Andrea Frazer - Holmes and Garden 01 - The Curious Case of the Black Swan Song (3 page)

‘I’ll meet you in Reception – provided I can find it – at two-thirty, then, and you can show me where it is before we collect the keys.’

‘Having a bit of bother finding your way around this warren?’ asked Holmes, with a small smile.

‘You can say that again. I feel just like Theseus in that Cretan labyrinth. I would leave a trail of crumbs, but I think the management may object. And I think I may have found the Minotaur in the shape of a vicious toy poodle that seems to reside in the old boot room.’

‘Ah, that would explain all the sticking plasters on your hands,’ Holmes said with satisfaction, another minor mystery having just been solved.

‘Little sod had a right go at me when I was getting lost looking for my room. And you’ll never guess what the little bugger was called? Sinatra! If only I had a pair of gauntlets with me, I’d throttle the little so-and-so. And I got blood all over my nice new clothes, too.’

‘Never mind. The blood will wash out in cold water, and your hands will heal. There are much more important things afoot for both of us. Shall we go through to dinner, as we’ve finished our drinks, and you can take a look at these commercial property details?’ Holmes spoke the last three words almost with glee.

‘Actually, I’m starving. It must be all this emotional turmoil.’

When they had eaten, they sipped their coffee and discussed the suitability of the local premises, then Garden expressed his desire to go outside and have a smoke. The evening was warm, and smoking was absolutely forbidden inside the hotel.

‘Splendid idea,’ agreed Holmes, with enthusiasm. ‘I’ll just nip up to my room to get my pipe. You toddle on out and park yourself on a bench, and I’ll catch up with you in a couple of shakes of a lamb’s tail.’

‘It’s not a meerschaum, is it?’

‘’Fraid not. Can’t stand the sight or the feel of the stuff. No, I’m afraid I favour the model smoked by Basil Rathbone in his film portrayals of the great man.’

As they both rose from the table, the differences in their height became pronounced. While sitting down they had appeared of similar height, Holmes, a rather portly figure, proved to be of just less-than-average height, but long in the body. Garden, who was short in the body but stood at exactly five feet eleven inches, was decidedly long of leg, and towered over his companion from across the table.

They were, in fact, not just different in age-group, Holmes being a good twenty or more years the senior, but very different in their outward appearance. Whereas Garden had a long, thin face and very thick, wavy brown hair – now spiked with gel – Holmes had what might have been described as a ‘chrome dome’.

He had hair only round the sides and back of his head. From his forehead to back beyond where his crown would have been there was hardly a follicle to be seen. He had inherited his male pattern baldness from his father who, since he was in his twenties, had divided his hair in a parting just above his left ear, and combed the strands from this side, which he had allowed to grow long, in a sad little brilliantined comb-over.

His son scorned this overt sign of being ‘in denial’ about his lack of hair, and always instructed his barber that he required ‘a short back and sides: nothing off the top’. This was the cue for the barber to give a polite little titter, to acknowledge his customer’s wit, although the routine was wearing thin after so many years.

Holmes made his way to the stairs to collect his oh-so-non-PC smoking gear and consequently it was Garden who heard the harsh voices emanating from the kitchen as he searched for the doors to the rear of the property.

‘But it’s bland, dated, and, frankly, unappetising,’ shouted a voice he had not heard before.

‘Who do you think you are, you jumped up little burger-griller? Who owns this place, you or me? I decide the menu and you cook it. Understand?’

‘But we get so many plates returned hardly touched.’

‘Nonsense! The locals love our food. Do you pay the bills for this place?’

‘Of course I don’t, but I could make it more profitable if only you’d let me be a bit more creative.’

‘The locals like our fare, and I won’t be swayed by a couple of dim guests who don’t know good food when it’s served to them.’

‘They would, if only you’d let me cook it.’

‘Terry, unless you drop this matter once and for all, you’ll be getting your P45 sooner than you think.’

‘Just you try it. I’ll be off to a tribunal quicker than you could say “salmonella”.’

‘Don’t push me too far.’

