There Goes The Bride

by M C Beaton

  She eventually arrived home in a panic and tore everything out of her wardrobe looking for the perfect outfit. At last dressed in a slinky black velvet gown and high heels, and with a cashmere stole over her arm, she descended to await Sylvan’s arrival.

  The day had been exhausting and she fell asleep, only to be awakened later by the ringing of the doorbell. She started up. The cats had been sleeping on her lap and her gown was covered in cat hairs.

  Seizing a clothes brush, she hurriedly brushed down her dress and then opened the door. Sylvan stood there smiling broadly, and holding a large bouquet of red roses.

  ‘How beautiful!’ exclaimed Agatha. ‘Go into the sitting room and fix yourself a drink and I’ll put these in water.’

  She seized the clothes brush from where she had left it on the hall table and attacked her dress again in the kitchen after running water in the sink and placing the bouquet in it.

  She returned to join Sylvan. ‘I took a drive around the Cotswolds,’ he said. ‘Very beautiful.’

  ‘They say it hasn’t changed in three hundred years,’ said Agatha, ‘but I think that’s too romantic a view. They didn’t have supermarkets and all-night shopping three hundred years ago. Mind you, on a quiet day the villages look much as they must have done long ago. That golden Cotswold limestone stands up to the weather very well. The shops are feeling the pinch. Very few Americans, what with the weak dollar.’

  Sylvan finished his glass of whisky. ‘Shall we go? I am very hungry. Or are we eating here?’

  ‘No, I’ve booked us a table in Mircester.’

  Sylvan said he would drive. Agatha eased herself into the passenger seat of his Jaguar sports car, suppressing a moan of pain as her arthritic hip protested violently.

  James Lacey had just returned home. He watched, startled, as they drove off, swore under his breath and decided to find out from Mrs Bloxby just what Agatha was about dating a murder suspect.

  ‘What puzzles me,’ said Agatha, mindful of her detective duties, ‘is why you told me that the baby was Olivia’s and yet Olivia told me the baby was George’s and he had smuggled it in. Surely the police would have found that out and charged him.’

  ‘Felicity was Olivia’s daughter. Olivia has the birth certificate. There was no need to smuggle any baby in. She is a very respectable matron and thinks a man having an illegitimate baby is better than a woman having one. Very English.’

  ‘Could George have been smuggling something else? Drugs, say, or cigarettes?’

  ‘George is just what you see – bluff and honest and very respectable.’

  ‘Your friendship with them surprises me. When we had dinner in Hewes, you talked about all sorts of glamorous people and celebrities. What is the attraction of the Bross-Tilkingtons?’

  ‘I was very ill just after I met them. My fair-weather friends were apt to stay away, but George and Olivia stuck by me until the treatment was over. We became very close.’

  ‘This whole business at Downboys must have shocked you all badly. You know the area. What’s going on? Why did they hire an ex-IRA man like Sean?’

  Sylvan sighed and raised his shoulders and spread his hands. ‘My dear Agatha, as far as they were concerned, he was a local yachtsman and an odd-job man. Nothing sinister there.’

  ‘But there must be something sinister,’ protested Agatha. ‘Who killed Felicity?’

  He leaned across the table and took one of her hands in a warm clasp. ‘Are you surprised, considering the way Felicity went on? Probably some rejected lover.’ His thumb stroked the palm of her hand. ‘Let’s talk about something more interesting. Why on earth did you become a detective?’

  ‘I drifted into it by accident. I solved a few cases and then decided to set up my own agency.’ Agatha gave him several highly embroidered descriptions of cases she had worked on.

  By the time the meal was over, Agatha felt herself sinking into the warm bath of obsession again. Everything about Sylvan fascinated her – his lean figure, his very Frenchness.

  Outside the restaurant, she suggested they take a cab because they had drunk quite a lot, but Sylvan only laughed and said he was an expert driver.

  As they drove down into Carsely, Agatha’s heart was beating hard as she checked over her body. Legs and armpits shaved, check; condoms in the bedside table, check; toenails cut, check…

  ‘Did you leave all the lights on?’ asked Sylvan as he drew up outside Agatha’s cottage.

