The Bookcase of Sherman Holmes: A Holmes and Garden Anthology Read online

  Mrs Markham’s house proved to be in an area where parking was allowed on the opposite side of the road, behind which was a small area of grass for local children to play on, and which sprouted a bench or two if one were too old to play on the swings and slide.

  He had put a pack of sandwiches and a flask of tea in the car, cannily picking up a newspaper on his way out of town, taking advantage of the fact that newsagents have to open very early every day, and felt he was well prepared.

  Parking his car in the one and a half car-lengths considerately left by two other vehicles, he unfolded his newspaper and began to scan the front page, his window slightly ajar so that he could hear if anyone left the house opposite. The road was a quiet one, especially at this time of the morning.

  At seven thirty, the front door opened and a tall, slim man, the physical opposite of Mrs Markham, left the house, driving away in the car that had been parked on the drive. That must be Mr Markham, thought Garden, and assumed that the daughter of the house would be next.

  At exactly eight o’clock, the front door opened again, and he saw Mrs Markham seeing off a teenage girl who looked like an exact, if smaller, model of her mother. Having waved off her beloved offspring to catch the school bus, the door closed again, and Garden became rather absorbed in his newspaper, waiting for the sound of the front door opening and closing again to announce that the mistress of the house was on her regular short walk to work.

  After a while, Garden started on the crossword, having got fed up with the stories, and not being at all interested in the business or sports pages. When he next looked at his watch, it was a quarter to ten, and still he had heard and observed no movement from the house. What was going on? He’d give it half an hour more before going over to investigate. Maybe she left by the back door, and he had, therefore, not seen her leave.

  At eleven fifteen, he folded his paper, put it down on the passenger seat and got out of the car, before approaching the house trying to look as if he were just a regular caller. He rang the doorbell just to make sure, whilst planning to gain access to the rear of the property to have a good look through the windows.

  To his surprise, the door was opened almost immediately by Mrs Markham herself. Giving him a puzzled smile, she said ‘Good morning, Mr Garden. How can I help you? Is there some information which you need, to further your enquiries?’

  The only reply Garden could think of in his utter shock at finding the woman still in the house was, ‘Why aren’t you at work?’

  ‘Did I forget to mention that today’s my day off? I’m so sorry, Mr Garden. How very remiss of me. Have you been here long?’

  ‘Only since seven o’clock,’ replied the detective in a voice full of self-pity.

  ‘I’m so sorry. I don’t know how to apologise enough for my omission. I hope I haven’t inconvenienced you too much.’

  She had, but he was loath to say so, as it would definitely not be good for business. He would do what anyone else with half a brain would do in the circumstances, and blustered that there was no harm done, he had almost cracked the crossword while he had been waiting, and that he would be back the next morning, on duty, as agreed.

  He left the woman still on the doorstep apologising profusely for her oversight, got back into his car, and drove off with a screech of tyres to vent his ire. He had made the effort to get up at, what for him, was a totally unreasonable hour, he would be on surveillance again tonight, this time at Mr James’s allotment, with the prospect of being woken up by that sadistic alarm clock at the same time tomorrow morning. So much for his daydreams of saving the world!

  Holmes had arrived in the office early, at eight thirty, fifteen minutes ahead of Shirley, and he was walking on air. His drink on Saturday night with Garden’s mother had turned into two drinks, followed by coffee and accompanied by a very long chat, and the alcohol had given him Dutch courage enough to ask her if she would like to go out to dinner with him. To his absolute delight and surprise, she had agreed, and said that she would look forward to it, next Saturday evening being set as the day of what Holmes thought of as their very first date.

  Now he could bedevil himself with other questions about dating etiquette, having cleared the initial hurdle: whether to kiss or not on a first date, whether to invite her back for coffee after dinner, what to say if she invited him back for coffee, and did coffee mean coffee, or was it code for something else entirely?

