by M C Beaton
His wife came into the bedroom and stood with her thin arms folded, looking at him. Kylie was his second wife. She had been a pretty little blonde when he married her ten years ago, but now, he thought, glaring at her reflection in the mirror, she looked a fright, with dark roots showing in her blonde hair, and a skimpy T-shirt, skin-tight leggings and high-heeled shoes all accentuating her painful thinness. He tied a red scarf at the neck of his open-necked blue shirt.
"Everything's ready for you to play the big shot," said Kylie. "But I ain't roasting them hedgehogs, no way."
"You wouldn't know how to," sneered Mike. "I know, just like that, cos of my gypsy background."
"What gypsy background?" said Kylie. "Your father's a burglar and he's still doing time."
"I'm talking about my grandparents. My grandmother was a gypsy." Mike took a swig of vodka from a glass on the dressing-table. His consumption of alcohol was awe-inspiring.
It is a sad trait among American alcoholics to claim a Cherokee grandmother; among their British counterparts, it is a gypsy.
Mike and Kylie Pratt lived in a neat bungalow among other neat bungalows, all almost identical with their niched curtains at the windows and their manicured lawns.
Mike went out carrying his glass, brushing past his wife. He heard the first car arrive. He had invited all the neighbours. He was not sure how hedgehogs should be roasted, but they were meat like any other animal, and should surely simply be salted and peppered and put on the barbecue.
The day was fine, not a cloud in the sky. Feeling the lord of the manor, he advanced to meet the first of his guests.
He had paid the butcher to skin the hedgehogs, and the little carcasses lay in a pathetic bunch on a table beside the barbecue. On other tables were bowls of salads, paper plates, cups, bottles and glasses.
He felt at his best when dispensing drinks. The garden began to fill up. Voices were raised in the usual neighbourly salutations, "You a'right? I'm a'right." The women surrounded their men, listening eagerly as if they had not heard every word over the preceding years, prompting their spouses with little cries of "Ye-yes. Oh, yes."
Mike put the hedgehogs on the barbecue and poked at them with a long fork. Maybe he should have tried to cook one before. The smell was not very appetizing.
And then the protesters erupted into the garden. "Murderer!" screamed Sybil.
Flushed with booze and outrage, Mike strode forward. "Get out of here, you hooligans." He punched Trevor on the arm. Trevor punched him on the nose and Mike fell back, with blood streaming down his face, while guests scattered and the television cameras whirred, for no protesters protested without informing the press of what they were about to do.
Zak crouched down behind a bush and phoned for reinforcements, which he knew were waiting in a van around the corner.
James had joined him. "Get out there and get yourself arrested," hissed Zak. "I'll get you off."
So James added to the fun by sending the barbecue flying. Burning coals rolled across the lawn.
Kylie leaned against the doorway of her house, sipping a drink, a little smile on her face. Mike's birthday was turning out to be quite fun after all.
Five
Agatha and Roy sloped around the house the next morning, both reluctant to walk even the few miles to Ancombe to tackle Mary Owen and to pick up the car.
"Let's see if there's anything on the news," said Agatha, switching to Sky Television.
"It's not on the hour," complained Roy. "It's eleven-twenty and it's all that dreary sports."
"Only last for ten minutes," said Agatha, sitting down in front of the set clutching a cup of coffee.
"There won't be anything about the murder," said Roy.
"Let's see."
The sports finished, then the ads. Then both sat up straight as the news came on again and a voice said, "The barbecue of a Mr Mike Pratt of Coventry was the subject of attack yesterday by members of Save Our Foxes."
"It's them," said Agatha eagerly.
The voice went on to explain about the barbecuing of the hedgehogs. "Look at that blazing sunshine," complained Roy. "You'd think Coventry was at the other end of the earth instead of being in the Midlands like us. Why did we have to get soaked?"
"Shh!" hissed Agatha.
