – and then Peter spotted the man in the crowd watching them both as he made the record.
There’s a man watching us now, Deirdre, even as I’m saying this. He’s been following us about. He’s wearing dark glasses and a doorman’s uniform with medals on, like you see on the men opening the door for people at the Grand and the Metropole. And he’s a bit bent over. I keep thinking, it can’t be Captain Hoagland, can it? But he walks like Captain Hoagland, he’s got the same limp. But now the light’s flashing and I have to stop—
‘So who’s this Hoagland?’ said Ma. But Brunswick was already heading for the door.
‘I have to be somewhere, I’m afraid,’ he called back. ‘But thank you.’
At the police station, Adelaide and Phyllis, clutching their Argus, ran up the stairs to Uncle Geoffrey’s office.
‘Phyllis has remembered something, Uncle Geoffrey,’ panted Adelaide, as they burst in. ‘Is your Constable Twitten here? She needs to tell him something.’
‘Could she tell me instead?’
Phyllis, leaning against the wall while she got her breath back, was clearly disappointed to be dealing with the monkey instead of the organ-grinder.
‘We thought Constable Twitten was in charge of the case,’ explained Adelaide, confused.
‘Look, young lady,’ said Steine, ‘if you’ve got information—’
‘It was when we wer
e going down the steps from the promenade!’ panted Phyllis. ‘A man pushed past me, and I didn’t think anything of it at the time. It was a man in a doorman’s uniform, and he had a very distinctive limp!’
At the railway station, Twitten watched as two businessmen, a secretary, a conscripted soldier and a limping hotel doorman entered the Left Luggage office together in a group. He had been in position for less than an hour but was already finding the tension unbearable. A dozen questions passed through his mind. Might the murderer not come in person? Might he send the doorman from his hotel? Might it be a woman, after all? The only thing they had to go on was the holdall. Wait for that holdall! Wait for the holdall!
And then Sergeant Brunswick appeared in view, evidently puffed out from running, and looking round for Twitten.
‘Over here!’ he called.
‘It’s someone called Hoagland,’ panted Brunswick. ‘The man who followed Dupont.’
‘But why would Captain Hoagland—?’
Twitten never got to finish his question. From the Left Luggage office came the sound of a kerfuffle: raised voices, then a bang and a scream. The swing doors burst open with several women running out, shouting, ‘A gun! A gun!’ – among them the woman who reminded Twitten of Mrs Groynes. Staff and passengers on the concourse scattered and hid, and there was a further bang from outside the station, followed by more screams.
Immediately, all the chaps on lookout abandoned their positions and ran to the Left Luggage office where they found poor old Ted, pointing down to an unmoving figure on the ground. It was dressed as a doorman, and in its deathly grip was the canvas holdall. It was Captain Philip Hoagland, formerly of the 35th Bomb Disposal Company. And he was dead.
Eleven
Of all the ersatz musicians in the Black Cat band, it was the chap playing alto sax who was nearest to the end of his tether. John Bamford was his name, and he was the man from Interpol – an organisation which, thanks to a great deal of unfortunate disinformation spread by irresponsible post-war screenwriters, stood high in the popular imagination as the coolest of all the law-enforcement agencies of the world, not excluding MI5.
So here he was – this keen, fit young man licensed to carry a weapon in special circumstances; protected by diplomatic immunity in the event of excessive parking fines; capable of taking Monaco’s tightest hairpin corners at thirty-two miles per hour; two clear points above average at downhill alpine skiing while carrying a hunting rifle – here he was, this veritable 007 of a man, playing a lame arrangement of ‘My Blue Heaven’ every night for a dance floor full of drunken, left-footed, over-dressed businessmen in a sordid little seaside town, in a venue reeking of Old Spice.
Unlike his more realistic fellow Interpol recruits, Bamford had never quite accepted the limitations of the job – which was why he had done the Monaco-bends and downhill skiing stuff on his own time without telling anyone. He had passed through the stolid Interpol training process in Paris – with its emphasis on conscientious desk-work, and a reliable, up-to-date knowledge of obscure extradition agreements – and he had done well. But still he harboured fantasies of chasing international playboy jewel thieves across the rooftops of Kowloon, or preventing the assassination of rich South American polo players in Gstaad.
So when the chance arose to help the Metropolitan Police in their investigations of the notorious Terence Chambers – whose suspected activities had started to extend to art theft in Madrid – Bamford was quick to say yes, imagining that the assignment held at least the potential for glamour.
‘We have reason to believe that Chambers is using the Black Cat night club in Brighton as a front for criminal activity,’ he was told at his briefing.
‘I see, sir.’
