Caribbean Sunset with a Yellow Parrot (The Belchester Chronicles Book 5) Page 10

  ‘We could put a note on the invitations for everyone to bring a little something along, just to help the food go a bit further. The more food there is, the longer they’ll stay, and the longer they stay, the more they’ll drink. And, of course, the more they drink, the looser their tongues will become,’ Beauchamp finished on a triumphant note.

  ‘You are a genius, Beauchamp; and Enid, you’re a brick, as always. Thank you both so much. You’re absolutely right; alcohol loosens tongues and removes inhibitions. We’ll be alright as long as Hugo doesn’t do his naked clog dance on the terrace,’ said Lady A with a twinkle in her eye.

  ‘My what?’ asked Hugo, scandalised.

  ‘It was only a joke, Hugo. You didn’t think I was serious, did you?’

  ‘I just hoped you weren’t. Do you think we’ll be able to go next door and use their equipment for these invitations,’ he replied.

  ‘Another genius in our midst. Enid, you can word the invitations, and Beauchamp can have a look round Windy and Beep-Beep’s extensive stock of booze to see if there’s anything you might need for the cocktails. She won’t mind at all. I’ve had a look in her larder, which isn’t a larder at all: it’s like a drinks warehouse. She must ship it here by the container-load. Come on, you lot. We’ve got a cocktail party to organise.’

  Lady Amanda was so excited at what they had planned, involving four sets of ears instead of just one, and having everyone in the same villa, that she almost asked her co-conspirators if they wanted to do the conga round to their host and hostess’s house. It must have been the last fumes of the sherry wafting away.

  Windy and Beep-Beep were enchanted with the idea of a cocktail party for everyone next door, and Beep-Beep led Beauchamp to their booze cupboard – almost like a small room – while Windy got two shopping trolleys from her large under-stairs cupboard, in which to transport back the array of bottles that Beauchamp would no doubt need.

  ‘Tell him not to be sparing with how many bottles he takes. We won’t empty them all, and it’s so much cheaper over here or from the mainland. I’ve heard so much about his expertise in mixing cocktails that I can’t wait to taste some, and I don’t want him to stint on ingredients,’ she said.

  Hugo went off to relay this information to the other two men and deliver the shopping trolleys, and also became entranced by the number and variety of the bottles in the store. He kept pointing at various shelves and exclaiming with delight at each new find. ‘This is even better than Manda’s drinks assortment, and I thought she had just about everything in it,’ he said, with glee.

  ‘It is rather marvellous, isn’t it?’ replied Beauchamp, with more enthusiasm in his voice than Hugo had ever heard before, except in his wedding vows. The man seemed to be absolutely bowled over, and in cocktail-mixing heaven.

  As the butler loaded bottles into the two-wheeled conveyances, Beep-Beep said, ‘You can always come back for more if you need them. It takes a great deal of ingredients to get cocktails just right, in my humble opinion.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree with you more,’ beamed Beauchamp, his eyes twinkling at the prospect of getting his hands on some of these exotic concoctions. He had, of course, brought his own shaker with him. He never went anywhere without it; it was his form of a badge of office.

  Back in the sitting room, Lady Amanda asked Windy if she had had any more ‘communications’. ‘Not so far,’ she replied, ‘but no doubt this murder has thrown the blackmailer off kilter, and we’ll have to wait until he or she gets over the shock. I mean it must be one of us, mustn’t it?’

  ‘I would have thought the anonymous letter’ – Lady Amanda sank her tones to a whisper for these last two words – ‘must be from one of the old girls, but I can’t be sure about the murder. Do you really think one of us could be so angry or so lost in love with the man that they would murder him?’

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea at the moment. It all seems too ghastly to be true,’ replied Windy, her face a picture of confusion. ‘This party tonight should give you a chance to really have a dig into what’s going round the grapevine, though. Hugo told me you two had sorted out murder cases before.’

  ‘When on earth did he have a chance to do that?’

  ‘On the dance floor at The Lizard Lounge.’

  ‘But it was so noisy in there.’

