Agatha Raisin 18 (2007) - Kissing Christmas Goodbye

by M C Beaton

  “Who’s she?”

  “Some cow who’s jealous of me and has always been trying to steal my accounts. I’m a failure. I can’t bear it. I had holiday owing, so I just took off in the car and I found myself driving towards you.”

  “Have you got a bottle of the stuff with you?”

  Roy fished in his pocket and pulled out a green glass bottle with a gold stopper. Agatha took off the top and sprayed a little on her wrist.

  “It’s lousy, Roy.”

  “But it’ll get good publicity and all because of me, and Mary will take the credit.”

  Agatha handed him the television remote control. “You sit there and finish your drink and watch something silly. I’ll see what I can do.”

  Agatha went into her study and logged on to her computer. She opened the file which held all her old journalist contacts. Then she switched off and picked up the phone and called Deirdre Dunn, top woman’s editor on The Bugle. To her relief, Deirdre was working late.

  “What is it, Agatha?” asked Deirdre. “I thought you were into the detective business.”

  “I am. But I want you to do me a favour and knock a perfume called Green Desire.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Remember I accidentally found out you were having an affair with the Foreign Secretary, Peter Branson?”

  “Do you have to rake that up?”

  “Only if necessary.”

  “All right, you old whore. What am I supposed to do?”

  “Take this down.”

  Twenty minutes later, Agatha returned to the sitting room. “All fixed,” she said cheerfully. “What is?” demanded Roy.

  “Deirdre Dunn is putting a piece in the Sunday edition of The Bugle, saying that Green Desire is one crap perfume, despite the brilliant public relations work of one Roy Silver, whom the thankless Betty Clap betrayed with her lack of business acumen by firing at the last minute and exchanging for someone with considerably less experience. She’s also sending her assistant out into the streets to do a vox pop, spraying people with the stuff and asking them what they think of it. She’ll only print the bad comments. Deirdre has great power. The stuff’s doomed. Revenge is thine.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you, Agatha. How did you persuade Deirdre?”

  “Oh, we go back a long way. We’re great friends.”

  Roy looked at Agatha uneasily. Deirdre, all skeletal elegance and cut-glass voice, had once said to him that if Agatha ever died, she would cheerfully piss on her grave.

  “Will it work?” he asked.

  “Trust me.”

  “Well, thanks, Aggie. How can I repay you?”

  “Just don’t stay too long.”

  Agatha came down to the kitchen the next morning to find a plate of fresh croissants on the table, and Roy sitting reading the newspapers.

  “Where did you get the croissants?” she asked.

  “The village shop. Some woman in the village has started making them. I’ve made coffee.”

  Agatha opened the back door and let her cats out to play. She poured herself a cup of coffee, sat down at the table and lit a cigarette.

  “Must you?” asked Roy, flapping his hands.

  “Yes, so shut up.” Agatha saw she had left Mrs Tamworthy’s letter lying on the table. She handed it to Roy. “Read that and tell me what you think about it.”

  Roy read it carefully. “She sounds mad.”

  “She might not be. I might read about her death in the newspapers and feel guilty.”

  “It’s a nice day,” said Roy. The morning mist was lifting. Agatha’s cats, Hodge and Boswell, were chasing each other over the lawn. “We could both go over and talk to her.”

  “Wouldn’t do any harm,” said Agatha. “That way we’ll find out whether she’s bonkers or not.”

  Chapter Two

  They eventually found Lower Tapor after having become lost several times. Signposts seemed to ignore the very existence of the place. Neither Roy nor Agatha were much good at reading maps, and so it was by accident that they at last found themselves confronted by a sign announcing Lower Tapor.

  They drove slowly between two rows of small red-brick cottages and then found themselves out of the village at the other end.

  “Snakes and bastards!” muttered Agatha, executing a clumsy eight-point turn. Back again. “Look for someone,” she hissed.

