The Quiche of Death

by M C Beaton

  Agatha rose to her feet. "Well, we needn't keep you any longer," she said. She felt claustrophobic. All she wanted to do was to escape into the sunlight, into the sights and sounds of ordinary village life.

  "But you will be punished," went on Maria, as if Agatha had not spoken. "Evil deeds are always punished. I will see to that."

  Roy forced a light note. "So if anything happens to Aggie here, we'll know where to look."

  "You will not know where to look," said Maria Borrow, "for it will be done by the supernatural powers I conjure up."

  Agatha turned on her heel and walked out. There was a game of cricket taking place on the village green, leisurely, placid, with little knots of spectators standing about.

  "I'm scared," she said when Roy joined her. "The woman's barking mad."

  "Let's walk away from the cottage a bit," said Roy. "I'm beginning to think that Reg Cummings-Browne would have screwed the cat."

  "He probably took what he could," said Agatha. "He was hardly an Adonis. We shouldn't have come, Roy. Something always happens to me after I've been asking questions. Let's just enjoy the rest of the day."

  They went to get their bikes, which were chained to a fence beside the pub. As they were mounting, John Cartwright came around the side r>f the pub. Lunch-time was over. He had discarded i pron. He stopped short at the sight of them and glowered. They pedalled off as fast as they could.

  On the road home, Roy struck a rock and catapulted over the handlebars, fortunately landing on the soft grass at the side of the road. He was winded but unhurt. "You see what can happen?" he said. "You really ought to wear a cycling helmet, Aggie."

  The rest of the day passed pleasantly, until Agatha ran him into Oxford and waved goodbye to him at the station.

  The next day, she remembered his remark about cycling helmets and bought one at a shop in Moreton-in-Marsh. Although she had a cottage-cheese salad for lunch and a chicken salad for dinner, she still felt fat. Exercise was called for. She put on her new helmet and got out her bike and pedalled up out of the village, having to get off several times and push. The light was fading as clouds were beginning to build up in the evening sky. At the top of the road, Agatha turned her bike about, looking forward to the long free-wheeling ride down into Carsely. The air was warm and sweet. Tall hedges and trees flew past. She felt she was flying,flyinglike a witch on her broomstick.

  So exhilarated was she by the feeling of speed and freedom that she did not see the thin wire stretched chest-high across the road. Her bike went flying on as she crashed on her head on the road. She was dimly aware of rapid footsteps approaching her and her terrified mind registered that the wire had been no accident and that someone was probably coming now to kill her.

  NINE

  Dazed, Agatha sensed rather than saw her assailant coming nearer and something made her summon up all her efforts and roll across the hard surface of the road just as some weapon smashed down where she had been lying.

  "Stop!" shouted a voice. Agatha's attacker ran off just as she dizzily hoisted herself up on one elbow. She got a glimpse of a dark figurebreaking through a gap in the hedge at the side of the road and then she was blinded with the light of a bicycle lamp.

  Bill Wong's voice came loud and clear. "Where did he go?"

  "Over there," said Agatha faintly, waving an arm in the direction in which her assailant had fled. Bill left his bike by the side of the road and then plunged off through the hedge.

  Agatha slowly moved her arms and legs, then she sat up and groggily took off her helmet. Her first coherent thought was, Damn Roy, why didn't he let me leave things as they were? She slowly got up on her feet and then was violently sick. Shakily she inched along the road until she came to her bike. She picked it up and then stood trembling. An owl sailed across in front of her and she yelped with fear. The heavy silence of the countryside pressed in on her. Suddenly she knew she could not wait for Bill Wong to return. Hoping her bike was undamaged, she mounted and free-wheeled slowly down into Carsely. No one was about the deserted village. She turned into Lilac Lane, noticing that there were no lights burning in Mrs. Barr's cottage.

  She let herself into her own and then shut and locked the door. How flimsy that Yale lock now looked. She would get some security firm to put in burglar alarms and those lights which came on the minute anyone even approached the cottage. She went into her living-room and poured herself a stiff brandy and lit a cigarette. She tried to think but her mind seemed numb with fright. A knocking at the door made her start and spill some of her brandy. She didn't even have a spyhole. "Who is it?" she quavered.

