Andrea Frazer - Holmes and Garden 01 - The Curious Case of the Black Swan Song (9 page)

‘Now, that’s a new one on me.’ Holmes was impressed now. ‘Can you recall his name?’

After a short silence, the barman had to admit defeat on this one, but it should be easy enough to ascertain, with the new information ‘bombs’ that the business cards represented.

‘You know about the two old dykes in the guild, don’t you?’

‘We have come across them, and they don’t put up much of a smokescreen if that’s their intention.’

‘Especially as they live together, and have a cleaner who knows that they share a bedroom. It’s bad enough calling themselves Mabs and Lebs, but when they were younger, it used to be Mabsie and Lebsie, and that used to make me want to gag – but it takes all sorts to make a world, and I just let people get on with it,’ Byrd concluded generously.

Just as well, thought Garden, as his mind flitted to his large collection of female clothes, and even to the rainbow confection he was wearing today. Without the
laissez-faire
attitude of people like Byrd, his life would be even more of a misery.

‘You know Chef hated Bellamy, don’t you?’ asked the barman, now undoing the belt on his trousers to accommodate the arrival of such a large portion of food.

‘He hired a fully trained and qualified man, then fenced him in with seventies stuff and school dinners, and insulted his training and his skills whenever he could. Fair furious was Chef, most of the time, which didn’t bother me, because the man’s a bully, and he likes to pick on me, so I reckoned he deserved a dose of his own medicine from time to time. Maybe I’ll get a bit of a rest, with Pippa letting him have free reign in reconstructing the food here.’ There was a look of wistful hope on his face as he said this.

‘Could you do us a bit of a favour?’ asked Holmes, a look of hope on his face.

‘If I can. Anything to bring a killer, or killers, to justice.’

‘Could you have a bit of a think about who might have been under your steady gaze when things actually happened, so that we can eliminate certain people from our enquiries?’

‘Course I can. I’ll put me mind to it during me afternoon break. I’ve got a notepad at the back of the bar for orders, so I’ll just scribble some thoughts on that while I wait for my next shift.’

The two newly minted investigators suddenly realised that they had missed lunch in their absorption with the current situation, and hastily ordered sandwiches to see them through to the evening meal.

Later, in the residents’ lounge, Holmes decided that after Garden’s brainwave in printing some cards and their informative little chat with the barman, they could probably do with having a round-up now of what they knew, so that they could decide what they now needed to know, as far as this was possible to anticipate.

‘I’m getting damned suspicious about that Ladies’ Guild,’ he began. ‘The Maitland woman was almost leaning over my shoulder when poor old Bellamy went out of the window. What if it was her who pushed him, and she just had time to skip out of the way as he teetered on the brink?’

‘Well, it didn’t do her a lot of good, did it? She was the next victim.’ Garden was not so enthusiastic. ‘So she couldn’t have had anything to do with the other two, could she?’

‘Fair enough, but there might have been someone else hanging around that I just didn’t see, and La Maitland did. They were all in that little room, you know. Who knows who might have slipped out for a minute to powder their nose or pitch a man through an upstairs window? And the woman herself could have done it, then been seen, and been knocked off herself. We could have a couple of killers on our hands, as well as whichever one of them killed the poor maid.’

‘True.’ Garden suddenly became thoughtful. ‘And La Maitland was at another of their committee meetings when she met her end. There could easily be a tie-in there. We’re going to have to hunt them down one by one and give them a bit of a grilling, but how on earth are we going to get their addresses?’

‘Elementary, my dear Garden. Ladies like that would be more likely to have a landline telephone than a mobile, so I suggest we just go through the local telephone directory. I can’t see anyone from that little mob wanting the anonymity of ex-directory listing, can you? Or having just a mobile phone?’

‘Sneaky old Holmes. Of course! The answer was right under my nose and I couldn’t see it. I can understand how Watson felt now.’ Garden’s mood was a mixture of contrite and excited. ‘What do you think of all the legal stuff about irregular purchasing of parts of the property?’

‘I think that can wait for now, and I’ll schmooze the solicitor – for I discovered who was handling the business last night after you retired – and see if I can get a little dirt from him as to how likely it is that that outcome will be to the detriment of the current situation.’

‘We seem, on reflection, what with one-night-stands, crushes, abortions, and what not, to have got quite a lot of grist for our mill. Do you think there’s more out there?’ Garden wasn’t good with new situations, and needed to know what his Mummy Dearest used to call ‘the ins and outs of a duck’s arse’, before he would accept anything.

