The Red Chairs Mystery

by L. D. Culliford

  It felt odd, but Holly relaxed as Mark rotated the pair of them gently to the right, paused, and then rapidly brought the club-head back and through its original starting point. ‘Like that, see!’ he said.

  Holly was suddenly breathless, whether from the effort or from Mark’s physical proximity, she wasn’t sure. Mark immediately released her and stood back. ‘Try it without a ball to start with,’ he said.

  Holly, a junior champion tennis player in her day, understood immediately about rotating her body. She repeated the baseball swing slowly first, to imprint it in her mind; then she leaned forward, allowing the clubhead to touch the turf, and replicated the movement as nearly as she could to the way Mark had done it. At the third attempt, the club, on the return, brushed neatly through the grass at the exact point between her feet where she was concentrating her gaze.

  ‘That’s wonderful!’ said Mark. ‘Keeping your head still ensures that you turn, rather than sway sideways. Did you also notice that, as your shoulders and hands return to the starting point, the point of impact, your hips are turning too? They have only half-rotated on the backswing, as you coil yourself up like a spring, but now they are free to be unleashed, and at the end of the swing your hips have turned anti-clockwise so as to be facing the target.’

  Less afraid of looking ridiculous, Holly wanted to try hitting an actual golf ball again, confident that she would not make such a mess of it this time. She no longer played tennis, or any other sport except going for a jog along the beach, but she had been attending a mixed yoga and Pilates class for three years, as a result of which her balance, core stability, body-awareness and muscle control were well developed. The next time then, following Mark’s instructions, she made good club-head contact with the ball, which consequently flew up in a perfect arc, landing almost a hundred yards away, more or less in the direction she was aiming.

  ‘Wow!’ said Holly. ‘That’s fantastic! Let me try it again.’

  Mark couldn’t help smiling. He wanted to give her a big hug, but instead took three more balls from his bag and threw them down. Two of them successfully followed the first, but the third went sharply to the right, across the ninth fairway, into the pond. ‘Oh golly!’ said Holly.

  ‘That’s okay’, Mark assured her. ‘It’s what we call a “shank”. You swung the club a little bit too quickly and it came back out of alignment. Shanking happens when the round shaft at the bottom end of the club hits the ball, rather than the club-face… We all do it once in a while.’

  A sharp gust of wind hit them suddenly at that moment. ‘I’ve got police work to do’, Holly realised. ‘I’d better go’, she said.

  ‘I’ll go and pick up the balls’, said Mark. ‘Would you mind waiting a second and giving me a lift? I haven’t got a waterproof with me, and it looks like I’m in for a soaking.’

  ***

  Holly dropped Mark off by the entrance to the men’s changing room, left the buggy by the pro’s shop and took the key inside. ‘Miss Marple, I presume’, said Kyle Scott as she entered. ‘What are you doing with my friend Mark? I saw you ferrying him around out there.’

  Holly, outwardly unembarrassed, re-adopted a professional demeanour. ‘I need to ask you some questions’, she told Kyle matter-of-factly. ‘Tell me where you were last night.’

  A few minutes later, Holly returned to the office to tell Peter Harding she was leaving and would be in contact again the following day. The Colonel, meanwhile, had tried again to get through to Jamie Royle by phone but had been unsuccessful. Instead, he had simply left a brief text about a visit from the police and a polite request to call back.

  As she was leaving the building, Holly caught sight of Mark and Kyle together at the bar, but decided she had no pretext for approaching them and hurried on. Sitting in the car for a moment, she pondered the day’s events and findings, or lack of them; then her phone bleeped and it was a message from her father. He was getting a meal ready and wanted her to join him. Finally, she put a call through to an unhappy Dr Narayan. There had been a lengthy delay at the Coroner’s Court. The dead person’s family had retained a lawyer to ask difficult questions of witnesses at the inquest, which had consequently overrun. He had barely commenced examining the corpse from the golf club, he said. She should call the following day.

