Let Slip the Dogs of War: A Bard's Bed & Breakfast Mystery #1

by Barton, Sara M.

  “Maybe that’s why she’s naked,” Ben suggested. “Maybe the killer doesn’t need her clothes.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” I wasn’t ready to give up my theory yet.

  Ben knelt on the floor, his hands picking up hers, and he examined each finger. Then he moved down towards her feet.

  “She’s missing fingernail polish on her baby toe, right foot. There’s none.”

  “Are you sure she wasn’t just a nervous Nellie, peeling it off instead of biting her nails?” My husband ignored me, carrying on a one-sided conversation with himself.

  “The bee could be the letter B. The rose could be the letter R. The missing fingernail polish could be the number for the new cipher. We start at B and add ten letters to get the one we want, the L. And if we start at R and add ten letters, we get the B, making L and B the letters for the key.”

  “How do you know you’re not supposed to start at B and go backwards ten? Which would be....”

  “...G and R,” he said. “Maybe that means you throw out the L and the G. Maybe the only letters that matter are the B and the R.”

  “What do we do with that?” I wondered. Stymied, I sat down on the bed, my feet dangling near the dead girl’s head, and checked the time. We had another two and a half hours before we had to leave for the drive to Burlington. “Are they someone’s initials?”

  “It could be just about anything, Bea.”

  “What should we do with the body? We can’t leave Jane Doe here. Mr. Williams may not be happy about that.”

  “Well, Langley didn’t give me any answers. No confirmation they know the girl. No confirmation who handled her. All they said was we had to get to Mr. Williams before the killer does. They’re not coming to do the clean-up on this. That’s up to us. I’m supposed to leave the girl in a field halfway to the airport. They gave me the coordinates, and they’ll have a crew swing by to pick her up. I guess I’ll go grab a trunk from the attic.”

  “Do we have a trunk in the attic?”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  “Ben, what if the killer is still hanging around? What if....”

  “Hi ho!” I heard Uncle Edward yodeling for us. He was knocking on all the doors along the hallway.“Where is everyone? Lorna and I are looking for a pair for bridge!”

  “Oh, bloody la-dee-da!” I groaned. “Perfect timing. Do we tell him?”

  “Langley says no. Go distract him and the fair Lorna while I tuck the body away.”

  “Uncle Edward! Mrs. Gillman!” I whipped open the door to the Ephesus Suite as if I were out of breath. “Hurry! You have to help me!”

  “Good God, woman, you’re in a state. Whatever is the matter?”

  “It’s Puck! I cannot find him anywhere. I’ve checked all the rooms,” I insisted, as I shut the door behind me. “I heard him whining, but I can’t locate him! Puck! Come here!”

  “Puck! Where are you, you little rascal?” Uncle Edward began searching in earnest for the pooch. His companion joined in the effort.

  “Perhaps Mr. Darcy knows where Puck is. Where has my little dog gone?” Mrs. Gillman asked. “Here, boy!”

  All I knew was I didn’t want the poodle and the Shih Tzu leading the elderly couple back to the now-decomposing body behind the door of the Ephesus Suite, because those little fur balls would surely be persistent.

  “Where was he when you last saw him, Beatrice?”

  “Chasing Mr. Darcy down the hallway about ten minutes ago. But something frightened him and he took off like a shot.”

  “He must be around here somewhere. Puck?”

  “Why don’t you two look downstairs and I’ll keep looking up here. Holler up if you find him before I do.”

  With that, the elderly couple hurried down the long hallway and descended the stairs, calling for the missing poodle.

  “You’re clear,” I said, sticking my head in to let Ben know he could head up to the attic.

  He was back five minutes later, empty-handed save about twenty feet of thick rope. “Get me the shower curtain from the bathroom.”

  “Why?” I already knew the answer, but I wanted him to say it anyway.

  “I have to have something to wrap her in. Hurry up.”

  “You can have the liner, not the curtain. I am not giving up a perfectly lovely shower curtain to conceal a dead body.”

