Cora shrugged her naked shoulders against the gleam of see-through plastic bra straps. ‘Whatever. He paid and that was it.’
‘So his things are still in his room?’
Cora made a hissing sound through her teeth. ‘Ooow, no. I had to clear the room because I had bookings, you see. It’s in storage. I’ll have to charge him of course.’
‘Of course. If he’s still alive that is.’
‘Well I can hardly charge him if he’s dead.’
‘Of course not.’
Honey rebuked herself for having misjudged the woman, but on hearing what she said next changed her mind back again.
‘If he is dead, then I’ll have to send the bill to his family.’
Now burning only an inch or so from Cora’s yellow-stained fingertips, the cigarette was stubbed out. A second or two, a little nail biting, and another one glowed red between sequined fingernails.
Honey’s eyes flitted to the garden. The rockery was incongruous, but all the same, she longed to sit on its pinnacle while drinking in the air.
She pulled herself back to the job in hand. ‘Did he do much sightseeing? I mean, is there somewhere he might have gone and stayed there longer than planned?’
Cora narrowed her eyes against the rising smoke until they were just slits shaded by thick mascara. ‘I don’t know about planning to stay anywhere. But he did visit places, though I didn’t like to pry. I asked in a general kind of way, and he answered in a general kind of way.’
‘Any particular places?’
‘Well, the Royal Crescent of course, and the Baths, but I think he went a bit further afield too. Came home by taxi three days following. Handed the driver over roughly thirty quid each time. I saw it.’
Honey agreed that he must have been visiting somewhere outside the city to attract that size of taxi fare. The AmericanMuseum at Claverton Down, or even pretty little Bradford-on-Avon? ‘Its Saxon church is especially fine,’ a Berkeley professor had told her. He’d also related a potted history of the Berkeley family and the castle situated halfway between Bath and Gloucester. He’d looked supremely satisfied on seeing her turn green at some of the gorier details.
‘Was it the same taxi cab company each time?’
Cora nodded. ‘Busy Bee. The car was black.’
‘What about your husband?’
‘What about him?’
The tone was soured, the eyes hard as pebbles. No love lost there then.
‘Did he speak to Mr Weinstock?’
‘Might have done. He was always asking for crushed ice.’ She laughed. ‘The look on Mervyn’s face when he was bashing them ice cubes with a rolling pin – enough to commit murder they were. Why can’t he have bloody cubes like everybody bloody else, he used to say.’
Crushed ice. Honey knew from experience that Americans loved crushed ice. It could be annoying when nothing else would do and other guests were making demands. Still, we aim to please, she thought.
‘I know your husband’s busy at the moment, but I would like a word with him.’
‘Of course you would.’ Cora got up and poked her head out of the conservatory. ‘MERV–YN!’
Her voice clanged around the conservatory like an iron bell.
‘No chance,’ she said coming back in. ‘He’s been helping the council blokes to take that freezer. Must have got up a sweat and decided a few pints were needed.’
‘He’s gone to the pub?’
‘Yeah.’ Cora screwed up her nose and took another puff of her cigarette. ‘It’s a home from bloody home as far as he’s concerned.’
Honey narrowed her eyes, partly against the damned smoke, and partly because she was making a mental list of all the questions she should ask. She wrote down his name along with a note to locate and question the taxi driver should Mr Weinstock not turn up. She smoothed the page flat with her hand. This was all very satisfying. Wasn’t sleuthing à la Agatha Christie based on a process of elimination? Now what else did those detectives on TV do?
It came to her in an instant. ‘Can I take a look at his things?’
Cora got up from her chair. ‘I don’t see why not.’
She led her to a cupboard beneath the stairs. ‘There it is.’
Two holdalls, one smaller than the other but neither of them very big.
‘Great!’ She leaned forward meaning to drag the bags outside.
An indignant Cora stopped her. ‘No need to do that and mess up my hallway. I’ve got guests coming.’
She said it as though she were the Royal Crescent Hotel and expecting a presidential cavalcade not a gang of spotty backpackers.