  ‘I know. He sort of shouted it confidentially into my ear.’

  ‘Silly old sod; but it’s true,’ admitted Lady A.

  ‘Well, do you think you could do a bit of digging around for us, then, not just about the letter, but about the murder as well. It’s going to be very detrimental to selling the other villas if the murderer isn’t caught and put away. How can we possibly hope to shift – I mean, sell – all these lovely homes if there’s a killer on the loose. It’s bad enough having somebody killed in one of them, without the perpetrator running about loose all over the place.’

  ‘I think I see what you mean,’ replied Lady Amanda, working it out in her head, ‘and of course we’ll look into things: just don’t let on to the others, or they’ll all clam up and I won’t be able to get a thing out of them.’

  At Windy’s agreement to this, there was the sound of jingling and clanking bottles, and Beauchamp came into view pulling two fully laden trolleys behind him, a big cheesy grin plastered across his face. ‘You look happy,’ commented Lady A.

  ‘A beautiful wife and access to an absolute Aladdin’s cave of drinks – how could I be anything else?’ he replied, and called over his shoulder, ‘I’ll be back for the rest when I’ve unpacked this lot.

  ‘The rest?’ asked his employer.

  ‘You, of all people, should know how many different ingredients are needed to give a real variety of cocktails. But the store here is even more extensive than yours. When we get back, there are a few bottles that I’d like to be purchased for consumption at Belchester Towers, if that’s all right with you, your ladyship.’

  ‘If you think we need ingredients, help yourself when we get back home. I’m hardly going to complain about you buying things that are going to make your creations even better, am I?’

  Beauchamp dragged out the first of his booty with the face of one who has won one of life’s little lotteries, and was celebrating his good fortune.

  Chapter Ten

  Windy had generously sent round her other staff in the shape of Marilyn, her house-keeper, and Dwayne and Royston, respectively houseboy and gardener, both dressed in their best suits, to help serve the drinks and canapés to the guests, and Beauchamp was having a fine time with lower ranks to order around. Apart from Enid’s invaluable help, he was used to being a one-man band and, as far as comestibles were concerned, Maria was still there, too, and doing her best to help – interfere – with the canapés that Enid was making.

  ‘Ah always put de caviar on de cream cheese wid de smoked salmon on top,’ she offered.

  Enid sighed in exasperation and explained that she had learnt to put the cream cheese on first, then the smoked salmon, then to use the caviar as a decoration on the top.

  ‘You English sure is strange people,’ judged Maria, earning her a severe scowl.

  ‘I suppose you’re going to have a go at my devils on horseback as well,’ Enid asked in exasperation.

  ‘No Ah ain’t. Someone seems to have teached you to do dem right,’ replied Maria, without a hint of irony or humour in her voice.

  Enid proceeded to drop a huge bundle of asparagus tips into boiling water, and shooed Maria away, instructing her to make sure the table was ready for the platters of canapés, and that there were sufficient plates and napkins waiting for the guests.

  Dwayne and Royston were employed in taking through jugs of ready-mixed margaritas and a large tray of ready-salted glasses, and Marilyn was uncorking bottles of red wine so that they had time to breathe before being poured. All was well, and it was nearly time for the frivolities to commence.

  Hugo appeared in the hall in, amazingly, a white tuxedo – how on earth had he k
eep that quiet? – then Lady Amanda slowly descended the stairs in the most dazzling of kaftans that had yet been seen on the island, and proceeded to say, most annoyingly, ‘Oh, this old thing? I had my seamstress run it up for me out of a spare bale of silk, before we came over.’ What a deceitful old bunny she was, but she did look quite spectacular – all things considered, like her age, her figure …

  Windy and Beep-Beep were the first to arrive, coming from just next door, and both exclaimed with approval and pleasure at how professional everything looked. ‘Why, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the staff so smartly attired, and someone’s done some real magic with flowers.’

  ‘That was Maria,’ volunteered Hugo, who had taken to Maria, and felt that she should get full credit for going out with some stout secateurs, and hacking away at flowering trees and shrubs to provide the beautiful multi-coloured displays that now adorned the many side-tables.

