Agatha Raisin 18 (2007) - Kissing Christmas Goodbye

by M C Beaton

  After a half-hour of questioning, Collins ended the tape and said in a cold measured voice, “I do not like you, Mrs Raisin, or your methods. I must ask you not to interfere in this case or I will charge you with obstructing the police in their duties.”

  “I have been engaged by a member of the family to solve Mrs Tamworthy’s murder,” protested Agatha.

  “Just get out. I don’t want to see you again.”

  Chapter Six

  Toni was released from hospital the following morning. She went to her flat and changed her clothes and then went to the office. Agatha squawked with dismay when she saw her.

  “Get out of here,” said Agatha. “I’m feeling guilty enough about you as it is. Go on. Have a good rest.”

  But Toni, weighed down with gratitude for her flat and her job, refused to go. “I’m a bit hoarse,” she said, “but it’s only bruising.”

  “If you’re sure…”

  “Very sure.”

  Patrick and Phil were there, notebooks at the ready.

  “Now, what have we got?” said Agatha. “I feel sure the motive must have been money. Bert’s brickworks are not doing well. Might be an idea, Patrick, to snoop around and find out why.

  Houses are being put up all over the place. Has he been gambling? Keeping a bit of totty on the side? His wife says she has her own money. How much? I wonder. And what did that county lady see in the very lower-middle–class Bert? “Sir Henry just has a relatively small amount from a family trust. Does he work? Maybe you can find out, Phil, but before that I want you to go to Lower Tapor and see if you can chat up the two village women who were serving the meal on the last day of Mrs Tamworthy’s life. I’ll give you their names and their address. I think you might have better luck there than I did.” Agatha turned to Toni. “I would feel easier if you would take on some of the lesser jobs today. We still have two dogs missing and three cats. Mrs Freedman will give you the details.” Toni opened her mouth to protest but then quickly decided that as the most junior employee, she should do as she was told.

  Agatha set out again for the manor. She wondered what Charles was doing. Certainly he had dropped in and out of her past before, but he had always stuck with each case—well, more or less.

  There was a slight chill in the air. Castles of white clouds rode high above in a pale-blue sky. Perhaps, thought Agatha, just for once it might be a cold winter. Perhaps there might even be snow. She could see it now, her house full of happy guests, holly and mistletoe, a roaring log fire and James, tall and handsome, smiling down at her.

  She swung round a bend and nearly collided with a tractor. She mounted the verge to let the tractor past, swearing under her breath. The tractor driver from his higher perch looked down at her insolently, a cigarette dangling from his lower lip. Agatha was suffering from not enough sleep. “Moron!” she shouted.

  The man’s eyes narrowed and he began to climb down from the tractor. Agatha wrenched the wheel, managed to get past the tractor and accelerated off. She could see his face, contorted with fury, in her rear-view mirror.

  I must watch my temper, thought Agatha. If Paul Chambers gets out on bail, then I’ll have enough danger from the local yokels without courting more.

  Only Alison, Fran and Sadie were at the manor. “Where is everybody?” asked Agatha.

  “Bert has gone to the brickworks,” said Alison. “Henry’s gone up to London, and Jimmy’s gone to close up the shop and put it up for sale.”

  “Will Bert continue to run the brickworks now he doesn’t have to?” asked Agatha.

  “No, he wants to sell. He never liked the job anyway.”

  Agatha glanced at Fran and Sadie. They seemed to be making up lists.

  “Fran and Sadie are making lists of everything to divide up. Not that there’s really anything of value. Come through to the morning room,” said Alison.

  The morning room conjured up in Agatha’s mind a charming refuge full of sunlight and comfortable chairs. But when Alison pushed open a door and ushered her in, she found herself in a small, dusty, dark room. The darkness was caused by a pile of boxes against the window. The only furnishings were a small round table covered with a dingy lace cloth and two battered leather chairs.

  “I see nobody used this room,” said Agatha.

