Andrea Frazer - Holmes and Garden 01 - The Curious Case of the Black Swan Song by Andrea Frazer Page B

this morning. They’d only just finished getting through asking people about last night when they had to come back again. They only had a few hours away from here.’
    ‘How ghastly for you.’
    ‘Inconvenient, that’s all, but it’ll be good for business which, I would like to point out to you, is now my business, and I’m going to take it by the scruff of its neck and shake it until its teeth rattle. There are going to be some radical changes around here.’
    That told Holmes, and he wandered away from the reception desk in the direction of the bar with a dazed Garden still in his wake. What a turn-up for the books this was, and how on earth did these two murders connect – if, indeed, they did? The web was considerably more tangled than it had seemed only twenty-four hours ago.
    At least Streeter won’t be on our backs over this one, though, he thought. We’ve been out all afternoon and the evening up to now, and the murder has taken place without our presence, fortunately putting us in the clear. I’m sure he was suspicious of us before, with one of us witnessing the dive, and the other the landing.
    Garden wandered straight up to the bar and absent-mindedly ordered a double gin and tonic. Holmes, on his heels now after his few moments of speculation, asked William Byrd to make that two, and to bring them over to them. He then wandered off to a table by the door, took off his jacket, put it on the back of the chair, and, when Garden reached the table, told him he was going outside for a quiet pipe.
    He desperately needed thinking time about what had happened earlier. Dismissing murders from his mind for a moment, he wondered whether Garden out of his mind, or had he just manufactured a phobia about his mother? Was his mother putting on an act? Was it a good idea to go into business with him? These were the questions that he pondered as he smoked outside the rear of the establishment in the courtyard.
    After about ten minutes, he knocked out his pipe and went back inside, where he found Garden sitting with an empty glass and a calmer expression on his face. ‘Drink up,’ he said to Holmes, as he retook his seat. ‘Do you know, I do believe you’re right. I think most of the fear of my mother was actually manufactured in my own mind, by the guilt I suppressed about going through her wardrobe and chest of drawers and wearing her make-up.
    ‘She does have a very busy social life with lots of friends, which she never had before Dad left. I think I’ve got this all wrong for years on end. Dad was the unsociable one, and all Mum wanted was to have a bit of fun. I do need to think this thing through a whole lot more, but I think a huge apology is in order, don’t you?’
    ‘I couldn’t agree more. Sleep on it, there’s a good chap. I’ll just get us another, and we can talk about the latest murder, if that would distract you until you’ve got some privacy.’
    ‘Good idea.’
    When he got back to the table, he found that his companion had been joined by two of the women they had met the previous evening – the two slightly younger ones who didn’t look as if they had just been exhumed.
    ‘Good evening, ladies. I was so sorry to hear about your friend. It must have been awful when she just didn’t come back with the refreshments.’
    ‘Mabs Guest,’ said one, holding out her hand to be shaken.
    ‘Lebs Piper,’ said the other, doing likewise. ‘We meet again. It was a terrible shock for us all, especially after what happened only yesterday.’
    ‘At first we thought she’d nipped off to a quiet corner to stuff all the best cakes and biscuits,’ Mabs continued their story.
    ‘Then we really began to worry when she’d been gone over half an hour.’ Lebs took the verbal shot and returned it with complete accuracy and skill.
    ‘So we got Pippa and asked her if she could take a look for her, in case she’d tripped with the trolley and, perhaps, sprained an ankle, or something silly like