  Chapter Four --

  “Come on,” Ben groaned, rolling his eyes. “Now is not the time to put your foot down. I have to have something to wrap her in so I can drop her over the railing. I can’t send her down there stark naked in a shower liner.”

  “We’ll use Uncle Edward’s rug. We can carry it downstairs,” I suggested.

  “That rug is heavy. And it will be bulky. Not to mention that it screams, ‘dead body’. Who’s going to think we’re just carrying a rug? And what if they want to help us?”

  “The rug has to be cleaned anyway, so we’ll kill two birds with one stone,” I countered.

  “I’d rather drop her over the balcony and into the garden,” he insisted. “That way, I can pick her up in the wheelbarrow and take her to the car.”

  “You will put plastic down if you’re taking the station wagon, right? I really don’t want to have to clean the trunk.”

  “Promise,” Ben agreed.

  “I have an old mattress pad that should do the trick nicely for a makeshift shroud. What about using some of my pantyhose to tie the padding around her? That should look a lot less suspicious than my expensive fabric shower curtain.”

  “Fine. Give me a hand.”

  I got the shower curtain liner down from the pole above the tub and spread it out on the floor.

  “Grab her feet,” Ben directed me, as he tucked his hands under her arms. Once we positioned her on the liner, we wrapped her up and repeated the process with the mattress pad. By the time we were done, you would have never guessed there was a body in the big bundle. That’s because Ben convinced me to sacrifice some old pillows, which we tucked in to disguise the shape of the body.

  “The pillows will cushion her fall,” he said, as I handed him the severed leg portion of an old pair of pantyhose. When he was done knotting it around the white batting, he held out his hand for the other leg. “This stuff is great. Nice and stretchy.”

  “Strong, too.”

  “It’d be good for tying up a bad guy.”

  “Yes, it would.”

  “Very handy.”

  “Forget it, Secret Agent Man. You’re not getting the last word here.”

  “Depends on how resilient I am,” he grinned, giving me a big wink.

  “No, it doesn’t,” I replied, wagging my finger at Ben. ‘You’re not that good-looking that you can get away with this. Besides, you know you want to stay on my good side if you want any more of my cast-offs.”

  “Yoo-hoo!” It was Lorna, hailing me. I hopped off the bed and grabbed the doorknob, giving it a fast turn with a flick of my wrist, knowing that we did not want her to cross the threshold in the Ephesus Suite. Uncle Edward may have been experienced in the ugly side of intelligence games, but the sweet, well-meaning, ever so slightly dippy Lorna was not. She had spent decades as a research librarian at the ivy league college where Uncle Edward taught and she was great in the stacks, skilled at pulling up obscure historical tidbits, literary quotations, and long-lost tomes. Lorna was a big Jane Austen fan and favored the classic feminista movement populated with gutsy, but kind heroines like Elizabeth Bennett. She was of an age where women sought to propel themselves forth as augers of wisdom and all things civilized. I wasn’t sure she could handle these all-too-mortal remains wrapped in white. Too much like a real Shakespearean tragedy.

  “Any luck?” I asked, stepping out of the suite before she could burst in. I started walking her back to the staircase, on the premise that I needed to get supplies from the linen closet.

  “Puck was in the kitchen with Mr. Darcy,” she announced. “As Edward remarked, all’s well that ends well. Time for some bridge?” />
  “Unfortunately, no. We’ll have to pass. We have to get rooms ready and then we’re off to pick up a guest.” I patted her shoulder to convey my disappointment. “Perhaps tomorrow.”

  “Perhaps,” she agreed. “Might I ask you something?”

  “Certainly.” I was in the middle of grabbing rolls of toilet paper, a box of tissues, and clean towels as she spoke.

  “Did that young girl find her friend?”

  “Excuse me?” I gave Lorna my full attention. Her pale blue eyes seemed worried.

  “She asked if she could wait for her friend in the library. I couldn’t find you anywhere, Bea. I hope that was alright.” Our mysterious visitor was let into the house by Uncle Edward’s friend. Go figure. One mystery down. At least now we knew that the poor girl didn’t get dragged to the Bard Bed & Breakfast, kicking and screaming. She came here to meet Mr. Williams.

