Beating About the Bush

by M C Beaton

  “Apart from a murder and media circus, you mean?”

  Agatha shot her a look.

  “Okay, I’m going.”

  “Mrs. Raisin!” Agatha heard John Sayer approaching. Or rather, the missing-presumed-dead Lieutenant Neil Webster. She eyed him cautiously, determined to maintain a neutral expression. She was not prepared to give him even an inkling of the questions that were racing through her mind. Why did he blow up his Land Rover? How did he get out of Afghanistan? How did he cross borders and travel halfway round the world without getting caught? How did he get back into the country? Why was he here at all? “Was that your young blonde friend I just saw you with? Is she leaving so soon?”

  “I just asked her to check…” Agatha thought quickly, “that the press people were parking sensibly.”

  “I see,” said Sayer. “That’s a very good idea. We wouldn’t want any more accidents, would we?” Somehow, thought Agatha, he managed to make that sound terribly sinister, almost a threat, despite his sickly-sweet smile. “Mr. Albert would like to see you in his office once you have finished here. I will take you up there.”

  “Fine by me,” said Agatha. “Now if you will excuse me, we have to get started.” So I have been summoned, she thought. All this must be getting right up Morrison’s nose. Well, if he is getting rattled, then he may let something slip. I’m looking forward to having a chat with Albert Morrison.

  Roy clapped his hands, jumping up and down to make sure that everyone could see him, and called for attention. Sayer shrank off into the background, positioning himself, Agatha noted, as though he were guarding the route from the stable yard to the factory. She looked in the other direction and saw Dunster lumber into view, lurking on the route towards the drive. We are being contained, she thought. They don’t want any of us wandering around where we shouldn’t.

  “Now come along, everyone,” Roy called, projecting his voice across the small crowd of press people. “Now that we’re all here, I want to introduce you to a very special character. Ladies and gentlemen, the adorable Wizz-Wazz!”

  That was Peter Trotter’s cue to present the star of the show. He hauled on the donkey’s harness, dragging Wizz-Wazz towards the waiting photographers and journalists. She still had the fun fur draped around her shoulders. Even now, in its dishevelled state, Agatha coveted the coat. It had been such a lovely thing to wear. Why on earth had she given it to the donkey? As soon as I get the chance, she promised herself, I am taking myself off on a shopping trip to London to find a nice new clean one just like it.

  “Come on, you stinkin’ swine,” muttered Trotter out of the side of his mouth. Wizz-Wazz grunted and viewed the strangers in her yard with hooded eyes. She doesn’t look happy, thought Agatha. Maybe I can calm her down and—

  “Thass ma Wizz-Wazz, baby!” The shrill of Aphrodite Morrison was unmistakable. John Sayer led her forward and then let her loose in the stable yard. Her blonde hair tumbled in waves down to her shoulders. She wore sunglasses, a gold Puffa jacket, black leggings emblazoned with gold stars, and gold hi-top trainers. She was showered with flashes from a dozen cameras as she stepped in front of the photographers.

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” called Roy, determined to recapture centre stage. “This is Wizz-wazz’s devoted owner—”

  “I am Aphro-nighty Norrishon,” slurred Aphrodite, advancing towards Wizz-Wazz, stumbling slightly and holding out a carrot. Incredible, thought Agatha. It’s barely ten thirty in the morning and she is plastered! Drunk as a skunk!

  Wizz-Wazz made a grab for the carrot, and in doing so nipped one of Aphrodite’s fingers.

  “Yeeeoww!!” she squealed. “Shon of a bitch!” She drew back her arm and aimed a slap at the donkey, who easily dodged out of the way. Aphrodite followed through and caught Peter Trotter full in the face. Cameras whirred and flashes fired, but Roy was already on top of things, having positioned himself between Aphrodite and the photographers, effectively blocking any chance they had of capturing the moment on film.

  The real photo opportunity, as Sayer stepped in to hustle Aphrodite away, came an instant later, when Wizz-Wazz sauntered past the press pack to Agatha, gently tucked her head under Agatha’s arm and turned her huge brown eyes to face the cameras. It was a pose so gloriously endearing that it captivated even the most hardened cynics of the media corps, and a low chorus of “Aaah” could be heard while the cameras clicked and whirred.

