by M C Beaton
By the time he had recovered enough to see it was a stone angel with a hat on top, the vicarage door had opened and a tremulous woman’s voice demanded, “Anyone there?”
He crouched down again, his heart thudding until she closed the door. He crept off. Down in the village, lights were shining from a tall building. He made his way there. A little road leading to the building had a sign saying Mill House Lane.
Crouching in bushes by the side of the pond, he switched on the powerful listening device. “I wish that young man hadn’t left,” said a woman’s voice. “He was so nice. I’m sorry he turned out to be a snoop. The rent made such a difference. It’s a bit hard to make ends meet these days and—”
A savage blow struck Dan in the back of the neck. He fell forwards. The listening device was picked up and thrown into the golden ripples of the moonlit pond.
Two days later, when Agatha was about to shut up the office for the evening, she received a visit from a Mrs. Ruby Palmer.
She was a small, crushed-looking woman with mousy brown hair in tight permed curls. Her weak eyes blinked rapidly. She was wearing a droopy green cardigan over a cotton blouse of violent-coloured zigzags and a long white cotton skirt.
“I’m Dan’s wife,” she said.
“You mean Dan Palmer? I’m sorry, Mrs. Palmer, but if you’ve come to give me a row about your husband losing his job, forget it.”
“No, it’s not that. You are a detective?”
“That’s what it says on the door.”
“I need your help. Dan’s gone missing.”
“He did drink a lot, Mrs. Palmer. Maybe he’s sleeping it off somewhere.”
“It’s not that. He had this idea of outdoing you as a detective. He said he was going to go to that village and find that murderer. You see, he had this illegal listening device. The newspaper didn’t know about it. You can stand outside people’s houses and hear what they are saying. I would like to employ you to find him. Not that I miss him, mind you, because he was really nasty when he had taken drink. But he recently inherited a good bit of money from an uncle. He paid me only a little housekeeping money. If anything’s happened to him, I won’t get the money until they find his body. I filed a missing person’s report with the police in Hackney but they weren’t much interested.”
“All right,” said Agatha. “I won’t charge you unless I find him. Have you a card?”
Ruby produced a card from her shabby handbag. “Are you staying in Mircester?”
“No, I’m driving back to Hackney.”
“That’s quite a drive.”
“I’m used to it. Dan was usually too drunk to drive.”
“What kind of car does he drive?”
“An old Volvo.”
“Here’s a piece of paper. Write down the registration number. Good. I’ll be in touch as soon as I find out anything.”
When she had gone, Agatha began to phone round to all the hotels in the neighbourhood, at last hitting on the motel where Dan Palmer had last stayed. The desk clerk said he had not returned and if he was not back by the following day, they were going to pack up his things and leave them in the hotel storage room.
Agatha introduced herself and told them to leave the room as it could be a police matter.
She then phoned Simon and asked him if he would like to work late. “I don’t want to call the police in at this juncture because Palmer is such a drunk, he may have forgotten which hotel he was staying at. I want you to go and park outside and wait and see if he returns. Give it until about midnight.
“I’ll stay here and start to phone round the pubs. Find out if he had a minibar in his room and then phone me back. If he didn’t, I’m sure he would be feeling thirsty.”
After half an hour, Simon phoned back to say there was no minibar.
Agatha diligently began to phone round all the pubs in and around Mircester, but Dan Palmer could have passed in any crowd unnoticed. She bit her thumb in vexation. If he did not show up that evening, then she really would have to tell the police what he had been up to.
By midnight, Simon called to say there was no sign of the missing reporter.
Reluctantly, Agatha phoned Bill Wong at his home, to be told by his mother that Bill was working nights.
She locked up the office and made her way to police headquarters and asked for Bill, saying she had vital information in a murder case.
Bill came out and led her through into an interview room. It was more like a hotel lounge with comfortable chairs and magazines.
“Have you gone people friendly?” asked Agatha, looking around.
“We needed somewhere comfortable for the rape victims, abused children, things like that. So, out with it. What’s going on?”
