Andrea Frazer - Holmes and Garden 01 - The Curious Case of the Black Swan Song by Andrea Frazer

the Ladies’ Guild, awoke with tears on her cheeks. She had dreamed of the man she had, many years ago, had a one-night stand with. Although this had haunted her in her younger years, because behaviour of that sort was not so tolerated then, in her later years she had come to view it as the one romantic spot in her past.
    Not that it had been really romantic; more frantic, but memory put a rose-coloured wash over everything, and now her memories were fond ones – most of the time. If only he could have quit his constant womanising with much younger females. She felt he had been making rather a fool of himself at his age, and had been considering having a word in his ear about behaving more like his age and not his shoe size.
    Although she had shed real tears the evening before, Agatha Crumpet was more her usual self this morning, and the burning anger she often felt was again ablaze in her breast. When she considered what had happened in the past, Berkeley Bellamy had ruined her life, and she blamed him completely for what happened.
    Young girls, at that time, knew little or nothing about stopping babies and, as the older and more experienced man, he should have been prepared to take precautions. He should have thought of the possible consequences of taking advantage of her, and not just laughed when she told him, several weeks later, that she was pregnant.
    She knew how experienced he had been, for it had been he who had organised the abortion for her – and paid for it. Her father had been told that she was visiting an old friend, but her mother she had had to confide in, and things had never been the same between them for the rest of her mother’s life.
    Her own life was irreparably marred, and she had felt soiled for ever. Never had she got close to another man, feeling only fear, revulsion, and guilt at the very thought, and her tears had been an unexpected reaction to the man’s death.
    Casper Staywell lay in his hotel room that morning, exultant at the death of the man who had cuckolded him. He and his wife had stayed at The Black Swan for a few days a couple of years ago and, if he looked back honestly, his marriage had not been the same since.
    Now that they were separating, he had finally learnt that she and Bellamy had had a brief fling during their stay, and that they had kept in touch ever since, occasionally meeting up for a bit of rumpy-pumpy. He was shocked and horrified at this information, and had vowed to come back and give the man a bloody nose.
    Well, he’d certainly taken the ultimate punishment now and, although he couldn’t tempt his wife to come back to him, at least he had the satisfaction of knowing that the man who had ‘taken advantage of’ his wife was dead. May his filthy soul rot in Hell.

Chapter Seven

Still Saturday
    Justin Budge, when called on the telephone, said he would be delighted to show them round if they could make it to the office at eleven o’clock, as at half past he had an appointment with a Mrs Hughes from the same hotel, to view various properties. Mr Budge may have seemed free with his information, but this snippet from his agenda for the day was nothing compared to what he had to tackle later: something which was so well under his hat that, if he’d worn a wig, it would have been under that as well.
    As it was now a quarter to the hour, the two newly minted detectives returned their newspapers to the reception desk and went outside to walk to the office, both of them lighting up, as they reached the exterior of the building. They were making hay while the sun shone, really, as clouds were slowly but unrelentingly rolling in, and it looked like a return to the previous wet weather so far this summer was on the cards.
    ‘Wow! That looks just about perfect,’ enthused Garden as he peered through the window, the estate agent not yet having arrived. ‘I wonder what’s at the back and upstairs.’
    ‘I’m hopeful there may be further office space behind the