Blood and Broomsticks

by Jean G. Goodhind

  Rubbish. Of course he was asking. The tension had left his face the moment she’d admitted the truth.

  ‘Yes you were. And yes, we did dash off to Northend and ask a few people some questions.’

  He leaned forward, his look intense, his fingers interlocked in front of him.

  ‘What questions?’

  ‘About Boris and Doris Crook. It seems that they were quite reclusive. Even the postman had trouble. He tried to deliver a parcel the day before they were murdered, but nobody answered so he did what he always did in such circumstances and left it with a neighbour. She signed for it and promised to deliver it the moment she saw they were at home. According to Gavin the postman, she’d intimated that there was only any sign that somebody was living there at night.’

  ‘But she delivered the parcel.’

  ‘As far as we know.’

  He leaned across the table, cupping her face in both hands.

  ‘Clever girl. I knew you wouldn’t let me down. Let’s go out there tomorrow and ask this obliging neighbour.’

  ‘We can’t.’

  ‘No such word as can’t.’ He maintained his smile, but then he hadn’t heard the rest of it.

  Honey forced her smile to stay put and for her eyes to appear wide open and innocent – something she hadn’t been since for a long time.

  ‘In these circumstances there are. Nobody’s seen the neighbour since. I asked at the pub and was directed to a an odd job gardener of her whereabouts.’

  Doherty’s expression was less exuberant. ‘And you found out the neighbour is away on a world cruise.’

  She shook her head. ‘Not as far as we know. She’s a very elderly lady, a Mrs Hicks. The fact is …’

  ‘The fact is you’re going to tell me something I don’t want to hear …’

  ‘The fact is …’ Honey took a deep breath. ‘The fact is she hasn’t been seen since the day the parcel was left with her.’

  Doherty’s face was now a pale shade of ashen disappointment.

  ‘That’s why I asked about the identity of whoever was sleeping in that top room,’ Honey added.

  ‘And I said it was definitely a man.’

  Honey nodded. Something tickled her all the way down her body when he looked at her that way. Past misdemeanours were forgiven. She was sure of it. She was melting.

  ‘We need to get together on this.’

  ‘Yes!’ He’d said exactly what she’d wanted him to say.

  Heaving a big sigh that made his chest expand and detail his six pack to feel-good proportions, he grabbed both her hands and held them in his.

  ‘And now to bed.’

  ‘Yes! Yes,’ she responded keeping the volume to a level only he could hear.

  ‘So we’d better both shuffle off early to bed. I’ll pick you up in the morning.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Gloria Cross was being her usual, forceful, no-nonsense self. Knights of old wore suits of armour when they were being charging into battle. Honey’s mother preferred Ralph Lauren.

  ‘I thought you were coming with me? We have questions to ask. Rhoda is depending on us and Antonio has offered to help in any way he can. The man is bending over backwards for us.’ On the one hand her tone was demanding, on the other it held just the right tinge of disappointment to make her feel guilty.

  Honey had phoned her mother first thing, even before serving up breakfast, Doris being away on one of her frequent short break holidays. When needs must, the owner mucks in which included serving platefuls of full English breakfast.

  ‘Mother, I think Antonio is bending over for you, not for me.’

  ‘The bending is mutual. Cute bum, huh? Have you noticed that all Latin types have cute bums?’

  Honey considered Doherty’s bum and decided it wasn’t necessarily true, but she wasn’t going to be drawn. Talking of bums before breakfast was too much to deal with.

  ‘Look, I’ve got a few errands to do this morning. How about tomorrow morning?’

  ‘How about today?’

  ‘Mother, it may have escaped your notice, but I have a business to run.’

  ‘You’re the owner. Delegate! Isn’t that what you employ people for?’

  ‘Look, I have to …’

  ‘I quite understand,’ she said stiffly. ‘This morning your policeman lover has priority over your own mother. He gets the morning so I’ll have to settle for later today. I’ll be round at six.’

  ‘I can’t …’

  ‘I have a plan. I’ve written a list of where we can look and enquire further. For a start there’s that Maggie person. She was being trundled off in the ambulance at roughly the same time as Rhoda’s husband fled the nest. She may have seen something.’

