Charlie Cochrane - Mysteries with a dash of slash, romances with just a pinch of spice

I was looking for an old post about EM Forster on The Macaronis, and found this en route. I seem to remember it was from some very silly challenge or other.

Apologies for the Faint Smell of Fish (starring the actor laddies from Home Fires Burning)

“Apologies, apologies, apologies, apologies. For the faint, for the faint for the fai-ai-ai-ai-aint, for the faint smell,” the singer paused imperceptibly and took breath, “for the faint smell…of fish. Of fish. Of fish. Apologies, apologies, for the faint…” and she was off again.

Toby groaned. Modern avante bloody guard opera? You could go and stuff it. Give him a nice Gilbert and Sullivan patter song, any day, or something swish by Cole Porter, but not this load of old cobblers’.

“Remind me why we’re here,” he whispered into Alasdair’s ear.

“Supporting the boss.” Alasdair grimaced, making his heavily insured eyebrow dance an expressive jig. “Surely you can’t have forgotten his protégée? She’s loud enough.”

“Protégée? Is that what they’re calling it this week?” The girl didn’t have a bad voice, she was pretty enough—in a Junoesque way—but why on earth had she decided to launch her career in such a dire production? The Fishmonger’s Daughter. Even the title made your flesh creep.

***

“This should earn us plenty of credit.” Toby sighed. The relief of the interval, the even greater relief of the bar and a glass of red wine, the greatest relief of their companions for the evening having gone to powder their noses—at least he and Alasdair could steal one moment of quiet pleasure.

“Not the best faux-girlfriends they’ve ever foisted on us.” The eyebrow flew up again.

“More ‘protégées’, do you think?” Toby shrugged. “Still, if we smile for the cameras and applaud in all the right places, we’ll get to go to the bucks’ do.”

Boxing, Bethnal Green, black tie and not a woman in sight. Landseer actors out in droves to promote the new film about a gentlemen boxer of Victorian times. Toby couldn’t wait. Maybe there’d be pre-bout singing—it couldn’t be worse than what they’d had to endure in the first few acts here.

“I’ve never been to a boxing match before.” Alasdair seemed equally delighted at the prospect. “Will there be lots of blood?”

“Gallons, I imagine. And styptic pencils and grease and all sorts of black arts being practiced in the corners.” Toby laughed. “Good, honest sport. None of your sissy rubbish.” The last remark had not been just for the benefit of bystanders. Gay they might be, but effeminate they were not—which was all to the good as far as the studio was concerned.

“I’d like to see you try it.” The glint in Alasdair’s eye—the same glint he’d used in their pirate film—spoke volumes.

“Me in shorts, dripping sweat?”

Alasdair swallowed hard, concentrated on his wine glass and whispered, “Stop it” from the corner of his mouth.

“Landseer wouldn’t let me. Spoil my looks.” Toby grinned. “And here come the girls.”

“Maybe that’s a lucky rescue, for once.” Alasdair got his best welcoming smile ready.

The five minute bell sounded.

“Seconds out, round two!” Toby said, brightly. “Prepared for more haddock, ladies?”

The girls giggled, Alasdair rolled his eyes. Business as usual.

Although Toby could have sworn a certain voice breathed, “Wait till I get you on the canvas”, in his ear as they sauntered back to their seats.

Then nip over to the Lethe Press website and snaffle one.

Both tales are amazing.

Look at me grinning from ear to ear.

Homes Fires Burning was re-released in the autumn, from Lethe Press.

It's a combination of two novellas, one light hearted and one much darker (that latter being one of the best stories I've ever written, IMO, but more of that tomorrow.) This is from "The Case of the Overprotective ass", in which two actors who are playing Holmes and Watson find themselves asked to play a similar role in real life.