  The 3rd

  Chapter

  Leaving the club, making her way westward, Holly found herself stuck behind a slow-moving tractor pulling a trailer piled high with hay bales. Eventually it pulled into a narrower lane, heading towards a barn, and she was able to speed up again, turning south soon after onto the main road south. Continuing on through Cocking and Singleton, she drove up over the steep sweep of the Downs, past the majestic stands of Goodwood racecourse and down gentler, rolling countryside towards the Chichester by-pass, the cathedral spire clearly visible to her right, poking provocatively skyward. From the edge of the city, it was only a short skip eastward to her father’s place in the ancient village of Oving. She came to a stop outside the house, parked carefully next to his ancient maroon Ford Cortina, then stood for a moment admiring his garden of late-blooming hydrangeas.

  ‘There you are!’ Sam Driver’s warm voice greeted her from the open doorway. ‘Come on in!’

  Holly’s father was medium: medium height, medium build, a Caucasian male with a medium complexion; neither dark, nor light. He gave her a quick hug and a broad smile. Because of what had happened when she was eleven, this was the only parent Holly trusted. She never saw her mother, who had abandoned them both for a new life with her so-called ‘Uncle Bob’. Thereafter, the bond with her father was absolute. ‘Perhaps’, she sometimes thought, ‘this was what got between me and Tony’. The two men used the same expressions and even sounded similar at times, father and husband; but she admitted to herself that, even if things had gone better between them, she could never have loved the younger man as much as the older. ‘It was good between us’, she admitted, ‘but it wasn’t like being on the same wavelength all the time, like I am with Dad’.

  ‘What’s cooking?’ she said, once inside, dumping her jacket and big brown bag on a chair in the sitting room, donning an old, favoured, pea-green cardigan hanging there… ‘The usual repast, I presume?’

  ‘Well, Madam! Since you ask… I’ve prepared slow-cooked, stewed onky-bonkles to start, and some twice-turned-over fried flapdoodles to follow. Also, for your delight, there is some lovely late-picked stinging-nettle wine.’ Her father was always a big tease.

  Going in, Holly found that a small table had been laid in the conservatory, which overlooked the lawn and farm fields to the east. A bottle of red stood open, and a kind of cheesy pasta smell emanated from the kitchen. ‘As always… It’s your famous Granny’s lasagne, Dad!’ said Holly with a laugh, turning to face him. ‘I wouldn’t want anything else.’ Then, changing tone, ‘I’m so sorry our lunch plans didn’t work out.’

  ‘No matter!’ Her father gestured with his left hand, as if to wave all disappointment away. ‘Try this wine! It’s from South Africa and, would you believe, it’s a blend of five different grapes? There’s Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Petit Verdot, Cabernet Franc and Malbec. I memorized them.’

  ‘I never know when you’re telling the truth,’ his daughter exclaimed.

  ‘You’re the detective!’

  ‘You’re so devious sometimes, Dad! I think that’s why I became a detective.’

  ‘Try it anyway! I think you’ll like it… Especially with the flapdoodles!’

  Holly couldn’t help laughing again. The wine was good; and the pasta dish too. When Sam brought in the coffee afterwards, there was a sponge cake with icing and a small lit birthday candle to go with it.

  ‘Who baked you a cake?’ said Holly in surprise.

  ‘Mrs Rivers.’

  ‘Oh Dad!’ This was a running joke between them. Mrs Rivers had been their housekeeper for a time, and it was she alone who ba
ked Holly’s birthday cakes after her mother left. Sam was always acting envious, begging the recalcitrant cook to bake him one too. ‘You finally got your wish, did you? I’ll bet you had to bake it yourself.’

  ‘Well, I had nothing better to do today than a little baking’, he replied. ‘It should be alright. I’ve been practicing.’

  ‘Well, I won’t tell your mates at the bowling club! But, do you mind if I give it a miss this time, Dad. I’m feeling rather full.’

  They sat comfortably side-by-side for a few minutes as the sun went down, watching a bunch of rabbits chasing around the edges of the field. Later, Sam went inside to do the dishes while Holly continued to sit. As it grew darker, she too went inside, closed the conservatory door and turned on a light just as her father came in with a tray of cheese and some crackers, and another open bottle of the excellent red wine. He put the things on the table in front of the couch and motioned Holly to relax.