  “Mother-in-law preferred the drawing room. The manor was too large for her. She would have been happier in a small bungalow but she was devoted to the memory of my father-in-law. He bought this place and so she was determined to stay.”

  “And yet she had recently changed her mind?”

  Alison sighed. “I sometimes wonder if she really liked her own children. None of them were happy. Jimmy hated the shop. Bert did his best with the brickworks but after a time he began to lose interest.”

  “I heard the business wasn’t doing too well.”

  “He wasn’t gambling or anything. He was beginning to be late with orders and builders were moving their business to other brickworks. He’ll be glad to get out of it.”

  “If you will forgive me for saying so,” said Agatha, “you seem an ill-assorted pair.”

  For a moment, Alison looked angry. Then she shrugged. “I was brought up on a farm. Although my father was rich and a gentleman farmer, he liked us—that’s me and my sister, Hetty, and brother, George—to do the farm work. I hated it. I’m no oil painting and the other rich farmers’ sons wanted to marry pretty girls. I met Bert at the Moreton-in-Marsh agricultural show. I was sitting by myself in the beer tent. The other tables were crowded and he asked if he could join me. We got talking and we soon had a mutual bond discussing bullying parents. He hated the brickworks and I hated farming. One thing led to another and we got engaged. He was my ticket out of farming. He said if I married him I wouldn’t need to see another cow or sheep again.

  “Phyllis—Mrs Tamworthy—was against me from the start. At my wedding she was on her worst behaviour and my family were furious. She actually got drunk, insisted on making a speech, and ran Bert down in front of everyone.”

  “He must have hated her,” said Agatha.

  “But he didn’t kill her,” said Alison fiercely. “He always made allowances for her.”

  “What about Jimmy? Now, he hated that shop.”

  “That was a bit of cruelty I’ll never understand,” said Alison. “She appeared to dote on him.”

  “And he never married?”

  “Bert said when Jimmy was younger, there were a couple of girls interested in him but Phyllis soon saw them off. He found out later when one of the girls was married to someone else that Phyllis had told her that Jimmy was subject to bad epileptic fits.”

  “What about Fran? She’s divorced. Did Phyllis have anything to do with that?”

  “Not really. Fran longed to belong to the upper classes. She met this stockbroker, Peter Meadows. He was such a snob. She met him on holiday and they got married abroad. Later, when he got to know her family, he turned nasty and said they were common. But she was pregnant, so the marriage struggled on for a few years until the divorce. He was a pill, but Fran blamed her mother for not being posh enough.”

  “Dear me. And Sadie?”

  “Sadie seems happy with Henry but he doesn’t have much money and Phyllis wouldn’t give her anything for her daughter’s education. Lucy had to go to a state school. Oh dear, I seem to be giving you a lot of motives for murder. But I know these people. I keep thinking it was someone from the village who took away the parsnips and replaced them with hemlock. I thought before that the tale of the death of Socrates we got at school was all bunkum or the Greeks must have mixed the hemlock with something else. But there was a case in Perthshire in the nineteenth century where a farmer’s children had made up his sandwiches with what they thought was parsley but was hemlock. The top of the plant is just as poisonous as the root. He died the same way as Phyllis. No convulsions, no vomiting, just slow paralysis.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “We’ve all been looking up hemlock poi
soning on our computers.”

  “Is there any hope,” asked Agatha, “that Phyllis might have made the mistake herself?”

  “Won’t do. If that were the case, we’d all have been poisoned.”

  “Are the rest of them quite happy with the idea of my investigating the murder?”

  “Yes, they’ve all come round, except Henry, who thinks it’s all a waste of money.”

  “You say you have your own money. Couldn’t you have made Bert give up the brickworks?”

  “He was just about to. He wouldn’t do it before because he feared his mother’s contempt.”

  “Does your father still have the farm?”

  “No, he died. Terrible accident. He climbed up the grain silo for some reason and fell in. He was smothered in the grain. He left us all a great deal of money. He had invested well and he was a bit of a miser.”

