The Adventure of the Dead Wild Bore (5 page)

‘Which is?'

‘That I represent myself as someone doing a survey, and go inside our suspects' houses, make some sort of diversion, like spilling a cup of tea on the carpet, and have a quick look round inside for any signs that the manuscript is, or has been, there.'

‘And what do I do while you're going through all this subterfuge?' asked Holmes.

‘Well, I suggest you dress in old clothes, because I want you to go out into their back gardens, search for any signs of a recent bonfire, and go through the contents of their dustbins, to see if you can locate any pages or fragments of it.'

‘!' Holmes was speechless for a few seconds. ‘What? You want me to go rummaging through people's refuse and old food scraps?'

‘If it apprehends a murderer, then it's all in a good cause, isn't it?'

‘Do I have to?' Holmes' face had a look of desperation and disgust about this request to go through people's trash.

‘I can hardly do it dressed like this, can I?' retorted Garden.

‘You could go home and change … No, I suppose that would take too long,' admitted Holmes, suddenly seeing that there was no way out of his role in Garden's plan for their evening – but he was going to have a very long soak in a lavender-scented bath when he got home, he decided.

‘So, remind me of the three members, and what their specialist areas are,' requested Garden, ‘so that we can decide what's the most sensible order in which to visit them. If one of them seems a better bet than the others, it's senseless to waste time – especially with your part of the job – drawing out the visits.'

‘Thank you so much for your kind consideration,' mumbled Holmes sarcastically, once more picking up his membership list.

‘We've got Peter Lampard, specialist area the most recent series starring, what is this fellow's name? – Benedict Cumberbatch? Extraordinary!'

‘He's the member whom we suspect may be having a relationship with his male house-mate – the gas fitter? To be honest, and taking all things into consideration, I don't think it's likely to have been him. Is he really that sensitive about coming out of the closet? Would he really be stupid enough to think that if he rewrote the first few pages and changed the title page, he could just steal the story? So, why do I think he should be left on the list? What are my reasons?' he asked, as Holmes opened his mouth to do just that.

‘Firstly, there is no fire without some smoke, to quote the saying correctly, and if he is in a gay relationship, he's hardly likely to have taken “A Study in Cerise” as a slur and, if I remember correctly, there was some sort of newspaper – I think it was – accusation that the couple, in that particular series, were closer than it was previously supposed – the characters, of course, not the actors, I hasten to clarify. Maybe he really thought he could make something out of the story. Who's next?'

‘Elliot Jordan, the librarian. His specialist area is the films.'

‘Again, I find him unlikely, but we'll at least have to take a look round at his place. And thirdly?'

‘Aaron Dibley, the probation officer whose specialist area is just the original books and short stories. He has no interest whatsoever in films or television portrayals.'

They had emptied a pot of tea while they were talking, and Garden looked at his watch. ‘If you go and get changed into your tattiest clothes – assuming you have any, which I find unlikely,' he stated, ‘I suggest that we start with our librarian chappie, Jordan, then go to Dibley's place, and leave Lampard to the end, because I get the feeling that he's an also-ran, or a red herring.'

‘And how are we going to work this thing?' asked Holmes, not having the faintest idea how this was going to work.

‘I've got a large-scale local map with me. I'll check out the addresses while you get changed, and explain our strategy to you when you're ready.'

It was a full twenty minutes later when Holmes returned to the room. ‘What have you been doing all this time?' asked Garden, who had thought his partner would have returned within five. It was, after all, only throwing on his oldest clothes that he had to do, not getting himself ready to go to the opera.

The older man appeared in paint-splattered trousers, a jumper, the wool of which was covered in minute bobbles, a battered trilby hat, and an overcoat that was crumpled, and rather torn about the hem, but was, thankfully, quite long and black.

‘You took long enough,' commented Garden, looking at his watch again and finding that it was just after seven o'clock: at least they should find their librarian at home, now, and wouldn't have to wait for him to arrive.

‘I had to go through all the bags I'd got in the bottom and on top of the wardrobe which have been waiting absolutely ages for me to remember, and find the time to take them down to the tip,' explained Holmes. ‘I don't actually have any “tatty” clothes that I regularly wear, I'm afraid,' he added, a trifle shamefacedly. ‘Now the bags are out, I can probably make time to drop them off tomorrow.'

‘Don't be too hasty,' Garden warned him. ‘In our profession, you never know when you'll need an out-of-character disguise, and what you're wearing now would be just right for the part of a tramp or a homeless person.'