Before Honey had chance to ask where she could take them, Cora pushed her in with the baggage. ‘There. I can’t shut the door without locking it, but you’ll be all right. You’ve got a light. Give me a knock when you’ve finished and I’ll let you out.’
Honey swallowed the urge to panic and head for the open air. Stephen King horror stories came to mind. She couldn’t quite recall one about a mad landlady locking an unsuspecting amateur sleuth under the stairs, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a possibility.
After settling her nerves and giving her thudding heart a severe talking to, she hunkered down and got on with it.
Nothing unusual about the clothes – typically non-iron stuff that anyone with any sense would take on a long-term vacation.
The flight documents and passport were in a see-through plastic zip up. That alone was worrying, though not unusual. Most people carried their passports around unless they had access to a safe. Only up-market hotels had safes.
‘So I would take my passport with me if I was staying in a place like this,’ Honey muttered to herself. ‘But you didn’t …’ Her voice trailed away. So why leave it? Unless he hadn’t had time or unless something bad, very bad had happened … The picture in the passport showed a strong-faced man with fair hair. His name was given as Elmer John Maxted, age 43, eyes blue, height 6ft 1 inch, weight 210 pounds.
‘You’re a big man, Elmer John Maxted,’ she muttered and frowned. ‘Now why call yourself Weinstock?’
Her eyes flitted over the address – somewhere in California – and dropped on the space reserved for occupation fully expecting something mundane like ‘insurance salesman’ or ‘realtor’. Far from it!
Holding it up to the bare light bulb, she reread the details on a receipt for travel insurance. Her heart skipped a beat.
‘Let me out,’ she shouted, hammering on the door. ‘Let me out!’
No sound from the other side of the door. Wherever Cora Herbert was, she wasn’t close at hand.
Honey dug her mobile out of her pocket and tapped Casper’s number.
‘Casper. I know you won’t want to do this, but you have to call the police.’
He tried a few excuses as to why he shouldn’t and asked why she thought he should.
‘Look, this missing American; I’m at Ferny Down bed and breakfast, the place where he stayed and he’s left his passport here …’
Casper questioned why that had filled her with such alarm.
‘Casper, no one leaves their passport behind in a bed and breakfast. But there’s something else. His name’s not Weinstock, it’s Maxted and he’s a private detective.’
Chapter Three
‘The police are making enquiries.’
‘Is that all?’
Casper’s sigh blasted down the phone like the air from a punctured balloon.
‘My dear girl, the man has only gone missing. And that, my dear, is more or less what was said to me. They said give it one more day. If he doesn’t turn up then they’ll put out a nationwide alert.’
The case of the missing tourist had run up against the buffers. Initially she’d been unwilling to take on this appointment. Now she found herself feeling disappointed. This had seemed like a real crime case and in retrospect she’d been quite keen to give it a go, but not now. The police had tagged it routine.
On top of that the weather forecast t
ook a nosedive. Storm clouds gathered. The weather god took no notice of her outburst. The rain started at five that afternoon.
‘It’s June, for goodness sake!’
Thursday. Lindsey’s night off and she was hogging the bathroom. The fallout from all manner of scented soap, shower gel, and shampoo was drifting with the steam out of the bathroom window.
Honey was sitting outside beneath a two hundred-year-old canopy. Its metal roof, the original colour turned to the mottled green of aged copper, ran the length of the private patio. Clematis and other plants climbed the fretwork supports. The patio area it covered was further divided from hotel guests by bushes and more plants climbing over a sturdy mesh of wire and stone pillars.
Honey settled herself on a wooden bench. Like the roof, its framework was also of iron and painted white. As she fondled the lion heads forming the arms, she wondered how long before her career in amateur detection restarted.
The sound of the running water coming from the bathroom ceased. Accompanied by a cloud of steam, Lindsey came out wearing a bathrobe and a towel around her wet hair.
Honey looked at her. ‘I suppose you’ll be late tonight.’
‘Tonight? Certainly not. Expect me at around three. You want me to enjoy myself, don’t you?’
‘You said you were going to a concert.’
