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“I thought you said Aunt Sarah was rich,” said Holly, looking over the plane tickets. “These aren’t first class. They’re barely even on the plane.”
“Well, I’m sure it’s a really nice plane, honey,” said March.
It wasn’t. With ten hours in the air and three connections, they had a lot of time to argue about it. By hour five Healy instituted a new rule: no complaining about the trip, and the first person to complain had to buy Healy another beer.
Sometime in October they’d gotten a letter addressed to The Nice Guys but sent to March’s house and not their new office; March’s old house, no less. Fortunately the mailbox hadn’t burned down and Holly still checked it sometimes.
Dear Holland, Holly, and friend:
This time of year I always start to miss my sister Hannah. Your heroic actions in the Detroit auto matter even reached the news on this side of the pond, and I know Hannah would be very proud of you both. I hope that all three of you can join me in Oxford this Christmas in her memory. All expenses will be paid by me. If this is agreeable to you, I will mail you plane tickets. I know your professional schedule must be very busy but I would much like to see you.
Sincerely,
Sarah Sutton
Holly had met Sarah a couple times when she was a toddler and then again at her mother’s funeral. She was looking forward to seeing her under happier circumstances, whether she was rich or not. Holly kept having to remind herself of this as they transferred from a cheap plane to a cheap taxi to a hotel that turned out to just be Sarah’s living room.
Sarah greeted them with hugs and cups of tea. After trying a sip, Holly politely abandoned her teacup on the end table with a coaster. Sarah didn’t look much like Holly’s mom. She was too old, for one thing. And her hair was brown and gray instead of blonde.
“Although I’m glad to see you,” said Sarah, “I have a professional matter to discuss as well. You see, I asked you here hoping to hire you.”
“Some family reunion,” said March. “Some happy Christmas. You only wanted us to solve a case for you all along! Well, I won’t be used.”
“Yes he will,” said Healy with his most pleasant smile. “Although we don’t offer a family discount, ma’am.”
“Of course I’ll pay,” said Sarah, annoyed now. March had that effect on people sometimes. “Your usual rate. I didn’t write you for a handout. I wrote you because they say you’re very good.”
March fidgeted with his teacup for a moment while he changed gears. He looked back up and said solicitously, “Thank you so much, Sarah. That means so much coming from you.”
“Shove it,” said Sarah.
“Sure,” said March, looking back to the teacup.
She was anxious underneath all the bluster; Healy could see it in her posture and her too-steady hands on her knitting. “What kind of work will we be doing for you, Miss Sutton?” said Healy, putting on his reading glasses. He got out his notebook and pen.
“A missing person,” said Sarah. She watched him write that down in the book and seemed to approve. “My cousin. Jacob Tyler. I haven’t seen him in two weeks. The police say he’s skipped town. But I know he’s dead.”
“What makes you say that?” said Healy.
“He told me he would come round and he never did. That’s the short version. The long version is, he’s a useless drunk who’s spent the last twenty years stealing, fighting and dodging coppers. He came back to town two months ago and told me he was finally going to be rich. He’d take me and his dad and everyone else on a grand vacation. He said we’d get what we all deserve. He promised to come round the next morning to explain. And he never showed.” She sighed. “You can already guess what the police told me when I called.”
“That you should hire a private detective,” said March.
“No,” said Sarah. “That he had fucked of somewhere and didn’t want to be found.”
“Yeah, we get those a lot, too,” said March.
“Can you find him?” said Sarah. “Even if you could find a trail - something to go on. I could keep looking after you leave. I can’t wait until someone else misses him, someone the police might listen to. Who knows how long that would take? He didn’t have a lot of close friends - just what family was left.”
She looked so worried. “Dad and Mr. Healy are great at finding people,” said Holly.
Healy tapped his notebook. “We’ve found people with less information than this,” he said. “Let me ask a few more questions and we can give you an idea what to expect.”
“Maybe a nap before we start though,” said March.
“Yeah, definitely a nap,” said Holly. “The flight was pretty rough.”
Holly woke up dusty couch feeling like a week had passed, although the clock said it was only about four hours. She ate a bunch of the jelly cookies Sarah had set out.
March, Healy and Holly headed out in the late afternoon for sandwiches and a look around. Sarah had told Healy that Jacob had visited one of the colleges twice in the week before he disappeared. She thought it was Christ Church and he had visited a Mr. Peckwater.
Looking up at the gate of Christ Church, March said, “This is definitely a school and not a church,” and pretended to write this in an invisible notebook.
