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

  CARIBBEAN SUNSET WITH

  A YELLOW PARROT

  The Belchester Chronicles: Book Five

  ANDREA FRAZER

  Lady Amanda Golightly’s dutiful butler Beauchamp is getting married and she provides him and his bride with a wonderful present – a honeymoon in the Caribbean. There’s just one snag – Lady Amanda and her friend Hugo are going too!

  One of Lady A’s old friends is hosting a school reunion, and so the Belchester party joins some of the other old girls in crossing for the reunion by sea – on a ship very accurately named the Seven Seas Floating Party Town.

  On disembarking, life is typically uneventful: the tropical island paradise is rife with murder, smuggling, blackmail, and much, much, more. With Lady Amanda’s unerring nose for nefarious deeds, she, Hugo, and the besotted newlywed Beauchamps are off detecting once more – aided by plenty of coconut rum – and the local hot sauce.

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  School Reunion-goers

  Lady Amanda Golightly – Sniffy

  Hermione Bazalgette – Horseface

  Deirdre Brokenshire – Droopy-Drawers

  Wendy Godiva – Wuffles

  Douglas Huddlestone-Black – Adonis

  Letitia Littlechild – Longshanks

  Ffion Simpson – Fflageolet

  Other Passengers on the Seven Seas Floating Party Town

  Hugo Cholmondley-Crichton-Crump – friend of Sniffy Golightly

  Beauchamp – butler-cum-general factotum to Sniffy

  Enid Beauchamp – bride of the butler and friend of Sniffy

  Residents of the Parrot Bay Sundowners’ Retirement community

  Belinda Bartholomew – Butterfingers, of Tropical Hideaway – 11

  Caroline Cassidy – Hopalong, of Coconut Corner – 2

  Dorothy Leclerc – Hefferlump, of The Palms – 9

  Philippa Montrose – Eeyore, of West Indies Retreat – 14

  Cecelia Nosegay – Snotty, of Lagoon View – 12A

  Wendy Winterbottom – Windy, of Cocktails – 16

  Julian Morris – aka Morris Minor & Beep-Beep, of Cocktails – 16

  Other Island Residents

  Albert ‘Albie’ Ross – runs the Parakeet Club

  Winstone Churchill – local bus driver

  Short John Silver – runs Old Uncle Obediah’s Rum Keg Landing Beach Bar

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Prologue

  The cough from the back of the church had reverberated with the impact of heavy artillery shot, halting the wedding and drawing all eyes to its source at the important point where the vicar had called for anyone present to speak now, or forever hold his peace.

  The bride, Enid Tweedie, widow of this parish and friend and gofer for Lady Amanda Golightly, and the groom, Beauchamp, butler to the same, stood whey-faced and open-mouthed at the front of the church, while every mind in the building whirred with activity. Was there something in Beauchamp’s past which no one knew about? Was he a bigamist? Come to that, was Enid a bigamist, perhaps never having been widowed?

  The man at the back coughed again, his hand in front of his mouth to prove he had been a well-brought-up boy, and cleared his throat, preparatory to speaking. Here was the truth. What were they about to learn, to sweeten and enliven Belchester’s already busy gossip mill?

  ‘I do apologise,’ he said, only heightening the tension. What did he want to apologise for? Was he a player in whatever he was about to reveal? He cleared his throat again and continued, ‘Mark Morton, church warden. I seem to have inhaled a small insect. Please carry on. I’m very sorry to have interrupted. Forgive me, and do carry on.’

  A collective sigh of disappointment that as held breaths were exhaled made enough of a breeze to stir Morton’s hat, and a buzz of let-down conversation began to move through the body of the church.

  The vicar also coughed, to drag everyone’s attention back to the matter at hand, then carried on with the service, his voice a little wobbly, as if this interruption had severely upset him, while a snort of indignation could be heard from the matron of honour, Lady Amanda herself, wearing what she referred to as ‘a pastel-coloured meringue’.