  ‘I thought the poor woman was having a heart attack? And I thought she’d died?’

  ‘Apparently not. Antonio confided in me that he’d received notice of her giving up her apartment. She’d decided to return home. She has a flat in Lansdown Crescent. Goodness knows why she took a flat at Overton House. Unless her son forced her out of course. Children can be so ungrateful. Anyway, if I can trace the ambulance driver, he might have seen something. Maggie will know who it is.’

  Honey wasn’t sure about any of this except that reference to this person’s son being ungrateful was a double edged barb, the inference being that Honey too was an ungrateful child.

  ‘So what do I say to John Rees – if he phones?’ asked Lindsey. ‘Are you about to burn your bridges, or should I maintain a drawbridge position?’

  Lindsey was well into history. Honey was just in a state of indecision; the prince or the prince?

  She sucked in her lips and thought about it. ‘Tell him I’m a bit over my head in this case. Something’s come up.’

  Lindsey fixed her with an accusing look. ‘Yes. Doherty is back on the scene. Did Gran ask how his car was?’

  Honey looked at her blankly.

  ‘Point taken,’ said Lindsey. ‘Incidentally, our new receptionist is starting tomorrow morning. I’ll take it you’ll be here for that?’

  ‘I most certainly will. Clint is badgering me for full details.’

  Lindsey grinned. ‘Hopeful that Anna’s replacement will be as obliging as she was, no doubt.’

  ‘He’ll have to be introduced, of course. All the staff will.’

  ‘Just promise I’m around when you do it.’

  They had a plan in mind, a surprise for Clint that they’d cooked up together. They eyed each other in mutual understanding. This would be fun.

  ‘Are you fit?’ Doherty was standing in the doorway, his elbow resting against the frame, his fingers playing with the three day old stubble that was as familiar to his body as the black T-shirt and leather jacket he wore. His denim jeans were faded and fitted his legs like a second skin.

  It was a vision that crept into Honey’s dreams when he wasn’t there – sometimes without the jeans but always with the stubbly chin.

  There was nothing like the real thing. When he moved he gave off the aroma of real man, fresh soap, and that subtle come hither smell; pure testosterone.

  She followed him out to the car with a spring in her step. As usual he had parked it on double yellow lines, the police sticker on the dash almost daring the parking attendant to give him a ticket.

  He hadn’t mentioned her looking nice, but Honey reckoned she did. Today she’d favoured a plum-coloured Jaeger top matched with a pair of olive Betty Barclay jeans. A chiffon scarf of plum, mustard, and red provided the link between everything. OK, Doherty hadn’t complimented her on her outfit, and the fact that her hair was glossy and her face a picture of the cosmetic industry’s best products. But the way he’d looked, blinked, and adopted an expression of casual indifference told her that he had noticed. He was toying with her – and he could toy with her any time he liked.

  Alistair didn’t so much stand behind the payment counter at Bonhams as loom. He was tall, broad in chest and face, and he was wearing a kilt – clan McGregor, if Hon
ey remembered rightly.

  ‘Is there some Scottish celebration on today that I don’t know about?’ she asked him. It wasn’t meant that seriously. Alistair didn’t need a reason to wear a kilt but always had a ready-made excuse if asked whether there was some specific reason.

  ‘No, hen. It’s the central heating. The thermostat’s gone and we can’t turn it off, and what with it being milder than a Highland winter this blower under my counter here just isn’t needed. Warm enough to roast chestnuts, it is. Wearing the kilt keeps everything cool.’

  She tried not to visualise or connect roasted chestnuts with Alistair’s more personal accoutrements. Luckily Doherty seemed willing to accept Alistair’s explanation without hesitation; a man thing of course.

  ‘You may recall I phoned you about the Greek style urns in which two very dead bodies got planted – in a manner of speaking. Can you give us any background on where they came from?’ asked Doherty.

  ‘Aye,’ said Alistair flicking open the pages of his ledger. Although records at Bonhams had long been placed on the computer system, Alistair would not ditch his old ledger. ‘I keep it on computer and written down,’ he explained. ‘Close at hand so to speak.’

