by M C Beaton
Agatha felt that twinge at her hip again as she rose from the table. She felt suddenly old. Elaine might have a dreadful laugh, but she was young. What if Charles married her? What would happen when she got older and the few friends she had faded away?
Outside the restaurant, Jeremy said to Roy, “You obviously know Agatha well.”
Roy smirked. “We’re terribly close,” he said.
Jeremy laughed. “Oh, Agatha, and I thought that stunning dress was all for me.”
“Roy is just a friend,” snapped Agatha. She was furious with Roy. What if Jeremy’s attempt at a new relationship with his ex-wife didn’t work out? He was divorced and available.
“What came over you, Roy?” she demanded as she drove off. “Implying we had a relationship.”
“Just protecting you, sweetie. I didn’t like him and you say he’s trying to repair his old marriage. So what’s he doing romancing you?”
“I thought you said he was only interested in finding out information.”
“Changed my mind. The way he looked at you! Like a wolf.” Agatha felt a little glow inside.
“And what were you about telling him you were near solving the case? He may be attracted to you, but if he’s the real villain, it won’t stop him having another go at you. And there’s a car following us. It was behind us when we left Carsely and it’s there again.”
“Probably that woman PC who followed me to Joyce Peterson’s. The police are keeping an eye on me.”
They said good night to the policeman on duty outside Agatha’s cottage.
“How long will they keep up the protection?” asked Roy.
Agatha sighed. “Not very long. Ever since this government closed down all the village police stations, Mircester find themselves overstretched. Fred Griggs, our local bobby, is retired, but it was great when he was around. Crime has spread to the countryside in a big way. Do you know the farmers can’t even leave their combine harvesters out in the field at night? One farmer found they had pinched the whole thing, dismantled it and shipped it off. The newspapers have been full of these thefts recently. Probably ended up in Bulgaria, or somewhere. I’d better check the phone for messages. Oh, there’s one for you, Roy. You’re wanted back in London.”
“Rats. Sorry, Agatha. I’d better get the morning train. I don’t like leaving you like this.”
“It’s all right. Charles will be back tomorrow.”
Charles woke up in the morning with a temperature, a sore throat and limbs like lead.
“I’ve got a bad cold,” he said to Gustav. “Phone Mrs. Raisin at her office and tell her I can’t see her today.”
Gustav did not want to phone Agatha. He disapproved of her. He thought her a nasty, pushy sort of woman. Charles, he knew* found her attractive and he didn’t want to find one day that Agatha was the new mistress of Barfield House. On the other hand, if he didn’t phone, Charles would be furious with him.
So he compromised by leaving a curt message with the temp who answered the phone at the agency: “Sir Charles does not feel like seeing Mrs. Raisin.”
Agatha, on receiving the message, was furious. The temp thought she had been speaking to Sir Charles personally.
Then Bill Wong called to say they were withdrawing the police protection. No, he said, they weren’t much farther, but they were pursuing several leads.
After he had rung off, Agatha decided to visit Mrs. Laggat-Brown. Everything had started at the manor. Maybe if she asked some more questions, she might get an idea. Maybe Jason had talked to his future mother-in-law about his father’s friends.
A brisk gale was blowing the clouds across a large sky as Agatha motored to Herris Cum Magna.
Catherine Laggat-Brown answered the door. “Oh, it’s you,” she said, looking flustered. “I was just about to phone you. Come in.”
Once they were both seated, Catherine asked nervously, “Can I get you something? Tea? Coffee?”
“Nothing, thank you. What did you want to tell me?”
“I no longer need your services. I have decided to leave it all to the police. As Jeremy has pointed out, they have the resources which you do not have.”
“But he said nothing about it when we had dinner last night!” exclaimed Agatha.
Catherine’s eyes widened. “You had dinner with Jeremy last night! He told me he was meeting a business friend.”
“I suppose I could be regarded as a business friend,” said Agatha.
Catherine stood up. “Send me your bill. I do not want to see you again.”