They’d left Johnny’s office and were down some stairs and along a corridor before Alasdair could trust himself to speak. “Why us?” He might have accepted the commission but that didn’t mean he was happy about it.
“The police weren’t interested, and…”
Alasdair cut across his friend; there was no time to waste. “I understand that, but why us? Why not a private investigator or someone else with the relevant experience?” He had a horrible thought. “He’s not still after you, is he?”
Toby snorted. “I should bloody well hope not. Surely he’s got the message by now? No, I don’t think this is all some cunning strategy to somehow get me alone and wheedle his way into my boudoir. Even if it was, give me some credit for being able to resist him.”
“I’m sorry.” Alasdair bit his lip.
“I’ll accept your apology if you look more contrite. Better. Now, are you sure, absolutely sure, that you want to take this case up?” Toby looked genuinely troubled.
“Of course I do, if only to see the smile wiped off his face when we succeed.” Another horrible thought. “Are you saying that you’d rather not be involved? You seemed so keen in there that I assumed…”
“You assumed quite right. I’d like to find anything to keep my mind off this bloody awful fiasco of a pirate film.” Toby grinned. “I quite fancy a diversion.”
“Then that’s a perfect motivation for both of us. You to stave off ennui and me to put one over on our smug friend.”
“Then, as your Commodore Neville has such a habit of saying, ‘There’s not a moment to lose.’” Toby bounded down a little run of five stairs and strode off along another corridor, Alasdair scurrying to catch up. They walked down to the foyer, the time for decision-making getting ever closer. Toby stood by the desk where they sold programmes and gave a huge, appropriately theatrical sigh. “Any idea where we should start, then?”
“Mr Bowe?” A sandy haired young man, very earnest behind metal rimmed spectacles but not bad-looking—apart from the knobbly Adam’s apple—came hurtling through a door and leaped across the foyer. “Mr Fisher said he’s terribly sorry, but he forgot to give you this.” He held out a small black-covered book.
Toby took it, perusing the pages and nodding his head. An address book. “Thank you, Mr…?”
“Hampson.”
“Hampson. I’ll try to remember the name. I suppose this book belonged to Robin Pierce?”
Hampson nodded. “That’s why Mr. Fisher wanted you to have it. That he should come to you for help, though...” He shook his head and turned on his heels, mission accomplished.
“What on earth did he mean by that?” Alasdair frowned.
“Probably thinks the same as us—that we’re actors, not detectives, and that this is probably all going to turn out for the worst.” Toby pocketed the address book safely against the rain which was still pitching down outside. “We should show him. Show the both of them. Where would Sherlock begin?”
“Bugger Sherlock. I’d begin with finding a decent pub, having a pint of beer and giving that book—which I note was sent down to you but I’ll try to ignore the fact—a dose of reasoning. There’s not a lot of time and we don’t want to be chasing wild geese.”

I'm delighted to say that my book of twinned novellas, Home Fires Burning, has been relaunched by Lethe Press. Very apt, given the anniversary of WWI this year.

Two stories, two couples, two eras, timeless emotions. In "This Ground Which Was Secured At Great Expense," it is 1914 and the Great War is underway. When the call to arms comes, Nicholas Southwell won't be found hanging back. It's a pity he can't be so decisive when it comes to letting his estate manager Paul Haskell know what he feels before he has to leave for the front line. In the trenches Nicholas meets a fellow officer, Phillip Taylor, who takes him into the unclaimed territory of physical love. Which one will he choose, if he's allowed the choice? In "The Case of the Overprotective Ass," stars of the silver screen Alasdair Hamilton and Toby Bowe are wowing the post WWII audiences with their depictions of Holmes and Watson. When they are asked by a friend to investigate a mysterious disappearance, they jump at the chance-surely detection can't be that hard? But a series of threatening letters-and an unwanted suitor-make real life very different from the movies. Charlie Cochrane brings her familiar romantic, roguish style to the two novellas that together are Home Fires Burning.

Excerpt:

The leaves on the copper beeches danced in the breeze; the late summer sun lighting on them produced a warm glow. Nicholas had always loved them more than any other trees on his estate, even in their bare winter form. Now, leaving the cab at the gate and savouring the walk along his own drive, he saw them afresh. He used to meet Paul under these branches when they were hardly more than boys, taking a chess set or pack of cards to play seemingly endless games bathed by the warm August Hampshire sun. There’d be no time for such frivolity now.

