The fifth floor

The lift doors slid noiselessly shut and with only a faint whine of a motor somewhere activating the lift began to move.  Miss Flava looked around, impressed.  Back at the police headquarters the lifts were avoided by all but the bravest or most time-pressed policemen and shuddered and groaned like they were bit-players in a Hammer horror film when they were used.  This lift had mirrors, shiny brass-effect buttons, gleaming pieces of trim, carpet on the floor, and a discrete poster advertising the breakfast buffet on the lower-ground floor.
"I think she thinks we're together, you know," she said.  Playfair sniffed.
"Well we are.  She'd be pretty dim to think that we'd just chanced to come in at the same time and had rooms next door to one another."
"That's not what I meant," said Miss Flava.  "I think she thinks that we're here for a romantic weekend break."
"Oh," said Playfair.  Then, after a couple of seconds pause.  "No."
"I know," said Miss Flava, with perhaps a little too much emphasis.  "But she doesn't, and she's drawing conclusion based on us having adjacent rooms, arriving together, and wanting a connecting door."
"Silly woman," said Playfair after listening to this.  "That's the kind of conclusion officers on this force jump to, because they haven't considered all the facts.  We've got too much luggage for that kind of romantic break for one thing, and you carried most of it."  The lift pinged softly to indicate that they'd arrived at the fifth floor, and the doors slid open.  "I don't know what form of ID you showed her, but I used my warrant card, and why would we ask for a key to the connecting door instead of just requesting that it be kept open?"
"Does that make it sound more like we're colleagues on a business trip?"
"...actually, it makes it look like I'm your parole officer, unless you showed your warrant card too."  They'd got the luggage out into the corridor now, and the lift doors silently closed behind them.  Miss Flava stared at Playfair in disbelief.
"She'd better not be thinking that!" she said, her hands resting on her hips and her chin jutting out slightly.  "How could...!  How dare...!  Playfair!!"
"Well, what ID did you show her?"
"My driving licence of course!  Like a normal person would."
Playfair shrugged.  "Passport would have been better, it's unlikely you'd be allowed to keep that if you were on parole," he said.  "Though our parole officers don't seem to much care."
Miss Flava kicked a bag that she knew contained clothes.  She knew the case Playfair was referring to, where three prisoners on parole had flown out of the country and disappeared in South America because their parole officer had apparently thought that meeting them for a pint on Wednesday evenings was enough to carry out his job.
"You're carrying the bags then," she said, venting her frustration where she could.
"No need," said Playfair.  "It seems we've got rooms by the lifts.  How convenient is that?"
Miss Flava took a very small amount of comfort in seeing that Playfair's door was directly opposite the lift, while hers was offset a little, meaning that late night returnees and drunkards would be more likely to wake him than her.
"Fine," she said.  "Carry your own bags into your room then."  She swiped her access card in the door lock, and pushed the door open.  Then she paused and looked back at Playfair.
"What are we doing with Calamity?" she asked.

Little Haversham Hotel

"This can't be right," said Miss Flava as she turned the wheel and guided the police car up the gravelled driveway of the Little Haversham Hotel.  Behind them, high hedges glared over high walls, silently communicating that visitors were not welcome, and the huge, wrought-iron gates, though open, suggested that they were ready to snap shut at the first sign of impropriety.  She drove the car slowly along the gravel, listening to it crunch evenly beneath the tyres, and looked at the vast, imposing building that came into view.  It reminded her of a larger version of the Great Cumulonimbus's house.
"Did you follow my directions properly?" asked Playfair, not looking up from the paperwork he'd picked up from the back-seat and was finally reading.  Behind him, Calamity sat up and barked, staring out of the passenger-side window.
"Yes."
"Then it's the right place," said Playfair.  "I picked the only hotel with the word Little in its name."
"Was it called the Little Little Haversham Hotel?"
"No.  That would be a stupid name."
"Then maybe you should have looked in up online before booking it," said Miss Flava.  "Accounts are going to have a fit when they see the bill."
"I did look it up online," said Playfair, turning a page back and forth, comparing text on the two sides.  "It has rooms, a bar, a small swimming pool and a restaurant."
"Why do we need a swimming pool?"
"We don't," said Playfair.  "I'm not expecting you to go swimming, Miss Flava, we're here to solve a crime.  A murder, of a very strange man, in a very strange fashion."
Miss Flava parked the car, and sat still for a moment, staring at the enormous building there were alledged booked into.  "Look at it, Playfair," she said at last.  "It's as big as Stormy's house."
Playfair finally looked up, scanned across the hotel, and nodded.  "It'll do," he said.
"Playfair, you know there's a budget for these things, right?  Accounts will have conniptions!"
"Yes, and no," said Playfair.  "I'm the budget holder for the department, right?"  Miss Flava looked at him, startled.  She hadn't known that her boss was allowed to manage any budgets.  "And we've used absolutely none of the accommodation budget for this year, and if we don't spend it all, it gets cut next year and we have to beg for every last penny we need as a result.  So, we're spending some of the available budget now to ensure that we have it when we really need it, and since two rooms in a B&B would probably go on petty cash, I had to book a real hotel."
"Petty cash?"
"There's a petty cash tin," said Playfair, packing his papers up.  "Check with Janine when we get back.  It's good for coffee, biscuits and prescriptions I think."
"Prescriptions?"
"Let's go and get checked in, I can see I've got a lot of thinking to do."