  ‘No,’ said Agatha. ‘Oh, snakes and bastards, it must be Charles. He has a key. I’ll soon get rid of him.’

  She anxiously hurried to get out of the bucket seat of the sports car and tumbled out on the ground.

  Sylvan laughed as he helped her to her feet. ‘Ah, the penalties of age,’ he said, and Agatha felt just as if he’d thrown cold water over her.

  She opened the door and marched into the sitting room to find not only Charles but James.

  Charles leaped to his feet and kissed Agatha on the cheek. ‘Have a nice time, darling?’ he asked. ‘I’ve put my stuff in the bedroom. Thought I’d stay for a bit. James has come to say goodbye. He just got back today but he’s off again tomorrow. Hello, Sylvan. Police let you out, did they?’

  Sylvan for a moment looked furious. Then he laughed easily and said, ‘I was never in police custody. Excuse me.’

  He drew Agatha back into the hall and whispered, ‘You should have told me you had a lover.’

  ‘He’s not my lover,’ muttered Agatha fiercely. ‘I’ll get rid of him.’

  ‘No, chérie, it doesn’t matter. I am going to France with my boat in two days’ time but I will be back a week on Saturday. Why not join me in Hewes on the Sunday for lunch and we will make up for lost time? I’ll meet you at the Chinese restaurant at one o’clock.’ He took her in his arms and kissed her passionately.

  ‘Yes, I’ll see you there,’ croaked Agatha when she could. ‘But can’t you stay? You can’t go all the way back to Hewes tonight.’

  ‘I’ll be fine. Bye.’

  Agatha stood on the doorstep and watched him roar off into the night.

  Then she went back inside to confront James and Charles.

  But James forestalled her by saying icily, ‘Have you gone mad? There have been three murders down there and Sylvan Dubois must be involved in some way. Are you going to believe that he and the Bross-Tilkingtons are entirely innocent?’

  ‘I’ll bet he was only trying to seduce you to shut you up,’ said Charles.

  Overwrought, Agatha, not usually given to swearing, told them both to go and perform impossible physical acts on themselves and stalked upstairs to bed.

  Later, when she lay awake, she heard Charles coming up the stairs to go to the spare room. She thought he might come into her room to argue with her, but his door closed behind him and then there was silence.

  At last, Agatha’s anger died down as she began to feel obscurely that she’d had a lucky escape.

  When she went into the kitchen in the morning, Charles was playing on the floor with her cats. He looked up at her and smiled. ‘Still mad at me?’

  ‘How did you find out?’ asked Agatha.

  ‘James saw you leave and called on Mrs Bloxby and then called on me to save you from a fate worse than death.’

  ‘I can take care of myself,’ said Agatha, lighting a cigarette.

  Charles stood up, poured himself a cup of coffee, and said, ‘I was listening at the door. I heard him say he was going to France and would be back a week on Saturday and would see you on Sunday.’

  ‘So what? Are you going to follow me down to Hewes?’

  ‘I’ve an idea. I think he’s smuggling something. We could go to the port, Hadsea, hire a boat and go upriver and lurk on the other side of the stream from the Brosses’ property and see if he brings anything in during the night on the Saturday before he’s due to meet you.’

  ‘Not another boat!’ Agatha told Charles about her adventures in the dinghy.

  ‘No, no,’ said Charles s
oothingly. ‘We’ll get something ferociously high-powered. I’ve got friends in Hadsea. I’ll phone and see what I can get fixed up.’

  ‘Why this sudden enthusiasm for detection?’ asked Agatha. ‘I felt sure you were chasing some girl.’

  ‘Me? No, just sloping around,’ said Charles. His beautiful Tessa had wanted to go to a rock concert. Charles endured a weekend of noisy bands, pouring rain, mud and the determined cheering and enthusiasm of Tessa. Love died in him when he found the communal toilets blocked up and when Tessa told him not to be such a wimp and find a convenient hedge.

  Hadsea was a small fishing port at the mouth of the river Frim. To her relief, the sea was calm. On Saturday Charles helped her board a large motor cruiser. ‘This can do forty-four knots,’ he said proudly.

  ‘Have you checked about the currents in the river?’ asked Agatha uneasily.

