Andrea Frazer - Holmes and Garden 01 - The Curious Case of the Black Swan Song (15 page)

‘Holy crow!’ Holmes gulped. ‘That means that it was definitely her that was responsible for the food poisoning. Whether it was a serious attempt on their lives or a warning shot over the bows, we don’t yet know, but that room contained what she would regard as all her current enemies, with regard to her ownership of The Black Swan.

‘And, if her grandfather was serious about changing his will, maybe she thought she ought to take the chance for full ownership before he changed his mind. She knows all the little nooks and crannies in this place, and could easily have pitched him out of the window before disappearing virtually through a crack in the wall.’

‘And maybe the Maitland woman saw her do her disappearing act, whereas you had your back to her.’

‘Ye Gods! I think we’re finally getting somewhere, Garden. I told you I was a brilliant detective.’

Garden gave him an old-fashioned look, then his eyes lit up again. ‘I’ve just thought of something else, as well. You remember I heard that maid-cum-waitress having an argument in the linen cupboard with Bellamy. Well, she was pregnant, wasn’t she?

‘I’d put my shirt on the fact that the baby she was carrying was Bellamy’s, and once the rumours got around that she was in the club, it wouldn’t be difficult to work out that the baby would be entitled to a slice of this place.

‘Well, she couldn’t have that happen, could she, so she removed both of her remaining problems, only to have last night’s crew materialise as another threat to her kingdom. If La Maitland saw her tossing out her grandfather, then that’s the reason she had to be taken care of.

‘All those suspects we’ve had our eye on and wasted time questioning, and the answer was here, right under our noses. We’ve been as naïve as a couple of work-experience students, not capable of seeing the wood for the trees.’

‘Garden, we’ve solved it!’ Holmes was almost dancing with glee and triumph in his chair, and it was all he could do not to get up and do a little jig, but another discreet knock at the door interrupted him, and he called ‘come in’ without looking round, so excited was he by the prospect of their first successful case. ‘Just put it over on the dressing table, will you?’ he instructed, while still staring sightlessly out of the window enjoying the unexpected success they had just had in putting the various pieces of the jigsaw together and actually finding out what the picture was.

‘You might’ve solved it, but you’re not going to get the chance to share it with anyone, least of all the police. Put your hands where I can see them.’

‘What?’ The two men whirled round in astonishment at this statement.

‘I beg your pardon?’

Both men had turned round to find themselves staring down the barrel of an old World War Two service revolver, and the twisted smile on Pippa’s young face.

‘What the hell do you think you’re going to do?’ asked Holmes, at his most indignant.

‘Oh, I don’t
think
I’m going to do something, I am
definitely
going to do something. I’m going to shoot you two, put the gun into one of your flabby dead hands, then scream the place down. I’ll tell them you were a couple of queers who fell out, and one of you killed the other then shot himself.’

Although this sent a chill through Holmes’ heart, he had a tiny bit of attention left to notice that Garden seemed fascinated with surreptitiously checking the time on his watch. Holmes glanced down at his own timepiece to see that the second hand was sweeping round to make it almost exactly five o’clock.

He was aware of Garden’s whole body tensing as if he were about to start a race, then as the second hand passed the Roman numeral for twelve, the most awful cacophony broke out in the corridor, and Garden sprang like a wild cat at the young woman holding the weapon, kicked it out of her hand, then threw himself onto her body to knock her to the ground. ‘Call 999, Holmes, then ring downstairs for staff to help me restrain her.’

Holmes obeyed without a murmur, yelling down the receiver to be heard above the chaotic riot of caterwauling that emanated from just outside the room. When he replaced the receiver, Garden asked him to open the door, whereupon he shouted, that’ll do. Thank you. I’ll discuss it with you later,’ and asked Holmes to shut the door again.

There was total silence for about twenty seconds, then Pippa started yelling, and Holmes asked in a loud voice, ‘What the hell was that all about?’

Before Garden had time to answer, there was the sound of footsteps clattering up the stairs, and the two sous chefs from the kitchen that Garden had obtained information from earlier entered the room.

The girl did her best, crying out that these two men had attacked her and had intended to rape her, but the two kitchen hands were not stupid, and could put two and two together as well as any other employee of the hotel.

They looked to Garden for instruction and, after informing them that the police were on the way, asked them to help escort the young woman downstairs where they could secure her hands to a chair back, and wait for the forces of law and order to arrive. Before they took her, however, he had something he wanted to clarify with her.

