Andrea Frazer - Holmes and Garden 01 - The Curious Case of the Black Swan Song (2 page)

Inside, the voices were getting louder and louder, until he could discern exactly what was being said. One of the voices, the male one, stated, ‘How on earth do you know? It could be anybody, knowing what you’re like,’ in a loud and menacing growl.

The voice that evidently was a woman’s shrieked, ‘How can you say that? You know how careful I usually am, except for that one time.’

Tiptoeing backwards about thirty feet, he began to approach the room again scuffing the soles of his shoes loudly on the floor, stopped outside the door from which there now was no sound, cleared his throat in a rather overenthusiastic way, and raised his hand to knock at the door. He had to get downstairs soon. The situation was getting ridiculous, and he feared that, once down on the ground floor, he would never return to his wonderful new bright wardrobe, just waiting for the next stages of his metamorphosis.

Before his knuckles connected with wood, however, the door opened and the man he presumed might be the owner, whom he had already met at the reception desk, came out, carefully closing the door behind him. This man, red of face and stout of body with not as much hair as he had once had, beamed a smile at him, and, before Garden could talk to him, shot off in the direction from which Garden had come. Fat lot of help he was, thought Garden, but remembered that there was still someone else in whatever space lay behind that door, and he was determined to complete his mission, or he could be roaming the corridors of The Black Swan for the rest of his life.

Taking his courage in both hands, he raised one of them to the wood and actually knocked on it softly this time. The door opened with a decided creak, a small female face leaning round it to peer at him, as if answering the door of what was now evidently a linen cupboard was something she did on a regular basis and nothing untoward at all.

‘May I help you?’ she asked in a quiet feminine voice, and risked a small smile of encouragement.

‘I’m trying to make my way from room twenty-seven to the ground floor because I fancied a coffee, but by the time I find it, it’ll be well past lunchtime. Do you think you could help me?’

‘Of course, sir,’ she replied, leaving the linen cupboard and closing the door behind her. ‘If you’d like to follow me, I’ll take you down there. I’m due on duty any minute to serve morning coffee, so we might as well go together.’

At the foot of the stairs, thankfully back where he had started his bewildering adventure of orienteering in this place, she headed off behind the scenes, and Garden found himself listening to a large angry man, in full flow of complaint at the reception desk with the man who had just exited the linen cupboard whence his guide and saviour had been incarcerated just a few minutes ago.

‘I’m so terribly sorry, Mr Holmes. There must have been an unintentional mix-up with the room allocation. The man in the room next door to you should never have been given the keys to that room,’ he blustered, ‘He should have been allocated a room right at the other end of the hotel which is not fully occupied at the moment.

‘Please accept my sincerest apologies for this oversight, which will be rectified instantly. In fact, I, myself, will see to it that his bags are moved, and I shall leave the key to his new room here behind the desk for when he is ready to take occupation of it. Please accept my sincerest apologies. The woman on Reception while I was on a break seems to have made an unfortunate error.’

Mr Holmes? Garden was fascinated by the name of the man making the complaint. Why, he would’ve given the moon and the stars to have had such a surname; but, no, his family couldn’t even manage Watson. John H. Garden he was, always had been, and always would be, unless he had the guts to change his name by deed poll.

He’d been an avid reader of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories since he had been old enough to decipher them, and some of them he knew almost by heart. He must find an opportunity to speak to this chap to see if his name had been the instigator of a similar interest in him.

Maybe he could invite the man to join him for coffee, and just steer the conversation in that direction to see if he took the bait. Of his curious eavesdropping outside the first floor linen cupboard he gave not another thought, so distracted was he by his cunning plan to waylay a stranger and enquire into his reading habits.

The angry man with the oh-so-fascinating name made an abrupt turn of one hundred and eighty degrees and marched off in the direction from whence there flowed the delicious scent of coffee, and Garden, after giving him a lead of about thirty seconds, floated languidly after him, trying to appear cool and disinterested.

The Black Swan was a much-used meeting place for morning coffee and thus, most tables had at least one person sitting at them. Espying that Holmes, for the moment, sat at such a table, he approached rather diffidently and asked if he may sit down.

‘Help yourself, dear sir. This place does seem to be popular with the locals, doesn’t it; at least, I assume they’re locals. A lot of the guest rooms don’t seem to be occupied at the moment.’

‘Thank you,’ replied Garden, glad not to have been rebuffed. ‘I’m Garden, by the way; John H.’

A look of surprise crossed his new companion’s face and he exclaimed, ‘Good Lord! John H? Why, my name’s Holmes: Sherman Holmes. Not a perfect match, but a bit of a coincidence, don’t you think?’

