Let Slip the Dogs of War: A Bard's Bed & Breakfast Mystery #1 (4 page)

He was back five minutes later, empty-handed
save about twenty feet of thick rope. “Get me the shower curtain
from the bathroom.”

“Why?” I already knew the answer, but I
wanted him to say it anyway.

“I have to have something to wrap her in.
Hurry up.”

“You can have the liner, not the curtain. I
am not giving up a perfectly lovely shower curtain to conceal a
dead body.”

Chapter Four --

“Come on,” Ben groaned, rolling his eyes.
“Now is not the time to put your foot down. I have to have
something to wrap her in so I can drop her over the railing. I
can’t send her down there stark naked in a shower liner.”

“We’ll use Uncle Edward’s rug. We can carry
it downstairs,” I suggested.

“That rug is heavy. And it will be bulky. Not
to mention that it screams, ‘dead body’. Who’s going to think we’re
just carrying a rug? And what if they want to help us?”

“The rug has to be cleaned anyway, so we’ll
kill two birds with one stone,” I countered.

“I’d rather drop her over the balcony and
into the garden,” he insisted. “That way, I can pick her up in the
wheelbarrow and take her to the car.”

“You will put plastic down if you’re taking
the station wagon, right? I really don’t want to have to clean the
trunk.”

“Promise,” Ben agreed.

“I have an old mattress pad that should do
the trick nicely for a makeshift shroud. What about using some of
my pantyhose to tie the padding around her? That should look a lot
less suspicious than my expensive fabric shower curtain.”

“Fine. Give me a hand.”

I got the shower curtain liner down from the
pole above the tub and spread it out on the floor.

“Grab her feet,” Ben directed me, as he
tucked his hands under her arms. Once we positioned her on the
liner, we wrapped her up and repeated the process with the mattress
pad. By the time we were done, you would have never guessed there
was a body in the big bundle. That’s because Ben convinced me to
sacrifice some old pillows, which we tucked in to disguise the
shape of the body.

“The pillows will cushion her fall,” he said,
as I handed him the severed leg portion of an old pair of
pantyhose. When he was done knotting it around the white batting,
he held out his hand for the other leg. “This stuff is great. Nice
and stretchy.”

“Strong, too.”

“It’d be good for tying up a bad guy.”

“Yes, it would.”

“Very handy.”

“Forget it, Secret Agent Man. You’re not
getting the last word here.”

“Depends on how resilient I am,” he grinned,
giving me a big wink.

“No, it doesn’t,” I replied, wagging my
finger at Ben. ‘You’re not that good-looking that you can get away
with this. Besides, you know you want to stay on my good side if
you want any more of my cast-offs.”

“Yoo-hoo!” It was Lorna, hailing me. I hopped
off the bed and grabbed the doorknob, giving it a fast turn with a
flick of my wrist, knowing that we did not want her to cross the
threshold in the Ephesus Suite. Uncle Edward may have been
experienced in the ugly side of intelligence games, but the sweet,
well-meaning, ever so slightly dippy Lorna was not. She had spent
decades as a research librarian at the ivy league college where
Uncle Edward taught and she was great in the stacks, skilled at
pulling up obscure historical tidbits, literary quotations, and
long-lost tomes. Lorna was a big Jane Austen fan and favored the
classic feminista movement populated with gutsy, but kind heroines
like Elizabeth Bennett. She was of an age where women sought to
propel themselves forth as augers of wisdom and all things
civilized. I wasn’t sure she could handle these all-too-mortal
remains wrapped in white. Too much like a real Shakespearean
tragedy.

“Any luck?” I asked, stepping out of the
suite before she could burst in. I started walking her back to the
staircase, on the premise that I needed to get supplies from the
linen closet.

“Puck was in the kitchen with Mr. Darcy,” she
announced. “As Edward remarked, all’s well that ends well. Time for
some bridge?”

“Unfortunately, no. We’ll have to pass. We
have to get rooms ready and then we’re off to pick up a guest.” I
patted her shoulder to convey my disappointment. “Perhaps
tomorrow.”

“Perhaps,” she agreed. “Might I ask you
something?”

“Certainly.” I was in the middle of grabbing
rolls of toilet paper, a box of tissues, and clean towels as she
spoke.

