Beating About the Bush

by M C Beaton

  That night, as she rolled into bed, she felt very much alone, and she wished more than anything that Charles was with her. She strained to hear his car pulling up outside, or his footstep on the garden path, or the sound of his key, which she knew he still had, in the front door. She heard none of those things, and when she finally drifted off to sleep, she was still alone.

  Chapter Nine

  Agatha hurried down Carsely High Street, pulling her dark green woollen coat tight around her to ward off the morning chill. The heavy clouds that had rolled in overnight looked like they had sunk almost to the rooftops and were threatening the village with rain.

  A bell tinkled merrily as she pushed open the door to the little café. Like so many others in Cotswold villages, this was an old-fashioned tea room with a scattering of tables covered with crisp white linen cloths. Carsely might have been bypassed to a large extent by the tourist trade, but the village tea room seemed to survive quite happily without the seasonal influx of touring coach parties and day trippers. On the counter at the back of the shop, Agatha fancied she could see a selection of muffins for toasting and an exotic display of croissants. Later in the day the shop would serve heavy fruit cake and light scones with afternoon tea. At this time of the morning, however, it was the smell of fresh coffee that filled the air.

  She walked towards a vacant table. She knew that in this establishment there would be no choice of coffee with ridiculous names; no non-fat, one-pump, no-whip mocha, and certainly no ristretto, half-caff, dolce soy skinny latte with cinnamon. Here they served good coffee, black or white.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Raisin,” the woman behind the counter greeted her. “What would you like?” She was plump-faced, with a cheerful smile, and Agatha recognised her from her sporadic attendance at Carsely Ladies’ Society meetings, though she could not remember her name.

  “Morning,” she replied. “Coffee, please. Best make that two. I have someone joining me.”

  A quick glance around the café had told her that Mary had not yet arrived. The handful of customers all looked towards her as she hung her coat on the back of her chair. The old couple near the window nodded and smiled. Two middle-aged women did likewise, and an elderly gentleman looked up from his paper and mouthed, “Good morning.” Agatha listened hard for any whisper of “donkey lady” filtering through from the muted conversations in the room, but heard nothing. They might not be saying it, she thought, but they were certainly thinking it. Still, they seemed friendly enough. Her real adversary had yet to arrive.

  The plump-faced woman placed two steaming cups of coffee on the table. “There’s milk and cream in them little jugs,” she said. “Just help yourself. Looks like we’re going to have some rain, doesn’t it?”

  Agatha was saved from any exchange of pleasantries by the jolly tinkle of the bell. Mary Darlinda Brown-Field breezed in wearing a Burberry coat, carefully faded jeans, and fashionably fringed ankle boots.

  “I am so sorry I’m late, Mrs. Raisin,” she said, striding towards the table. Agatha checked the clock on the wall. It was only three minutes past ten.

  “Don’t be,” she said. “You’re not late at all.”

  “Oh, but I am,” said Mary. “I always like to be punctual, but there is just so much to do at the moment. Simply masses to sort out for the wedding.”

  “I’m sure there is,” said Agatha.

  “Of course, I’m not really telling you anything, am I? You must know just what I’m talking about. You’ve been through this whole thing a couple of times, haven’t you?”

  She might have quite a sweet smile, Agatha thought, if she didn’t have a chin like an open sideboard drawer.

  “Not, I’m sure, on the sort of scale that you are planning.”

  “Well, it really has to be quite a grand affair, I’m afraid,” said Mary. “We have a great many business associates who are close personal friends, and of course, we have to invite all of Charlie’s friends and they do expect these events to be of a certain standard, don’t they?” She settled into her chair and sipped her coffee, then stirred in a little more cream.

  “I very much doubt,” said Agatha, “that Charles has his heart set on the sort of society wedding you are describing.”

  “Perhaps not,” Mary said, her dark eyes meeting Agatha’s, “but it’s the bride’s day. That’s what they say, isn’t it? It is my day and I will not let anything, or anyone, spoil it.”

