by M C Beaton
They discussed the case this way and that without getting any further. Then Joanna said, “I’d best go home now. I’m a bit hungry and haven’t had anything to eat yet.”
“I’ll take you for something,” said John.
“Would you?” Joanna beamed. “That’s very kind.”
Surely, thought Agatha, they are not going to leave me. Surely they are not going to just go off together without including me in the invitation.
But John said, “See you later.” They walked out. That was that.
Agatha began to feel very angry indeed. They both knew that a woman had been killed because she had been mistaken for her. It was her case, too, dammit.
She would phone Roy, see if there was any work, and leave for London. She looked down at the kitchen floor to find her two cats staring up at her. She felt a pang. It would mean leaving them, the only friends she had got.
She heard the doorbell ring. Ah, come to their senses, had they?
But it was Bill Wong.
“What’s all this I’ve been hearing?” he demanded. “My friend at Worcester police tells me that the woman who was killed last night was wearing your wig and glasses.”
“Want to go out for dinner and I’ll tell you about it?”
“All right. I’ve got a free evening.”
“We’ll go to the Marsh Goose and I’ll sit down and tell you everything.”
♦
When they were seated at a table by the window in the Marsh Goose in Moreton-in-Marsh, Agatha saw John and Joan at another table across the room. They waved to her. She ignored them. “Let’s order first,” said Agatha, “then I’ll begin at the beginning and go on to the end. Damn, I feel like getting drunk tonight, but I’ve got to drive you back after dinner and then you’ve got to drive to Cirencester.”
“Them’s the laws.” Bill’s almond eyes crinkled with amusement in his smooth young face. The next time I get interested in some man, thought Agatha, I’ll make sure he is more wrinkled than I am.
They ordered their food and then Agatha began to tell him everything that she knew and everything that had happened – with one exception. She did not tell him about the attempt on her life. He listened carefully. Then he said, “Barrington’s got a cast-iron alibi. After he was released by the police the first time he was taken in, he phoned his wife and said he was dashing off to Birmingham to see a client. He did dash off to Birmingham, but to a hotel, where he spent the night with a Miss Betty Dicks.”
“Who’s she?”
“Some Birmingham secretary who he has been seducing with promises that he’s ready to leave his wife any day now. He left Birmingham early in the morning to get to his work in Evesham but he went home first, where he found the police waiting for him. So he could not have killed Mrs. Anstruther-Jones.”
“But he could have killed Kylie.”
“Doubtful. Whoever killed Kylie is now scared enough to want you out of the way. Have they offered you police protection?”
Agatha shook her head. “I think they’re so mad at me for interfering in police business that they don’t care if someone does bump me off.”
“Either that or they’re convinced that whoever killed Mrs. Anstruther-Jones still thinks you are researching for television. If they, or he, or she, or whoever knew your real identity, they would have made an attempt on your life in Carsely. No, our murder saw what he thought was you, walking along Waterside.”
“Cars!” said Agatha. “Do any of those girls have a car?”
“Phyllis has an old Volkswagen, Ann Trump a Ford Metro, and Marilyn Josh uses Harry McCoy’s old Rover. Zak and his father both have cars. You said you upset Mrs. Stokes. She drives a station wagon. They’re all being checked out. The police will be appealing for witnesses on television tonight. You know what ties Kylie’s death and Mrs. Anstruther-Jones’s death together?”
“No, what?”
“Panic. There’s panic in both cases. Take the case of Kylie. She’s injected with an overdose of heroin. The body’s dumped in some sort of freezer. It could have stayed there for weeks, months – years, even. But no, whoever did it panicked, took the body out and threw it in the river. And someone saw what they thought was you and without worrying about possible witnesses, they stamp their foot down on the accelerator.”
Agatha looked at him thoughtfully. She longed to tell him of the attempt on her life.
“What?” said Bill, looking at her quizzically. “You haven’t told me all. You’re holding back something.”