Garden feigned delighted surprise. ‘How extraordinary!’ It looked like raising the subject of his obsession wasn’t going to be as difficult as it had first appeared to him. ‘I don’t suppose you are familiar with the works of the great Sir Arthur?’

‘Familiar? Why I could quote from a lot of his Sherlock Holmes stories. Are you, too, an aficionado?’

‘Obsessively! I say, what a lucky meeting this is turning out to be.’ Garden was ecstatic at finding such another as he, at least as far as taste in reading-matter was concerned.

‘That means we can have a good old yarn about what sounds like both our favourite subject, with no one rolling their eyes and yawning,’ suggested Holmes with a grin of pure joy.

‘You get that, too, do you? We’d best make the most of it while we can, then. What’s your favourite story? And do you like the other ones about the professor? And what about Sir Nigel?’

‘It’s Holmes all the way, for me, old son. I’m not into those other yarns – you know, like
The Poison Belt
; and Sir Nigel leaves me cold.
The Hound of the Baskervilles
 – that’s my favourite.’

‘Mine too!’ agreed Garden. ‘The atmosphere is so well described that you could actually be there.’

‘Couldn’t agree more. The Grimpen Mire and the swirling mists really get to me, every time I read it …’

The conversation carried on in this vein through a Danish pastry and two cups of coffee apiece. So engrossed was Garden that it was with only a languid interest that he noticed that their waitress was the young lady from the linen cupboard whom he had encountered earlier, in, to him, rather embarrassing circumstances.

As he was about to enter his thirties, he knew that the young were well-nigh impossible to embarrass, and just let the thought slip from his mind as he continued the (to him) fascinating conversation in which he had found himself happily involved, and when it had run its natural course, the two men turned to what the other was doing staying at The Black Swan.

‘After you, John H., if you don’t object to me addressing you as such,’ offered Holmes.

Turning pink with delight at this mode of address, Garden took a few seconds to think, then passed this opportunity over to his new friend. ‘You first, Holmes, as you are, after all, the senior partner.’

He felt a little frisson of fear that his reply may not be received in the manner in which it was intended, but he needn’t have worried. Holmes had no real confidantes, and was as happy to set his problem before a perfect stranger as he would have been to write to an agony aunt under an assumed name.

‘Righty ho! Here we go! I have come, unexpectedly, into a large sum of money. Don’t go blabbing this all over the hotel, for God’s sake. I don’t want people sucking up to me and asking for a loan, or trying to bum dinner off me.’ The man’s voice had dropped to a low volume.

‘Wouldn’t dream of it, Holmes. Go on.’

‘Well, I simply don’t know what to do with it. I don’t want to go mad and kick over the traces. Likewise, I’m bored to the back teeth with my job, and could do with escaping from the sheer grind of it. What to do, though? Should I just invest it and live off it? I’d die of boredom without some sort of shape to my day or week. What do you think, Garden?’

‘Have you not got any secret ambitions that you haven’t been able to achieve before? Something that you’ve always wanted to do and either never had the opportunity or the money?’

‘Funny you should mention that. There is something that I’ve dreamt about since I was a lad, but it’s too ridiculous even to contemplate,’ Holmes confessed, looking a little shame-faced.

‘Come on. You’ll probably never bump into me again. What can it hurt to confess your heart’s desire to me?’ Garden was overcome by an insatiable curiosity to get to the bottom of what this new acquaintance really wanted out of life.

‘It would sound too silly.’

‘As long as it’s not joining the Bluebell Girls and dancing the can-can in the Moulin Rouge, I can’t see that it would sound silly at all. You can trust me never to divulge a word of what you say to another living person.’

Amused by this entreaty to confide in Garden, Holmes looked him square in the eye, and began to explain his life-long, if rather impossible, dream. ‘Well, I’ll tell you; and that’s probably purely because of your name and our similar interest. I’ve always wanted to be a consulting detective like the great fictional character himself. I suppose today, the equivalent would be opening a private detective agency, but who on earth would need my services?’

‘What a simply sumptuous idea! How on earth can you resist, if you’ve now got the wherewithal?’

‘I’d feel such a fool when people found out what I was giving up a regular wage for.’ Holmes was an extremely conventional and conservative man.

‘So what! Not many people get to follow their dream, and if you have the opportunity and let it slip through your fingers, then more fool you.’

‘You think so?’ Garden had certainly given Holmes pause for thought.

