Beating About the Bush

by M C Beaton

  “What is it, Gustav?” Charles sounded irritable.

  “The bloody editor of that fishing magazine,” said Gustav, “is holding court in the drawing room.”

  “But the house is out of bounds,” said Charles.

  “I told him that and asked him to leave. He refused. So I flung the bastard out and told him to bugger off. Now he’s demanding to see you and ranting and raving by the front door. It was all I could do to stop myself from giving him a bit of a slap.”

  “I’d better go,” said Charles, turning to Agatha, “but I really need to talk to you. Can I take you to dinner tonight? Meet me at that French place in Broadway. You remember it?”

  “I remember it,” said Agatha. “See you later, Charlie…”

  Charles tutted, shook his head, and ran his fingers through his hair again. Agatha decided that she had had enough of country sports for one day and headed for the car park. A small sports car had managed to become bogged down in a patch of mud. Some men were hitching a tow rope to the front of it and preparing to pull it out using a Land Rover caked with mud. One of the men saw her watching and laughed.

  “Hey, missus!” he yelled. “We’d have been able to drag this thing out of here easy as pie if you’d brought your donkey!”

  “Screw you!” Agatha snarled.

  She walked past, then stopped. She looked back. It was as if someone had switched on a light in her head. Of course! How could she have been so stupid? She grabbed her mobile phone from her handbag and punched in a number.

  “Toni? Get Patrick back to the office now. I’ll be there as soon as I can. I know who murdered Mrs. Dinwiddy!”

  * * *

  Patrick Mulligan was waiting by Toni’s desk when Agatha stormed into the office.

  “Can you find a map of the world that shows us the Middle East and Europe, Toni?” she said, perching on the edge of the desk.

  Tony tapped a few keys and a world map came up on her screen. She zoomed in, putting the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea roughly in the middle of the screen.

  “Let’s think this through using all we have found out,” said Agatha, “concentrating for the moment on Dunster, Bream, and Sayer, or Webster as we now know him to be. They have known each other for quite a few years.”

  “Since they served together in Germany at least,” said Mulligan.

  “Where there was the scandal of the stolen supplies. Let’s assume that they were involved in that scam. What would they have done with the stuff they stole?”

  “The easiest place to sell it,” said Mulligan, “would be in Eastern Europe. Even during the Cold War, when we were facing up to the Soviets all across Germany, there were thefts from British and American supplies with the goods finding their way east. The Iron Curtain wasn’t always as impenetrable as it sounds. Nowadays, if you know the right border crossing points, it must be even easier.”

  “So Dunster, Bream, and Sayer could have sold stuff in Eastern Europe,” said Toni. “How does that help us?”

  “If they were selling stolen goods,” Agatha explained, “it means they developed criminal contacts in Eastern Europe—people they could rely on to sell and transport stuff. Now let’s look at Afghanistan on the map, because that’s where they were next posted.”

  “It’s a big country,” said Toni.

  “It is more than two and a half times the size of the UK,” said Agatha.

  “I didn’t know you were hot on geography,” said Toni.

  “I used the interwebby thing that you showed me,” Agatha replied, “and I found out this morning that the drugs business in Afghanistan, especially in Helmand Province, is massive.”

  “That’s certainly true,” said Mulligan. “Most of the heroin coming into the UK comes from Afghanistan.”

  “Bream and Sayer both went missing in Helmand,” Agatha pointed out. “Bream temporarily, Sayer permanently—until he turned up back here. What if they were making the same sort of contacts in Afghanistan that they did in Eastern Europe? What if they were talking to the drug barons and warlords in Afghanistan, trying to do business with them?”

  “That would be a really risky business,” said Toni. “The Afghan criminals would surely have seen British soldiers as spies. They wouldn’t trust them. They’d be more likely to kill them.”

  “Risky all right,” said Mulligan, “but the money to be made could make it attractive. What would they have to offer the Afghans?”

  “Their contacts in Eastern Europe, perhaps,” said Toni.

