by M C Beaton
“Now you’re here, come in,” said Charles. “Have some coffee.”
“That woman called me a creature,” said Emma, still looking at his feet.
“That woman is my aunt and she calls everyone a creature.”
Mollified, Emma followed him in through a dark stone-flagged hall decorated with a few oil paintings badly in need of cleaning and a moth-eaten moose head.
“Gustav!” shouted Charles. “Coffee! In the study.”
“Can’t you get it?” came the reply. “Em cleaning the silver.”
“Coffee for two. Now!”
The study was as dark as the hall and lined from floor to ceiling with books. There were two comfortable armchairs with side tables by the fire. Charles lit a lamp and opened a window.
“Sit down, Emma,” said Charles. “Does Agatha know you’re here?”
“It’s silly of me but I was working nearby looking for a missing teenager and I suddenly decided to call on impulse. Do forgive me. I should have phoned first.”
“That would have been a good idea. Still, you’re here. How’s the shooting case going?”
“Oh, haven’t you seen the paper yet?”
“No, what’s been going on? Ah, Gustav. How do you take your coffee, Emma?”
“Two sugars and no milk, please.”
Gustav had grizzled hair, small black eyes and a long mobile mouth. He was dressed in black trousers and a white shirt open at the neck.
He deftly poured coffee for both of them.
His black eyes studied Emma for a long moment. Then he turned to Charles. “You really ought to be locked up,” he said. “Bugger off, Gustav,” said Charles amiably. “Who was that?” asked Emma.
“My butler. Of course no one, least of all me, can afford a full-time butler these days, so Gustav is a maid of all work.” “He should show more respect.”
“Did you come to criticize the staff?” Charles’s normally pleasant voice had an edge to it.
Emma’s hand holding the cup shook. “I’m so sorry,” she babbled.
“Oh, Emma, stop apologizing and tell me about this shooting case.”
So Emma rallied and told him the little she had heard and all she had read in the morning’s papers.
“Now, that is odd,” said Charles. “It’s all so neat and tidy. Is Agatha at the office?”
“No, we all have the weekend off.”
“But you said you were working.”
“I’m conscientious.”
“I’d better drop in on Aggie.”
Emma simpered. “Today might not be a good time. She has a young man staying with her.”
“That’ll be the dreadful Roy. I’d better get over there. If she had let me in on it, I’d never have let her leave it until the morning. Now look what’s happened. Nice to see you, Emma, but I’ll let you get on with your work. Gustav!”
The door opened. “What?”
“Show Mrs. Comfrey out.”
Emma followed Gustav out and through the shadowy hall. “Phone next time,” said Gustav and slammed the great door behind her.
She got into her car feeling very flat and diminished. She had better get home and look up the case files she was working on, select a missing cat or dog and say it had been reported in Warwickshire. Emma switched on the engine and let in the clutch and drove slowly off, her dreams crumbling about her ears. But when she reached the bottom of the drive, she remembered with a sudden glow that he had called her glamorous. And he had felt so at ease with her that he had not bothered to dress.
By the time she had turned into Lilac Lane, her fantasies were back in full force. She must call on Agatha when Charles arrived. But first she must come up with a case as an excuse for visiting him.
Having found what she considered a good enough excuse, she sat on a chair on the landing by the side window overlooking the entrance to Agatha’s cottage. Agatha’s car was not there. Emma prayed that Charles would arrive before Agatha returned. That way she could nip out and invite him into her cottage to wait. She was just wrapped in a rosy fantasy where Charles was saying, “I feel so comfortable here with you, Emma. Makes me realize what a lonely life I’ve had,” when she heard the sound of a car.
Charles drove up and took a bag out of the boot and headed for the door. But instead of ringing, he took out a set of keys, selected one, opened the door and went in.
Emma bit her thumb. Well, she had been going to call on Agatha, hadn’t she? No harm in ringing the bell. She went to the bathroom and repaired her make-up, patted her hair and went next door. She rang the bell.
