Blood and Broomsticks

by Jean G. Goodhind

  ‘Right.’

  Being at a loss for words wasn’t usually a problem for Honey. She prided herself on being a woman who could converse with anyone from any walk of life; sewer cleaner to secretary of state – not that the latter had ever stayed at the Green River Hotel. Nor the former for that matter. The odds for her taking this case on were pretty long.

  ‘I want something done about it and I’m willing to pay.’

  The odds on Honey taking it on had shortened.

  Fixing her lips between her teeth she nodded. This was the second private case offering to pay her money for her services. Her fame was spreading, her ego expanding.

  ‘When did this last incident occur?’ she asked Mrs Nobbs.

  ‘Hallowe’en!’ Mrs Nobbs voice dropped to a hushed whisper and her eyes bulged with a look of secretive horror. ‘I think Norman was a sacrifice to the old gods, cut into pieces in an effort to arouse Beelzebub and his legions.’

  Honey’s resultant nodding was now on automatic. Norman, she assumed, was the name of the gnome; a phonetic alliteration that suited him.

  ‘So six of your … boys … have been brutalised?’

  ‘Murdered. I don’t consider murder too strong a word for this terrible deed. All in the last fortnight – the run up to Hallowe’en, you see.’

  ‘Trick or treaters don’t usually come knocking until Hallowe’en itself …’

  ‘Not children! Children wouldn’t – couldn’t – do this much damage.’

  Honey surveyed the rough edges of the plastic.

  ‘You could be right. I think I should get this examined by an expert who can advise as to what would have cut like this. Do you mind leaving your … Norman with me?’

  Small piggy eyes glinted at her from over plump cheeks. Mrs Nobbs was weighing her up. At last she nodded.

  ‘I think I can trust you. Now, what about organising a stakeout? I’m willing to pay you fifty pounds per night plus expenses. It seems about the going rate for people like Philip Marlowe once you allow for inflation over the years. When can you start?’

  It wasn’t easy trying to explain to Mrs Nobbs that sitting out in the cold on a November night wasn’t likely to achieve much. Besides which, she pointed out, Marlowe might have been more inclined to ask for fifty pounds as an hourly rate not a day rate.

  Honey persuaded her that it made sense to first obtain an expert to look at the damage done to Norman the gnome.

  ‘You may call on me the moment there are developments. Here’s my card.’

  Mrs Nobbs had blown in like a March wind and went out pretty much the same way.

  Honey slumped in her chair, white card flung onto the desk.

  Lindsey came in grinning.

  ‘What did she want?’

  ‘Mrs Nobbs has a fetish.’

  ‘Really?’ Intrigued, Lindsey sat in the chair on the other side of the desk. ‘My words, older people never fail to surprise me. What is she into?’

  ‘Gnomes.’

  ‘Gnomes?’

  ‘Plastic gnomes. She wants me to find the person who’s been sawing them into bits.’

  ‘Plastic gnomes are horrible.’

  ‘So are politicians, but that’s no reason to saw them into bits.’ She paused. ‘Is it?’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Doris was back on duty when Honey’s phone rang just before breakfast was served.

  ‘I just thought you’d like to know. We’ve found Edna.’

  Honey had known Doherty long enough to read the sound of his voice without needing to see his face.

  ‘You’ve found her but she’s playing dead?’

  ‘Worse than that. She is dead. I’m in Keynsham. Edna was found in a skip outside a house that was being renovated.’

  ‘In Keynsham? What was she doing there?’

  Keynsham was one of those towns to the west of Bath that had grown up from a village sixty or so years ago. Now it was an urban sprawl, a mix of housing and a busy high street where traffic was king.

  ‘Well she wasn’t having an away day with friends.’

  He gave her the address.

  First stop was to phone Ahmed to check about the health of her car.

  His sigh said more than words ever could; noisy and full of dramatic intent.

  ‘Alas, poor car. French, n’est pas?’

  ‘Point taken.’