“If I tell you, you’ll tell the police.”
“That bad?”
“Yes, that bad.”
He looked around the restaurant. The tables were spaced well apart.
“I think you’d better tell me. Okay, I won’t tell the police. Something’s happened, and knowing you, it’s something dangerous.”
“It’s like this. I went to try to see Harry McCoy. He wasn’t at home. I turned to walk back to Merstow Green car-park, along Horres Street. The street was deserted. I heard the sound of a car and I don’t know why I knew it was coming for me, but I threw myself over a garden hedge just as it roared past.”
“Agatha, why didn’t you tell the police?”
“Because I was in my disguise of television researcher and I thought they’d make a fuss and stop me investigating. It seems silly now, but I’ve left it too long.” She looked up impatiently. John and Joanna were standing next to their table, smiling down at her.
“We wondered if you would like to join us in the lounge for coffee?” said John.
Agatha gave them both a basilisk look. “No, go away.”
“That was very rude of you, Agatha,” said Bill severely.
“That was my neighbour, John Armitage, and one of the girls from Barrington’s, Joanna Field.”
“So what gives? I thought you and this John were investigating together.”
“Joanna and John came round. Joanna was full of the news that Mrs. Barrington had turned up and made a scene in the office, I told you that. But then she said she was hungry, John invites her out for dinner, and they both swan off without even offering to take me along.”
“Maybe he thought she would talk more freely without you around. Anyway, this attempt on your life. I think the murder of Mrs. Anstruther-Jones was chance. She just happened to have been spotted. But I can’t think that the attempt on Horres Street was chance. Cars don’t normally drive through it going anywhere at night, but they do drive along Waterside. Are you sure there was no one at home? You say that Marilyn Josh lives there in the upstairs flat and that Phyllis is having an affair with Harry McCoy. One of them could have been at home, looked out of the window and seen you, and phoned someone. Or there’s a lane at the back of Horres Street. One of them could have nipped out the back way, run round, got into a car and headed for you. That’s what’s so baffling. I keep getting a feeling of panic combined with amateurism. I could swear that whoever’s doing this hasn’t got a record, has never killed before.”
They discussed everything over and over again without coming to any firm idea of who might have done it.
When they had finished their meal and were driving back, Bill said, “I can tell you’re not in love with this John Armitage.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Well, there’s no use flying off the handle with someone who isn’t a boyfriend, is there? Yes, they should have invited you, but I’ll bet John thought he might have been able to get more out of her without you. I told you that already. You’ve been involved with men since I’ve known you who’ve treated you badly, so you automatically think any man is rejecting you. Forget it, Agatha. It’s bad policy to quarrel with neighbours anyway.”
“I’ll think about it,” said Agatha sulkily. “Want to come in for more coffee?”
“No, I’d best be getting back. Mother sits up until I get home.”
Agatha, not for the first time, wanted to point out to him that his mother was a possessive bag who drove o
ff all his young girlfriends, but she knew Bill would be deeply hurt. He adored his parents.
She said good night to him and waved him goodbye and went indoors. A few minutes later, there was a ring at the door. She looked through the spyhole. John Armitage.
Let him rot, thought Agatha mulishly.
∨ The Day the Floods Came ∧
7
Agatha awoke next morning to find a letter pushed through her door. She opened it while Boswell dug his claws into the hem of her housecoat and tugged hard. She carried it into the kitchen, dragging the cat along with her.
Agatha sat down and, after dislodging Boswell’s claws from her housecoat, she opened the envelope, noticing as she did so that it was unstamped.
“Dear Agatha,” she read, “I am so sorry about last night. I could see that you were angry because I had not included you in the invitation to dinner. I thought that perhaps Joanna would tell me some more details if we were on our own. As it turned out, she had nothing new to add. Yours, John.”
Agatha felt she had been churlish. It might be an idea to phone Roy Silver first and ask about work. But she would not rush next door immediately. She would take her time and read the morning papers.