  ‘You don’t have to drink any more’, he said, ‘But you can always stay in the spare room if you do.’

  ‘Well, I’ve no wish to get caught by a traffic cop tonight, if that’s what you mean.’ She had often stayed with her Dad in the bungalow. It was handy if she needed to be in Chichester early, for example. ‘I’ve got to go and see the pathologist first thing, anyway’, she said. ‘So, I think I will join you in another small glass.’

  But her father, having eventually found the remote under a cushion, had another surprise in store. Switching on the television, he suggested she might like to watch.

  ‘What is it?’ Holly asked.

  ‘Golf!’ he replied. ‘From Medinah, in America… It’s the Ryder Cup opening ceremony.’

  The screen suddenly showed a large, colourful crowd of people in front of a stage on which the two twelve-man teams and their captains were paraded. Spot lit, on a plinth at the front, was the famous golden trophy, about two-feet in height, topped by a figurine modelled on the leading golfer of his day, Abe Mitchell.

  Sam wanted to show off his knowledge, ‘Mitchell lived in Sussex, you know! He had a house or cottage right next to the fourteenth tee of the golf course in Ashdown Forest. He was a close friend and the golf coach of Sam Ryder, the businessman who donated this very cup for the first official match between professional golfers of America and Great Britain, back in 1927’.

  As they watched the screen, the US captain, Davis Love, was introducing his vice-captains and team members one by one. As his name was called out, each – all in matching blazers – stood up and took a bow.

  ‘Did I hear that right?’ said Holly. ‘Bubba! Is one of the Americans called Bubba? He looks perfectly normal.’

  ‘He looks normal, but he has a truly wild and idiosyncratic golf swing, hits the ball prodigious distances… with a pink-headed driver, no less… and is totally unmistakeable when he’s playing, because he is also left-handed.’ Sam was only too happy to inform his golf-wise ignorant daughter.

  ‘Now Davis is introducing his “wild cards”: Dustin Johnson, Steve Stricker, Jim Furyk and Brandt Snedeker… These are players he has picked personally, based on their experience in previous Ryder Cups and their current form; although Stricker has not been particularly successful this year. The other eight are chosen strictly on their standing in terms of “Ryder Cup” points, “World Rankings” and such like.’

  ‘That’s Tiger Woods, isn’t it?’ Holly pointed at the screen. ‘He’s about the only one I recognize.’ They watched in silence for a few more minutes until it became clear that they had already missed the presentation of the European Team by its captain, Jose Maria Olazabal. As the speeches and commentary continued, Sam switched the sound off.

  ‘This is a big year for Europe’, he explained. ‘The match is played every two years, and alternates between the USA and Europe. We won last time, at the Celtic Manor in Wales, but it was very close: 14½ to 13½. Some say we were lucky, mainly with the weather. The US team didn’t have adequate rain gear at the start of the contest. Because it rained such a lot, the three-day match had to be extended into the Monday. On that fateful final day, the twenty-one year old Ricky Fowler showed extraordinary calm and maturity, fighting back to win the last three holes to tie his match against one of the Italian Molinari brothers… Edoardo. That left everything, the entire Ryder Cup, hanging on the last of the twelve matches, the one between Graeme McDowell and Hunter Mahan. McDowell made a birdie at the sixteenth to go two up, and Mahan eventually conceded after making a poor attempt at seventeen, so it was over and the European team had the victory.’

  ‘I know there are eighteen holes in golf’, said Holly, cutting in ‘But what exactly is a “birdie”?’

  ‘Good question! Let me explain… You’ve heard the expression “par for the course”? Well, a par for each hole is determined by its length. If a good golfer can hit a ball in one shot from the tee to the green, where the flag is, with an allowance of two putts, that makes it a “par-3”. If it takes two shots to reach the green, it’s a “par-4”; and if it takes three shots, that makes it a “par-5”. You add up all eighteen and you get the “par for the course”. In other words, it is all done by measurement. There are no par-6’s, by the way. For a championship course, the total is 71 or 72, usually made up of four par-3’s, four par-5’s and the remainder par-4’s. The course where I play is shorter. There is only one par-5 and five par-3’s, so that makes the total par score 68, and that’s how our handicaps are worked out.’