‘Got to be, old boy. What we’ve got is probably just the tip of the iceberg: loads of intrigue in the undercurrents of small-town life. We are now part of that, and must become expert at sorting the wheat from the chaff.’

‘I say, Holmes.’

‘Yes?’

‘You haven’t swallowed a book of clichés, have you?’

‘Shut up, you ignorant young pup, or I shall throw you outside with no supper.’ Garden just grinned. This was a new situation he thought he could very soon grow used to: so much better than just inhabiting an office chair all day and shuffling papers from one pile to the next.

After a full and slightly celebratory dinner to mark their unofficial launch into the detection business, they spent the evening in Holmes’ room making a decent dossier on their current findings, and going through the local telephone directory to avail themselves of the home addresses of the Ladies’ Guild committee members. They were on their way now.

Chapter Ten
Monday

Over breakfast, Holmes and Garden had discussed tactics, and decided just to turn up at the addresses they had garnered. Surprise was the best weapon, they considered, as they were hoping to get the women of the guild to spill some information that they were trying to conceal. Office fitments temporarily forgotten, Holmes was back on the case wholeheartedly, much to Garden’s relief.

They had got a local town map from Reception on their way to breakfast, and got egg yolk and brown sauce all over it working out their best and most efficient route. ‘If we go to the left on leaving the hotel,’ began Holmes, plonking a sticky finger on to the representation of The Black Swan, ‘we can make our first call on Millicent Fitch at Tall Trees, which the directory reliably informs me is in River Road, here, just behind the shops.

‘Then, if we return to the main shopping street, we can go up Tupps Alley where we will find Anna Merrilees at Moon Cottage, at number twenty-seven. If we then cross over to the other side of the main street, we can have a look at the outside of La Maitland’s house at Hunters View, 31 Drubbs Lane. Sorry about reciting all these addresses, but I find it easier to remember something if I’ve said it out loud.

‘After that,’ continued the older man, his finger on the move again, his moustache quivering with excitement, ‘we can visit Agatha Crumpet at The Hedges, 18 Hedging Cut, and, finally, on to Marion Guest and Lesley Piper at Freesia Cottage, situation, 18 Puddle Path.’

‘You seem to have got that all worked out,’ said Garden, slightly impressed, even though he had resisted the feeling. ‘How long do you think this is going to take us?’

‘Absolutely no idea, old boy. Never done this sort of thing before, so we’ll just have to play it by ear,’ he replied, shattering the illusion of having everything under control that his previous speech had engendered. ‘We’ll just take things as they come. In the main though, I think I should lead the questioning, and you should endeavour to pick up as much stuff visually as you can. Can learn a lot about someone by the place they live and the way they furnish and decorate it.’

Folding the map, Holmes made ready to be off, and Garden wiped his mouth prissily on a napkin and rose too. ‘We’ll amalgamate what we’ve learnt at the end of this exercise, then?’ he asked, in clarification.

‘Absolutely. I’m sure, between us, we can work out a decent modus operandi in this business.’ Holmes was sounding a little more confident than he felt, because he was just as at sea as Garden was, but was bolstering himself up with false confidence, because he didn’t want to cramp the style of his dream, and let it languish, rather than flourish. This had to work, didn’t it?

On their way out, there were noises of anger and distress coming from the reception desk, where they espied young Pippa deep in a hushed conversation with one of the female guests. ‘I don’t know whether the woman’s complaining about something, but she’d got Pippa all fired up,’ commented Garden.

‘Yes, but no time to probe now. We’ll see what we can find out later,’ decided Holmes, dismissively. The final thing they heard was the young owner’s voice raised in a yell of, ‘Over my dead body.’

The town was not busy even though the tourist season was approaching fast, and River Road was easy to find, being the first turning to the left off the main shopping street. Tall Trees wasn’t far from the main drag, and proved to be an old cottage that had been renovated to within an inch of its life. There was more of Disney than of olde worlde charm about it, and the final vestiges of this charm had gone with the external decoration, so black and white as to be untrue, with some of the beams obvious fakes.

Although this could easily have been a nod to The Black Swan, it just looked like the owner suffered from OCD, and couldn’t bear even a blade of grass out of place. Every brick in the chimneys had new pointing, and the garden would not have disgraced a miniature park.

