Agatha Raisin: Hiss and Hers

by Beaton, M. C.

  In a halting voice, she described her terror of Rex. Rex had said that if she did not do his bidding, he would not only kill her but her mother as well. He would know the minute she contacted the police.

  ‘Her mother?’ whispered Agatha to Patrick.

  ‘Quite mad. In an asylum. Jessica never visits her,’ mumbled Patrick.

  ‘Shh!’ complained an angry voice behind them.

  Jessica’s voice broke occasionally. Her hands fluttering in a touching gesture of appeal, she looked at the jury. ‘Rex was obsessed with George Marston. He said if he couldn’t have him, nobody would. He said that George’s behaviour, having affairs with old women, was disgusting and that they should all be wiped off the planet.’

  And then she broke down and cried.

  To Agatha’s dismay, a woman on the jury began to dab her eyes.

  Jessica was asked by the judge whether she would like a recess, but she dried her eyes and said she would go on.

  The prosecutor did his best, but ended up looking like some sort of brutal bullying villain.

  The court finally rose. ‘Let’s hope the judge’s summing-up cuts through the crap,’ said Agatha.

  They returned the following day. Lord Hollinsby gave an impassioned defence. The prosecutor gave a dry, concise attack. The summing-up by the judge was balanced but, in Agatha’s opinion, there were too many ‘on the other hands’ in it. She had hoped for an outright condemnation.

  The jury retired to consider their verdict.

  There was no result on the following day, but they were told the day after that that the jury had returned.

  The verdict was not guilty.

  A great cheer shook the court.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ said Agatha. ‘I feel sick.’

  It had been raining, but when Jessica emerged to face the barrage of the world’s press, the sun had come out.

  ‘I can only say that I am overcome with gratitude,’ said Jessica, and then was hustled to a limousine by two bodyguards.

  ‘Not much of a statement,’ said Toni.

  ‘Means she’d sold her story to the highest bidder,’ said Agatha cynically. ‘I feel awful. Let’s all go home.’

  Jessica had sold her cottage in Carsely. As another summer arrived, the village settled back into its usual Cotswold torpor as if it had never been rent by murder. Joyce Hemingway and Mrs Freemantle had also sold up and left. George’s sister would inherit his cottage and estate after a long legal process, so George’s cottage remained empty.

  Agatha had seen nothing of Charles. She had tried to call several times but had been told firmly by his man, Gustav, that he was not at home. She had written to him and sent emails but there was never any reply. James was abroad and even Roy had turned down the offer of a weekend. Agatha was feeling friendless, despite the comfort of visits from Mrs Bloxby and Bill Wong.

  She had to admit to herself that she really missed Charles. She had not read Jessica’s story, which had been published in a Sunday newspaper. Agatha thought that Jessica would always go down in her mind as her one big failure.

  She had decided to take a holiday but didn’t relish the idea of travelling on her own.

  The listening device had been recovered from her garden and placed in a cupboard under the kitchen sink.

  One sunny Saturday morning, Bill Wong called. ‘What’s happened?’ asked Agatha, ushering him through to the garden.

  ‘Nothing at all in the way of dramatic crime. But have you heard the news about Charles?’

  ‘What? Is he all right?’

  ‘Oh, yes. It’s just that I read about his engagement in The Times this morning.’

  ‘Not that Petronella creature?’

  ‘No, it’s someone called Crystal Stretton, daughter of a Colonel and Mrs Stretton. Didn’t he tell you?’

  ‘No. As a matter of fact I haven’t seen him for nearly a year. You see, I was overwrought that night Jessica tried to kill me and I found him in the spare room. I went ape and told him to get out.’

  ‘Still, he must have read about your ordeal in the papers.’

  ‘He wouldn’t get all the facts until the trial report and that would make me look like the man-hunting harpy from hell.’

  ‘An apology should do the trick.’

  ‘I emailed him. I wrote snail mail. I’ve tried phoning.’

  ‘Yes, but did you actually apologize?’

  ‘Not really. I was going to do that face to face.’

  ‘So you just said something like “get in touch”.’

  ‘Something like that. He should have understood,’ said Agatha.