  The rest of the service went off without a hitch, as did the photographs outside the church, the only outré moment being when the man with the camera asked the ladies present to show a bit of leg for a risqué shot. Lady Amanda slightly uncovered what looked like a sturdy leg of pork, while Enid pulled her wedding dress high enough to show off her garter, revealing several nicotine patches nestling underneath it: a novelty, to say the least. A mass clicking indicated that most of the guests also wished to capture this unusual sight for posterity.

  It was not too long, though, before the wedding party returned to Belchester Towers, the ancestral home of Lady Amanda’s family, for the wedding breakfast.

  The caterers had been back, as had the wedding decorators, and the place was transformed into a fairytale celebration venue, starting with white ribbons, bows, and balloons at the front steps. Inside, every surface was covered in flowers, from dirty great vasefuls to tiny little nosegays; there was white ribbon everywhere, and balloons bobbed like captive clouds, tied to just about every piece of furniture.

  The theme of each table centre was a heart, and these sprouted from place cards to menu holders, too. All in all, Cinderella didn’t just go to the ball, it was thrown in her honour, and Enid went pink with delight when she set eyes on it, making little squeaking noises of approval and disbelief.

  The toastmaster, who was part of the catering package, started off the ceremony by explaining the order of events, which ended with carriages at three a.m., and introduced Beauchamp, that he may welcome his guests and introduce his bride to all here gathered. There were no parents-in-law to introduce, although he did give hearty thanks to his employer, who had made a gift of this reception and the honeymoon to the happy couple. Enid blushed again at the implications of the word ‘honeymoon’, but Beauchamp carried on regardless.

  ‘I and my, um, wife, er, have told everyone that we were going to the West Country for this part of the getting married experience.’ Here, Enid nodded contentedly, before he continued, ‘Instead of which, due to my employer, Lady Amanda Golightly’s incredible generosity we are going, not to that delightful part of the country, but, to the West Indies.’

  Enid spilt champagne all down the front of her frock in shock, and accidentally inhaled the mouthful she was about to swallow. While Hugo Cholmondley-Crichton-Crump thumped her back, murmuring, ‘There, there, old girl. Cough it up, and you’ll feel much better,’ there was a communal sharp intake of breath from the guests, which was repeated, fortissimo, when Beauchamp carried on with his speech.

  ‘We are going to a tiny island which is privately owned, called Caribbaya. Lady Amanda and Mr Hugo will accompany us on our sea journey across the Atlantic, whereafter they will stay with one of her ladyship’s old schoolfriends, and my bride and I shall retire to separate guest accommodation.’

  The hubbub rose in volume. The old wrinklies
were going on honeymoon with them? How absolutely disastrous. How could the newlyweds stomach the thought of being at their beck and call all the way over on that long sea crossing, then no doubt summoned from their guest accommodation at all hours, to pass the salt or something just as ridiculous?

  Lady Amanda sat smirking like the Cheshire cat, Hugo had resumed his seat and looked thoroughly embarrassed, while Enid, the new Mrs Beauchamp, now had hiccoughs, and her eyes stared widely as if her whole world had just shattered around her.

  ‘Beechy?’ she croaked, holding out a hand to her new husband.

  ‘Later,’ he reassured her, patting the hand, and handing over to the best man.

  Chapter One

  Their luggage was all packed, and they breakfasted as normal on sailing day, as the boat didn’t leave until four in the afternoon. The next morning, an army of cleaners would descend on Belchester Towers to get it spick and span, fit for their return in three weeks’ time. Today, all four of them breakfasted together, Enid still getting used to the idea that she would be spending her honeymoon with the ‘Saga louts’ for whom she and her new husband worked.

  Although she hoped against hope that they could have some kind of privacy, she didn’t trust those two not to ferret out some murder or other malfeasance, and drag her and Beauchamp into the jaws of danger as they had done on four previous occasions.

  ‘What is the name of this cruise liner you have booked for us?’ asked Beauchamp, swallowing a mouthful of bacon and breaking the awkward silence that was currently prevailing. Hugo was also uncharacteristically quiet, being in a bit of a sulk, not only because he had not been consulted about whether he wanted to go or not, but also because he thought it was intrusive and presumptuous of Manda to include the two of them on what was, after all, someone else’s honeymoon, for God’s sake!