  ‘I checked. I’ve got the maps. I know where the currents are. There’s even a saloon with a bar. Go below if you like and I’ll shout for you when we’re nearly there. Borrowed it from friends. They’re as rich as anything.’

  They must be, thought Agatha, as she went into the expensively appointed wood-panelled saloon. There was a bar in the corner. She poured herself a large gin and added tonic as the powerful engines began to roar. Agatha was determined to stay where she was until they arrived at their destination. She did not like boats. On a coffee table was a selection of magazines. She picked them up and flipped through them, reflecting it was surely a sign of age when she did not recognize many of the celebrities. Of course, with the advent of reality TV, it was possible to become a celebrity without really having done anything, studied acting, or achieved anything amazing in sport.

  She was perfectly sure they would not find out anything sinister about Sylvan. She deserved a little fling, she told herself. It was all very well to be moral about casual sex, but when it turned out to be a long time since one had had any at all, morals became weak and shifting. Besides, by now the British police would have been in contact with the French police, and if there had been anything criminal about Sylvan, he would have been arrested.

  The saloon was warm and comfortable. Agatha was tired after the long drive and drifted off to sleep, only awakening when she heard Charles hailing her and realized the engines had stopped.

  She climbed up and joined him, staring at all the gleaming instruments. ‘It looks like the cockpit of the Concorde,’ she said. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘A little downriver and under the trees on the opposite bank. It’s as dark as pitch. Now we wait. There’s no sign of any boats at the jetty.’

  ‘When do you think he’ll come?’

  ‘Maybe soon. It’s just after midnight. Now, think about this, Aggie. If he were an innocent yachtsman, he’d have come earlier.’

  ‘What if he’s decided to come back by plane, car or train?’

  ‘Always uses his boat. It’s called Jolie Blonde. He’s a great favourite down at the harbour. Always presents for the customs people at Christmas and a big donation to the local lifeboat. Doesn’t that strike you as suspicious?’

  ‘He might just be a very generous man. He’s got a lot of money. Not all men are such tightwads as you, Charles.’

  ‘Miaow!’

  Agatha stifled a yawn. ‘So we sit here all night?’

  ‘I’ll do a deal with you. When it gets up till two or three in the morning, we’ll call it quits. Listen!’

  It was a very still night, and faintly in the distance they could hear the throb of an engine.

  A large cruiser painted some dark colour sailed up to the jetty and the engines were cut. A tall dark figure made the boat secure and then went below.

  ‘Damn,’ muttered Charles. ‘Don’t tell me he’s going to spend the night on his boat.’

  They waited impatiently. ‘There’s a lot of banging and moving going on,’ said Charles. The tall dark figure they guessed was Sylvan reappeared and said something. Six smaller dark figures climbed from the boat and stood on the jetty.

  Charles nipped to the front of his boat where there was a powerful lamp and shone it straight on the group on the jetty. Sylvan’s startled face stared into the light. Beside him stood six Chinese men.

  Sylvan untied the tender and leaped back into his boat. A roar of engines and he shot off down the river.

  ‘Chase him,’ yelled Agatha.

  ‘No, phone the police. They’ll alert Hadsea. And get them to pick up those poor sods. I hate this. They probably gave Sylvan their life savings to get smuggled in.’

  Agatha phoned the police and then they waited. The Chinese stood patiently. ‘They’re waiting for someone,’ said Agatha. ‘I bet it’s the owner of that Chinese restaurant. He probably moves them on to work as slave labour somewhere.’

  At last they could hear police sirens. ‘Lights are going on in the house,’ said Agatha. ‘The Brosses must be at home. They must be involved in this.’

  A police launch was the first to arrive. Then Jerry Carton appeared, shouting to his dogs as police cars roared down the grass on the riverbank.

  ‘And do you think we’ll get any thanks for this?’ complained Charles. ‘Not a bit of it. They’ll be on board soon. We’ll need to go into the police station at Hewes and they won’t believe in my lucky guess for a minute. They’ll think we’ve been withholding information.’

  They were interviewed separately. Detective Superintendent Walker, flanked by Boase, was in a high temper. He said he was sure they knew all about the smuggling and instead of informing the police had decided to play at being detectives. His temper was further inflamed by the news that Jerry had escaped.

