Andrea Frazer - Holmes and Garden 01 - The Curious Case of the Black Swan Song (8 page)

Chapter Nine
Sunday

When Holmes came down for breakfast the next morning, the place was buzzing with news of yet another tragedy, and the police were attending in full force. Heading for the hub of gossip at this time of day: the restaurant part of the bar, he sat down and ordered a pot of Darjeeling and a full breakfast, before enquiring of the waitress what on earth was afoot now.

‘It’s that Tiffany Jacques. One of the chambermaids went to get fresh linen from the cupboard and, when she opened the door, Tiffany just fell out on top of her. She had hysterics.’

‘I’m not surprised. Would that be the linen press near room thirteen?’

‘That’s the one, sir. She was a right one, was our Tiff, especially where men were concerned. I ran along there when I heard the screaming, and helped lay her body on its back. Well, I don’t think I’m telling tales out of school if I say it was obvious she had been wearing loose clothes to try to conceal the fact that she was pregnant. It was just starting to show.’

‘Has anybody any idea who the father might be?’

‘No one even knew she was up the duff. That’s about the only thing she’s managed to keep quiet in I don’t know how long. Do you want lemon or milk with your tea, sir?’

‘Milk, please, and thank you for the information. I wondered what all the fuss was about.’

Garden entered the dining room from an exterior door and sat down opposite him. ‘Thank God you’re up,’ he sighed.

‘Why, have you been up long?’

‘Just a bit longer than I would have liked to be. They’d only gone and forgotten to move that blasted piper, and it was “Mull of Kintyre” at half past seven. I put the radio on as loud as I could and had a long, hot shower, then I went outside for a couple of cigarettes before coming in to look for you.’

‘How are you feeling this morning?’

‘Much better, thank you, Holmes. I say, have you heard all this to-do about the maid who was found bolt upright in one of the linen cupboards?’

‘The waitress just told me. My mother always said things come in threes.’

At the word ‘mother’, Garden visibly winced and coloured a bit. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that,’ Holmes promptly apologised. ‘Let’s change the subject back to the murders. There have been three now, and I find that rather excessive in such a short time. They must be connected, and it’s our job to find out what the common denominator is.’ Holmes was sounding determined now.

‘When we’ve eaten, I think. Walls have ears, and a bench outside would probably be the most private we can attain, given the number of people careering round the corridors today,’ replied Garden, signalling for the waitress to come and take his order.

Once outside with their respective smokes, Holmes announced a change of plan. ‘I believe that, at this stage, there is not enough accurate gossip circulating. The police are the only ones getting the good information, and people are too shocked yet to chatter about things and trivialise events a bit so that they can come to terms with what has happened.

‘I suggest that we view the offices again today and perhaps design some advertising and stationery. We will also need a receptionist if we’re to have any time to work on cases, and we must give some consideration to the impression we need to make on a public embarrassed about having cause to use our services that will be reassuring but confident. We can’t have some flibbertigibbet of a girl. We need a mature woman.’

‘Don’t you think we’d be better off trying to extract information from people?’

‘No, I don’t. I think this case is going to be like home-made soup – better if it’s left to mature for a couple of days, to allow all the flavours to come out. If we throw ourselves into it too soon, we’ll just get hearsay and conjecture. If we wait, some of the truth will, by natural order, bubble to the surface, because people, no matter how hard they try, can’t keep things to themselves.’

‘But Holmes always said there was no time to lose.’

‘Sherlock Holmes was fictional. We are real, and real life is never like fiction. If fiction read like real life, nobody would ever read it – there’s too much trivia and time-wasting going on, and too many dead ends.’

‘In that case I’ll find time to draft a letter of resignation. I can’t face going back to working in that office.’

‘I think I’ll join you in that task, John H. I’m of a like mind, and wish to get on with my new life – our new lives – as quickly as possible. There should be no problem with the lease, and we want to get advertising out into the community as quickly as possible. People may only make a note of our details until they need it, and business may be slow at first, but the sooner we make our presence known, the sooner pens will be noting down our number.’