“Did that young girl find her friend?”

“Excuse me?” I gave Lorna my full attention.
Her pale blue eyes seemed worried.

“She asked if she could wait for her friend
in the library. I couldn’t find you anywhere, Bea. I hope that was
alright.” Our mysterious visitor was let into the house by Uncle
Edward’s friend. Go figure. One mystery down. At least now we knew
that the poor girl didn’t get dragged to the Bard Bed &
Breakfast, kicking and screaming. She came here to meet Mr.
Williams.

“Just fine,” I assured the elderly woman.
“Thank you for doing that. What time did she arrive?”

“Oh, I was up at five-thirty, having coffee
in the kitchen. She knocked on the back door. She seemed peckish,
so I fetched her a cup of coffee and a muffin. I hope you don’t
think I was overstepping my bounds.”

“Heavens, no. I’m glad you were kind to her.”
It was true. There was a part of me that was relieved to know
someone had offered that poor girl something other than that fatal
injection into her veins in her final hour of life. But that still
left us with the mystery of who killed her and why, and there was
still a murderer on the premises, unless he fled. Or she died of an
overdose.

“I just didn’t want you to think I was trying
to interfere, dear.”

“Mrs. Gillman, you feel free to do what seems
the right thing to do while you’re here.” I snaked around her, my
arms full of bathroom supplies, giving her a friendly smile that
was returned. My answer seemed to satisfy her, and she nodded
before going down the stairs.

Ben was on his hands and knees, securing the
ropes around the padded lump when I opened the door of the suite. I
tossed the items onto the bed, not caring that two of the rolls of
toilet paper bounced off and scooted across the bedroom floor. I
had much bigger fish to fry, and that pan was going to get really
hot before I was done.

“What time did you say Philippe Graphon is
getting here?” I asked curtly.

“I didn’t say.”

“And why is that?” With a big glare, I waited
for the answer I knew was coming.

“I didn’t think it was necessary.”

“Because he’s already here,” I said. “And
he’s been here since when?”

“Last night,” Ben admitted, with a slightly
defensive air.

“In what room?” With my arms folded across my
chest, towering over the man trying to busy himself with a fancy
knot, I presided over the inquisition.

“Antium.”

“Next door to this room,” I pointed out,
“where the dead body surfaced. By the way, Lorna let the girl into
the library this morning to wait for her friend.”

“Hmm....” When Ben sighs like that, it
usually means he’s figured something out. Getting him to share it,
though, is like pulling teeth. That’s okay. I went to the Street
Smarts School of Dentistry. No anesthesia. No fancy equipment. Yank
and you’re done.

“Hmm, what?” I demanded.

“Nothing. Just something.”

“What kind of something?” I thought for a
moment. Lorna let the girl in to meet her friend. If Philippe was
here last night, maybe this wasn’t about Mr. Williams at all. “That
low-life, rat-faced, dung-loving son of a....”

“We can’t be sure. We still have to think
about Mr. Williams.”

“What if we were right about the tattoos, but
wrong about the recipient?” said I, suddenly all too aware of the
fact that Philippe Grapon had a dangerous, predatory side, when he
wasn’t trying to get into the closest pair of panties. “What if she
was delivering the bona fides to that creep and once he got them,
he killed her?”

“That would mean that whatever she gave him
was important enough to kill her.”

“Or,” I told him, climbing back onto the bed
as I considered the possibilities, “what if he killed her because
he was posing as Mr. Williams?”

“Oh, criminy!” Ben bellowed at me, eyes
glaring, fire flaring from the nostrils.

“What?” I admit I thought his was an extreme
reaction to my intellectual musings.

“Why in the bloody hell do you have to
speculate to the point of confusion? You can’t just come up with
one solution and check it out. Oh, no! Miss Jane Marple here has to
come up with a dozen theories, so that we are pulled in so many
directions, we waste precious time trying to pick the right one!”
Boy, he was really hot under the collar. I was going to suggest he
unbutton that top button and take a chill pill, but he had that
ugly look on his face that told me he was close to blowing a
gasket.

“Which means we don’t know why Philippe came
here or what he plans to do,” I decided.