  “Just fine,” I assured the elderly woman. “Thank you for doing that. What time did she arrive?”

  “Oh, I was up at five-thirty, having coffee in the kitchen. She knocked on the back door. She seemed peckish, so I fetched her a cup of coffee and a muffin. I hope you don’t think I was overstepping my bounds.”

  “Heavens, no. I’m glad you were kind to her.” It was true. There was a part of me that was relieved to know someone had offered that poor girl something other than that fatal injection into her veins in her final hour of life. But that still left us with the mystery of who killed her and why, and there was still a murderer on the premises, unless he fled. Or she died of an overdose.

  “I just didn’t want you to think I was trying to interfere, dear.”

  “Mrs. Gillman, you feel free to do what seems the right thing to do while you’re here.” I snaked around her, my arms full of bathroom supplies, giving her a friendly smile that was returned. My answer seemed to satisfy her, and she nodded before going down the stairs.

  Ben was on his hands and knees, securing the ropes around the padded lump when I opened the door of the suite. I tossed the items onto the bed, not caring that two of the rolls of toilet paper bounced off and scooted across the bedroom floor. I had much bigger fish to fry, and that pan was going to get really hot before I was done.

  “What time did you say Philippe Graphon is getting here?” I asked curtly.

  “I didn’t say.”

  “And why is that?” With a big glare, I waited for the answer I knew was coming.

  “I didn’t think it was necessary.”

  “Because he’s already here,” I said. “And he’s been here since when?”

  “Last night,” Ben admitted, with a slightly defensive air.

  “In what room?” With my arms folded across my chest, towering over the man trying to busy himself with a fancy knot, I presided over the inquisition.

  “Antium.”

  “Next door to this room,” I pointed out, “where the dead body surfaced. By the way, Lorna let the girl into the library this morning to wait for her friend.”

  “Hmm....” When Ben sighs like that, it usually means he’s figured something out. Getting him to share it, though, is like pulling teeth. That’s okay. I went to the Street Smarts School of Dentistry. No anesthesia. No fancy equipment. Yank and you’re done.

  “Hmm, what?” I demanded.

  “Nothing. Just something.”

  “What kind of something?” I thought for a moment. Lorna let the girl in to meet her friend. If Philippe was here last night, maybe this wasn’t about Mr. Williams at all. “That low-life, rat-faced, dung-loving son of a....”

  “We can’t be sure. We still have to think about Mr. Williams.”

  “What if we were right about the tattoos, but wrong about the recipient?” said I, suddenly all too aware of the fact that Philippe Grapon had a dangerous, predatory side, when he wasn’t trying to get into the closest pair of panties. “What if she was delivering the bona fides to that creep and once he got them, he killed her?”

  “That would mean that whatever she gave him was important enough to kill her.”

  “Or,” I told him, climbing back onto the bed as I considered the possibilities, “what if he killed her because he was posing as Mr. Williams?”

  “Oh, criminy!” Ben bellowed at me, eyes glaring, fire flaring from the nostrils.

  “What?” I admit I thought his was an extreme reaction to my intellectual musings.

  “Why in the bloody hell do you have to speculate to the point of confusion? You can’t just come up with one solution and check it out. Oh, no! Miss Jane Marple here has to come up with a dozen theories, so that we are pulled in so many directions, we waste precious time trying to pick the right one!” Boy, he was really hot under the collar. I was going to suggest he unbutton that top button and take a chill pill, but he had that ugly look on his face that told me he was close to blowing a gasket.

  “Which means we don’t know why Philippe came here or what he plans to do,” I decided.

  “Hell, the girl could have died accidentally. They could have been planning a romantic tryst and it got out of hand. We just don’t have enough information to make a logical conclusion, Bea!” he snorted. “Why do you always have to throw the baby in with the bathwater when I’m trying to clean out the tub?” You can tell we’ve been at the Bard for some time. Ben is actually the guy who scrubs the porcelain.