‘When should we go through what we already know? God, I’m so excited. This is the most bizarre thing that has ever happened to me, and I think it’s fantastic.’

‘Ditto, Garden. I think sometime tomorrow would be a good time to see what we already have, then consider how we’re going to extract more information from those who may be involved or may have witnessed something.’

Garden borrowed a tape-measure when they were ready to leave the hotel – being determined to measure up for curtains, etc., Holmes having phoned the agency to ascertain that they could pick up the keys. This being England, almost everywhere
was
open on a Sunday, especially estate agents, car salesrooms, and DIY outlets, catering for when people were free to visit their establishments.

Today, the premises seemed even more suitable. Time had given the layout the opportunity to gel in their minds, and identify itself as perfect for the sort of business they wanted to run, with the bonus of the upstairs flat, not only for accommodation for Garden, but also as extra security. After all, once they were established, the offices would hold files of confidential material on their clients and, hopefully, the presence of somebody in the upstairs flat would deter intruders.

John H. fussed around working out where he could store the respective male and female halves of his wardrobe, and chattered merrily away about how useful his predilection for female attire would be should it be necessary to adopt a disguise for investigations.

Holmes merely nodded. The other man was happy, but he really couldn’t foresee a situation where he would be at ease going about in public with his partner dressed as a woman. It was inadvisable, though, to quash such zest and enthusiasm, and he had a feeling time would temper this more to reality.

Although he had never seen John H. dressed in such a manner, Holmes was unsure of his own reaction to such an occurrence, and could not reliably predict what he would look like. It could go either way. He could look just like any other man dressed up as a woman and living a double life – or he could look like his mother. This was a thought that Holmes stifled immediately, as he had by now decided that Mummy Dearest was a very attractive woman, and indeed was already coming to a momentous decision about Mrs Garden.

It was something about which he was currently very uncomfortable putting to his new partner, but the idea refused to go away, and seemed the perfect solution, even if only temporary, to the circumstances in which they currently found themselves. Holmes made little harrumphing noises of discomfort, and got on with drafting his letter of resignation. Time enough the next day to broach what was becoming a very good plan in his own mind.

Garden, meanwhile, carried on with his exciting moving-in plans, his mind a whirl of other thoughts as well, of which only one concerned Holmes’ soft spot for his resident cat. Damned great wild animal, he thought, as a vision of Colin, all claws and teeth, entered his mind. He’s bigger than a lot of dogs I’ve known. How could the man be taken in by such a monster?

Maybe the cat really was nervous, and didn’t understand that he was actually causing pain? He was sure they’d get used to each other during his temporary occupation of the spare room, and that some sort of truce could be arranged. Garden may have liked animals, but he didn’t know them very well.

The other thing that was ringing a tiny bell at the back of his head, making itself heard above the buzz of excitement, was Holmes’ eagerness to just abandon their investigation and get on with plans for the office. Surely three murders were more important than desks and chairs? A tiny chill ran through him as he wondered if Holmes was really serious about this whole thing, or if he was just a butterfly that flitted from idea to idea. What if he left his job and Holmes decided to go off on another tangent with his inherited fortune?

No, that couldn’t be so. Garden simply wouldn’t believe it - but he’d certainly hold off on posting his letter of resignation till he felt a little more certain of their business future together. Finally he convinced himself that Holmes was just as excited as he was and, after all, they hadn’t been employed to look into the nefarious deeds at The Black Swan, so if the police solved it first, it was no skin off their noses, although he would, naturally, be very disappointed.

At one point, Garden looked as if he had just had a very good idea, and rushed out of the offices, returning within half an hour with a smile that said the cat had got at the cream again, but gave not a word of explanation to his new partner. They were going to have trouble wheedling information out of people as just themselves. He had just acquired the means for them to do things on a more formal footing. Thank God for Sunday opening hours.

