Читать книгу The Curds and Whey Mystery - Bob Burke - Страница 5

1

Along Came a Spider

Sometimes being a detective isn’t all that easy. Actually it’s never that easy. Case in point, my current client: a small lady with a big arachnid problem.

‘Spiders?’ I said, ushering the very pale and very frightened Miss Muffet to the nearest chair.

‘Yes, spiders,’ Miss Muffet nodded faintly, lips trembling. She looked to be teetering on the edge of a complete breakdown – and I didn’t fancy being the one left cleaning up the shattered pieces from my floor afterwards.

‘Spiders,’ I said again, still trying to get my head around what she was saying. ‘As in small, scuttling things with eight legs that build webs in unswept corners?’

‘No Mr Pigg, spiders as in large, hairy creatures the size of poodles; spiders that eat small animals and build webs that fishing trawlers could use to haul in whales. I’m not talking about a few tiny money spiders here; I’m talking about thousands of these giant eight-legged monsters running amuck in my house. Imagine putting a breakfast on the table and then, when the guest goes to get his coffee, he comes back only to find that a tarantula or somesuch has made off with his bacon,’ she said. ‘And not only that, spiders terrify me; always have done. I hate them. I can’t even sleep there any more I’m so frightened. It’s playing merry hell with my business.’

‘And what business would that be?’ I asked.

‘Oh, sorry, didn’t I say? I do apologise. I’m the proprietor of the Curds and Whey Bed and Breakfast on Grimm Road. Maybe you’ve heard of it?’

I gave a rueful shake of the head.

‘Ah well, never mind. It used to be very popular with visitors and was very highly thought of. Until this happened, business was extremely good. I had full occupancy. Now, not too many people are keen on staying there.’ Fumbling in her bag she took out a tiny white handkerchief and began dabbing her eyes just as the tears began to trickle. ‘The house has been in my family for generations,’ she said between sobs. ‘If I can’t get this sorted I’ll have to close down and sell it. I can’t let that happen. That’s why I’ve come to you.’ She looked up at me. ‘I need you to find out who’s doing this; find out who’s trying to put me out of business. Can you help me, Mr Pigg?’

Now I’m normally not one to refuse a pretty lady, but there was just one teeny problem; well, a fairly big problem actually: I didn’t like spiders either. Scratch that, I hated them. They were one of two things that really terrified me (and no, I’m not about to tell you what the other is; I don’t want you laughing at me). Just the thought of one of those hairy creatures scuttling across my trotter sent shivers up and down my spine, along my arms and down my legs, where they stopped for a moment to catch their breath before running back up again for a repeat performance.

Miss Muffet’s dilemma meant I now had to do a careful juggling act: fear of spiders versus earning money to pay some long outstanding bills – and some of my bill collectors were of the type that had a baseball bat as part of their corporate uniform. After a brief, but brutal, mental struggle, earning money came out a clear winner, actively encouraged by blind greed and aided and abetted by sheer desperation – fear of spiders never stood a chance.

I stood up and extended my trotter. ‘Miss Muffet, the Third Pig Detective Agency would be delighted to take on your case,’ I said, trying not to show any hint of the anxiety that was developing into full-blown arachnophobia in my head.

The look of relief on her face convinced me I’d done the right thing.

‘Oh that’s wonderful, Mr Pigg. I knew I could count on you.’

We’ll see how much you can count on me when funnel-web spiders start doing the tarantella up and down my back, I thought, but, of course, I didn’t say it out loud; I had an image to maintain, after all.

I walked my new client to my office door.

‘I think the first thing we should do is to go and have a look at your building,’ I said. ‘Maybe we’ll find some clues there.’ I didn’t really want to – for obvious reasons – but I had to start somewhere and the B&B seemed like a good place to kick things off, although if what she said was true I’d spend most of the time kicking off spiders.

‘An excellent suggestion,’ said Miss Muffet. ‘There’s no time like the present. My car is outside. Why don’t I drive?’

On the way to Miss Muffet’s B&B she gave me some more background.

‘Well, when I was a young girl there was nothing I enjoyed more than eating my bowl of curds and whey on the tuffet in the back garden.’

Curds and whey? No, I’d never heard of it either. I wasn’t sure what it actually was, but it didn’t sound like something I’d like. Mind you, I had no idea what a tuffet was either.

