by M C Beaton
But by the end of the week, she decided it would be only decent to go and see Freda Stokes and tell her what she had decided.
Accordingly she went to Evesham Market to where Freda was working at her stall. “Don’t say anything here,” said Freda. She called to a woman at the stall opposite. “Could you mind things for me, Gladys? Going for a cuppa.”
“Sure,” said Gladys. “Quiet as the grave today.”
They went to a café at the back of the covered market. Agatha ordered two cups of tea and carried them to a table. Freda’s first words appalled her. “I suppose you’re worried about Joanna.”
“What about Joanna?” Agatha’s heart gave a lurch.
“She’s missing. I had the police round. She hadn’t been at work, but that wasn’t why they were worried. They had a mysterious call from someone telling them that Joanna’d had an affair with Barrington and was going to blackmail someone. They kept calling at her flat and when they didn’t get a reply, they finally broke in. No sign of her. No note. No clothes had been packed. Nothing missing. Except Joanna.”
Too late, thought Agatha. I was too late.
“It’s like a nightmare,” said Freda. “Some murderer’s prowling about. Why can’t the police do anything?”
Maybe because I kept the information to myself for just that bit too long, thought Agatha sadly.
“I’m not much of a help, Freda,” she said. “I’ve been trying and trying and all I do is dig up more muck without ever finding out who did the murder.”
“If we never know,” said Freda miserably, “I can never feel that my poor girl is resting easy in her grave.”
“Have they released the body for burial?”
“Yes, the funeral’s tomorrow. We’re keeping it quiet. Don’t want the press around.”
“Where is the funeral to take place?”
“At Saint Edmund’s up on Greenhill at eleven in the morning. Will you come?”
“Yes, I’ll be there.”
♦
The funeral of Kylie Stokes took place on a warm sunny Saturday. Zak was there with his father and the girls from the office, minus Joanna. The service was brief and simple. Freda was red-eyed but tearless, as if she had shed so many tears over her daughter’s death that there were none left. Zak was supported by his father. He had lost more weight and was white-faced with grief. Agatha was wearing a large hat and dark glasses in case any of the office girls should recognize her without her disguise. She wished she had not come.
Kylie might not have been the angel her mother had once elieved her to be, but she had been so young and pretty – too young and pretty to lie so soon in the warm earth on a sunny day.
I must find out who did it, thought Agatha. But how?
∨ The Day the Floods Came ∧
9
When Agatha returned home, she sat down at her computer to go through her notes. She managed to catch Boswell in mid-air as he was about to leap on the keyboard. She carried the protesting cat out to the garden, followed by Hodge. “Stay there,” she ordered. They both sat side by side on the lawn, staring at her, as if she had committed some outrage. Agatha shut the door on them and returned to the computer.
She printed out what she had written and retreated to the kitchen with the pile of papers. Agatha made a cup of black coffee and lit a cigarette. She sighed. It still tasted like burning rubber. She left it burning in the ashtray but a smell like smouldering tyres on a used-tyre dump began to fill the kitchen. She sighed again and stubbed it out. She opened the kitchen door to clear the air. “You can come in now,” she said to her cats. They turned their backs on her and strolled off down the garden.
Agatha shrugged and retreated to her notes. Now, was there anything she had missed?
There was something Mary Webster had said. Where was it? At last she had it. Mary Webster had said that she had caught Kylie in the ladies’ room smoking pot. Now, as pot was still an illegal substance, anyone who wanted it had to go to an illegal source and illegal sources often pushed harder drags. Why had she, Agatha, let this one slide by? Then there was one other thing nagging at her brain.
She closed her eyes and remembered looking down from the bridge at the flood, seeing Kylie floating underneath, her hair swirling in the water, the white wedding dress, like a shroud, the bouquet clutched in stiff hands. Her eyes snapped open. The bouquet! Yes, she could have gone to show someone the wedding gown. But the bouquet! She glanced at the clock. Freda would be at home. She had surely taken the day off for the funeral.