“Very funny,” said Healy. “Meanwhile you missed this.” He pointed to a map on a lamppost. “Peckwater isn’t a person. It’s a building.”
According to the map, the building wasn’t far away, but people were being stopped at the gate as they entered the quad. This posed a problem. Next to them was a black robe folded over a bicycle leaning against the wall next to them. “Let me handle this,” said Holly.
She swept the robe around her shoulders, left Dad and Healy lurking outside the giant stone gate, and strode into the center green with purpose. A guy passing the other way on the path ignored her until she said, in her best imitation of Aunt Sarah’s accent, “This is so embarrassing, but I need to hand in a paper in Peckwater building? Can you give me directions?”
He stared. He kept staring. “Yes?” said Holly. “Peckwater building?”
“Christ Church is men only,” said the guy.
“… Oh,” said Holly.
They stared at each other. Finally the guy said, “But if you wanted, I could show you around-”
“Peckwater?” said Holly.
“My room?” said the guy hopefully.
“No,” said Holly, and walked back out of the quad, the robe flapping around her ankles.
There was no way March or Healy were going to pass for students, so the plan changed. “Holly, you stay in with Aunt Sarah tonight,” said March. “Watch the telly or something. Healy and I are going to go out. To the pub.”
Holly obviously didn’t buy it. “You know, if you get arrested for trespassing on college grounds, we’re definitely going to miss our flight home.”
“Pub,” said March. He ruffled her hair. “See you, sweetie.”
Aunt Sarah saw Holly’s sulky expression as they dropped her off. “Come on,” she said. “I’ll give you a tour of Oxford. You can see where your mother and I used to play growing up.”
That turned out to be a dingy alley behind a shop that Aunt Sarah said was still run by one of their cousins. It was exactly the kind of street urchin habitat Holly had been hoping for; she was thrilled. The late-afternoon sunlight slanted down across the rooftops and threw every piece of gravel a contrasting shadow. There were broken crates, determined weeds pushing through the cracks in the pavement, and Holly thought she even saw a rat. She could just picture her mother here and reading on top of a box of apples.
“This was our grandfather’s shop,” said Sarah. “He worked himself to the bone here and still came up short. It would have folded after the War if not for the Mantells, he used to tell us - to tell us how close we were to the poorhouse, I suppose. If we didn’t run errands for him, we’d end up begging in the street, something like that.”
“The Mantells?” said Holly.
“Rich toffs,” said Sarah. “Gave him some loans to keep afloat. Must have liked shopping here.” She frowned. “Not that I ever saw them in the shop. Grandfather would point them out across the street.”
“How was he able to pay back the loans if his margins were so slim?” asked Holly.
Sarah kept frowning. “One of those things, I suppose. You believe it as a child and never think of it again . . . There really is no sense in it. The Mantells didn’t shop here. Barely knew the family. Weren’t known for charity. Who knows? Maybe the truth of it is in the ground with my grandfather. Maybe he made his money doing favors for the mob and the Mantell story was just a cover.”
“If your family still owed the Mantells money, maybe that was what Jacob came to town asking about,” said Holly. She kicked a half-rotten rubber ball against the wall, lost in thought, then corrected herself. “No, not if he told you he was going to be rich. He wouldn’t pursue a debt. But he might pursue more money?”
“Blackmail the Mantells?” said Sarah.
“If blackmail was the way your grandfather got money from them,” said Holly.
“Even if it wasn’t, their family wouldn’t want the story to come out now,” said Sarah. “Too many people would care - the father just died and his son has inherited everything.” She looked up sharply. “And Charles Mantell is a student at Christ Church.”
“It’s a solid lead!” said Holly. “We should interview him, see if he knows anything. Do you know where he lives?”
“Everyone does; it’s a historical landmark.” Sarah clapped her hands together and the sound echoed off the stone walls. “I can see why you like this job so much,” she said. “It’s fun.”
March and Healy actually did go the pub first. They needed to overhear a little information about how to break in and out of Christ Church. When that information didn’t materialize at the first pub they had to visit a couple other pubs just in case. So by the time they got back to Christ Church and were staring up at the ivy-covered walls, they may have been a little tipsy.
The ivy pulled away from the wall in March’s hand. “This looks so much easier in the movies.” In the movies, he and Healy would have climbed hand over hand up the wall. Also in the movies they would have an empty alley to do this in. Right now all they had was a busy road and a crowded sidewalk and for some reason a couple of college kids had stopped and were staring at them.