Miss Muffet continued her story. ‘One morning I was busily tucking in as usual when I heard a noise beside me. I looked over and there was this enormous spider hanging down – a really big hairy one – looking at me as if I was going to be his breakfast. It quite frightened the life out of me. I was so scared my bowl shot into the air and spilled all over me. It made quite a mess, and curds and whey are so difficult to get out of clothes. After that, I never really liked spiders again.’

I nodded occasionally as she told the story. I could understand where she got her fear of spiders from – that much was obvious – but how did that connect to the sudden plague of them that was apparently infesting her business premises – if it was infested at all. If she was that frightened of spiders, maybe she’d just seen one or two and overreacted. I know I probably would have.

I started asking the obvious questions.

‘Miss Muffet, do you have any enemies; anyone with a grudge or who might want to put you out of business?’

‘Oh no,’ she said, after thinking about it for a moment. ‘I’m sure I don’t. Who could possibly want to do such a thing? I don’t think I’ve ever had any problems with anyone.’

‘Has anyone shown an interest in buying you out?’

‘Well, I have turned down offers over the years, of course. It was always a lucrative business and people were forever looking to buy me out, but I always resisted.’ She frowned as she remembered something. ‘Mind you, there was one gentleman recently who did phone a number of times offering to buy the building. He was most persistent, but I kept on refusing. Eventually he stopped calling. I do remember because he had a strange, squeaky kind of voice.’

Motive, I thought to myself.

‘And you have no idea who it might have been?’

‘I didn’t pay much attention, to be honest, and I never thought to ask for his name.’

She drove around a corner and onto a long street. ‘Here we are, Grimm Road. I’m at the far end.’

Apart from yellow construction vehicles in the distance and a few cars parked outside some of the houses, the street itself seemed very quiet. But as I looked out of the window a most bizarre sight greeted me. Turning to Miss Muffet, I pointed to what I’d seen.

‘Is that a…shoe?’ I gasped in amazement.

Now I should point out that this wasn’t just an ordinary shoe that someone had lost while running from the scene of the crime. This was a giant shoe; a shoe the size of the building my office was in. This was a piece of footwear that dwarfed all others into insignificance – a mega-shoe. As I gaped at it I thought I could see… ‘Are those windows?’ I asked.

‘Hmm, pardon? Oh, yes,’ replied Miss Muffet with a complete lack of interest. ‘Those are probably windows.’

Considering what I was looking at, her response puzzled me. She was acting as if this was quite an ordinary event.

I nudged her gently. ‘You don’t seem particularly surprised at seeing what looks like a giant shoe at the end of your street.’

‘Don’t I?’ she replied. ‘Well, I do see it every day. It’s the Shoe Hotel. It’s been there for years. A little old lady lives in it. She runs it as far as I know.’

Now it began to make sense. I vaguely remembered reading about a series of themed hotels that had opened up all around the country over the past few years. This must have been one of them but, as themed hotels went, it was quite spectacular. It had been designed to look like a trainer – all white paint and blue stripes – and would never suffer from foot-odour. The huge entrance doors were where the (presumably very large) big toe would have been and the shoelaces were large plants that draped down along the walls. From the small number of cars in the car-park, business didn’t appear to be too good. That was significant. More to the point, it was just possible that the owners mightn’t take too kindly to competition from a local B&B and might be only too delighted to see it close its doors.

More motive.

I made a note to speak to this ‘little old lady’ on my way back.

‘And you’ve never spoken to the owner of this hotel?’ I asked.

‘No, I don’t even think I’ve ever met her. Ah, here we are,’ Miss Muffet said as she pulled into the driveway of a large house. ‘Well,’ she said as she stopped the car and we got out, ‘shall we take a look?’

From the outside the B&B didn’t look particularly frightening. It was a three-storey brown brick building with white lace curtains in all the windows. Very homely indeed.

But was there something odd about those curtains?

‘Miss Muffet, why do you have lace curtains on the outside of all your windows?’ I asked.

The look she gave me suggested she might be having second thoughts about utilising my services as a detective. ‘Those aren’t curtains, Mr Pigg, they’re webs.’

I took a second, closer look and, to my horror, I could see she was right. What I thought were curtains were in fact giant spider webs that covered all the windows from top to bottom. This lady hadn’t been exaggerating. If the webs were anything to go by, she did have a major spider problem and probably some major spiders causing the problem. I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to go inside now. In fact, I was thinking about turning around, running straight back to my office and hiding behind my desk until they went away.

Miss Muffet must have read my mind as she grabbed me by the arm and pulled me towards the door.

‘It’s okay,’ she said gently. ‘They tend not to be too active this time of the day. They mostly come out at night – mostly. We should be able to look around without being disturbed too much.’

