Nick & Carter Holiday #24
Saturday, December 26, 1981
It's Boxing Day and Nick and Carter are renting a sprawling 19th century house in the heart of Auckland, in New Zealand.
The sun has barely risen when Nick sits up in bed after hearing the sound of a woman screaming.
While Carter rolls over to go back to sleep, Nick investigates the house next door where he finds a corpse who's been stabbed in the back.
Once the police detective arrives, he asks Nick and Carter for their help.
What they turn up is an unexpected connection to a sad and sorrowful time in their past...
In the end, however, some old ghosts finally find peace and so do Nick and Carter.
I have only read about half of the Nick and Carter Holiday shorts but of those I read, Boxing Day, 1981 is definitely the more mystery-centric and it definitely is one of my favorites(though I think I say that with nearly each one😉). As it's a mystery I won't say too much of the plot, being all anti-spoiler as I am, trust me when I say if you enjoy Nick and Carter then this is a must and if you are new to this universe, well despite it being the last in this series of shorts there is no real set timeline as it jumps all over the place(and that's not a bad thing with these guys) then Boxing Day is a perfect place to hook you in.
A little note of the overall series(so far):
I'll admit, I've scrolled past many of these entries on Amazon when they popped up on "recommended for you" over the past couple of years but in 2022 I was trying to find more stories that featured "forgotten holidays". Now by "forgotten" I don't mean holidays we don't honor in our lives but holidays that get glossed over or completely ignored too often in fiction. Honestly, Nick and Carter Holidays were a perfect fit for what I was looking for. Time didn't always let me read each one so in 2023 I'm hoping to enjoy the ones I missed and if Time is real good to me I'm hoping to discover the boys' complete journey(as much as I'm really hoping to explore their past I have my doubts Time has the same plan for me but one day I will make Time give me the opportunity).
I'm not going to say this series of shorts gives us a chance to see how the men got to experience the normalities of the holidays as the rest of us do because frankly, Nick and Carter are not your typical humans. Life seems to have a way of giving them experiences that most of us don't even dream of but through these snippets of holiday life we do get to see how much they love each other, how much their friends mean to them, and how much they love life in general. Be it humorous, serious, mysterious, or a number of other -ouses, I was never anything but completely entertained.
Tyne House
77 Tyne Hill Road
Tyne Garden Estates
Auckland
New Zealand
Saturday, December 26, 1981
6:12 a.m. NZDT
I sat up in bed, startled.
"What is it?" asked Carter as he patted me on the back.
"Did you hear that?"
"Hear what?" mumbled Carter.
"I thought I heard a woman scream."
"Maybe you were dreaming." Pulling on my arm, he added, "Go back to sleep, son."
I sat there a moment, listening to all the birds chattering, astonished at how different they sounded from the birds at home.
"Sleep," mumbled Carter.
I stretched out and waited for the sound of his light snoring. That was the sign that he'd fallen back to sleep. It didn't take long.
I slipped out of bed and pulled on a pair of BVDs and a t-shirt and then pulled on a robe, something I never usually wore. When we were walking around the house before taking a shower, that was how both of us dressed so we didn't embarrass the live-in housekeeper, Mrs. Smith.
I walked over to the windows that looked out over the kidney-shaped pool and tried to figure out where the sound had come from. For whatever reason, I had a feeling it had come from the house that was on the other side of the pool.
With a big sigh, I tiptoed out the door and down the hall where, as I was coming around the corner into the front hallways, I found Ferdinand, our Czech gardener and ersatz chauffeur at home, standing there with his hand on the door handle. He was already dressed, wearing his uniform of khaki trousers, a tight red short-sleeved pullover shirt, and leather slip-on shoes. The shirt changed from day to day, but, as he'd been doing for a while, he wore the same style of khaki trousers and the same kind of shoes. I wasn't sure why, not that I really cared.
"Did you hear it?" I asked.
He nodded. "Yes. Mrs. Grover."
"That's what I thought too." I made a sweeping motion with my hand. "You first."
He gave me his tight grin, opened the door, and then lead the way out onto the porch.
. . .
The house we were renting for the holidays was large. With five bedrooms and room to entertain thirty for dinner, it was nothing less than a mansion. That said, the only impressive thing about the place was the wide wrap-around porch that overlooked the front lawn and the park across the street. The building, which probably should have been two stories, rambled around a bit, having been built on a large lot. On the inside, it was completely upgraded with all the latest modern conveniences, having been renovated in 1979. The upgrade included the swimming pool, something that everyone we met seemed to agree was unnecessary and out of place.
The original owner, one Mr. Joseph Tyne, was a Welsh miner who'd made good and had built the big house for his young wife in 1892. They never had any children but had been famous around the turn of the century for their large parties. When the widowed Mrs. Tyne had passed away in '34, all her assets, including the house, had been turned over to the Tyne Trust, which still owned the place.
Whereas my Welsh great-grandfather had made his money during the California gold rush of 1849, Mr. Tyne had made his money by mining a variety of metals on both the North Island (where Auckland was located) and the South Island. Accounts varied but, from what I understood, he'd had his hand in gold, silver, copper, and antimony. It was, in fact, antimony which killed him. Apparently, the effect is similar to arsenic and, when he passed in 1912, it caused quite a sensation.
The man who'd run his company, a Mr. Thomas Selkirk, had been accused of murdering his employer with arsenic. He'd been quickly tried, found guilty, and was sentenced to hang.