“Hell, the girl could have died accidentally.
They could have been planning a romantic tryst and it got out of
hand. We just don’t have enough information to make a logical
conclusion, Bea!” he snorted. “Why do you always have to throw the
baby
in
with the bathwater when I’m trying to clean out the
tub?” You can tell we’ve been at the Bard for some time. Ben is
actually the guy who scrubs the porcelain.

“Fine!” I snapped in response. “What do you
want me to do? Not consider the possibilities?”

“I want you to stop and think before you
start spewing theories,” he replied, his words carefully measured
and dispensed through clenched teeth. “Not everything is a bleeding
conspiracy of evil! Sometimes a black crayon is just a black
crayon!”

“You’re saying this isn’t a murder? Just
because she died, it doesn’t mean someone killed her, Ben?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. She could
have accidentally overdosed. We don’t even know what was in the
injection.”

“Right. Except for the fact that she’s not
covered with signs of intravenous drug use on a regular basis,
which means the injection was probably not a normal thing for her.”
One step closer to admitting it was a murder. Ben looked like he
was feeling guilty for sneaking that miscreant into the Bard Bed
& Breakfast, and he was hoping his error in judgment didn’t get
that poor girl killed. I believe the technical term for his
reaction is called denial. A glance at my watch told me we still
had some time before we left for the airport. “What are we doing
next?”

“We get Uncle Edward and Lorna out of the
way, I drop the body over the railing, and you grab it below. Then
we get in the car, drive to the drop-off, and then head to the
airport to pick up Mr. Williams.”

“Why can’t you catch the body?”

“Because I have to hoist it over the parapet,
my love, and lower it down to you. I cannot be in two places at
once.”

“Don’t you have a pulley or a zip line you
can use? I’ll hold the rope and lower it down after you get it set
up.”

“Beatrice, there you go again, not thinking
it through. We have a dead body,” he said, speaking slowly, as if
to a dull child. “We need to move the dead body from this room to
the garden below. The weight of the dead body on the pulley would
require you to hold it fast for the length of time that I would
need to run downstairs and out to the terrace, around to the garden
and under the balcony.”

“Can’t you just tie the rope to the bed? I’ll
untie it when you get into position.”

“You would have us do all of that extra work,
not to mention risk the stability of Uncle Edward’s antique bed,
all because you are squeamish about catching a dead body that is
double-wrapped?”

“Oh, fine!” I snapped back. “I hate it when
you’re right. Thank heavens you’re not right on a regular basis.
That would be unbearable.”

“Meaning you are?”

“More than you,” I replied proudly,
defiantly.

“Hardly. Grab the feet. We’re going to move
her to the balcony.”

We dragged the unfortunate girl out through
the narrow French doors and carefully rested her on the cold
wrought iron railing. The white shroud stood out against the sharp
black metal, and I was certain it was visible for some distance.
Luckily, the hostelry was located on more than thirty acres of
prime wilderness, surrounded by thick woods. Still, when it comes
to ex-spies, you never know what evil lurks in the shadows, let
alone in the hearts of men.

“Now go and see what the lovebirds are doing
and keep them busy while I get the wheelbarrow into place,” the
laird commanded.

“Fine,” said I.

“Good,” he replied.

“I still think my plan was the better,” I
muttered as I shut the door behind me and headed down the hall.

“Was not,” were the words I heard in the
distance as I hit the stairs. I grimaced and whispered to no one in
particular.

“Was too.”

Uncle Edward was playing gin rummy with Lorna
in the library. The two were happily ensconced at the antique card
table and it looked as if Lorna had the upper hand. I slipped out
the back door, scooted across the terrace, and went to meet the
erstwhile knight in tarnished armor as he maneuvered the
wheelbarrow on the ground.

“You stand here.” His strong hands gripped my
shoulders and moved me into position. He checked the angle twice
more before disappearing back into the house. A moment later, I saw
that face appear over the railing of the balcony. One last time, I
glanced around me, searching the horizon for signs of observers in
the area; seeing none, I silently offered a thumbs-up. Seconds
later, Ben held the carefully contained corpse in his arms, lifted
her past the wrought iron barrier, let go, and grabbed the rope in
time for the body to travel almost the full twenty feet before the
rope went taunt.