‘When I came across you in the boot cupboard, you were sobbing your heart out as if your world were about to come to an end. Were they really just crocodile tears?’

‘Of course not,’ she spat. ‘How on earth could I have had any idea that you might come to the door and hear me? I was devastated by the thought of all that I’d done to secure this place as mine, and now there were three other people queuing up to try to wrest it, or parts of it, from my grasp. I was weeping for the cruelty of Fate that could even consider whipping this opportunity away from me after all I’d been through.’

‘And what about the people that you “removed”? Do you not think they may have gone through a horrendous ordeal, too? You killed them, you do realise?’

‘Of course I know what I’ve done, but they were a waste of skin, the whole lot of them. I was the future of this hotel, not some outsider that didn’t know their arse from their elbow as far as this place was concerned.’ After this, she sunk into a sullen, defeated silence until she was led away.

As they sat, bemused at the melodrama of what had just happened, Holmes once again enquired about the dreadful noise that had so distracted Pippa and allowed Garden to disarm her, thus saving both their lives.

‘I’d been thinking of our grand opening,’ he started. ‘I thought we should have something special to mark the occasion, then I decided that maybe it might be good to have something that would attract attention, and then I remembered the impact Geoffrey Jones had made on both of us.’

‘Who, in the name of all that is holy, is Geoffrey Jones?’ Holmes was well confused now.

‘The man who plays the bagpipes. I bumped into him in a corridor on my way to the kitchen earlier, and he said he was due to leave tomorrow. Anyway, I got to thinking how much attention it would attract if we had a piper in full Highland gear outside the shop for the grand opening day, so later on I went to his room and asked him if he’d consider being paid to play outside.

‘When he said he would, I arranged for him to have an audition by playing outside your room at exactly five o’clock this afternoon. I knew we’d be talking in private, and I’d decided that, if necessary, I’d
make
it happen there and not outside having a puff.’

‘You could’ve warned me. I nearly had a heart attack when I heard that awful row.’

‘I couldn’t say anything. This was to see how much it attracted your attention, and how effective you thought it might be in getting people curious about what sort or business the piper was playing outside of.’

‘You finished that sentence with a preposition, my boy.’

‘I know, and I’m dreadfully sorry: it won’t happen again, but you get my meaning.’

‘Indeed I do. Tell him he’s hired. He’ll certainly be a crowd-drawing novelty, and even if no one comes inside to make enquiries, I bet a lot of them might come in for a business card, or will take down the telephone number. We owe our lives to your odd idea and that man’s dreadful playing. The least we can do is to say thank you by giving him a whole day in which to play, when no one will complain.’

‘When do we open, then?’

‘Saturday. The day after tomorrow. It’s as good a day as any other, don’t yer think?’

Garden gulped. There was really nothing he could think of to say. He was absolutely speechless with the audacity of the man with whom he would now spend his working days.

As if this wasn’t enough information to swallow, there was a sharp knock at the door, and Holmes opened it to reveal a positive plethora of representatives of the forces of law and order. Standing in a row as if waiting for a free kick to be aimed at them, were Streeter, Port, and Moriarty, all with grim expressions on their faces.

Streeter pushed his way past Holmes and into the room, his minions following him like bridesmaids. He put his hands behind his back and glared at the two bemused men and drew a long, shuddering breath before launching into his tirade of wrath.

“What the hell did you two think you were doing?” he asked, but the question was evidently rhetorical, for he carried straight on. “You’ve been meddling in police business and in things that don’t concern you at all. Do you hear me? They were none of your business. The likes of the deaths here are for us to sort out, not for amateurs to poke their noses into and put their lives at risk. Do you know how close you came to being dead today?”

Again, this was a rhetorical question, for he merely carried on berating them. “Do you realise the danger you put yourselves in, and other people could easily have become involved by accident and been injured, or even killed. I will not tolerate members of the public poking around in official matters, and I hope you hear me loud and clear, for I never want to find myself in this situation again.”

As he paused for breath, Holmes put his hand into his pocket and, in the glare of Garden’s horrified gaze, removed one of their business cards and handed it to the inspector in a very sanguine manner.

Streeter read it, and his eyes began to bulge with fury, his face to turn almost purple, his hands to tremble with complete fury. “I won’t have it! I simply won’t have it, I tell you. I won’t tolerate you snooping about in my manor like a pair of Mike Hammers.”

