by M C Beaton
Agatha brightened up at the prospect of seeing Roy again, but she missed Charles. She went through to her desk with some computer disks which had the detective agency’s accounts logged on them, put the disks in and began to go through the figures.
She noticed that she was beginning to actually show a small profit despite all the staff she had employed. The adultery cases were paying well and they were beginning to get quite a few from divorce lawyers.
She closed down the computer and was just about to phone Charles when her phone rang.
“Jeremy Laggat-Brown,” said the voice at the other end. “Remember me?”
“Of course.”
“Have you had dinner yet?” “No, not yet.”
“How about coming out to have a bite to eat with me?” “That would be nice,” said Agatha cautiously. “Will your wife be there?”
“Catherine’s got a Women’s Institute meeting tonight.” “Well, in that case .. .”
“Pick you up at eight? Where are you?” Agatha had put her home phone number along with the office number on her card but not her home address. She gave him directions. Then, when she replaced the receiver and looked at the clock, she let out a squawk. It was half past seven.
She fled up the stairs and began to tear clothes out of her wardrobe and place them on the bed. Then she decided she was wasting valuable time wondering what to wear when she should be making up her face.
Agatha at last descended the stairs just as the doorbell rang wearing a black sheath dress and very high heels and carrying a cashmere stole.
She opened the door and noticed with a sinking heart that Jeremy was dressed in jeans and an open-necked shirt.
“You look grand,” he said.
“Maybe too grand. Should I change into something casual?”
“No, you’re fine as you are.”
Remember, Agatha cautioned herself, as she eased herself into his Mercedes, he may not be married but he’s living with his ex-wife and she thinks they’re getting together again.
He took her to a newly opened French restaurant in Broadway. “Shall I order for us?” he asked.
“Please,” said Agatha on her best behaviour, although she privately thought he might at least have suggested she look at the menu.
When he had placed the order, he smiled at her with those deep blue eyes. James has blue eyes, thought Agatha, a sharp memory of her husband invading her brain. “Tell me about yourself and how you got into the detective business,” he asked.
He was a good listener and Agatha loved to talk about herself and her adventures and so it was lucky for him that she did not really notice much what she was eating, although she did register that the confit de canard seemed to consist of rubbery pieces of near-raw duck in a sort of watery jam.
Over brandy and coffee, Agatha suddenly realized just how much she had been monopolizing the evening’s conversation.
“You haven’t told me a bit about yourself,” she said guiltily. “How did you get into the import/export business?”
Was it her imagination, or did those eyes go hard for a moment? Then he smiled. “You have been doing your work. I got fed up stockbroking. I originally trained as an electronics engineer. I knew several of the top firms and so it was easy to start importing and exporting electronics. But surely this is all very boring. Have you found Harrison Peterson?”
“One of my staff, a retired police detective, is out looking for him. I suppose he must be the guilty party. Did you know him?”
“Only slightly when I was a stockbroker myself. I don’t know that I approve of Cassandra’s engagement to Jason. There’s bad blood in that family.”
“Do you think that Jason might have been in with his father in a plot to kill Cassandra?”
“Why should he?”
“They’ve made joint wills, Cassandra and Jason. And you know that Cassandra won the lottery. I hope that’s not the case because the pair of them are together in Bermuda.”
“Seems silly. Makes Jason or his father the obvious suspect. Jason is devoted to his father by all accounts.”
“Where’s the mother? Whoever tried to shoot Cassandra had a female accomplice.”
“Jason never forgave her for divorcing his father. I don’t know where she’s living.^
Agatha sighed. “You see? So many questions I forgot to ask. The police have probably found her.”
Jeremy called for the bill and Agatha excused herself and went to the ladies’ room. As she repaired her make-up, she began to fret. Will he ask me out again? Why on earth did I talk so much?
“Oh, grow up, Agatha!” she snarled at her reflection in the mirror. “He may not be married but he’s as good as.”
She went out. He rose to his feet. “I’ve enjoyed the evening immensely. We must do this again.”