Holmes glared at Garden at this slur on his appearance, then sighed, and looked resigned to having to keep all his old garments for the sake of the job.

‘I've looked at the map, and used my personal knowledge of where we're going, and I can tell you all the properties, Lampard's included, have rear alleyways for access by the refuse collectors. What I suggest is that I drop you off at the end of each alleyway, you count the houses along, and get in the back way and go through the rubbish …'

‘In the cold,' muttered Holmes miserably.

‘… While I go in and do my bit inside…'

‘In the warm,' Holmes almost growled, at the unfairness of it all. Damn it all, why couldn't he have been the one to dress up as a woman? Then he remembered his manly figure – portly – and, finally, his magnificent moustache, which was much too luxurious even for the most hirsute of women to be sporting. With a shudder of horror at the picture this made in his mind's eye, he returned his attention to his partner.

‘When you've finished, you can make your way back to the front of the house to where the car will be parked, and wait in that, if I'm not back first – I'll let you have the spare keys.'

‘But how will I know which house it is from the back?'

Garden sighed in exasperation. ‘We'll drive by the front and count along from the correct house to the end, where the alleyway begins, then you just have to count along the backs of the properties.'

‘Stout fellow!' exclaimed Holmes, suddenly understanding what was expected of him. He might not relish the idea, but he was a private investigator, and a private investigator baulked at nothing when it came to solving a case.

Part Five

At the entrance to the first alleyway, which ran behind Elliot Jordan's house, Holmes stood lost in thought. Was it the fourth house or the fifth? He couldn't remember, so he'd have to try to look through the back windows to see if he could see Garden. He was so excited at being out in the field undercover, that he hadn't concentrated as they had counted along the properties to get to the end of the row, and now he was in a pickle. He hoped Garden didn't find out that he had forgotten where he was going.

The fourth house along, he decided couldn't be the right one, as the gate was bolted from the other side, and a large dog began to bark furiously at his presence, as he stopped just the other side of the fence. Climbing gates and getting attacked by what sounded like a rabid dog had definitely not been mentioned in Garden's plan.

Fortunately, the next gate was unlocked, being opened by a latch, and he crept inside the boundary of the garden, searching around, at first, for the sign that there had recently been a bonfire. He thought this was a particularly ingenious idea on his part, in case the manuscript had been burnt. Hardly any people had open fires these days, and an incinerator was the best way to get rid of things permanently – and if one didn't have an incinerator, one had a simple bonfire.

Flitting from tree to bush, from bush to half-wall, he made his way round the lawn, ending up back at the end of the garden where the dustbin was located. Taking off the lid gingerly, as the bin was quite full, he began to lift out the contents gingerly, trying to spot anything that looked like sheets or part-sheets of paper, and trying not to get too dirty in the process.

Blast and damn! Jordan, if this was, indeed, his dustbin, must have had a take-away curry recently, and hadn't wrapped up the remains very securely. Now he had curry sauce all down one sleeve and the front of his right trouser leg. Dropping the package as if it were radioactive, he reached once more into the bin after wiping his hands carelessly down the front of his coat.

Was he absolutely certain this was the right house? Suddenly he wasn't sure. Maybe he ought to just …

‘Joanne' Garden had been invited inside by Elliot Jordan, who lived alone, and eyed up this unexpected visitor with an unwelcome lasciviousness, mentally undressing her as she sat down in an armchair. Actually, had he really been able to do this, he would have run, screaming, from the room, but his imagination didn't allow him even to consider that this lovely lady might be a gentleman in disguise.

Garden crossed his legs, took a pen out of his handbag, which he set on the floor beside the chair, and looked at his clipboard. This was a busy road, so he used the excuse that he was carrying out a survey about whether a bypass would be welcomed by the local residents.

Jordan very quickly offered his visitor a glass of wine and, when she refused, pressed his offer more firmly. Garden, who had refused without thinking about it, immediately changed his answer to the affirmative, as something liquid would be the ideal way of creating a diversion. ‘I'd prefer red, if you've got any,' s/he said, with a winsome smile, knowing s/he wasn't chancing her arm, because s/he knew what was going to happen to the wine.

Jordan quickly returned from the kitchen with two enormous glasses of claret, and put one down on a side-table by the armchair, winking knowingly as he did so, before taking his seat as close as he could get on the arm at the end of the sofa.

