The Comedy Club Mystery Read online

  Praise for earlier Crampton of the Chronicle mysteries…

  "A fun read with humour throughout…"

  Crime Thriller Hound

  "An excellent novel, full of twists and turns, plenty of action scenes, crackling dialogue - and a great sense of fun."

  Fully Booked

  "A good page-turning murder mystery, with a likeable protagonist and great setting."

  The Bookworm Chronicles

  "A highly enjoyable and well-crafted read, with a host of engaging characters."

  Mrs Peabody Investigates

  "An amiable romp through the shady back streets of 1960s Brighton."

  Simon Brett, Crime Writers' Association Diamond Dagger winner

  "A highly entertaining, involving mystery, narrated in a charming voice, with winning characters. Highly recommended."

  In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel

  "A romp of a read! Very funny and very British."

  The Book Trail

  "Superbly crafted and as breezy as a stroll along the pier, this Brighton-based murder mystery is a delight."

  Peter Lovesey, Crime Writers' Association Diamond Dagger winner

  "It read like a breath of fresh air and I can't wait for the next one."

  Little Bookness Lane

  "By the end of page one, I knew I liked Colin Crampton and author Peter Bartram's breezy writing style."

  Over My Dead Body

  "A little reminiscent of [Raymond] Chandler."

  Bookwitch

  "A rather fun and well-written cozy mystery set in 1960s Brighton."

  Northern Crime

  "The story is a real whodunit in the classic mould."

  M J Trow

  "A fast-paced mystery, superbly plotted, and kept me guessing right until the end."

  Don't Tell Me the Moon Is Shining

  "Very highly recommended."

  Midwest Book Review

  "One night I stayed up until nearly 2am thinking 'I'll just read one more chapter'. This is a huge recommendation from me."

  Life of a Nerdish Mum

  The Comedy Club Mystery

  A Crampton of the Chronicle Adventure

  Peter Bartram

  Deadline Murder Series Book 3

  The Bartram Partnership

  First published by The Bartram Partnership, 2019

  For contact details see website:

  https://www.colincrampton.com

  Text copyright: Peter Bartram 2019

  Cover copyright: Barnaby Skinner 2019

  All characters and events in this book, other than those clearly in the public domain, are entirely fictitious and any resemblance to any persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publishers.

  The rights of Peter Bartram as author have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Text and Cover Design: Barney Skinner

  Also by Peter Bartram

  Crampton of the Chronicle Mystery novels

  Headline Murder

  Stop Press Murder

  Front Page Murder

  Deadline Murder Series novels

  The Tango School Mystery

  The Mother's Day Mystery

  The Comedy Club Mystery

  Novella

  Murder in Capital Letters

  Morning, Noon & Night Trilogy

  Murder in the Morning Edition

  Murder in the Afternoon Extra

  Murder in the Night Final

  The Morning, Noon & Night Omnibus Edition

  (All four Morning, Noon & Night books are also in audiobook)

  Short stories

  Murder from the Newsdesk

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  Bonus chapter: The Tango School Mystery

  Chapter 1

  Author’s note and acknowledgements

  About the author

  More great books from Peter Bartram…

  Chapter 1

  Brighton, England. 8 November 1965

  My news editor Frank Figgis took a drag on his Woodbine and blew a perfect smoke ring.

  He said: “Did I ever tell you about the legal trouble we had when we ran that picture of a stud bull with no testicles?”

  I said: “Now that does sound like a balls-up.”

  Figgis harrumphed.

  He narrowed his eyes to show he didn’t welcome the interruption.

  I ignored the signal and said: “In any case, I don’t see what that’s got to do with me. My byline reads Colin Crampton, crime correspondent. Hector Smallhouse is the night lawyer. The paper’s legal trouble is his line of country.”

  We were in Figgis’ office at the Brighton Evening Chronicle. The room had green walls hung with mounted front pages of the paper’s greatest scoops.

  The ceiling was a kaleidoscope of yellow, red and brown nicotine stains. If Michelangelo had smoked Woodbines, the Sistine Chapel ceiling would have looked a bit like it.

  Figgis sat behind a desk scarred with cigarette burns and overflowing with galley proofs. The place smelt like a campfire was smouldering in the corner.

  Figgis’ hard eyes peered out of a grizzled face. He had a scrawny neck. His thinning black hair was shiny with Brylcreem and parted down the middle. He looked like a bad-tempered gnome.

  He took a last drag on his fag. He stubbed out the dog-end in the Watney’s Red Barrel ashtray he’d “borrowed” from the Coach and Horses.

  He said: “The trouble happened before your time here. But talk of night lawyers misses the point. When you’ve got legal trouble on a newspaper, the last person you want on the scene is a lawyer. Best to sort it out yourself. Just as I did with the bull with no bollocks.”