After a short pause in which Agatha had just been about to demand, “When?” and thought better of it, she said instead, “I should enjoy that very much.”
He drove her home. She invited him in for a drink, but he replied that he should be getting home. Agatha went into her cottage feeling rather flat.
She checked her phone for messages and found there was one. It was from Patrick Mullen. “I’ve tracked Harrison Peterson. He’s staying at a small pub that lets rooms called The Hereford in Evesham. We’re meeting him tomorrow at ten. He says he’s got a lot to tell us. I tried to get him to talk this evening. I didn’t see him. He talked through the door. Should I go to the police with this?”
Agatha quickly phoned Patrick. “Don’t go to the police,” she ordered. “This is our coup. I’ll see you in the office at nine.”
Her evening with Jeremy was quickly forgotten. Agatha could barely sleep that night for excitement.
In the office the following morning, Agatha was only momentarily diverted by Emma’s appearance. Emma’s hair was now dyed blonde and she was skilfully made up. She was wearing a black trouser-suit of expensive cut. Agatha briefly reflected that Emma now looked like one of those well-preserved, ginny, big-toothed women one occasionally saw at game fairs. Agatha forgot that Emma had claimed to be ill.
“So, Patrick,” she said, “how on earth did you get on to him?”
“I saw this Mrs. Blandford, a widow who lives in Herris Cum Magna. She knew him slightly. She gave him a cup of tea. She said he was sore at being left out of the engagement party. I said that was because his son didn’t know where he was and she said that Harrison had told her that his son had been in touch with him but had said that Mrs. Laggat-Brown had refused to invite Harrison.”
“The old cow. She never told me that.”
“I asked where Harrison was now and she got all shifty and said if she’d known that, she’d have told the police. I picked up that she’d a soft spot for Harrison. At last she said he’d said something about having a room in a pub in Evesham. I checked out the pubs that let rooms—very few of them—armed with a description and traced him to The Hereford.”
“Well done,” said Agatha. “Let’s get along there.”
As they drove towards Evesham, Patrick said uneasily, “Eve got a bad feeling about this. I feel we should have turned the whole thing over to the police.”
“Patrick, Mrs. Laggat-Brown is paying heavily for my services. If the police get to him first, she may give them all the credit and cut back on my fee and I’m just beginning to show a profit.”
“I know, I know. Just got a bad feeling in my water.”
The Hereford was situated near Evesham railway station. Patrick parked in the car-park. “The pub’11 still be closed,” said Agatha.
“It’s all right. You get to his room up a side staircase.”
“No security,” commented Agatha as Patrick opened the side door. “Anyone could walk in.”
“Well, they’re hardly expecting burglars in a dingy pub in Evesham. His room is number two.”
They mounted the uncarpeted staircase which smelt of stale beer. Patrick knocked on the door. “Harrison? It’s me. Pat
rick Mullen. Open up.”
There was no reply.
“Damn,” said Patrick. “Maybe he’s flown. I should have told the police last night, Agatha.” “Try the door,” urged Agatha.
He turned the handle and the door swung open. It was a small dark room furnished only with a wardrobe, a wash-basin, a table and chair and narrow bed.
And on that bed lay a man, face-down.
FIVE
“WAIT!” ordered Patrick as Agatha would have rushed forwards. He drew out two pairs of thin plastic gloves. “Put these on.”
Agatha did as she was told, whispering, “He’s not dead, is he?”
Patrick went to the figure on the bed and felt the neck. Then he straightened up. “There’s no pulse.”
They looked around. An empty bottle of sleeping pills and an empty bottle of vodka stood beside the bed. Against the vodka bottle was propped a folded sheet of paper. Patrick picked it up and opened it carefully.
“What does it say?” asked Agatha.
Patrick read: “I tried to kill Cassandra because I wanted Jason to get her money and give some to me so I could start my own business. Now I can’t live with myself. I threw the rifle in the river.”