  ‘Not unless he’s gifted with ESP. There’s also news in the paper about Jessica.’

  ‘What’s she done now? Flipped her lid and killed someone else?’

  ‘No such luck. I’d still like to nab her somehow,’ said Bill. ‘She’s going to Hollywood next month. Landed a part starring opposite Tom Hanks.’

  ‘Isn’t she under contract to the soap?’

  ‘Evidently the ratings were plunging and they weren’t going to do any more. The fact is that after all that euphoria about her walking free was over, the public began to wonder if she really was innocent.’

  ‘And yet Hollywood’s not bothered!’ exclaimed Agatha.

  ‘She has a good PR, Harry Curry.’

  ‘That man never had any morals.’

  ‘I’m glad she’s leaving the country,’ said Bill.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For a time I was worried she might come after you,’ said Bill. ‘I was in on her interviews and I could swear she was a hardened psychopath.’

  ‘Well, it looks like it’s going to stay one of my failures.’

  ‘You and the police’s,’ said Bill.

  Epilogue

  After Bill had left, Agatha mulled over the news about Charles. She felt that once he was married, then he would really be lost to her. She eyed the cupboard under the sink where the listening device was kept. Just once, she told herself suddenly. I’ll go to his mansion after dark and see if I can learn where he is going to be and maybe waylay him.

  The days were growing lighter and it seemed a long time before the sun went down. Dressed in dark clothes, Agatha put the listening device in her car and drove in the direction of Charles’s Warwickshire home.

  She parked the car under a stand of trees a little short of the drive and set out on foot, hoping she would not come across a gamekeeper. She left the drive near the house and cut across the fields so that she could approach the house from the back.

  Agatha settled down in a clump of bushes and pointed the machine at the black silhouette of the Victorian mansion.

  She could hear the sounds of a late-night news broadcast on a television set. Then the sound of a phone ringing. Gustav’s voice came loud and clear. ‘No, Mrs Conway. Sir Charles is not at home. He and his fiancée have gone to France.’ Then Gustav’s voice again. ‘He is travelling by car to Moulins with a view to buying a property in the Auvergne.’

  Agatha had heard enough. She carefully and silently made her way back to her car, where she sat staring into space, wondering what to do. She hadn’t had a holiday in a long time. Perhaps if she went to this Moulins place, she could make her apology.

  In the morning, she phoned Doris Simpson and asked her to look after her cats. Then she called Toni and said she would be away for two or three days.

  Agatha shoved a few clothes into a suitcase along with a large bag of make-up and then sat down at her computer to map out a journey to Moulins. She looked up the hotels and found Charles had booked into the Hotel Bourbon.

  A little voice of common sense in her head kept protesting, ‘This is madness. You’re stalking him.’ But she told the voice to mind its own business.

  She drove to Birmingham Airport and booked herself on to the first flight to Paris. In Paris, she took a taxi to the Gare de Lyon and bought a first-class seat on a train to Moulins.

  Only when the train was hurtling through
the French countryside did the voice of common sense become increasingly louder.

  Well, she told herself, I need a holiday. I don’t really need to see him.

  She had not booked into the same hotel as Charles. Instead, at Moulins, she took a cab to the Clos de Bourgogne, a pleasant hotel like a French manor house. Before she could weaken, after she had unpacked, she took a cab to the Hotel Bourbon. She did not go into the hotel but walked along the street to a brasserie with outside tables. From there, she could watch the entrance. She felt guilty at not exploring the old town, which had been the seat of the Dukes of Bourbon before the French Revolution. It had a gentle area of prosperous calm with sunlight gilding the old buildings on either side of the narrow streets.

  Agatha began to feel weary but relied on a cup of black French coffee and two cigarettes to perk herself up.

  And then, quite suddenly, she saw them – Charles and his fiancée. Her heart sank. Crystal Stretton was young and beautiful. She had long blonde hair, a perfect face and very good legs revealed by the short, filmy summer dress she was wearing. Agatha grabbed a discarded newspaper from a nearby chair and held it up over her face.

  She therefore did not see Charles usher the beauty into her car or hear him say, ‘Thank you for taking the time to show us those houses, but nothing seems to suit. Maybe tomorrow.’

