Holmes found that his glass was still nearly full, a fact that his brain had mislaid in its state of developing muddle, and he drained it in one, as Garden replied, ‘That’s a bit of a stretch of the imagination, isn’t it? Dave Warwick wasn’t there, and we don’t know for sure that it was one of the Irregulars who killed Antony. We’ve only been surmising. There’s no proof.’
‘Of course we do,’ replied Holmes, feeling his head begin to spin with this latest onslaught of alcohol on his bloodstream. ‘Who else could it ’ave been, Garding?’
He was definitely deteriorating if he couldn’t even get his partner’s name right, thought Garden, and wondered how messily the evening would end. They should never have watched that film or opened that second bottle of wine.
‘I-I-I think I’ve had a good idea, Gra-Gad-Garden,’ he slurred. ‘I’m goin’ to ring good old Greg an’ ask him to give me the s, the s, the s-p.’
‘Don’t you think you might be a little tiddly to hold a conversation?’ asked Garden, whose glass had not been so frequently refilled, sitting as it had at a bit of a distance from his partner’s and the bottle.
‘Jober as a sudge, me, John H. Now, where’s his number? Ah, yes. Now, what time is it?’
‘It’s 11.15; a bit on the late side, don’t you think?’
‘Rubbish! Never known old Greg go to bed before midnight. He’ll be up having a nighty-night nightcap, don’t yer know,’ replied Holmes rather slushily. His diction had suffered considerably under the influence of the better part of two bottles of wine.
Fortunately for all concerned, his part in the telephone conversation was brief. He managed to announce himself to Greg Wordsworth, but Wordsworth seemed to want to do all the talking, and all that Holmes had to do was agree now and then, and nod or shake his head sagely, an action that did nothing to underline his agreement, as it was just an ordinary telephone he was using.
Making rather an elaborate business of placing the handset back where it belonged, Holmes swung quite recklessly in Garden’s direction, swaying alarmingly on his feet as he did so, and said, ‘There’s been a bit of bad luck for Greg, but it does clari-clafiry-clarify things for us.’ He stopped and shook his head from side to side, as if trying to reorder his thoughts.
Leading him to a sofa, Garden asked what Greg had said. ‘Said … ’e said …’ Holmes cleared his throat enthusiastically and tried again. ‘He said,’ he repeated, slowly and carefully, ‘that the’es fire-escade – a fire-escape – leadin’ from that meetin’ room, and tha’ Street-eet-eeter had found it locked. ’E’s gonna get done for that. Poor old Greg.’
Noticing tears of pity well up in Holmes’ eyes, Garden gently assisted him to his feet and led him to his bedroom, where he helped him undress and get into his pyjamas. Carefully, he slid the older man under the enormously fluffy duvet – one modern idea that Holmes had grasped enthusiastically, not being a fan of bed-making – and tiptoed out of the room.
He then padded to the kitchen, found a packet of dried cat food, and filled up the plastic bowl on the floor, refilled the water container, checked that the back door was locked, then made his way to his own room. He undressed in the light coming through from the hall, placed his clothes, fairly neatly folded, on a leather armchair against the wall, and, having forgotten to bring a pair of pyjamas with him and wearing only his shirt, slid, with a sigh of relief, under his own enormous duvet. Which, uncharacteristically, bit him on the right buttock.
With a yell of surprise and pain, he sprang upright, throwing back the puffed up cover, thus letting out a lot of the heat the electric blanket had built up over the evening, and exposing what had been a very soundly asleep and contented Colin.
The cat made a lightning swiping motion with his right front paw, drawing four lines of blood from the back of Garden’s left leg, shot straight up into the air, and literally flew out of the door.
Garden got out of bed, walked slightly unsteadily towards the door, and slammed it with a growl of fury at being ‘got’ again by this sneaky and devious animal who obviously hated him. By the time he got back into bed, most of the warmth had left it, and he shivered, curled into a foetal position, until the blanket managed to engender a little warmth back into the mattress and the forlorn figure lying on it.
The next morning, when Garden awoke, he could hear Holmes already up and pottering around in the kitchen, clattering pots and pans and running water. He must have made a remarkable recovery, thought the younger man, as his stomach gave a lurch, and a wave of nausea washed over him. He did not have a strong head for alcohol, and had drunk more than he usually did.