“Typewritten?” asked Agatha.
“There’s his computer and printer on the table. Blast. We’ve got to get out of here. If we go to the police now, they’ll charge us with tampering with an investigation and I promised the Bland-ford woman I wouldn’t get her into trouble.”
“What about security cameras outside?”
“None. I checked. Come on. Let’s go.”
Once they were in the car and heading out of Evesham, Agatha said, “Anyone could have written that note.”
“Nice thought,” said Patrick, “but I’ve found that real-life cases are not like detective stories. If he said he did it, he did it. Don’t tell anyone in the office about this.”
“They were all listening when we were discussing going along.”
Patrick stopped in a lay-by with a phone-box. “Ed better give the police an anonymous call and then get the hell back on the road because they can trace calls immediately they’re made these days.”
Agatha waited while Patrick went into the phone-box. He spoke briefly and then jumped back in the car. “Off we go,” he said, “and as fast as possible. Now when we get to the office, we tell a white lie and say he’s dead and the police got there before us, so we turned about.”
“They’re all very loyal. We could swear them to secrecy.” “I don’t trust anybody.”
“Okay, we’ll do it your way. Means the end of working for Mrs. Laggat-Brown.”
He shrugged. “Who needs her anyway? Cases are coming in by the day.”
Agatha suddenly missed Charles. She felt uneasy aboutHarrison’s death. She felt she could think more clearly if she discussed it with Charles. Still, Roy was coming and he was always a good listener.
Mrs. Laggat-Brown phoned later that day to tell Agatha that Harrison had been found and that it was all such a relief. She ended by saying, “I should have followed Jeremy’s advice and left the whole thing to the police and saved myself a lot of money.”
Agatha longed to say that if it hadn’t been for her agency’s investigation, the case might never have been solved.
She phoned Charles, but his aunt said he had gone abroad.
Agatha sat and drummed her fingers on the desk. Then her eyes lit up. If by any chance it should turn out that there weren’t any fingerprints on the vodka bottle or on the glass, then that would mean someone had faked the suicide.
She phoned Patrick on his mobile. “I’ll check it out, Agatha,” he said. “But I’m afraid you’re going to have to get back to dogs, cats, divorces and missing teenagers.”
Miss Simms entered, flushed with success, having not only found the missing teenager she had been looking for but having delivered the girl back to her parents.
“Oh, well done,” said Agatha. “Let me build up a little more profit and I’ll get another girl to do the secretarial work and put you on the road.”
“You look lovely, Emma,” said Miss Simms brightly. “What have you been doing to yourself? Got yourself a fella?”
Emma blushed. “Just felt like smartening up,” she mumbled.
On Friday evening, Agatha picked up Roy from the station at Moreton-in-Marsh.
The young man was all in white—white raw-silk suit, white panama hat and white high-heeled boots.
“Now what are you supposed to be?” asked Agatha. “You look like the man from Del Monte.”
“It’s the cool look, sweetie,” said Roy. “It’s the ice cream look. This weather’s been so hot. I assure you, I’m the new black.”
“Do you want to eat out or in?”
“Out,” said Roy, who had sampled Agatha’s microwave cooking several times.
“What do you feel like eating?” “Chinese.”
“There a great one in Evesham. That’s if you don’t mind driving. I’m tired. It’s been a gruelling week.”
Between mouthfuls, as they picked their way with chopsticks through a large Chinese meal, Agatha told him all about the Laggat-Brown case and the suicide of Harrison Peterson.
Her story took her right through the meal until the pot of green tea was being served.
“Well,” said Roy, leaning back and patting fussily at his mouth with his napkin, “it all seems odd. I mean, he makes an appointment with this detective of yours and then kills himself.”
“That’s what I thought. But Patrick has contacts in the police and if there had been anything fishy, he’d let me know. I mean, Peterson typed the suicide note on his computer and printed it off. If anyone else had typed it for him, they’d have wiped the keys clean.”
“I watch all these forensic detectives stories on television,” said Roy. “The things they can find out.”