‘So this is where the woman lives who had a one-nighter with old Bellamy?’ asked Garden, just to get things straight in his mind, almost simultaneously with the door being opened by a tiny bird-like woman, almost continental in her immaculate turn-out. Her hair was grey and well-cut, her light make-up precisely suited to her years and colouring. Even at this time, on a normal Monday morning, when she had probably been expecting no visitors, she was immaculately turned out in a light grey skirt suit over a soft ivory blouse, and looked quite the Saga fashion-plate. She had absolutely nothing in common with the average English countrywoman.

‘Good morning. Miss Fitch, I presume,’ stated Holmes, holding out one of their recently acquired business cards. ‘I wonder if we might have a word with you about the trouble at the hotel.’ This was an understatement, but one that was appreciated by the precise spinster, but she wasn’t as green as she was cabbage-looking.

‘May I ask on whose behalf you are working? Exactly who has asked you to look into this?’ she asked, an intelligent light behind her eyes.

‘You may well ask,’ blustered Holmes, as Garden’s shoulders slumped. Clocked and dismissed so soon? ‘However,’ his partner continued, ‘we are not able to reveal our client’s personal details for reasons of professional integrity. I’m sure you can understand how a client may not want it to be generally known that he, or she, is pursuing certain information until that information has been gathered.’

Nice work, thought Garden, as the woman’s face cleared, and she seemed to accept this transparent excuse without question. Confidentiality was something almost everyone craved these days, especially with the intrusiveness of CCTV, general security cameras, and even the eyes of spy satellites and online map-makers.

Miss Fitch ushered them into a preternaturally clean and tidy sitting room furnished in the antique style so beloved of the 1980s, and bade them plant their bottoms on little chintz sofas, of which there were three in the room.

‘May I offer you any refreshment?’ she asked politely and, when they refused, sat on the third and only vacant sofa. ‘So, how can I help you?’ she next enquired, a little intrigued to be visited by such an exotic species as a pair of private investigators.

Clearing his throat to bolster his confidence, Holmes began. ‘First, we would like to know how well you knew Mr Berkeley Bellamy.’ This seemingly innocent question caused Miss Fitch to blush a deep crimson and look away.

‘I knew him quite well some time ago,’ she managed, almost in a whisper, unable to look either of her visitors in the eye.

‘You were, in fact, intimate with him?’ Holmes said this almost sadistically.

‘I was, but I don’t want that bandied about, gentlemen. I’m really not that sort of person. I was once very fond of him, however.’

‘Thank you for your honestly,’ Holmes rewarded her, with a return to his avuncular manner. ‘And may I ask where you were when the unfortunate gentleman met his death?’

Miss Fitch cringed at such blunt language and finally admitted that she was in the ‘small room’ at the hotel where the committee meeting had been taking place.

‘And you didn’t leave that room?’

‘Only to – wash my hands,’ she replied, with a return to embarrassment.

‘And where were you when Margery Maitland was murdered?’ Time for some strong meat again.

‘I was in the room waiting for Margery to return with the refreshment trolley. Unfortunately poor Pippa couldn’t spare us any waitress staff that time.’

‘And did you leave the room?’ The question was repeated with unnecessary emphasis on the second word.

‘To powder my nose,’ the woman replied, barely audible above the buzz of guilt in her head. ‘But I didn’t touch either of them.’

‘And what about Tiffany Jakes? What do you know about her demise, and where were you at the time it happened?’ But this time Holmes had overstepped the mark. Not only did the woman they were questioning not know the exact time the woman had been murdered, but neither did they, so a stalemate ensued.

In a final attempt to extract something, Holmes went for pot black. ‘Is it not true that you were insanely jealous of Miss Jakes, because she was carrying your ex-lover’s child, and you had never had that honour?’

She didn’t exactly beat Holmes about the head with the
Radio Times
, but she certainly hooshed them out of the house
tout de suite
, and slammed the door on them, leaving them in no doubt as to the state of her temper.

Holmes was left leaning up against the front wall, where he had hurtled under the pursuit of a very angry elderly lady, and Garden sauntered up to him and said, ‘Pushed it a bit far there, didn’t you?’

‘Fortune favours the brave,’ replied Holmes, trying to regain his dignity. He’d been well and truly ousted and reminded that, like everyone else, he had feet of clay, and couldn’t get away with murder, even if someone at the hotel thought that they could.

‘But not the foolhardy. Come along, Holmes old man: suspects to question, investigations to undertake.’ Holmes’ run-in had given Garden new confidence, and he thought he might get in a bit of the questioning on their next visit. It was all very well to tell him to count frills and furbelows, but it was his investigation too. ‘You came down pretty hard on her.’