Lindsey’s voice was muffled by towel and wet hair. ‘Mother, I’m trying to appear wild, just as you want me to.’
‘You're going nightclubbing?’
Lindsey smiled through fronds of wet hair. ‘After the concert.’
The young social scene in the city of Bath was second to none. Trendy wine bars rubbed shoulders with the Theatre Royal, pubs, restaurants and clubs that partied till dawn. Lindsey was part of that scene, but with reservations. Goodness knows where the culture vulture genes had come from.
‘Anywhere nice?’ Honey asked, trying to sound laid back and modern – even unconcerned. It was far from easy.
Lindsey rubbed vigorously at her hair. ‘It depends on my friends.’
Who was she going out with? Honey sipped at her drink.
‘Three men friends,’ said Lindsey before she had chance to ask.
Three men and going to a night club. Buzz words, every last one of them. But what did they mean? Trying to sound laid back and modern flew out of the window. Mother Hen took over.
‘Now look, if you must go clubbing, keep in a crowd and don’t let these guys take advantage, and make sure you get a taxi home.’
‘Taxis are expensive.’
There was a sense of déjà vu at that statement. Now where had she heard it before? Her response was also familiar. ‘I’ll reimburse you.’
‘Mum! Stop fussing. The guys are great pals and are not going to rape me. Stop treating me like a child. I’m eighteen, for God’s sake!’
Honey’s mouth dropped as the truth dawned. ‘Gosh. You sound just like me. You’ve inherited my genes.’
Lindsey’s eyes echoed the smile playing around her mouth. ‘And you sound just like …’
‘Hold it right there!’ Honey held up her hand, palm facing her daughter. ‘I apologise for sounding like my mother. Go out, get drunk, get laid, but don’t bring any trouble home.’ She kissed her daughter’s cheek. ‘Just take care of yourself.’
‘I will.’
The old coach house they lived in was situated at the end of the long, paved courtyard to the rear of the hotel. There were two bedrooms downstairs plus a bathroom. The upper floor that had once held hay and barley for the horses, now boasted a fitted kitchen and a spacious living room. A stone fireplace graced one wall of the living room and two huge A-shaped trusses supported an exposed apex ceiling panelled in Canadian maple. The panelled ceiling was the reason Honey had created bedrooms on the ground floor and living space upstairs. The view was good. So was the ceiling when you were lying flat on your back, staring into space.
Kicking off her shoes, Honey lay back on the yellow leather settee and eyed with – affection? Yes, affection, her collection of corsets, silk stockings, and beautiful garters festooned with ribbons, flowers and even tiny birds made of real feathers. Pride of place went to the copious bloomers said to have belonged to Queen Victoria. Like her other favourite items, the bloomers were safely framed behind glass and hanging above the fireplace.
Framing them had been done swiftly before an uninformed member of staff assumed the voluminous expanse of cotton was a tablecloth.
Poor old Queen Victoria. She’d turn in her grave if she knew that someone could actually contemplate setting a plateful of English breakfast on her drawers!
End of the day. The best time. She poured herself a glass of wine. There was something about a good wine that made one see clearer, when in fact by reputation it should make one’s thoughts fuzzy.
First, the question of Elmer Weinstock; was he merely missing? Was he here on a secret mission? Or was it that Mervyn Herbert had smashed his last load of ice for the visiting American and decided to smash Elmer’s head in along with it? On the other hand, perhaps there was some other reason that wasn’t yet quite clear.
Never mind. At least her rooms were full. Dear old Casper had sent more business her way.
She toasted herself.
‘Honey Driver. Five-star hotelier, world-famous beauty and famous detective.’
A little over the top, but there …
‘Give it time,’ she said with a sigh and closed her eyes. She dozed. In her dreams she was wearing a deerstalker hat, toting a magnifying glass and smoking a pipe.
Chapter Four
It was Saturday night, pouring down and gone one o’clock when Loretta Davies, Mervyn Herbert’s stepdaughter, left the Underground Club, which was subterranean, and close to the river.
