Caribbean Sunset with a Yellow Parrot (The Belchester Chronicles Book 5)

by Andrea Frazer

  Hugo pulled open the door to admit a siren of a figure – but an emergency siren rather than a beautiful one who lured sailors on to rocks with her hypnotic and enchanting song. Windy’s mouth was so wide open that one could see her epiglottis. Approaching this embodiment of distress, Lady Amanda gave her a sharp slap round the chops, then stood back as the yelling subsided into muffled sobs, coupled with a few rich swear words, as criticism of her precipitate cure for hysteria.

  ‘That’s better,’ she soothed their shocked visitor. ‘I’ll just get you a brandy while Hugo gets you seated, then you can tell us all about what’s got you into this state.’ Windy subsided on to a feather-stuffed sofa and slumped there, hiccoughing in distress.

  After she had had a few gulps at the enormous brandy with which she was presented, she looked at Hugo and Lady Amanda, and said baldly and in a sepulchral voice, ‘He’s dead!’

  ‘Who’s dead?’ squeaked Lady A. ‘Not Beep-Beep? Surely not. He looked as fit as a flea only this afternoon.’

  Windy’s head began to shake to and fro, and eventually she managed, ‘It’s Adonis.’

  ‘Douglas Huddlestone-Black? But I thought he was leaving today. That’s what you told me earlier.’

  ‘So I did, but when his keys weren’t in our mailbox when I was getting ready for bed, I thought I’d just pop over and see if everything was alright. I have a spare, as he only rents it, and it might need some repair or maintenance work when he’s not here.

  ‘I let myself in, and his cases were in the hall, but they were open, and everything was pulled out of them and his stuff strewn all over the floor and the bottom of the staircase.’

  ‘Weren’t you scared?’ asked Hugo.

  ‘Not in the least, although I expect I ought to have been. But, being good old Windy, I just thought he’d mislaid his passport and was probably upstairs pulling apart the drawers in the bedroom to see if he’d left it up there. And up the stairs I toddled calling out “Coo-ee”, like the fool I was acting.’

  ‘Why were you a fool?’ Hugo was definitely interested in getting to the end of this story, because he sensed a juicy conclusion to it.

  ‘And there he was. On the bedroom floor. His throat cut from ear to ear. Dead. And the killer could have still been in the villa, for all I knew. What an idiot I was to go charging up there calling out.’

  ‘And you heard and saw no one?’ Lady Amanda was on the case now. ‘Have you called anybody?’

  ‘There’s nobody to call on the island. I told you so. We have to get police from the mainland.’

  ‘And how do you get in touch with them?’

  ‘By satellite phone.’ Windy was a little calmer now.

  ‘Then get Beep-Beep to make the call, tell the authorities that there’s been a murder, then take us over there so that we can have a little snoop around first, in case the police miss something.’

  ‘Do you really think we ought to, Manda?’ Hugo was always much more law-abiding than Lady A, who could be a law unto herself.

  ‘Of course we must. When you think about it, there can’t be that many suspects. How many people did he know on the island apart from ourselves? It is our duty to find whatever evidence there is, so that there’s not a miscarriage of justice.’

  ‘She’s right, you know,’ agreed Windy, who had quickly popped back home to instruct Beep-Beep to get on the blower, then returned to lead them to the scene of the crime. ‘I’ve brought some washing-up gloves with me so that we don’t leave any fingerprints,’ she declared, handing over two pairs to her co-conspirators, and they noticed that she had hers on already.

  ‘No wonder you made head girl,’ was Lady A’s only comment, before they went over to number five Parrot Bay to view the murdered body of the boy with whom they had all been in love in their school days.

  ‘Of course, they’ll have to take his body to the mainland for a post mortem,’ whispered Windy as they walked the short distance to the House of Death. ‘We simply don’t have the facilities here.’

  ‘That’s going to string things out a bit, isn’t it?’ Lady Amanda was also whispering, although whether it was so as not to alert a gaggle of fussing old women, or because of the gravity of the situation and the darkness, she didn’t know. The sun set early here, all year round, and darkness did tend to make people act a little furtively.