“What?” said March. “You’ve never seen an American before?”
“Are you trying to climb that wall?” asked the girl.
March leaned on the wall to prove he definitely wasn’t climbing it.
Healy said, with a polite smile, “We’re trying to reach a friend of ours. He works in Peckwater building. Can you help point us in that direction?”
“A lecturer?” said the girl.
“Sure,” said Healy.
The guy interrupted her. “No lecturers work in Peckwater. It’s student accommodations. Are you sure you’re in the right place?”
“Maybe not, maybe not,” said March. “Wouldn’t you like to know.” The guy chuckled and rolled his eyes, tugging the girl’s arm to lead her away. The girl gave them a close look before she followed; she might be suspicious enough to alert the staff about them. They needed to move on.
“Come on,” said Healy, “If it’s a dorm, I know who we can ask for information.”
Once they reached the Christ Church front gate Healy propped March up on a bench despite his protestations and chatted up the porter alone. He spun a pretty good story: just a regular working-class American guy, he won an Oxford vacation in a contest, his niece wanted him to drop off a letter while he was there to save on postage, he forgot the guy’s name but knew he lived in Peckwater, could the porter help him out? Within just a few minutes of commiseration over disrespectful college students, Healy had the names of all 16 of the dorm’s residents. None of them seemed all that special at first, but one started to itch in the back of Healy’s head.
“Mantell,” he repeated. “Sounds familiar.”
“It should, you passed a street named after him on your way here,” said the porter. “Well, named after his great-great-great-grandfather or someone. Charles Mantell, Jr. Sound like someone your niece would want to write to? She should get in line, if you don’t mind me saying. He’s just come into a lot of money since his father died.”
“That definitely sounds like my niece,” said Healy.
“I can put the letter with the rest of his mail and he’ll see it next time he comes by. Mr. Mantell lives primarily at his family home but he’s in and out here -never keeps a reliable schedule.”
Suddenly Healy had left the letter at his hotel and had to go get it, with a promise to come back promptly and deliver the letter to the porter. He even got an invitation to stop in to see the porter and his wife over the weekend. Nice guy.
He woke up March, who was napping on the bench, head thrown back. “I think we’ve got our guy,” said Healy. “He’s rich, he’s connected, and he lives outside of town. Sarah can tell us where. We can go in the morning.”
Of course, Sarah wasn’t home when they got there. Neither was Holly. There was a note lying on the stack of suitcases in the living room: “GONE TO INTERVIEW CHARLES MANTELL,” with the address below it, all in Holly’s best handwriting.
Aunt Sarah told the taxi to stop before they reached the main gate. The night had fallen so quickly that Holly had gotten turned around and couldn’t remember which way the town was. The days were so short here in the winter. Somewhere in the distance Holly heard a weird bird cry.
They got out, hidden in shadow, and sent the taxi away. As the crunching of gravel under its wheels grew fainter in the distance, Holly took in the size of Mantell’s estate: definitely big enough that no one could hear them scream for help. It was a little different from the palaces of Hollywood in that respect. Even at the biggest homes Holly had been to on cases, you were always just a couple steps away from some other rich guy’s backyard. Dad had even thrown a corpse from one party into another by accident one time. (He’d told her once when he was drunk before Healy bundled him off to bed.)
Once they walked past the big stone gateposts, there was a crescent of gravel big enough to fit a fleet of cars, a flat-faced mansion with manicured gardens on either side, and back the way they had come, misty fields trimmed by woods. The road curved away into nothingness.
“I’ll distract them at the door,” said Aunt Sarah. “You sneak round the garden. Jake was always clumsy; look for bootprints and general mess. Signs of a struggle. Meet me back here when you hear the taxi come back.”
“Got it,” said Holly. “What’s the signal?”
“What signal?” said Aunt Sarah. “The taxi?”
“The signal for if it all goes sideways,” said Holly patiently. “Dad always has a certain phrase he’ll yell. So I can call the cops or get his gun or whatever.”
Poker-faced, Aunt Sarah said, “Oh God, no, please don’t kill me.”
“Ok,” said Holly. “I guess that works.”
Holly split off toward the garden on the left, sticking to the shadows, even though she didn’t think anyone had been looking out the windows. You could never be too careful. First rule of being a private eye.
She ducked around the corner of the garden wall and waited there a moment, listening. Aunt Sarah rang the doorbell and it echoed through the house. Murmured voices greeted her. Holly moved on.