  But the street appeared deserted. “Look!” said Roy. “There’s that little road on the left. It must lead somewhere.”

  Agatha whipped the wheel round and plunged down the side road. They came to a triangle of village green with houses set around it and one pub called The Crazy Fox.

  Agatha stopped the car outside the pub. They both got out and stood for a moment looking up at the inn sign, which displayed a painting of a fox dressed as a huntsman, gun in hand, standing upright with one rear paw resting on the dead body of a man.

  The pub itself was a low building built of mellow Cotswold stone. The village was very quiet. The day was perfect and the sun warm.

  Agatha pushed open the door and, followed by Roy, went inside. She stood and blinked in surprise. The pub was full of people. A man with a clipboard stood in front of the bar. He had been addressing the crowd but fell silent and stared at Agatha.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “I want directions to the manor house,” retorted Agatha.

  There was a sudden uneasy rustling of papers and whispered voices.

  “Why?” demanded the man with the clipboard.

  He was a big, burly farming type and his small eyes were suddenly full of menace.

  “Because that’s where I’m trying to get to,” howled Agatha.

  “Go out. Turn right, and down Badger Lane. Takes you there.”

  “Any chance of a drink?” asked Roy.

  “No,” said the man. “This is a private meeting. Get out.”

  “Well, I never!” said Roy outside. “Oh, forget about the local yokels,” said Agatha.

  “Let’s find this house.”

  They got back into the car and found Badger Lane leading off from a corner of the green.

  Agatha drove slowly. The lane ran between high stone walls and was so narrow she was afraid of scraping her car.

  “There it is,” she said, spotting a double gate on which hung a small sign, THE MANOR HOUSE. “You’d better get out and open the gates,” said Agatha.

  “Why me?” complained Roy.

  “Because I’m driving.”

  Grumbling, Roy got out. He was soon back.

  “The gates are padlocked. We should have phoned first. Phone now.”

  “No, I want to surprise her,” said Agatha. “I want to find out if she’s really bonkers. We’ll leave the car here and climb over the gate”

  “It might be a farm,” said Roy uneasily, looking at the fields of wheat that stretched out on either side of a road on the other side of the gate. “We could walk miles.”

  “Don’t be such a wimp. Come on.”

  As Agatha climbed over the gate, her hip gave a nasty twinge. She had been told she had arthritis in her right hip and would need a hip replacement. She had gone back to her Pilates classes earlier in the year but had recently stopped going.

  Thankful that she had put on a trouser suit and flat shoes, Agatha began to trudge along the road. After two miles of walking, her feet were aching and her bad hip was throbbing. “It must be here somewhere,” she said, exasperated. “There are trees up ahead. Might be there.”

  But when they reached the trees it was to find another sign, on a post this time, with the legend THE MANOR HOUSE picked out in gold paint.

  Ahead of them lay a metalled driveway. Glad to be under the shade of the trees, they walked on. The road twisted and turned, thickly wooded on either side.

  “We’ve been walking for hours,” groaned Roy. After what seemed an age, they arrived at a lodge house and could see the road stretching on between two fields where sheep cropped the grass, to b
uildings at the top of a rise.

  “Nearly there,” said Agatha. Now she was beginning to wish she had phoned instead. Her linen trouser suit was beginning to stick to her back and she knew her face was shiny. “The only thing that’s keeping me going,” said Roy, “is the thought of all the pounds of weight I must be losing.”

  They passed some well-ordered stables, turned a corner and found the house at last. It was a square Georgian house with a porticoed entrance and one long Victorian wing to one side. “It’s very quiet,” said Roy. “What if she was down at that meeting in the pub?”

  “We’re here anyway. May as well ring the bell.” They rang the bell and waited. At last the door was opened by a small, stout, motherly-looking woman wearing an old–fashioned flowery pina fore over a black dress.

  “We have come to see your mistress,” said Agatha grandly.

  “That being?”

  “Mrs Tamworthy, of course.”