  “Fine!” I snapped in response. “What do you want me to do? Not consider the possibilities?”

  “I want you to stop and think before you start spewing theories,” he replied, his words carefully measured and dispensed through clenched teeth. “Not everything is a bleeding conspiracy of evil! Sometimes a black crayon is just a black crayon!”

  “You’re saying this isn’t a murder? Just because she died, it doesn’t mean someone killed her, Ben?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying. She could have accidentally overdosed. We don’t even know what was in the injection.”

  “Right. Except for the fact that she’s not covered with signs of intravenous drug use on a regular basis, which means the injection was probably not a normal thing for her.” One step closer to admitting it was a murder. Ben looked like he was feeling guilty for sneaking that miscreant into the Bard Bed & Breakfast, and he was hoping his error in judgment didn’t get that poor girl killed. I believe the technical term for his reaction is called denial. A glance at my watch told me we still had some time before we left for the airport. “What are we doing next?”

  “We get Uncle Edward and Lorna out of the way, I drop the body over the railing, and you grab it below. Then we get in the car, drive to the drop-off, and then head to the airport to pick up Mr. Williams.”

  “Why can’t you catch the body?”

  “Because I have to hoist it over the parapet, my love, and lower it down to you. I cannot be in two places at once.”

  “Don’t you have a pulley or a zip line you can use? I’ll hold the rope and lower it down after you get it set up.”

  “Beatrice, there you go again, not thinking it through. We have a dead body,” he said, speaking slowly, as if to a dull child. “We need to move the dead body from this room to the garden below. The weight of the dead body on the pulley would require you to hold it fast for the length of time that I would need to run downstairs and out to the terrace, around to the garden and under the balcony.”

  “Can’t you just tie the rope to the bed? I’ll untie it when you get into position.”

  “You would have us do all of that extra work, not to mention risk the stability of Uncle Edward’s antique bed, all because you are squeamish about catching a dead body that is double-wrapped?”

  “Oh, fine!” I snapped back. “I hate it when you’re right. Thank heavens you’re not right on a regular basis. That would be unbearable.”

  “Meaning you are?”

  “More than you,” I replied proudly, defiantly.

  “Hardly. Grab the feet. We’re going to move her to the balcony.”

  We dragged t
he unfortunate girl out through the narrow French doors and carefully rested her on the cold wrought iron railing. The white shroud stood out against the sharp black metal, and I was certain it was visible for some distance. Luckily, the hostelry was located on more than thirty acres of prime wilderness, surrounded by thick woods. Still, when it comes to ex-spies, you never know what evil lurks in the shadows, let alone in the hearts of men.

  “Now go and see what the lovebirds are doing and keep them busy while I get the wheelbarrow into place,” the laird commanded.

  “Fine,” said I.

  “Good,” he replied.

  “I still think my plan was the better,” I muttered as I shut the door behind me and headed down the hall.

  “Was not,” were the words I heard in the distance as I hit the stairs. I grimaced and whispered to no one in particular.

  “Was too.”

  Uncle Edward was playing gin rummy with Lorna in the library. The two were happily ensconced at the antique card table and it looked as if Lorna had the upper hand. I slipped out the back door, scooted across the terrace, and went to meet the erstwhile knight in tarnished armor as he maneuvered the wheelbarrow on the ground.

  “You stand here.” His strong hands gripped my shoulders and moved me into position. He checked the angle twice more before disappearing back into the house. A moment later, I saw that face appear over the railing of the balcony. One last time, I glanced around me, searching the horizon for signs of observers in the area; seeing none, I silently offered a thumbs-up. Seconds later, Ben held the carefully contained corpse in his arms, lifted her past the wrought iron barrier, let go, and grabbed the rope in time for the body to travel almost the full twenty feet before the rope went taunt.

  “Son of a bitch!” Before I knew it, I was flat on my fanny. I rubbed my head where the immobilized stiff kicked me on her way down. I knew it wasn’t the girl’s fault her wayward feet struck a blow. It was that big lout on the other end of the rope who caused the problem. “You bastard!”