‘Getting a taxi?’ shouted one of her friends, tottering on the edge of the pavement and hanging on grimly to her boyfriend who was impatient to be away and screwing her in the privacy of some shop doorway.
‘You must be jokin’. I’m skint now ain’t I!’ The shouted reply was drowned in the drumming of the downpour.
Whatever else her friend shouted back was drowned too. Both the girl and the young man faded into the darkness between the high buildings.
Loretta pulled the collar of her jacket up around her face as best she could. It was plastic, black and shiny. The rain hammered on it before running off in sheets like it would off a tin roof. The Mac was also short, her skirt shorter and her black tights sodden from the thighs downwards. Wisps of hair clung wetly to her face and water dripped from her eyebrows.
Passing cars muted the sound of her DM’s splashing on the glossy pavements. Headlights glanced like the beams of a lighthouse through the teeming rain.
Streetlights and headlights lessened once she left North Parade. She kept the gardens on her right aiming to make her way across the road near BogIsland, an old Victorian lavatory that some quirky soul had changed into a nightclub at one time.
As she bent her head against the driving rain, she cursed the night. Her footsteps bounced off the walls in narrow alleys. At times it seemed like an army was following her – or at least one person, possibly more. She shivered inside her raincoat and dug her hands more deeply into her pockets, glad when she finally emerged into a rank of Regency houses.
Square panes in Georgian windows were shut tight around her and curtains drawn. Fewer cars flashed by, most sensible people already home in a warm bed with a warm body. Even the shop doorways were empty, fumbling couples defeated by the wind driven rain, their novice explorations saved for another time when the weather was better.
Empty echoes, lonely streetlights, and heavy rain. Wetness and darkness took the night as their own. The rain hammered so hard and loud that she could no longer hear her own footsteps. She didn’t hear his.
A shadow came alive.
She was startled when he stepped out in front of her until she saw who it was.
‘You!’
Mervyn Herbert had deep-
set eyes. His teeth were yellow. ‘Nasty night.’
Loretta was far from pleased to see him. ‘Mervyn, stop following me!’
He slipped a hand into his trouser pocket and brought out a twenty-pound note. ‘Here you are. I expect you could do with it.’
She hesitated, her gaze bouncing between his face and the money.
She snatched it and stuffed it into her pocket.
‘Thought you’d need it. You always did like a pound note, didn’t you, girl?’
She didn’t correct him and say that there was no such thing as a pound note, only a coin. The money always came in useful.
‘I’ve got the car.’
His smile was wide. ‘Come on sweetheart. I’m only doing my duty as a loving daddy.’
‘You’re not my daddy!’
Her exclamation bounced between the buildings.
The light from a streetlamp picked out Mervyn’s yellow teeth as he smiled.
‘We’re still family and it’s a lousy night.’
The rain trickled into Loretta’s eyes and down the nape of her neck. She asked herself whether she could cope with him. The rain increased and lightning lit up the sky.
‘All right.’
She was still shivering when she slid into the front passenger seat of the five-year old Ford ‘family’ car. Family! That was a laugh. Her mother told people she’d been a child bride. She could hear her mother now:
‘My Loretta’s seventeen. I know I don’t look old enough, but I was very young when I had her. Only eighteen myself.’
Hogwash! Her mother had been well into her twenties, but denied herself those extra years, just as she denied the extra inches around her hips and thighs.
She turned as she fastened her safety belt. The rain was unceasing. The streets empty.
The headlights of a passing car picked out a figure amongst the shadows. She sucked in her breath, saw him craning his neck, looking in her direction.
She jumped when Mervyn patted her knee. ‘Everything all right, sweetheart?’
She smacked his hand away. ‘Keep your dirty paw to yourself!’
Whoever had been watching in the shadows was gone. There was just Mervyn, sitting beside her looking his usual greasy, unkempt self. His complexion was ashen and the sad sod had taken the effort to comb a few strands of hair across a hairless skull. The result was comical rather than complimentary. A sliver of hair slewed over his face and dripped water down his face leaving a portion of his head bald and shiny.
Something in the Blood (A Honey Driver Murder Mystery) Page 3