  “Maybe,” said Agatha. “How does heroin find its way from Afghanistan, where there are no sea ports, to the UK?”

  “My understanding,” said Mulligan, “from the briefings we used to have when I was still on the force, is that the whole area is criss-crossed with camel trails that were ancient trade routes between Europe and the Far East.” He pointed to the map. “The most direct route is across Iran and into Turkey, which gives you access to the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe.”

  “And Eastern Europe,” said Agatha, “is where our gang could use their network of contacts to distribute the stuff or ship it on towards the UK. That would be useful to the drug barons. Every time the police uncover one network and shut it down, they must have to find another way to get their goods across Europe.”

  “That all kind of fits,” Toni agreed. “When Bream and Dunster were sacked from their jobs in the warehouse in Leicester, it was for running some sort of mail order business.”

  “If that was to do with drugs, it could only have been small-scale,” said Mulligan. “They didn’t actually have control of the warehouse. Dealing with large shipments would have attracted attention.”

  “They obviously attracted too much attention anyway,” Agatha pointed out. “They were found out and sacked. Clearly no one knew exactly what it was they were supplying by mail order.”

  “But at Morrison’s, they do have control of the warehouse,” said Toni. “Certainly at night, when the regular workforce has been cleared off the premises. And they have a facility in Sekiliv to take delivery of shipments coming in from Afghanistan.”

  “Exactly,” said Agatha, “and a regular delivery service from the Sekiliv factory right to our doorstep here.”

  “But they would have to bring the drugs in through a UK port,” said Toni. “They have electronic checks and sniffer dogs and things to find drugs, don’t they?”

  “There are lots of chemicals used in batteries,” Mulligan pointed out. “That could mask any scent. They might be packing the drugs in fake batteries that are shipped in along with the real ones.”

  “But how did Albert Morrison get involved?” Toni asked.

  “I haven’t quite figured that out yet,” said Agatha, “but we do know that he was desperate for money to prop up his business. The drugs operation would bring him lots of money.”

  “So who killed Mrs. Dinwiddy?” Toni asked.

  “That,” said Agatha, “is the easiest piece of the puzzle to place once you realise the two things that were missing from the murder scene. Dinwiddy’s recorder was not with her body … and Trotter’s muddy old Land Rover was not in the stable yard. He didn’t walk into Mircester to visit the betting shop; he drove! He must have made sure that he was seen arriving on foot. Then he placed his bets and left on foot, but he had the Land Rover hidden nearby and drove back to the stables. Doing the journey more quickly meant that he had enough time to clobber Dinwiddy, make himself scarce, and then show up as though he had walked all the way from Mircester. I bet he had the hoof ashtray with him in his car.”

  “We must very nearly have caught him in the act,” said Toni.

  “My guess is that he heard us coming,” said Agatha. “After he had whacked her, he just had time to grab the recorder and scarper before we arrived.”

  “So it was Mrs. Dinwiddy he was getting so angry about on the recording,” said Toni, “and he was talking to Sayer!”

  “The others are involved, without a doubt,” said Agatha, “but it wa
s Trotter who did the deed. He was the only one not at the party—apart from Dinwiddy. He is the murderer.”

  “It’s a great theory,” said Mulligan, “but you know what Bill Wong will say…”

  “Yes, I know,” Agatha admitted. “We have no proof. Still, it’s worth mentioning to him. I’ll give him a call later. Right now, however,” she added, nodding at Toni, “our best chance of finding proof is definitely in those sound files. Mrs. Dinwiddy was killed because she found out what was going on, and the evidence for that is in the recordings somewhere.”

  “I’ll get back to it,” said Toni. “There are still hundreds to plough through.”

  “Since I’m here,” said Mulligan, “I can give you a hand for a while before I have to get back to the hotel. We can transfer some files to another machine.”

  “No, Patrick, I need you to stay on the hotel job,” said Agatha. “Morrison is never going to pay us, so we need to collect our fees on our other cases. Maybe I could help you?”