*

Reception was the long desk with computers, printers, electronic key writers and receptionists behind it, just as Miss Flava had expected; she was slightly surprised to learn that they had executive suites on the fifth floor, with a connecting door that had its own separate key  The receptionist gave her a look that suggested that she thought that they were an executive couple preserving appearances and explained when breakfast was, where breakfast was, and seemingly eight-hundred other things about the hotel's pool and spa complex, multifarious restaurants, room service regulations and towel replacement policy.

"...and I do hope you enjoy your stay," she concluded, with a smile that made Miss Flava wonder how much she spent on dentistry.

"Lifts are this way," said Playfair, pointing.  "Bring the luggage, Miss Flava!"

A claustrophobe's bedroom

"Speaking of SOCO," said Miss Flava.  "Isn't it about time we passed this over to them?  This house is getting weirder with every room we go through.  We should let them look over it and find all its little secrets out before we accidentally lose any of them."
"If there are any left," said Playfair.  "Don't forget that we've no idea what Ronald and his belle were up to in the house before we arrived."
"The door was locked," said Miss Flava.  Playfair had started up the stairs, not bothering to check to see if she was following.
"But when?" said Playfair.  He vanished onto the landing at the top of the stairs, leaving Miss Flava stood there wondering to herself if he was right.  If Ronald had had a key then locking the door behind him when he came into the house would be only natural.  They only had his word for how long he'd been there, after all.  Grimacing slightly she hurried after Playfair, telling herself that she had to keep and eye on him and make sure he wasn't adjusting the evidence to suit himself.
At the top the landing had three doors, all of which were ajar, and a second staircase led up again, over the staircase she'd just come up.  Playfair was just coming out of the left-most room.  He shrugged when he saw her.
"Bathroom," he said.  "Small, mean, looks like it might be for guests.  Toilet paper is shiny."  He poked his head round the next door, but didn't bother going in.  "Bedroom, small, mean, single bed, cover looks dusty," he said.  "Ever get the feeling we're on the guest floor?"
"For what guests?" said Miss Flava.  "As I said downstairs when you weren't listening to me–"
"Bedroom, small, meaner, single bed with a bare mattress and a broken lightbulb," said Playfair from the doorway of the third room.  "What was that?"
"I said, when you weren't listening to me I already asked you what guests our magician could have had?"
"Good question.  Single people, I should think.  There's not a double bed in sight."
"This is stupid, Playfair.  The man never had guests!"
"So why does he have guest rooms?"  Playfair started up the second flight of stairs.
"For show?"  Miss Flava knew she was guessing wildly, but she hated Playfair's persistent questions that always seemed to last longer than anyone could keep answering for.
"How very Edwardian," said Playfair, his voice echoing oddly.  "Now, this is interesting."  Miss Flava followed him up the stairs, cursing softly under her breath.  As she ascended she got a sensation of space, and couldn't see any walls through the balusters, so assumed that the landing was abnormally large.  It was only as she reached Playfair that she saw that there were no intervening walls, just a wide open space with concrete supporting pillars.  The floor was carpeted in beige, but otherwise there was almost nothing else up there.
"That's a sleeping bag," she said, pointing to the crumpled pile of satiny-looking fabric in the middle of the floor.  "That's probably a pillow caught up in it."
"Best to check," said Playfair.  He kicked the sleeping bag aside, and a sad, lumpy pillow fell over with a soft, slack sound.
"First attempt at a theatre?" She looked around some more, but found nothing else, not even cupboards or shelves.  The windows had blinds, but they were all drawn up.
"Or a claustrophobe's bedroom," said Playfair.  "I wonder if he ever did any magician-in-a-cabinet tricks."

