The Package Included Murder (14 page)

‘D'you mind passing over my sandals, Bones?' said the Hon. Con, frightfully distant and cold.

‘Are you going after Miss Clough-Cooper, dear?'

On the grounds that a trouble shared is a trouble halved, the Hon. Con decided not to bear a grudge. ‘
We
're going after Miss Clough-Cooper, Bones!'

It was something of a disappointment to find Miss Clough-Cooper alive and well behind the locked door of her hotel bedroom. She was rather cross at being disturbed and the Hon. Con and Miss Jones returned to their own room with ears that were still tingling.

‘Poor girl,' rumbled the Hon. Con, searching for an excuse. ‘'Fraid the strain's beginning to get her down.'

Miss Jones was still smarting at the way the Hon. Con had been treated. ‘She was certainly very brusque,' she agreed stiffly. ‘ Well, what are we going to do now, dear? Go back to the beach?'

The Intourist beach at Sukhumi was some considerable way from the hotel and the centre of the town and even involved a short boat journey. Apart from having to negotiate all the normal difficulties of a foreign transport system, visitors to Sukhumi also had to cope with the excessive friendliness of the local population who were a special breed of Georgians called Abhazians. The Hon. Con and Miss Jones had had to suffer some very unwelcome attentions from swarthy, dark-eyed men who flashed mouthfuls of gold teeth at them and lounged suggestively on the boat rail. It had quite knocked all Miss Jones's soppy ideas of romance on the head and she clung to the Hon. Con for protection. The fact that the propositions which were being made to them were unintelligible didn't make them any less frightening and – as the Hon. Con was tactless enough to point out – anybody could see with half an eye that they all kept harems, communist state or no communist state.

‘It wouldn't be so bad,' Miss Jones had wailed, huddling pathetically up to a padlocked lifebelt, ‘ if they weren't so foreign looking.'

The Hon. Con kept her mind on the practicalities of the situation. ‘Good grief, here comes another one! If he takes another step, Bones, kick him where it'll do the most good!'

No, neither of them fancied that boat trip back to the beach.

Besides, the Hon. Con had other fish to fry. For some time now she had been troubled by the realisation that she was not carrying out this investigation with her usual vigour. True, she was operating under extreme difficulties but, to a private eye of her calibre, that should merely have heightened the challenge. Wasn't – the Hon. Con encouraged herself – the prospect of Penny Clough-Cooper's gratitude enough to put a bit of the old zip, the old get-up-and-go spirit back into one's veins? Yes, by golly, – the Hon. Con slapped her thigh – it was!

Miss Jones, frivolously examining her freckles in the mirror, gave a little jump.

The Hon. Con grinned reassuringly. ‘Steady the Buffs!' she advised. ‘'Fraid we're going to have to pack in the old sun bathing for today.'

Miss Jones began breathing again. ‘Oh, that'll suit me, dear!' She laughed shyly. ‘I don't want to finish up with my skin looking like a piece of old leather.'

The Hon. Con, whose skin did look like a piece of old leather, failed to appreciate the point. ‘Listen,' she went on, ‘I want you to pop along and see if Mrs Frossell and her dratted son are in their rooms. I don't trust that lad as far as I can chuck him.'

Miss Jones, well used to being put upon, duly popped. Her report when she returned brought the scowl back to the Hon. Con's face. Mrs Frossell, Miss Jones stated, was in her room having a rest and – until Miss Jones came hammering at her door – asleep. Of young Roger Frossell, on the other hand, there was no sign.

‘The mother not know where the little perisher is?'

Miss Jones shook her head. ‘ She says not, dear.' Miss Jones returned to the mirror and her freckles. ‘Oh, and I even tried asking the chamber maid on the landing, dear. She doesn't speak any English, of course, but I think we managed to communicate. She pointed to her watch and I rather gather that she hadn't seen young Mr Frossell since he left for the beach with the rest of us after breakfast.'

‘He must be somewhere!' insisted the Hon. Con.

‘Oh, yes, I should think so, dear.'

The Hon. Con picked up Miss Jones's white cotton gloves from the bed and handed them to her chum. ‘And we're going to find him! Best foot forward, Bones!'