  “Why would anyone want to do that?”

  “Oh, there’s always someone who might crop up and cause a problem.” Mary lowered her voice to make sure that only Agatha could hear. “Of course, I won’t have a drunken, blackmailing husband turn up to ruin the ceremony like you did. It really was most careless of you not to make sure that your first marriage was over before you launched into your second.”

  “You … you seem to know a lot about me.”

  “Know your enemy, Mrs. Raisin. That’s another thing they say, isn’t it? Know your enemy. I made it my business to find out all about you. You are not the only private detective for hire. My man turned up an awful lot of frightfully interesting stuff about your sordid little life.”

  Agatha felt a flush of anger. Had Charles actually been serious about marrying this woman?

  Woman? She was really only a girl! She couldn’t be more than twenty-two!

  “He won’t go through with it, you know,” she said calmly, matching her younger opponent’s soft tone. “Charles loathes that hunting, shooting, and fishing set. The horsey lot. They don’t suit him at all … and neither do you.”

  “They may not suit him, Mrs. Raisin, but they suit me. I ride very well. It is my passion. I am also an excellent shot—deadly accurate with a shotgun or a rifle. Especially a rifle. I could put a round right in your eye from three hundred metres.”

  “Is that supposed to be a threat? Are you actually threatening me?”

  “Take it however you like,” hissed Mary, leaning close and speaking almost in a whisper. “I will have my way. Charles will do as he is told or I will ruin him. You will stay out of my way if you know what is good for you.”

  She doesn’t want to make a scene, thought Agatha. She’s trying to keep this nice and quiet. She doesn’t want to be seen going head to head with me in public. She has a lot to learn.

  “I don’t take that sort of talk from a lantern-jawed, bug-eyed little shit like you,” she whispered, then sprang to her feet. “What did you just call me?” she shrieked. “Bitch, was it? Why don’t you slither off back to whatever slime pit you crawled out of, you disgusting little creature? Snakes and bastards! I’ve scraped better than you off my shoe! Now BUGGER OFF!”

  Every face in the café turned towards them. Mary gave Agatha a look of sheer hatred, set her substantial jaw in a grimace and stormed out through the door. The little bell tinkled cheerfully.

  Agatha looked round at the shocked customers. One of the middle-aged women was frozen with a cup halfway to her mouth. A glob of marmalade from his slice of toast plopped into the elderly gentleman’s newspaper.

  “The donkey lady strikes again!” Agatha proclaimed, then sat down to finish her coffee.

  * * *

  Agatha was walking along Lilac Lane to where she had parked her car when the gloom of the morning was suddenly illuminated by a flash of lightning that split the sky. An instant later, she felt the breath squeezed from her chest when the loudest boom of thunder she had ever heard shook the air. She quickened her pace, diving into her car as the first huge splots of rain hit the windscreen.

  Driving up the hill to take the road towards Mircester, the rain began to fall much harder, and by the time she was out on the main road, it was coming down in torrents. The windscreen wipers were struggling to cope, and what she could see up ahead looked more like a river than a road. Deciding that she would rather sit out the cloudburst than land upside down in a ditch, she pulled into the car park of a pub called the Greedy Goose. More than once, she and Charles had enjoyed a long, lazy Sunda
y lunch there before heading back to Carsely for a long, energetic Sunday evening in Lilac Lane. The rain drummed on the roof of the car and bounced off the bonnet. What was he thinking of, marrying that dreadful girl? Money, of course, but there was more to life than money … and what did Mary mean when she said that she would ruin him? Did the Brown-Fields really have that much of a financial stranglehold on him already? He simply had to get out of the marriage. That girl was a truly nasty piece of work.

  Agatha turned her mind to the Morrison affair. Money was at the root of that sordid business as well, and it had turned into a personal vendetta. Because of Albert Morrison, Agatha had been humiliated on national television. She had a score to settle with him over that, but more important was the murder of Clarissa Dinwiddy. Trotter had done it, but the others were in on it, Agatha was sure of that. If only for the sake of poor Elizabeth Thirkettle, she was determined to prove that Morrison and his chums had murdered Mrs. Dinwiddy.