  He slid a handful of spade ended fingers down over a column of copperplate handwriting.

  ‘Ah, yes. They’re only plastic of course. It seems that Miss Porter needn’t have put a last bid on these. They were never likely to make top dollar. And they came from a nightclub up in London. One of those places featuring erotic dancers.’

  ‘You mean exotic,’ Honey corrected him.

  ‘No. I mean erotic. Women wearing no clothes and dancing in a suggestive manner. They probably popped out of the urns for some bloke’s birthday bash – that type of thing.’

  Honey and Doherty indicated that they got the picture with a series of silent nods.

  ‘They were certainly large enough for somebody to pop out of,’ Doherty commented. ‘You don’t suppose Miss Porter was the sort to use them for the same purpose?’

  ‘She’d need to give herself an all over iron to get rid of the wrinkles first,’ remarked Alistair as he stroked his nest of a beard.

  ‘It’s pretty obvious she bid for the wrong urns,’ said Honey. ‘It’s the most logical explanation.’

  ‘More than likely,’ said Alistair. ‘She only paid three hundred pounds for this pair.’

  ‘Three hundred quid!’ Doherty’s face exploded in disbelief.

  ‘It’s not out of the way,’ said Alistair. ‘As I explained, they were plastic and a lot heavier than they looked. Though I suppose they had to have stable bottoms seeing as what they were used for. Wouldn’t want them tipping over and the girls spilling out. Not that they were what Miss Porter wanted at all. She was really after a nice little pair no more than eighteen inches high. Reproduction of course; probably brought back from Greece by some tourist in the seventies. But her eyesight was going so she wrote down the wrong number.’

  Doherty shoved his hands in his pockets and looked down at the floor, swaying his shoulders from side to side before turning towards the door.

  Honey lingered. There was a question she just had to ask of this man she thought she knew well.

  ‘How did you know girls popped out of those pots?’

  ‘My cousin Hamish told me. He used to work at the place. He was staying with me around the time of the auction and wandered in. Recognised them immediately. Surprised that they’d ended up being for sale. He remembered seeing them in the club, standing there in pride of place. Then suddenly they were gone. The girls were still there though – eye catching – lovely …’

  ‘Nude,’ added Honey.

  ‘Well, Mr and Mrs Crooks weren’t nude or dancing in them,’ said Doherty from his place at the door. ‘Just dead.’

  Honey commented that they would probably be passed on to a new owner once the police investigation was over with and the infamy of Moss End Guest House had died down.

  ‘I need a list of everyone who was at that party. Your friend Alison has promised to oblige. The murderer or murderers had to be among the guests. Do you recall anything odd about any of them?’

  ‘Well, let’s see,’ said Honey slipping her hand through his arm as they walked from Bonhams to his car. ‘Quite a few women – including yours truly – were wearing long black wigs, pale makeup, and a slinky black dress. Others sported green noses, pointy hats, and warts on their noses. Oh, and quite a few were armed with broomsticks. Some of the men were swathed in bandages, quite a few sported fangs that Dracula would have been dead proud of. I vaguely recall a Frankenstein monster complete with a bolt through his neck, one Spiderman, two people who I thought were right cop-outs wearing nothing but bedsheets …’

  ‘Ghosts,’ said Doherty. ‘So nobody saw their faces.’

  Honey said nothing. Referring to the ghosts had popped out without prior thought. She tried to think whether she’d seen the ‘ghosts’ later on in the evening.

  ‘That’s an odd thing. I only saw them when they arrived at the door.’

  ‘And mine hosts let them in …’

  ‘I’d forgotten about them. After that …’ She shook her head. ‘I never saw them again. Not at the party. I never saw either the late arriving guests or Mr and Mrs Crook again.’

  Doherty stopped. Honey looked up at him. He was wearing his deeply thoughtful expression.

  ‘There had to be two perpetrators to restrain them, smash in their skulls, and tip them out of the window. More damage was done it slid down the roof, the back of his head catching on one of the metal tangs holding a loose slate in place.’

