Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #3: Books 9-12 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [reading in the dark TXT] 📗

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An hour later, we joined the other guests in the drawing room.

The Gordon Castle was a boutique hotel. There was no pool, no bar and no dining room in the usual sense of the word. More than staying at an hotel, it was like staying with a rich friend at his country manor. Instead of several hundred anonymous guests milling around a vast building in Florida, here we had just a handful of fellow guests who had cocktails in the drawing room, and lunched and dined with the family in the ancestral dining room. It was different, and it had sounded like exactly what Dehan and I needed.

The drawing room was big. The floors were wood, strewn with what looked like genuine Persian rugs, and to the right of the door as you went in, there was a huge, granite fireplace. Right now there were several large logs burning in it. An eclectic collection of sofas and armchairs, standard lamps and occasional tables were scattered around the room in an apparently random fashion that somehow managed to be homely and comfortable. Against the far wall, an elaborate credenza held an extensive collection of bottles, hand cut decanters and glasses. To the left of it, French windows stood open onto a stone terrace with steps down onto the lawns and the gardens.

There were a number of people standing and sitting, and they all turned to watch us come in. For a moment they looked like a bizarre frozen tableau from an early play by Agatha Christie: Charles Gordon was standing by the drinks, dressed in a tuxedo, holding a cocktail shaker. On the crimson and gold sofa directly in front of the fire was a woman who was still attractive in her mid fifties. She had short, black hair and wore a long evening dress of deep blue satin, with a string of pearls around her neck. She had very red lipstick and regarded Dehan with wary eyes.

In an aquamarine armchair with wooden legs, also beside the fire, was another woman, blonde, perhaps in her early sixties. She wore a low cut white satin dress with a gash up to her thigh, exposing a leg that looked thirty years younger than she did.

A third woman stood by the French windows, smoking. She was younger than the other two, perhaps thirty. Her dress was mauve and the gash, up to her hip, exposed a leg you had to try hard not to look at. She had hair that was wild, curly and red, tied back in a mauve satin bow. Her face should have been pretty, but a spray of freckles and mischievous blue eyes made it more captivating than that.

Besides Charles, there were two other men in the room. One was standing beside the redhead. He was tall and strongly built, wearing what looked like an off the peg Italian suit. He had black hair and sullen eyes, which he was using to undress Dehan. I figured he was in his thirties.

The other was standing by the fire. Like Charles, he was wearing an evening suit and a bow tie. He was probably in his late fifties and had that stiff, brisk air that the British military brass all seem to acquire by osmosis.

They all smiled with varying degrees of sincerity, and Charles said in a loud voice, “Ah! You’re here! Well done! Now, what will you have? Major, care to make the introductions?”

Before the major could get started, Dehan said, “Any whiskey you recommend, straight up. Stone will have the same.”

The blonde in the aquamarine chair, with the low cut white dress, turned out to be our hostess, Charles Jr.’s mother. She smiled at me without moving, raised an eyebrow and sipped her drink, then said, “How do you do, John?”

I caught something in her voice which I filed away under irrelevant gossip that might later be useful, and asked her how she did. Then the major gestured toward the woman on the sofa in the blue dress.

“Lady Jane Butterworth, Detective John Stone and his wife, Detective Carmen Stone.”

She ignored Dehan but leaned forward and offered me her hand to kiss. “I don’t use my title, I’m a committed socialist, you know,” she said breathlessly, then laughed. “I hope you won’t arrest me! Call me Bee, may I call you Stone? Such a strong name.”

I told her I wouldn’t and she could and the major led us on to the couple at the French windows. “Dr. and Sally Cameron, very old friends of the family! Ian has his surgery opposite the pub in the village. Very handy, eh, Ian? And Sally owns the grocery store and runs the post office. Everyone does a bit of everything on Gordon’s Swoma, hay?”

The major laughed and the doctor looked at him with distaste. Sally stepped forward and kissed Dehan on the cheek while I shook the doctor’s hand. I had seen friendlier eyes on great white sharks. We all asked each other how we did, and then the major laughed like he was telling a hilarious story and said, “And I am Major Reggie Hook, old friend of Charlie’s, been coming here for years, ay, Charles?”

“Indeed!” Charles approached with two glasses of whiskey and handed them to us. With an enthusiasm that had more to do with wishful thinking than truth, he added, “We are all old friends here. Aren’t we, Mummy?” Whatever Mummy was going to answer, he didn’t give her a chance. He plowed on, “I think you’ll like this single malt. It’s from the local distillery and a bit of a hidden treasure. We have superb water here.”

The thing continued in that vein for the next half hour. At first I worried that it would get on Dehan’s nerves. I knew well that her tolerance of BS and small talk was limited, at best, but when I