  Reporters clamoured for Agatha’s attention as the flashes continued to burst. In front of them all stood Charlotte Clark. She grinned and mouthed, “Exclusive.” Agatha nodded, and then Charlotte all but disappeared as reporters thrust arms over her head, pointing microphones and recorders in her direction. “How did you make friends with Wizz-Wazz, Agatha? Why does she love you so much?” Agatha could hear herself answering their questions as though it were someone else talking. For a moment she felt strangely detached, her mind racing, because at that instant she realised what was missing from the murder scene. No—she briefly turned to survey the stable yard—there was something else. The picture was still incomplete, but she now knew what one of the missing pieces looked like. All they had to do was find it.

  * * *

  Their questions exhausted, Roy Silver ushered the press people back towards their cars. “Don’t forget,” he said. “We will have a product launch here tomorrow at the same time, with press packs and giveaways and details of how to run competitions so that your readers can win the chance to meet Wizz-Wazz in person and…”

  Agatha led Wizz-Wazz back to her loose box. Am I getting to like you? she wondered. I doubt you will ever be my favourite animal, but maybe … She stroked the donkey’s head, then caught a whiff of donkey pong from her own hand … Maybe not.

  Trotter appeared and slammed shut the loose box door. He had a red mark on the side of his face.

  “You don’t have much luck with women, do you, Trotter?” Agatha said.

  “You better watch your mouth,” he hissed, taking a step towards her.

  “Cut that out, Trotter!” John Sayer strode across the yard. Trotter spat on the ground at Agatha’s feet and skulked away.

  “He’s such a charmer,” said Agatha to Sayer. “What rock did you find him under, Mr. Human Resources Manager?”

  “Would you come with me, please? Mr. Albert is waiting for you.”

  Albert Morrison looked up from a document on his desk, his face grim, when Sayer showed Agatha into his office.

  “Mrs. Raisin,” he said, pointing out of the window towards the stables. “I dislike having that sort of pantomime performed on my premises!”

  “Good morning to you too, Mr. Morrison,” said Agatha. “Your wife played something of a starring role in that pantomime, didn’t she?”

  “You leave my wife out of this!” shouted Morrison. “You have caused us nothing but embarrassment here, Mrs. Raisin, and I want you out. Your contract is terminated.” He picked up the document on his desk and held it in front of Agatha so that she could see it was the contract they had signed, then tore it to shreds and dumped it in a pile back on the desk.

  “Very dramatic,” said Agatha, “but I have a copy of that contract, too.”

  “Then you will know,” said Morrison, “that there is a clause in it forbidding you from doing anything that might bring the company name into disrepute. You are most certainly in breach of that clause. You won’t be getting a penny in payment.”

  A side door to the office opened and Angus Bream strutted in, his hand clamped around Toni’s upper arm. He shoved her roughly towards Agatha.

  “She is never to be allowed on these premises again under any circumstances,” Morrison declared. “You, Mrs. Raisin, will confine your activities tomorrow to the stable yard. I never want to see you again. Now get out.”

  Agatha gave Toni a look of concern. Toni nodded and shrugged. She was fine.

  “I’m going,” said Agatha, leaning across the desk, “but you have not seen the last of me, Albert Morrison.” She flipped th
e pile of torn paper into the air and it rained down on Morrison like giant confetti. Agatha Raisin then left the building.

  * * *

  Agatha, Toni, and Roy sat in the King Charles pub opposite the Raisin Investigations office. They ordered sandwiches and drinks and used their lunch to review the events of the morning.

  “I thought it all went exceptionally well,” said Roy, “apart from the Aphrodite incident and we needn’t worry too much about that. Most of the press didn’t really see what happened and none of them got a photo. There will be some utterly divine shots of you with Wizz-Wazz, though, Aggie. You looked sensational together!”

  “I think I managed to give them plenty about how wonderful she is.” Agatha smiled. “The big question was always: if Wizz-Wazz is innocent, then who did kill Mrs Dinwiddy?”