Joanne began her questioning about noise nuisance caused by the local traffic then, when Jordan had tipped his glass back to take an enormous gulp, shot out her elbow, and knocked her glass on to the cream, shag-pile carpet, its ruby red contents splattered in a low arc to halfway across the room. ‘I'm so sorry,' s/he purred, her eyes wide an innocent, as she surveyed the mess and turned towards her host.

With a cry of distress, Jordan leapt from his perch and rushed from the room to get some cleaning cloths with which to absorb the defiling fluid, and Garden leapt up and went to stand beside the dining table which had all sorts of papers lying on its top, with just a small place cleared where it could be assumed that his host ate his evening meals.

As the distraught librarian rushed back into the room and covered the slowly sinking puddle with cloths, his visitor had a quick examination of what was on offer: nothing there to give any cause for suspicion. Jordan then said he was going to open some white wine to use to remove any staining from the spilt red.

As he was getting the bottle out of the fridge and opening it, Garden pulled down the flap of a bureau and had a quick look in that: again, nothing obvious sticking out of the pigeon-holes. Not even noticing her shutting the bureau's flap, Jordan hurried back into the room, finished his mopping, and poured white wine onto the dark pink stain now scarring the pristine appearance of the carpet.

He then turned to Joanne with a leer, and got to his feet with a definite twinkle in his eye, and Garden, inside her clothes, began to panic. He hadn't factored this sort of thing into his plan at all – could not even have foreseen it. As nobody ever seemed to express an interest in him as a man, he had never thought that someone might fancy the pants off him as a woman – and what a grand surprise that would be for them!

At that point, Jordan's face fell, and he pointed at the rear picture window, where the disreputable figure of what looked very like a tramp appeared. ‘Who the bloody hell's that in my garden?' he yelled, and tore across the room to chase off the tatterdemalion intruder.

Holmes had only had a little peek to see if he could see either Elliot Jordan or Garden to confirm that he was at the right house, and now made a mad dash for the back gate, throwing the dustbin down behind him to hinder any pursuer.

Garden, in his highest-pitched Joanne-voice, squeaked frantically for Jordan to come back in case he got hurt, and managed to halt him actually in the back doorway. As the householder froze, Garden made a frantic rush for the front door and let himself out, slamming it behind him. He feared he would always remain a mystery woman in Jordan's eyes, but he'd be a bit more than that if Jordan ever seriously got his hands on him.

He drove the car briskly away, turning round at the corner so that he would be at the end of the rear alleyway, and there he found Holmes, crouched into a ball behind the fence of the end house.

‘Thank God you're here,' Holmes said in a loud whisper. ‘I thought I'd had my chips, then.'

‘With curry sauce?' asked Garden, wrinkling his nose as the smell of jalfrezi wafted across from his partner. ‘But it's great that you did look through the window, because that guy was plying me with wine, and was planning to jump my bones. If you hadn't peered in when you did, I think he might be contemplating having got rather more than he bargained for, right now.'

Holmes began to chuckle at the thought of Garden's apprehension, then as he thought about it more, he moved on to full blown laughter. ‘Stop that!' ordered Garden, ‘You're splattering me with detritus from that dustbin.'

‘You just wait until you see the state of me under a street light, never mind the inside of your car,' replied Holmes. ‘But I had no idea Jordan was a lech. No wonder his wife divorced him. I'll bet he couldn't keep his hands to himself when they were married, either.'

Dibley's house was the middle of seven and, as Garden pointed out to Holmes, as he fastidiously used a lacy handkerchief from his handbag and a good helping of spit to get some marks off the left leg of his tights, this was hardly a case for getting muddled as to which back garden it might be that he was expected to enter. As he'd stared directly through the back window he had had to confess why he was there, staring balefully into Jordan's house. ‘Just count three in both directions, and whatever's left in the middle must be it.'

‘It's easy being clever after the event. You don't know what it's like down those dark back alleyways at night, and with no street lights. All the houses seem to merge into one.'

‘Don't whine. It doesn't become you,' said Garden, sounding exactly like Holmes' mother, and he pulled up at the end of the row of seven houses and waited for Holmes to get out, which he did, already counting under his breath as he entered the darkness which was the back access alley.

Garden drove round to the front, parked, and walked up the garden path and knocked the door, there being no bell. Aaron Dibley, for it must be he as he was unmarried, according to Holmes, answered the door with a frown at being disturbed during an evening when he had not been expecting visitors. ‘What do you want?' he asked brusquely.