The cupboard under the stairs

"Don't you think the room's a bit odd?" said Miss Flava, not moving as Playfair started off towards the other door.
"No," he said.  "Come along."
"No, really, Playfair," she said.  "Look at it, it's like it's two rooms in one, a study and a lounge.  But the house is huge, so why would he need to use one room twice like this?"
"Perhaps that little theatre we just came through takes up more space that you think.  Let's look through the rooms, that'll probably tell us how he liked his house laid out."
Miss Flava looked around again, half-convinced that she was missing something about the room.  She thought that the dead magician would be hard put to entertain anyone in here, and even if he did spend his romantic liaisons elsewhere, as Ronald and his sister-in-law had suggested, surely he had to have the occasional visitor.  Even if they were all business?
"Come on!" shouted Playfair from beyond the door.  "I've found the hall!"
She knew that he was being sarcastically enthusiastic, but she found herself hurrying up just a little anyway.  For all he was obnoxious and hard to work with most of the time, she did respect both her boss's incredible ability to annoy everybody and still solve the crime, and she found herself admiring his boundless self-confidence.
The hall was carpeted in beige, had a flight of stairs leading upwards, a door below the stairs, and several doors leading off to either side.  There were no windows, and all the light came from a single, energy-saving lightbulb hanging barely from a frayed cord near the foot of the stairs.  Playfair was stood by the door beneath the stairs.
"Do you believe in witches and wizards, Miss Flava?" said Playfair.  He never called her by her first name, preferring to retain a certain level of formality that she'd long since given up with.
"No," she said.  "Why?"
"Well then, if we open this door and find a nine-year-old boy sitting in here crying and looking lost, we'll be in agreement that it probably isn't Harry Potter."
"Really?  You think the magician is keeping children in the cupboard under the stairs?"
"Keeping an open mind," said Playfair airily.  "Never expect anything."
He opened the door, which stuck a little at first and then pulled free.  No-one came out, so Playfair leaned in and shouted, "Harry Potter?  It's Voldemort, come to get you!"
"Really, Playfair," said Miss Flava, her hands on her hips as she stared at him.  "We're supposed to be investigating a crime scene."
"Yes," said Playfair.  "Which makes this a little interesting, don't you think?"  He stood aside, inviting Miss Flava to come and look inside the cupboard.  There was nothing to see directly through the door, but when she leaned in and looked to the side her eyes widened.  Hanging from a hook in the ceiling, suspended by a rope tied around its neck, was a fully-dressed body.
"It's not real," said Playfair, seeing her reaction.  "The hands are plastic, and the neck is far too thin for a human being, but why would Stormy have this hanging in the cupboard under the stairs?  We know he's got space for props over in his theatre."
Miss Flava swallowed, a slight acid taste in her mouth from her stomach's contraction at the side of a hanged body.  "That's a good question, Playfair," she managed, backing out of the cupboard and away from it.  She stood, catching her breath and relaxing.  "It does look like this wasn't part of any act."
"Right," said Playfair.  "Got a sticker for SOCO?  I think they should pay special attention to this."
"In the car," said Miss Flava.  "I can go and get–"
"No need," said Playfair.  "Just remember it and phone it in before we leave.  Now, where next?"
Miss Flava swallowed again and found her notebook to write down a reminder.  Playfair seemed to have more energy than a battery-operated bunny.

A little off the top

"A guillotine!" said Miss Flava.  "I wasn't expecting that."
"What were you expecting?" asked Playfair, looking at her as though she were stupid.  "How you could have been expecting anything?"
"Oh leave it be, Playfair," said Miss Flava.  "You know what I meant."
"Sloppy speaking engenders slopping thinking," said Playfair.
"Oh, very Sapir-Whorf," muttered Miss Flava, making sure it wasn't loud enough for Playfair to catch.  "Let's go look at the guillotine then."
The guillotine was a spotlit blade mounted on two tall columns of wood with a thin bar stretched across the top of the two columns.  A rope stretched from the blade of the guillotine to a tying off point on the floor of the stage, around which it was wound in a figure-of-eight.  Beneath the blade was a black padded bench with a floral pillow a little after where the blade would fall.  A piece of shaped wood propped up against the bench looked as though it was intended to fit around the victim's neck, holding their head in place so that the blade could slice cleanly through without being blunted or turned by vertebrae.  On the floor next to the bench, behind it from where Playfair and Miss Flava had been stood in the wings, was a body.  Playfair saw it first, and sped up, while Miss Flava, seeing what her boss had spotted, stopped where she was and pulled her notebook out.
"Anyone we know?" she asked, holding her pen tightly over the pad.
"Not exactly," said Playfair, bent over the body.  "But I think we encountered his head just a little earlier."  He lifted up the chest of the body to reveal that it was headless.  The stump of the neck had little metal contact points and socket junctions instead of veins and bands of muscle.  Miss Flava put her pen away.
"He?" she asked.
"Very definitely male," said Playfair, looking further along the body, which was now clearly just a very lifelike mannequin.  "Either he's needed for some other part of the act, or the Great Stormy has some insecurities."
Miss Flava thought about that for a moment, and decided that she wouldn't like to have to guess.  "OK," she said. "So we have a guillotine on a stage, so it looks like we know what the rehearsal was going to be.  Head's in a cupboard, so perhaps it's not needed for the main trick?"
"We should probably ask Ronald and his dreadful sister," said Playfair. "They were supposed to be here helping with this rehearsal."
"Sister-in-law," said Miss Flava, patiently.  "Right, well, we can do that later unless you think this is important?"
"Everything is important," said Playfair.  "I've told you that, and I keep telling you that."
"Yes," said Miss Flava.  "But at the end it always turns out that some things were much more important than others, and what I really want to know if how to spot them."
"Start off by understanding that everything's important!"
"Shall we carry on looking around?"
They went off the stage the way they'd come, walking back through the prop-room in the corridor and through the sticking door.  They looked at the door that seemed to lead into the rest of the house; it was still locked.
"Do you think Ronald will have a key?"  Playfair was eyeing the door up.
"Possibly," said Miss Flava.  "Why don't you go and see if he's still here?"
"You go," said Playfair.  "You're better at negotiating than I am."
Miss Flava sighed and walked back out to the auditorium.  Calamity was still underneath the table, curled up now and making little doggy dreaming noises, the empty trays next her showing that she'd eaten all of the sandwiches.  Miss Flava shuddered a little, still worried that they might yet have a dead police dog on their hands.  She looked around, and realised that Ronald had managed to leave most of the stuff they'd thought he'd brought with him behind, taking apparently only his sister-in-law and their bags.  She went to the French doors to see if he was still in the carpark, but a thud back where she'd left Playfair had her running back to see what had happened.
Playfair was stood where she'd left him, but the locked door was now swinging open and the lock looked a little bent.
"It opened," said Playfair, smiling as though stunned.  "I was just standing here, and it... well, it opened."
Miss Flava didn't believe him for an instant, but gestured at the open door anyway.
"After you, Sir," she said.