He told Nanny that he was signing up almost as soon as he reached the house, before anyone else. She’d been so proud at the thought of him putting his name down. “You’ll look a picture in your uniform. Have all those mesdemoiselles waving their handkerchiefs at you. Be careful you don’t come back with one of them on your arm.”

“I promise.” Only recently had Nicholas been able to address his former governess and not feel seven-and-a-half again. Even though he towered over her, she would always seem the grown-up one of the pair. “I hope to be off training in just a few weeks, which will give me time enough to set my affairs here straight. There are plenty of safe pairs of hands to entrust things into.”

“Young Mr. Haskell will keep a steady eye on things,” Nanny said, fiddling with her knitting. No doubt those fingers would be employed producing socks or scarves or who knew what else over the next few months. “You’ll be back come the spring, in time to see the lambs over at Longlea.” She made the pronouncement as if it were a certainty, as sure as Christmas Day falling on December the twenty-fifth.

“I hope so.” As Nicholas spoke the words, he felt a prophetic jolt, and knew it was all a lie. Somewhere inside—heart or brain, he couldn’t be sure—he was certain they were in for a long campaign. Leaving the old lady with her wool and her thoughts, he went out into the gentle light to find Paul.

As he walked down the path back to the beech avenue an instantly recognisable, elegant figure came to meet him, a gun hanging off its shoulder and an uncharacteristically serious look on its handsome face.

“You’ll sign up?” Paul didn’t attempt any small talk; it wasn’t their way. They usually met three times a week, if Nicholas was down in Hampshire, and those meetings always began with a litany of business, action taken or to be considered on the estate, successes and failures. Only when all the business was dealt with would Paul take a beer, relax for half an hour and indulge in chit-chat. A discussion of parish scandal, something which might have been called gossip if they’d been female, a brief harking back to the days when they’d traded all their secrets over that chess board. True to form, Paul hit straight at the crux of things now.

Nicholas wasn’t sure if the question was an order—you do this for the honour of the estate, I can’t—or some sort of expression of jealousy, that he could go where the other man could only dream of. He couldn’t dare hope it was the beginnings of a plea for him not to go.

“It’s my duty.” The words seemed inadequate, barely expressing anything Nicholas felt. Yes, he was bound by duty, but there were other considerations. He was, he knew, running away from conflict as much as running towards it.

“I’ll look after things.” Paul’s eyes registered something which might have been offence.
Nicholas replied hastily. “Of course you will. I’ve never doubted it.” He’d doubted his own intentions, of course.

He cast a sidelong glance at Paul, wondering what expectations he’d have. The estate manager wore his business face, a cool, clear eye surveying the fields, maybe weighing up the chances of the next pheasant brood surviving the depredation of fox or buzzard.

This is from last year's Speak Its Name Advent calendar. Jonty, Orlando, Rory, George and others, all celebrating Christmas throughout time.

Marley
Christmas 1914
Rory and George from Wolves of the West

Marley was dead. Rory looked at the body and shivered; dear God Almighty, was there to be no end to the slaughter?
“Too late. Again.” George was at his shoulder, ready to help bear the casualty back to the ambulance and thence to the clearing station. “Happy bloody Christmas.”
“Maybe it still will be. There’s another eighteen hours.”
“Were you always so optimistic?” George laid the stretcher down. They’d still need to get this poor soul back.
“What else is there to be? If I believed things couldn’t get better then I’d want to lie down in the mud with this poor sod and have done with it.” They manoeuvred the dead soldier onto the stretcher. “Can we not have one day without the dying? One day when the guns stop and we treat each other like fellow humans?”
“Hun as well?”
“Why not? If it’s true, the bit about the babe in the manger, then it’s true for them, as well.”
“Not just optimistic. Believes in miracles too,” George said, addressing the corpse. “Will he get one? A star over Ypres as well as Bethlehem?”