  ‘I just hope it’s not one of us,’ replied Windy, not really confirming or denying Lady A’s worries about timescale.

  ‘Who else did he know?’ she asked. ‘Did he ever go out for a drink or a meal?’

  ‘Occasionally, but not often.’

  ‘Well, that helps to widen the field of suspects,’ concluded Hugo, optimistically.

  They entered the villa in total silence, the two who hadn’t already been there looking round in shock at the mess of belongings just hurled hither and thither as someone had emptied the waiting suitcases. ‘It looks to me more like someone looking for something they thought he had. I’m quite sure he was far too organised to mislay a thing as important as his passport,’ said Lady Amanda.

  ‘I tend to agree with you,’ commented Windy, taking a couple of deep breaths before they mounted the stairs. On the landing, she stopped and pointed to an open door. ‘If you don’t mind, I’d rather not see what’s in there again. I’ll wait here.’

  Lady Amanda went first, wondering at the way Hugo could now climb stairs without the agony and effort it had once cost him. Once inside, her whole mind was riveted on the gory scene that lay before them. Douglas Huddlestone-Black lay on the white bedside rug, the biggest smile ever plastered right across his neck and gleaming redly at the newly arrived visitors.

  Just outside the doorway, there was a fanfare on the bum-trumpet. Any stress went straight to Windy’s digestive system.

  ‘Speak on, sweet lips that never told a lie,’ intoned Lady Amanda, while Hugo covered his nose with his hand to ward off the noxious fumes which were already pervading the room.

  Chapter Nine

  The police arrived at six o’clock the next morning – what Lady Amanda referred to as sparrow-fart, in her bleary-eyed state – as the noise of the helicopter’s rotors woke her. They had no sooner stopped when there was the roar of a powerful engine, and a police boat pulled in as far as it could to Parrot Bay, disgorging officers with their shoes in one hand, their trousers rolled up to their knees.

  That was followed by the noisy chatter of other officers arriving from the clearing south-west of the lagoon, where the helicopter had landed, and the whole crew descended on number five. There were a number of police officers, a photographer/videographer, and a fingerprints man included. The medical man had come in the helicopter, by which means it was intended the body should be taken away for the autopsy.

  By the time they had been in the house fifteen minutes, there was a cackling gaggle of oldies outside the front door, all craning their necks and squinting to see what was going on inside. Beep-Beep did not join them, but Windy, Lady Amanda, and Hugo were the last to arrive, knowing full well what was beyond everyone’s view inside, and having taken the time to steel themselves against the barrage of questions they would inevitably face, not only from the police, but from the other temporary and permanent residents of Parrot Bay.

  Some of the girls had taken time to throw on some clothes, others were still in their nighties, with a dressing gown carelessly thrown over the top for decency’s sake, and they were all suffering a severe case of bed-head.

  ‘What the blithering heck’s going on here?’

  ‘What’s happened and when did it occur?’

  ‘Who’s dead? Anyone?’

  ‘Why are there police here?’

  ‘Where’s Adonis? Is he hurt?’

  The questions were many, but all on the same theme. Something momentous had occurred, and no one had told them about it. With a telepathic precision, the three who knew very well what was going on advised everyone to wait until the police informed them of what the trouble was and the trio kep
t schtum. There was a tacit understanding between the three of them that life would be a little easier that way. Their questioning would be less rigorous if the others had the initial facts from the police horse’s mouth, so to speak.

  Having pleaded ignorance by a sin of omission, Lady Amanda looked around at the other old girls’ faces to see what emotion was being shown in light of this unexpected arrival of officialdom. Was it a shock to all of them, that something had summoned the police from the mainland? Or did someone know what lay in the master bedroom of that innocent-looking villa, with a gaping slash across its throat?

  Most of the faces were worried and puzzled, but a few of them showed a different emotion. Eeyore, for some reason, looked absolutely furious but devastated at the same time, although Lady A could think of no reason why she should be. Horseface looked as guilty as hell about something, and Longshanks looked worried to death. Whatever was eating these three? Could one of them possibly be responsible for this vile and bloody death? Surely not!