Nosing around

Miss Flava and Playfair left Ronald tugging at his sister-in-law's leg and walked to the stage at the back of the room.  The curtains were drawn, and Calamity was still sitting beneath the trestle tables and had nearly finished a whole tray of sandwiches.  They looked at each other and decided silently that they'd leave her where she was for now.  Then they looked at the apron, which was about three feet high.
"Climb, or find stairs?" asked Miss Flava, sure that she could get up on the apron without trouble.
"Stairs," said Playfair after a moment's hesitation.  "Technically, moving the curtains counts as interfering with the scene of the crime."
"Do you think SOCO's been here yet?" asked Miss Flava as they both turned to the left, where the shadows suggested that there might be doors.
"Hah!  I don't think anybody but us has been here yet," said Playfair.  "Except maybe to ring the front doorbell and then write down in a little notebook that no-one appeared to be in at the dead man's residence."
"You're not giving the police in Little Haversham much credit, are you?" said Miss Flava.  They located two doors in the gloom at the side of the room, one appearing to lead out into the rest of the house, and being locked; the other was smaller, flimsier, and looked as though it might lead to the back of the stage.  Playfair gripped the handle firmly and opened the door with a shove.  It scraped along the floor for a few inches then moved freely, so he ended up slamming it back against the wall.  Calamity barked once, and then presumably went back to eating the sandwiches.
"They've not given me any reason to," said Playfair looking through the doorway.  "It's been three days at least, and they've not checked the house out.  That's given this upper-class twit a chance to get in with his simple sister and do god-knows-what in here.  We could be missing valuable clues because he's been tidying up or putting them in the sandwiches when his sister's not looking."
The doorway opened onto a small ante-chamber that was essentially a wide, short corridor with lots of shelves on both sides.  The shelves were lined with props for tricks, and some parts had been fitted with doors to turn them into cupboards.  Playfair opened the first and found several stacks of playing cards; the next was contained stacks of oversized playing cards.  A third cupboard contained a realistic severed head that seemed to eye Playfair back as he stared at it.
"Sister-in-law, not sister," said Miss Flava.  She was looking at the shelves on the other sides with their little machines, linkages, and boxes of nuts, bolts and washers.  "And... damn, does that mean we should have been treating the sandwiches as evidence?  You did say they looked like ham, and we've pretty much believed Ronnie when he said they were mackerel mayonnaise."
Playfair took the severed head out of the cupboard, a little carefully as it proved to be heavier than he was expecting.  Miss Flava turned to see why he hadn't answered, and took a step back, her hands coming up protectively in front of her.
"My God, Playfair, what is that?"
"Latex skin," said Playfair examining it, "over a metal frame I think.  There's a switch here...."
He pressed it and the head seemed to come to life, a soft interior glow making the flesh seem warmer and more human and the eyes blinking a couple of times.  The lips moved, and a hint of a pink tongue seemed to lick them.
"That's creepy!  Put it back, Playfair.  It's not evidence."
"We don't know what is and isn't evidence yet," said Playfair, but he pressed the switch again and put the head back in the cupboard anyway.  He closed the door on it.
"You might be right about the sandwiches," he said.  "But we've got a lot of them in Calamity now, so there's probably no call for worry."
Miss Flava considered that a potentially dead police dog was certainly cause for worry, but couldn't be bothered arguing with Playfair over it at the moment.  They carried on, walking through the corridor into the wings of the stage.  Towering curtains of black cloth now created entrances onto the stage that prevented the audience from seeing through to the wings or the prop room, and allowed the performers to move on and off stage as though vanishing from the world.  There was enough room for about four people to stand in the wings before it started getting crowded, and there was a small prompter's desk with a blue-shaded light-bulb tucked into the corner.
What they could see of the stage through the curtains was much more interesting though.