  “You’ve found her. I’m Mrs Tamworthy.” Agatha flushed with embarrassment. A drop of sweat ran down her cheek. “I am so sorry. I am Agatha Raisin. You wrote to me.”

  “So I did. Come in.”

  They followed her across a hall and into a large airy sitting room overlooking a vista of lawns and ornamental lake.

  “Sit down,” ordered Mrs Tamworthy. “Drink?”

  “Please,” said Agatha. “Gin and tonic, if you have it.”

  “Beer for me,” said Roy and Agatha looked at him in surprise. She had never known Roy to drink beer.

  Mrs Tamworthy went to a drinks cupboard in the corner. “You live a long way from the village,” said Agatha. “We had quite a walk. The gates are padlocked.”

  “You never came that long way! You should have come through Upper Tapor. The gates on that side are always open and only a few yards off the road.”

  There was a little refrigerator under the drinks cupboard. Agatha soon heard the welcome tinkle of ice being dropped in a glass.

  “Drinks are ready,” called Mrs Tamworthy. They both rose to their feet, Agatha wincing as she did so.

  When they were all seated again, Agatha asked, “Who is trying to kill you?”

  “One of the family will try, I think. They are all coming here next Saturday for my eightieth birthday.”

  “Eighty! You don’t look it.”

  “It’s one of the benefits of being fat, my dear. It stretches the wrinkles.”

  Agatha noticed for the first time that Mrs Tamworthy’s hair, worn in a French pleat, was dyed brown. There were deep wrinkles around her eyes but her cheeks were smooth. Her eyes were small and black, the kind of eyes which are good at concealing the owner’s feelings. She was very small, very round, with only the vestige of a waist. Her feet, encased in flat slippers, did not meet the floor.

  Agatha took a strong swallow of gin and tonic, opened her handbag and took out a pen and notebook.

  “Why should one of your family want to kill you?”

  “Because I’m selling this place, lock, stock and barrel, and that includes the village.”

  “Why should they object?”

  “Because they all want to go on like lords of the manor. You see the portraits of my ancestors on the wall?”

  Agatha looked round. “Yes.”

  “All fake. That was my daughter Sadie’s idea. Ashamed of the family background because she’s married to Sir Henry Field. Now, my late husband, he made his money in building bricks. He started work as a brickie, but he won the football pools, and the brickyard was going bust so he bought it. Then the housing boom came along and he made a fortune. Our children, there are four of them—two sons, Bert and Jimmy, and two girls, Sadie and Fran. They all got good educations. Sadie and Fran were sent to a finishing school in Switzerland and that’s where they got their grand ideas. My husband, Hugh, would have done anything for them, and just after they had nagged him into buying this estate, he died of cancer. I took over the business and doubled his fortune, got a good manager for this estate who actually ran the farms at a profit.

  “They even made me take elocution lessons. But I want my own life now. I never liked it here. I want a small flat of my own.”

  “Why not just leave the estate to your children?”

  “They’d run it into the ground. My Hugh didn’t work hard just for me to see it all frittered away.”

  “But one of them wanting to kill you!” exclaimed Agatha. “Are you sure?”

  “You’d better come along to my birthday party and see them for yourself.”

  “I don’t come as a detective, do I?”

  “No, you say you’re a friend of mine. You can bring your son as well.”

  “He is not my son,” said Agatha angrily. “He used to work for me.”

  “Bring a bag. You’d better stay the weekend”

  “I’ll get my secretary to send you a contract outlining fees and expenses,” said Agatha. “Now, is your other daughter, Fran, married?”

  “Was. Didn’t work out. Divorced.”

  “Why didn’t it work out?”

  “Husband, Larry, was a stockbroker. Pompous prat. Fran says he thought she was common and it was all my fault. She blames me for the divorce.”

  “Sadie?”

  “Married to a stuffed shirt, Sir Henry Field”

  “And your sons?”

