Cravendish
CHAPTER THREE
Of course in the pursuit of his investigation, Cravendish started with the obvious places first. He climbed the trees that bordered the High Street, made kissy sounds down alleyways and scouted the roofs he could gain access to, searching for that foot and a quarter long ball of fur. He had spent some time in the grounds of the Royal Monarch Hotel, near fire exits and the outside benches, until he was chased off by the Hotel’s diminutive Chef while Cravendish was sniffing around the bins outside of the Kitchens. There were plenty of places for a cat to hide, but something - call it an instinct - either that or his stomach was playing up again and he was in need of some respite - led him away from there, further up the seafront to the café area of a small Hotel of less than reputable condition, called The Doublet. From beneath one of the tables, a small black cat slinked out in its affront to life in general. Cravendish made a grab for it. While fending off the dangerous claws and the hissing maw, Cravendish let out a number of expletives, none of which he was proud of.
"Come here, you wonderfully annoying ball of fluff!" he called after the bushy tailed demon as it jumped onto first a table, then a wall, before vanishing down the other side of that wall. Cravendish collapsed wearily into a nearby chair.
"You perhaps are having difficulties with your pussy?" asked a Teutonic man seated at another table. He was drinking from a chrome flask.
Cravendish looked to the bearded man and answered, "No, it's just that I have a case -"
"Police?"
A little illumination of contemplation flashed behind Cravendish's eyes, "No, a self-employed Detective -"
Finally something Hoehler could understand in this quite unique land, "Ah! A Detective?! I would ask of your help then, if that is possible?" he enthused with all the effort of a European not on a fascistic bend.
"How can I help you? A visitor to town, I take it?" said Cravendish, winning the award for the most obvious statement of the month.
Hoehler smiled a toothy smile. There was a gap between the first two, wide enough to pass a very low gauge train through, "Yes, I am. I am Kirk Hoehler, at your service -" If Kirk could have clicked his heels together, he might very well have.
"Cravendish." said Cravendish, as usual.
Hoehler expressed doubt that his grasp of English was going to be sufficient for this particular conversation. He had recently experienced a broad-speaking local, and suspected aliens had truly landed, right here in Brayburn, "I'm not understanding? Is that a forename or a surname?"
"Both." It was a personal point of Cravendish's to correct the misnomer when it occurred.
Hoehler nodded his assumptive knowledge, "Ah, okay - Cravendish? Right! It is about my - how you say - girlfriend, Antonia -"
"Yes, we say that too."
"Sorry?"
"We say girlfriend as well." replied Cravendish, slightly confused.
"Oh, right." said Hoehler, suddenly lost on the highways and byways of Cravendish's mind, "Well, she has gone missing. It is not like her to vanish like this. She is usually more - how you say - sensible?" There was a manner to the man that demanded attention, like a fish jumping suicidally onto a hook.
It was unsure if the conversation Cravendish was listening to was, in fact, of this moment, or he was distracted by something much more urgent, "We say sensible also." he said, entirely pointlessly, "Have you informed the Police, Mr Hoehler?"
Hoehler nodded vigorously, "Yes, but the Officer, he said that if she has only been missing for a few hours, then there's nothing they can do?" If Hoehler continued to wring his hands thus, his fingers might fall off and on to the cigarette butt forest at his feet.
"I kind of see their point, Mr Hoehler."
Hoehler was insistent, to the point of comedy, "But you don't understand! This is not like her! She does not do these things!" Hoehler made a grab for Cravendish's lapels, but retreated when he saw his action might break the poor man in half, if not rattle him loose somewhat, "I am scared for her! Please, Cravendish? Please help me?" There were people at the tops of bungee jumps or the open door of a parachute plane that were less anxious that him, which Cravendish sensed. He would have to be an emotionless statue surrounded in concrete and deposited in the deepest hole in the remotest part of the planet not to have sensed it, however.
Cravendish attempted to settle the man, seemingly one of the only skills he had managed to produce that was remotely useful from his time as a Private Detective. If only he could stand the sight of blood, gore, and bedpans, he would have made a good Doctor, with a bedside manner that could halt a herd of stampeding rhinoceros on ecstasy, "Right, okay. Calm. What can you tell me about her? When was the last time you saw her?"
Hoehler looked yonder, "I saw her on the Lawns over there playing with a cat similar to the one you were fondling earlier."
A light came on in Cravendish's dishevelled mind, flicking on and off like a strobe on a high setting, "Are you sure?"
Hoehler nodded vigorously again, attempting to separate his head from his shoulders in a form of penance, "Positive. I saw you with that cat only a few minutes ago -"
Cravendish crashed like a blind pilot attempting low flight through the Swiss Alps, "No, I mean are you sure you saw her holding it? Was there a diamond collar around the neck?"
Hoehler looked nonplussed, "Of Antonia?" Oh, and it started with so much promise.
With patience even an angel would envy, Cravendish replied, "No, of the cat?"
The torch of basic understanding passed to the next brave athlete, "I think so." said Hoehler, "Why? Is that important?"
The suicidal fish had not only become attached to the hook, it had also sMothered itself in butter and was waiting patiently in the pan for frying, "It might well be, Mr Hoehler! It might just be! Anything else?"
Hoehler showed signs that he too understood there was a significance there, "I am not sure. A big black car came past, and I did not see where Antonia went. Could they have picked her up? If there are diamonds? Oh, please save my Antonia!"
Cravendish suddenly felt the flush of professionalism ravage his body with the warm glow of accomplishment, "I'm not sure what's happened exactly, Mr Hoehler, but I accept your case! It tallies with my own, you see? I will find your Miss -"
"Berngaard."
"Berngaard!" Cravendish brandished the name like the ornate sword of investigation pulled from the stone of inequity, "I will return her to you, on the winds of the Brayburn Bay sea -" His swathing arm was rudely interrupted by Germanic rhetoric.
"The what of the what, what?"
Cravendish shot him a marginal glance of brashness, "Doesn't matter." he uttered before engaging the engines of further investigation, now filled with the fuel of truth, and the windscreen wiper fluid of righteousness, with just a smidgeon of the oil of success.
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If it weren't for the flick of the hair that danced the ponytail in a rhythmic samba, Cravendish might well have been out of the gravitational orbit that was Claire Ditherall. He was a gas giant and she was a bright shining star; he was a hulking nebula, while she was a spiralling galaxy of fascination. Cravendish was a dirty great moon and Claire was the beautiful arboreal planet. Cravendish was running out of space metaphors, and decided to give it a rest after imagining himself as a pointy rocket attempting to dock with the International Space Station, crudeness being not his style. Cravendish's style was in fact grey suit, grey tie and grey socks, peering from between his brown shoes and his unaltered and high trouser cuffs. When he sat down, he sometimes looked like an oversized boy in short trousers. He certainly had the knees for it. Whereas Claire; she had everything, and all in the right places, in the right proportions. Her uniform fitted her just right, and in such a way as to emphasise those parts most men, and some women, preferred to be emphasised.
It was all well and good looking at her, however. That simply appeared creepy, and slightly odd, but then that was remarkably Cravendish to a tee. He had talked to her, he had conversed, he had exchanged glances and she had placed a gentle hand on his quivering shoulder, but it had ever been thus, and not a modicum more. She was attainable, he was sure, but this Cravendish - this version of the man - was not the one for her. He would continue to strive to be the better version of himself, and be the part that Claire so obviously desired. Fate would continue to laugh at him from above the bust of Pallas, after kicking the poor bird from its perch and beginning to mimic the creature, leaving off the last four letters of its dialogue, just for spite.
No, Cravendish knew for her he was right, just not right now.
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