  “I … don’t think so,” said Mulligan. “I don’t want to blow my cover now.”

  “What do you mean?” Agatha asked.

  “You’ve been the talk of the hotel,” Mulligan explained. “Everyone saw you on the news. You’re ‘the donkey detective’ or ‘the donkey lady.’ Everyone knows who you are.”

  Agatha’s face fell.

  “The donkey lady—that’s what they’re calling me? Will I ever be rid of that bloody creature?”

  “Give it time, Agatha,” said Toni. “It’s already yesterday’s news. By next week people will have forgotten all about it.”

  “Until the toy range comes out,” Agatha muttered, stomping into her office, “or the stupid stinking animal gets its own TV series!”

  The door slammed.

  * * *

  Agatha parked her car near the Swan pub at one end of the high street in Broadway. She threw a shawl over her head and wrapped it over one shoulder as she walked past the tables outside the pub. It was now almost dark, and too chilly to sit outside. Inside it looked comfortable and cosy, and she could see people tucking into hearty meals. No one looked in her direction. She was glad about that. She did not want to be recognised as the donkey lady.

  Why is it bothering me so much? she wondered. I was sure I had moved on. Maybe it’s because no one else seems to have moved on yet, or maybe it’s because of the whole situation with Charles. She cursed under her breath. The donkey should not be affecting her so much. Charles should not be affecting her so much. She hated not being in control. She hated being the donkey lady. The scarf would hide her face well enough to make it difficult for anyone to spot her. She had thought about wearing sunglasses, but sunglasses at night? Really? Only people who actually wanted to attract attention wore sunglasses at night.

  Feeling like a spy or some kind of secret agent, she hurried furtively past the bow windows of closed shops and empty tea rooms. The well-lit windows of the restaurants promised warm welcomes for Broadway diners, but she resisted the temptation to peer inside. She avoided any sort of eye contact with fellow pedestrians. Before reaching the Lygon Arms Hotel, she turned off into a side street where a discreet little restaurant bathed in the glow of a street light. It served French cuisine, not so fancy or pretentious as to leave you hungry at the end of the meal, but not so robust as to be pure peasant food. She and Charles had dined there several times in the past. She could not recall Charles ever having paid, but she was determined that he would do so this evening.

  Once inside, she was pleased to see that the restaurant was as dimly lit as she remembered. None of the other diners would recognise her. Santa Claus could walk in with Marilyn Monroe on his arm and no one would notice them. A waitress greeted her, and Charles waved and called out, “Over here, Agatha!”

  “Shh!” she hissed as she bustled over to the table. “Don’t make such a scene.”

  “What do you mean, sweetie? I wasn’t making a scene.”

  “I don’t want to attract attention,” said Agatha, moving the candle on their table away from her. “I don’t want anyone recognising me.”

  “Who do you think would recognise you?”

  “I don’t know—everyone. Apparently I’m known as ‘the donkey lady.’”

  “Ah, yes, I’ve heard about that.”

  “The entire planet has heard about it, Charles.”

  “You’re not wrong there. Gustav showed me the social media internet stuff. You’ve gone viral.”

  “Oh, great. So now I’m not just a laughing stock, I’m a virus as well.”

  “It means that you’re popular, Agatha. You and your catchphrase.”

  “I have a catchphrase?”

  “Yes. It used to be only you that said it. Now everyone is apparently saying ‘snakes and bastards’!”

  Agatha hid her face in her hands. “I can’t stand it!” she said. “I thought I was going to be famous, not a figure of fun!”

  “Hey, this isn’t like you, sweetie. This is the kind of thing you normally wrestle into submission. I thought you would have shrugged it off by now.”

  “I had. I really had. I thought I had, anyway. But I don’t want to be the donkey lady.”

  “On the bright side, not many people have such a good catchphrase.”

  “You’re not funny, Charles—or is it really Charlie nowadays?”