Having disdainfully pulled on yesterday’s clothes, he followed the noise and found his friend preparing a fried breakfast, a large cafetière already on the table, and two places set. ‘How come you’re so chirpy this morning?’ asked Garden, running his fingers through his rumpled hair and yawning.
‘I haven’t the faintest idea, but I slept like the dead, and woke up very refreshed and ready to go on this case of ours,’ he replied, putting a couple more rashers of bacon in the pan. ‘One egg or two?’
Garden nearly gagged, but took sufficient control of himself to ask, ‘What time is it?’
‘Don’t worry about the time. I’ve phoned Shirley and told her she can manage for today. We don’t get a lot of new business through the door what with the Saturday shopping crowd, so I’ve told her that if she needs us, she can always ring. We’ll be here, solving the mystery of the … of the … of the what?’
‘Dead wild bore,’ suggested Garden. ‘He was a helluva bore, he was absolutely furious at the last meeting when the others wouldn’t give his short story a hearing, and he was as dead as a dodo when we came across him yesterday evening.’
‘Well done, old chap,’ Holmes congratulated him, starting to serve an amazing fry-up. ‘There you go, egg, tomato, sausage, bacon, fried bread, baked beans, mushrooms, and black pudding – that’ll put hairs on your chest. Just let me pour you a cup of coffee. Get that lot down you and you’ll be ready for anything, John H.’
After a few solid swallows of coffee and his first forkful of bacon and egg, Garden found that he already felt better, and tucked in with a will. As he chewed, Holmes said, ‘I’ve just remembered something that poor old Greg said on the phone last night.’
Classing this as nothing short of a miracle, Garden replied, ‘Go on.’
‘Greg asked all his staff if anyone had been up to the meeting room since his wife had cleaned it, and they all said they hadn’t. He said he definitely didn’t go up there, so it looks a bit as if we’re looking for the invisible man. There’s no access to the snug from outside, and the fire-door at the top of the fire escape was locked, so how did whoever did for Antony get up there without being seen? This is a problem worthy of old Sherlock himself, don’t you think?’
Garden halted, fork halfway to his mouth, and sat there like a statue, his face screwed up in deep thought. ‘Someone else must have gone up there,’ he stated. ‘Did they actually see Antony go up?’
‘A couple of them said good evening to him. He didn’t like to stay out of the limelight and would obviously advertise his presence.’
‘But they didn’t see anyone else?’
‘No,’ replied Holmes, chewing on a particularly succulent mouthful of sausage doused liberally in brown sauce.
‘So, who took up the jugs of squash and the plates of sandwiches, then? I can just picture them on the table when we went up there. And there were ice-cubes still in those jugs. I remember them distinctly,’ replied Garden, with a smile.
‘By Gad, you’re right. So can I, now I think of it. But how did they manage it, eh?’
Garden closed his eyes and seemed to go into a trance for a few minutes, then he shot up from his chair with a cry of ‘Eureka!’
‘What the heck is it, Garden, old chap?’ asked Holmes, his eyes shining.
‘Who never gets noticed going to a front door? The postman. Who never gets noticed going to a hosp
ital bed? A nurse. Who never gets noticed walking around with a large tray? A waiter or member of staff!’
Holmes’ face fell. ‘But they all say that none of them went up there.’
‘No, I’m sure they didn’t, but that doesn’t stop an outsider from slipping into the black and white they wear for work, and taking charge, maybe, of their refreshments, which may have been left unattended for a moment,’ declared Garden, with a note of triumph in his voice.
Holmes, most unexpectedly, got up from the table and did a little dance round the kitchen, with as much energy as his portly body would allow, then he stopped and glared at Garden. ‘If I’m Holmes, then you’re supposed to be Watson, and Watson wasn’t very bright. But I think you’ve solved the mystery of how someone got upstairs without being noticed.’
‘He could slip back downstairs again, time his moment and, go into the gents, from which he could emerge in his everyday clothes, and no one would be any the wiser. All he would have to do would be to dispose of the black and white he wore.’