  The rain had begun to ease off. Agatha started the car and pulled out onto the main road, heading for the office.

  * * *

  “Come on, Toni, what have you got for me?” called Agatha, striding across the outer office. “You must have turned up something else by now.”

  “Not much,” said Toni, sounding glum. “A couple of more interesting snippets, but it’s all mainly domestic drudgery.”

  “Well, leave your drudgery out here and bring your interesting bits into my office,” said Agatha. “We’ll have a listen to it all in there. I’ll fire up my computer. No, don’t tell me … I can remember how to do it.”

  By the time Toni appeared in the office doorway with a computer memory stick in her hand, Agatha had almost managed to switch on her machine. She allowed Toni to hustle her out of the way and finish the job.

  “I’m down to the last few folders now,” said Toni. “I think I’ll have finished listening to it all by this evening. These are the only new ones that are of any interest.”

  “I don’t want anything going wrong with the big shipment.”

  “That’s Morrison.”

  “I will check the buildings along with Bream and Dunster to make sure everything is secure.”

  “And that is Sayer.”

  “Fine, but once we take delivery we will need everyone to lend a hand.”

  “Morrison again,” said Agatha. “This is good stuff, Toni.”

  “No problem. I will get them to confirm the ETA. Could be as soon as next Thursday.”

  “Sayer again…” Agatha paused. “ETA—that’s estimated time of arrival. When was this recorded, Toni?”

  “It’s difficult to tell,” Toni explained. “Mrs. Dinwiddy was really organised about the way she stored these files, but what appear to be the later ones are a bit jumbled up, almost like she was trying to disguise them, or hide them amongst the rest of the mundane stuff. She hasn’t been consistent, though. Maybe she wasn’t thinking straight. It’s all a bit of a mess.”

  “You said ‘later ones.’ How recent are they?”

  “I think most of them are probably within the last couple of weeks.”

  “Really? Toni, this is dynamite!” Agatha gasped. “If this was recorded within the last couple of weeks and Sayer was talking about Thursday—today is Thursday. Their big shipment could be tonight!”

  “Yes, I suppose that is possible…”

  “You suppose?” said Agatha. “Toni, I don’t think Clarissa Dinwiddy is the only one who wasn’t thinking straight on this. What’s wrong with you? Get it together, girl. What are you dreaming about? You need to keep your mind on the job and … This is about that bloke you’re seeing, isn’t it?”

  “Seeing him? When do you think I’ve had time to see anybody, let alone him? I’ve been stuck listening to hours and hours of this prattling gossip for days and days!”

  “That’s your job!”

  “How is listening to a load of depressing old crap my job?”

  “Because you are a detective and this is a murder!”

  “My job is NOT to be a murder detective!”

  “Your job is what I say it is!”

  “Well maybe you should just shove your job up your—”

  “You’ve split up with him, haven’t you?”

  “We did NOT split up!” Toni, having swelled with indignation, slowly deflated again. “I told him that I wasn’t ready to get married … that there were other things I still wanted to do.”

  “Oh…” said Agatha, barely able to conceal a fist-pumping whoop. Toni is staying with me! She isn’t going to run off, start breeding, and become overwhelmed by the horrendous tidal wave of a squeaky-clean young family! “You poor thing. That’s a tough call to make. It must have been … um … really hard on him?”

  “That’s what I thought.” Toni shook her head and then surprised Agatha by managing a smile. “But he said that working for a detective agency was miles more interesting than anything he could offer. He said that if that’s what makes me happy, then it’s what I should do, because if I’m not happy then our marriage would be doomed.”

  “Who is this guy?” said Agatha. “Your average man doesn’t think like that. Are you sure you want to let him go?”

  “I’m not letting him go,” Toni explained. “I’m just keeping him where I need him to be—where he and I both need to be. Some way down the line, things may change.”