Ronald and Melissa

The walk from the carpark to the house was short and leafy.  Miss Flava lifted some of the leaves up – glossy, broad deep green leaves that reminded her of those of a rubber plant, only smaller – and checked.  The plant was growing over a red-brick wall that defined the passage.  Ahead of her, Playfair was unconcerned about the route, and seemed intent on getting to the house.  Behind her (she checked when she didn't hear the click of claws on the paving stones) Calamity had decided to wee on the wall and the plant.  Given that Calamity's bladder apparently held enough to flood small rooms (and Miss Flava was sure that Playfair had been teaching her tricks about holding it in as well) she was relieved that the dog was relieving herself outside.
She came to the end of the passage and turned a corner.  The wall stopped and a short lawn spread out before her, leading to white-painted, glass-panelled French-doors.  A very shallow flight of steps led up to the doors, where Playfair was rapping impatiently on the glass.  As the doors opened, Calamity came galloping up behind her, brushed past her at full speed, and charged towards Playfair.  Miss Flava said nothing, knowing that her boss would somehow be expecting this.
"Who are y–" said a man in an angry voice.  He cut off as Playfair stepped neatly aside and Calamity leapt at him, her paws landing heavily on the shoulders of his suit and bowling him over.  He fell backwards, letting go of the door, which Playfair caught and held.
"That's my dog," he said in his best outdoors voice.  "Please stop molesting her.  Now!"
The man on the floor, who was being frantically licked by Calamity, stopped trying to push her off him and submitted to her cleaning.  A thin woman in an uncomfortable-looking blue and mauve dress hurried over from a table against the far wall of the room.  She was still holding a china cup of tea, and its matching saucer.
"Oh, dear!  What...?  What...?  Ronald?  Are you under that dog?"
"Don't start!" snarled the man on the floor, turning his head to the side to try and escape Calamity's tongue.
"Well, I'm only asking!"
Playfair gestured, and Miss Flava walked in.  The room appeared to be a function room of some kind: it was large, with a wooden floor that seemed highly polished.  Seats were stacked against both end walls, and a few large, simple tables were pushed up against the front of a small stage.  The stage curtains were drawn across, so that only the apron could be seen.  When she looked up, she could see lighting gantries across the ceiling, and tracing them across with her eyes she found a black-painted ladder in the shadows of one corner, obviously the way up there.  Underneath the tables were large packing cases and trunks, and on top of the tables were a tea-urn, some china cups and saucers, a plastic half-litre carton of milk with a blue top, and a couple of foil trays of rather dry-looking sandwiches with the cling-film pulled half-back.
"No-one seems to have come to your party," said Playfair, who'd come in silently behind her.  "Calamity, dear, please leave the man alone.  He's stopped attacking you now."
"Are you Calamity?" said the thin woman, turning to Miss Flava with a terrifying smile.  Her teeth were varying shades of yellow and brown and looked badly decayed.
"No," said Miss Flava coldly.  "That's Calamity."  She pointed at the dog, who had started to get off the man on the floor and then found something interesting to sniff.  "Calamity!"  The dog lifted her head, saw the expression on Miss Flava's face and quickly retreated behind Playfair.
"Oh, I'm so sorry," said the woman.  "I assumed, with that name, that Calamity must be human.  Calamity Jane, I'm sure?"
If you're so sure, thought Miss Flava, why are you making it a question?  But she held her temper in check.  "Yes, Calamity Jane."
"My favourite Crimean nurse," said Playfair, as he always did when someone asked about Calamity's name.  The thin woman nodded and smiled, not seeing anything wrong with this statement, which made Miss Flava hate her even more.
"Who are you?" she said pointedly, realising that the woman wasn't going to offer her name.
"She's Melissa," said the suited man, finally up off the floor.  "She's my sister-in-law.  I'm Ronald Verges."  He emphasized the last syllable of his surname.  "And who the hell are you two?  You'd better not be part of the act."
"What act?" said Playfair quickly.  Miss Flava pulled her warrant card out anyway.
"If you don't know that, you'd better be quick at explaining why you're here," said Ronald, his face hardening and his eyes tightening into a squint.
"I was rather thinking the same myself," said Playfair, sounding cheerful.  "You see, we're the police, and the Great CumuloNimbus is dead.  So: who let you in, and why the hell are you here?"