  ‘I should have known what she was up to when she mysteriously disappeared with almost all my vases,’ replied Windy with a smile, helping herself to a margarita as she spoke. ‘My, how delicious. The glass is just perfectly salted. You were right about Beauchamp being the best,’ she exclaimed to Lady Amanda, who just smirked with satisfaction looking like the cat that had got the cream.

  ‘And he’s all mine,’ she replied boastfully.

  ‘Not quite,’ piped up a voice, as Enid came into view with a silver platter of delicious nibbles. ‘Some parts of him are definitely mine.’

  Lady A made a little moue of distaste, and let her know that she could have those parts, as she wasn’t in the least interested in what she referred to as ‘the giblets’, and Enid gave a snort of unladylike laughter at the description. Then, there was a real run on the doorbell, as everyone seemed to arrive in one continuous stream. Although Eeyore’s face was puffy and blotchy, her eyes still red and swollen, she had made the effort of changing into a frock and applying some lipstick.

  As everyone streamed in and hunted down or ordered their particular poison, the mood, although sombre and subdued at first, soon picked up a bit with the application of a couple of extra-lethal cocktails, and Lady Amanda and Hugo began to circulate.

  Behind the makeshift bar of a decorating table swathed in white table cloths, Beauchamp did a number of skilful tricks with bottles and the cocktail shaker of which Lady Amanda had no idea he was capable, and just for a second or two, she could see Tom Cruise standing there – but as he was so much smaller, she let her mind shift back to Beauchamp, who was doing a sterling job keeping the old girls entertained. There was plenty of ‘ooh-ing’ and ‘ah-ing’ as he spun bottles in the air, catching them again with complete confidence, and what he did with his cocktail shaker was nobody’s business.

  Enid looked on from the food table, almost bursting with pride. She looked quite the new woman. Windy, who had just gone home to fetch her iPod and speakers, put on some lovely old music, and Hugo grabbed Lady Amanda and swung her into a waltz, to which the others responded with a round of applause.

  Apart from Beauchamp, who was much too busy to bother with dancing, Beep-Beep was the only other man present, so there was a particularly bitchy competition to be his partner, and then the other girls reluctantly paired off, dancing as they had done in school, with each other.

  The only one missing was Adonis, who suddenly appeared as the ghost at the feast in their midst; the music went off with as much rapidity as it had gone on, and the mood went down a notch or two. They hadn’t had quite sufficient to drink yet to really make the party go with a swing, but they’d get there, given time. It was like a rehearsal for the dear departed Douglas’s wake.

  After a few more cocktails, however, the atmosphere started to lighten again. Enid, although she had worked really hard to make enough canapés, was enjoying the varied company enormously, after so long with just her new husband.

  Said husband was also having a really good time. His specials for the evening were Caribbean Sunsets, cocktails with a glorious red band at the bottom of the glass, and Yellow Parrots, small but deadly, and they were going like hot cakes. As he mixed, he thought how grounded and secure he felt since he had married dear Enid. He felt that he would never have a recurrence of his irritating little problem when the red mist descended, for as long as he lived. He certainly hoped not, or it could ruin more lives than his own.

  After a few bevvies, Wuffles had taken quite a shine to Hugo in his white DJ, and cornered him on a sofa for a little chat. She hadn’t yet reached the embarrassingly flirty stage of inebriation, so he felt quite safe. After a few polite opening generalisations, she began to open up about how she and Longshanks had always been at loggerheads. ‘In that way, we’re very like Horseface and Fflageolet.

  ‘We never got on from day one. There’s just something about her that rubs me up the wrong way. Maybe it’s the fact that she looked like a dog we used to have when I was little that used to growl every time it saw me,’ she confessed – she could talk; Hugo could hardly believe his ears, hearing this from a woman who herself looked uncannily like a spaniel – ‘or maybe it’s just because she’s so small. Have you noticed how tiny she is? Even as a child she was undersized, and it was the source of quite a lot of bullying. Girls can be so cruel – much worse than boys.’