  Agatha’s brain was beginning to whirl with all this information. She had a nasty little picture of Alison climbing up the silo after her father and shoving him in.

  “Isn’t it odd?” said Alison. “These days the world is full of therapy-speak and you hear people on television saying that they come from a dysfunctional family. What is a functional one? I wonder. Does it exist?”

  “I’m in the wrong line of business to tell you that,” said Agatha.

  Toni, mindful of Mrs Freedman’s earlier instructions, went to the animal refuge and located all the missing animals except one cat.

  As she did not have transport, she thought of phoning up the owners and telling them to call at the refuge. She phoned Mrs Freedman. “Don’t do that, dear,” said Mrs Freedman. “You’ll make it look too easy. You wait there and I’ll be round with my car.”

  To Toni’s relief, Mrs Freedman turned up in a Land Rover. They borrowed carrying cases from the refuge, bore the animals off to the office and phoned the delighted owners.

  When the last one had gone, Mrs Freedman said to Toni, “You’re looking a bit peaky. Why don’t you run along to your flat and have a nice lie-down.”

  Toni retreated to her flat. She made herself a light lunch and then slept for two hours and awoke feeling much refreshed but also restless. Her friends must be wondering where she had got to. Since joining the agency, she had not seen any of them, partly because she had been busy and partly out of fear that her brother might track her down if he learned where she was. Would her name be in the newspapers? It would have been too late for the attack on her to be reported in that day’s newspapers. But what about tomorrow? Then she relaxed. They would probably just say that a man had been charged with attempted rape. Her name would not be mentioned until the court case came up. Doris Crampton opened her cottage door to see who had knocked. An inoffensive elderly man stood on the doorstep.

  “I am Phil Marshall,” said Phil politely. “I am helping to investigate the murder of Mrs Tamworthy.”

  “Are you police?”

  “No. Private detective.”

  Doris made as if to close the door. But Phil looked so unthreatening with his white hair ruffled by the breeze and Doris had a longing to gossip.

  “Come in,” she said, “but I can’t really tell you anything.”

  Phil followed her into the cottage parlour. “You have a nice home here,” he said.

  “For how long?” demanded Doris.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because we pay rent to the manor, see. When the whole place is sold, the new owner might turf us out. I’ll say one thing for Mrs Tamworthy, she never raised the rents. That’s why we was all so upset when we heard she was planning to sell. It weren’t really nothing to do with the building plot.”

  “Dear me. It must all be very worrying for you,” said Phil.

  “Sit down,” said Doris. Phil sat down in an armchair beside the fireplace and Doris took the seat opposite him.

  “I find it surprising that Mrs Tamworthy didn’t raise the rents,” commented Phil. “From what I’ve heard about her, she seems to have been a hardnosed businesswoman.”

  “She was that. But you know, sir, I don’t think she did it out o’ kindness. Kept reminding all of us how generous she was and there was always at the back of her voice and in her eyes a sort of threat. We was all frightened to cross her. I think she liked her bit o’ power. But no one in the village would have harmed her. I mean getting rid of her would mean her children taking over and there would be nothing to stop them raising the rents or selling the place.”

  “But she was going to sell anyway,” Phil pointed out.

  “We kept hoping she’d come round. See, she liked upsetting people.”

  “To get to the murder,” said Phil. “Did she always make that salad herself?”

  “Right proud of it, she were. There’s a big kitchen garden up at the manor and she’d go herself to get the vegetables. There’s a gurt big shed at the end where the picked fruit and vegetables are stored.”

  “There is a gardener, of course?”

  “Yes, that’s Fred Instick. He’s getting on and the work’s hard. He kept asking for an undergardener but she wouldn’t listen to him. Told him to get Jill, the groom, to help. Jill did it sometimes because she was sorry for Fred but usually pointed out she had her hands full with the horses. He’ll be worried about his house, now. Don’t think anyone now’ll want to keep on an old gardener.”

  “I’d like to meet him. Where is his cottage?”

  “It’s at the back of the stables.”