‘Absolutely! At least you have a way out of your humdrum existence. I’m trapped in mine and am determined to change my life, but it would probably destroy me financially and socially, and I’d have to go crawling back to Mother with my tail between my legs like a whipped puppy.’

‘What on earth is it you want to do? Win the
X-Factor
?’ asked Holmes, who wasn’t totally alienated from the vicarious life of the twenty-first century: it was just that he preferred to spend as much time as he could in the Edwardian era.

‘Are you mad? No, of course not.’ Here, Garden’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I’m not gay and I’m not a transsexual, but I am a transvestite – that means I like to wear feminine attire. I just feel comfortable in women’s clothes and I want to come out of the closet, but I live at home with mother, and she’d have a conniption and probably throw me out on the street, or tell me it’s just a phase I’m going through. But it’s not. I’ve known since I was a child that there was something different about me: I just couldn’t get a handle on what it was until I approached puberty. Then when I did realise, I remembered all those cruel remarks my mother had made over the years about gay people and cross-dressers, and how disgusting they were – perverts to a man.’

‘God! You are in a hole, aren’t you?’

‘If I come out, I might get thrown out. And the place I work in is full of intolerance of anyone who doesn’t conform to what they deem to be normal. They couldn’t use my ‘hobby’ as a reason to sack me, but they’d set something up so that they could get rid of me. So, you see my quandary? If I want to be who I really am, I have to give up home, job, and family. And I don’t really have any friends, because I don’t have anything in common with the people I come into contact with in my daily round.’

Holmes stood abruptly, announced that he needed time to think, and made as if to leave the table. Garden suddenly felt both dejected and rejected. Here, he had poured his heart out to a total stranger, and he had been rebuffed. Maybe the man thought he was making some sort of a pass at him, although he had explained that he was ‘straight’. Whatever it was, he was quitting and going elsewhere to find company.

‘Meet me here for dinner tonight,’ said Holmes in a strangely strangled voice. ‘Eight o’clock, if that would be convenient. I believe we have more to discuss, and the break will give me time to think things through.’

With a slight lifting of his spirits, Garden realised that his misgivings had been misplaced, and wondered what on earth the older man would have to say when they met again later that day.

Chapter Two
Still Friday

Holmes took himself off into the sunshine that was so rare a commodity at the moment, and took a stroll down the main street that led from The Black Swan through a street of shops which was separated by long, wide flower beds that bisected the road into two separate carriageways. At the point where the two carriageways became one, the last obstruction to their union was a church that sat facing the more secular way of life at the hotel.

The flowers in the long beds were in bloom, if a little battered by recent inclement weather, and made a bright slash of colour through the two rows of retail establishments. Holmes selected the carriageway to his right for the first section of his walk.

He had no inclination to buy anything, rather to turn his little window-shopping exercise into what would really be thinking time. Having finally expressed his situation to another human being, he needed time to ponder whether this experience had made any impression on the way he had previously viewed his circumstances, and realised that it did.

Because it had been vocalised, it now didn’t seem such a madcap idea to throw up everything that until now had ruled his life, and throw his hat into the ring to see where fate led him. After all, he chided himself, you only live once, and if he passed up a chance like this, he might spend the rest of his life regretting it. Also, why put off until later what you could put into motion now?

If he took the chance now and it didn’t work, he would have sufficient capital to pursue, perhaps, setting up another Sherlock Holmes society and mixing with like-minded people all the time. If he took the chance and it did work – well, he’d be in heaven, wouldn’t he? Without even trying to rationalise the mechanics of realising his dream, he realised that he would probably now go ahead with it, just for the hell of it.

His conversation with that young man earlier had really galvanised his spirits. If Mr Garden – John H., as he had already begun to think of him – could face the tricky choices that life had bowled at him, then he, Holmes, had no reason for anguish and worry about what was a godsend, in the shape of his inheritance.

He was finally resolved. He would do it, and to hell with the consequences. And he might even be able to help out John H., who had been instrumental in him reaching this previously unlikely of solutions.

Arriving abruptly at the church, he stilled his pace and took a little trip up its steps and inside. He had no real idea what he felt about religion, but if anything other-worldly had been involved in guiding his steps to meeting the other man, it was certainly an occasion to give thanks, and he offered them now, to whoever or whatever may have been responsible, without his knowledge or comprehension.

John Garden sat on at the table which Holmes had just vacated and stared into space for quite a while, absent-mindedly ordering another pastry and coffee while he lost himself in thought. In his opinion, Holmes had no problem whatsoever. He should just go for what he thought was right for him. He, Garden, on the other hand, didn’t have the backing of a whacking great inheritance to bolster up his situation, and although life was going to get very rocky for him for a while, after he had announced his intentions of being himself and not the man every other person in his life wanted and expected him to be, he’d probably live through it. Even his declaration for the love of colour in the guise of his new wardrobe would mark him out as different.