  Charles went into the hotel to join what he was beginning to think of as the Great Mistake. The real Crystal Stretton was waiting for him in the lounge. She was thin, angular and tall. He reflected that they had not spent much time together before he popped the question or he might have realized just how domineering she was.

  Also, as Crystal was very rich, Charles had assumed she would pay for the house in France and their first row had erupted that day when it transpired that Crystal expected him to pay for it.

  ‘I’m just going upstairs for my cigarettes,’ he said.

  ‘You must stop smoking,’ said Crystal.

  Charles did not reply. He went up to their room. He lit a cigarette and looked out of the window, wondering what to do. As he watched, he saw someone who looked remarkably like Agatha Raisin getting into a cab.

  He sat down at his laptop and found the numbers of hotels in Moulins and phoned round until he discovered the one where Agatha was staying.

  He was told at the hotel that Mrs Raisin was having dinner in the garden. He hesitated a moment in the doorway. Candles flickered on the tables. At a table at the edge of the garden sat Agatha Raisin.

  She looked sad and tired. He realized in that moment that he had wanted to get away from Agatha, be a family man, lead a ‘normal’ life. But all it had got him was an engagement to a woman who, rich as she was, had turned out to be even meaner than he was himself. Not only that, she was bullying and managing.

  He walked into the garden, pulled out a chair opposite Agatha. Charles waved away a hovering waiter.

  ‘Hello, Aggie.’

  ‘Don’t call me Aggie.’

  ‘Okay, Agatha, what are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m hunting you down to apologize. I did try so often to contact you. I am very sorry I told you to get out. My nerves were frazzled after the attempt on my life. I suddenly wanted a man to look after me, not to lie snoring in my spare-room bed.’

  ‘No one could call your apologies exactly fulsome, Agatha.’

  ‘I sometimes want to be an ordinary domesticated woman,’ sighed Agatha. ‘Where’s your fiancée?’

  ‘Probably wondering where I’ve gone. Maybe we’re not supposed to have so-called normal relationships. I’ve made a bad mistake.’

  ‘She’s rich, isn’t she?’ demanded Agatha.

  ‘But mean with it.’

  ‘So are you.’

  ‘Not always. Waiter! Champagne!’

  Crystal wondered where Charles had gone. When he had rushed out of their hotel, she had been reading a magazine and so had not seen him escape. After searching the whole hotel after she had found their room empty, she ate a solitary dinner. When she went back up to their room, she noticed this time that Charles’s computer was switched on, although the screen was dark. She pressed the enter button and found herself looking at a website of hotels in Moulins. Beside the laptop was a note: ‘Clos de Bourgogne.’

  Crystal ordered a taxi and went to the hotel. To her demands at reception, they said that no Sir Charles Fraith was staying at the hotel.

  ‘Perhaps he is dining here,’ said Crystal.

  ‘Most of our guests are dining in the garden restaurant,’ said the receptionist. ‘I’ll show you where it is.’

  Crystal looked around the garden but there was no sign of Charles. She could hear the English accents of a couple dining at one of the tables.

  Crystal took a photo of Charles out of her handbag. ‘Have you see this man this evening?’

  The woman said, ‘Yes, he went into that cottage over there.’

  At the edge of the garden was a guest cottage. Crystal strode towards it.

  ‘Oh, Lord,’ said the woman’s husband. ‘You should have told her he went in there with that woman.’

  Crystal did not knock. She simply turned the handle and walked in. There was a small hall separating the bathroom from the bedroom and just coming out of the bathroom was Charles. He was stark naked.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ raged Crystal. ‘And cover yourself up. You’re indecent!’

  In the bedroom, Agatha, who had packed to leave in the morning, slid her suitcase under the bed and then followed it herself.

  ‘I wanted to get away from you,’ said Charles.

  ‘Who is she? You’re not registered here.’

  Crystal threw open the bedroom door and stared at the seemingly empty room.

  ‘I booked it under another name,’ said Charles. ‘You’re always yakking at me and I wanted a bit of peace and quiet.’