  “You need to stick to the plan on that one, Aggie dear,” said Roy. “You can’t comment on an ongoing investigation. Tomorrow, once we have led them through the campaign again, you can give Raisin Investigations a big plug, talk about your track record, and say that any evidence you uncover will be handed to the proper authorities.”

  “Not that we really have any evidence yet,” said Toni.

  “Not yet,” said Agatha, “but I now know what we should be looking for.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Toni.

  “Something that was definitely missing from the murder scene,” Agatha explained. “Mrs. Dinwiddy’s digital recorder.”

  “Of course!” said Toni. “She always carried that thing on a strap around her wrist. I would have seen it when I checked her pulse. It definitely wasn’t there.”

  “And whoever she recorded on that thing,” said Agatha, “and whatever they said may well be what led to her death. I think Mrs Dinwiddy found out something that meant she had to be silenced.”

  “So we have to find her recorder,” said Toni. “Where do we start looking? At the factory?”

  “It’s not going to be easy to get back in there,” Agatha said. “You are completely banned and they’ll never let me out of their sight. What happened to you this morning?”

  “Actually, I did find a way into the factory,” said Toni. “Bream kept yelling at me to tell him how I managed it. I told him that I walked in the front door, but he didn’t believe me. He caught me chatting to one of the girls in the dispatch department. She told me that they are all kicked out of the place at the end of the day, but that often when they come back in the morning, it’s obvious that people have been in there during the night. Then Bream grabbed me and hauled me away.”

  “So how did you get in?” Roy asked.

  “The R&D building isn’t secure,” Toni explained. “Most of it’s burnt out. The doors to the outside are hanging off. The part that is attached to the side of the main building is the least damaged, although it’s still all black and charred. There’s no obvious way through, but there was a door to a ladies’ loo in R&D. It looked locked, but I gave it a shove and it opened. The lock and part of the door frame came away. When I closed it from the other side, it looked like it was still firmly locked. The R&D loo is linked to the ladies’ loo in the main building through a door that wasn’t locked, although it is now.”

  “How do you know it’s locked now?” Agatha asked.

  “Because,” said Toni, reaching into her pocket, “I locked it, and here’s the key.”

  “Very clever,” said Agatha. “So anyone who even suspects you came in that way is going to find nothing but locked doors, yet we may be able to use that route again.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a terribly good idea to me,” said Roy, shaking his head. “If you were prowling around and got caught by those dreadful thugs…”

  “It’s an option,” said Agatha, taking the key from Toni, “and right now we need to consider every option.”

  “Right now I need to use your office, Aggie,” said Roy. “I have to chase up a lot of stuff for tomorrow and try to make sure that you and Wizz-Wazz make some of the evening news reports. We will definitely have the regional morning papers, and that will bring the big boys buzzing like bees around a honeypot.”

  As Roy made his way across the lane, Agatha was suddenly struck by what he had said. Bees around a honeypot. She felt a thrill of pride and excitement. That’s me, she thought. I am the honeypot! After all those years in PR in London, arranging junkets and organising publicity for other people, I am now the centre of attention. The thing about Dinwiddy’s recorder distracted me, but all those press people were desperate to talk to me. This time I am the star. Agatha Raisin is about to become a celebrity!

  “See if you know where that is,” she said to Toni, handing her Elizabeth Thirkettle’s address. “I need to consider what I will say to my public tomorrow.”

  * * *

  Toni drove Agatha out of Mircester, along the road towards Charlbury. The day remained fair and Agatha gazed out of the car window and beyond the hedgerows to where fields lay already ploughed, prepared for winter. Some potato crops had yet to be harvested, providing green pockets on the patchwork of rich earth that spread itself across the gently rolling hillsides. Now and again she spotted red kites wheeling gracefully in the sky, their long wings outstretched to catch every thermal and helpful gust as they patrolled the countryside.

  “Sparrow Farm Lane should be next on the left,” said Toni. She turned into a narrow rutted lane and the car rocked from side to side, heaving itself from one wheel-carved trough to the next. Agatha felt her lunchtime sandwich threaten to reappear, but the lane thankfully smoothed itself out and they drew up outside a stone farmhouse.

