Blood and Broomsticks

by Jean G. Goodhind

  A door went off on either side of the tiny landing. Both doors were open and police-incident taped.

  The room to the left was slightly smaller than the one to the right. They peered in. As with the other rooms, the bed was unmade and the room was chilly. A fair-haired girl in a white jump suit glanced over her shoulder.

  ‘The other room’s swabbed and sectioned. Not far off finished on this one. As far as we can make out, the woman was dumped out of this window, and the man out of the window in the other room.’

  Doherty thanked her. They looked over the tape into the other room. Rumpled bedclothes lay at the foot of a perfectly ordinary double bed. The room was nowhere near as cold as the others.

  ‘Someone’s been sleeping in this bed,’ remarked Honey.

  ‘And it’s not likely to be one of the Three Bears.’

  A pair of table lamps with pink shades and white onyx bases sat on cabinets to either side of the bed. The main light was a round collapsible white paper shade hanging in front of the dormer window.

  ‘We’ll do DNA tests of course, but if the occupant of this room doesn’t have a record …’

  The conclusion was left hanging in the air, but obvious for all that. No criminal record. No DNA record.

  ‘We’ll ask around whether anyone saw a third person living or working here.’

  Although Honey ached to ask him why he hadn’t phoned, she decided that the question was best left for the moment. Doherty had plenty on his plate without her hassling him.

  When they got down to the ground floor, the door to Mr and Mrs Crook’s private quarters was open.

  Honey nodded in that direction. ‘I’m assuming you saw the luggage. Did you find any flight tickets?’

  His response was abruptly professional. ‘Yes to the first question, no to the second.’

  ‘Well. They were certainly going somewhere. I presume you’re thinking whoever was in that attic room threw the Crooks out of the window.’

  ‘That’s about the size of it.’

  ‘Odd though. One from each window, purely so each of them lands in one of those pots.’

  The pots loomed large in Honey’s mind. Why throw two people out of a third-storey window so they landed in them? It also crossed her mind that the pots themselves might have some significance, though it didn’t seem likely. They were just plant pots. Very large urns decorated with a frieze of dancing naiads and satyrs in states of semi-undress. And what’s more they looked as though they were made of carbon fibre. Tacky. Not quality.

  ‘Tell your chairman we’ll do our best to put this case to bed,’ Doherty shouted over his shoulder.

  Honey eyed his retreating back regretting that he’d given no sign of kiss and make up.

  John Rees was waiting for her by the pedestrian gate. A large stone had been placed against the damned thing to hold it open. A few people at the party had laughingly remarked about how noisy it was and how sturdy the spring that caused it to clang shut behind them.

  She threw John a brief smile. ‘Homeward bound then.’

  ‘No kiss and make up?’

  She almost winced but instead made herself smile.

  ‘He’s engrossed in the case. He’ll call me if he needs me.’

  Hopefully she didn’t sound bitter. She didn’t feel bitter. OK, regretful, but not bitter. And she couldn’t believe it was all over. Not really.

  Chapter Four

  There was nothing Honey found more irritating about Casper St John Gervais, chairman of Bath Hotels Association, than him brushing imaginary dirt off a chair before sitting down. Deciding it wasn’t worth mentioning, she pasted on a happy face even though she was only feeling so-so.

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘What sort of coffee is it?’

  ‘Just coffee.’

  ‘I do not drink “just coffee”. Now these people out at Moss End Cottage Hotel … quite unsuitable for the hospitality trade. I can’t imagine what possessed them.’

  ‘Dead people. They’re dead people, Casper. We shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.’

  The long face drooped a little longer and the nostrils in the aquiline nose contracted to no more than pencil fine slits.

  ‘I’m not speaking ill of them. I’m merely stating my first impression on meeting them at one of those infernal association meetings. They were gushing over everyone and wanting to be involved in everything one minute, then hey presto – they never appeared again.’

  It crossed Honey’s mind that Casper himself might have put them off. His opinion of them would have been obvious. He couldn’t help himself.