Conversations

"You're being obstreperous," said Miss Flava to Playfair as they walked past the front desk.  Manning the front desk was a young woman in a very smart uniform, standing rigidly upright and organising files while she waited to be of assistance.
"Henry?" said Playfair, stopping in mid-stride and causing Miss Flava to stumble as she tried not to collide with him.
"And who might you be, Sir?" asked the woman behind the counter.
"DI Playfair," said Playfair.  "You're Henry?"
"Short for Henrietta, Sir, it was my Aunt's name."
"You should be careful she doesn't decide to take it back then," said Playfair.  "Come along, Miss Flava, we have a house to look at, possibly before it burns down!"
"You stopped!" Miss Flava stared after him as he walked out of the station and turned towards the car-park round the back.  "That man...." she said, partly to herself, but partly also to Henry, who didn't even crack a smile.
By the time she reached the car Playfair was stood expectantly by the driver's door, and so she raised an eyebrow and sighed loudly.
"Oh come on," he said, holding his hand out.  "It can't be far, and there's no traffic on the roads, and no-one will ever know."
"Yes they will, because you'll find a way of stripping all the teeth off the gearbox," said Miss Flava.  "Or you'll drive into something, probably livestock, or someone will drive into you.  These accidents are why you're not allowed to drive the car any more, boss."
"I am your boss, aren't I?"  Playfair still had his hand out.
"Which you won't be if anyone finds out I let you drive."
They stared at each other, eyes locked and a silent battle of the wills playing out.  Miss Flava blinked first, but Playfair let his hand drop fractionally later, and walked round to the passenger side of the car.
"I can think better when you're driving," he said, as though nothing had happened.  "Fewer people seem to do stupid things in front of you."
Calamity barked her enthusiasm at seeing them again as Miss Flava unlocked the doors, and she attempted to bound over into the front seats and get out of the car.  Playfair pushed her back, and Miss Flava had to wait till he'd finished wrestling her on to the back seat before she could get in.
"Should we take her for a walk first?"
"No," said Playfair.  "I'll need her up at this house to sniff around.  She'll get her exercise then."
"Don't let her widdle on things," said Miss Flava, starting the engine.  "Forensics didn't stop complaining about you for weeks last time."
"Last time?"
"You gave Calamity one of the bones from the scene of the crime to play with.  It took three of them half-an-hour to get it back off her!"
"Yes, but it wasn't one of the human bones, it was just some old bone that had gotten mixed in with the rest.  It didn't matter."
"Maybe, but no-one else knew that, Playfair.  And since you won't explain how you knew, there's still no-one else who knows how you knew."
"It's obvious, really, you know.  If any of you would just sit down and think about it properly for half-an-hour you'd know too.  Really."
Miss Flava pulled out of the car-park and turned left.  "Which way is this house then?"
"I don't know," said Playfair.  "I didn't ask.  Beechwood Drive, I think."
"Yes, I remember that, but where is Beechwood Drive?  I can't go there if I don't know where it is!"
"Oh," said Playfair.  "It looks like you're lost then!"

The Great CumuloNimbus

Playfair's chair clattered back to the floor on all four legs, and he leaned diagonally forward across the table towards the office.
"A magician?" he said, his voice raising slightly.  "As in, a stage magician?  Someone who does card tricks, or someone who does grand illusions? Grand Guignol, even?"
"Isn't that a type of sausage?"  When Playfair refused to answer, or even to remove his gaze from the officer's face, he continued after swallowing hard.  "He calls himself the Great CumuloNimbus and he does a lot of illusions and disappearances.  He made the town-hall disappear last year, and the year before that he made the Mountgarden's garden bloom in winter.  Just for the one night, mind you.  He's very good."
"Did he bring the town-hall back again?"  It was impossible to tell if Playfair was being sarcastic or not, and the officer decided not to chance it.
"Yes, it came right back, right after the show.  Just like it had never been away," he said.
"At least he keeps the place tidy then," said Playfair sitting back at last.  "How many of his shows have you seen?"
"Uh, well, I don't know," said the officer.  "I mean, he usually does one every Christmas, and there's often a summer one, unless he's travelling of course, but then he'll usually do a Spring one before he goes then... and of course, he's a local boy, so you try and show a bit of support, don't you?"
"Do you?" said Playfair.  "You certainly sound like a fan.  Are you bothered that he's dead, then?"
"Now look here," said the officer, his voice getting gruff.  "Anyone dying round here is a cause of bother.  You can come here with all the attitude you want, and think that we have pigs living round the back and no internet connections, but we still do the job, and we do it right."  He rose to his feet while he was talking.
"I'm sure Playfair didn't mean–" said Miss Flava trying to step tactfully in before Playfair could speak again, but the officer cut her off.
"I'm sure he did mean it."
"I still mean it," said Playfair.  "And I'm glad that you're bothered that he's dead, as it means you'll have looked all the harder into who might have killed him.  So what you need now is someone who didn't know the victim, who can stand back with a little bit of objectivism and help sift the wheat from the chaff.  Or the pigs from the sheep, or the shit from the sherbert, or whatever else you might sift out here beyond the barricades."
"...Ayn Rand?" asked Miss Flava.  The officer sat down, looking a little calmer, although also a little puzzled as people tended to be after one of Playfair's monologues.
"Yes," said Playfair.  "Very odd woman.  I recommend you study her."
Now it was Miss Flava's turn to get annoyed.  "What, so I can be a very odd woman too?"
"No.  So that you don't end up like her."  Ignoring the look of fury on Miss Flava's face he faced the officer again.  "Look,... er... whatever you name is, from the report I've read, and I know that it's incomplete, you have a murdered magician and so far no suspects.  That can't possibly be right; if nothing else he must have had parents, and most murders are family affairs.  You've done a lot of digging, you've turned up a lot of evidence–"
"Tortoise shells," muttered Miss Flava, still fuming, but Playfair ignored her.
"–and now it's time to find out what that evidence is telling us.  I've been sent to help out, and that's what I'm going to do.  Now, tell me all about Stormy the Magician."
"Who? And my name's Alf, Sir."  The Sir was delivered meaningfully, with a strong intimation that it could be taken away again just as quickly.
"The Great CumuloNimbus," said Playfair not quite patiently.  "CumuloNimbuses are stormclouds."
"I never knew that!" said Alf.