  "Me. Bill Wong."

  Agatha opened the door. Bill Wong stood there with Fred Griggs, the local policeman, behind him. "There'll be reinforcements along soon," said Bill. "Fred, you'd best get back and block off that bit of the road where the attack took place. I'm slipping. I should have thought of that. Wilkes will have my guts for garters."

  Bill and Agatha went into the living-room. "Thank God you happened along," said Agatha. "What were you doing on a bike?"

  "I'm too fat," said Bill. "I saw you on yours and took a leaf out of your book. I was coming to pay you a visit. Now, I happen to know you were over in Upper Cockburn asking where Miss Maria Borrow lives, and Miss Borrow was the woman in that photograph you gave me. Not only that, you had lunch in the pub where John Cartwright acts as part-time cook."

  "You've been checking up on me," said Agatha hotly.

  "Not I. Word gets around."

  Agatha shivered. "It was that Borrow woman, I'll swear. She's quite mad. She says Cummings-Browne promised to marry her."

  "I'm beginning to think Cummings-Browne was a bit touched himself," said Bill drily. "Anyway, Wilkes will soon be here and you will be asked all sorts of questions. But I think I can tell you now who had a go at you."

  "Barbara James? Maria Borrow?"

  "No, I think it was John Cartwright, and do you know why?"

  "Because he killed Cummings-Browne."

  "No, because you've been ferreting about. I swear he knows his wife had an affair with CummingsBrowne and he doesn't want it to get out."

  "Then the logical way to put a stop to it would have been to kill Cummings-Browne in the first place!"

  "But he is not a logical man. He's a great ape. Now begin at the beginning and tell me what happened."

  So Agatha told him about the wire stretched across the road, about how someone had brought something crashing down near her which would have struck her if she hadn't rolled away.

  "But look," ended Agatha, "the horrible Boggles, a couple of pensioners I took out for the day, they knew about the affair, so surely it was generally known in the village about the goings-on between Ella Cartwright and Cummings-Browne."

  "Look at it this way. Cartwright may have suspected something was going on but he could never prove it. She would deny it. Then Cummings-Browne dies, so that's over. But you turn up asking questions, and he gets scared. That sort of man couldn't bear the idea of his wife having an affair—no, I mean the idea of anyone else knowing. Pride does not belong exclusively to the upper classes, you know. Here's the rest of them arrived. You'll need to answer questions all over again."

  Detective Chief Inspector Wilkes and Detective Sergeant Friend came in. "We did as you suggested and went straight to Cartwright's house," said Wilkes. "He's gone. Dived in the door, the wife says, grabbed a few clothes, shoved them in a bag, and off he went. Took that old car of theirs. She says she doesn't know what's going on. She says he was getting a bee in his bonnet about Mrs. Raisin here and kept saying he would shut her mouth. Anyway, we searched the house. She said we needed a warrant but I told her I could get that, so she may as well let us save time. In the bedroom upstairs we found a stack of cash in a box, a sawn-off shotgun, and one of those giant bottles filled with change, the kind they have in bars for charity. This one was for Spastics. There was a robbery last month from the Green Man over at Twigsley. Masked man with sawn-off shotgun emptied
the till and swiped the charity bottle off the bar. Looks like Cartwright did it. Ella Cartwright broke down. Her husband thought Mrs. Raisin here was on to that and that was the reason she was snooping around. So much for all your theories about the cheated husband. We've put out a call for him but I'll bet that car of his is found abandoned quite near. He did time over in Chelmsford in Essex ten years ago for armed robbery, and it was assumed he'd gone straight. Funny, we'd never have got on to him if this hadn't happened. It was Ella Cartwright who told us about the prison sentence."

  "But when Mr. Cummings-Browne died," exclaimed Agatha, "surely you looked to see if anyone in the village had a record."

  "Even then, it would have meant nothing. Before we knew it was an accident, we would have been looking for a more domestic poisoner."

  Agatha stared at him. It was as if the blow to her head had cleared her brains. "Of course," she said, "Vera Cummings-Browne did it. She saw the opportunity when I left my quiche at the competition. She took it home, threw it away, and substituted one of her own."

