‘Proof, Major?’ A faint sneer, a languid hand reaching down by the side of the chair. ‘If we’re looking for proof—’
‘Leave that alone! How dare you, sir!’
‘—Then we need hardly look very far.’
The man in black had found a walking stick, ebony, with a brass handle in the shape of a cobra’s head. As he weighed it in his hands, you could hear the distant visceral scraping of a solo violin. Should have sounded naff, but it was somehow exactly right, timed to underscore the tension as the stick was proffered to the man in the chair.
‘If you please, Major... or shall I?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Then we shall waste no more time!’ Snatching back the stick and holding it over the table, next to the oil lamp, so that everyone could see him twist the cobra’s head.
No! The Major sat up. ‘That—’
The snake head came off, the hollow shaft of the walking stick was very gently shaken. The man in black was somehow manipulating the light so that everyone’s attention was on his hands, and on the stick... and on this big red stone that rolled out and lay there glowing on the very edge of the table.
‘Hmm. The Fontaine Ruby, I imagine.’
The Major half rose from his chair, as though he was about to make a break for it. Several spontaneous gasps wafted out of the shadows, from people who had spent most of the afternoon searching for this paste ruby – with the walking stick conspicuously propped up in the hallstand the whole time.
The man in black didn’t even glance at it. Gems, in themselves, clearly held no big fascination for him; even his interest in the Major was waning now that guilt was proved. They both glanced towards the door, which had opened to reveal this guy bulked out by a huge tweed overcoat. The Major slumped back.
‘I think this is all the evidence we require,’ the man in black said mildly. ‘You may arrest him now, Lestrade.’
Silence. And then the electric lights came up and the applause kicked in: genuine appreciation, a couple of actual cheers. A triumph. You couldn’t fault it.
When the lights came fully on, everything seemed duller and shabbier, the country-house drawing room reverting to hotel lounge, the oil lamp dimming into history. And Sherlock Holmes was Ben Foley again, closing his eyes in relief.
Afterwards, when the bar was closed, Jane went down to the kitchen to collect mugs of bedtime hot chocolate to serve to the twelve guests. Earlier, she’d heard Ben saying that twelve was barely enough to make the weekend pay for itself, and they were all too old, and the whole thing was an embarrassment.
The kitchen had flagged floors and high windows and room for a whole bunch of servants, but it was dominated by the new island unit that Ben had assembled from the debris of a bankrupt butcher’s shop in Leominster. If most domestic island units were the Isle of Wight this was Australia. Amber, who didn’t have any staff to speak of, was on her own, bending over a corner of the unit, adding something herbal and aromatic to the cauldron of hot chocolate. She looked up.
‘Is he all right?’
‘Basking in adulation.’
‘Yes, he’s quite good at that,’ Amber said. No sarcasm there; Amber didn’t do sarcasm.
Last night, all wound-up before the guests came down for dinner, Ben had snarled that yeah, he might have done live theatre before, but that was over twenty years ago, and back then he didn’t have to work with school pantomime props and a bunch of crappy amateurs.
‘He was brilliant, Amber. Genuine massive applause – well, as massive as you can get from— Anyway, you’d have thought there was a lot more of them, to hear it.’
Amber was wearily rubbing her eyes, shoulder-length ash-blonde hair tinted pink by the halogen lights. She was probably about fifteen years younger than Ben, maybe mid-thirties, but more... well, more mature. She was wearing a big pink sweater and an apron with a cartoon cat on it.
‘Must’ve taken for ever to plan,’ Jane said. ‘Like the gas mantles – I didn’t even know they worked.’
Amber looked worried. ‘Some kind of bottled gas. I don’t like to think of the safety regulations he’s broken. Plus messing with the trip switches last night to make sure the normal lights didn’t work – I mean, what if one of those old women had fallen down the stairs?’
‘Well, they didn’t. It was brilliant.’ Jane liked Amber moaning to her; you only moaned to people you could trust. ‘Oh yeah – good news – only one of the punters correctly identified both the murderer and the motive, so that’s just the one bottle of champagne to give away.’
Amber blinked. ‘You did phone your mother, didn’t you?’
‘I did phone my mother. And there wasn’t a problem about staying over.’
‘Because I’d hate—’
‘There was no problem.’
‘It’s very good of you, Jane,’ Amber said. ‘The girl we had before wouldn’t do Saturday nights. They don’t seem to want weekend jobs any more.’
‘Jesus, Amber,’ Jane said, ‘this isn’t a job.’
A holiday, more like. A regular weekend break, and they gave you money at the end of it. Well, usually.
At first, Jane had thought Amber was a bit like Mum, but now she saw a clear difference. Amber’s modesty came out of this essential self-belief; she’d handled the food end of two significant London restaurants fronted by flash gits who treated customers like morons, knowing that she was the reason they could afford the arrogance. Flash gits faded fast, but Amber was never going to be out of work, Ben had remarked, talking about it to guests in the bar, naming names. I like to think I rescued her from that little scumbag. Can you bear to watch his crappy TV show?
To Ben, virtually everything on the box, including the news and weather, had become crap from the day he finally negotiated his severance deal with BBC Drama. A couple of weeks ago, a Face from Casualty or EastEnders – someone vaguely familiar from something Jane wouldn’t have watched if the alternative was the Open University – had come to stay overnight at the hotel, accompanied by a gorgeous-looking woman who sat propping up her smile while the Face and Ben got rat-arsed and ranted on for hours about the bunch of totally talentless twats who ran the Corporation these days.
‘So who was the winner, Jane?’ Amber started setting out empty mugs on the wooden trolley.
‘Oh – guy with white hair? Like Steve Martin without the humour?’
‘Dr Kennedy. He’s the serious expert. The others are just here for fun. Kennedy’s written books on Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes. He knows a lot.’
‘I thought Ben knew a lot.’
‘Ben? All Ben’s ever done is produce The Missing Casebook for the BBC. You’re probably too young—’
‘No, I think I saw a couple.’
‘I’m sure you’re too young to remember the fuss.’
Apparently The Missing Casebook had not been adapted from the Conan Doyle stories. It was this semi-serious spoof, supposed to be about what Holmes was really doing after everyone thought he’d died at the Reichenbach Falls. The joke being – possibly for copyright reasons – that the central character in The Missing Casebook was incognito. He looked like Sherlock Holmes, he spoke like Sherlock Holmes, he played his violin in the night and shot himself up with cocaine, and everyone knew who he was really, but he was always called something else, a different name in every episode.