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"Well, yes, of course I know Mister Dalgrin Balloch. In fact, he's dining in the Club right now." I was standing in the kitchens. Or, more precisely, in one of those obscure corridors lined with storerooms and other places with rather less well-defined purposes that led off from the kitchens. My companion was one Ronan Strathallan, the head waiter at Rourke’s, a private dining club whose corridors we were presently cluttering up. Rourke’s was not a restaurant, exactly. Even to be able to book a table for dinner, you had to be elected as a member, as well as being able to cough up the not insubstantial sum that was the annual membership fee. It didn't advertise, or even give any indication of what kind of place it was from the outside. Of course, that sort of exclusivity naturally appealed to those who measured themselves in terms of what they had which others did not. Just the kind of place that a moneyed, loud-mouthed bully like Balloch would want to be a part of. It seemed my luck was in today. Strathallan ran the place, more-or-less. Oh, sure, there was a Membership Committee, a group of pompous old buffers who no doubt prided themselves on maintaining standards, but nevertheless somehow managed to let in any nouveau-riche upstart who happened along. But there needed to be a steady and sober hand at the tiller, one who hired the staff, managed the purchases, handled the finances and also somehow managed to pay themselves pretty well besides. The head waiter himself was unusually pale-skinned, almost white, rather than the mahogany-brown of most Goblins. He was only moderately tall, but seemed even more so because of his extreme thinness. He had slender, sensitive fingers which made him look like a concert pianist, or perhaps an undertaker, an effect enhanced by his cadaverous features and his habit of wearing a tuxedo and black bow tie. He moved precisely and unhurriedly, even elegantly, at all times and exuding a sense of calm purposefulness - except when it came to shouting at the kitchen staff, of course. I had been engaged by Strathallan once, a few decades before. A club member had been found dead in one of the private dining rooms - the kind which even the waiting staff were not to enter unless expressly summoned by the means of an electric bell. But the bell had not sounded all night and, when all the other members had been ferried off to their beds - or somebody's bed, at least - nobody had emerged from the dining room. After much deliberation, and increasingly frantic knocking at the door to the private room, the staff risked the unabated wrath of the member by opening the door, which was locked, and therefore required the use of the sole master key, held securely by the head waiter himself. The esteemed member had been found sitting at the table, murdered most horribly. Foul Play, as they say, had been suspected. He was thought to have had a companion at his dinner table, although there was no sign of the young female when they opened the door and, when I had questioned the staff afterwards, nobody at all had a clear recollection of the lady in question. I had solved the case. It was actually a grisly case of suicide, made to look like murder. A clever, if rather desperate brain was behind it. The young companion had never existed at all; she was just a chimera created by a very well executed glamour, one which must have cost a small fortune to procure. The member in question was flat broke, completely bankrupt, and wanted to disguise the fact; through a series of failed investments and poor business decisions, he had lost the sort of money that, by comparison, the expensive glamour or even the membership fee paled into insignificance. There was even a thought that he wanted an old enemy - also a club member, of course - to be implicated in this apparent murder. I never proved that, of course. But such revelations and suspicions would have pulled the club apart, destroyed its moneyed exclusivity. As it was, it was all over very quickly, with barely a ripple of gossip or murmur of dissent. Strathallan was immensely grateful to get the police off his back, presented with a clear-cut case. So he ready did owe me a favour. "So, what's he like, as a customer?" I asked. "Member," Strathallan chided gently, unfailingly polite, "Please remember that all my Gentlemen are Members here." I grinned wryly. I do that a lot. Strathallan was such a stuffed shirt. But I needed his cooperation just at the moment. Better to play along. "As a Member," I reiterated.
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Part 9