  Wilkes gave her a pitying look. "That was the first thing we thought of. We had her garbage checked, her cooking utensils, every surface of her kitchen, and her drains. Nothing had been cooked in that kitchen the day before Cummings-Browne was found dead. Now, will you just describe to us what happened this evening, Mrs. Raisin?"

  Wearily, Agatha went over it all again.

  At last Wilkes was finished. "We should be thankful to you, Mrs. Raisin, for leading us to Cartwright. He might have killed you, although I suspect he only meant to beat you up."

  "Thanks a lot," said Agatha bitterly.

  "On the other hand, I am sure we would have caught up with him sooner or later. You really must leave investigations to the police. Everyone has something to hide, and if you are going to go around shoving your nose into affairs which do not concern you, you are going to be hurt. Now, do you wish to be taken to hospital for an examination?"

  Agatha shook her head. She hated and feared hospitals quite illogically, for she had never been treated in one.

  "Very well. If we have any further questions, we will call on you tomorrow. Have you some friend who can stay the night with you?"

  Again, Agatha shook her head. She wanted to ask Bill to stay, but off duty or not, he was obviously expected to leave with his superiors. He threw her a sympathetic look as he went out.

  When they had gone, she switched on every light in the house. She felt as weak as a kitten. She turned on the television and then switched it off again, fearing that the sound would drown out the sounds of anyone creeping up on the house. She sat by the fire, clutching the poker, too frightened to go to bed.

  And then she thought of Mrs. Bloxby, the vicar's wife. She rang up the vicarage. The vicar answered. "Could I speak to your wife? It's Agatha Raisin."

  "It's a bit late," said the vicar, "and I don't know . .. oh, here she is."

  "Mrs. Bloxby," said Agatha in a timid voice, "I wonder if you can help me."

  "I hope so," said the vicar's wife in her gentle voice.

  So Agatha told her of the assault and ended up bursting into tears.

  "There, there," said Mrs. Bloxby. "You must not be alone. I will be along in a minute."

  Agatha put down the phone and dried her eyes. She felt suddenly silly. What had come over her, crying like a child for help, she who had never asked anyone for help before?

  But soon she heard a car drawing up outside and immediately all her fears left her. She knew it was Mrs. Bloxby.

  The vicar's wife came in carrying a small case. "I'll just stay the night," she said placidly. "You must be very shaken. Why don't you go to bed and I'll bring you up a drink of hot milk and sit with you until you go to sleep?"

  Gratefully Agatha agreed. Soon she lay upstairs until Mrs. Bloxby came into the bedroom carrying a hot-water bottle in one hand and a glass of hot milk in the other. "I brought along the hot-water bottle," she said, "because when you have had a fright, no amount of central heating seems to warm you up."

  Agatha, with the hot water bottle on her stomach and the hot milk inside her, and Mrs. Bloxby sitting on the end of her bed, felt soothed and secure. She told the vicar's wife all about John Cartwright and how they had found the money from the robbery in his house. "Poor Mrs. Cartwright," said Mrs. Bloxby. "We will all need to call on her tomorrow to see what we can do. She will need to get a job now. He did not allow her very much money but it would be very good for her to have something to do, other than playing bingo. We will all rally round. Try to sleep now, Mrs. Raisin. The weather forecast is good and things look so much simpler when the sun is shining. We have a meeting of the Carsely Ladies' Society at the vicarage tomorrow night. You must come. Mr. Jones—you do not know him, such a charming man and a gifted photographer—is going to give us a slide show of the village past and present. We are all looking forward to it."

  Agatha's eyelids begin to droop and with the sound of Mrs. Bloxby's gentle voice in her ears, she fell fast asleep.

  She awoke once during the night, immediately gripped with terror. Then she remembered the vicar's wife was in the spare bedroom across the landing and felt the fear and tension leaving her body. Mrs. Bloxby's goodness was a bright shining weapon against the dark things of the night.

  The next day, Agatha went along to Mrs. Cartwright's, mindful of her promise to Mrs. Bloxby that morning to help out. But in the clear light of a sunny day, she felt sure Ella Cartwright would be more interested in money than sympathy.