An English chemist by the name of Robert Underwood happened to arrive in New Zealand the day after the judge handed down the death sentence. After Mr. Underwood read about the trial in the paper, he approached the police and explained how, in a poisoning case, arsenic could be mistaken for antimony. Since it was well known that Mr. Tyne had been in the habit of handling antimony in the course of his work, Mr. Underwood had suggested that, maybe, he'd accidentally poisoned himself. Mr. Selkirk was released after the new information was brought to the attention of the court. A new inquest (I was pretty sure that was the word) had been held and determined the old man died of accidental exposure to antimony.
Carter, of course, was the one who'd started looking into the history of the house after we'd first arrived on the 20th. He'd quickly found a historian who knew all there really was to know about the house and its original owner. Dr. Marcus Robinson taught history at The University of Canterbury in Christchurch on the South Island and had done a lot of research on Mr. Tyne and Tyne Metals, the company he'd founded. Since Dr. Robinson was spending the holidays in Auckland with family, Carter had invited him and his wife over for dinner and a tour of the house. That was when we heard all about the 1912 trial and the fact that Mr. Joseph Tyne was born David Lloyd Jones just outside Cardiff in 1832.
Mr. Jones, as he was still known then, had set sail for Cape Town in 1861 and spent 6 years there before meeting Thomas Selkirk. The two left the Cape Colony (or, according to some sources, were expelled) in 1869 and, by 1871, had settled in Auckland.
Mr. Selkirk was born in Newcastle in the North East of England in 1829 and, by all accounts, had been a fisherman until he'd vanished from the area in the late 1850s and resurfaced in Cape Town in 1866.
At some point, David Lloyd Jones changed his name to Joseph Tyne. That happened before the two men arrived in New Zealand but after they left the Cape Colony. Dr. Robinson's theory was that Mr. Jones had taken on the last name of Tyne since Newcastle was located on a river of that same name and Mr. Selkirk was from there. In any event, by 1890, Tyne Metals was the largest mining company, by far, in New Zealand and Mr. Joseph Tyne was one of the first tycoons to live in the British colony.
He married Angela Marsden, daughter of an Auckland solicitor, in 1889 when she was 23 and he was 57. According to Dr. Robinson, she was working as a teacher and had never seemed interested in marriage before then. Her father worked for the law firm retained by Tyne Metals. How the two met was never clear since there were a number of conflicting stories. One said that Mr. Tyne saw her at her father's office and immediately fell in love. Another said that they happened to pass by each other on the street. A third version was that Mr. Tyne, desperate to get married, had asked his lawyers to set the whole thing up. Dr. Robinson tended to believe that story.
Their springtime wedding in early December of 1889 had been the event of the year. They'd honeymooned in Tasmania and then settled into wedded bliss in a rented house close to the Tyne Metals headquarters, he with his bedroom and she with hers.
Tyne House, located at 77 Tyne Hill Road at the top of Tyne Hill, overlooking the center of Auckland, across the street from Tyne Hill Gardens, a park Mr. Tyne had commissioned to be built for the city, and in the center of what would eventually be known as Tyne Garden Estates, was built over the spring and summer of 1891-1892. The first party was thrown in June of 1892 and they'd continued on a regular basis until Mr. Tyne's death 20 years later.
Meanwhile, Mr. Selkirk, who never married, always claiming to be too busy running Tyne Metals to find a bride, eventually built his own house at number 79, right next door to his employer who lived at number 77.
When Dr. Robinson got to that part of the story, Carter and I had both laughed. Dr. Robinson asked what was funny about the house being next door. Carter said it was obvious Mr. Tyne and Mr. Selkirk were lovers. Dr. Robinson didn't seem to like that, and his wife lectured us about the platonic nature of male relationships in the 19th century. They left as soon as they'd had their dessert which was an ice cream sundae that Mrs. Kimberley, the cook who came with the house, had called a knickerbocker glory.
Nick Williams Mystery Series
In 1953, the richest homosexual in San Francisco is a private investigator.
Nick Williams lives in a modest bungalow with his fireman husband, a sweet fellow from Georgia by the name of Carter Jones.
Nick's gem of a secretary, Marnie Wilson, is worried that Nick isn't working enough. She knits a lot.
Jeffrey Klein, Esquire, is Nick's friend and lawyer. He represents the guys and gals who get caught in police raids in the Tenderloin.
Lt. Mike Robertson is Nick's first love and best friend. He's a good guy who's one hell of a cop.
The Unexpected Heiress is where their stories begin. Read along and fall in love with the City where cable cars climb halfway to the stars.
Long before the Summer of Love, pride parades down Market Street, and the fight for marriage equality, San Francisco was all about the Red Scare, F.B.I. investigations, yellow journalism run amok, and the ladies who play mahjong over tea.
Nick & Carter Holiday Series
Welcome to a year of holidays with Nick Williams and Carter Jones!
This is a series of short stories with each centered around a specific holiday.
From New Year's Day to Boxing Day, each story stands on its own and might occur in any year from the early 1920s to the first decade of the 21st Century.
Saturday Series Spotlights
Author Bio:
Frank W. Butterfield is the Amazon best-selling author of 89 (and counting) self-published novels, novellas, and short stories. Born and raised in Lubbock, Texas, he has traveled all over the US and Canada and now makes his home in Daytona Beach, Florida. His first attempt at writing at the age of nine with a ball-point pen and a notepad was a failure. Forty years later, he tried again and hasn't stopped since.
Boxing Day, 1981 #24
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