‘But our premises will be open to the public on Saturday,’ Holmes almost purred at him.

‘If I catch you investigating anything more serious than a missing cat, dog, or straying spouse, I won’t be responsible for my actions. I absolutely forbid you to get mixed up in anything else of a criminal nature, do you hear me?’

‘Perfectly, old boy,’ replied Holmes. “Now, we’ll make statements later but, if you’ll excuse us, I think we deserve a large drink after solving this case for you.’

‘Solving this case? Why you arrogant, pompous …’ But he never got the chance to finish this sentence, as the other two policeman took an arm each, and almost carried him out of the door and down the corridor, still metaphorically spitting chips.

‘Bar, old chap?’ enquired Holmes of a very shaken Garden.

‘I could certainly do with a drink after all that’s happened,’ replied his partner, already heading for the door.

Chapter Sixteen
Friday

First thing on Friday morning, they both took their cars to Garden’s old address; as they had not found time to do this yet, it was imperative that they get his stuff moved to Holmes’ apartment before they opened for business, as the flat would not be ready for occupation for some time. Holmes, trying to take his friend’s mind off what lay ahead, stated that he thought he might adopt wearing a deerstalker when they were operational, unless they were undercover, and he really must organise some violin lessons – ‘I’ve got one on the wall at home. I don’t know if you noticed it’ – just so that he knew the basics, and how to use a bow – that sort of thing.

‘And, did I ever tell you what my mother’s maiden name was?’

‘No,’ mumbled a very uncomfortable Garden.

‘Go on, have a guess.’

‘Can’t.’

‘It was only Barratt. Imagine if she’d done what a lot of young ladies do nowadays, and hyphenated her maiden name with her married name. I’d be Mr Barratt-Holmes. Unbearable!’ Holmes had done his best, but it hadn’t been nearly enough to cheer up Garden’s gloomy countenance.

Garden gave a weak laugh, but then sunk back into his misery. He hated going back, but had assumed that his mother would be at work on a Friday morning.

She wasn’t, and was having a day off from her temping, and greeted both of them with a radiant smile of welcome. She even helped John H. take his possessions out to the two waiting cars, explaining to nosy neighbours who had come outside to have a look at such an amount of ladies’ finery being shifted, that she was clearing out her wardrobes, as she had far too many clothes, and she felt it was time for a change.

For this, Garden was grateful, as he didn’t want the neighbours gossiping about him, and they were a really talkative crowd and very judgemental about people. When the cars were fully loaded, Mummy Dearest – aka Shirley – called them both in for large mugs of tea and a full biscuit barrel, as they probably were low on blood sugar after all that running around.

Holmes sat on the sofa and made very acceptable small talk, all the while smiling at Garden’s mother, and making rather an old fool of himself, and Garden was glad when they were on their way to Farlington Market and Quaker Street.

At the other end, everything had to happen in reverse, and all the clothes, shoes, make-up, jewellery, and wigs were just dumped in the spare bedroom until there was an opportunity to put everything away. Before that could happen, though, Holmes insisted that he throw them together a ploughman’s lunch, and opened a couple of bottles of beer, for he felt they had earned this reward.

Garden was grateful for the offer and sat down at the table as Holmes brought in two plates loaded with hunks of bread, cheese, pickled onions, and chutney, with a dainty garnish of salad. The man had evidently made a quick trip to a local shop while Garden was still in the bedroom working out where everything should go.

He had applied plentiful butter to his bread, and was just about to cut off a small piece of cheese with which to adorn it, when something whizzed across his lap, he felt the sting of needle-sharp claws on his free hand, and when he looked down, his cheese was gone, his hand bleeding, and Colin the cat was sitting on the other side of the room, hunkered down over his ill-gotten gains with a completely different sort of relish.

‘Sorry about that, old chap. I’ll get you a plaster and some more cheese. I should have mentioned that Colin’s a sucker for a bit of mature cheddar. I ought to have given him a piece of it to distract him, but it slipped my mind. Head’s in the clouds for some reason.’

Garden sucked his injured hand and glared at the cat. He could see the clouds of war forming on the horizon, and hoped he would not be staying here too long, delightful as the apartment was, because he could never envisage he and Colin becoming the best of friends, or even calling a truce.