A blond man with an ugly sneer on his face was pushing the barbecue over. Agatha stiffened. "Doesn't that chap look like James?"
"You poor thing." Roy shook his head. "You're beginning to see Lacey everywhere. Let's go. At least the Coventry sunshine has reached us."
"Isn't this beautiful?" said Roy as he trotted along by Agatha's side on the road to Ancombe.
Agatha grunted by way of reply, but wondering again why the sheer beauty of the spring countryside did not seem to get inside her. She remembered passing some Saturdays of her underprivileged childhood at the art gallery in Birmingham studying English landscapes, enjoying the painted scenery which had become part of that early dream of living in the countryside one day. And so she saw the present passing landscape like a painting. That bright green of the new leaves, she'd had that colour in her art class at school. And the curved furrows of a ploughed field, with the trees at the edge raising their branches to the blue sky, looked like one of those paintings. Perhaps one had to be brought up in the country to really appreciate it.
"Do you believe in God?" asked Roy suddenly.
"Don't know," said Agatha, wondering if the person in the sky with whom she frequently made bargains--get me out of this one and I'll give up smoking--really did exist.
"I believe in Nature," said Roy, spreading his arms wide. "That's what it's all about."
"You're not going to start hugging trees?" said Agatha suspiciously. "I've got to live here."
"I'm trying to explain I'm a pagan," said Roy. "I am as one with all this."
Agatha was about to say something waspish, but Roy's thin, weak face was turned up to the sun and he looked supremely happy. "Glad you're enjoying yourself," she said gruffly.
"Funny," said Roy, taking her arm, "I always thought anyone who moved out of the city was mad, but maybe if I lowered my sights, it would be better. You and me, Aggie, we could team up and start a new agency in Mircester. Do local accounts. Maybe get married."
"And spend my declining years with people mistaking you for my son?"
"Think about it. We get on all right."
Agatha privately thought that a very little of Roy went a long way, but she gently detached her arm and said, "Okay, I'll think about it." Then she said, "Do we really have to go on with this? It's funny how people in villages so close by can be so different. Apart from the dreadful Mrs Dairy and a few others, the people in Carsely are wonderful. But the ones we've met in Ancombe seem to be really nasty, and Mary Owen is surely going to be the nastiest of all."
"You've dealt with nasty people all your life, Aggie."
True, thought Agatha, and it used to be all the same to me, nice or nasty, just a job, but now I've learned to like people.
"Where does Mary Owen live?" she realized Roy was asking.
"I looked her up. She lives in Ancombe Manor, far end of the village. We'll pick up the car and drive."
Soon they were turning in at the entrance to the manor. Thick yew hedges lined either side of the narrow drive, giving Agatha the impression of driving through a maze. Suddenly they were in front of the house. It was old, very old, made of Cotswold stone, rambling and covered in ivy. It looked as if it had been there so long that it had become part of the surrounding countryside.
Agatha's sharp eyes noticed that there were weeds sprouting in the gravel-covered circle outside the manor-house. She began to think the report that Mary Owen had fallen on hard times might be true. Such a house would have housed an army of indoor and outdoor servants in the old days.
"Well, here goes for another barrage of insults," said Agatha, pushing an anachronistic bell-push by the side of the iron-studded door.
At first they thought there was no one at
home, but then they heard footsteps approaching.
The door opened. Mary Owen stood there. She was wearing a shabby sweater and stained riding-breeches and boots. Her head was tied up in a scarf and she held a duster in one hand.
Her contemptuous eyes raked them.
"What do you want?"
"I am Agatha Raisin--"
"I know that. And who's your creature?"
"This is Mr Roy Silver," said Agatha firmly, thinking if one was prepared for insult, it certainly helped one not to lose one's temper.
"Out with it, then. Haven't you done enough damage, whoring for that damned water company?"
Roy timidly tugged at Agatha's arm, but Agatha smiled pleasantly. "I just wanted to talk to you."
"About what?"
"The murder."