“But don’t you want to know who shot at your daughter?” “As I said, the police can deal with it. Now go! And keep away from my husband.”
“He’s not your husband. You’re divorced.”
“We’re getting married again next month. Didn’t he tell you?”
Agatha drove off, feeling furious. What was that snake Laggat-Brown on about, to have dinner with her and not mention a word of her contract being cancelled? She decided to go up to London and see him. She stopped her car and took out a train timetable. There was a train due to leave Moreton in fifteen minutes. She sped off and just managed to board the train as it was pulling out.
At Paddington, Agatha took a taxi to Fetter Lane, got out and began to search up and down for Jeremy’s import/export business. She phoned Patrick and said, “Have you got the number in Fetter Lane of Laggat-Brown’s business?”
He gave it to her. Agatha walked along and saw, in a dark doorway that she had already passed, “Asterix Import/Export.” She climbed up a narrow, dusty staircase to the top floor, where there was a frosted glass door with “Asterix” painted on it in gold letters.
She knocked, but there was no reply.
She retreated to the landing below, where there was a sign on the door indicating it was the office of Cutie magazine.
She opened the door and went in. A receptionist with gelled hair and Gothic make-up stared at her indifferently.
“I want to ask about the import/export business upstairs,” said Agatha. “There’s no one there.”
“Hardly ever is,” said the girl laconically. “There was a secretary, but I ain’t seen her in ages.”
“What did she look like?”
“La-di-da. Yaw-yaw voice. Blonde hair. But they’re all blonde these days. So naff.” And she touched a finger to her own black hair complacently.
Agatha thanked her and retreated. She tried a solicitor’s office on the floor below. A secretary there said she thought no one worked at Asterix anymore. “There was a lot of coming and going a year ago,” she said. “Lot of visitors. But lately, there’s been nothing.”
Agatha then tried the sandwich shop on the ground floor, but the Greeks who ran it said they were too busy to notice anyone other than their customers.
She wanted to see Jeremy. She realized she wanted him to smile at her and tell her he had said nothing of the kind and it was all Catherine’s idea. Agatha had fallen a little in love with Jeremy. She went to a doorway across the street and waited and waited to see if he would arrive. At last, she glanced at her watch and realized that if she caught the five-o’clock commuter train, he might be on it.
She went to Paddington. But once she had boarded the train, one of the very long ones run by the Great Western Railway, she could see no sign of him.
Charles drifted in and out of sleep, and by evening decided he was feeling well enough to get up for a little.
Gustav tenderly helped him into his armchair in the study and poured him a brandy.
“I’ve prepared a light supper of roast quail for you,” said Gustav. “You should try to eat something. Are you sure you don’t want me to call a doctor?”
“No, it’s just a bad cold. Didn’t Agatha call?”
“There’s been no call from Mrs. Raisin.”
Selfish, thought Charles sulkily. She might have sent me flowers.
Agatha arrived home to find Bill Wong waiting outside for her. “Don’t be alarmed,” said Bill. “It
’s a social call.”
“Come in,” urged Agatha, “We haven’t had a chance of a proper talk in ages.”
Bill followed her through to the kitchen. “You never use that dining room of yours.”
“If this case ever gets solved, I’ll give a dinner party. You can come and bring a girl.”
“I don’t have a girl at the moment. The work gets more and more, and if I set up a date I usually have to break it.”
“Coffee?”
“I suppose it’s safe now that Emma’s inside, but she won’t stand trial. She’s really flipped. They tried their best to get sense out of her. At one point she even tried to claim she’d hired Mulligan to bump you off, but then she relapsed into rambling incoherently. But of course, the powers that be want to believe her and get the case closed. Which leaves us with the shooting at the manor.”
“I went up to Jeremy Laggat-Brown’s office today,” said Agatha, plugging in the kettle. “Oh, Eve got some biscuits.” And seeing the look of apprehension on Bill’s face, she added, “No, not mine. Doris baked them.”