Agatha phoned Freda and when she got her on the line, she asked, “Freda, Kylie was clutching a wedding bouquet when she was found. How did she get it? Did you keep it at home?”
“No, the police asked me that. I’d ordered it from that florists next to the market. It was to be of red roses and lilies and some maidenhair fern. It hadn’t been collected. It hadn’t even been made. They were sending it round on the morning of the wedding day.”
“And that was Kylie’s choice?”
“Well, no. She’d left all the wedding arrangements to me and Terry. Terry was paying for the wedding, but I was paying for the wedding gown and the bouquet and the bridesmaids’ dresses.”
“Who were the bridesmaids? Anyone from the office?”
“No, Iris was going to be one bridesmaid, and my brother Frank’s girl, Ruby, the other. And then Iris’s little daughter, Haley, was going to be flower-girl.”
“Did Kylie object to the bouquet as much as she objected to the wedding gown?”
“Well, she did. She said she wanted white roses.”
“Did the police say anything about what the bouquet was like?”
“No, it was never found. It must have come loose from her hands. They said with so much debris and so much of the flood-water pouring into people’s homes and shops and basements, it could be anywhere.”
Agatha thought furiously. The drowned Kylie had been clutching that bouquet. Hard to tell with the swirling of the water what it had been like. Agatha was sure that bouquet had contained white roses.
“Do you know if Kylie told anyone about the fact that she didn’t like the bouquet you had chosen for her?”
“She was angry about it and the dress. I usually gave in to her, but not on this. As I told you, I couldn’t afford a new gown for her, and I didn’t see any reason to. Iris’s gown was beautiful and as good as new. I could have changed the order for the flowers, but to tell the truth, I was so mad because Kylie had taken no interest in the wedding preparations, I dug my heels in and said I’d no intention of changing anything at all.” Freda began to sob. “If only she were alive, she could have anything sh-she w-wanted.”
Agatha tried to comfort her but Freda said she was too upset to talk any longer. Agatha said goodbye and then sat biting her nails, a substitute for nicotine. Those flowers. Now if they had been in the deep freeze with Kylie’s body, they would be frost-blasted and black. So someone must have put the bouquet in the dead girl’s cold frozen hands before putting her in the river. She shuddered. There was something very evil about that macabre touch of the bouquet. It had been done with hate.
She longed to phone Freda again and ask if she told the police about the row over the bouquet. Had the police checked all the florists to see if anyone had ordered a bouquet of white roses?
Then she thought, why not phone the police? She had not found out about the bouquet by any questioning in disguise. She telephoned Worcester police and was put through to Brudge. He listened to her carefully and then said, “There were little marks on her hands as if from thorns. Thank you, Mrs. Raisin; we’ll look into it.”
Agatha put down the phone with a feeling of relief. The police had the resources to cover florists far and wide.
She went back to her notes. Kylie must have been close to one of the girls. Just suppose one of them suggested to her at the hen party that she should slip out after she got home and bring the dress with her? She sat back and frowned. Wedding presents. She had
never asked about the wedding presents. Now if one of the girls had given a particularly expensive wedding present, would that not go to show particular friendship?
Agatha was reluctant to phone Freda again, but curiosity compelled her to dial her number.
“I don’t want to upset you further,” said Agatha. “What about the wedding presents?”
“I returned them all,” said Freda in a tired voice.
“Can you by any chance remember what the office girls gave her?”
“It was a joint present, a tea-service.”
“Nothing else?”
“I made a list. I may still have it. Hold on.”
Agatha waited impatiently. Freda came back on the line.
“I’ve found it. Oh, Joanna Field – poor Joanna, the police haven’t found her – gave her a bottle of perfume as well as contributing to the tea-service. And Marilyn Josh gave her one of those indecent thong swimsuits. I remember Kylie saying, “She must think I’m a tart.” Nothing else.”