  "Come in," said Ella Cartwright wearily. "Coppers are crawling around upstairs. Have a gin."

  "This must have been a sad blow," said Agatha, finding it hard to find the right words after a lifetime of not bothering.

  "It's a bloody relief." Mrs. Cartwright lit a cigarette and then rolled up the sleeve of her cotton dress. "See these bruises? That was him, that was. Never marked my face, the cunning sod. I hope the p'lice catch him before he comes snooping back round here. I told him you only wanted to know about Reg, but he thought you'd got wind of the robbery. Fair paranoid, he was."

  Agatha accepted a pink gin. "I felt guilty about Mr. Cummings-Browne's death, that was all," she said. "And there was a rumour that you and he were . . . friends."

  Mrs. Cartwright grinned. "Oh, Reg liked his bit o' slap and tickle. No harm in it, is there? Took me out to a few posh restaurants. Said he'd marry me. I laughed like a drain. He wanted women to be crazy about him, so he usually made a pass at spinsters and widows. Didn't quite know what to make of me at first. We was good pals, for he knew I didn't believe a word he said."

  "Weren't you worried about his wife finding out?"

  "Nah. I s'pose her knew. Didn't bother her, none of it, I reckon."

  "But you said they hated each other."

  "I was trying to give you your money's worth. Tell you something, though. You never can tell what a married couple really think about each other. One says one thing, t'other says something else. Fact is, they got along pretty well. They was two of a kind."

  "You mean, she had affairs as well?"

  "Nah. She liked to play lady of the manor and he liked to play Lord Muck, judging competitions, trying to rub shoulders with the aristocracy. You should have seen the pair of them if someone had a title. Scraping and simpering and mylording the chap to death."

  "What will you do now?"

  "Get a job, I reckon. Mrs. Bloxby's coming to run me over to Mircester. There's a new Tesco's supermarket and they're hiring people. Don't want to go but you find you're doing what Mrs. Bloxby wants whether you wants to do it or not."

  Agatha finished her gin and took her leave. Somehow what Ella had said about the CummingsBrowne's marriage made sense. There was no reason for any further investigation. Agatha realized that deep in her heart, she must have thought Vera Cummings-Browne the murderess all along. No one had murdered anybody. This time she really would take Bill Wong's advice.

  But as she walked back to her own cottage, she saw to her
surprise that there was a large FOR SALE notice outside Mrs. Barr's cottage. Mrs. Barr saw her coming and stood at her garden gate waiting for her.

  "You have driven me away," said Mrs. Barr. "I cannot continue to live next door to a murderess."

  "Fat chance you'll have of selling it," said Agatha. "Nobody's buying these days, and who the hell is going to want a twee cotage called New Delhi anyway?"

  She marched to her own cottage and went in and slammed the door.

  But Agatha felt bleak. She had poked a stick into the village ponds and stirred up a lot of mucky feelings.

  That evening, before the Carsely Ladies' Society meeting, she went to the Red Lion for dinner. The landlord, Joe Fletcher, gave her a cheerful good evening and then asked her what all this business about John Cartwright trying to kill her had been. Immediately several of the villagers crowded around to hear the story. Agatha told them everything—about the wire across the road and how Bill Wong had come to her rescue and how the police had found the money from the robbery in Cartwright's house—while they all pressed closer, occasionally making sure her glass was refilled. "I gather his last crime was in Essex," said Agatha. "Does that mean he wasn't from here?"

  "Born and brought up here " said a large farmer called Jimmy Page. "Decent people, his folks were. Lived down the council houses. Died a whiles back. Couldn't do a thing with him, not since he was so high. Got Ella in the family way and her father came after him with a shotgun and that's how they got married. Kept going off to make his fortune, he said, and sometimes he'd come back flush and sometimes he wouldn't. Bad lot."

  Agatha realized dimly that she had not eaten but she did not want to leave the bar and the company. She knew also that she was sinking an unusually large amount of gin.

  "I see Mrs. Barr has put her house up for sale," she remarked.

  "Oh, aye, her's been left a bigger cottage over Ancombe way," said the farmer. "Aunt of hers died."

  "What!" Agatha stared. "She let me believe it was to get away from me."