Psycho by the Sea Read online

  ALSO BY LYNNE TRUSS

  The Constable Twitten Mysteries

  A Shot in the Dark

  The Man That Got Away

  Murder by Milk Bottle

  Other Fiction

  The Lunar Cats

  Cat Out of Hell

  A Certain Age

  Going Loco

  Tennyson’s Gift

  With One Lousy Free Packet of Seed

  Non-fiction

  Get Her Off the Pitch!

  Talk to the Hand

  East, Shoots & Leaves

  Tennyson and His Circle

  Making the Cat Laugh

  For Hoagy,

  captain of my heart

  ‘Every detective must be a psychologist, whether he knows it or not.’

  Anthony Berkeley, Roger Sheringham and the Vane Mystery, 1927

  ‘The cosmetics manufacturers are not selling lanolin, they are selling hope. We no longer buy oranges, we buy vitality.’

  Vance Packard, The Hidden Persuaders, 1957

  Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?

  Title of Richard Hamilton’s Pop Art collage, 1956

  ‘Adelaide Vine’s hair was technically chestnut, while her eyes were almond-shaped, and hazel-coloured. As her mother used to say, Adelaide had been born with all the nuts.’

  Lynne Truss, The Man That Got Away, 2019

  Author’s Note

  Psycho by the Sea is the fourth Constable Twitten story, set more than a month after the events recounted in Murder by Milk Bottle. Although it can be read as a stand-alone book, actions occurring since June 1957 – when Twitten first arrived in Brighton – will continue to have dramatic consequences for the four main characters: Constable Twitten, Sergeant Brunswick, Inspector Steine, and Mrs Groynes (station charlady and secret criminal mastermind). For the convenience of new readers, here are some brief (helpful) notes.

  On 5 August, Summer Bank Holiday, Inspector Steine shot dead London gangland boss Terence Chambers at a seafront milk bar.

  Barrow-Boy Cecil, ostensibly a simple cockney street trader with a tray of clockwork bunnies, is in fact employed by Mrs Groynes. In Murder by Milk Bottle, he sold a handgun to a minor, which was morally questionable.

  Mrs Thorpe, a glamorous widow, owns a gracious Regency house on Clifton Terrace, where Constable Twitten is now a paying guest.

  Miss Sibert is a heavily accented Viennese émigrée and known associate of Terence Chambers.

  Adelaide Vine is a stunningly attractive young criminal who was reared by a group of four ruthless con artists, one of whom was her mother.

  Pandora Holden is a precocious and beautiful young woman of nineteen with misplaced romantic hopes concerning Twitten.

  Blakeney is a dog who enjoys travel.

  The action of this book takes place over one week in mid-September 1957.

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Afterword

  A Note on the Author

  Also available by Lynne Truss: A Shot in the Dark

  Also available by Lynne Truss: The Man that got Away

  Also available by Lynne Truss: Murder by Milk Bottle

  One

  If the disappearance of Barrow-Boy Cecil aroused no suspicions at first, it was for one very good reason: since the beginning of the month, Brighton had been subject to constant, drenching rain.

  The September seafront was grey and deserted; striped shop-awnings sagged and flapped; street drains backed up; overexcited schoolboys wrote rude words, backwards, on the steamed-up windows of the trolley-buses. No wonder that the town’s dodgy street characters, one and all, turned up their jacket collars, pulled their sodden headgear tighter to their heads, and raced indoors (through puddles) to sit it out.

  Any visiting academic engaged in studying the Petty Criminal of the South Coast of England could have had a field day in the cheaper cafes and milk bars of Brighton during this unlooked-for monsoon season. Even the respectable Lyons tea room towards the top of North Street was full of minor hoodlums. In every establishment it was the same: damp, disgruntled men and boys (some with livid facial scars) sat around formica-topped tables in loose, taciturn groups, waiting with charmless impatience for the pubs to open at half-past eleven while their clothes steamed unpleasantly. Conversation was scant. Each man nursed a cup of strong tea, smoked roll-ups down to the stub, miserably totted up halfpennies dug from deep trouser pockets, or idly polished a flick-knife blade with a handkerchief – or at least until the proprietor yelled ‘Oi!’ from behind the counter.