  She closed her eyes and took deep breaths. When her car was incapacitated, only one person could oblige at short notice. Mary Jane was, as usual, ready and willing, had eaten a bigger breakfast than anyone else, and declared herself raring to go.

  ‘Get you there in no time and I won’t spare the horses.’

  Honey gulped. Mary Jane’s response was exactly as feared.

  While Mary Jane went to fetch her pink peril of a car, Honey went into the bar where she reached for the gin bottle, poured, and swallowed a swift snifter.

  Back in Reception, her daughter Lindsey eyed her with amusement from beneath a heavy fringe that this week was brandy brown – more or less her natural colour.

  Looking and feeling as wooden as a Dutch doll, Honey stopped in front of the reception desk.

  ‘Do you think I should write a last will and testament before venturing out?’ she asked her daughter.

  Lindsey patted her mother on the shoulder. ‘You’ll be fine, Mother. You don’t need to make a will. I’m perfectly capable of sorting things in your absence without you needing to direct me.’

  It wasn’t funny. Being a passenger in Mary Jane’s car was never funny.

  Honey was aware that her legs had turned to jelly and a host of flying fish were windsurfing in her stomach. She kept telling herself that Keynsham was only a few miles away – it would just seem longer.

  Unfortunately, this was one occasion when she couldn’t get away with listening to her iPod; she had to give Mary Jane directions. The west side of the city was an unknown quantity to an out of town person.

  ‘This the right way?’ Mary Jane shouted as they whizzed along the Lower Bristol Road.

  Honey opened one eye. ‘Yep. This is the way.’

  Alternating eyes was tiring but somehow being able to see only flashes of dangerous driving halved the fear.

  By the time they were parked outside the address Doherty had given her, Honey was convinced that her eyes had been shaken loose from their fixings and were rolling round in her head like glass marbles. Lindsey had told her that breathing exercises could help overcome anything. Honey tried it but decided that Mary Jane’s driving was a notable exception.

  ‘Do you want me to come in?’ Mary Jane asked.

  ‘No,’ Honey responded fervently. ‘I’ll be a while. I can get a lift back with Steve or one of the other officers.’

  ‘I can wait for you if you like.’

  ‘No need,’ Honey said hurriedly.

  Mary Jane leaned out of the driver’s side window. Lowering her voice, she said. ‘Well you be careful who you drive with. Those cops just love driving fast. They’re trained to do it. That’s how come you see all those car chases on TV and blockbuster films. ‘

  Feeling distinctly unsteady on her legs, Honey trotted towards the right house, a big stone semi-detached with a huge garden, big bay windows, and a gable at one end.

  A large skip was pulled up onto a concrete covered drive outside.

  By modern standards the house was huge, big enough to accommodate three estate style semi-detacheds. By the look of its squared off bays, it had been built round about the beginning of the twentieth century.

  Incident tape fluttered across the gap where a hedge had been rooted up to make way for the builder to park his skip and his van. A little further along the road she spotted Doherty’s car hugging the kerb. A few crisp leaves, the last of this autumn, came fluttering from a walnut tree to land like splayed hands on the car’s gleaming paintwork.

  On the other side of the tape, Doherty was talking to a few of his team. He saw her, waved her in, looked deep into her eyes, and s
aid, ‘You look a little pale.’

  ‘Mary Jane drove me over.’

  ‘That would do it.’

  ‘Not as pale as our friend Edna, no doubt.’

  ‘Edna was the outdoor type. Slept outdoors summer and winter.’

  ‘She was found in there?’

  Honey jerked her chin at the builders’ skip.

  ‘It was only half full,’ Doherty explained. ‘One of the builders’ labourers was about to shove some more rubbish in there when he saw our lady of the highways and byways. Do you want to see her?’

  Quite frankly it was something Honey preferred to avoid. On this particular occasion she was right there and couldn’t really avoid it. The crew had just transferred the victim from skip to stretcher. Just this once her stomach would cope with it. Afterwards it would be nil by mouth until supper time.