Mary stood scowling at the duster in her hand. Then she jerked her head. "Come in."
They followed her into a small dark hall and then along a stone-flagged corridor to a kitchen. "Sit down," barked Mary. They sat down at the kitchen table. Mary jerked out a chair with the toe of one boot and sat down facing them.
"You have a bit of a reputation as a detective," said Mary.
"I have solved some cases," said Agatha.
"So you say. The only reason I'm bothering with you is that you might get the police to see some sense. You see, I know who murdered Robert Struthers,"
"Who?" demanded Agatha and Roy in unison.
"Jane Cutler, that's who!"
"Why?" asked Agatha. "I heard she hoped to marry him."
"Of course she did. That ghoul specializes in marrying men who are due to drop dead, only Robert didn't have terminal cancer or anything like that. He could have lived to a hundred. So she helped him on his way."
"But what good would that do her?" Agatha looked every bit as bewildered as she felt.
"Because I believe she talked poor Robert into making out his will in her favour."
"But you don't know for sure!"
"I know. Do me a favour and get it out of your police friends. Now if you don't mind, I have work to do."
"So what do you think of that?" asked Roy as they drove off.
"I think we should drive to Mircester and see what we can get out of Bill Wong."
"Why do you think she sneered at me like that?" demanded Roy moodily. "Creature, indeed."
"She was furious with me and you just happened to be there."
Roy's thin face lightened. "That's it. It can't be my clothes. I mean, this sweater's Italian and cost a mint, and my jeans are stone-washed."
Agatha privately thought that no matter how much money he spent on clothes, Roy would always look somehow as if he belonged in one of those London street gangs of white-faced undernourished youths.
"Oh, bugger," said Agatha as they drove into Mircester. "Market-day. No central parking, and I'm sick of walking."
"Park right there!" said Roy.
"It's a yellow line. No parking."
"Just park," said Roy, fumbling in his back pocket and taking out his wallet. He fished out a 'disabled' sticker and affixed it on Agatha's windscreen.
"Where did you get that?"
"From a friend," said Roy.
"But what if some copper comes along?"
"We can always drool at the mouth and say we're mentally disabled. Come along."
They went into the police headquarters and asked for Bill Wong. "We should have phoned," said Agatha, as they waited. "He's probably out."
But after a few minutes, Bill appeared.
"I hope you've got something for me," he said. "I'm busy." He led the way to an interviewing-room.
Agatha outlined everything she had learned since the last time she had seen him, ending up with Mary Owen's claim that Jane Cutler had murdered Robert Struthers to inherit after his death.
"Not the case," said Bill. "His son gets everything, not even a mention of either Jane Cutler or Mary Owen in the will."
"Oh," said Agatha, disappointed.
"This old boy, I mean Struthers," said Roy, "could have been playing both of them along. Old people sometimes do that to get attention. I mean, he liked playing cagey. He wouldn't tell any of the other councillors which way he meant to vote. Strikes me as being manipulative and liking his little bit of power. Just suppose Jane Cuder thought she was in the will."
"That's a good point," said Bill, "but why not get him to marry her and be absolutely sure? Common sense would tell her that he would leave it all to his son. Then Jane Cutler is rich, and if Mary Owen has fallen on hard times, and she believed he had changed his will in her favour, then she might have bumped him off and then accused Jane to deflect any suspicions from her, although it's all very far-fetched."
"James has disappeared," said Agatha. "Have you heard anything?"
Yes, Bill had through the grapevine learned that James was masquerading as a member of Save Our Foxes, but he didn't want to tell Agatha that. He felt the less Agatha saw of James, the better. Out of sight was out of mind.
"No," he lied. "Probably off on his travels."
Agatha pulled herself together. "You said they had decided that Struthers had been killed elsewhere and dumped at the spring. Any forensic evidence?"
"Nothing much. Forensic believes that someone vacuumed the body before dumping it. There was just one thing. A white cat hair in one of his turn-ups. He wore those old-fashioned trousers."