After she had rung off, Agatha studied the notes of Marilyn Josh. Marilyn lived above Harry McCoy and could have seen Agatha standing outside the house that evening when someone had tried to run her over. But Marilyn would not have the means to inject Kylie with heroin and then dump her body in a freezer. Unless she had help. Or had Joanna been in on it and had disappeared to somewhere she was sure the police would not find her?
The doorbell rang. Agatha opened the door to find Mrs. Bloxby there. “You haven’t forgotten about the old photographs of the Cotswolds thing?” she asked anxiously.
“I had,” said Agatha ruefully.
“It’s tomorrow at three in the afternoon. All you have to do is serve tea, sandwiches and cakes.”
“Oh, all right. I’ll be there. Lantern-slides?”
“No, framed photographs around the walls. Easy, pleasant afternoon.”
“For some,” muttered Agatha. “Come in. I’ll make some coffee.”
“I have to get on. Is John Armitage back? His car isn’t there.”
“I neither know nor care,” said Agatha stiffly.
“Oh, Mrs. Raisin!”
“Mrs. Raisin what?” But the vicar’s wife was walking rapidly away.
Agatha decided to check her e-mail. There was one from Marie Hernandez. “We are going back to Robinson Crusoe Island in August and wondered if you would like to join us? We had such fun and I think it was a healing place for you. Let us know if you’ll be there.”
Agatha thought of the long, long plane flight to Santiago and then the three-hour flight in the small propeller plane out to the island. She typed, “I don’t think I can make it. Maybe next year.” She hesitated. Should she tell Marie about the case she was on? But it was too complicated and would take too long. So she added a few sentences about the weather in true British style and sent it off.
The doorbell rang again. It was Bill Wong. Agatha eagerly drew him in and described how she had phoned Brudge about the flowers.
“Good work,” said Bill. “I heard a while back from my friend at Worcester police that they had been asking about that bouquet, but the people with you on the bridge when Kylie was spotted were too shocked to notice if the bouquet was fresh. Anything else?”
“Did I tell you that Mary Webster once caught Kylie smoking pot?”
“No, I don’t think you did. That’s interesting. If she was experimenting with pot, she might have gone on to experiment with something stronger. Did she tell Mary where she’d got it?”
“No. Well, I forgot to ask that.”
“And I hear from the news that Joanna Field is still missing.”
“I wonder, Bill, if she had anything to do with it. I wonder if she thought the police might soon get on to her and decided to disappear.”
“I almost wish that were the case. But would she go off and not take any of her clothes with her? She has only a little bit of money in her account and none of it has been touched. How’s John Armitage?”
Agatha stared at him. “There’s a thing. I wonder.”
“What?”
“He was keen on her. He found out she’d been sleeping with Barrington – what a euphemism, sleeping. Anyway, he took off after that. But he was keen on her. What if she gave him some sob story about wanting to get away from it all?”
“I think you’ll probably find that John Armitage left news of his whereabouts with Worcester police before he left. But I’ll phone them and check him out. You know, it’s a pity it wasn’t Zak. It’s usually the nearest and dearest.”
“But he’s so cut up. And what could his motive be?”
“If there were drugs at that club and Kylie had somehow found out and threatened to tell the police, that would be a motive. But the club’s been searched. And there’s never been a whisper of anything there. It could be jealousy on the part of one of the girls. But would any of them go to such lengths? Trying to kill you and then succeeding in running down Mrs. Anstruther-Jones?”
Agatha lit a cigarette, took a puff, winced and put it out. “I don’t know, Bill. I just don’t know.”
He smiled. “Relax, Agatha. You’ve done your best. The police will be combing the florists far and wide. That was a good tip. Leave everything to them.”
♦
Agatha retreated to the garden to start weeding again. The weather had turned very warm and heavy. She noticed that the grass on the lawn had grown several inches. Again she thought of calling the gardener, but stopped herself from doing so with the reminder that she might as well occupy her time, and why pay someone to do what she could do herself?