At that moment, the owner, Berkeley Bellamy, shouldered his way through the swing door and stormed off in the direction of the bar. Oo-er, thought Garden. He wasn’t the only one with unresolved troubles.

Chapter Three
Still Friday

While back in his room, Holmes took advantage of the situation and ‘used the powder room’, then spent a good ten minutes searching for his tobacco pouch and pipe, which had mysteriously been hiding in his sponge bag.

On a bench in the garden, Garden was by now on his second cigarette and just enjoying the peaceful ambience of the place.

As Holmes exited his room, he caught movement out of the corner of his eye, and turned just in time to see a pair of shod feet shoot through an open window, to be followed by a cry of extreme anguish, a rather nasty squishing sound, then silence. He did not see anyone disappearing down the nearby flight of stairs, but he did become aware of a woman with a large, hairy mole on her face, leaning over his shoulder and breathing rather heavily into his ear.

‘Did you do this, madam?’ he asked, as much for something to say rather than in genuine interrogation, withdrawing his head from the open window to remove the dreadful sight below from his gaze.

‘I certainly did not,’ was the reply he received, with a little ‘hmph!’ of indignation. ‘My name is Mrs Margery Maitland and I am the chairwoman of the Ladies’ Guild. The committee is meeting in the guest library – often used for such purposes – and I just came out to see why our refreshments haven’t arrived. They’re over a quarter of an hour late, which is a very shoddy way to treat regular clientele.’

‘I couldn’t agree more, madam. Do excuse me, please,’ spake Holmes, and made his way swiftly downstairs, after eying the bottom of the sash window, which was wide open.

Meanwhile, Garden had just been lighting his third cigarette, having got up to stretch his legs, when something big and heavy whizzed past his right ear, wailing, there was a very unpleasant sound, rather as if someone had dropped an over-ripe water melon from a great height, and suddenly his trousers had some very dark stains on them, and his shoes had some adornments of a pinky-grey stuff that definitely wasn’t part of their design.

As Holmes had looked out of the window above, the young man gracefully folded in half and drifted down into a flower bed, dead to the world.

When Garden returned to his senses, he was lying on a Chesterfield sofa in the bar, Holmes sat in an upright chair beside him, a concerned frown on his face. ‘I say, old man, it was lucky you didn’t knock yourself unconscious. If you’d fallen the other way, you’d have landed in the rockery and could have given yourself a nasty crack on the head.’

‘What happened?’ asked Garden, then memory returned, and he made an unpleasant retching sound in his throat before asking, in a somewhat husky voice, for a glass of water.

‘The owner of the hotel went out of the window near my room, and it sounds like he narrowly missed landing on your head. You could probably do with a stiff brandy and a nice cup of sweet tea as well,’ advised Holmes, given furiously to think about remedies for shock.

‘I’d rather just have the water, and perhaps someone to take my trousers to the dry cleaner’s, and maybe sponge off my shoes.’ Garden’s face, which had been returning to something like its regular colour, blanched again as he remembered his shoes; his lovely new Italian shoes that he was wearing for the first time tonight. Looking fearfully down his body, he became aware that he was no longer wearing them.

‘I took them off you and sent them to be cleaned up,’ admitted Holmes. ‘I hope that’s alright.’

‘Heroic in the extreme, although I don’t think I can bring myself to wear them again. Is there any chance you could help me to my room so that I can get off these soiled trousers?’ In retrospect, he recognised this as a good wheeze, to be led to his room and not to have to spend forty-five minutes looking for it, being savaged by what was probably a rabid poodle on the journey, all the time having to tolerate these disgustingly blood-stained trousers.

‘The only thing I can think to do with them is burn them. I’ll never be able to look at them again without thinking of what I saw …’

Holmes, who did
not
have difficulty with directions, led his new acquaintance with unerring instinct straight to his room which, for a few moments, made Garden feel very inferior, then his attention was grabbed by a ‘Do not disturb’ sign on the door of the room next to his. Someone else must have booked in, so he might, in the future, have someone he could follow downstairs when he wanted the bar or the formal dining room.