In a copy of the morning Bugle, she found an article by a celebrity who had given up smoking through hypnosis. “It worked,” Agatha read. “The first thing I noticed was that I had more energy. Then friends started commenting on the clearness of my skin. I’m so glad I quit. My looks are important to me. You can always tell a middle-aged woman who smokes. They’ve got these nasty wrinkles on their upper lips. I didn’t want to end up like that.”
Agatha’s hand strayed nervously to her upper lip. She remembered she had the phone number of a hypnotist in Gloucester. She had always been meaning to go, but had kept putting it off. She phoned the hypnotist, who said he could see her if she could be at his consulting rooms in an hour and a half’s time, as he had just received a cancellation. Agatha agreed to be there and then rushed to get ready. The day was dry but misty. Agatha drove steadily through a grey world. Water dripped from the trees beside the road.
She managed to find a parking place near the hypnotist’s consulting rooms. She was five minutes early, so she celebrated with what she swore would be her last cigarette.
Half an hour later, it was all over. He had told her that from now on every cigarette she smoked would taste terrible, like burning rubber.
With a feeling of having actually done something for her health and well-being, she drove back home.
As she parked outside her cottage, she saw a familiar figure standing on her doorstep. Freda Stokes. What now? thought Agatha as she got out of the car. Another row? She pinned a smile of welcome on her face.
Freda greeted her with a cry of “Oh, Agatha. I’m so sorry.”
“Come inside,” said Agatha, opening the door. “Come through to the kitchen. Sit down. I’ll make some coffee.”
Agatha plugged in the percolator and sat down at the kitchen table opposite Freda.
“I didn’t want to believe what you told me. I couldn ‘t believe what you told me,” said Freda. “The police called on me. Mr. Barrington has admitted paying Kylie – my Kylie! – to keep her quiet. I’m beginning to wonder if I knew my daughter at all. She was always like a child to me. Innocent. ‘I’m not like those other girls, Mum,’ she’d say. ‘I don’t sleep around. I’m saving myself for my wedding day’.”
“Did she need a lot of money?” asked Agatha, wondering if Kylie had indeed had a drug habit.
“She was always asking me for money. It was a bit hard for me, for I don’t make that much. But she was my only child. I couldn’t refuse her. Now I remember things about her, like she would wear clothes for a few months and then take them back to the shop and try to get her money back. She had this raincoat, oh, for about eight months, and she took it back to the shop and tried to say she had just bought it. But they wouldn’t take it back. So she asked me to take it to the dry-cleaners. I did that and gave her the coat. She took it into her bedroom and then she came out with it and it was covered in grease spots. She said the cleaners had ruined it and I had to take it to them and demand the price of the coat. They paid up in the end but they accused me of having put the grease stains on myself. They said there was no way it could have happened otherwise.” Freda looked tearfully at Agatha. “Do you think Kylie was greedy?”
“Perhaps,” said Agatha cautiously.
“And then there were times when there was money missing from my purse. I had a young girl working at the stall with me during the school holidays. I thought it must be her and fired her. Now I mink it might have been Kylie. Where did I go wrong?”
By pretending nothing was happening, thought Agatha.
Aloud she said, “I have to ask you this. Do you think she’d been taking drugs?”
“No! But then, I didn’t know about the blackmail or anything,” wailed Freda. “Maybe she took that overdose herself and the people that gave her the stuff panicked.”
“That’s possible except for the fact that she was wearing that wedding dress and slipped out late at night. Someone asked her to let them see it.”
Agatha stood up and poured two mugs of coffee and put one, along with milk and sugar, in front of Freda. “Was she very proud of the wedding dress?”
“No, that’s the thing. It was my sister, Josie’s, girl’s gown. Josie’s daughter, Iris, had only worn it once and it cost Josie a mint. Lovely gown, it was. Kylie said she wanted a new one, but I dug my heels in on that. What’s the point, I said to her, of paying out all that money on a gown you’ll only be wearing once? And then Iris and Kylie were the same size.”