The garden paths were all white gravel so Holly walked on the grass to keep her footsteps quiet. It was almost boring as rich person gardens went. Big shrubs cut into boxy shapes, rose bushes that were just tangles of thorns this time of year, and the statue in the fountain was even wearing clothes. The path curved several times back toward the house and when it did Holly had to crouch down under the tall glass windows and creep past. Nothing much was happening in the rooms she chanced a look into. They sat dark and empty and she could mostly only see silhouettes of furniture.
“What are you looking for?” came a voice from behind her.
She spun around. She could barely make out a human shape in the darkness, outlined in moonlight against the even darker forest beyond. He was sitting on the far stone wall. A little red light flared, outlining his face and making Holly blink. A cigarette.
“They don’t let you smoke inside?” blurted Holly. She straightened up, trying to look like she hadn’t just been sneaking around, but she kept away from the window just in case.
“Oh, they let me smoke wherever I want,” said the man. “I’m just smoking out here because I saw a suspicious girl in the garden.”
Holly, for once, felt a little out of her depth. What was a plausible thing that people like her did in houses like this? Especially since she had been startled into using her real, foreign accent and thus made herself more suspicious?
“I was here for the party,” said Holly. “A while ago. I just realized I lost my bracelet somewhere on the grounds. I didn’t want to disturb anyone and make them help me look.”
“No parties here lately,” said the man. He took another drag of his cigarette, causing another glint of red. “This is funny. Tell me why you’re here and I won’t even call the police. I’m just curious. And what are you? Australian?”
“What? No,” said Holly. “American.” Not that she wanted to give this guy more information, but that couldn’t stand.
“Yet another lie,” said the man. The smile had left his voice. He jumped down from the wall and started striding toward her. Holly glanced to her left, the way she’d come, before bolting right, deeper into the garden. Surely the two gardens must connect in the back; she could get out the other side if she could outrun him.
Her feet sank into the gravel as she ran, slowing her down. It was like a nightmare. The man grabbed her shoulder and spun her in place.
“I said I just want to talk,” he snapped.
Holly already had a big fake smile on her face. “You don’t remember me, Charles? Really?” she gambled, trying to get her shoulder out of his grip.
Now that they were closer together she could see his face. In his twenties, brown hair, kind of ugly. Definitely rich, based on the quality of the clothes and his disregard for them; he’d torn the sleeve of his sweater jumping down from the wall.
“No, we’ve never met. I’d remember that lying face. Thief? Spy? Stalker? Just let me know which one it is,” he said.
“Why? You sound like you have something to hide,” said Holly.
There was a flash of genuine fear across his face before it melted into a smirk. “Nice try,” he said.
Holly said loudly, “I know about Jake Tyler,” hoping that it would startle him into letting her go or at least alert Sarah in the house that something was wrong.
Charles’s expression twisted. He definitely recognized the name. “You know? What’s to know? I’ve never heard of a Jake Tyler.”
“You saw him two weeks ago,” said Holly. “And you knew each other as boys. At the shop.”
Charles let go of her shoulder and grabbed her hair, yanking her head back and making her shriek. The dark windows of the house were impassive. No one came to help. “You don’t know anything,” he muttered. “His stupid family sent you to frighten me. But it won’t work.” Charles used his free hand to take his cigarette out of his mouth and blow smoke into Holly’s face.
She coughed. While he was grinning about that she kneed him in the balls. He folded like a lawn chair, his grip gone slack, and Holly sprinted away into the darkness, sticking to the grass this time. In a few long strides she couldn’t even hear him groaning anymore.
Of course, she couldn’t see in the dark, either. The shrubs were just suggestions of shadows ahead of her. The moonlight helped a little, but she kept tripping over low plants anyway. She could hear Charles’s footsteps on the gravel somewhere behind her. Slow, irregular, but gaining speed.
Up ahead was a square blackness that wasn’t a shrub. It was a shed, painted a dark color, and Holly rushed up to it, sliding her hands across the wood paneling, trying to find a latch. Her hands met nothing but smooth boards, so after a moment she darted around behind it instead, crouching in the narrow space between the wooden shed and the stone wall that enclosed the garden. Hiding, listening for footsteps, she realized that the shed smelled bad. Really bad. Like a corpse.
When March and Healy’s taxi pulled up outside the Mantell house there were no other cars out front. The door was standing open.
“Is that normal?” Healy asked the taxi driver. Then a shotgun blast echoed through the house.
