The Curds and Whey Mystery. Bob Burke
told the story. I could understand where she got her fear of spiders from – that much was obvious – but how did that connect to the sudden plague of them that was apparently infesting her business premises – if it was infested at all. If she was that frightened of spiders, maybe she’d just seen one or two and overreacted. I know I probably would have.
I started asking the obvious questions.
‘Miss Muffet, do you have any enemies; anyone with a grudge or who might want to put you out of business?’
‘Oh no,’ she said, after thinking about it for a moment. ‘I’m sure I don’t. Who could possibly want to do such a thing? I don’t think I’ve ever had any problems with anyone.’
‘Has anyone shown an interest in buying you out?’
‘Well, I have turned down offers over the years, of course. It was always a lucrative business and people were forever looking to buy me out, but I always resisted.’ She frowned as she remembered something. ‘Mind you, there was one gentleman recently who did phone a number of times offering to buy the building. He was most persistent, but I kept on refusing. Eventually he stopped calling. I do remember because he had a strange, squeaky kind of voice.’
Motive, I thought to myself.
‘And you have no idea who it might have been?’
‘I didn’t pay much attention, to be honest, and I never thought to ask for his name.’
She drove around a corner and onto a long street. ‘Here we are, Grimm Road. I’m at the far end.’
Apart from yellow construction vehicles in the distance and a few cars parked outside some of the houses, the street itself seemed very quiet. But as I looked out of the window a most bizarre sight greeted me. Turning to Miss Muffet, I pointed to what I’d seen.
‘Is that a…shoe?’ I gasped in amazement.
Now I should point out that this wasn’t just an ordinary shoe that someone had lost while running from the scene of the crime. This was a giant shoe; a shoe the size of the building my office was in. This was a piece of footwear that dwarfed all others into insignificance – a mega-shoe. As I gaped at it I thought I could see… ‘Are those windows?’ I asked.
‘Hmm, pardon? Oh, yes,’ replied Miss Muffet with a complete lack of interest. ‘Those are probably windows.’
Considering what I was looking at, her response puzzled me. She was acting as if this was quite an ordinary event.
I nudged her gently. ‘You don’t seem particularly surprised at seeing what looks like a giant shoe at the end of your street.’
‘Don’t I?’ she replied. ‘Well, I do see it every day. It’s the Shoe Hotel. It’s been there for years. A little old lady lives in it. She runs it as far as I know.’
Now it began to make sense. I vaguely remembered reading about a series of themed hotels that had opened up all around the country over the past few years. This must have been one of them but, as themed hotels went, it was quite spectacular. It had been designed to look like a trainer – all white paint and blue stripes – and would never suffer from foot-odour. The huge entrance doors were where the (presumably very large) big toe would have been and the shoelaces were large plants that draped down along the walls. From the small number of cars in the car-park, business didn’t appear to be too good. That was significant. More to the point, it was just possible that the owners mightn’t take too kindly to competition from a local B&B and might be only too delighted to see it close its doors.
More motive.
I made a note to speak to this ‘little old lady’ on my way back.
‘And you’ve never spoken to the owner of this hotel?’ I asked.
‘No, I don’t even think I’ve ever met her. Ah, here we are,’ Miss Muffet said as she pulled into the driveway of a large house. ‘Well,’ she said as she stopped the car and we got out, ‘shall we take a look?’
From the outside the B&B didn’t look particularly frightening. It was a three-storey brown brick building with white lace curtains in all the windows. Very homely indeed.
But was there something odd about those curtains?
‘Miss Muffet, why do you have lace curtains on the outside of all your windows?’ I asked.
The look she gave me suggested she might be having second thoughts about utilising my services as a detective. ‘Those aren’t curtains, Mr Pigg, they’re webs.’
I took a second, closer look and, to my horror, I could see she was right. What I thought were curtains were in fact giant spider webs that covered all the windows from top to bottom. This lady hadn’t been exaggerating. If the webs were anything to go by, she did have a major spider problem and probably some major spiders causing the problem. I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to go inside now. In fact, I was thinking about turning around, running straight back to my office and hiding behind my desk until they went away.
Miss Muffet must have read my mind as she grabbed me by the arm and pulled me towards the door.
‘It’s okay,’ she said gently. ‘They tend not to be too active this time of the day. They mostly come out at night – mostly. We should be able to look around without being disturbed too much.’
I was disturbed enough already and I wasn’t sure that I particularly wanted to look around the inside any more but, for such a slight woman, she was incredibly strong; she propelled me through the front door and into the lobby before I could change my mind.
Inside, it was as if the whole interior had been redecorated by someone from Haunted Houses’R’Us. Huge strands of ghostly web hung over the stairs and all the furniture. Long wispy tentacles extended from the ceiling and drifted in the draught from the front door. One trailed across the side of my face. It felt like someone breathing gently on my cheek and I jumped in fright.
Miss Muffet laughed quietly. ‘After a while you just learn to ignore it.’
As I looked around I could see that, just like she said, there didn’t appear to be too many active spiders. I’d never heard of them taking afternoon naps before, but I was glad they did. Spider siesta meant they weren’t going to bother me – for which I was grateful. I could see large dark shapes huddled up in some of the webs but, understandably, I didn’t examine them too closely. The last thing I wanted to do was to wake any of them up.
Miss Muffet gave me a guided tour, but apart from all the webs there wasn’t much to see. The ground floor comprised a large dining room, a guest lounge, a small reception area, Miss Muffet’s office and the kitchen. The rest of the building was taken up by bedrooms. Other than the webs there certainly wasn’t anything obvious in the way of clues and I’m a very observant pig – I spotted the giant shoe hotel, didn’t I? By the same token, I was keeping a very close eye out for any spiders that might suddenly awake and decide they wanted to play with me.
As I wandered around the house a couple of things began to bother me – other than the spiders. Apart from the little ones that you’d find in any ordinary house, spiders weren’t too easy to come by. So where did the thousands of spiders that had taken over Miss Muffet’s house come from? Someone must have supplied them – and they were probably very specialised, so certainly weren’t picked up off the shelf from alongside the tins of beans and cereals in the local supermarket. That was certainly something to follow up. It was time to talk to my informant – although, if past history was anything to go by, he’d barely be able to inform me of his name let alone give me any useful information.
The other thing that nagged at me was Miss Muffet’s mention of guests. It meant she must still have had some staying in the house. So why exactly were they staying? Unless they were keen students of spiders there was no sane reason to stay in the B&B – especially with a lovely, shiny, shoe-shaped hotel just up