  It would have been madness for Barrow-Boy Cecil to be out. ‘See the bunny run, madam?’ was his perpetual patter, as he wound up the plastic mechanical toys on his felt-lined pedlar’s tray and waved a showman’s hand, as if the world offered nothing more splendid than their stiff, arthritic hopping. ‘See the bunny jump, sir! Only half a crown! See the bunny jump!’ Well, what sort of idiot holiday-maker would be in the market for a cheap, foreign-made clockwork toy in weather like this?

  But there was another good reason. Cecil’s regular pitch was at the Clock Tower – a location that tended to bear the brunt of inclement conditions, what with its being a major crossroads, exposed to winds whipping straight up West Street from the sea. In some ways it was an excellent spot, providing a 360-degree vantage point for a trusted lieutenant in a well-organised criminal gang headed by a woman cunningly posing as a charlady at the police station. It made him the visible hub of the organisation; almost its talisman. ‘What’s the lay, Cecil?’ Mrs Groynes would traditionally ask, smiling, as she stood in front of him at least twice a week, pretending to purchase a bunny for a favourite niece. Alternatively, if she needed him to act as an urgent bush telegraph, she would get hold of young Shorty (trusted juvenile messenger) and hiss, ‘Get this to Cecil. He’ll tell the others.’ So there was no gainsaying the topographical advantage of Cecil’s position, but there was also no denying that it was dismal when the wind blew hard from the south and the rain came down like bullets.

  So, that’s why no one missed him initially. There were four perfectly good reasons for Barrow-Boy Cecil to be absent from the streets. In the first place, there was zero passing trade; second, standing in his usual place, it would be like having buckets of water chucked in your face; third, he secretly received a regular substantial stipend from Mrs Groynes anyway, so the revenue from the bunnies concerned him little.

  But the fourth factor was probably the clincher: in conditions like these, the bunnies not only blew about on the flimsy tray suspended from Cecil’s neck; their mechanisms seized up, and they toppled over onto their backs, making a heart-breaking noise (Fzzzzz, fzzzzz, fzzzzzzz …), with their little legs kicking feebly at the air.

  Sergeant Brunswick was the first to ask where Cecil was. For several years the sergeant had, deludedly, been passing money to the bunny-man every couple of weeks in return for information about criminal activity in the town. Sometimes this outlay was later reclaimed from petty cash; more often, it came from the sergeant’s own pocket (he wasn’t very clever about money). It was only ten shillings, but you could buy quite a lot for that: two tins of salmon; sixty cigarettes; several quick haircuts from Rodolfo the Barber on Western Road. However, if the sergeant wished to throw his money away on Cecil, it was up to him, and it made him feel he was doing his job properly.

  For his own part, Cecil quite relished the comic role of underworld ‘grass’. Sometimes, alone in the evening, he practised in a mirror tilting his hat forwar
d, tapping his nose, and speaking shiftily out of the side of his mouth. At one point he toyed with having a toothpick clamped between his jaws, but it turned out to be almost impossible to say ‘See the bunny run’ with your jaws clenched. Also, for proper authenticity, you had to manoeuvre the stick from one side of your mouth to the other, and the first time he tried this he nearly swallowed it.

  But Cecil didn’t assume the role of double-agent for his own entertainment. It was entirely for the benefit of the gang. For Mrs Groynes’s purposes, this ‘informer’ arrangement was a reliable means of sending the police (in the person of Sergeant Brunswick) on well-timed wild goose chases when she had important criminal business to conduct.

  ‘Word is you should keep an eye on that new Buy Rite supermarket, Sergeant,’ Cecil would murmur, conspiratorially (head down, lips exaggeratedly lopsided, like Popeye), as he picked up a toy, wound it up, and placed it on the tray. Then, loudly, with the usual flourish of the arm, ‘See the bunny run, sir? Lovely, innit? Lovely bunny, sir! Only half a crown! See the bunny jump, look!’

  ‘Good man, Cecil,’ Brunswick would murmur in reply, and then announce for the benefit of anyone passing, ‘I’ll take that pink one, mate.’

  ‘Pink one? Good choice, sir. Look here, sir, on the bottom. Made in Hong Kong, only the best!’