“PC Darren Boyd, the good-looking one who was on duty at your cottage during the day, was quite upset to be called off. He said he’d never been so pampered in all his life. You wouldn’t find anything at that office?”
“Why?”
“He’s closed down the business. Taken early retirement.” “Can he afford to do that?”
“Well, his ex is loaded and they’re getting married again.”
“I thought he was a charming man. Now I’m beginning to think he’s a rat.”
“Yes, but a rat who is devoted to his daughter.”
“And nothing bad in his background?”
“No. We checked out all his import/export business and interviewed his clients. He’s exactly what he says he is.”
“Catherine Laggat-Brown’s taken me off the case. Yet, I had dinner with Jeremy the night before and he said nothing about it.”
“Oho, have you been dating him?”
“No, Roy was there. He was interested in what we’d found out but I couldn’t tell him anything about Mulligan because I was told not to. Nothing in Harrison Peterson’s background?”
“We’re still digging, finding out who he made friends with in prison, that sort of thing.”
“Let me know when you find anything.” Agatha set two cups of coffee and a plate of biscuits on the table.
“I’m not supposed to.” Hodge climbed up Bill’s trouser leg and settled on his lap.
“Funny how much these cats love you. How are your parents?”
“Mother’s got bad arthritis in her hip. She had this pain for ages but she wouldn’t get the hip x-rayed and now she’s got to queue up for a hip operation.”
Agatha’s hip gave a sharp twinge and she thought, I can’t have arthritis. Surely only old people get it.
Bill finished his coffee, ate two biscuits and left, saying “Look after yourself. In fact, Agatha, stick to divorces and missing dogs and cats. You’re off the Laggat-Brown case. So leave it that way.”
Agatha made herself a supper of lasagne in the microwave. She overdid it and it was stuck to the sides of the plastic tray, but she scraped off what she could. She decided to cook up some fish for the cats, and after the fish was cooked switched off the gas and went upstairs.
She had a long hot bath, opened her bedroom window, and went to bed.
Agatha awoke with a start. There was a scratching and yowling from the thatch above her head. She leaped out of bed and opened the bedroom window wide and leaned out. Her cats were up on the roof. She could not see them but she recognized their cries.
Agatha pulled her head in and was just about to switch on her bedside light when she smelt gas. North Sea gas does not have the same strong smell as the old coal gas, but she knew it was gas all the same. She hurried down to the kitchen, trying to breathe as little as possible.
The gas under the fish pot was switched full on. She switched it off and opened the kitchen door and breathed in great lungfuls of fresh air.
It was then she realized that when she opened the kitchen door the burglar alarm had not gone off.
But her overriding thought was to rescue her cats.
She got an extension ladder out of the shed at the bottom of the garden, and carrying it up the path, placed it against the thatch and climbed up.
Agatha called to her cats, who approached her cautiously. She managed to get hold of Hodge, and Boswell leaped onto her shoulder. Agatha eased down the ladder with the cats and collapsed on the grass, holding her head in her hands and feeling sick.
Then she went indoors and opened the front door and all the windows before she phoned the police.
PC Boyd, accompanied by PC Betty Howse, arrived. At first they were sure that Agatha had simply forgotten to light the gas.
“It doesn’t light automatically,” said Agatha. “You have to push that button there to ignite it. And why didn’t the burglar alarm go off?”
Boyd put on a pair of thin gloves and lifted the cover off the main burglar alarm box.
“It’s switched off,” he said over his shoulder. “Are you sure you didn’t do it?”
“Absolutely not!”
“But when you came in this evening, it must have sounded before you punched in the code.”
“Come to think of it, it didn’t. Bill Wong was with me and I was talking to him and didn’t notice.”
“That would be Detective Sergeant Bill Wong?”
“Yes, we’re friends.”
“Who else has keys to your house?”
“Just Doris Simpson.”
“I’ll need her phone number.”
Agatha gave it to him and he picked up the phone and called Doris. Agatha’s heart sank as she heard Boyd’s end of the conversation. “What repair-man? What did he look like? Did he show you any identification? Did you leave your keys lying around? Did you leave him alone at any time?”