  ‘May I remind you, I am a detective,’ complained Agatha, ‘and without us you’d have got sweet damn-all. I suppose you’ve arrested Bross-Tilkington.’

  ‘No, why? As far as we can gather, he had nothing to do with this.’

  ‘You must have lost your wits. George’s best friend is unloading Chinese at the bottom of his garden and he doesn’t know anything about it? What about his security-dog man?’

  ‘Jerry Carton has disappeared. We are looking for him. We are also interrogating Mr Bross-Tilkington, but he seems genuinely bewildered. It was Mr Dubois who suggested hiring Jerry and then Sean.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure when you bring Sylvan Dubois in, he will inform you that they were all in cahoots.’

  Walker’s eyes flickered uneasily and he glared down at notes on the desk in front of him.

  ‘You’ve lost him!’ exclaimed Agatha. ‘You’ve let him get away.’

  ‘He got out into the Channel but the coastguard will soon pick him up,’ said Walker heavily. ‘Now, if we can get back to the questioning…’

  Later the following morning, when Agatha and Charles, who had slept on their boat, woke up, Agatha phoned Patrick to ask him if his contact in Hewes could come up with any news. Patrick had heard about the hunt for Sylvan on the radio news that morning. ‘They’ve a fat chance of catching him,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’ asked Agatha. ‘They’ve got the coastguard out looking for him.’

  ‘Don’t the cops down there read the newspapers? Coastguard staff around Britain are on a twenty-four-hour walkout over pay. It started at seven o’clock last night.’

  Agatha groaned. The thought of a surely vengeful Sylvan escaping frightened her.

  When she rang off, she told Charles. Then she asked him, ‘What made you so sure he would be smuggling something?’

  ‘It was because of an article I read earlier this year,’ said Charles, nursing a mug of coffee. ‘In February, the police broke up a massive people-smuggling gang. Chinese people pay up to twenty-one thousand pounds to be smuggled into Britain. People like Sylvan are probably responsible for the France-to-Britain leg of the journey. That costs each five thousand pounds. In one flat in Peckham High Street in London, twenty-three Chinese were discovered living in cramped conditions. The police say it’s a myth to think they’re poor peasants. A lot of them are highly ski
lled.’

  ‘So what happens to them?’

  ‘They think a lot get swallowed up by the restaurants in London’s Chinatown.’

  ‘There’s the Chinese restaurant here of course,’ said Agatha. ‘That’s where Sylvan took me and Roy for dinner. But I wonder how he got them in?’

  ‘He was friendly with all the authorities down at Hadsea,’ said Charles. ‘I told you that. He probably had a room hidden somewhere in that large boat of his.’

  Agatha’s phone rang. It was Patrick. ‘They’re taking the Bross-Tilkington house apart this morning,’ he said, ‘but George is swearing innocence and they can’t so far find a thing against him. They believe he was conned by Sylvan. They think maybe Felicity knew about it and was going to talk and that’s why Sylvan shot her. George and his wife were flattered because Sylvan treated them royally when they were in Paris and introduced them to all sorts of famous people.’

  ‘Idiots,’ commented Agatha sourly.

  ‘Oh, really?’ said Charles. ‘If it hadn’t been for me, sweetie, you’d have got laid and into a blind obsession.’

  Agatha was saved from replying as a voice hailed them. Charles went up on deck. He came back down and said, ‘There’s a police car on the pier. We’re wanted back at the station.’

  Agatha was interviewed again by Boase and Walker. The detective chief superintendent’s eyes were red-rimmed with lack of sleep. The police were still suspicious as to why Charles had leaped to the conclusion that Sylvan was smuggling something. ‘There is a detective sergeant at Mircester who claims that you have withheld vital information in the past,’ said Walker severely.

  ‘That will be a bitch called Collins,’ said Agatha wearily. ‘She hates me. I have helped Mircester police many times in the past.’

  Falcon put his head round the door. ‘A word, sir? It’s urgent.’

  Walker told the tape the interview was being suspended and then left the room. He returned shortly, his eyes gleaming with excitement.

  ‘Found something?’ asked Agatha eagerly.