  I lifted a questioning eyebrow. “You sewed back his cobblers personally?”

  “In a manner of speaking. You see, what happened was that Len Bryant, one of our photographers, had been up at the Royal Sussex Agricultural Show taking some shots. There was this prize bull – best in show – that had won a ton of prizes. I seem to recall the animal was called Goliath. Ugly beast, if you ask me. But, apparently, in the previous six months it had serviced forty-three heifers. Earnt his owner a small fortune in stud fees. As Goliath’s general and two colonels were still in full working order, the lucky farmer expected a rich harvest of fees in the next breeding season. And then our picture appeared over a report of the show – and the cowpat hit the fan.”

  “I don’t see why. What about ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity’?”

  “Not in this case. Len had taken pictures of the animal from all angles. He’d planned to use a shot of the beast’s head.”

  “And after forty-three heifers, no doubt with a smile like a giant banana on his face.”

  “Not exactly. He looked like a miserable brute. Not the kind you’d put into a pasture with Daisy the heifer and hope that a good time would be had by all.”

  �
��So he used a different shot?”

  “One taken from the rear. The only trouble with that was Goliath’s undeniably impressive meat and two veg were centre stage in the picture, if you see what I mean.”

  I could see what was coming.

  “And so Len airbrushed them out,” I said.

  “He said readers like maiden ladies living in Hove would be embarrassed when they turned the page.”

  “And young brides up on the Whitehawk estate would be viewing their new husbands with a disappointed eye,” I added.

  “That’s as may be. The next thing we knew a libel writ had landed on my desk.”

  “I suppose the owner claimed the picture showed the animal he was hiring out at big fees wasn’t match fit. And that, therefore, he was a fraudster.”

  “He wanted damages and an apology in the paper.”

  “Looks like he’d put the balls in your court,” I said.

  Figgis harrumphed again.

  He said: “The last thing I wanted was the night lawyer crawling all over the case. So I told Len to reprint the picture from the unbrushed negative and we ran it on the round-up page the next day under the headline ‘Now that’s what we call a ballpark figure’. The owner was delighted – at least, he was by the time he’d downed the sixth double Scotch I’d bought him in the Coach and Horses. We heard no more about it.”

  I leaned back in my chair and glanced out of Figgis’ grimy window. Rain was dripping off the trees in the Pavilion gardens. In was the kind of November day when dark clouds hang low in the sky like wet blankets.

  I switched back to Figgis.

  “A tale for our times,” I said. “But what’s brought it on?”

  “This,” Figgis said. He took a bundle of papers from his in-tray. His thick eyebrows beetled together as he studied the densely typed text. His forehead furrowed like a freshly ploughed field.

  “It’s a libel writ,” he said.

  “Not for me, I hope.”

  “Not this time. This one is for Sidney Pinker.”

  “Our theatre critic. What’s he been up to?”

  “It was that piece he wrote about the death of music hall in last Friday’s paper.”

  “I never read obituaries,” I said. “But it doesn’t strike me like a topic that would have people screaming defamation.”

  Figgis put down the libel papers, rummaged among his galley proofs, and produced a press cutting.

  “This is the piece from the paper,” he said. “Read the first paragraph in the second column.”

  I took the cutting and read: “Music hall was in the sick room even before that great Brighton entertainer Max Miller died two years ago. But since then its condition has become critical. And no wonder when the patient is attended by witch doctors like theatrical agent Daniel Bernstein. Mr Bernstein was best known as Mr Miller’s agent and manager. But since Miller’s sad death, Mr Bernstein has played the variety theatre-going public for fools by supplying only second-rate acts. Singers who can’t hit the right key. Dancers with two left feet. And comics whose jokes would take the bang out of a Christmas cracker.”

  It rambled on in the same vein for a couple more paragraphs.

  I passed the cutting back to Figgis.

  I said: “How did this get into the paper? You’d spot a libel like that within seconds of it hitting your desk.”

  Figgis avoided my eyes.

  He picked up a paperclip and bent it out of shape. Tossed it into his wastebasket. He glanced towards the window, then at the ceiling. There was something he didn’t want to tell me.

  He dragged his gaze back to the writ on his desk.

  “I was out of the office,” he said.

  “Business meeting?”

  “No.”

  “Day off?”

  “No.”

  “You were playing hooky.”

  Figgis’ thin lips compressed. It was the closest he ever came to embarrassment. He looked like a naughty boy caught with his hand in the sweetie jar.

  “If you want to put it like that.” He wagged a finger at me. “I expect you to keep that confidential, of course.”

  “Of course. But for my private interest, what were you doing?”

  “You don’t need to know that. What you should know is that we must clear up the libel problem quietly.”

  “You mean without His Holiness hearing about it?”

  Figgis nodded.

