chapter 3

On the ground floor of the house was a set of double doors, tucked away out of sight. Few people but for Ava and Butler went back here, but it was one of the most important rooms in the house for the mistress. Butler stood outside these doors now, wearing a set of black scrubs. He had traded his leather for a black surgical mask, and his harness for a stethoscope. Above the mask, his usually calm eyes were alive and determined. He stripped off the examination gloves quickly and hurried through the house, peering through different doors in his search for the mistress. He found her in the lounge, draped over a chaise lounge. Settled on a small bed of cushions on the floor was Nate, looking up at her with a dopey expression on his face as she languidly dropped chocolates into his mouth. She looked up sharply as Butler entered. Nate barely looked up at all, massaging his swollen gut as he swallowed blissfully.

“Permission to speak, ma’am,” Butler requested in a severe voice. She nodded, her brow furrowed, and he continued. “The patient has, ah, discharged from your care.”

Ava stood up with a cat-like swiftness. Towering over Nate, she smiled sweetly and offered him her hand to help him stand up. “Nathan, sweetness, it’s time to go home now.”

He snapped into consciousness. “Wait, really? No, I…*hic*... I think I can eat more if…”

“NOW, Nathan,” she snapped, taking her hand back abruptly. Unsteadily he got to his feet unaided, wincing at the heaviness in his belly. She pointed him towards the door with a steely smile. “Go home. You’ve done so well this weekend. Mummy’s very proud of her little pet. Get some rest and eat well for me, my love.” There was no room for argument and so, feeling rather stupid, Nate walked heavily to the door and left for home, feeling both twice the size he had been when he had entered and also very, very small indeed. Avarice turned back to Butler as soon as he confirmed that Nate had left. “The patient? He’s gone?”

Butler nodded gravely. “Just now, ma’am. I made sure of it.”

Ava smiled broadly for a moment, then closed her eyes dramatically and clutched at imaginary pearls around her throat. “Butler, darling, call for an ambulance. There’s been a terrible tragedy.”

“At once, ma’am,” he replied, the barest hint of humour to his tone. “I’m terribly sorry for your loss.”

Later that morning, Ava found herself sitting comfortably in a large wing-backed chair, accompanied by a very young police officer who spent the time that he wasn’t scribbling down her answers in a tatty notebook staring at the mistress in amazement. She had changed out of her latex into a tight fitting black dress, and the dramatic makeup she normally wore had been scrubbed off, save for a small amount of mascara which carefully ringed her eyes in her apparent grief. As she spoke, she would occasionally allow a single tear to drip prettily from her face into her cleavage. The officer was hanging onto every teardrop.

“He was just so young,” she sniffed, pushing a plate of glazed doughnuts towards the chubby officer as she did so. Behind them, visible through the windows, a team of paramedics were pulling an enormously laden stretcher through the garden around to the ambulance. The fire brigade had arrived in case the wall had needed to be taken down, but luckily for Ava the double doors in the back of Jack’s room had been just sufficient. The stretcher was covered by a king sized bed sheet. It was incomprehensible to think that the bulk that the sheet hid could possibly belong to just one man. The officer picked up a doughnut and took a large bite.

“Jack was your… third husband?” he asked as he finished his mouthful. Ava nodded, her eyes closed. He took another bite. “If you don’t mind me saying, Ms Leptos… your other two husbands, they also died under, ah… similar... “

“Both of my darling husbands were taken from me by heart attacks, officer,” she replied, placing a hand over her heart with an almost saintly manner. He had finished the doughnut, and there was now a sugary thumbprint in his notebook. “Taken in their prime.”

“From what I’ve heard, they were also morbidly overweight,” the officer noted, and Ava gave him a tearful smile.

“I… have a type,” she said, offering another doughnut. Her eyes lingered on the officer’s prominent stomach as she said this, and he shifted a little uncomfortably in his seat.

“And this business of yours, Ms Leptos,” he began, plucking what would be his fourth doughnut from the plate with sticky fingers. “A BDSM themed hotel? Myself and the other officers couldn’t help but notice that many of the people staying here were similarly overweight.”

“My business is all-inclusive, sir. I suppose my establishment attracts a certain kind of clientele due to my sterling reputation among the community for catering to all shapes and sizes.”

By the time the interview was concluded, the authorities found nothing suspicious to report. Just as always. They had been here several times, and Ava was used to talking rings around them by now. The police officer conducting the interview had eventually reached for a final doughnut, found to his surprise that the plate was empty, and ended the line of questioning. Like most men leaving Ava’s dungeons, he staggered to the doors, looking and feeling full and quite sleepy. When the emergency services finally left, Ava called Butler back into the room. He had been wearing full service livery, but had replaced his leather mask the second the officers had gone.

“Deftly done, ma’am, as always,” he took the liberty of saying, and she grinned smugly at him.

“Lock the rooms back up, darling,” she said. “You and I are going to celebrate tonight. Mistress is coming into an inheritance very soon. Tomorrow we start the weigh-ins again in earnest.”