Interview room A

"Bugger what?" said Playfair, still emptying pockets.  He'd found one that appeared to contain just a large amount of lint, which he happily strewed over the counter.
"What?" said the officer behind the counter.
"It sounded like an instruction," said Playfair.  "And given that we're out in the blasted wastelands here, I wondered if you were expecting it to be followed."
"What?"
"Playfair, I think he believes that you're you," said Miss Flava, marvelling at the junk in her boss's pockets, and also noting that he'd not produced any other card than an Oyster card, despite producing about five different ones when interviewing the priest earlier.  "Can you stop emptying pockets and let's get on?"
"Dead bodies don't get any deader," said Playfair, but it was relatively gentle.  He stirred the large pile of junk on the counter  and fished the string and sealing wax out of it.  "I don't want the rest," he said.  "You have a bin, I suppose?  Or does it all get fed to the pigs?"
The officer behind the counter went pink, but picked up a plastic waste-bin lined with a translucent white plastic bag and swept everything Playfair had dropped on the counter into it.  He put it back down on the floor, then leaned on the counter, his fingers interlinked in front of him.
"This is about that man what they found in the church, isn't it?" he said.  "You'd probably better come into the interview room then.  Door over there, it's not locked."  He pointed, and Miss Flava looked, and nodded.  "I'll just have to get Henry out from the back-room to man the counter.  We don't like not having an officer visibly on duty."  If Playfair noticed the jibe he paid it no attention.
The interview room was rectangular and cold.  There was a table with two plastic chairs on one side and a third on the other.  A couple of sheets of white A4 copier paper lay scattered on the desk, and a cheap plastic pen was on the floor under the table.  Small windows, high-up, let in a begrudging amount of rather grey light and the room smelled of disinfectant.
"Now the murder happened in the church," said Playfair, sitting on the single chair and leaving Miss Flava to choose which of the other two chairs she disliked least.  She opted for the blue one, leaving the orange one free.  "That will cause them problems, spilled blood can deconsecrate churches if I remember right."
"I think it takes a fair amount of spilled blood," said Miss Flava.  "But I don't think he meant that the murder took place inside the church building, just on the church grounds."
"Then he should say so!"  Playfair leaned back, balancing the chair on two legs.  He wobbled.
"Who should say so?" The officer from behind the desk came in, closing the door behind him.  He pressed a switch on the wall next to the door.  "Just letting people know that the room's in use," he said.  "Probably don't need to lock you in, heh?"
"You should say so," said Playfair.  "You said that the murder happened inside the church, while the report I've read says that the body was found in some woods.  That would be what I like to call a discrepancy."
"The body was found in the woods," said the officer sitting on the free chair.  He seemed uncomfortable sitting on the same side as Miss Flava, and shuffled and scooted his chair round until he was at the end of the table, facing both of them.   "But it looked like he'd been murdered several times over, and then dumped in the woods.  For him to bleed out like that, we think he must have been murdered quite close by, and the only building nearby is the church."
"You see–" started Miss Flava, but Playfair leapt in and spoke right over her.
"I've not seen the coroner's report yet.  What do you mean, he was murdered several times over?"
"Well, strangled, stabbed, beaten and hanged," said the officer, looking apologetically at Miss Flava as he tried to acknowledge that she'd been speaking first.  "It seemed a bit excessive if you ask me."
"Perhaps he was well-hated?"  Playfair was being a little flippant, but the meaning was clear.
"Not that we've been able to find out.  His name was Iain MacLeod, and up until three days ago he was drawing a capacity crowd to the Mountgarden theatre every weeknight.  Seems like he was a pretty popular guy."
"He was an actor, then?"
"No.  He was a magician."