  Then the sergeant would hand over a folded ten-bob note, put the toy in his pocket, and walk off without any change, glowing with achievement, while Cecil called ‘See the bunny run, madam?’ at a fresh member of the public.

  And usually the information paid off – but only because it was a fair bet in this town that if you set out to uncover criminal activity in any location, you would succeed. Acting on Cecil’s insider dope, Brunswick (taking several men with him) would lie in wait at the new supermarket and, sure enough, apprehend a couple of unwashed kids smuggling tins of peaches up their moth-holed jumpers. What Brunswick had so far failed to notice was that, invariably, just as he triumphantly grabbed a scarpering juvenile delinquent by the ear and said ‘You’re nicked, sonny!’ (to gratifying cheers from female shoppers), a high-end jeweller’s shop in another part of town was successfully raided by masked villains.

  Meanwhile Brunswick’s desk drawer was filling with wind-up bunnies, as testament to his acumen and perseverance as a police detective. When she was alone in the office, Mrs Groynes sometimes turned from her special locked cupboard – filled with gelignite, armed-robbery equipment, hot jewellery, and gold bullion – and opened the sergeant’s drawer, just to see the bunnies. They always made her smile. Much as she liked Sergeant Brunswick personally, there was no escaping the tragic fact that he was, basically, such easy meat.

  Still, it was Brunswick who was the first to notice that the bunny-man was missing. ‘Barrow-Boy Cecil hasn’t been around much lately,’ he observed on this dismally wet Tuesday morning in September, hanging up his soaked hat and mackintosh to drip on the lino, and gazing in despair at his sodden, half-ruined shoes. ‘I hope he’s all right.’

  The overhead lights were on in the office, and heavy rain drummed at the window. Mrs Groynes, a lit cigarette in one hand, was waving a feather duster along the tops of picture frames (mostly for effect), while young Constable Twitten was absorbed in a book. It was quite cosy. The air smelled of cocoa-flavoured biscuits, fresh from the packet.

  But before Brunswick could properly relax, he nodded at the inspector’s empty room.

  ‘The inspector … ?’ he said carefully. ‘Still elsewhere?’

  ‘Thank Christ, yes, dear.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  Twitten chipped in, without looking up from his book. ‘The inspector is still in London, sir.’

  Brunswick narrowed his eyes. Something was different. ‘It’s very quiet.’

  This was true. No phones were ringing.

  ‘Oh, I got them to deal with all his calls at the switchboard,’ said Mrs Groynes.

  ‘Blimey, you’ve got some nerve, Mrs G!’ said Brunswick, impressed. The fierce female telephonists at the station were notoriously unaccommodating to requests of this sort. They also had surprisingly well-developed arm muscles from all the reaching across each other to connect the jacks to the board. Once, without properly thinking it through, he had asked out a petite redhead from the switchboard and over their first drink in the saloon bar of the Cricketers pub she had challenged him to arm-wrestling, with embarrassing results.

  ‘Oh, they don’t scare me, dear. I said if they put one more call through to this office, I’d rip the wire out of the bleeding wall. I said the bags of post piling up are bad enough.’ As if to prove the point, she kicked an unopened sack of fan letters that stood against the wall with a dozen others. ‘All this interest is on account of that shocking Chambers business last month, of course,’ she sighed, shaking her head as if this vague ‘Chambers business’ was a regrettable train of events with which she’d had nothing to do (when she had in fact engineered the whole thing). ‘Cup of tea, then? Come on, Sergeant, there ain’t nobody here but us chickens. Take the weight off those massive plates of yours.’

  Brunswick exhaled with relief and sat down. Naturally, everyone was very pleased that the psychopathic London villain Terence Chambers had been shot dead in Brighton last month, making the world a better place; and yes, they were proud that Inspector Steine was the man who pulled the trigger. But had the shooting marked the end of anything? No, it had been more like the flaming beginning. Because afterwards came … the accolades.

  It started just a day or two after that momentous Bank Holiday Monday, when the inspector came bursting out of his office with the news.

  ‘Men! Men! Listen!’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘I’m receiving the Silver Truncheon award from the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police!’

  ‘Ooh, well done, sir. Well deserved, sir.’

  ‘Bleeding well done, dear.’