She got the lawn-mower out of the shed at the foot of the garden, carried the lead into the kitchen and plugged it in.
Back in the garden, she switched on the machine and began to trundle it happily up and down the grass in the sunshine, dreaming of becoming a completely new Agatha Raisin, in that way that people who do not like themselves very much are apt to do when they set about inventing a new character for themselves. She would take lessons in cookery and baking from Mrs. Bloxby. She would become a model villager. She would fond-raise for the church. Her thoughts began to take a gloomy turn. Yes, she would be the perfect country lady, and at her funeral the church would be filled with sobbing villagers. Alf, the vicar, would be in tears as he explained to the packed congregation that he really did not know how he or the village would get along without her. Perhaps James Lacey would be there, head bowed by her graveside. He would say, “I loved her all my life and came back to tell her so, but it was too late.” A tear rolled down Agatha’s cheek and she brushed it angrily away.
The grass done and the cut grass bagged up in refuse sacks, Agatha went back indoors and decided to do a particularly tough Pilates exercise called the dead bug, which involved lying on her back and stretching alternative legs and arms until she ached.
What next? A shopping trip? But where? Stow-on-the-Wold and Chipping Campden were wall-to-wall tourists. Much as she liked Evesham, it didn’t have much in the way of smart clothes shops.
The doorbell shrilled. Glad of a diversion, Agatha hurried to open it and then glared at Sir Charles Fraith. Certainly, he had somehow restored himself to his old slimness and impeccable tailoring, although his hair was still thin. “Get lost,” snarled Agatha.
He put his foot in the door. “I need a shoulder to cry on,” he said.
Agatha hesitated and then opened the door wide. “Come in, but make it quick. I was just about to go out.”
He followed her into the kitchen. “Any chance of a coffee?”
“I’ll make some and we’ll take our cups into the garden. It’s a glorious day. Don’t spoil it by staying too long.”
“If you say so,” said Charles gloomily. Agatha made two mugs of instant coffee and they carried them out into the garden and sat at a table in the sunshine.
“So,” began Agatha, “what’s up?”
“She’s left me.”
“What! Your wife? The French bird? Why?”
“Would you believe it, Aggie, she says it’s because I’m mean. She’s gone to Paris and says she doesn’t want to see me again.”
♦
“Well, you always were tight with money, Charles. When it comes to paying a bill in a restaurant, you’ve always managed to forget your wallet.”
“I’m thrifty,” he said defensively. “And she’s got oodles of cash, but she says she sees no reason why she should have to spend her own.”
“You sound like soul mates,” commented Agatha drily. Her stomach gave a rumble. “I’ve got to eat something,” she said.
“Then I’ll prove to you I’m a reformed character. I’ll take you for dinner. What do you feel like?”
Agatha felt for a moment that she should rebuff him. He had behaved disgracefully. But then, when had Charles ever behaved well?
“Oh, all right. I feel like Chinese. There’s a good restaurant in Evesham. I’ll go and change.”
♦
“So what have you been up to?” asked Charles as they tackled pancakes and crispy duck.
“It’s an odd business,” said Agatha. “Did you read about that girl found in the river in Evesham?”
“Saw something about it. Tell me. This is like old times.”
Yes, it was, thought Agatha. She almost expected James to walk in the door. He’d had a habit of turning up when she was with Charles.
Agatha started with first meeting Kylie at the beauticians. Charles listened carefully until she had finished.
“What a complicated case!” he exclaimed when she finally fell silent. “I think you should concentrate more on this Marilyn Josh. She lives at the same address as Harry McCoy. Someone saw you and decided to kill you, or that someone decided to phone the murderer and say where you were. Kylie was blackmailing Barrington. Who knows? She may have been blackmailing someone else.”
“But who? Someone we don’t know?”
“And this Joanna Field. Wouldn’t her neighbours have seen anything?”