‘Hang on a minute,’ said Holmes, once more looking thoughtful. ‘If he only accessorised his black and white, say with a bright tie and jacket – and I’ve just remembered that all the staff except for Greg and Tilly have to wear baseball caps, all he’d need to do was stash his unneeded items of clothing, and “borrow” a baseball cap.’
‘And he could come straight out of the gents’ and order a drink with no suspicion whatsoever falling on him,’ finished Garden, following his partner’s expression of victory, and doing a little war dance up and down the hall. Unfortunately, halfway through this little celebratory dance, Colin shot out of his master’s bedroom, and Garden landed unceremoniously on his knees, before he could return to his unfinished breakfast. Colin howled as if he had been shot, at being thus disturbed in his flight to his litter tray, shot off down the hall, through the apartment, and disappeared through the cat-flap as if the Hound of the Baskervilles was after him.
‘Get out, you little beast!’ shouted Holmes, so flushed with success that he didn’t even have time to defend his adored baby Colin.
Garden got up and dusted himself down. ‘So, where does that leave us, then? I’d say that it was probably one of the Irregulars who saw Antony off. Did they go into the pub before the meeting started, in mufti, or did they not arrive until after the body was discovered? Can you think of anyone you saw while we were eating, just before we went up?’ he asked.
‘Leave that one with me and I’ll give it some thought,’ replied Holmes. ‘What else do we know?’
‘That the murderer either stole that disgraceful short story from the dead man and shoved the title page into his waistcoat, or he’d already got his hands on it, and brought along the title page to make a point. Whichever way it was, it means the story was taken from Antony, because he never let it out of his sight, and it could be anywhere by now. Do you have a record of all their addresses?’ asked Garden, but Holmes’ answer was cut off by the ringing of the doorbell.
Holmes opened the door to find Detective Inspector Streeter and his sidekick, Detective Sergeant Port, standing on the doorstep, a uniformed constable at the foot of the small flight of steps that led up to the ground floor apartment. Holmes made a face like someone sucking a lemon, and invited them in. ‘What can we do for you?’ he asked, adjusting his expression to one more akin to that of someone welcoming guests.
Streeter came into the hall, followed by the shorter, rather tubbier man, pulled himself up to his full height, gave a smug little grin, then announced, ‘Having coordinated all the notes from the questioning we did yesterday evening, and examining all the circumstances very carefully, it is my sad duty to inform you that – oh, Mr Garden is here, too. That makes life easier for me. Now where was I?’
‘Examining all the circumstances very carefully,’ prompted Port.
‘Ah, yes. In light of all the evidence we have, to date, we find that our chief suspects are you two. You are the only ones known to have mounted that staircase after Mrs Wordsworth left it, and Mr Richard Brownlow, the barman, says that you didn’t turn around and come straight back downstairs. He reckons there was a gap of a few minutes, which we consider was just enough time for you to do away with Mr Antony and wipe off any fingerprints you may have left.’
‘That’s the most preposterous thing I have ever heard in my life,’ exploded Holmes, going almost purple in the face with indignation. ‘Garden and I are private investigators, uncovering crimes, not committing them. Why on earth should we want to kill someone like him; Garden had only met him on the evening of our last meeting. He’d never seen him in his life before that.’
‘Says he,’ sneered Streeter, glaring Holmes in the eye, then giving Garden the same Paddington stare.
‘Says me, too,’ Holmes challenged him ungrammatically. ‘And do you have a warrant for our arrest, or is all your evidence just in your own twisted imagination?’
Garden smiled, as if to say, ‘take that’. ‘Have you spoken to any other members of the Quaker Street Irregulars?’ he asked.
Streeter blustered and Port blushed, answering for his superior officer. ‘We’ve not had sufficient time, so far, but DI Streeter wanted to come round here just to mark your cards,’ he offered.
‘I think you’ll find that I’m holding the aces of spades and clubs, and my colleague here is holding the aces of hearts and diamonds. When I played poker as a younger man, four aces beat anything you could have in your hand,’ Holmes crowed in triumph. The man was bluffing. He’d just wanted to put the wind up them, and it wasn’t going to work. They were innocent, and would uncover the guilty party without his help.