Little Haversham Police Station

Little Haversham Police Station had a car park that was three times larger than it needed to be for the number of cars in it so Miss Flava pulled easily into a space that was one of a bank of six.  She turned the engine off, and looked at her boss, who had unbuckled his seat-belt but so far not got out.  Since he often managed to get the passenger door open before she'd finished parking, she was wondering what the matter was.
"The barrier should have been down," said Playfair.  The barrier to the car-park had been up, allowing anyone to come in and park.  Or, as Playfair was now considering, come into and plant bombs underneath police cars.
"I think that's more of a London worry," said Miss Flava.  "Out here I don't think they have to worry too much about terrorists.  Lost livestock, pensioners, and a lack of traffic wardens seem to be Little Haversham's main concerns this year."
"If you start sloppy you stay sloppy," said Playfair.  "And that applies to many areas of life."
Miss Flava got out of the car rather than ask him what he meant by that, and he slowly followed suit.  The car-park was black tarmac with painted white lines, and a space near the door had the letters CC painted in front of it.  There were six cars already there, not counting her own, and they all lined up neatly as close to the door without infringing on the labelled space as they could get.  Four were patrol cars, and the other two were unwashed and looked as though they hadn't been driven in a while.  Three sides of the car-park were lined with trees, with the fourth side being the side of the police-station and the short drive they'd come up.  Birds sang and whistled in the trees, and there was a rustle and a scamper that might have been squirrels.  Miss Flava found herself feeling oddly relaxed.
Playfair strode across the car-park and examined the door in the side of the building.
"Locked," he said, with some satisfaction.  "Though I think I can probably get it open if you've got a credit card...?"
"No, Playfair," said Miss Flava.  "Let's go round to the front desk and introduce ourselves.  You're not here for an inspection, we're here to solve a murder."
Playfair looked a little disappointed, but fell into step alongside Miss Flava as they walked round the building to the front door.  His gaze constantly swept the path, the side of the building, and the fence that separated the drive from the road, but didn't find anything else to comment on.  The front doors opened with a squeak, and Playfair rang the bell on the counter several times with the flat of his hand.  The officer who'd been stood at the front desk had to wait, with his mouth open, until the ringing died away.
"I'm right here, Sir," he said, his voice indicating disapproval.  "There was no need to ring the bell, was there?"
Miss Flava cringed inwardly.  Telling Playfair off might have worked, but asking him to agree with the telling off was an invitation to an argument.
"I was testing it to see if it worked," said Playfair.  "I know what you provincial lot are like, you put a dummy bell on the counter and then all go off down the pub for lunch, and lunch ends slightly after your shift."
"I wasn't at the pub though," said the officer, with what Miss Flava felt was commendable patience.
"And the bell worked, so there's two surprises in two minutes," said Playfair.
"What can I help you with?"
"Detective Inspector Playfair," said Playfair, producing his Oyster card from his pocket and looking at it as though it had deliberately become the wrong card.
"Now him I can't help you with," said the officer.  "You'll have to sort that out yourself."
"No," said Miss Flava while Playfair sorted the contents of his pockets onto the counter.  'He is DI Playfair, and I'm Miss Flava."  Her warrant card appeared like magic, while Playfair had only managed to find string and, by the looks of things, sealing wax.
"Oh," said the man behind the counter, his face visibly falling.  "Bugger."

Knowing what to ask

"Did you see all those tortoise shells?" said Miss Flava as they drove away.  Calamity, sat on the back seat, barked now and then, mud still sticking to her nose.
"Yes," said Playfair.  "But Bartle barely noticed them.  What did you say he was?"
"A Reverend," said Miss Flava.  "You've got the case notes already, you only just read them!  You're... in fact, you're sitting on them now!"
"Oh really?"  Playfair didn't sound interested, but he did pull the notes out from underneath himself, tearing them only a little in the process.  He made a show of going through the pages once again while Miss Flava peered at the road names and traffic signs and tried to work out where she was.  For a small village, Little Haversham seemed to have a lot of very short streets.
"Can you believe where that idiot has parked!" she snarled as she braked hard coming round a corner to find a midnight blue, sleek, sporty-looking car several inches out from the kerb and dangerously close to the corner.  "See, Playfair, this is what traffic wardens are for!  Stopping people doing idiotic things like this!"
"That's not enough to justify their existence," said Playfair flatly.  "The Nazis did good deeds now and then as well, you know."
"You're never comparing traffic wardens to the Nazis!"  Miss Flava braked again just so she could stare at her boss in wonderment.  "What the hell have traffic wardens ever done to you?"
"It says here that Bartle is a Reverend," said Playfair innocently, "but it doesn't tell me what church he's part of.  Did no-one think that was important?"
Miss Flava gently eased her foot back on to the accelerator and the car moved forward again.  At the cross-junction at the top of the street she finally spotted the road she was looking for: Potsdam Drive, about fifty yards the wrong way down a one-way street.  Looking for traffic, and finding that they were the only car on the road, she indicated and drove down the one-way street regardless.
"He's attached to St. Samuels," she said.  "That's the church we saw, in whose grounds the body was found.  I think it's a C of E church."
"Hmph." Playfair shuffled the papers again.  "Just because he's using a C of E church doesn't mean he's Anglican.  A lot of those happy-clappy places use churches that have been sold off, and you sometimes have to look pretty closely to find out just what you're walking into.  I want him checked out properly, get me some background on him."
"We could just ask him, of course," said Miss Flava.  "We're in Little Haversham, I've no idea if they've heard of the internet this far outside of London."
"Fine, write it down as a question for later, then," said Playfair.  "By the way, you're going the wrong way on a one-way street."
"Not any more," said Miss Flava, making her turning onto Potsdam Drive.  Astonishingly, given how short all the other streets had been, this stretched into the distance.  She kept her speed low so that she could see hidden entrances; there were lots of trees and high hedges on the sides of the road.
"Also," said Playfair, and Miss Flava mentally sighed a little.  Her boss had clearly found things wrong in the investigation of the case so far, and not only would she hear about it now, she'd have to step in when he started on the luckless souls who'd not met his standards.  "Also, it says here that the body was found in the woods next to the church, not on the church grounds."
"The woods actually belong to the church," said Miss Flava.  "Though woods is perhaps a bit generous, it's more of a large copse."
"The corpse was found in the copse," said Playfair, gazing off into the distance again.  "I wonder if that's just coincidence.  You should have turned there, by the way."
Miss Flava restrained a snarl, having just spotted the sign announcing Little Haversham Police Station half-hidden behind a hedge, and too late to turn in.  She braked, and started a three-point turn.  This was not how she'd hoped to arrive.