  Hugo took as much as he could stand, and made his escape with the excuse of a trip to the little boys’ room, before she went a stage further and started making eyes at him. By a sneaky detour, he managed to get himself to the kitchen, where the only occupant was Beep-Beep, no doubt having sought sanctuary from all the old girls, who were getting to the point of being in ‘frisky’ mode.

  Beauchamp, ever watchful, slipped briefly into the room and handed each of them a glass, muttering, ‘Yellow Bird, double size’ before whisking back to his post at the makeshift bar. Beep-Beep raised his glass and took a long swallow.

  ‘I don’t suppose you and your lady-friend have given any thought to purchasing one of the villas?’ he asked, a look of slight anxiety on his face.

  ‘Not really, although she did say she’d consider it. Oh, and by the way, old man, she’s not my lady-friend, not the way you mean. She’s just a platonic friend from years ago, and she happens to be kind enough to let me live in her house – nothing dodgy about our relationship at all.’

  ‘Didn’t mean to offend, Hugo, but has she mentioned whether she’d made any decision?’

  ‘I think she’d like to do the viewing first. She makes up her mind quite quickly, but not before having seen the actual product.’

  ‘Fair enough. I’ll get Windy to organise it as soon as possible. We’ve got ten, you know, just sitting there, with occasional visitors, but we’ve got all that money tied up, and I reckon we’ve got to sell some of them soon, or we’ll be stony broke.’ Really! Those two next-door did nothing but moan about money and selling the properties. Surely they couldn’t be that broke?

  ‘No!’ Hugo was shocked, considering their lifestyle. ‘But this place with the pool? Your booze cupboard? You give the impression of being absolutely loaded.’

  ‘Not so. It wouldn’t do to give any other impression, but we’re damned near on our uppers. Give Sniffy a gentle nudge, will you, please?’

  It took Hugo a second or two to compute who Sniffy was, but when the penny dropped, he assured Beep-Beep that he would do that for him as soon as they were alone.

  ‘Thanks, old man. Very grateful and all that; and any influence she might have over the other visitors would also be greatly accepted. Might even offer her a discount, if you can swing this one for us, and a wee bit extra, for everyone she persuades to buy one.’

  Hugo left the kitchen as embarrassed as he had entered it, although for a different reason. He had really gone from the frying pan into the fire, with a choice between being made up to by a woman that looked like she belonged on the end of a lead, to that unmentionable subject, money. He was really uncomfortable discussing it, and the idea that Beep-Beep thought he had any influence whatsoeve
r over Manda was laughable beyond belief, although he would tell her about the conversation, just because he had given his word that he would.

  Lady Amanda, meanwhile, was having a bit of a shake with Windy, asking her if she’d had any idea yet who might have sent her the anonymous letter, and whether there had been any follow up. When the answer came back in the negative, she told Windy that she was going to disappear for a short time, and that, if anyone asked about her, she was to say that she was in the bathroom. That way, at least nobody would seriously come looking for her. Just before she slipped away, Windy asked her where she was going, but she just put a finger up to her lips, and eased herself out of the room.

  Once outside, she grabbed the bottom of her silk kaftan, and raised it to knee level to allow herself more speed, and shot off into the garden of 12A, thinking that in her opinion, before they had arrived, the kaftan she had had specially modelled would be far too garish to be worn in public, but she had been proved wrong, and was really pleased with the opportunity to be able to wear such an eye-catching garment, but then, she had known where Enid was going for her honeymoon, which Enid had not.

  Moving round to the back of the house and producing a penlight torch from her handbag, she approached the refuse bin and opened the lid. If someone had cut out the letters to make the words of the anonymous communication, then they would have ditched the periodicals or newspapers from which they had been cut. She was going to work her way round this side of the close, then work her way back to Cocktails via the other side.

  In the garden of The Palms, number nine, she said a very rude word as she barked her right shin on a stone garden statue, and hoped that the sound didn’t carry to anyone outside at the party. She didn’t want her little investigative trip discovered and her cover blown this early in the investigation – investigations! There were definitely two of them now, but at present, she was engaged in finding the compiler of the anonymous letter.