Charles was sprawled on the sofa watching a rerun of Frasier. He heard the bell but decided not to answer it. Probably some boring woman from the village.
Emma retreated, baffled.
Frasier being finished, Charles decided to visit Mrs. Bloxby to pass the time until Agatha returned.
Emma, now downstairs, saw him pass the window. She rushed towards her front door, but tripped over a footstool and went sprawling. When she had picked herself up and opened her door, there was no sign of him. She set off in pursuit, out of Lilac Lane and past the general stores. There, ahead of her, turning off from the main street down the cobbled lane which led to the church, was Charles.
There’s no service today, thought Emma, so he must be going to call on Mrs. Bloxby.
She drew back a little. Let him get inside the vicarage and then she could stroll casually up and ring the bell. Mrs. Bloxby would not think it strange. Everyone in the village called on Mrs. Bloxby. She would wait for five minutes.
“It’s good of you to let me in,” Charles was saying. “Why should I not let you in?”
“It was just when I rang your doorbell,” said Charles, “that I suddenly realized how irritating people can be when they just land up on your doorstep without telephoning and expect a welcome.”
“Were you thinking about anyone specific?’’’
“That Emma Comfrey who works for Agatha. Rolled up this
morning at my home.”
“Oh dear. You haven’t encouraged her in any way, have
you?”
“I took her out for lunch a couple of times. But she’s old enough, just, to be my mother.”
“Come into the garden. We’ll have coffee there.”
Charles relaxed in the pleasant vicarage garden under the shade of an old cedar. The sun blazed down. As Mrs. Bloxby prepared the coffee, there was a comforting tinkle of china from the kitchen and a smell of warm scones. Up on the hill a tractor crossed a field, looking like a toy.
The doorbell rang.
Charles stiffened as he heard the door open and Mrs. Bloxby say loudly, “Why, Mrs. Comfrey.”
Charles shot to his feet, feeling suddenly hunted. He vaulted nimbly over the garden wall into the churchyard and hid behind a sloping gravestone.
“He was here a minute ago,” he heard Mrs. Bloxby say. “He must have remembered something and just left. I’m sure you can catch him if you hurry.”
Charles stayed where he was until he heard Mrs. Bloxby calling, “You can come out now.”
Charles climbed back over the garden wall and brushed down his trousers.
“Coffee’s ready,” said Mrs. Bloxby placidly.
Charles grinned as he sat down at the garden table. “I didn’t know you were capable of lying.”
“I didn’t lie. I said you had left and so you had. Mrs. Comfrey has blonded her hair and is wearing full make-up. What have you done?”
“I was only being kind to the old bird. She’s had a rough life. Never mind her. I’m waiting for Aggie to get back to tell me all about the shooting.”
Emma waited on her chair on the landing. She saw Roy and Agatha return, and then Charles came strolling along Lilac Lane.
Once more she decided to wait five minutes and then go and join them.
She kept glancing down at her watch. How slow the second hand crawled around the dial! At last, she straightened up, went downstairs and marched n
ext door.
Agatha opened the door. “Why, Emma. What can I do for you?”
“I thought I might join you for a coffee.”
“I’m afraid now is not a good time,” said Agatha firmly. “You’ve got the whole weekend off, Emma. Make the most of it. I’ll see you in the office on Monday.”
Emma marched back to her own cottage, back ramrod-straight, and two spots of angry colour burning in her cheeks.
She hated Agatha Raisin. Agatha must have sensed Charles’s growing interest in her and was jealously keeping him to herself.
“That was Emma,” said Agatha, joining Roy and Charles in the garden. “But I couldn’t ask her in because I want to tell you about the case and Emma mustn’t know about us finding the body before the police. So where was I? Oh, yes, the more I think about that suicide, the more worried I get.”
“Say it wasn’t suicide,” said Roy. “Who’s the murderer?
Jason is in Bermuda, although he’s probably heading back by now. Laggat-Brown has a cast-iron alibi. Who’s left?”