I was disturbed enough already and I wasn’t sure that I particularly wanted to look around the inside any more but, for such a slight woman, she was incredibly strong; she propelled me through the front door and into the lobby before I could change my mind.

Inside, it was as if the whole interior had been redecorated by someone from Haunted Houses’R’Us. Huge strands of ghostly web hung over the stairs and all the furniture. Long wispy tentacles extended from the ceiling and drifted in the draught from the front door. One trailed across the side of my face. It felt like someone breathing gently on my cheek and I jumped in fright.

Miss Muffet laughed quietly. ‘After a while you just learn to ignore it.’

As I looked around I could see that, just like she said, there didn’t appear to be too many active spiders. I’d never heard of them taking afternoon naps before, but I was glad they did. Spider siesta meant they weren’t going to bother me – for which I was grateful. I could see large dark shapes huddled up in some of the webs but, understandably, I didn’t examine them too closely. The last thing I wanted to do was to wake any of them up.

Miss Muffet gave me a guided tour, but apart from all the webs there wasn’t much to see. The ground floor comprised a large dining room, a guest lounge, a small reception area, Miss Muffet’s office and the kitchen. The rest of the building was taken up by bedrooms. Other than the webs there certainly wasn’t anything obvious in the way of clues and I’m a very observant pig – I spotted the giant shoe hotel, didn’t I? By the same token, I was keeping a very close eye out for any spiders that might suddenly awake and decide they wanted to play with me.

As I wandered around the house a couple of things began to bother me – other than the spiders. Apart from the little ones that you’d find in any ordinary house, spiders weren’t too easy to come by. So where did the thousands of spiders that had taken over Miss Muffet’s house come from? Someone must have supplied them – and they were probably very specialised, so certainly weren’t picked up off the shelf from alongside the tins of beans and cereals in the local supermarket. That was certainly something to follow up. It was time to talk to my informant – although, if past history was anything to go by, he’d barely be able to inform me of his name let alone give me any useful information.

The other thing that nagged at me was Miss Muffet’s mention of guests. It meant she must still have had some staying in the house. So why exactly were they staying? Unless they were keen students of spiders there was no sane reason to stay in the B&B – especially with a lovely, shiny, shoe-shaped hotel just up the road.

‘How many people are actually staying here at the moment?’ I asked.

Miss Muffet did a quick calculation. ‘Nine, I believe.’

‘And they’ve shown no indication of wanting to leave because of your infestation?’

‘No, not at all. In fact, I haven’t received a single complaint,’ she said proudly.

Now that struck me as more than a tad suspicious. For someone to want to stay in a house infested with spiders, they’d need a particularly good reason – a reason that might just be connected with the case – especially when there were so many other places to stay.

‘Can I have a list of your current guests and all your employees?’ I asked.

‘Of course, but surely you don’t believe any of them are involved,’ Miss Muffet replied, a bit naively I thought.

‘At the moment I’m not ruling anything out,’ I said, grabbing for the usual clichés as she reached behind the reception desk and opened the register.

‘Here you are,’ she said. ‘Nine guests: Mr and Mrs Jack Spratt, Queenie Harte, John B. Nimble, Licken and Lurkey, William Winkie, Pietro Nocchio and, lastly, Thomas Piper.’

‘I’ll have to speak to all of them; can you arrange that?’ I said, then I focused on what she’d actually told me. ‘Did you say Licken and Lurkey?’

‘Oh, yes, indeed, they’re a rather entertaining team.’

She might have been a savvy businesswoman but her taste in entertainment was clearly lacking. Licken and Lurkey were a cabaret act that had been run out of every theatre in town – and in most other towns in the county as well. They marketed themselves as the WORLD’S most renowned and entertaining comedy DUO (their capitals, not mine, I hasten to add), but they were about as entertaining as having boils lanced. I also had history with them. Back in the days before becoming the WORLD’S most renowned and entertaining comedy DUO, they had toured the country as the WORLD’S MOST ASTOUNDING MAGIC ACT – which had been neither magic nor astounding. I’d been asked to investigate a series of dove disappearances and had discovered that they all coincided with a performance by the despicable duo. As their act included the standard ‘dove from a hat’ trick and as the dove escaped during each performance, never to be recaptured, they had to find new ones for every show. Did I mention they weren’t too bright? I hadn’t realised they were still in town, but they’d be first on my list of interviewees as, from past experience, they were a pair who weren’t too worried about getting their talons dirty.