  That, thought Agatha, is the best news I have heard all day. Now that she’s got it all off her chest, maybe she’ll start sparking like I need her to. I can’t afford to let her go all mushy on me. I need her operating at full capacity.

  “And then,” said Toni, “we had a bit of a laugh when he said, ‘After all, how could I compete with the donkey lady?’ That’s quite funny, isn’t it?”

  “Of course,” said Agatha, forcing a smile. “The whole donkey lady thing is … really very funny.”

  “And then he said…”—Toni held her hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle—“that you had your own catchphrase where you said—”

  “Don’t push it,” Agatha interrupted. “Get back to the last of those recordings.”

  * * *

  That night Agatha drove to the pineapple gates of Albert Morrison’s manor house and pulled her car into a parking spot on the main road close by. She had decided that it would be easier to take a look at the factory from this direction rather than approaching from the main factory gates. She promised herself that she would not do anything silly. All I need to do, she told herself, is check if there are any lights on in the factory—check if there’s anything going on that could mean that tonight is the night for Morrison’s “big shipment.”

  She crept in through the gates and made her way up the drive towards the stables, flitting between the moon shadows cast by the trees. She was wearing walking shoes, black trousers, and a heavy black sweater to blend into the darkness. She knew she would be difficult to spot, but she was keeping a wary eye for any potential sentries prowling the grounds.

  Skirting past the stable block, she quickly reached the R&D building. She flattened herself against the wall and slowly poked her head around the corner to look across to the main building. Sure enough, there were lights on. The windows were covered with blinds, but they did not mask the glow from inside.

  I know I’m not going to do anything silly, she reminded herself, but I have to see what’s going on in there. It’s not as if they’ll be expecting visitors. They will have searched the whole place and locked all the doors so that they can concentrate on whatever it is they are up to. The doors might all be locked, but … She patted the pocket containing the key that Toni had given her. All she needed to do was to take a very quick look. She’d be in and out of there without them ever knowing a thing.

  Getting into the R&D building was, as Toni had described, perfectly simple. Most of the doors and windows were missing. Agatha fished a slim penlight out of her pocket. The majority of the building was blackened and burned, and the floor was littered with debris
. Her flashlight cast eerie shadows across the floor as she picked her way towards the door to the ladies’ lavatory. Just as Toni had said, it looked like it was locked. She gave it a gentle push. Nothing happened. She shoved harder and, with a slight crunching sound, the door opened. She played her torch beam over the charred frame and could see where part of it had broken away, clinging shakily to the lock and the edge of the door. Being careful not to do any further damage, she slipped inside and eased the door closed behind her.

  Inside, the lavatory seemed largely unaffected by the fire. Scanning the room with her penlight, she quickly found the door that linked to the ladies’ lavatory in the main building. She tried the key in the lock. It turned with a soft click. She inched the door open, expecting at any moment to have it torn out of her hands by Bream or Dunster on the other side. She breathed a small sigh of relief when she could see that the room beyond the door was in darkness. Of course it was, she told herself. Why would any of those blokes be using the ladies’ loo? She locked the door behind her and crossed the floor to where another door would take her into the main building, opening it just a crack. Outside was a corridor, fully lit. She chanced a glance left and then right. The coast was clear. A few yards down the corridor was the door to the dispatch department.

  This, Agatha warned herself, was the really tricky bit. She tried the handle and gently opened the door just far enough to see inside. Five figures clad in white stood at a long workbench. They were wearing the same sort of forensic overalls that Bill Wong had donned when he went to fish the false leg out of the undergrowth. They were also wearing white latex gloves and white nuisance masks over their faces. Bream, Dunster, Sayer, Trotter, and Morrison, thought Agatha. I would recognise them anywhere, despite what they’re wearing.

  The five of them were unpacking boxes filled with batteries about the size of a large soup can. They were then using tools like small bolt cutters to slice open the batteries and remove plastic-wrapped packages from the inside. Those packages were then being cut open and the powdery substance inside poured into larger plastic bags, making bigger packages.