“Someone we don’t know about,” suggested Charles. “Might be an idea to get hold of Harrison Peterson’s wife.”
“I could phone Patrick,” said Agatha reluctantly. “But I told him to take a rest.”
“You could see if he’s dug up anything else and then he can rest while we do something about it,” said Charles.
Roy shifted uneasily in his chair. He resented the appearance of Charles, although he knew him of old. This was supposed to his weekend with Agatha.
“While you make your phone calls,” he said. “I’ll take a walk down the village.”
“Right,” said Agatha. “I’ll phone Patrick.”
Roy nipped upstairs and changed out of his white suit into an old pair of jeans, checked shirt and moccasins. He could see no reason to waste the glory of his best wardrobe on what he waspishly damned as “a bunch of sheep-shaggers.”
He was just strolling past the cottage next door when Emma, who had been pretending to weed her front garden, called out, “Are you visiting Agatha?”
“Yes,” said Roy, “but she’s got phone calls to make and I’m feeling bored.”
“Why don’t you come in and we’ll sit in my garden and have coffee.”
Roy brightened. “Just until she’s finished with her phone calls.”
He followed her through her cottage, looking about him as he passed through the living room. It had changed a lot since the days of James Lacey, Agatha’s ex. Where James had walls lined with books, Emma had shelves of ornaments: china cats, little pottery houses and glass animals. The wood-burning fire now had an electric fire with fake logs in front of it. A sofa and armchairs were covered in chintz. Roy thought it all charming.
“Now sit down,” said Emma brightly when they were in the garden, “and Ell fetch the coffee. Ell just move this umbrella so that you’re in the shade. It is rather hot.”
Nice old bird, thought Roy, stretching his feet out on the grass.
Agatha came back from the phone. “He’s working on the wife’s address, but I’ve got the doctor’s. It’s a Dr. Singh in Cheltenham. His surgery’s in Portland Lane just off the old Bath Road.”
“He won’t be there on Saturday. He might have an emergency surgery on Saturday mornings, but it’ll be over by now. You think someone else got these sleeping pills masquerading as Peterson?”
“Far-fetched, I know,” said Agatha, “but I’d like to check it out. I’m hungry. I’ll make us something to eat.”
“No, you don’t. Last time I was here it was the Swami’s extra-hot curry done in the microwave. We’ll get something in Cheltenham.”
“All right. We’ll drive round the village and pick up Roy.”
But there was no sign of the young man. He was not in the Red Lion or in the general stores or anywhere walking along the cobbled sun-baked streets.
“Let’s just go without him,” said Agatha.
“You’d better leave a note,” said Charles. “You’ve got a nasty way of cutting out your friends when it suits you.”
Agatha opened her mouth to apologize to Charles for having left him when she had gone with Patrick for lunch, but the apology died on her lips.
They drove back to Lilac Lane where Agatha scribbled a note for Roy and propped it on the kitchen table against a jar of instant coffee.
“I’d better get back,” Roy was saying reluctantly. “Maybe they’ve found out the address of that doctor.”
“What doctor’s that?” asked Emma.
“Well, Harrison Peterson took an overdose of sleeping pills, so they want to check up and make sure he really got them for himself.”
Emma saw her chance. “I’ll come with you,” she said. “I am a detective, too.”
“Good idea,” said Roy. Emma had mothered him and fussed over him, something, he thought, that Agatha Raisin should learn how to do.
They went next door. There was no answer to the doorbell. Agatha had completely forgotten that Roy did not have a key.
Roy turned round. “Her car’s here but his has gone. I must say that’s a bit thick. And I’m hungry. Tell you what, I’ll take you for lunch.”
Emma brightened. This young man was obviously attracted to much older women. Although her heart ached for the missing Charles, it was flattering to be escorted around by Roy.
Roy’s boss, on hearing that he was going to visit Agatha, had suggested that he try to lure her back to London to do some freelance work. Roy knew he could take Emma out for a slap-up lunch and put it on his expense sheet as having entertained Agatha.