  Doherty pulled the zip down. A knitted woolly hat that could easily have doubled as a tea cosy appeared first. A small wizened face came into view beneath it. The face was heart-shaped and high-coloured, as though it had been wind-blasted and sunburnt for years and years. Both face and clothes were unwashed, the strong smell masking the stench of death.

  Honey swallowed the bile that rose in her throat. ‘And nobody noticed her?’

  ‘The ME reckons she’s been here for a couple of days. The builders were working on another job during that time. She wasn’t discovered until this morning.’

  The body was resealed in the body bag.

  Honey stepped back, unable to take her eyes away from the small bundle that used to be a woman.

  ‘Small, isn’t she?’ she said, noting that the woman’s feet stopped a few feet short of the bottom of the stretcher.

  She joined Doherty to peer over the iron side of the skip, the coldness of the metal biting into her hands.

  Doherty was wearing his seriously thoughtful expression, the iron clad one that once adopted didn’t disappear until he’d thought things through.

  ‘There wasn’t much in here, so nobody would have seen her from the road. She was right down the bottom. Amongst the rubbish.’

  Honey gripped the sides of the skip and eyed the outline of a person drawn onto blood soaked pieces of plasterboard. Each piece was being photographed and logged before removal from the scene for further analysis.

  Although she’d never met Edna, Honey felt a great sadness come over her and couldn’t help the big sigh that escaped with her steamy breath. Who had killed her? Why had they killed her?

  Doherty read her mind. ‘We don’t know who killed her, but there are a few possibilities as to why, number one being this business of identity theft. If that is the case, then I think the only person that may be able to answer our questions is Rhino.’

  ‘And he’s disappeared.’

  Doherty’s hands were clasped tightly together and his eyes were narrowed.

  ‘Something’s scared him, and once he finds out about Edna he’s going to bury himself so far underground, nobody’s likely to find him. The man’s scared of somebody. We need to find out who.’

  He understood she needed a lift back to Bath and eyed her warily before offering.

  ‘Just don’t touch anything,’ he said as she fastened the seatbelt. ‘And don’t distract me from my driving. Distraction is what causes most accidents.’

  She promised not to touch anything. Promised not to distract him.

  A seasonal mist was starting to descend on Saltford, like Keynsham once a village and now a busy road crowded with houses on both sides.

  Not very interesting scenery. There had to be something she could do, something she could talk about that was both professional and amusing. Mrs Nobbs and Norman the gnome sprang instantly to mind.

  ‘Do you recall telling me about the decapitated gnomes?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘You didn’t follow it up.’

  ‘The woman’s mad. Do you know what she wanted me to do?’ Doherty said incredulously.

  ‘Arrange a stakeout to see who was carving up her boys?’

  For the briefest of moments it seemed as though he was going to look at her. The urge was strong, but he kept his nerve, eyes fixed on the road, hands gripping the steering wheel as though it might fall off if he didn’t. My, but he loved his car.

  ‘She came to see me,’ she said in answer to his unasked question. ‘She wanted to pay me fifty pounds to sit outside in her garden all night. I declined of course.’

  ‘I should hope that you did.’

  ‘I told her my rate was fifty pounds an hour.’

  ‘That’s exorbitant! You’re not a real detective!’

  ‘You told me I was pretty good.’

  He just about managed to slide his eyes from the road for a few seconds.

  ‘We were in bed at the time and I’m not sure it was your sleuthing prowess I was referring to.’

  ‘I promised her I’d get expert advice as to what weapon was used to carve up Norman and the boys.’

  ‘Norman?’

  The car went into a slight wobble, kissing the white line in the middle of the road before straightening out.

  ‘That’s the name of the latest victim. Mrs Nobbs believes he was the ultimate sacrifice to the dark forces of Hallowe’en. Some of her other gnomes were vandalised in the weeks before, but she reckons Norman was their greatest prize.’

  Doherty was shaking his head and murmuring that he didn’t believe what he was hearing; that riding the two horses of being a hotelier and crime liaison officer had finally sent her round the pipe.

  ‘You know and I know that I can’t possibly sit out in her garden all night in the hope of catching whoever did it. I’ve got other things to do.’