‘I wonder if I could come in to have a quick chat with you …' Garden was thinking furiously, because this was not a busy neighbourhood and, so disturbed had he been by Holmes almost getting rumbled, and himself almost getting a tumble, that he had forgotten to have a cover story ready. ‘… I wanted to discuss what you think of the levels of crime in Farlington Market,' he concluded, quite proud that he had chosen a subject that was likely to be dear to Dibley's heart, he being a probation officer.

‘I don't normally take part in surveys conducted by people who come round to my home disturbing me, but I shall make an exception in this case, as I can see no danger in letting
you
into my home, and I have a professional interest in that sort of thing. I'm always telling people who live on their own that they should never let strangers into their house when they haven't someone else with them.'

He stood aside to let his visitor in, and Garden thought it was lucky he hadn't tried to get in here by presenting himself as male. He had acquired a number of false moustaches and eyebrows since he and Holmes had gone into business together, and had even remembered to salvage a few of the drab grey and navy office clothes from his last dreary job, for working undercover in just these sorts of circumstances.

Dibley was quite a forbidding-looking man, with close-cropped dark hair, its short tufts already turning grey, and he wore horn-rimmed glasses, giving him a rather headmasterly look. When Garden was settled, he made a pot of tea, and joined him in the sitting room which, unlike the last house, didn't go straight through to a dining area, meaning it was quite safe for Holmes to ferret around to his heart's content, provided he didn't actually knock over anything noisy.

An opportunity never presented itself to knock over his tea cup, because Dibley kept them prissily on the tray on a low coffee table. There was a bit of rustling discernibly audible from the back garden, but Dibley didn't seem to notice it, just interrupting his monologue on the probation service to murmur, ‘Hedgehogs. Nothing to worry about.'

Garden, rather cunningly in his opinion, got him talking about Edwardian policing, and easily steered the conversation round to the subject of the investigations of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. ‘I've got a couple of albums of fascinating photographs up in my loft,' he suddenly volunteered. ‘They contain photographs of policemen and criminals in the actual time that Conan Doyle was writing. Are you at all interested?'

Garden was so interested, also loving the Holmes and Watson stories, that he almost forgot to use his female voice to answer in a very enthusiastic affirmative, and Dibley trotted off upstairs, where the sound of a loft ladder descending could be heard.

With a jolt, Garden realised that – he didn't know for how long – he had been sitting with his knees apart, as if he were wearing trousers, and not with them crossed in a more delicate, ladylike fashion, and just hoped that Dibley hadn't noticed, and taken it as a come-on.

Pulling himself (and his knees) together, and deciding that he'd have to get out as soon as it was conveniently possible, but not before he'd had a quick search, Garden was off like a shot, going through the wall unit, through the desk, and even taking a peek through the contents of the sideboard in the dining room. Once in there, he started at the sight of an open fireplace, and the remnants of some papers in it. Kneeling down, careful not to ladder his tights, he removed what he could, took a quick look at it, and became very excited.

On one fragment he could discern the best part of the word ‘Sherlock'. Dibley had not yet reappeared, but Garden was suddenly aware of a frantic fanfare being played on a car horn, which he recognised as his. Stuffing the paper fragments unceremoniously into his handbag, he fled through the front door and towards his vehicle.

Outside in the darkness of the garden, Holmes had had an initial swearing fit because there were no lights on in the back room, and he was going to have to search only by the light of the moon and the stars, then a hand in his coat pocket came across a small torch that he used to carry when he had bonfires in the garden, and the batteries seemed to still be in working order.

Shading its light with his hand, he walked round the garden, finding no evidence whatsoever of any signs of a fire or an incinerator. He moved on towards the dustbin, his shoulders slumped. He didn't reckon there was any chance of him coming across any incriminating evidence. He absolutely reeked of curry, his hands and clothes were filthy, and his skin was crawling at what he might come across in this festering collection of household refuse.

The noise Garden had heard had been Holmes trying to smother the sound of the metal dustbin lid as he put it on the ground. Damn these old-fashioned dustbins. Why couldn't everyone have a wheelie bin or a plastic one; it would make this current episode in his life a damned sight easier.

He quietly cursed all these men who lived alone for relying on ready-cooked food, as the remains of a Chinese meal landed on his shoes, and he suddenly remembered that he had forgotten to change them, and these were his good brown brogues. He'd have to take them into the cobbler's to see if they had any magic solution for removing chow mein stains from leather. Blast!