  ‘Did you see their curtains? And those urns. Who in their right mind would buy such monstrosities as those?’

  ‘Miss Potter bought them. Alistair at the auction rooms told me so. She had a habit of not bidding an actual amount, but just going for last bid. When a bidder does that it means that basically they’re willing to buy the item or items at any price.’

  ‘I have been to a few auctions myself. I know what it means,’ he said acidly.

  ‘Odd that they ended up potted – so to speak.’

  ‘Indeed. Now what sort of progress are we making on this and are the police getting anywhere with their investigations?’

  Honey shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

  Casper had a way of raising one eyebrow that made her think of a guillotine. Nobody could raise an eyebrows like he could – then drop it from a great height. ‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’

  ‘I’m kind of … excluded from what’s going on.’

  ‘You can’t be excluded. It’s your job to be included.’

  Honey squirmed. She didn’t want to tell the full story. A précis would have to do. ‘Well, it’s like this. Doherty and I have had a slight falling out …’

  ‘Ah! So you and he are no longer on the intimate terms you once enjoyed. Is this what you are saying?’

  She nodded mutely. Up until now Casper hadn’t exactly been in the need to know loop regarding the personal side of her relationship with Detective Chief Inspector Steve Doherty.

  ‘Then you have to make amends – whatever the price.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Well, we can’t have the association being excluded from an incident that could have serious repercussions on the tourist trade, now can we,’ he exclaimed, slapping the chair arms with his fine, white hands in an act of finality. ‘As I explained to you from the first, the reputation of this fine city is in your hands – yours and mine. My reputation and that of the city are inexorably bound together. So is yours, for that matter. There is no other recourse open but for you to build bridges and reaffirm your relationship.’

  The fact was she would quite like to reaffirm her relationship with Doherty. The stumbling block was a smashed-up car and wounded pride. Forgiveness wasn’t going to come that easily.

  ‘What if I don’t want to?’ Honey said huffily, thinking that Casper was acting a bit like her mother. Her mother strived to get her into relationships – mostly with people who lacked sex appeal but not money.

  Casper was unrepentant. Intertwining his long white fingers, he viewed her as a judge might a condemned prisoner. She had no option. The blade of the guillotine was heading downwards.

  ‘I’m sorry, Honey, but you have to do your best to find the perpetrators of this heinous crime even if it means going behind the police officer’s back. My preference is for you to make amends. You must be professional at all times, and so must he. There is far more at stake here than personal relationships. I look to you to close this case. If not …’

  Down came the raised eyebrow.

  Just for a moment, Honey imagined the feel of an icy blade across the nape of her neck. She didn’t want to confront the ‘if not’ scenario. When first handed this post, she’d eyed it as one might a cupful of wine given by the most poisonous of the Borgias. Now the job felt as much a part of her as her chocolate-enhanced thighs. Or her daughter. At a push, even her mother. Part of the fa
mily so to speak.

  October was rustling to a close, the nights drawing in, and a bracing autumn turning damp and misty. Even the honey-coloured stone buildings of Bath were looking a little grey.

  The need to keep a hotel presentable all year round meant that Honey and Lindsey were working hard. In fact they were out in the courtyard that separated the hotel from the coach house they lived in. Dead heading the potted shrubs was one of the few outside jobs of a professional hotelier. Honey was no keen gardener, but as the main skill needed was leaving enough hydrangea to protect next summer’s new shoots, she was doing pretty well.

  Being out of earshot of staff and guests, their conversation naturally got round to Detective Chief Inspector Steve Doherty.

  Honey was skirting around the romantic side of their liaison preferring to concentrate on her ongoing commitment to the post of Crime Liaison Officer.

  ‘I simply cannot relinquish the cut and thrust of crime detection that easily.’

  ‘And your association with a certain police officer.’

  ‘I know I wasn’t keen to take it on, but now I’m not sure I can live without it. I just love escaping moaning staff and whinging guests. You get to meet so many different people.’