  Said Phil, “You say Mrs Tamworthy was very proud of her salad and yet she did not serve it at dinner.”

  “No, sir, always at high tea. She said it were right good for her bowels.”

  “How did she get on with her children?”

  “They didn’t come round much. Just on her birthday and Christmas. ‘Cept for Jimmy. He was round a lot.”

  “It’s a big house. Didn’t he live with her?”

  “No, poor sod lived above the shop. She charged him rent, too.”

  Phil looked shocked. “I’m really not surprised someone has murdered her.”

  Doris smiled for the first time. “Let me get you some tea, sir.”

  Fran had agreed to be interviewed by Agatha. She sat in front of Agatha, nervously plucking at her skirt.

  “At first,” said Fran, “we were really all against you trying to find out who murdered Mother. But then the police began to make each one of us feel guilty. Something’s got to be done. Jimmy’s going ahead putting the shop up for sale. It’s too early. None of us is going to get a good price with the suspicion of murder hanging over our heads. Besides, it’s just a little shop, no post office counter. The villagers go on grumbling about keeping the old ways but most of them shop at the supermarkets. The ones who go to Jimmy get their groceries on tick and then he has the awful job of making sure they pay their bills.”

  “Was your mother—how can I put this—was she ever very maternal?”

  “Not that I can remember. Dad adored us. We had marvellous Christmases when we were small. It was only after he died that Mother—well—turned. I sometimes wonder if she was jealous of us all.”

  “Was Jimmy always destined to be a shopkeeper?”

  “No, he was working in computers as a website developer, a firm in Mircester. The firm went bust just after Dad died. He was looking around for another job when Mother bulldozed him into running the shop.”

  “The shop did not belong to the estate?”

  “No, she bought it for him and gave it to him as a Christmas present. You should have seen his face. I thought he was about to cry.”

  “And Bert?”

  “Well, Dad had taken him into the business and he was happy working with him.”

  “And you are divorced?”

  “Yes. He was snobbish but it was as if Mother went out of her way to look common when he was around. She wouldn’t help out with Annabelle’s education.”

  “Didn’t you get a good settlement from the divorce?”

  Fran turned red
. “I had an affair. I looked on it as a passing fling but my ex got a private detective on to it. He said if I didn’t just walk away from the marriage, he would bring out my adultery in court. I should have stood my ground and fought for some money for Annabelle’s education, but I was so ashamed and Mother said, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll give you an income.” It wasn’t enough.”

  “When your daughter grew up, did she come to resent her grandmother?”

  “Annabelle doesn’t resent anyone. A girlfriend with money suggested they open a dress shop in the King’s Road in Chelsea. It did and does very well.”

  “Annabelle isn’t married?”

  “My daughter is a lesbian.”

  “Oh. Do you own your own house?”

  “No. Mother bought it for me. Or rather, she bought it and took the rent out of my allowance. It’s a poky former council house in Mircester.”

  “And you all knew about your mother’s special salads?”

  Fran shrugged. “Couldn’t not. As far as I can remember, she’s served up the beastly things.”

  “But you’ll be able to sell the house now?”

  “Yes, thank God. We’re all going to try and stay here at the manor until this dreadful murder is solved. It must be someone from the village.”

  “Why?”

  “Because none of us has the guts. She really ground us down.”

  “Is the kitchen door always open during the day?”

  “Yes, anyone could have come in that way. You know what these villages are like. Lots of inbreeding. I think it was done by someone mad.”

  “Where is Jimmy at the moment?”

  “He’s up at the shop, clearing out.”

  “Perhaps I might go up there for a word with him. And then perhaps Sadie might like to talk to me.”

  “I really don’t think my sister or Bert can tell you anything further.”

  Agatha had to park a little way away from the shop. There was a crowd outside and the road was almost blocked by tractors and cars.

  She walked forward and pushed her way to the front of the crowd. A rejuvenated Jimmy was shouting, “Everything must go. Fifty pee a box.”