  ‘It’s the one that Windy Winterbottom said everyone else was coming over on, for this school reunion,’ replied Lady Amanda, sipping her coffee, oblivious to how everyone else was feeling. All was right in her world, and her skin was so thick that artillery shells could not have pierced it.

  ‘Windy?’ squeaked Enid, who had returned to her normal self now, through deep breathing and the use of nicotine patches, and re-joined the land of the non-smokers. She was retrospectively proud of the fact that she had had five patches under her wedding garter, to prevent nerves which might tempt her back to the wicked weed.

  ‘Oh, her real name is Wendy. We all had nicknames at school.’

  ‘What was yours?’ ventured a rather bold Beauchamp.

  ‘Well, I might as well tell you, as you’ll find out anyway. I was known as Sniffy Golightly, because I suffered from a constantly runny nose, which turned out, on inspection by a doctor when I was nine years old, to be the result of a plastic bead, which I must have pushed up there when I was a mere toddler. Anyway, the name stuck for the rest of my schooldays.’

  ‘How dreadful,’ sympathised Enid.

  ‘I know,’ replied Lady A. ‘Fancy my mother letting me get my hands on anything made of plastic!’

  This was hardly the answer Enid expected, but she carried on gamely with her enquiries. ‘And who are the others going to the reunion?’

  ‘Let me see, ooh yes, Hermione Bazalgette, Deirdre Brokenshire, Wendy Godiva, yummy Douglas Huddlestone-Black, who was the headmistress’s son, Letitia Littlechild, and Ffion Simpson will all be on the same vessel.

  ‘When we get there, we will meet Belinda Bartholomew, Cecelia Nosegay – silly name – Dorothy Leclerc and Caroline Cassidy. Windy and her partner – never met him – got hold of the land, then those four put in money for villas for themselves, and the rest of the close was built, to represent the start of the Parrot Bay Sundowners Community for the Retired. I believe that only Parrot Bay is built at the moment, but there are great plans to expand – clubhouse, that sort of thing, I believe.’

  ‘And that vessel is called?’ Beauchamp ploughed on doggedly – he wasn’t giving up that easily.

  ‘And do they all have nicknames, too?’ asked Enid, at the same time. The atmosphere was becoming a little less glacial, and there was danger of a little excitement leaking in around its melting edges, for none of them had been to the Caribbean before and, even with Lady A and Hugo in tow, it was a hugely enticing thought that, within a few days, they could be sprawled on a tropical beach with a tall cool glass of rum punch in their hands.

  ‘Of course they do, dear Enid, but you shall find those out when you meet them.’

  ‘The name of the vessel, your ladyship?’ Beauchamp soldiered on, wondering what she was hiding.

  ‘I’ve booked a suite for Hugo and I. We will have to share, but there are two queen-sized beds …’

  ‘Manda!’ spluttered Hugo, covering his front with toast crumbs, suddenly appalled, his equilibrium totally capsized.

  ‘And I have booked a double cabin for you two. Inside, because I doubt you’ll spend much time looking out of a window, will you?’ she said with a sly wink in Enid and Beauchamp’s direction. As her mother had always said, you don’t look at the mantelpiece when you’re poking the fire, and the same went for portholes and new brides, in her opinion.

  This embarrassingly intimate question effectively silenced everyone but Beauchamp. ‘The name? What is the name of the blasted ship?’

  ‘For your information,’ announced Lady Amanda, ‘Mr Nosy-Parker Looking-A-Gift-Horse-In-The-Mouth Beauchamp, the name of the blasted ship is the Seven Seas Floating Party Town.’ She then lived up to her school nickname by giving the most enormous sniff, as if daring any of those present to question her choice of vessel.

  Beauchamp had loaded the extraordinary amount of luggage they seemed to be taking with them into the Rolls, even pushing squashy travelling bags into the back seat with Lady Amanda and Hugo, the former complaining that she felt like part of a left luggage consignment, and would the man please leave her enough room to breathe. Beauchamp gave the last squishy bag a final squeeze, extracting an ‘Oh, I say!’ from Hugo, before getting into the driver’s seat and aiming the vehicle towards the port.