It is unlikely that the natives of Sukhumi had heard the one about mad dogs and Englishmen, but innumerable pairs of large, dark eyes peered unbelievingly out out of the shadows as the Hon. Con and Miss Jones slogged unrelentingly through the town. Not that their quest was as untidily random as it looked. The Hon. Con was actually quartering the town in as methodical a manner as she could, given the inadequate tourist map which was all she had at her disposal.

Miss Jones stared, agonised, at the shimmering white road which seemed to go straight up into that mercilessly blue sky. ‘What about lunch, dear?'

‘Faint heart, Bones!' The Hon. Con squared her shoulders. ‘We'll just do this Trapetsia Mountain place first. Not beyond the bounds of possibility, I suppose, that the wretched lad's gone back to look at those blooming monkeys again.'

‘He didn't show much interest when we were there yesterday. I heard him telling his mother that he thought the whole place stank.'

‘Foul mouthed young lout!' snorted the Hon. Con before the steepness of the ascent deprived her of all further powers of speech.

The Frossell boy was not, however, in the Medico-biological section of the USSR Academy of Medical Science, though the Hon. Con and Miss Jones had to endure another conducted tour of the monkeys before they could be absolutely sure. It took a full hour to go round all the cages and compounds and they were eventually seen off the premises by a very puzzled young man in a white coat. They were probably just a couple of lunatic women from the capitalist world, but you never knew. He trotted off to find a telephone. In the KGB you tried to be safe rather than sorry.

Meanwhile, all unconscious of the excitement and trouble they were causing, the Hon. Con and Miss Jones went down the hill considerably faster than they had come up it.

‘Where now, dear?' asked Miss Jones bravely.

‘Back to the hotel!' The Hon. Con sensed that this answer might give an impression of chicken-heartedness. ‘I've been working it out,' she puffed in explanation as she felt the descent dragging mercilessly on the back of her legs. ‘Simple deduction, really. It's well on the cards that the Frossell boy will go back to the hotel for his lunch. Because of the coupons.'

She really didn't need to say any more because Miss Jones understood perfectly what she meant. All tourists in the Soviet Union are obliged to pay for their meals before they even start their holiday. In return they are given a number of coupons which are accepted in Intourist establishments instead of money. This simple system effectively prevents the tourist from economising and also serves to stop him from mingling too closely with the indigenous personnel who don't normally frequent Intourist restaurants very much.

Miss Jones forgot all about her aching feet and gazed up at the Hon. Con. ‘Oh, Constance,' she cooed, ‘aren't you
clever
! Fancy working that out! I'd never have thought of it in a hundred years!'

‘Nothing, really,' mumbled the Hon. Con modestly. She suddenly felt quite warmly towards old Bones who mightn't be as handsome as some but whose heart was jolly well in the right place. ‘ Here,' – the Hon. Con beamed at her friend – ‘why don't you take my arm? It'll ease the strain on the old pins a bit.'

Virtue, they say, is its own reward but the Hon. Con, on this occasion, collected a bonus with gratifying speed. She and Miss Jones had barely staggered a dozen yards arm in arm when they both caught sight of their quarry at the same moment.

‘Don't stop!' hissed the Hon. Con, feeling Miss Jones hesitate.

Miss Jones picked up the step. ‘It is him isn't it, dear?'

‘It jolly well is!' The Hon. Con whooped her triumph in a whisper. ‘Now, take a grip on yourself, Bones! We've got to box this one clever.'

‘Yes, dear!' It was at moments like this that Miss Jones placed herself unreservedly in the Hon. Con's hands.

The Hon. Con shot steely glances in all directions from under lowered brows. ‘OK – so this is how we play it! We'll stroll along nonchalantly as far as that bamboo tree thing on the corner – got it? Then we'll turn round – without making a meal of it, Bones! – and amble nonchalantly back in the direction from which we've just come. That way, we'll be
behind
him and thus in a position to follow him.'

Miss Jones leaned affectionately towards the Hon. Con. ‘You mean –
shadow
him – don't you, dear?'

The Hon. Con interrupted her impersonation of your wealthy English tourist out for a leisurely pre-prandial walk to give Miss Jones a warning scowl. ‘Don't try to teach your grandfather, Bones!' she growled.