  One of the policemen, dressed in a short-sleeved shirt and knee-length uniform shorts came outside and, holding up his hands, palms outwards, for silence, began to address the small crowd of twittering oldies that had gathered outside.

  ‘Attention, please. This house is now out of bounds, as it is a crime scene. There has been a suspicious death here, and we shall need to speak to you all individually, once we are satisfied that we are finished examining the property for now. I should like you to wait in your houses until one of my officers comes round to interview you about the deceased.’

  Dammit, he’d used the words ‘suspicious death’ and ‘deceased’. Now they knew there was probably murder afoot! DI Pharaoh was mortified at what he had just let slip, and disappeared into the villa again with a burning face. It was due to the gathering of elderly ladies that he had been wrong-footed: they made him think of his grandmother, and he could never lie to her.

  The girls dispersed, talking in pairs and trios about the now indisputable fact that there was a murderer at large, and it was highly likely that Adonis had been the victim. Lady Amanda stumped back to number fifteen, Hugo trotting behind trying to keep up with her. This warm weather really was doing their mobility the world of good.

  When they got back to the villa, Hugo asked her what she thought about what would happen now that the police had arrived. ‘Shh!’ she chided him. ‘I’ve got a lot of thinking of do,’ and she disappeared off into the large airy living room and headed straight to the drinks cabinet. Pouring herself a sherry, which she tossed off in one, she made to leave the house.

  ‘Where on earth are you going?’ asked Hugo, now thoroughly puzzled by her actions.

  ‘I’m going to visit all the others. Windy asked me yesterday to find out who had sent her an anonymous letter, and that’s exactly what I intend to do. If I can pick up the scent of a murderer as well as a blackmailer on my travels, well, all the better,’ she explained.

  ‘Can’t I come too?’ asked her housemate, with a pout. He didn’t want to be left out of any sleuthing that she might want to do.

  ‘Best not. There ought to be someone in when the police call. You could go round to Windy’s and see what she’s got to say about what we should tell them.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Whether she wants to tell them that we saw what was in there, too.’

  ‘Gotcha!’ Hugo was getting quite up on out-of-date slang, now he lived with other people. He had been alone too long, and relished the company this new lease of life had given him, since his rescue from that dreadful Birdlings Serenade Rest Home, and the bedridden existence he had eked out there.

  Thus emboldened by sherry, Lady Amanda started by calling at West Indies Retreat where Eeyore, one of the permanent residents, lived, deciding on the short walk, that she would have to blast Enid and Beauchamp out of bed and into the investigation. Their behaviour simply wasn’t good enough, considering the serious turn of events that had just occurred.

  Eeyore opened the door, her eyes red and full of tears. ‘Come in,’ she sniffed. ‘Sorry about this, but I still had the most dreadful crush on him, which I didn’t realise until I saw him get off the boat again. It happens every time he comes over, just when I think I’ve got over it for the umpteenth time.’ She stopped for a moment to blow her nose, standing aside so that Lady Amanda could enter. ‘I had no idea I still felt that way yet again, and to find that he was dead was devastating.’

  At this, she burst into a fresh cascade of tears, and Lady A put her arm around her and escorted her into the sitting room. ‘You never married, did you?’ she asked gently.

  Eeyore’s normally lugubrious face looked even more tragic, as she shook her head. ‘I suppose that, subconsciously, I always carried a torch for him,’ she said quietly. They sat in silence for a moment, then Lady Amanda asked,

  ‘You’re a year-round resident here. When did you last see Adonis – Douglas, I should say?’

  ‘Not since he arrived here and got off the boat. I was waiting at the quay and just got a glimpse of him as he hared off,’ was the reply.

  ‘Do you know why he seemed to lead such a secretive life when he was here, because Windy’s told me he rarely socialised.’

  ‘I have no idea. When he first started coming out here, I used to go round with cakes that I’d baked, but he wouldn’t even answer the door to me, and I used to end up leaving them on the doorstep. I never wondered what he did with his time. I just wanted to spend some of it with him.’