When he did get another hunk of cheese, he crouched over it like a dog protecting a precious bone, and didn’t sit up straight again until he’d finished eating. He was damned if that animal was going to get another dairy freebie from him, but he did feel better for a full stomach, and was willing to believe that the cat didn’t bear him any personal malice, and that it was really the attractions of the cheese that had caused him to scratch his hand in his eagerness to get at the tasty titbit.

As Holmes cleared the table, Garden stood up and stretched, feeling quite achy after all the to-ing and froing, and was suddenly caused to yell out loud, as a series of tiny knives made their way up his legs and spine. When Holmes ran in at the cry of distress, it was to find Colin wrapped around Garden’s neck like an old-fashioned fox fur, only much bigger, and much, much heavier, and with much more evil intent.

‘See, he likes you, Garden,’ Holmes smiled happily at his new lodger.

‘No he doesn’t,’ replied Garden. ‘He’s gone round in a complete circle and, is at this very … ow! … moment, biting my ear. Ouch! Get off, you vicious bugger.’

‘Come along, Colin,’ Holmes said in a singsong voice. ‘John here doesn’t know you very well yet, but he knows you love him.’

‘Oh no I don’t. That cat’s got it in for me,’ retorted Garden, trying to look over his shoulder for tell-tale blood stains.

‘He just doesn’t know his own strength.’

‘Oh yes he does. And he knows how to use it, too. I bet my back’s covered in punctures.’

‘He was just showing you that he loved you after you so thoughtfully shared your lunch with him.’

‘He was doing nothing of the sort. He was intent on injury from the moment he first saw me, and I don’t think he’s ever going to become genuinely fond of me.’

‘Have you ever had a cat?’

‘No, but I know an enemy when I see one.’

Colin, enormous beast that he was, was now on Holmes’ lap, padding at his burgeoning paunch blissfully, and purring, but he must have known they were talking about him, because he stopped momentarily and made a wheezy sound, almost like a chuckle, and glared triumphantly at his new adversary.

‘I’m going through to put away some of my stuff. If you want me I’ll be in the spare room,’ Garden declared huffily, realising that Colin would always be Holmes’ blind spot. He’d keep a truce so long as the cat played along, but one claw in the wrong place, and he was going to cuff his ears for him good and proper. The animal had no self-discipline, and was obviously spoilt rotten.

When most of his stuff was stored or in suitcases, Holmes breezed into the room heartily and declared he had made an appointment with a decorator to discuss doing up the flat, and then they’d go out to eat. That was fine with Garden. Whenever he’d left the room for a quick visit to the bathroom, he had been aware of being observed hostilely from a number of different places of concealment, and it was making him jumpy. A break from the apartment was just what he needed to restore his courage where that mangy monster was concerned.

The ‘decorator’ lived in the really posh area on the outskirts of Farlington Market where even the price of an ice-lolly would be sky-high, if there were an ice-cream van classy enough to brave making tinkling calls there. Even the thought of the cost of such luxurious and sprawling accommodation made Garden’s eyes water, but Holmes seemed not in the slightest intimidated, but this was probably because he could afford to buy up any one of them without batting an eyelid. Garden didn’t have such self-confidence, however, and found himself almost cringing as Holmes pulled a very fancy pull in the porch at the target address.

The man who answered the door was a brawny fellow wearing paint-stained overalls, who looked a bit like an ex-wrestler. His hair was cut to ‘number two’, if not ‘number one’ shortness, and he looked very intimidating. Garden was about to ask if the owner was at home when Holmes held out a hand and said, ‘Busman’s holiday, Mr Legrove?’

This?
This
apparition was Legrove the well-known interior designer of whom even Garden had heard? Why wasn’t he dressed in velvet and wearing a cravat? Why was he so brawny and coarse-looking? How could this man be capable of such genius of design? Garden shrugged and followed Holmes into the house, totally at a loss, many of his illusions about interior design shattered. Weren’t interior designers supposed to be willowy and foppish, and why hadn’t Holmes looked for a simple painter and decorator?

The hall was, indeed, covered in decorating sheets, and open pots of paint stood around like sly traps for the unwary, but when Legrove shrugged off his overalls, the room he showed them into was sublime, and John H. blushed at the
faux pas
he had nearly committed by asking for the householder. People came in all shapes and sizes, and he had been guilty of stereotyping, something he thought he would never do, considering his alter ego.

‘Let me show you some colour charts and swatches of material. If you want to pick up some period furniture for the flat, there’s an auction next week that I think would be right up your street. I’ve been given a little peek at some of the stuff and, although it may not come cheap, it’s simply divine.’