  ‘Thieves, tramps, the odd murderer …’

  ‘And detection means pushing my mental faculties to the limit. You can’t push your mental faculties unblocking a bathroom sink or shoving sage and onion stuffing up the rear end of a Sunday turkey.’

  ‘And Doherty?’ asked Lindsey, as she bent to tug a limp and ragged geranium from its bed.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I mean, do you love him?’

  Cornered, Honey chewed on her bottom lip and eyed a half-dead fuchsia. Dead or not dead?

  Lindsey noticed her hesitation, placed her muddy glove on her hip and faced her. ‘OK. You’re undecided. Doherty blew a gasket about his car.’

  ‘It wasn’t my fault.’ She held her tongue on blaming her mother. Not that it mattered much. Her mother had kept her distance for days. Lindsey knew the score.

  ‘It doesn’t matter whose fault it was. You’ve broken a boy’s favourite toy, irritating in itself, but more so because you thought YOU were his favourite toy.’

  Honey mumbled something inaudible along the lines of that she wasn’t a teddy bear. Or a toy train, and if she was he’d cuddle one and play for hours with the other.

  ‘Muttering to yourself isn’t going to fix matters. Make up or move on.’

  Honey eyed her daughter sidelong. The look in Lindsey’s eyes was catlike and deeply intuitive. There was no fooling her. Lindsey had been born old and responsible. She just had that way about her.

  At this particular moment she wasn’t so much asking the question as daring her mother to deny what was so obviously on her mind. It made Honey wonder whether the words ‘John Rees – Bath Bookseller’ was written in indelible ink across her forehead.

  Deciding there was no point in lying, she waggled her trowel from side to side and gave in.

  ‘John Rees brought me home. That’s all.’

  ‘No big surprise there then. He’s always been hanging around. Was it really a coincidence that he was at the party?’

  ‘He was invited. I think he knew Maurice Hoffman, Alison’s latest muscular mattress.’

  ‘He’s always fancied you, and you’ve always had a soft spot for him.’

  ‘I’m not denying that.’ Of course she wasn’t, though it was more like a hot spot than a soft spot.

  ‘There’s no point you denying it. I’ve seen the way your eyes drop to his preferred areas whenever he calls in.’

  Honey threw another frost-bitten plant into the biodegradable rubbish bag. The bag was a Lindsey thing that she had no problem adhering to.

  There was no point in denying that John Rees had always rung her bell – not literally – yet. But metaphorically? An unassailable truth. Mentally, he had always been in the running.

  There was no point denying anything. ‘Well come on, oh wise and wonderful one. What shall I do?’

  Lindsey patted the compost from a dead plant root with her trowel. ‘As I see it, Mother, the choice is yours and on the whole there isn’t much to choose between them. Number one, you can beg Doherty on bended knees to forgive you for smashing up his car – even offer to pay the bill if you wish …’

  ‘Steady on!’

  ‘Number two, you can show him that you’re as good a detective as he is by solving the case all by yourself – if that’s at all possible.’

  ‘And number three?’

  Lindsey straightened, threw her trowel into the wooden box where all gardening tools were kept, and grinned.

  ‘Give John Rees some of your time. Dip your toe into unknown waters. You don’t have to dive in. Paddle around at the edge. See what comes up.’

  Doherty would come round. She was pretty sure of that, but he’d always been touchy about his car. He loved that car, perhaps as much as he loved her. In the meantime it was a case of getting on with life. Everything would turn out OK in the end. Wouldn’t it?

  Chapter Five

  Aubrey Abingdon was doing his best to look nonchalant but wasn’t entirely sure he was up to the job. He’d waited until his mother and that man were out before making his move.

  That man! He couldn’t bear to even think of his name. Not naming him made him not quite real, though of course he was. The slug! The slimy toad that had upset his life!

  A November mist was a help though often as not all it did was to obscure the view of the city.

  He checked and checked again. Although there wasn’t a soul in sight, he was all nerves, half expecting some nosy neighbour to leap out from the emptiness and accuse him of loitering with obvious intent. Especially Mrs Nobbs, her of the generous bosom and terrible taste in clothes and garden accoutrements.