Meanwhile Betty Howse reached up and took down the instruction manual from the control box. “What’s this?” she demanded sharply, pointing to the numbers “5936” written on top of the instruction manual.
“It’s the code,” mumbled Agatha. “I kept forgetting it, so I wrote it down.”
Meanwhile, Boyd ended his interrogation of Doris. “A man saying he was from the security company who installed the burglar alarm called round when Mrs. Simpson was here. He flashed some sort of card at her and she let him in. Then she said she had to get down to the shops to get some more cleaning stuff and she left the keys on the table. Time enough for him to get an impression of them. He makes sure the alarm is switched off He then comes back when you’re asleep, lets himself in. But what puzzles me is that he couldn’t guarantee you wouldn’t notice the alarm had been switched off. He wouldn’t know that a short burst of alarm as he let himself in wouldn’t wake you. He didn’t have the code to switch it off quickly.”
“Oh, yes, he did,” said Betty and held out the instruction book with the code written on it.
“Amateurs. You, I mean,” said Boyd bitterly. “So it was planned to look like an accident. The house fills with gas. You switch on a light, and, boom, you’re history. Now I must ask you to leave the kitchen alone until a forensic team arrives. In fact, it would be better if you could stay with someone.”
Agatha thought desperately. “I could phone Mrs. Bloxby, the vicar’s wife, but it’s the middle of the night and her husband would be furious. I would check into an hotel, but they probably wouldn’t let me bring my cats and I don’t want to leave them here. I know, I’ll get Doris to drop in and look after the cats and then I’ll book into some hotel.”
“We need to know which one.”
“There’s a big one outside Bourton-on-the-Water called The Cotswold.”
“Phone them now.”
So Agatha phoned and was assured of a room. She went upstairs and got dressed and packed a bag. Then she put her cats into the large cat box and drove round to Doris Si
mpson. Doris was still awake and full of apologies. “Honestly, he was such a meek-looking little man. I didn’t think for a moment there was anything wrong. Of course I’ll look after the cats.”
Agatha drove off in the direction of Bourton-on-the Water, feeling numb. Why was she considered such a danger? She didn’t know much, and what she knew was surely considerably less than what the police knew. In the hotel room, she unpacked her few belongings, undressed and climbed into bed. She lay shivering despite the central heating. She felt they, whoever they were, were not going to give up. The only solution, surely, was to leave the country for an extended holiday and let everyone know she had left so that the murderer or murderers would no longer think her a threat.
She fell into an uneasy sleep and woke up in the morning remembering her dreams and feeling she had spent the night in some sort of Shakespearian play, with first murderer and second murderer waiting in the wings.
Agatha craved the soothing presence of Mrs. Bloxby, but first she drove to her cottage. A forensic team was working outside like so many figures from science fiction in their white hooded suits, gloves and white bags tied over their boots.
One of Agatha’s favourite programmes on television was CSI—Crime Investigators. Now she wondered if that was really how American forensic teams went on, treading all over crime sites in their normal clothes and shaking their own hair and DNA all over the place.
She left her car and walked up to the vicarage.
Mrs. Bloxby let her in and said that as the day was fine, they could sit in the garden where Agatha could have a cigarette, mindful of her husband’s complaint, “Keep that bloody woman and her cigarettes out of the house.”
“I hear a forensic team are back at your cottage. What happened?”
So Agatha told her, and when she had finished, Mrs. Bloxby said, “I would have thought Bill Wong might have noticed the burglar alarm wasn’t on.”
“No reason to,” sighed Agatha. “I never think about other people’s alarm systems, so why should he?”
“What are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know. 1 can’t think. But I’ve a feeling that whoever is behind this won’t stop now. I keep going over and over it. Maybe I do know something that’s frightened whoever. If only I could think what. My neck’s rigid with tension and I feel like shit. Sorry. I know you don’t like bad language.”