He’d had enough of being his mother’s prize possession, and being at the beck and call of her whims over the years. He’d had enough of being a figure of fun in the office. No one ever said anything to his face, of course, but he had been aware for some time of sniggers behind his back, and disapproving faces made as he left a room or a meeting.

He’d booked this break when he’d had an almost overwhelming urge to wear a red silk dress into the office, and that simply would not do without a plan in place for how he would move forward.

All in all, he’d just had enough! He was going to do what he had intended to do as soon as this little visit was over, and the other people in his life could like it or lump it. If he ended up jobless and homeless, at least he would be being true to his inner self, and not pandering to other people’s images of him.

He left the residents’ lounge a resolute man, grabbed a newspaper from the reception desk, and walked outside to have a quiet read and a cigarette in peace. Let the world go screw itself. He was John H. Garden, and he would
not
conform to a way of life that was a lie. He would be his true self from now on, and see how that felt for the first time ever.

Sherman Holmes exited the church, absent-mindedly lighting his pipe, and began to make his way down the shop fronts on the other side of the flowers, glancing in shop windows as he walked, but taking little in. It was a good feeling to have at last made a decision about his future, but it wasn’t long before he stopped dead in front of an empty plate-glass window and stared inside with a feeling of rising excitement.

The unit was empty and had a ‘For Let’ sign in its window. The estate agent’s address was one that he knew was situated just across the road, because he had meandered past it at the beginning of his walk. What if? he thought, and smiled below his rather fine moustache. What if I just went and did it? He must find out whether the property was on a long or a short lease, whether it was just the shop frontage, or whether there was any accommodation provided with it. It was something he could achieve immediately, and he crossed the road, using a little pedestrian path that intersected the flower beds, to achieve this purpose.

Not that he wanted to move from his present apartment at 21B Quaker Street in Farlington Market, but it would be nice just to know the details. No, he was highly delighted with the address he had managed to obtain after selling the family house and finding a little hideaway for himself. It might not quite be 221B or Baker Street, but it had a nice ring to it, and was the closest he would ever achieve locally as an homage to his fictional hero.

The apartment itself was ground floor; one of three which had been converted from the large Victorian villa it had been built as. As the ground-floor tenant, he had garden access, a lovely drawing room, and two large bedrooms.

The name of the street was as a result of the Quaker meeting house that used to stand at one end of it, but had been so neglected as to fall into complete disrepair, with no clamour of local residents to fight for its rehabilitation. It had been demolished in the sixties, as had so many things that would never be seen again, but the road had kept its name, much to the pleasure of Sherman, who now made his home there.

Tapping out his pipe and returning it to his pocket, he entered the estate agent’s office with a determination either to achieve his dream or die in the attempt.

Meanwhile, Garden had read as much of his newspaper as he desired and decided that it might be a good idea to go back up to his room to freshen up before lunch. That meant, however, finding his way to said room again, and it was with a feeling of trepidation that he re-entered the hotel and stared around the entrance hall. Which way should he try this time?

With a decisive nod of his head, he turned right and walked down a corridor that looked promising, but the ancient place worked its black magic on him again, and he found himself in a cul-de-sac on the first floor which ended in what had presumably been the boot boy’s room.

It was little more than a large cupboard, but lying inside, curled up on a discarded blanket, was a black miniature poodle, snoozing contentedly in the quiet.

Garden had an affection for domestic creatures and immediately approached the animal, intent on petting it and gaining its approval of his attention. With a wistful smile on his face, he stretched out a hand towards the poll of tightly curled fur, then screamed in pain as a mouthful of tiny teeth bit their way into the flesh of the ball of his thumb.

Retreating from the dog, he looked again, and it seemed still to be peacefully asleep. Now, Garden wasn’t a man who learnt life’s lessons easily, hence his problems with life in general and, trying again hopefully, the dog really did a number on him, managing to nip several of his fingers and produce some nasty scratches on his wrist that bled copiously onto the cuff of his new shirt – one of the jewel-bright ones that he had bought especially for this important weekend of decision.

Wincing with pain, and shock that such a tiny creature could inflict so much damage in so little time, he thrust his damaged hand into his mouth, and pulled at the cuff of his shirt-sleeve to try to avoid it getting too badly stained. While he was thus employed, a voice from behind him said, ‘Naughty Sinatra! Don’t be so horrid to the poor man,’ and the young woman who had allotted him his room entered the restricted space, snatched up the creature, and pulled it to her breast to hug it.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she apologised, not looking in the least sorry, ‘but what on earth are you doing in here?’