Agatha's eyes gleamed. "So we are looking for someone with a white cat!"
"Do you know, there isn't one white cat in the village of Ancombe?" said Bill. "We went from house to house. Someone could be lying, of course."
"It needn't be an all-white cat," said Roy. "Could be one of those black-and-white things."
"Sorry. I should have explained that the hair was from a Persian cat."
"Definitely a Persian, and a cat?" asked Agatha. "It couldn't have been a dog?"
Agatha would have loved it to turn out to have been Mrs Darry.
"Definitely a Persian cat."
"Still, it's something to go on," said Agatha eagerly.
"I don't want to dampen your enthusiasm for amateur detection, but a great number of policemen have been searching for that cat and are still searching."
"Does Mary Owen have an alibi?"
"Yes, on the night of the murder she was staying with her sister in Mircester. She stayed all night."
"But he could have been killed earlier in the day!"
"It's always hard to estimate time of death, but he was killed earlier that evening. Mary Owen's sister said she arrived at four in the afternoon and did not leave until the following morning."
"A sister would say anything."
"True, but she seems a very direct, truthful sort of lady. Now, I've really got to get back to work."
As Agatha and Roy approached Agatha's car, a large policeman was standing staring at it.
"Limp!" hissed Roy.
The policeman swung round and watched their approach. "Thank you, dear boy," quavered Agatha. "I am getting so forgetful. I cannot remember where I left my stick."
Hoping desperately it was not some policeman who had seen her before, Agatha smiled at him weakly and allowed Roy to help her into the driving seat. As soon as Roy was in behind her, she drove off with a great grinding and clashing of gears.
"Okay, I'm nervous," said Agatha. "The minute we stop I'm going to get that sticker off the windscreen."
"Where now?"
"Let's go back to Ancombe and have a wander around. We might see that cat."
"We haven't eaten and I'm starving."
"We'll eat in the pub in Ancombe."
"What about all that food I was going to cook? I've got to get the London train this evening."
"Next time," said Agatha.
James and Zak had agreed not to be seen spending too much time together. There was a member of Save Our Foxes called Billy Guide who drank heavily. James targeted him, buying the grateful Billy as much as he could drink.
A week after Agatha's interview with Mary Owen, James attended another meeting and his heart beat faster when he learned that the group's next expedition was to the spring in Ancombe.
Sybil, her fine eyes flashing, said they would take bags of cement and put them into the basin of the spring.
James, who longed to point out that their plan would cause more destruction to the village environment than the water company, kept silent. Why should such a group switch their attention from animals to the matter of spring water? Someone must be paying them for this action. Sybil was saying that the bus would pick them up at the usual place.
He half-listened to her rant, wondering if she believed a word of it.
Various other members made rousing speeches. James stifled a yawn. He roused himself when he heard Trevor ask if the press had been informed.
"No," said Sybil. "When the spring is cemented up, we'll phone them."
"Wait a bit," slurred Billy Guide, "if the basin is filled with cement, that means the water from the spring will flood that woman's garden--what's her name?--Toynbee."
"And serve her right!" cried Sybil. "It's all her fault that capitalist commercialism has been allowed to pollute one of our English villages."
At last the meeting finished. James edged up to Billy. "Fancy a drink?"
"Okay, squire," said Billy, "but I'm a bit broke."
"On me."
"Great."
"Lefs find a pub a bit away from here," said James, knowing that Billy would go anywhere for a free drink.
On the road to the pub, Billy said, "My missus is always complaining I come home smelling of beer."
"Let's have vodka," said James. "That doesn't smell."
And may God forgive me, he thought. I didn't think any of this useless lot were married. Billy already smelt like a brewery, but James was only interested in getting him drunk enough to loosen up.
He didn't, however, want Billy to get so drunk that he couldn't think or speak.
"Have you been married long?" he asked.
"Ten years."
"Kids?"
"Four."