  Gerald Pope, the paper’s editor, was a patrician throwback to the age when the editor was a gentleman and everyone else on the paper was a prole. Pope had zero news sense. His idea of news was Alvar Lidell reading the Court Circular on the BBC’s Home Service. Pope had landed in the editor’s chair only because his father had known someone else’s father. Figgis had kept trouble, like libel, out of Pope’s way. So Pope trusted Figgis. As a result, Figgis was left to run the paper while Pope spent his time sending out memos about the correct use of the semicolon. Or whether there were too many black squares in the crossword puzzle. There was a thick file of the things on the bookshelf in the newsroom. Nobody ever read them.

  But if something happened which made His Holiness’ faith in Figgis waver, who knew what might happen? He might even decide to try running the paper himself. And then what?

  Après Figgis, le déluge.

  I said: “Does Pinker know a libel writ is heading his way?”

  Figgis reached for his ciggies, shook one out of the packet, and lit up.

  “He heard yesterday. He was in here like a quivering jelly. Talk about going to pieces. I thought he was going to end up as a stain on the carpet. I told him to say nothing. And I insisted he steered well clear of Bernstein.”

  “Will he?” I asked.

  “He’d better, if he knows what’s good for him. He should leave us to sort this mess out.”

  “Us?” I queried.

  Figgis took a drag on his fag and relaxed a little.

  “Why do you think I told you that story about the bull with no goolies? I sorted out that problem with Len Bryant. His Holiness was none the wiser. We – you and I - can do the same with Bernstein.”

  “I don’t even know Bernstein,” I said.

  “Then he won’t know what a crafty devil you are. You can sweet-talk him into withdrawing the writ.”

  “How?”

  “Offer him a flattering feature in the weekend supplement. Meet Mr Show Business. That kind of thing. You’ll have him drooling down his kipper tie.”

  “I might have him using it to throttle me.”

  “Then he’ll be on a murder charge and the writ will be forgotten.”

  I pushed back my chair and stood up.

  “And you’ll be without a crime reporter.”

  Figgis shrugged. “It’s a small price to pay,” he said.

  Fortunately, when a dead body turned up it wasn’t mine.

  Chapter 2

  I headed back into the newsroom trying to think of a way to get out of the job Figgis had just landed on me.

  Perhaps I could do what he’d just done. Hand it on to someone else. Trouble was, Figgis would only find out. Then he’d think up some fresh way to waste my time. Or he’d cavil about small items in my expenses. Or tell me to interview some duff old body with a dull mind and a monotone voice.

  Best just to get the job done.

  I hated having to sort out the mess created by someone else, but I didn’t have much choice. Figgis was right about keeping trouble away from Pope. There was no telling what he might do if he actually tried to edit the paper. We’d end up running front-page splashes about his wife’s charity tea parties.

  What made Pinker’s problem worse for me was the fact it involved theatricals. They flounced around and called each other “darling”. And they never paid for their round in the pub.

  I headed across the newsroom towards my desk. The place was gearing up for the first deadline of the day. Twenty journalists had their heads over typewriters and rattled out stories. The noise sounded like a machine-gun
attack.

  Cedric, the copy boy, drifted around the place. He had freckled cheeks and goofy teeth. He looked like a train-spotter but there were rumours he was ace at pulling the girls down at Sherry’s dance hall on a Saturday night.

  He walked up to me as I sat down.

  “Any copy for the subs, Mr Crampton?”

  “Not for the first edition, Cedric.”

  “We could do with one of your murders.”

  “I don’t commit them – I just report them. And, anyway, there’s not much chance of that.”

  Cedric ambled off across the room.

  I picked up a sheaf of press releases that had arrived overnight and stuffed them into my bin.

  I sat back and considered how I was going to tackle Bernstein.

  I thought Figgis’ idea that Bernstein would drop his libel writ in return for a flattering profile was a long-odds bet. I’d rather put my money on a three-legged nag in the Grand National. People don’t generally issue writs unless they intend to go through with them. Figgis had struck lucky with the farmer who owned the bull with no balls. Bernstein sounded like a tougher customer. As an agent, he’d be used to dealing with contracts. So he’d be in regular touch with lawyers. When it came to the law, he’d know which kind of case would fly and which would shrivel up and wither away.

  More than that, he was used to negotiating with theatre owners so he’d be familiar with the cut and thrust of deals. He’d know how far he could push someone. If it came to brinkmanship, I’d be dealing with an experienced operator who’d been to the brink and back more times than I’d cursed Frank Figgis.

  So before I set up a meeting with the man, I’d need some leverage. Something I could use to pressure him when the deal-making got tough. I was willing to bet that anybody who inhabited Bernstein’s world would have some skeletons they’d prefer to keep locked in their green rooms. I had to find one of those skeletons and rattle it in his face.