  To put it bluntly, he was in a right old lather, just with the thought that he supposed she was now his girlfriend. Did that mean that Garden was his almost-stepson? No! He was rushing much too far ahead in his mind: best just to try to banish the subject from his thoughts. Saturday would come quickly enough.

  When Shirley Garden arrived, he gave her ‘good morning’ and blushed as she thanked him again for Saturday night, saying that he was a thoroughly fascinating man to talk to. He returned to his office, his heart aflutter, and began to wonder where good old Garden was, even going as far as mounting the staircase to the flat to knock on his door in case he had overslept.

  It slowly dawned on him that Garden wasn’t oversleeping the sleep of the just, but was out in his car keeping an eye on Mrs Markham’s garage and her precious car, and he came back downstairs again with the feeling of embarrassment. His mind really wasn’t on the ball this morning. How could he have forgotten the arrangements they had made on Saturday with that pushy woman? Then he remembered the surveillance that would have to be undertaken on Mr James’s allotment, and began to worry that he would be too tired to be on his toes for Saturday night, if that turned into a protracted affair.

  Affair. The very word made him shiver with excitement, and he thought back to the last girlfriend he had had. It was so long ago that his memories of her seemed to be in black and white. In his mind’s eye he saw himself as a young new noise in the local government offices, and he had had the temerity to don a pair of extra-wide flares, a kipper tie, and a psychedelic shirt for their very first date, not realising that, as with so many things in his life, he was two steps behind trend.

  Alison, her name was, a pretty, shy girl from the office. In those days, although he had already developed his bumptious side, underneath he was a shy, retiring soul, and they had never got further than a kiss and a bit of a cuddle. It must be thirty years, now, since he had ventured out on the town with a pretty girl on his arm.

  Now he looked back on the scene, his hair must have been longer than hers, and all over his head. He was sure he had a photograph of the two of them together at one of the office dos; he must look it out when he got home, just for old times’ sake, and to take his mind off what lay ahead in the near future. Elated, he certainly was, but terrified almost out of his wits at the same time.

  Garden’s arrival at the office was just as full of emotion, but he was less walking on air than ready to punch the living daylights out of it if it didn’t get out of his way. He slammed open the outer door, startling Shirley, greeted her with a curt, ‘’Llo,’ and exploded into the rear office as if he were a demon appearing on stage by the theatrical magic of a trapdoor.

  Holmes, who was enjoying a cup of tea at the time, spilt quite a bit down his tie in surprise, as his younger partner stomped over to his desk, flung himself into his chair, and exploded with, ‘Bloody woman,’ then sat there in brooding silence.

  ‘Whatever’s the matter, old chap?’ asked Holmes, rubbing at his tie with his handkerchief in the vain hope that the stain that had just arrived there would disappear as if by magic if he rubbed hard enough at it.

  Garden was too furious to speak for a few moments, merely sitting bolt upright in his office chair, seething and mentally cursing the forgetful Mrs Markham with all the un-pleasantries his mind could conjure up. Eventually he took a few deep gulps of air, and began his sorry tale.

  ‘First, I was awakened by the devil’s own alarm clock at six o’bloody-clock, and parked opposite the Markhams’ house by seven o’clock. I wore my drabbest clothes so that I woul
dn’t stick out like a sore thumb – just look at me! – and I watched as, first Mr Markham left for work at seven thirty, then the daughter departing at eight, then nothing; a big, fat zero – no departure of Mrs Markham, and no signs of life inside the house at all.

  ‘Eventually, at 11.15, I went over to the house and rang the bell whilst working out how to get to the rear of the property to get a peek through the windows to check that the woman hadn’t collapsed or fallen. Then, she only goes and opens the door to me, and says how sorry she is, but she hadn’t mentioned yesterday that today was her day off from work. How silly of her, et cetera, et cetera, while I stood there gaping like a goldfish, trying to clear my mind of scenes of having to call an ambulance for assistance. If I’d acted how I felt at that moment, calling an ambulance wouldn’t have been an option, it would have been a necessity!’