‘A considerable amount of money is paid to the Benson family for their co-operation, but it is unclear how far the Bensons are privy to the activity itself; very possibly they know nothing. The main things you need to know are these: first, at least one man has been killed on the orders of Terence Chambers for threatening to uncover the activity; second, officials have been systematically bribed so that the activity can continue undisturbed; third, Chambers is bound to have an inside man at the Black Cat, so trust no one; fourth, the Brighton Constabulary are utterly, shockingly obtuse, so expect no help there; fifth, we have absolutely no idea what the activity is, not a clue. All we know is that it happens underground.’
‘Could it be a headquarters for the forging of high-denomination bank-notes, sir?’
‘It could be, Bamford. According to information supplied by our British friends, a character known locally as Dave the Forger is often seen in the vicinity, but this could be mere coincidence. He is known to be a regular customer of a sweet shop on the corner.’
Bamford winced. ‘Dave the Forger’ was not a promising name for the sort of charming master-criminal he was prepared to engage with. He preferred something like ‘Scaramouche’. The mention of the sweet shop on the corner didn’t help much either.
‘Perhaps it’s a hoard of illicitly procured treasure, sir? Heaps of diamonds, gold and so on? The proceeds of the London Airport robbery? The stolen Goyas, perhaps?’
‘I have to confess I lean towards the Aladdin’s Cave theory, myself. It’s very attractive. And it’s true that the money from the London Airport robbery has never been traced. But not every criminal is in the Raffles mould, Bamford, as I’ve had reason to remind you before when we were discussing the illegal trade in bananas.’
‘What if it’s a torture chamber for disposing of enemies, sir?’
‘As I say, we rule out no possibilities.’
‘With the walls coated with blood—’
‘Yes, yes. Let’s not get carried away, Bamford. My advice would be, remember the motto of Interpol at all times.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Which is?’
A sigh. ‘Connecting police for a safer world, sir.’
And so Bamford had joined the Black Cat band, where he had acquitted himself well – all the while entirely unaware he was playing alongside one man from MI5, one from Scotland Yard and a further one from the Brighton Constabulary; also one man who reported to a charwoman at the police station, and another (tickling the ivories) who had a couple of years ago murdered and sawn up Kenneth Benson for poking his nose in where it wasn’t wanted.
‘Watch and wait, Bamford,’ they told him, each time he petulantly filed an uneventful report. But in his frustration, Bamford had started to haunt the club during the daylight hours – letting himself in through a door from the Maison du Wax. And this was how, on the afternoon that had seen Brighton disappear under a blanket of damp fog (and also Captain Hoagland shot dead at the railway station while in the act of retrieving an incriminating canvas bag), Bamford was present in the Black Cat, and heard the recorded voice of Peter Dupont, which suddenly – with an ear-splitting preliminary feedback shriek from a stylus making contact with wavy vinyl – boomed through the silence of the darkened, empty club.
Bamford, despite his training, jumped in the air.
Deirdre, I love you, said the voice.
‘Oh my God!’ gasped Bamford, clutching his chest.
Ma Benson had already heard the record once. Its contents had inexplicably sent trumpet-player Kevin racing out of the club. Now she was playing the record for a second time, on the gramophone inside her private office, with the door closed – forgetting that the gramophone was wired to powerful speakers outside, with the volume adjusted for night-time conditions, when it needed to be heard above the hubbub of a boisterous, well-oiled crowd.
I love you, Deirdre, and I wish I weren’t so frightened. You are looking at me now with such a loving expression, and it makes me – oh, it makes me want so much to protect you.
‘Peter?’ whispered a voice behind Bamford. He swung round. It was Deirdre, the Benson girl. She looked weird and ethereal – but then, she always did. In contrast to most men, Bamford found this pallid, help-me quality in her quite annoying. It wa
s as if she stood permanently under a glowing spotlight and was being filmed through gauze. At this moment, as her pale, anguished face loomed from the shadows, she was more ghostly than ever. It made him impatient.
‘Deirdre, where have you been? People have been worried,’ he said, reaching out to her.
But she didn’t reply. She was swaying, with her eyes closed, humming ‘The Man That Got Away’ in a distracted fashion over the disembodied voice of her dead boyfriend. From beyond the grave, Peter was telling her that there was a man watching them: a man in a doorman’s uniform.
‘No, seriously, Deirdre. Look at me. Where have you been?’
‘Down there,’ she said, dreamily. She pointed to an open trapdoor at the front of the stage, where the piano stool normally sat. Why had he never noticed it? Surely not just because Gerry-on-the-ivories always sat on top of it?
‘I’ve been down there,’ the girl repeated, pitifully.
‘What’s down there, Deirdre?’
‘Heads,’ she said. ‘Hundreds and hundreds of heads.’
In Inspector Steine’s defence, the people who had set out to defraud him of his inheritance (and kill him in a faked accident at the Maison du Wax) were among the best in the business. They were a talented team of magsmen who had met in wartime and had now worked together for fifteen years. Collectively and individually, they were imbued with all the qualities required for the ‘long con’: they were thorough, hard-working, patient, attentive to detail and unhesitatingly ruthless.