  “This is it,” Toni announced, unclipping her seat belt. “Sparrow Farm.”

  The building was a large farmhouse, too big to be called a cottage and too small and plain to be deemed a manor house. An open wooden porch protected the front door, and roses stood in beds to either side, humbly offering their last fading pink flowers.

  “I think I was expecting something a little more grand,” Agatha sniffed. “It’s not exactly palatial, is it?”

  She rattled the large black lion’s-head knocker and Clive Thirkettle opened the door, his curly silver locks forming a halo against the darkness of the inner hallway.

  “Come in, Mrs. Raisin,” he said. “We have been expecting you.”

  He led Agatha and Toni through to a drawing room, where Elizabeth Thirkettle sat by an ornate wooden fire surround. Light flooded in from the large windows at the front of the house, and the room was furnished with two sofas and two armchairs, a sideboard, and a display cabinet, all solid Georgian pieces, as was the coffee table that sat in front of the fireplace. It was, Agatha decided, elegantly comfortable.

  Elizabeth Thirkettle stood to shake hands with her guests. They were invited to sit, and Clive left the room, promising to bring back tea and Garibaldis.

  “Thank you for coming, Mrs. Raisin,” said Elizabeth. “It means a great deal to me that you are taking this whole dreadful business seriously.”

  “Oh, we all are,” said Agatha, the image of a barking toy donkey flashing through her mind. “What I would really like is to find out more about your sister.”

  “That is us,” said Elizabeth, pointing to a silver-framed photograph on the mantelpiece. Two young girls in summer dresses stood smiling in the sunshine. The elder one was clearly Elizabeth, the younger Clarissa. They were standing, to Agatha’s astonishment, with their arms around the necks of two hairy, tall-eared grey donkeys.

  “The donkeys,” Elizabeth said, watching Agatha’s face. “That picture was taken in the field just beyond the front door, right outside this house. There were always donkeys in that field. This is where we were brought up.”

  “You’ve lived here all your life?” Toni asked.

  “Not yet.” Elizabeth smiled. “In fact, when Clive and I married, we spent a great deal of time abroad. The United States, the Middle East, Burma—they call it Myanmar nowadays, don’t they? Clive worked for an oil company. When Clarissa m
arried Henry Dinwiddy, she moved to a large modern house in Hampshire. Henry started life as a builder but bought and sold property, mainly around London. He became a very wealthy man.

  “When Clive retired and our parents died, we came back to this house, as did Clarissa when Henry passed away a few years ago.”

  “Did Clarissa have any children?” Agatha asked.

  “No, she never did,” said Elizabeth. “Clive and I have two sons, both grown up now and working in Singapore. They were brought up mainly in Asia, and they have stayed out there.”

  “So Clarissa inherited Henry’s fortune?” said Toni.

  “That’s right,” Elizabeth confirmed. “She had no money worries.”

  A clinking of teacups from the hall announced the imminent arrival of Clive Thirkettle. He placed the tray carefully on the coffee table and let out a sigh of relief, clearly delighted that he had managed to deliver the best china unscathed. Toni offered to pour and he gratefully relaxed into an armchair.

  “If Clarissa was a wealthy woman,” asked Agatha, “why was she working for Albert Morrison?”

  “That is something that I will never properly understand,” said Elizabeth. “She had always been very much involved with Henry’s business. She was a great organiser. Very efficient. Henry needed her backing him up to keep on top of the business. I think she believed that Albert Morrison was another Henry. She met him at a village fête in Carsely. She seemed to invest all of the affection that she once had for Henry in a new relationship with Morrison—transferred all her love to him. She adored him and couldn’t see, as we could, that he was not a very nice man.”

  “Absolute scoundrel,” muttered Clive. “A little warm in here, isn’t it, dear?”

  “Not now, Clive,” said Elizabeth. “Clarissa was devastated when he married that Aphrodite woman, but she was convinced it was a marriage of convenience.”

  “What do you mean?” Agatha asked.

  “The woman had become an American citizen,” said Clive. “No longer had a British passport. He told her that if she married him, she would be allowed to stay in this country. It is really very hot, I’m afraid, Elizabeth…”