  ‘Hold your horses, Garden, old chap,’ soothed Holmes, pressing a button on his desk and requesting that Shirley bring through a cup of strong coffee for her son, who had worked himself up into a state of fury over a simple misunderstanding.

  A soft word often turns away wrath, but in this case, Garden felt like going over and beeping Holmes one on the nose, and only with his mother’s swift arrival with a receptacle of liquid caffeine did he rein in his temper. ‘It’s a lovely day, Garden. Why don’t you take that outside and have a nice long smoke, then we’ll discuss what happened to you further,’ the older man advised.

  Seeing this as the wisest thing to do, Garden shed his jacket, undid the top button of his shirt, loosened his tie, and went off out of the back door to where there was a bench, placed especially for the smokers of the firm which, at this moment, numbered two. As Garden stewed on the bench he thought to himself, if only we could get something interesting to investigate, like a pair of ears in a cardboard box!

  He returned to the office just in time to surprise Holmes, who was having a quiet chuckle to himself about his partner’s labour-in-vain start to the day, when the smile was wiped off his face by Garden’s reminder that they were both on allotment surveillance that night.

  ‘Yes dammit! I remembered that this morning.’

  At this exclamation, the phone on Garden’s desk rang. It was a call from Jimmy James, who explained he was on early lunch break today, and he thought he’d better let them know that there had been no action at the allotment over the weekend. That definitely confirmed that they would have to be in attendance all evening and throughout the wee small hours.

  The rest of the morning was spent scouring the Hamsley Black Cross and Farlington Market local papers’ lost and found columns, to see if there was any business there to be drummed up. There were a couple of pleas from pet owners whose little darlings had gone missing, but a few telephone calls ascertained that both had returned home of their own accord, and that was that for the morning.

  With Holmes’s new lunchtime regime, Shirley was on first break from eleven thirty until twelve thirty, with Garden sitting in for her in the office. Garden was to take the twelve thirty to one thirty slot, and Holmes, the one-thirty to two-thirty break, thus ensuring that there were always two people on hand to deal with any business that came in.

  These times were absolutely barren of custom, but at three o’clock, a woman came into the office with the news that the bank had not opened that morning. Efforts to contact the manager at home had raised no response, and eventually, one of the staff had called the police, who had gained entrance to the premises, only to discover that the safety deposit boxes and the cash machine had been emptied, as had the safe, of any cash that was stored inside it. This was news indeed.

  ‘A bank robbery.’ exclaimed Holmes. ‘There’s meat for our platter.’

  ‘I’d rather you concentrated on my problem first,’ stated the woman who had brought these serious tidings. ‘I’m here to engage your services, not to sit and listen to you witter on about who might have done over the local bank.’

  Holmes immediately put on his business face, and asked her to take a seat and tell him how he could help her. ‘I’m sure my husband’s having an affair, but I can’t seem to catch him out. I want you to keep an eye on his movements for me and report back if you can secure any evidence of him playing away,’ she stated baldly.

  ‘Although we should be perfectly delighted to take on your commission, I must be honest with you and inform you that we could not commit ourselves to any surveillance just at the moment,’ Holmes explained, for once thinking before he overloaded them with work that there were not enough of them to cover.

  ‘That’s alright. He’s just gone up to Northumberland to stay with his mother for a week. That’s why I’ve taken this opportunity to call in to speak to you,’ she retorted.

  ‘That couldn’t suit us better,’ Holmes assured her, and began to tease the details out of her. ‘Your name, please?’

  ‘Deirdre Matcham.’

  ‘Your husband’s name?’

  ‘Stephen.’

  ‘Your address?’

  ‘68 River Road, Hamsley Black Cross.’

  ‘Your husband’s place of employment?’

  ‘Glover and Pure, Estate Agents, just next door to the bank.’

  ‘Do you have a recent photograph of him?’