‘I’m looking for my room,’ he explained, wondering why this creature had mauled him so.

‘Well, it’s certainly not in here. And don’t look so persecuted. He does that to everyone – except me. He’s my little baby and he knows it,’ she explained. ‘Now, what’s your room number?’

She conducted him to the door of his room on a route which contained only one flight of stairs and a couple of turns, and left him outside it, trying to manipulate his key without damaging his hand any further. This weekend wasn’t going exactly as he’d planned it.

The only good thing that had happened so far was that he had definitely made up his mind about his future. Oh, and meeting that man Holmes, of course; although he probably wouldn’t want to know him any more after what he had confessed this morning, even if he had made a date for dinner with him. He probably wouldn’t show up.

Going into his bathroom, he washed and attended to his injuries, then placed his stained shirt in the bag he had brought with him to hold dirty laundry. It didn’t seem to matter how positive you felt, he thought, life always had some other way of kicking you in the balls that you hadn’t even considered.

He eventually had lunch served to him in his room, not being able to face the trek into
terra incognita
that he would have to make to gain either the formal dining room or the more relaxed one in which he had had coffee earlier on the ground floor. The rest of the afternoon he spent re-affirming his new course in life.

What were a few little nips from a tiny dog compared with what carrying on as he had been was concerned? He was more determined than ever to be true to himself, although he felt rather shivery whenever he contemplated a life of unemployment and homelessness. He could just be making himself a social leper.

Dammit! This was wishy-washy thinking, and it would not do. He’d go down for dinner this evening to meet that man Holmes, and if he was at all disparaging, he would just throw his drink in his face and walk away. No one was going to bully him or intimidate him ever again (although he didn’t, of course, believe this deep down).

When he finally emerged from his room again, he was a glorious vision in a hot pink shirt and purple trousers, the very epitome of a fuchsia flower. His tie was lime green, as were his gloriously luxurious silk socks, and he felt a million dollars again. His hand was a sea of sticking plasters, but a well-known medicated cream had taken the sting out of his injuries, and he looked forward to the evening, in the hope that his companion of earlier was actually awaiting him downstairs.

Following a guest from the same corridor, he made his way down to the ground floor without a hitch, and turned towards the bar. It was only seven forty-five, and Holmes would be in the bar if he were to show up at all. And there he was, sitting at a table by himself, looking at what were, if he was not mistaken, estate agent’s property details.

As he approached the table, Holmes raised a hand in greeting and waved at a chair for Garden to join him. He was smiling and evidently at his ease, so all Garden’s worry about the other man’s disapproval had been for nothing.

‘Take a seat, Garden. I’ve made my decision, and I’d like your opinion on what I intend to do. What will you take to drink?’

‘Campari and soda, please,’ replied Garden, sliding into a chair and letting his eyes stray again to the sheets of paper in front of his companion.

Holmes ordered the drink then turned to the information in front of him. ‘I’ve had a little gander round the town this afternoon, and I’ve seen what looks like the ideal office for a small private detective’s business: straight out of the hotel, go down the left-hand side of the flower beds, and it’s about halfway between here and the church – the place with the “for rent” sign in the window.

‘I’ve made an appointment to view for tomorrow afternoon, and I wondered if you would be so kind as to accompany me to give me your opinion on its suitability.’

‘Ra-ther! So you’ve actually made your decision? You lucky dog.’

‘Thanks. I think so too. Now all we’ve got to do is sort out your problem, and we can get on with the lives we’d prefer to live, instead of the one’s we’ve let ourselves get stuck with.

‘If you’ve really got a problem about where to live after ’fessing up to your mother, you can always come and stay at my apartment. I’ve got a spare bedroom, and you’d be welcome to bunk there for a while until you get yourself sorted out.’

‘How generous of you. That, in fact, makes my decision a little easier. If I’ve got somewhere to go, I can get this thing over with knowing I won’t be left to live in a cardboard box in the gutter, which my mother will probably think is the best place for me after what I’m going to tell her.’

‘That’s a little melodramatic, don’t you think?’ opined Holmes, as the waiter placed their drinks in front of them.

‘You haven’t met my mother.’

‘She can’t be that bad.’

‘She isn’t. She’s even worse. Now, what time’s your appointment tomorrow?’

‘I’m due at the estate agent’s about three o’clock.’