  Honey shivered. ‘Nasty.’

  ‘Yet nobody saw or heard a thing.’

  ‘Unless our friend Mrs Hicks she saw them arrive. They must have come in a car and lovely as she may – or might have been,’ said Honey swiftly correcting herself, ‘she’s a nosy but well-meaning neighbour. She was sure to have noticed the car colour at least, perhaps even the registration number.’

  ‘It’s a possibility.’

  ‘And she was the sort to go poking her nose in, making herself a little too obvious perhaps? It is likely that she may have been eliminated. Unless she really has gone on a cruise or something.’

  ‘We’re making enquiries as to relatives and whether anyone saw her going off anywhere or whether she told anyone she was going away. In view of ongoing enquiries, it strikes me that we have enough of a reason to take a look around her house.’

  He reached into his pocket and took out a key.

  ‘Steve Doherty, you are such a dark horse!’

  ‘The postman had it. She gave it him in case he couldn’t rouse her anytime. He popped in there for tea most days. Thought about popping in there when he knocked the other day, but was in a hurry. He was meeting his girlfriend in town and once the murders happened, he didn’t think it would be wise.’

  ‘So he was suspicious even then?’

  ‘Concerned was the word he used.’

  ‘Trip to Northend?’

  ‘Seems like.’

  She was careful folding herself into Doherty’s car. Fearing even to leave a greasy finger mark, she rubbed the car door with the cuff of her coat sleeve.

  Mrs Hicks’ cottage was chilly but didn’t smell at all musty as a place does if somebody is away for days.

  A large vase full of Michaelmas daisies sat on a tripod table in front of the window. The chairs and settee were old and had bun feet at each corner, the cushions were fat and green. A pair of firedogs; black ironwork griffons with snarling mouths and clenched claws sat either side of an old fashioned Parkray coal burner.

  The decoration was subdued but warm, an old person’s place but with a touch of eccentricity.

  A series of corn dollies looked as though they were dancing along the high slate mantelpiece.

  Doherty touched the glass panel on the front of the Parkray.

  ‘Stone cold. Hasn’t been lit for days.’

  The smell of beeswax evid
enced well-polished furniture. A mahogany sideboard graced one wall, the curtains were green velvet, and every shelf and surface seemed to be taken up by feline figurines, though there was a frog and a couple of rabbits as well.

  Honey admired the daisies.

  ‘They’re still pretty fresh. There’s a big bunch of them growing in the garden. Strange that she bothered to pick some if she was going away.’

  Doherty was straightening a picture of a beautiful woman, a cat draped like a mink stole around her shoulders.

  ‘Gorgeous creature,’ he murmured.

  ‘The cat or the woman?’

  ‘Both. Now retrieve your claws and get looking.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Anything useful.’

  A large mirror hung on the back wall reflecting the front garden and the upper floors of the house opposite.

  ‘The Lady of Shalott,’ murmured Honey.

  ‘I know. A poem. I vaguely remember it from my schooldays. It was about a woman who was cursed and could only view the world via a mirror. She went along with it until she saw Sir Lancelot riding down to Camelot. That’s the bit I remember the best. I think I was eleven years old and fancied myself as Sir Lancelot. You know … horse, sword, suit of shining armour.’

  ‘Written by Alfred Lord Tennyson.’

  Doherty turned to her and grinned. ‘That’s the bit I didn’t remember.’

  Each room of the house was neat, tidy, and there was no sign of a struggle. Rows of clothes hung in the wardrobe in the front bedroom; a patchwork quilt lay smooth and brightly coloured on the brass bed and the clothes in the chest of drawers lay undisturbed.

  The dressing table was of the same vintage as the sideboard downstairs. Honey caught sight of herself in the triple display via the one central and two folding side mirrors.

  A pair of candlesticks sat on the main part of the dressing table where most people kept their hairbrush, face cream, and fancy box of cleansing tissues. No cleansing tissues. Just a paperweight.

  Honey picked it up and shook it. ‘No snow storm,’ she said. ‘I’m disappointed. All paperweights like this have snow storms.’