Christmas past
Christmas 1917
Paul and Nicholas from Home Fires Burning

“You caused a sensation.” Paul laid down his prayer book, slipped off his gloves and rubbed his hands together. “These feel like ice. Cold enough for snow out there.”
“Aye,” Nicholas replied, easing off his coat. “And they deserved the sensation. Will the world end because I didn’t communicate on my own?”
“It’ll be all over the county by Boxing Day.” Paul followed his lover into the drawing room, where a welcoming fire, a decanter of sherry and two glasses awaited them.
“I stood shoulder to shoulder with the ‘base, common and popular’ out in France. I can do so at the communion rail.” Nicholas slid into an armchair—God, his leg hurt in this weather—and rubbed his knee. “They’ll blame it on my wound, and miss the point.”
“Let them.” Paul brought over the glasses, taking his seat at Nicholas’s feet and resting his arm on the good leg. “They miss the point on everything else to do with this bloody war, don’t they?”
“There’s one point I’m glad they’ve missed.” Nicholas ran his hands through Paul’s hair. “Us. If it hadn’t been for France I’d never have summoned up the courage to say anything.”
“I’ll take that as the single shining star to have emerged over the last three years.” Paul leaned into his lover’s touch. “I’m not sure what we did to deserve it settling over our house. But I’ll accept the touch of grace.” He raised his glass. “All our lads far away.”
“Our lads.” Nicholas shared the toast. “Wishing them dry feet and warm hands.”
“This is the fourth Christmas they said it would be all over by.”
“Is it? I’ve given up keeping count. Maybe next year, then? Although I don’t hold out much hope.”
“Neither do I, but I’ll drink to it.” Paul raised his glass again. “To us, here, next year. And them. Home as well.”
“Amen to that.”

Christmas present
Christmas 2012
Ben and Nick from Tumble Turn

“Right. Let’s see if I’ve got this straight. Mine for Christmas Day. Yours for Boxing Day. Back of beyond for New Year.”
“Sounds good. Hang on, changing over.” Ben moved the phone into his right hand. Training had gone well today, but it had taken a lot out of him. Or had that been the lingering after effects of the weekend with Nick?
“That’s what you said on Friday night. When you...”
“Shhhh!”
“Why should I? Nobody can hear me. Which is the same as Friday night, too, which is why we...”
“Look, they may not be able to hear, but they’ll see me go red. They’ll think I’m having phone sex.”
“That’s a good idea. What are you wearing? Just your Speedos and your gold medals?”
“This call will terminate in ten seconds if you don’t behave.”
“I can always ring back, though. So is it just a towel and your 2012 goggles? Or just the goggles?”
“Bloody hell. Right, I’m upping the ante. Conduct yourself properly or I’ll take back your ticket to A Question of Sport.”
Nick went quiet and when he dared to speak, his voice had gone unnaturally submissive. “You don’t mean that. Not really.”
“I bloody well do.”
“No Matt? No Tuffers? No Paignton Peach?”
“You’ve got it.”
“You’re a hard man.” Nick sniggered. “Which is what I thought on Friday, too.”
“Nick?” Ben, said, exasperated, “ Tuffers. Remember?”
“Oh hell. Right, I’d better go, before I say anything else. See you on Friday.”
“See you. Oh, and Nick?” Ben added. He’d been planning this line for days. “Remember, behave yourself. Or ‘what happens next’, ‘home or away’, might be a round that’s too ‘quick fire’ for your liking.”
Nick groaned. “If they ever make punning an Olympic event, you’re a certainty for gold...”