They drove into Oxford and parked at the Randolph Hotel.
He hoped people would think Emma was his mother. She looked such a lady. She looked like the type of woman one always wanted one’s mother to look like on school sports day. He remembered his own mother with a shudder. She’d been such a coarse, powerful woman.
Over lunch, Emma began a tale of her miserable life. Most of Emma’s life had indeed been pretty miserable, but a lot of it had been self-inflicted. She had taken revenge on people who had upset her at the office by spreading false rumours about them. She had nearly lost her job once. A pretty secretary had been rising up the ranks fast. She was popular with everyone. In a fit of spite, Emma had squeezed a tube of Superglue over the keyboard of her computer after erasing all the girl’s files.
As some of the files contained classified documents, the police forensic department had been called in. Emma had worn gloves, but someone had seen her coming out of the girl’s office, and although nothing could be proved against her, she had ended her years at the Ministry of Defence under a cloud. She still felt that it had been an extraordinary fuss about nothing. The files had been restored from the hard drive and a new keyboard found.
But of course she did not tell Roy about that particular crime. Roy listened, fascinated. Although Emma had been only a secretary, she told Roy that she had been a spy, sent to different countries on dangerous missions. She invented several colourful stories.
Then she realized that if Roy told Agatha or Charles anything about these stories, she might not be believed, and so she said, “Please don’t tell Agatha or Charles anything about my secret life. I shouldn’t have told you. But you are such a good listener, and”—she giggled—”such a very attractive young man.”
Roy beamed. He wished he had worn his white suit.
SIX
“WE’RE in luck,” said Charles. “God bless the Asians. He’s got a surgery at two o’clock this afternoon. We’ll have a quick bite to eat. How are we going to handle this? Ask him outright? Or are you going to pretend to be ill and then drop it into the conversation?”
“Ask him outright. I’ll phone Roy. I feel guilty about him.” Agatha rang her home number but there was no reply.
They had a sandwich in a pub and then went back to the surgery. There were already five people waiting. Agatha went up to the receptionist and handed her card over. “We would like a few words
with Dr. Singh.”
The receptionist was an enormous woman. Her thighs spilled over the typing chair. Her huge bosom cast a shadow over the keyboard in front of her. Her head was surprisingly small despite triple chins. Agatha guessed she could not be any more than thirty yearsold. Her appearance conjured up memories of a seaside holiday where one got one’s photograph taken by sticking one’s head through a life-sized cardboard cut-out of the fairground’s fat lady.
“You’ll need to wait until all the patients have been seen to,” she said. “Take a seat.”
So they did and waited and waited. Agatha tried to contact Roy several times, phoning Roy’s mobile phone as well as her own home number, but failing each time to get a reply.
At last they were told that Dr. Singh would see them. Dr. Singh was a small neat man, dark-skinned, wearing glasses and a white coat, as thin as his receptionist was fat.
“I have already spoken to the police,” he began. “I see you are a private detective, Mrs. Raisin. I assume you wish to ask about the sleeping pills I was supposed to have prescribed.”
“Yes,” said Agatha eagerly.
“Mr. Harrison Peterson was a temporary patient. He suffered from high blood pressure. I prescribed high blood pressure pills. The police showed me the bottle. Someone had carefully extracted a label from another bottle, a bottle of barbiturates, steamed off the label—I should guess—on the bottle of high blood pressure medicine and then replaced it with the part that stated the medicine was sleeping pills. Then they pasted on the section with my name and the name of the pharmacy.”
“So it must have been murder,” said Charles.
Outside, Agatha said excitedly, “So the case is open again. How did the murderer get him to take the sleeping pills?”
“Can’t think. I wonder what the results of the autopsy were,” said Charles as they walked to the car-park. “I mean, he may not have taken sleeping pills. He knew his killer. No sign of forced entry. They have a drink. The murderer doctors Peterson’s drink with that date-rape drug, whatever it’s called, and then, when he passes out, smothers him with a pillow or pinches his nostrils and then sets the scene.”