  “Mmm,” Charles grunted, picking up the wine list. “You wouldn’t like to change places with me, would you? I think I could cope with being the donkey lady better than I’m dealing with this whole marriage business. Let’s order some wine.”

  They chose a bottle of Pinot Gris, and once the wine waiter was out of earshot, Agatha was first to speak.

  “I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to forgive you for not telling me about Mary straightaway,” she said, “but I would like to know how you got yourself into this mess.”

  “It’s not necessarily a complete mess,” said Charles. “It’s just a bit awkward. All to do with money, you see.”

  “But we got your finances on a fairly even keel,” said Agatha. “The broker I put you in touch with—my own broker—is the best in the business. He had your investments ticking over nicely.”

  “Yes, but it was never really enough of an income,” said Charles, “and then one of the chaps at my club put me on to what sounded like an unbeatable investment. A consortium mining for gold in the Amazon. Trouble is, they’ve now been told they can’t do it. Too ecologically harmful, apparently. So until they find a way to extract the gold without destroying the rainforest and polluting the rivers, the gold is staying in the ground, and my money is buried with it.

  “Then Mary’s father contacted me. His little girl wants a certain lifestyle, and what Mary wants, she apparently gets.”

  “Amazing,” said Agatha. “Aphrodite, Dinwiddy, and now Mary, all trying to use money to get men to give them what they want. The female of the species…”

  “I don’t follow you,” said Charles, “but I am starting to think I’ve made a total hash of this. You were right when you said that the very people Mary wants to impress, the very set she aspires to join, are laughing at her behind her back. ‘Bloody Mary’ they’re calling her, because of her family business in—”

  “I get it.”

  “And ‘the Brown-Field Sight’ because she’s not the most—”

  “I get that, too.”

  “It’s all rather irksome. I mean, I don’t much care what they think or say—don’t much care for them at all. But the Brown-Fields are going to force me to mix with them all the time. Gymkhanas and shooting weekends and riding with the hunt. Not that they’re allowed to hunt anything nowadays. They just charge around the countryside on bloody great horses tooting horns and drinking port. It’s not for me, Aggie. Not for me at all.”

  “And what does Gustav think of Mary?” Agatha already knew the answer. Gustav did not approve of Charles’s relationship with Agatha. Gustav did not approve of Charles having a relationship with any wom
an who did not come from the right stock. To Gustav, breeding was everything, which was probably why he was so tight-lipped about his own mysterious foreign roots.

  “Gustav despises Mary and her family, as I think you have probably already guessed. He is an utter snob. He thinks I should find a way out of this fiasco and call it all off.”

  “I agree with Gustav,” said Agatha. “You should call it all off.”

  “Then that will be my mission,” said Charles. “Let’s drink to it.”

  They touched glasses and sipped the chilled white wine.

  “So what about your murder case?”

  Agatha brought Charles up to date on events at Morrison’s as they ordered and ate their meal. He listened intently.

  “And where does Chris Firkin fit into all this?” he asked eventually.

  “He is like a breath of fresh air,” said Agatha. “He is taking me to dinner on Friday night.”

  “I know,” said Charles. “He told me. I felt like he was asking my permission.”

  “And you said…?”

  “I told him you were a free agent. You do as you please. No man can conquer Agatha Raisin.”

  “As if he would even want to try”—Agatha sighed—“to conquer the donkey lady.”

  “He would be mad not to try,” said Charles, and there was an awkward pause when they both realised they were staring into each other’s eyes. “Anyway, it could be worse,” he said in a jolly voice, breaking the spell. “You could have been called ‘the farting donkey lady’.”

  “Too soon, Charles, too soon. I’m not ready to laugh about it yet.”

  They chatted for the rest of the evening like old friends, before, to save Charles the embarrassment of pretending that he had left his wallet in another jacket or on the side table in his bedroom, Agatha reneged on her promise to herself and insisted on paying. Outside the restaurant they hugged, and then, knowing she was losing the will to resist the urge to kiss him, she pushed him away and hurried to her car.