  “Bert is a darling but weak. He manages the brickworks. He married a farmer’s daughter, or rather she married him.”

  “Name?”

  “Alison.”

  “What’s she like?”

  “All four-wheel drives, tweeds, sounds like the Queen. A bully.”

  “And Jimmy?”

  Phyllis Tamworthy’s face softened. “Ah, my Jimmy. He’s a dear. Quiet and decent.”

  “What are the ages of your children?”

  “Sadie is fifty-eight, Fran, fifty-six, Bert, fifty-two and my Jimmy is forty. I thought I was past it when he came along.”

  “And grandchildren?”

  “Only two. There’s Fran’s daughter, Annabelle, she’s thirty-seven, and Sadie’s daughter, Lucy, is thirty-two.”

  “And do they have children?”

  “Just Lucy. Her child, Jennifer, is eight.” Agatha scribbled busily in her notebook. Roy piped up. “Which one of them do you think is going to kill you?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just a feeling I have.” Agatha raised her eyes from her notebook.

  “You’re not telling us everything. You’ve a pretty good idea of who it might be. You seem a sensible woman. You don’t just have feelings about things.”

  “You’re the detective. I’m hiring you to find out.” Roy, again. “We went into the village pub to ask for directions and there seemed to be some sort of meeting going on there.”

  “Oh, they’re always complaining about something. I own the village as well. There was a Sir Mark Riptor owned this place before my husband bought it. When I took over, they asked me to donate thirty thousand pounds to the upkeep of the cricket club because Sir Mark had always looked after them. I refused. Then they wanted the village fête here. Sir Mark always had it. I refused. They said there had always been a fête at the manor since time immemorial. I said, ‘Tough.’ So they have meetings and grumble. ‘Come into the twenty-first century,’ I told them.

  “‘I don’t expect you to pull your forelocks and act like peasants, so don’t expect me to act like the lady of the manor. Shove off.’”

  Agatha stared at her. “Don’t you think one of them might have it in for you?”

  She laughed. “No. They like grumbling”

  “How long do you want me to work on this case?”

  “The weekend should be enough. I said I was putting the place up for sale right after my eightieth birthday.”

  “But apart from wanting to keep it as a family home,” said Agatha, “won’t they inherit a great deal of money from you? I mean, this estate must be worth a mint.”

  “They won’t inherit much. I had to stand on my own two feet an
d run the business. They should learn to do the same. I’m going to have a technical college built and dedicate it to the memory of my Hugh.”

  “And do they know this?”

  “Yes, I told them a few months ago.”

  “Did you ever make a will leaving them anything?”

  “Yes, I left everything to be divided equally amongst the four of them.”

  “And have you changed that will?”

  “I’m going to change it next week to make sure that the college is built. As soon as this place is sold, I shall start the building of the technical college. I am in good health and want to see the work completed before I die. If there’s anything left over, they can have it.”

  “But they can inherit the technical college!”

  “No, I’m leaving that to the state.”

  Agatha took a deep breath. “Are you tired of living?”

  “Not a bit.”

  “Look, under these circumstances, if you were my mother, I might be tempted to kill you myself. Do your children love you?”

  “I suppose so. Jimmy does.”

  “What does Jimmy do?”

  “He owns a newsagent’s and general stores in Upper Tapor. I bought it for him so he’ll be all right.”

  “Did he want a shop?”

  “The poor lamb is very shy. He didn’t know what he wanted to do. I said a shop was the idea. Meet the public. Get out of himself. I hope I’ve given you enough information because I’m tired and would like to lie down.”

  “Have you got anyone who could run us back to our car?”

  “You’ll find Jill, the groom, in the stables. Ask her. Now if you don’t mind…”

  Jill was a cheerful young woman. She said, sure, she’d run them back, and soon they were jolting down the drive in an old Land Rover. “Does Mrs Tamworthy keep many horses?” shouted Agatha over the roar of the engine.