  ‘Like find this ageing hippy who’s gone to meditate in India or something?’

  ‘Bert Watchpole is not an ageing hippy and Rhoda is worried about him. He’s left his medication behind.’

  ‘Then he can’t have gone far; either that or he’s got access to a fresh supply.’

  Honey sat back and thought about it. ‘You’re right. Why didn’t I think of that? He’s either managed to get his hands on a fresh supply or he’s dead – or ill – or something.’

  ‘Is his wife charming?’

  Honey pursed her lips. ‘Let’s just say that she’s into comfort eating.’

  ‘You mean she’s fat.’

  ‘I comfort eat sometimes.’

  He grinned and glanced at her without losing control of the wheel.

  ‘You work it off – and I don’t just mean at the hotel.’

  ‘About the weapon of choice for sawing up plastic gnomes …’

  ‘A chainsaw. I think I told you that when I first mentioned it.’

  She pointed out that he’d referred to it as the ‘Tasteless Chainsaw Massacre’.

  He snorted. ‘Plastic gnomes! A bloody good description. I mean, how tasteless is that?’

  ‘So it was a chainsaw?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  She sighed. ‘I can’t do a stakeout. It’s not practical, but she does need to be reassured.’

  Honey fell to thoughtful silence. Did she need to ask him to oblige, or would he offer? The old Doherty, her Doherty, would offer.

  ‘You want me to have a word with her. Right?’

  The old Doherty was still in situ!

  ‘Right.’

  ‘OK. Lansdown Crescent it is. As it happens I can kill two birds with one stone. I’ve another case to follow up, that’s if you don’t mind waiting for me once I’ve set Mrs Nobbs’ nerves to rest.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  Despite the mist that was slowly turning leaves soggy and pavements slick with wetness, Lansdown Crescent looked as opulent and breathtaking as ever. The honey coloured stone never failed to glow even in November.

  Bearing in mind that his car doors were wide and the entry low, Doherty parked his car at the end of the crescent where the pavement was almost level with the road.

  They found the right house where bay tr
ees in tubs stood either side of a white front door with a brass knocker and letter box. The sash windows were tall, wide, and reflected views of the city.

  Someone had neglected to close the front door properly so they didn’t need to buzz into the security system. The door opened into a wide hallway. A handsome balustrade curved with the stairway up to the next floor. At the far end of the hall a glazed door looked out over a patio and a patch of green grass. Without needing to see it in more detail, Honey realised that the garden would be like a slice of countryside in the heart of the city, a tasteful oasis where birds nested in the spring and flowers bloomed in perfumed splendour, spoilt only by a collection of plastic gnomes. She’d probably have taken a chainsaw to them herself.

  An elderly woman with snow white hair and wearing a grey woollen dress answered the door of the ground floor apartment, right hand side. Her expression tightened.

  ‘Oh! It’s you.’

  ‘I’m not here to see you, Mrs Sinclair. I’m here to see Mrs Nobbs. Is she at home?’

  ‘Yes?’ she replied while her hands played nervously with the cameo brooch she wore at her throat. ‘I was invited in to have coffee with her. But I’m going now. Who shall I say is calling?’

  Doherty explained why they were there.

  ‘The vandalism. Oh dear. Yes. I see. Then I’ll leave you to it.’

  They divided as she darted through them leaving the door of the apartment wide open.

  ‘Maggie? Who was it at the door?’

  Mrs Nobbs appeared, stocky and purposeful, and without the aid of a walking stick.

  ‘Where did Maggie go?’ she asked sharply.

  ‘The lady went that way,’ said Honey, pointing to the door on the other side of the hallway.

  Mrs Nobbs grunted something about not finishing a perfectly good cup of coffee and friends coming back to their rightful place, but not being reliable. ‘Flighty type,’ she explained, although neither of them had asked anything about the woman.

  ‘You’re not using your walking stick. Is your leg feeling better?’ Honey asked, assuming a pleasant opening gambit would elicit pleasantness from Mrs Nobbs.