Once inside, Holmes still with him to see him safely down again, Garden removed the offending trousers and held them out between finger and thumb, almost as if he were using a pair of tongs, and dropped them straight into the waste paper basket.

‘Aren’t you going to have them cleaned, then?’ his companion asked.

‘Absolutely not! I would be like Lady Macbeth, always conscious that I – and only I – could still see the stains. I can’t be doing with wearing a pair of trousers which would make me continually think, “Out, out damned spot”. No, no, even though they’re brand new, I simply can’t face the things again. They’ll be for ever haunted. I’ll have to replace them.’

‘Someone called the police while you were still in your swoon,’ commented Holmes, more for something to say rather than for any other reason. Just what did one talk about when he was waiting for another man to put on a clean pair of trousers? If Garden ever got in the swing of his new life, he’d have to ask him.

‘They’ll need to speak to both of us, I fear, as the poor man landed right beside you, and I actually witnessed his feet going out through the window. There was also some woman there, although I can’t remember her name, now. I’ll have to mention that as well, of course.’

Garden was now, once more decently attired, and he turned to Holmes and declared, ‘Here we are, just met, and we’re already involved in a suspicious death. How’s that for a coincidence?’

‘Remarkable,’ Holmes replied, his moustache twitching with excitement. ‘I was going to ask you this tomorrow but, given what has happened, I think it would be better if I asked you now.’

‘Asked me what?’

‘How would you like to go into business with me as my partner in the private detective business? It could solve all your problems at one fell swoop. You could leave your job to work on this new one, and the flat above the shop could be made habitable – if it isn’t so at the moment – for you to live in, and you could bunk in with me in the meantime.’

‘Holmes, you’re an absolute marvel. I say, will you come with me when I break things to Mother?’

‘Of course I will, old man. A domineering mother is a fearsome creature to face down.’

‘You’re a gem. I suppose we’d better be getting back down to the bar again. If this is going to be our first case, then we don’t want to miss any of the action or the gossip.’

‘I hadn’t thought of that. Of course, we won’t be paid for solving this death, but it would be a jolly good dry run for both of us, if you don’t think that sounds too indecent in the light of the fact that a man lost his life here today.’

‘Not at all. If we’re going to be professionals, then we need to act in a professional manner, and that does not include squeamishness.’ A fleeting memory of what had actually occurred earlier on passed through Garden’s mind, and he blanched at the thought, thinking that he’d have to work on this aspect of what was to be his new career.

‘If we go back via my room, I have a couple of small notepads with me that I thought I might need for jotting down the pathways of my decision process, but it looks like that is already done and dusted for both of us, so we can use them for making case notes in.’

‘I say, how thrilling this all seems. I can’t believe my luck,’ chuckled Garden, rubbing his hands together and feeling back on form.

‘Neither can I, young man,’ agreed Holmes, similarly chafing his palms together. ‘I get the feeling that we’re going to get on like a house on fire.’

Back downstairs once more, the police were in evidence and they were taping off the scene outside, although interviewing had not started. The place was humming as news travels fast in a small town and nobody wanted to be left out of this
outré
occasion. The ladies of the guild had come downstairs to join the merry throng, and were having their refreshments served to them at the tables in the informal restaurant area of the bar. There were currently no seats available, so the two newly arrived men pushed their way through to the bar itself to order a drink.

As they elbowed their way through the crowd, there was a bright call of, ‘Yoo-hoo!’ and Holmes turned his head to identify the woman whom he had found looking over his shoulder when their host had, literally, dived out of the window outside his bedroom. She was beaming a smile of welcome and waving frantically for him to join them.

Garden also looked over at the woman beckoning to his companion, and offered to go to the bar while Holmes went over to see if he could secure them a seat with the ladies. ‘What can I get you?’ he asked.

‘Make it a pint of bitter. This is a great chance for us to question that woman. I met her upstairs, you know, when our host went diving. She said she was with some women’s group or other for a meeting, so we’ll get the chance to pick all of their brains about the deceased.’

‘Excellent idea, Holmes. I’ll join you as soon as I can get served, although I’m fairly unnoticeable in a crowd.’