  ‘Thank you. I’m very excited. It’s the highest honour bestowed—’

  ‘We know, sir.’

  ‘I know too, dear. Good for you.’

  ‘I am absolutely overwhel—’

  ‘Cup of tea to celebrate?’

  ‘—med. Oh. Well, yes. Yes, please.’

  But it didn’t stop there. It escalated.

  ‘Men! Men! You won’t believe it!’

  ‘Gosh, sir. What is it now, sir?’

  ‘They want me to be a guest on Desert Island Discs! Roy Plomley just telephoned personally! I nearly fell off my chair!’

  ‘That’s flaming marvellous, sir. Well done.’

  ‘I know. It’s a huge honour.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Bally well done.’

  ‘Men! Men! You won’t believe it! I’ve been invited to the Palace!’

  ‘Men! Men! They want me to appear on something called The Sooty Show!’

  ‘Men! Men! If I am willing to lend my name to Brylcreem, which is apparently a hair preparation of some description, they’ll pay me a fee of five hundred pounds!’

  Much as Brunswick and Twitten tried to say ‘Congratulations, sir!’ with consistent gusto, it soon grew hard to do so. Inwardly they groaned with each fresh salute to Inspector Steine’s greatness. One evening, when Brunswick and his auntie sat cosily at home watching Panorama, a handsome young man with a guitar started singing a witty topical calypso about Inspector Steine, ‘Cleaning the Streets of Bright-on’, and Brunswick was so upset he burst into tears.

  But there was more to it than having to offer constant congratulations. For those who knew Inspector Steine well, to observe him on the receiving end of so much hero-worship was seriously alarming. The big question was: could he cope? After all, it takes strength of character to treat fame with the contempt it deserves, what with the natural temptation to measure one’s own self-worth by it. Many great men have fallen victim to hubris. What hope could there be, then, for Inspector Steine – a man of small achievements, feeble intellect, and no self-knowledge whatsoever?

  So this was why B
runswick was relieved to find the inspector out of the office, and was free to remark (again) that Barrow-Boy Cecil hadn’t been seen lately, causing Twitten to stop reading for a moment and look up at Mrs Groynes. Knowing full well that the bunny-seller was, secretly, one of this ersatz charlady’s most trusted gang members, he was keen to observe her response.

  She didn’t let him down. ‘Barrow-Boy who, dear?’ said Mrs Groynes, still flicking the feather duster with one hand and dropping fag-ash on the floor with the other.

  ‘Cecil,’ said Brunswick. ‘You know, Mrs G. See the bunny run? By the Clock Tower.’

  Mrs Groynes frowned, as if trying to place the name. ‘Oh, yes. Tall cove with a tray. Ain’t he out and about, then?’

  ‘Not that I can see.’

  Twitten closed his book. ‘I can’t imagine how a chap like him actually makes a living, can you, Mrs G?’ he asked, in a conversational tone. ‘Even if he sells the bunnies at two shillings and sixpence each. I wonder sometimes whether such colourful Brighton street characters in fact obtain the bulk of their income from other, more nefarious sources.’

  Mrs Groynes reached over to pat him on the shoulder. ‘You’re asking the wrong bleeding person, dear. Now, how about that cup of tea, Sergeant?’

  ‘Ooh, yes, please,’ said Brunswick, idly picking up the Police Gazette. ‘The thing is, it’s been at least a week since anyone clapped eyes on him. I hope he hasn’t got that flaming Asian Flu everyone’s talking about. The doorman outside the Essoldo said he saw Cecil talking with a glamorous young woman—’

  But at this point, unfortunately, all talk of Cecil abruptly ceased. With a cup of tea in the offing, more important matters had come up.

  ‘Kettle, sir!’ interrupted Twitten urgently, jumping to his feet. ‘Sir? Sir? The electric kettle!’

  Kettle? What was going on? Why was Twitten so excited by tea-making all of a sudden? But then Brunswick remembered. ‘Right, son. Yes!’

  ‘Give me strength,’ said Mrs Groynes. Year after year she had made the tea for this lot and no single bugger had taken the remotest interest. But now? Good grief. Rolling her eyes, she withdrew her hand from the kettle’s switch.