  ‘To think I threw over Brian Fairweather for you,’ shouted Crystal.

  ‘Then I suggest you pick him up again.’

  ‘I never want to see you again,’ said Crystal, her face mottled with rage. ‘I’ll take a cab to Lyon in the morning and get on the first plane home. Our engagement is over.’

  After he made sure she had really gone, Charles said, ‘You can come out now, Agatha.’

  Agatha crawled out from under the bed.

  ‘Now, where were we?’ said Charles.

  At one point during the night, Agatha heard him complain, ‘Damn, I should have asked for my ring back.’

  ‘Cheapskate,’ murmured Agatha, and fell into a heavy sleep.

  Two days later, Bill Wong phoned Toni. ‘Do you know where Agatha is?’ he asked. ‘I called at her home but her cleaner said she was abroad.’

  ‘I got a call,’ said Toni. ‘She’s due back tomorrow. Anything urgent?’

  ‘It’s just I feel uneasy about Jessica. I’m always afraid she might try something. She’s due to leave for the States next week and I’ll be glad when she’s out of the country.’

  The nurse, Mary Donovan, was sitting on a bench outside the hospital, enjoying a cigarette, when a car drove up and stopped opposite her. The windows were very dark – surely illegally dark.

  The driver’s window slid down. With a gasp, Mary recognized Jessica Fordyce. ‘Hop in, Mary,’ said Jessica, and quickly slid the window closed again.

  Mary scurried round to the passenger side and got in. ‘I thought you had forgotten about me,’ she said.

  ‘As if I would. I’m off to the States, but when the film is over, I’ll be returning to do another series, and there will be a part for you. Now, you’re not to tell anyone.’

  ‘I swear I won’t.’

  ‘I just want you to do one little thing for me. Here is a photograph of a cat. I want you to go right away to the Agatha Raisin Detective Agency and say it is your lost cat. Ask for Agatha Raisin personally. They will tell you she is out of the country. I phoned today and found that out. Find out when she is due back and call me. Here is a note of my mobile num
ber. And here is a hundred pounds for your trouble.’

  ‘But why . . . ?’

  ‘Do you trust me?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Then don’t ask questions.’

  Half an hour later, Toni surveyed the new client. When Mary demanded that Agatha alone should deal with her missing cat, Toni said, ‘That is not possible. Mrs Raisin is abroad.’

  ‘When will she be back?’

  ‘Not until tomorrow. But we are perfectly capable of dealing with your missing cat in her absence.’

  Toni noticed that the new client’s hands were trembling and that her face was covered in a thin film of sweat. Toni turned to Phil, who was fiddling with a camera lens.

  ‘Phil, take a photo of Miss Donovan for our files.’

  ‘No!’ shrieked Mary, heading for the door. ‘I’ve changed my mind.’

  ‘You’ve left your handbag,’ called Toni.

  Mary swung round and Phil snapped a photo of her. It was then that Mary realized she had her handbag over her arm. She scampered down the stairs and out into the street. She was sure that man hadn’t had time to get a picture of her. She wouldn’t tell Jessica. Just give her the news about Agatha Raisin’s return.

  * * *

  Charles and Agatha arrived back the following afternoon. Agatha suddenly felt awkward. ‘Coming in?’ she asked.

  ‘No, I’m tired. That side trip to Birmingham Airport to pick up your car was a killer. Got to get home. Things to do. People to see.’ He glanced at her downcast face. ‘Maybe a coffee to wake me up.’

  ‘We’ll have it in the garden,’ said Agatha. ‘It’s a real Indian summer.’

  In the kitchen, she filled up the coffee percolator from the water filter jug on the counter.

  When she carried the tray out into the garden, Charles was half asleep. He sat up. ‘Just what I need.’

  Agatha poured black coffee for both of them.

  The day had that lazy golden sunshine of autumn. They sat peacefully drinking coffee, Agatha, for once, not feeling she had to demand anything of him.

  ‘I was wondering,’ began Charles. ‘Wait a minute. I . . .’ He slumped forward over the table.

  Agatha began to feel her senses swimming. ‘Charles,’ she croaked. ‘The coffee . . .’ And then she, too, collapsed.