It was a real shame Healy couldn’t bring his sidearm across the Atlantic. His hand went to his hip and nothing was there. March was already dashing across the driveway, straight into danger, as usual. Healy ran after him as fast as his bad knee could manage.
He ducked around the doorway, half-expecting a gunfight, but found only March gently taking the shotgun from Aunt Sarah’s hands. A butler in a suit was cowering under a shattered glass cabinet.
“He tried to tie me up,” said Sarah. “Then he pointed this at me!”
“I’m sure he did,” said March. He pointed the shotgun at the butler. “Where’s my daughter?”
“What daughter?” said the butler, shaking.
“Are there other guns in the house?” said Healy to the butler. The butler pointed to an outrageously old musket on the wall over the fireplace. It would have to do.
A side door led into the garden. While they ran outside Sarah told them about the plan: Sarah distract, Holly investigate, but only outside in the garden. Sarah explained, “I didn’t even bring up Jake, but that butler did. And when I said I did know him, next thing I know he’s grabbing me and tying me to a chair. Good thing he doesn’t know anything about knots.”
In the distance there was an angry voice. Some man was yelling at Holly and she was screaming for help. March didn’t even remember crossing the distance between the house and the shed; suddenly he was there and pulling the asshole away from his daughter. The shotgun was out of shells and the musket hadn’t been fired in 200 years, but in the end March and Healy didn’t need bullets to take care of the guy; they just beat the shit out of him the old-fashioned way until the taxi driver called the cops. And the cops were a lot more cooperative once Holly told them about the body in the shed.
At the police station they assigned a lady officer to put a blanket around Holly and sit with her while they grilled her dad, Healy, and Aunt Sarah in separate interview rooms. The sun was coming up and pale pink light was coming in the windows at the end of the hall. Holly had been up all night, but it also felt like it was just after dinner on California time, so all she knew was she was exhausted.
After about an hour Holly asked to go to the bathroom, sniffling, and on her way back “accidentally” ended up in the lobby and found a phone and a phone book. There were a few local papers listed. Holly tried numbers until she got one: an older lady who briskly asked, “What is it? Unless this is about the Mantell murder, make it quick.” Holly found her way back to her assigned officer, still sniffling, and twenty minutes later a lady walked in with a tape recorder and a couple of lawyers. Then there were a bunch more reporters. And more lawyers. And a tv news crew. Turns out Aunt Sarah was right: the Nice Guys had been a hit in the news last year, and here they were solving murders at Christmas right here in Oxford.
The police had to send them home to contain the chaos, but told them not to leave town for a while; there would be more questions as the investigation progressed.
“We’re definitely going to miss our flight home, then,” said Holly.
The Mantells’ housekeeper, who had hidden upstairs and hadn’t tied anyone to a chair, had apparently spilled the whole story to the reporters, so the next morning’s paper was a page-turner. Holly lay on the floor under the Christmas tree and read it aloud while Sarah made breakfast.
“Charles Mantell was covering up his father’s scandal at the cost of a man’s life,” she read. “Jacob Tyler was threatening to expose THE TRUTH: Charles Mantell’s father, the late Thomas Mantell, had secretly fathered a pair of girls in Oxford, bringing the future of the Mantell fortune into question! The Sutton girls - hey, that’s you! Sarah, this is about you and mom!”
“Wait,” said March. “Sarah, are you and Hannah . . . heiresses?”
“So the paper says,” said Sarah, not sounding impressed. “We’ll see if I’ll ever see a dime.”
Holly sat up. “So I’M an heiress too?” she said. Then she made a face. “And Charles Mantell is my cousin?”
“He’s your half-uncle,” said Healy.
“Ew,” said Holly.
“We can’t choose our family,” said Sarah. She finished setting plates out on the table. “Holly, breakfast is ready.”
Holly got up, passed the newspaper to Healy, and scooted her chair in in front of her plate. Her dad leaned over her to grab a cookie and said, “So, about our payment.”
“Dad,” said Holly.
Aunt Sarah shrugged. “You can stay here as long as the police need you, but I can’t pay your fee unless I really do get the Mantell fortune. I spent all I could afford to flying you over here.”
“I knew it,” said March.
“Our return flight isn’t transferable,” said Healy. “We’ll need to buy separate return tickets.”
“That I can help you with,” said Sarah. “My friend has a case for you. She said her daughter’s new boyfriend is hiding something. She doesn’t know if he’s hiding a wife . . . or covering up a murder.”
“Dad! Can we? Please?” said Holly.
March pointed his fork at Sarah. “Very Miss Marple. We’ll take it.”