Back in the restaurant for lunch, Holmes began to outline his plans for putting together a more coherent dossier on what they had discovered, and talking about ways of abstracting information when it would seem they had no business to do any such thing.

‘Got that one covered, Holmes,’ declared Garden with a triumphant grin.

‘How?’ Holmes was intrigued. If Garden had had a brainwave, why hadn’t he himself had it first? After all, he considered himself to be a genius where this detecting lark was concerned: naturally gifted, was how he would describe himself.

Garden slipped a hand into his jacket and extracted a handful of business cards, marked up as representing Holmes and Garden, Private Investigators, and giving the address of the office in the town. ‘Here you are, old man.’

‘Where on earth did you get these?’ asked Holmes in astonishment.

‘Stationer’s a few doors from the offices. I suddenly remembered that when I’d gone in there once for a newspaper, there had been a card-printing machine near the back: easiest thing in the world to do, to go in and run a few off for our pre-emptive strike on the criminals of this society.’

‘How many did you do?’

‘Just enough to get us through. We can hand these out and ask away, with most people co-operating without thinking that the offices are not yet open, because that’s how life works.’

‘By George, I believe you’re right.’

They had been late in for lunch and now the crowds of diners had cleared, William Byrd the barman, who had had a very busy shift serving drinks to the local ‘roastie’ vultures, had just sat down to his own meal.

Rising from his seat, Holmes called the waitress and asked for two coffees, then approached the table where the man sat, just beginning to tuck into his roast pork and apple sauce. ‘Mind if we join you?’ he asked politely, proffering one of his newly acquired business cards.

Byrd looked at it, at first with suspicion, then with dawning comprehension on his face. ‘Thought you two looked like you were in the business,’ he commented, and Garden actually winked at Holmes. The magic of an ‘official’ card was real, and had just proved itself. ‘Now, what can I do for you two gentlemen? Personally, I don’t have much faith in the plod, but with a professional name like yours, I think I could go along with that.’

Sitting down with a serious expression on his face, Holmes said he wanted to know anything about anyone in the hotel who might have had some sort of grudge against the deceased owner of the hotel. ‘After all, we have to start at the beginning, before we can decide whether the three deaths are all down to one person, or whether there are different perpetrators here, and one of the first things we need to know after that, is who definitely has an alibi for any of these foul acts.’ He was certainly sounding the part.

Byrd conscientiously worked his way across the contents of his plate with his mind whizzing through what he knew of those who could have had a bone to pick with Bellamy. ‘Have you heard anything about that shrinking old violet, Merrilees?’ he asked through a mouthful of broccoli.

‘Not a word,’ Holmes confirmed. ‘What have you heard?’

‘What I have
over
heard is that she and the old man had a bit of a one-night-stand years ago, and she thought that, as she’d let him pluck her cherry, that he was bound to marry her – silly, naïve bitch. She carried a torch for him for ever after that. That’s why she was in tears the other day. The love of her life had gone.’

‘By jingo.’ Holmes was impressed with this hitherto unexposed piece of information.

‘And you know he got that old bat Crumpet pregnant, when she was a gel?’

‘Actually, we had heard that,’ replied Garden. Thirty-fifteen.

‘Righty–ho,’ commented Byrd, and gazed at the few scant morsels that remained on his plate, as he once again searched his memory for relevant data. ‘There are a couple of guests here who have some sort of beef with the owner – whoever that currently is, although I believe it’s that little madam, Pippa – about how certain parts of this establishment were originally purchased, and I believe they are having investigations conducted.’

‘You do hear a lot, don’t you?’ interjected Garden with surprise, as he had already retired the previous evening when Holmes had joined his little after-dinner group, and had temporarily forgotten, in his glee at having a new home, what Holmes had gleaned on Friday evening.

‘
Au fait
with that one, Byrd, old boy. Holmes is on the case.’

‘Did you know about the guest that the old man screwed a couple of seasons back? Her husband is here snorting fire and brimstone. Think his marriage’s gone tits up because of it.’