Christmas yet to come
The future
Jonty and Orlando from the Cambridge series

“Where are we?” Orlando Coppersmith looked left, right, up and down. Jonty thought he might just bend down and look backwards through his legs in his confusion.
“December 12th, 2014.”
“That’s when, not where.” Orlando rolled his eyes. “And the date was obvious. It said so on the dial.”
“I still don’t know how you persuaded me onto Dr. Panesar’s latest creation. Or how it actually ended up working!” Jonty looked up at the large, handsome building in front of them. “It looks like London. In fact, I could swear that’s the Natural History Museum. I wonder if my glyptodont’s still there?”
“I sometimes think you love that glyptodont more than you love me.” Orlando sniffed. “Why are those women wearing so little to skate? And where did the ice rink come from?”
“No idea and because it’s the twenty first century. Either answer to both. Don’t you remember being here before?”
Orlando groaned. “The disco? With those awful women? I’d tried to forget.”
“The awful women who write?”
“The awful women who write rude stories.” Orlando lowered his voice. “About what chaps do in bed.”
“And in mud puddles and up against a cliff and who knows where else, if half their stuff’s to be believed.”
“Have you read it?”
“I may have done. Might have slipped a few books into the time machine when we went back to 1908.”
“Is it filth?” Orlando hissed, after looking all around him—although whether for eavesdroppers on the ladies in question, who could tell?
“It’s very moving fiction, of the highest quality.” Jonty drew himself up to his full five foot eight and a half. “Actually,” he added, smirking, “Some of it would knock your socks off. Possibly other parts of your clothing, too. Fancy a skate?”
“I’d love to, only what will we do for money? Do remember the debacle over the white five pound note last time? Lucky Mrs Beecroft rescued us or they might have called the police.”
“Money’s all sorted.” Jonty walked over to a clump of bushes, made a beeline for a particular rock which was half hidden in the soil, rummaged under it and produced an envelope. An envelope which appeared to be bulging with notes.
“Where did that come from?”
“Mrs. Cochrane. She suggested that next time we found ourselves here and in need of what she called ‘dosh’, I leave her in trust some small jewellery to sell and instructions about when and where to leave the proceeds.” Jonty waved the envelope. “And here they are.”
“But how did you know we’d arrive here, today?” Orlando’s eyes looked like they were about to launch themselves from his skull.
“I didn’t. I haven’t set up the trust or instructions yet. I’ll do that when I get home.” Jonty grinned at his lover’s discomfiture. “So are we going to skate?”
“We might as well. My head can’t spin any more than it’s already doing.” Orlando had taken three strides when he stopped. “Mrs. Cochrane. The small woman in the short skirt?”
“That’s her.”
“Writes filth?”
“Not really. Sauce rather than smut.”
“About chaps?”
“Um, yes.”
“Which era? Which chaps?”
Jonty grabbed his arm. “Come on or we’ll miss out on the skating.”
“But you haven’t answered my question.”
“I know. And believe me, I’m not going to...”

The excellent Cheyenne Holiday Sampler is back. (With 2 new stories!)

Why not download it right now? It has a free Jonty/Orlando short story and snippets from lots of other works, including Home Fires Burning

December 1915, behind the lines

“More wine?” Nicholas tilted the carafe towards Phillip’s glass.
“Seems a shame to waste it.” The little pension where they sat had a certain shabby charm; were it not for the sound of the guns in the distance, one could imagine oneself taking a little winter tour of Northern France prior to a proper Christmas at home. No such luck on that front—they’d been moved back here for re-training and amalgamating some “fresh from England and wet behind the ears” recruits into their company ranks, but they’d be back in the line by Christmas Eve at the latest. Still, the dispensation of one night’s leave and somewhere clean and dry to spend it felt like a blessing.
“I’ve not tasted wine this good since…” Nicholas stopped just in time. “Since we were in that cottage” would have risked opening old wounds which seemed to have healed successfully weeks ago. “Since I can’t remember when.” He smiled. Life was good, if only for a brief while. His initial reply to Paul had brought another cleverly written response, “the lad on the estate” being grateful for his employer’s understanding and Paul himself willing to act as broker in ensuring things were sorted out to everyone’s satisfaction the next time he was home on leave. More code. More seeds of hope.

Read more

Actually several words short of a flashifc, but a small adventurette starring Toby and Alasdair from Home Fires Burning, to be found over at The Macaronis blog. (Where you'll find several daft offerings in honour of a daft day.)

I'm delighted with Erastes' review of Home Fires Burning over at Speak Its Name.

She says of "This Ground which was secured at Great Expense", Absolutely marvellous read–please do not miss this one. I can only hold my breath to see where Cochrane goes next.

One by the lovely Jenre (reposted at Reviews by Jessewave).

For those who've never read anything by this author before, then this would be a great opportunity to see what you've been missing! Grade: Excellent.

And another by the equally lovely Gerry Burnie.

You can always be assured of a good read with Charlie Cochrane’s name on the cover.

Thank you, both.