  Again and again his nervous gaze scanned the elegant expanse that was Lansdown Crescent and with the same result as before; there wasn’t a soul in sight. No pedestrians. No passing cars, no taxis, no service vans, and nobody sitting on sentry duty in any of the few cars parked at the kerb.

  Satisfied that the well-heeled residents were either at work, shopping, or catching the rays in sunnier climes, he crept up to the front door of one particular house, plunged the key into the keyhole, and pushed it open.

  Once inside he used both hands to close the door, keeping the lock disengaged until he knew for sure it would shut soundlessly. Hardly daring to breathe he listened for the tell-tale signs of occupation; a voice, music, the creaking of footsteps on the staircase that climbed in sinuous curves to the upper floors.

  In years gone by the classic Georgian house situated in an imposing crescent of similar houses had been lived in by one family with an army of servants but had since been divided into fine, elegant flats, two on each floor. Nobody lived here who couldn’t afford haute cuisine at a two Michelin star restaurant, season tickets to Covent Garden Opera House, and a yacht in St Barts or a ski chalet in the Austrian Tyrol.

  The door to the ground floor flat on the right hand side of the hallway loomed large and menacing. The couple who owned the flat were rarely in residence; the woman was something in education, the man some kind of business development executive who mostly worked abroad in Arab countries. The woman was sometimes there, the man rarely so.

  Aubrey held his breath as he strained to hear, feeling so nervous that he was almost tempted to bite his nails. Reminding himself that he’d only just had them polished and trimmed stopped him. Burglary, he decided, was all so unnerving.

  He waited. Listened. Not a sound. The place was all his.

  Even so, he couldn’t help tiptoeing over the checkerboard of black and white floor tiles to the Georgian door on the left of the hallway. Like the other it was fashioned from solid mahogany, its surface protected by over two centuries of paint.

  Confident now, he took a deep breath, inserted the key into the lock and pushed gently until he heard a soft cli
ck, then closed it behind him.

  He tutted at the marks he’d left on the brass fingerplate. Meticulous in his drive for perfection, he fetched paper tissues from a drawer in the fragile, fine-legged sliver of a hall table.

  Setting down the tan coloured hold all he’d brought with him, the sort used by sports enthusiasts to carry their rackets and freshly laundered shorts and polo shirts to the gym, he straightened, sighed, and tapped his beating heart. The bag was a recent purchase for which he’d discarded both the bill and its wrapping into a bin on the way here. It was currently empty.

  He knew his mother – and that man – were out. They didn’t belong here and even though he hadn’t voiced his objections to them living here, he had begun to formulate an insidious plan; one that would sort the pair of them out for good.

  Satisfied that no one would hear him, he opened the door to his favourite room which faced due south and was thus flooded with light.

  Such a lovely room and one of the main reasons why he so loved the place. Sighing at the prospect of living here alone again, he went straight to one of the three tall windows and eyed the view. The city of Bath was better observed from this crescent than from the more famous Royal Crescent, plus it did not attract the tourists. You had to know where Lansdown Crescent was and luckily the tourists did not. Visitors to the crescent were usually there to call on friends and relatives who were residents; either that or service engineers for boilers, cleaners, or the installers of burglar alarms. Lansdown Crescent was its own private little world, for private and often quite wealthy people.

  This flat was no exception. Oils and watercolours of the Georgian period graced walls of duck egg blue, a traditional colour from that time, the paint formulated from an original eighteenth-century recipe.

  The furnishings were of the right period too, sourced from every quality auction house throughout the country.

  Setting down the bag, he set about selecting and removing those items of which he’d grown particularly fond but which formed part of his plan. The miniatures were first; a set of four beautifully executed watercolours; rosy cheeked ladies with dimpled chins, their breasts peach sized and shyly peering above lace trimmed collars, their hair set in high flounced curls trembling onto porcelain shoulders.