  What a pathetic case poor Eeyore was, thought Lady A, but could this be a cake too far for the spurned victim of unrequited love? Changing the subject so that she could chew over this idea in peace later, she asked her if she knew of anyone who might have a grudge against Windy and Beep-Beep, or who might know something to their detriment.

  Eeyore seemed to be shocked by the idea that anyone could wish this couple ill-will. ‘Why, they’re the life and soul of Parrot Bay,’ she said, ‘if not the whole island.’ Then she muttered, ‘Oh, my poor, darling, beautiful Adonis,’ and burst into a fresh cataract of tears. Lady Amanda took her leave to allow the woman to grieve in peace.

  She had only walked back as far as her own villa when the sherry suddenly wore off, and she questioned her intention of going round the whole of the little community and poking her nose into other people’s business. There must be a more subtle way than this, she thought, as she wandered back indoors and stood in the hall in a reverie of indecisiveness.

  Suddenly she realised why Eeyore had looked both furious and devastated when she heard about what had happened to Douglas Huddlestone-Black. He was finally beyond her reach for the rest of her life, and there was no hope left of ever getting him to fall for her. Not only that, but she’d never again get the chance of even just catching a glimpse of him as he disembarked at the cruise terminal. She’d never have another chance to seduce him with her baking.

  It would never have happened, of course, but all the time he had been alive, she could live with the hope that one day he would fall for her irresistible charms – or cakes; whichever he found the more attractive.

  Before Hugo could get out of the sitting room, there was a knock on the door which, incidentally, Hugo answered, as Lady Amanda seemed too lost in deep thought to react to anything as prosaic as a doorknocker being used, and he opened it to find Beauchamp and Enid standing there, hand in hand.

  ‘Good day to you, Mr and Mrs Beauchamp,’ Hugo greeted them with a smile. How very good to see you two up and about.’ Having thought about the implications of his last remark, he turned a light shade of pink, and ushered them into the house. ‘Manda, we’ve got visitors. It’s Beauchamp and Enid, come to see us.’

  ‘Finally got yourselves out of bed, have you?’ she said gruffly, conveniently forgetting that they had attended a couple of other group events such as the boogying at the Lizard Lounge, as she re-joined the land of the living. ‘’Bout time, though.’

  ‘Manda, don’t make such personal
remarks,’ Hugo chided her.

  ‘’Snot personal, it’s just the truth,’ she stated, ever forgetful. ‘I suppose you’ve heard what’s happened?’

  ‘That’s why we’re here,’ replied Beauchamp, as Enid covered her blushes as best as she could at Lady’s A’s rather near-the-knuckle and inaccurate remarks.

  ‘I was just on my way round to speak to everyone, but I only got as far as the house across the road. Eeyore’s in bits, because she obviously had a bit of a thing about our Adonis since we were at school, but when I came out, I thought it would look a bit ham-fisted if I just called on everyone. I’d have completely blown my cover if I’d wanted to investigate. There’s got to be a more subtle way of getting everyone to talk, but not to appear to be being too nosy.’

  ‘Of course there is, and we came straight round as soon as I thought of it,’ replied Beauchamp, looking just a mite smug.

  ‘Come on then, spit it out, and don’t leave us both in suspenders,’ Lady A chivvied him.

  ‘If I can use a laptop, I could print out invitations to a cocktail party here, tonight. You can invite everyone round. Enid wouldn’t mind doing canapés’ – at this Enid nodded in agreement – ‘and I can be responsible for cocktails. You’ve told everyone how well I make them, but I’ve never actually mixed any for them. I’m sure they’ll be glad to get together to talk about what’s happened, as well as having some of my famous recipes: free food and booze. It’s an irresistible combination, especially when you add in a pinch of local gossip and murder most foul.’

  ‘And you really wouldn’t mind doing the canapés, Enid?’

  ‘Not at all. It would be good to feel useful again – domestically speaking – and it would be nice to have some varied company – nothing personal, you realise?’ She directed this last to her husband, but he took it in good part, and merely smiled down at her.