  ‘Oh, yes’, said Holly. ‘You explained that to me once… If a good golfer completes the course in a par score of 68 shots and you regularly average 78, you are given a handicap of ten. Is that it?’

  ‘Something like that. Anyway, as I was saying, it’s always harder for the away team in the Ryder Cup, and we lost heavily at Valhalla, a golf club in Kentucky, in 2008. The last time we won in the States was in 2004. What a match! I still remember the fantastic 45 yard putt Sergio Garcia holed to halve the fourball match he was playing with Lee Westwood against Jay Haas and Chris DiMarco. It was enormous, and pretty much sideways, right across the rolling final green. Sergio won his three other matches that year too, beating the other great left-hander, Phil Mickelson, on the final day to round it off.’

  ‘You talk about them by their first names as if you know them personally’, Holly remarked.

  ‘It’s true. I guess we pick that up from the commentators.’ Sam was balancing a piece of cheese on a water biscuit, before putting it in his mouth and washing it down with a big gulp of the ‘Constantia’ red, as they continued watching the screen. ‘The Spaniards are special when it comes to match play’, he began again on the same theme. ‘Garcia, Olazabal, Jimenez… They are all fantastic, but the greatest was undoubtedly Seve… Severiano Ballesteros.’

  ‘I have heard of him’, Holly interrupted, keen to show off her recently acquired knowledge to Sam. ‘He was the golfer who beat Arnold Palmer in the World Match Play event at Wentworth in 1983. Didn’t he get cancer or something?’

  Sam was impressed. ‘He had a brain tumour of some kind. It was only about four years ago that he had to stop playing, the most fabulous golfer ever… So imaginative, so passionate! It was such a tragedy when he became ill; and now he is dead. He died in May last year, only fifty-four.’

  Holly had not often heard her father express such strong feeling about a sportsman, or anyone, before; awe, admiration, joy and grief mingled together.

  ‘He must have been really something’, she said sympathetically.

  ‘Seve always used to shine in the Ryder Cup’, Sam continued. ‘I think he was in it eight times, often teamed with Olazabal. They were hard to beat. Now his legacy is going to act as a kind of mascot, spurring on the European team. They are going to try their hardest to win it for him, I imagine… And I’ll bet Olazabal even said as much in his opening speech.’

  ‘So what happens now?’ said Holly.

  ‘The Medi
nah Club is near Chicago. That’s about six hours behind us. It’s a very tough golf course. Tomorrow morning, each team will field four pairs who play match-play – hole-by-hole – against each other in a ‘fourball’ format; which means all four players complete each hole and the team’s lowest score counts. In the afternoon, four more pairs play a similar match, but this time it’s called ‘foursomes’ and only two balls are in play. The players on the same side take alternate shots until the ball drops into the hole, and the team with the lower score wins each hole until they run out of holes and the match is decided. Then on Saturday they go through the whole thing again, just the same.

  The captains decide on the teams each day so, for instance, it is possible for a player to be left out of play altogether. Usually though, to give everyone a chance to experience the atmosphere and prepare for Sunday, everyone plays at least once during the first two days. Similarly, to avoid anyone getting too weary, the twelve players on each team usually get rested at least once. Then on Sunday everybody plays in the twelve ‘singles’ matches, one-on-one. That’s when the match gets really exciting… the Ryder Cup at its best!’

  ***

  The following morning, Holly awoke to the pleasing aroma of coffee. She took a quick shower, put on a clean blouse and underwear, and was looking tidy, fresh and smart when she joined Sam for breakfast. ‘Eggs and bacon?’ he called. ‘You bet!’ she replied.

  A few minutes later, as they sat at the table together, Holly said, ‘I’ve got a question, Dad’. Sam put down his coffee cup and looked up. ‘Okay!’

  ‘You remember you told me the Ryder Cup was played every two years?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And it was first played for in 1927?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, how come it’s being played this year? 2012 is an even year.’

  ‘Very clever, Mrs Detective! Have you been thinking about that all night?’