  ‘Here,’ she said, removing a snapshot from her handbag. ‘That was taken only last month when we went away for the weekend.’

  Holmes took the proffered likeness and tried not to gape as he noticed that the man appeared considerably younger than his wife, whom he judged to be about forty-five. ‘Can you tell me what first made you suspicious?’

  ‘I was getting out the suits of his that needed to go to the dry cleaner’s, and I found a partly used packet of condoms in one of the pockets.’

  ‘And, you don’t, um, er, use them yourselves?’ Holmes was definitely embarrassed to be involved in a conversation concerning a means of birth control, with all its connotations of the act of having sex.

  ‘No. Never have. I was sterilised years ago,’ she replied in a direct manner, embarrassing him even further with the suggestion of women’s bits and pieces that this statement carried with it.

  ‘Er, anything else, Mrs, um, Matcham?’ Holmes was definitely rattled.

  ‘If you mean have I ever found lipstick on his collar, then the answer’s no, but he’s been getting a lot of phone calls on a mobile I’ve never seen before, and which he carries with him always, even sleeping with it under his pillow, and he has been disappearing off on little jaunts that he claims are for work.’

  ‘Have you spoken to his employer?’ asked Garden, deciding to give Holmes a little break to regain his composure.

  ‘Have I heck as like. That office operates in complete chaos, most of the appointments being in the employees’ heads rather than a formal diary, and nobody ever seems to know where anybody else is at any given time. If I made enquiries there, they’d all stick together. They’re all men and probably used to covering for each other during the odd fling.’

  ‘May we have the known mobile numbers you have for your husband and, of course, his office number?’

  This dealt with, she gave her husband’s working hours, as far as she knew them, and her own contact numbers, told them she would be in touch as soon he resumed his usual routine, and was about to leave when Garden asked, ‘Have you tried calling his mobile when he says he’s not in the office?’

  ‘My husband seems to have no end of trouble with his mobile. It’s either not in an area where he can get a signal or out of battery when I try to call him. Nobody can be that unlucky.’

  ‘Ring us when you want us to proceed.’

  ‘And I’d like a copy of your charges, terms and conditions, if you would be so kind.’

  Dammit! Holmes knew he had omitted to order something when he organised the stationery, and this was the thing he had overlooked, now brought to his attention in very embarrassing circumstances. ‘We’re still awaiting delivery of those from the printers as we are such a new firm, but
I promise I will deliver one personally as soon as they arrive,’ he blustered, hoping that this excuse would suffice.

  It did, and Mrs Matcham left the office a slightly happier woman than she had entered it.

  Holmes gave her a five-minute start, and started urgent consultations with Garden about what they should charge per hour, and how much they should ask for up front. This agreed, he got straight on to the printer and gave his order while Shirley did a mock-up of the handout for him to send over by e-mail. On this particular piece of public information, their USP was free consultations but, if business picked up, this may be subject to change.

  ‘Phew, Garden, that was a close-run thing.’ Holmes mopped the perspiration from his forehead with a pristine white handkerchief, and looked over at Garden sheepishly.

  ‘Jolly good improvisation though,’ Garden batted back to him. ‘Very quick thinking by you.’ It was always better to butter up the man’s ego and keep him sweet. ‘And we have another new case, to boot.’

  ‘We’re on our way, my boy. I can just see us in a decade’s time, with another ten branches.’

  ‘Don’t forget you get the early watch on allotment surveillance tonight,’ added Garden, instantly bringing the man back down to earth in a sentence, and earning the expletive, ‘Bum!’

  On reflection, Garden silently agreed with him. He had just realised that he would have to take second watch at the allotments, and go straight on to watching Lesley Markham’s garage in search of someone taking her car without consent during working hours – and he couldn’t guarantee that they’d be nice and cooperative and take the vehicle early in the morning. He might be there for most of the day. He’d be destroyed from lack of sleep by the time the premises were locked up for the night. Not quite what he had in mind in the excitement of setting up this venture.