‘Not in those clothes you won’t be,’ replied Holmes, before slapping a smile of welcome across his face and heading off towards the tables of ladies with determination in his stride. Holmes and Garden – Private Investigators, were just about to commence investigations on their first case.

When Garden got served, which he noticed he did with remarkable swiftness exactly according to his new partner’s prediction, he made his way over to where Holmes was now seated amongst a herd of middle-aged and elderly women, rather like a short-sighted sultan who had either chosen unwisely when filling his harem, or hadn’t traded in any of the older models for younger ones over the years.

There were half a dozen of these women, three of them crying into handkerchiefs. Another had a face of thunder as she sipped bitterly at her glass with tight lips, and two of them were whispering, heads together, about something that they didn’t want to share with their companions.

‘Ah, there you are, Garden. Allow me to introduce you to the members of the local ladies’ guild, who were having a meeting in the hotel tonight. Ladies, this is John H. Garden, my new business associate with whom I shall soon be taking up offices in your fair town.’

One by one, they recovered their manners and held out hands of welcome to the newcomer.

‘Margery Maitland, head of the Ladies’ Guild. Delighted to meet you’ – this was the lady who looked so discontented.

‘Lesley Piper, but do call me Lebs. Everyone else does’ – one of the ones that was in whispered conversation.

‘Marion Guest. I’m known as Mabs’ – the other secret talker.’

‘Millicent Fitch. Pleased to make your acquaintance’ – one of the ladies who had been crying.

‘Agatha Crumpet, Mr Garden’ – another weeper.

‘Anna Merrilees. Delighted, I’m sure’ – another one with a handful of handkerchief.

Garden put the drinks he was carrying down on the table while he shook all the hands offered to him, and some of the ladies grabbed a spare chair which had gone unnoticed and made room for him to join them.

‘What sort of business are you in together?’ asked Margery Maitland, almost challengingly, then looked round her as if to confirm that she could talk on topics other than the death of the hotel’s owner this difficult evening.

‘I’d rather not disclose that at this juncture, if you don’t mind, my dear lady. Arrangements are at present at a very delicate stage.’

Nice one, thought Garden. They’d only seen fit to agree to a partnership a very short time ago, and Holmes hadn’t even looked round the office premises out of which he proposed they should work. He only hoped he was right that there was a decent flat upstairs, or he’d be in a right pickle. Still, the man was long on imagination and short on the truth when he considered himself to be on a case, which was a good sign.

Garden was a bit of a babbler usually, and realised he would have to curb the enthusiasm with which he distributed details about himself to others – except about the things that really mattered. He’d talk happily for hours about music or books, especially those by his hero, Sir Arthur, and about any television programmes or films that he had enjoyed, but he’d better start to clam up now in case he let something slip. Here was another way in which he had to become a totally new person.

When he tuned back into conversation going on around the table, he became aware that Holmes had evidently gained their confidence, and was now engaged in drawing their life stories out of them. Clever man.

Margery Maitland seemed to be talking only about the guild of which she was head honchette. She made no mention of any family, the only other person being named in her tale that of the owner of The Black Swan, whom he gathered had rejoiced in the name of Berkeley Bellamy. What a mouthful.

Her view of him was through a very jaundiced eye, for she clearly had despised the man. ‘He was so coarse and common, yet you’d be surprised what a position he holds – held – in Hamsley Black Cross. He is – 
was
 – on the parish council, a school governor, although what the man knew about education is anybody’s guess – he wasn’t one of life’s brightest lights as far as intellectual capacity went …’

God, she did – had – her knife into him, and Garden wondered what heinous sin he had committed to bring down such wrath and loathing on himself. She had been interrupted now, however, by three voices eager to speak in his defence.

Anna Merrilees cried out in outrage that such things were being said about the so recently deceased, and pointed out that Berkeley had been a man who looked after his guests well, whether residential or local, and always offered good value for money. He’d even allowed his premises to be used for charitable events in the past.

‘But never, I noticed, offered to donate even a percentage of the bar takings,’ interjected Margery, with a malicious smile on her face. Good heavens, the woman was practically dripping venom from her dentures.