‘As a shot in the dark, it certainly raised a cry of distress,’ his partner replied, suddenly rather pleased with the reaction he had provoked. ‘It’s certainly food for thought. With a house like that, the old dear’s as repressed as they come. No telling what she might have done if provoked.’

‘But she was in tears afterwards,’ tempered Garden.

‘Of the crocodile variety, my friend. Just camouflage. Crackin’ stuff! Onwards and upwards,’ he carolled, rubbing his hands together in complete recovery. A rubber ball had nothing on Holmes.

The route to Tupps Lane was an easy one, initially taking them back to the main street, where Holmes admitted he had to go and stock up on pipe tobacco. Charging Holmes with the task of getting him some more cigarettes, Garden went off on a mission of his own, and they met ten minutes later at the entrance to the lane. ‘What have you been up to?’ asked Holmes, mildly annoyed that Garden had used him like an errand boy while he took care of something as yet undisclosed.

‘Went back to get a couple more small batches of those business cards. Thought we might need them if this is what we’re going to be doing,’ he replied, to receive a grin of approval.

‘Good thinking, my boy. Just what we need to further our investigations, if the last visit’s anything to go by.’

Moon Cottage was part of a terrace that once must have been a farm labourer’s dwelling, and was what an estate agent would have described as bijou – barely big enough to swing a cat, in in common parlance.

The owner of this ‘jewel’ answered the door like a refugee from a rather bohemian colony, wearing a plethora of beads and scarves, her hair long and loose about her shoulders. She had looked nothing like this when they had come across her at the hotel, and the two men both decided that she had a secret persona at home.

Bangles positively jangled as she waved an arm to admit them, and she had sandals that laced to halfway up her calves, under a rather floaty frocky kaftan-like garment. Her scent was musky, her eyes hopeful. ‘What can I do for you gentlemen?’ she almost breathed, in an effort, perhaps, to sound sexy.

‘Holmes beamed at her and handed her one of the now-so-useful business cards. Her eyes widened, she looked up under lowered lashes to say, ‘Private investigators – how exciting. This is quite an adventure for me. Can I get you anything while we talk? I’m sure you’re here about what has been happening at The Black Swan. Shocking!’

The way she said the last word was almost salacious. The woman was actually getting a kick out of the situation. How arid her existence must be, and how rooted in fantasy, if she looked like that and had as yet trapped no mate.

As they settled into feathery, plump armchairs, Miss Merrilees, for such was she, wafted round the room lighting incense sticks and cones. ‘So necessary to create the right atmosphere,’ she commented, lavishing a smile on them. Holmes looked a trifle flustered to have arrived so unexpectedly in an ashram, but Garden had a small smile on his face as he admired the woman’s sheer style.

Before Holmes could gather his resources, she had begun the conversation for him. ‘So tragic about poor Bellamy. I had such a soft spot for him. All he really needed was the love of a good woman, and he would have been reformed.’ Here, she sighed. ‘It’s not as if I didn’t try, though I never bruited my feelings abroad, but he wasn’t the sort of man who surrenders easily. You can lead a horse to water, but that’s about as far as I ever got. Drink, I could not make it.’

‘That’s very candid of you, Miss Merrilees,’ said Garden, busily taking notes in his tiny notebook. If they were touting themselves as official, there was no reason at all that he couldn’t look official and actually make a note of what was being disclosed to them.

Regarding Holmes’ still astounded face, she gave a throaty chuckle, and explained, ‘My life outside this house is everything the life of a woman of my age and social standing should be – hence the Ladies’ Guild membership. But here, in my own tiny paradise, I live a life more exciting. I can be a
femme fatale
in my own home whereas, in public, I’d just attract ridicule.

‘I don’t go out much, for my life is here, reading romantic stories and making them up. I actually write now and again for a ladies’ magazine under a pen-name and, I suppose, I have become rather bohemian in my introverted little world.

‘Maybe you’ve even heard of my alter ego, for I’ve just begun to write for Bills and Moon, the romantic publishers. I am Dolores Dalrymple,’ she stated, with a flourish of a trailing scarf, then proceeded to fit a cigarette into a long holder and look around for a lighter. ‘Purely herbal,’ she explained, inviting them to light up if they pleased.

Holmes, who had been wondering what the strange smell of bonfire was inside the cottage, got his pipe out as if on automatic pilot. This, he had not expected at all, to find such a hot-house flower behind the door of this tiny dwelling: one who had masqueraded before as an everyday middle-aged to elderly woman.