“I don’t think it actually works like that here,” said Agatha.
“I mean, the labs are backed up with cases. They aren’t going to look too hard when they’ve got a suicide note, an empty vodka bottle and an empty bottle of sleeping pills.”
“Who supplied the sleeping pills? The doctor’s name would be on the bottle.”
“Why should I bother?”
“It would be interesting to know a bit about Harrison.” “I didn’t think to look. I was so shocked. Maybe Patrick noticed.”
Agatha rang Patrick’s mobile and asked him. “You didn’t notice either,” Roy heard her say. “Any way of finding out? I know it seems odd but I’d just like to know. All right, thanks. I’ll see you in the office on Monday.”
“Don’t you work weekends?” asked Roy when she had rung off.
“Usually. But I told everyone to have a rest. We’ve all been working long hours.”
Emma watched from the side window of her cottage as Agatha and Roy drove up. She saw Roy lift a travel bag out of the boot and then follow Agatha indoors. To Emma’s old-fashioned mind, a man stayed overnight with a woman for only one reason. It was disgusting. He was obviously years younger than Agatha. She wondered if dear Charles knew of this liaison.
She went back downstairs and looked at the details she had copied out of the Peerage and Baronetage. Charles owned Barfield House in Warwickshire. Her heart began to thump as she envisaged a plan. He had taken her for lunch twice. They were friends. She had heard Agatha trying to contact him but did not know Agatha had been told he was abroad. In the morning, she could drive out to his home and say she was working on a case in the neighbourhood. No harm in that. No harm at all.
The nights had turned blessedly cool, but the morning mists dispersed rapidly. Saturday promised to be yet another scorching day as Emma motored along the Fosseway into Warwickshire, her hands damp on the steering wheel with nerves, an ordnance survey map on the passenger seat beside her.
She turned off the Fosseway and down long narrow country lanes, searching for Barfield House. She nearly missed the entrance because there was not the name
of the house on the gateposts but a sign saying “Private.” Emma drove a long way up a wooded, twisting drive. Perhaps she would have turned back if the road had not been too narrow to make a turn. Then she was out of the woods and the road ran through fields. She drew onto a grassy verge as a tractor approached. The tractor stopped alongside her and the driver asked, “What are you doing here? This is private property.”
“I am a friend of Sir Charles Fraith,” said Emma crossly. He nodded and touched his cap and drove on.
Emma headed onwards, round a stable block, and there, suddenly, was the house.
In her dreams and fantasies about Charles—and they were many—Emma had imagined a Georgian mansion with a pillared portico. Barfield House was one of those Victorian mistakes. It was not even Victorian Gothic but built in the fake medieval style beloved by the Pre-Raphaelites. It was a large building with mul-lioned windows which sparkled in the sunlight.
“Here goes,” muttered Emma.
She rang the bell set into the stone wall beside an enormous studded door.
A faded elderly lady answered the door, “Yes?” she asked, her pale grey eyes raking up and down Emma’s long figure. “I am here to see Charles.” “What’s your name?” “Emma Comfrey.”
“And he was expecting you? He’s gone abroad.” “No, but we’re friends and I happened to be working in the neighbourhood and—”
“Not collecting for something, are you?”
“NO!”
“Who is it?” she heard Charles calling. “Wait!” commanded the woman.
Emma waited. The woman retreated into the house and left the door open. Emma heard her calling, “Charles! Where are you? Eve got some creature on the doorstep asking for you.”
Emma, all newly blonded hair and new sky-blue linen suit, felt herself shrinking.
It was no use. She couldn’t go through with it. She turned away towards her car.
“Do you want to see me?” called Charles’s voice from the doorway.
Emma reluctantly turned.
“Good heavens! It’s Emma, isn’t it? And looking glamorous,” said Charles gallantly.
He was wearing a striped dressing-gown over a pair of blue silk pyjamas. His feet were bare. Emma stared at his feet as if mesmerized.