Agatha’s interest quickened. “If she was worried about it, she might have said to someone that she didn’t want to wear it and they said, “Well, bring it round and let me have a look.” That suggests another woman. When she got home, did she make a phone call or have any phone calls?”
“She went straight to her room and then I heard her playing a CD. She had a mobile phone. But the police took that away and checked all phone calls to and from the house. She didn’t make a phone call that evening.”
“Does this mean you want me to go on investigating?” asked Agatha.
“Yes, please. I feel I know the worst about my daughter now and nothing else can shock me.”
“Did she keep a diary?”
“No. I bought her one once, but she never bothered to write anything in it.”
“Letters from anyone?”
“None of those. Young people seem to use the phone these days.”
“I’ll keep in touch with you,” said Agatha. “I’ll do my best, but the police have warned me off.”
♦
After Freda had left, Agatha phoned John Armitage. “You’d better drop round,” she said. “There’s been a new development.” When John arrived, Agatha told him about the visit from Freda and what she had said.
“We need to find out more about that hen party,” said John. “We need to find out if one of them volunteered to look at the: dress, and there’s another thing.”
“What?”
“No phone calls. But what about e-mail? Someone could have sent her an e-mail to her station at the firm. Joanna could check that for us.”
“Oh, her,” said Agatha.
“Yes, her. She’s bright and she’s clever and she knows your real identity, which the other girls don’t. I don’t chase young girls, Agatha.”
“I’m not interested if you do,” said Agatha crossly. She automatically lit up a cigarette and then scowled in distaste and stubbed it out. “What’s up?”
“I went to a hypnotist,” said Agatha. “He said every cigarette I would now smoke would taste like burning rubber and he was right.”
John burst out laughing. “There’s one thing about you, Agatha – no one could ever call you boring.”
“That’s me. A laugh a minute,” said Agatha gloomily.
“And I’ll take
you for lunch to make up for last night.”
Agatha brightened. “I’ll go and change while you phone Joanna.”
She went upstairs and changed into a trouser suit and a tailored blouse, noticing with delight that the trouser waistline was quite loose. She carefully made up her face and sprayed herself liberally with Champagne perfume before going downstairs to join him.
“Joanna said she would check Kylie’s machine after all the others have gone for the night. If we wait round the corner in the Little Chef, she’ll join us there about seven o’clock this evening.”
♦
“Aren’t you coming, Joanna?” demanded Marilyn Josh as the other girls put on their coats.
“I’ve just got a couple of bills to send out,” said Joanna. “I’d better get them done now.”
“Please yourself,” said Phyllis nastily. “But it’s no use sucking up to the boss. He’s not in.”
Joanna shrugged and pretended to concentrate on her computer. It was, she thought uneasily, as if the others suspected she was up to something. They seemed to take a long time to leave. She stayed at her desk until she heard them all disappear at last into the night. Then, just as she was about to rise from her desk, Sharon Heath came back in. “Still here?” she said. “Won’t be a mo. I left something in me desk.”
Joanna typed steadily, glad she had taken the precaution of leaving her computer switched on. She heard Sharon behind her, opening and shutting drawers and muttering, “Now, where did I put that dratted thing?” Then a grunt of satisfaction. “See ya,” said Sharon. The office door banged shut and Joanna could hear her high heels clacking off down the corridor.
She had a sudden impulse to shut down her computer and leave. The silence of the office seemed threatening. But if she found something, John would be pleased with her. He was very attractive. She wondered if there was anything going on between him and that Raisin woman. No. Definitely not. No vibes there. She had enjoyed her dinner with him. Older men were so much more attractive. She cocked her head to one side and listened. She rose again. She heard footsteps in the corridor and sat down again hurriedly. The door opened. George, who manned the front desk, put his head round the door. “I want to lock up. How long you going to be?”