  All four of the car’s passengers had their heads filled with visions of what the cruise terminal would be like, none of them very realistic, and based mostly on old newsreels and black and white films. To say that each and every one of them romanticised it would be a huge understatement.

  The most pessimistic was the new Mrs Beauchamp’s, whose mind continued to chew over grainy monochrome images of all the poor people boarding the Titanic, off to start a new life in the New World via third class, with no idea of their place in history, and the disaster that was shortly to occur to deprive them of the rest of their lives, never mind their new ones. She had distrusted transatlantic sea crossings ever since she had first heard of this disaster as a child.

  When they had sent off the car for long-term parking and checked in their luggage, Lady Amanda looked around her and asked if some of the people milling round might be the showgirls from the entertainment staff. Hugo chipped in with the possibility that there may be a few school trips booked to sail.

  Beauchamp gave a loud ‘harumph’, threw a contemptuous gaze towards his employer, and asked her to repeat the name of the ship.

  ‘I told you at breakfast,’ replied Lady Amanda, her gaze as flinty as his was steely. ‘The Seven Seas Floating Party Town.’

  ‘And you wonder who all these young people are?’ he asked, making sure that his tone was rhetorical enough even for her selective hearing.

  ‘You mean …’ she spluttered. ‘You mean that all these children are the actual passengers? But there’s not a dowager duchess in sight, and where are all the honourables? Where are the ladies and the sirs? I don’t understand.’

  ‘Say the name again, but more slowly this time, and maybe understanding will dawn on you,’ advised the butler.

  Lady Amanda’s lips moved imperceptibly and, on repeating the word ‘Party’, she examined the cruise vessel a little more closely. ‘It’s fly
ing the Stars and Stripes? Why’s that? And where’s the Union Jack?’ she declared loudly.

  ‘Your ladyship has booked an American party boat, the target customer of which is young, heavy on the alcohol, and deep into partying of the more wild variety.’

  ‘You mean there will be no games of charades or bridge? No floating around elegantly on the dancefloor?’

  ‘There will be body-popping and gyrating to heavy drum and bass, and rap – and a bit of nostalgic seventies disco-bopping, if your ladyship is lucky. The dancefloor will be a sea of perspiring young bodies, all well over their alcohol limit, in various stages of undress or unconsciousness. They may even be throwing up to the music.’

  ‘You will have your little joke, Beauchamp,’ interjected Hugo nervously, when suddenly a voice hailed through the crowds, ‘Manda? Sniffy Golightly, is that you?’

  A tall, stooped woman with an extraordinarily long face and enormous protruding teeth efficiently elbowed her way through the melee and halted by Hugo’s side. ‘This the other half, eh, Sniffy? Is he up to snuff? Sniffy; snuff. Ha ha!’

  Lady Amanda’s brows furrowed at this ridiculous and impertinent question, and addressed the new arrival. ‘What ho, Horseface! May I introduce you to Hugo Cholmondley-Crichton-Crump, one of my oldest friends, and to Beauchamp and his new bride Enid; almost like part of the family. Gang, this is Horseface Bazalgette who appeared on the jolly old register as Hermione.’

  A ‘coo-ee’ from several rows behind sounded, and four more elderly ladies pushed their way through to join them. Greetings ensued. ‘Hi Sniffy, ’llo Horseface.’

  ‘Jolly hockey sticks, Fflageolet.’

  ‘Wotcher, Wuffles. Have you spotted Adonis yet?

  ‘Where’s Longshanks? Just coming with Droopy-Drawers? Jolly Dee.’

  The crowd of mad old women now numbered five, shortly to be joined by a white-haired old boy whom every member of the school reunion greeted with swooning smiles and looks of adoration.

  When a woman in ship’s uniform came up beside Hugo and offered him a glass of Mimosa, he absentmindedly took two – one with each hand, and immediately drained both glasses, placing them back on the tray to take another two. ‘Thanks a million, my dear. I really needed a drink.’ With all these bizarre nicknames to cope with, he’d need something a bit stronger than Mimosas to see him through this voyage and holiday.