Garden felt right outside his comfort zone, being more used to flat-pack than drop-dead gorgeous. And to hear the man’s deep, rough voice and down-market accent utter the words ‘simply divine’ sent his head into a whirl of confused thoughts. Holmes, however, was flipping through swatches of curtain and upholstery material, and pawing his way through colour charts, deep in conversation with Legrove, absolutely in his element. Garden would be glad to get back to the apartment, even with his arch-enemy Colin-the-Destroyer in residence. The cat may even be out on the prowl somewhere, torturing and killing some innocent small mammal, if he was lucky.

On the journey back to Quaker Street, Garden was silent and thoughtful for so long that Holmes eventually asked him, ‘What did you think of Legrove? He’s a bit of a character, isn’t he?’

‘You can say that again. I nearly asked to see the householder.’

‘A lot of people do that, but he’s got such a flair for colour and design that he’s becoming all the rage. I was lucky to get to see him at such short notice, but he’d had a cancellation and was filling in time working on his own home. It’ll be a while before you can move in though. The best has to be, and is worth, waiting for.’

Garden sighed, and decided that it would be as well to purchase some gauntlets.

‘Chin up!’ Holmes exhorted him. ‘We open tomorrow, or had you forgotten?’

Garden had, and sighed again. He felt like he was caught up in a whirlwind. His life had always been quiet, measured, and lived in little compartments before, now he was lurching from one activity to another, and things were moving on apace. He just hoped he could keep up with everything. If not, he wanted to go back to Kansas – he had the ruby slippers back in Holmes’ place.

Once again in the apartment, Holmes headed straight for the shower, and Garden went to his room to sort out something more suitable to dinner out than the casual clothes he had worn for the work they had done today. There had been no sign of the cat, but on entering his room, Garden’s nose began to twitch, and it wasn’t long before his eyes told him too that Colin had paid the lodger’s new domain a visit. Right there in one of his blood-red Italian leather shoes was a deposit, but not the sort that would be appreciated by a bank. The cat had taken a dump in his shoes, and that was the second time that his beautiful shoes had had something disgusting thrust all over – or in this case, in – them, in just a few days. They’d definitely have to be burnt now. Maybe he could use the gas poker.

‘Holmes!’ he squeaked in disgust and despair. Those shoes had cost him a week’s wages. ‘I demand that you clean up after your perfectly horrid animal.’

Holmes hurried out of the shower as quickly as he could, and took away the despoiled articles, promising to return them as good as new, but Garden couldn’t somehow see himself ever having the stomach to wear them again without the thought of what had been in them and on them.

He took Holmes’ place in the bathroom, feeling glad the offending animal hadn’t been around. If it had he would probably have kicked it into the middle of next week. He’d have to pin his hopes on Legrove getting another cancellation, for if he had to live with this sort of disdainful treatment from a mere cat, he could see felicide being committed, and his partnership with the owner would not last very long after that, what with Garden having killed Daddy’s little darling.

When he had finished his ablutions, he came out to find the apartment abandoned by both its furry and its non-furry resident, so he made himself a cup of tea and sat down to read an abandoned copy of a newspaper that Holmes had picked up when they went out earlier. He had had quite an upheaval in the last twenty-four hours, and he needed a period of respite in which to start the recovery process before he got involved in what would be the whirl of opening the office doors for the first time the next morning.

It was six o’clock before Holmes returned to change, and at six-thirty he deposited his car keys on the hallstand and announced that a taxi would be picking them up very shortly, and that they would be eating in a pub called The Sherlock, which he had discovered by accident one day when searching for an address he never found. The pub itself was a gem, done up in the true Edwardian manner, and with lots of Holmes aficionados as regulars.

Garden was astounded when they reached their destination, there were deer-stalkers a-plenty, violins and bows on the walls, and many a rack of pipes, both meerschaum and Basil Rathbone-style, strewn about the place’s stage-dressing. And it was only about a mile from Quaker Street but, as Holmes explained, they would want wine with their meal and it would be an inauspicious start to a career in private investigation if it began with being caught for driving over the limit, and he couldn’t have been more right.

The hours passed only too quickly and, all too soon they found themselves back at the door of the apartment. ‘I think I’ll take myself straight up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire,’ announced Holmes, who didn’t actually possess a staircase, and headed for his bedroom door. Garden was totally in agreement, and, turning towards the door of his own room, went inside.