The Hon. Con and Miss Jones hadn't been tracking young Roger Frossell for more than a few minutes when they made a most remarkable discovery. While they were surreptitiously and unobtrusively following Roger Frossell, he was surreptitiously and unobtrusively following somebody else.

‘It's that woman, dear!' Miss Jones barely vocalised the words, so anxious was she not to give the game away. ‘Can you see her? The one in the flowered frock with the …'

‘They're all wearing flowered frocks!' the Hon. Con hissed back. It was a slightly unfair comment on the local couture but not without some foundation.

Miss Jones tried to clarify things. ‘It's the one with her hair drawn back in a bun.'

‘I know, I know!' snapped the Hon. Con. ‘Lascivious young pup!' she added.

Miss Jones, a romantic if ever there was one, was inclined to be more charitable. ‘You can hardly expect a boy of his age not to be interested in girls, dear.'

‘Girls? If that woman's a girl, I'm a Chinaman! She's old enough to be his grandmother!'

Although the woman in question wasn't even old enough to be Roger Frossell's mother, Miss Jones decided it wasn't worth arguing about. ‘I believe that some young men prefer more – er – mature women,' she said.

The Hon. Con snorted loudly. ‘I wasn't suggesting that it was a
unique
liaison, Bones,' she said. ‘ Merely that it was a disgusting one.
Hey
!'

The Hon. Con's yelp caused several heads to turn but it merely indicated that the woman with the bun had left the dusty pavement and gone through the gates of a small park. Roger Frossell lost no time in crossing the baking boulevard and following her.

Miss Jones clutched the Hon. Con. ‘What now, dear?'

The Hon. Con came from a long line of ancestors who had learned to make up their minds quickly. ‘We must follow them!' she announced as though this was a highly original idea. ‘ Look, there's another gate a bit further on. See it? We'll walk on and go into the park through that. Savez? Then we should be able to pick up our quarry without difficulty and it'll look more natural with us approaching from the other direction.'

No sooner said than – in spite of certain misgivings on Miss Jones's part – done. The Hon. Con picked up Roger Frossell again almost immediately. He and his elderly girl friend had joined forces to the extent that they were both now sitting on the same park bench, albeit at opposite ends. Neither was speaking to, looking at, or paying the slightest attention to the other – a fact that the Hon. Con found highly suspicious.

Beady-eyed and with nostrils twitching, she scanned the terrain. ‘We're deuced short of cover,' she complained.

Miss Jones looked at the luxurious growth of tropical trees, flowering shrubs and riotously multicoloured flower beds, and said nothing.

The Hon. Con was extremely sensitive to implied criticism. ‘We can hardly crawl up behind 'em on our tums across a patch of newly mown grass, can we?'

‘No, dear.' Miss Jones was examining the statuary with which the park was liberally provided. She was relieved to find that they were all fully clothed. ‘Er – why do you want to get any closer, dear?'

‘To hear what they're talking about, of course! The heat must have addled your brains, Bones!'

Miss Jones tore her mind away from the statues – so natural looking that one didn't have any doubts at all as to what they were meant to be. ‘But, they haven't said a word to each other, have they, dear? I've been watching their lips ever since we came into the park and they haven't moved. Neither – er – pair of them.'

The Hon. Con sought for a ton of bricks, and found it. ‘Never heard of ventriloquism?' she demanded scathingly. ‘Of course they're talking to each other! Why else should they both come and sit on the same seat in the same park at the same time?'

‘It could just be a coincidence, dear,' murmured Miss Jones and then nerved herself for another observation which might well drive the Hon. Con to physical violence. ‘But, even if it isn't, well, I don't quite see what it's got to do with us. I mean, Mr Frossell's private life is – well – his private life, isn't it? I don't see what this' – Miss Jones indicated the distant park bench with a refined gesture – ‘ has to do with these alleged attempts to murder Miss Clough-Cooper.'

Don't imagine for one moment, gentle reader, that the Honourable Constance hadn't got an explanation for this, because she had. Several. Cruel fate, however, deprived her of the chance to use them for, at that precise moment, the park was invaded. Invaded not by little green men from Mars or even trilby-hatted thugs from the KGB but by something much more sinister. Small children.

The Hon. Con and Miss Jones stood and stared in blank dismay as several million (the Hon. Con's considered estimate) tiny tots swarmed through the park gates in a solid, screaming mass.