Streeter left with his plans in complete disarray, and Port, as he followed him through the door and down the outside steps, looked over his shoulder, and winked at a surprised Holmes and Garden. He wasn’t taken in by his guv’nor’s behaviour and accusations, either.
Garden followed them down to the street to have a quick word with the uniformed constable, to find out why he was there in the first place. ‘I think he had high hopes of clapping you both in handcuffs and frog-marching you down to the cells,’ he explained, good-naturedly. ‘Do you know what we call those two down at the nick?’
‘Enlighten me,’ Garden encouraged him.
‘They’re known, as a pair, as “Janet.”’
‘Why’s that?’ Garden had no idea why this should be so.
‘Janet Street-Porter – Janet Port-Streeter. Geddit?’
Garden did, and laughed merrily, going indoors to explain this to Holmes. Of course, he had to explain who Janet Street-Porter was first, before Holmes could become aware of why it was funny, but he got there in the end. And when he’d had a quick look on the internet, he laughed until he nearly became reacquainted with his breakfast.
Part Four
Holmes did, indeed, have a list of the members’ addresses and home telephone numbers – hardly any of them relied on a mobile – these being the only records that the society seemed to keep. Leaving Holmes to ring round to see if the other men could provide alibis for the time before the meeting was due to start, Garden went on to the computer to see what he could dig up.
Apart from the odd ‘oh!’ ‘really?’ and ‘how very interesting,’ Garden more or less worked in silence, tapping away at the keys and making notes on a pad to the right of the keyboard of the laptop that he had, thankfully, thrown into the back of Holmes’ car out of force of habit. In their occupation, one simply didn’t leave the office without one’s laptop, although they had yet to find one that Holmes felt happy with.
Holmes, on the other hand, made quite a bit of noise over his phone calls. Sometimes he spoke to the member himself, at others, to wives or house-mates, and he, too, took copious notes of what was being told to him.
It was one o’clock before they both came up for air, and Holmes suggested a spot of lunch before they compared notes. He was feeling so hungry that he could eat a scabby donkey; not that he counted suc
h an expression in his vocabulary.
After a scratch meal of ham salad sandwiches washed down with a cup of tea, they each took their notebook, and sat opposite each other on the twin sofas. ‘What have you got, Holmes?’ asked Garden, deciding that the host should go first.
‘The chair, Stephen Compton, is a widower and lives alone: retired doctor. Specialist area, the short stories. He returned a spade he had borrowed from his neighbour, however, on his way out, and got talking. By the time he looked at his watch, he really had to rush, and arrived at the pub to find us at the bar hatch, waiting for the Wordsworths to come through.
‘Here’s the members’ list. Could you write in pencil underneath his name, “check with neighbour”. Next, we have Ludovic Connor, a forty-year-old single bank clerk. Specialist area, the longer stories like The Hound. He worked overtime, and was five minutes late, arriving while we were in the back parlour, from what he tells me, as he remembers us coming back through. Under his name, put “check with employers”, although how we’re going to do that, I have no idea. You know what secretive buggers – pardon me – bank staff are and how loath they are to give out any information whatsoever.’
‘We could always chat up one of the other employees there, and see if they worked late last night or knew of anyone who had,’ suggested Garden.
‘Excellent idea, Watson, er, Garden: first-class thinking. Next, we have Aaron Dibley, a divorced probation officer: specialist area, just the written stories. He says no one can confirm when he left the house, because he lives alone, so we may have to do a bit of checking with the neighbours there. Make a note: “check with neighbours”.
‘Next, we have Peter Lampard, gas engineer and single, although I know he lives with another gentleman, and I’ve never looked too closely at their living arrangements. The other gentleman said Lampard didn’t leave until twenty minutes before the meeting was due to start and, although he doesn’t live far away, by then we were already on our way upstairs. He’s the one that’s potty about the series starring Benedict Cumberbatch: thinks it’s sheer genius. Make a note, Garden: “check on relationship”, not that it’s any of our business what he does behind closed doors. Whether he’s telling the truth or not, I don’t know. He did sound a little furtive.’
A Case of Crime Page 14