Agatha described everything Ruby had told her. Bill took rapid notes. Then he said, “You look worn out. Leave this to us.”
“But keep in touch with me,” said Agatha. “After all, you’d never have known if I hadn’t told you.”
“I promise.”
Chapter Ten
The next morning Agatha said to Simon and Toni, “You’ve heard all about how Dan Palmer is missing. I want you both to go to that wretched village and start to search. You won’t be in any danger because the place will be crawling with police.”
Agatha did not know that Wilkes had turned down flat any idea of a search. “He’s a reporter and a drunk and a grown man,” Wilkes had said. “I’m not wasting the manpower.”
So when Toni and Simon arrived, it was to find that there was not one policeman in sight. “Well, it’s a bright sunny day,” said Simon. “They’ll hardly attack us during daylight. Let’s start looking. We need to find the car first.”
But there was no sign of Palmer’s Volvo either in or around the village.
“Let’s go and speak to May Dinwoody,” suggested Simon. “I know she was angry with me, but I think she’ll still have a soft spot for me and might have seen something.”
The lane to the mill house was still damp as it was shadowed by trees and had not dried up after the recent rain. “Look,” said Toni, “lots of footprints in the mud here. The police should be along taking casts.” They sidestepped the footprints and went to the mill house, but there was no answer to May’s doorbell.
“I’m hot and hungry,” said Simon. “What if we buy some lunch and drive up out of the village and find a pleasant place for a picnic?”
“But not at the local store,” said Toni. “I can’t bear any more of their hate. You said they wouldn’t attack us in daylight, but remember those kids throwing clods of earth at us.”
“School’s in so we should be safe. But there’s a shop at a garage out in the ring road. We’ll get some stuff there.”
Armed with sandwiches and soft drinks, they drove back through the village and up to the top of a hill where there was a bench overlooking a hay field.
The hay had been bundled up into great round bales. “How peaceful and rural it all is,” said Toni as a tractor made its way across the field, picking up each bale with a spear mounted at the front and heading back to the barn.
“They have to get the spear right in the middle of the bale,” said Simon. “If it scrapes against the ground, it can foul the whole thing up. Have a salmon sandwich.”
“Thanks. Here comes the tractor again.”
The tractor chugged back. The spear was thrust into the next bale. Simon stared. Something black, which yet glinted red in the sunlight, was oozing out from the bale. He vaulted the fence, crying, “Stop! Stop!”
The tractor driver could not hear him above the noise of the engine but saw Simon shouting and yelling as he raced across the field.
He switched off the engine and asked truculently, “What’s up with ye?”
“There’s blood coming out of that bale,” gasped Simon.
“So what? Probably a fox or rabbit or something.”
“Don’t move that bale another inch. I’m calling the police.”
“I’ve already p
honed them,” said Toni, joining him. “Call Agatha.”
A tall man in a blue pen-necked shirt and jeans strode rapidly across the field. “Here’s the boss,” said the tractor driver with gloomy relish. “You’re for it now.”
“I’m Gerald Fairfield, the farmer,” said the man. “What’s up, Andy?”
“This ’ere precious pair’s screaming there’s blood coming out of the bale.”
“So it’s some animal or other,” said Gerald impatiently.
Toni rapidly explained about the missing journalist.
Despite his shock, Simon noticed the farmer was quite handsome. His angry face softened as he looked at Toni as she blurted out the explanation about the missing reporter.
“Well, young lady,” he said. “We’ll wait until the police get here, but I think you’ll find you’ve just made great fools of yourselves.”
Bill Wong was the first to arrive, followed by two policemen. He studied the bale and then said, “We’ve got to wait for SOCO to arrive.”
“You’re surely not taking this seriously,” protested Gerald.
“Very seriously,” said Bill. “Here come the Scenes of Crimes Operatives. I suggest we all back off before we’re accused of compromising what may be a murder scene.”
They all retreated to the edge of the field as the white-coated figures advanced with their equipment. Simon found a pair of binoculars in his car and studied the scene. The wire around the bale was cut and SOCO began its search.
Out of the hay finally tumbled a crumpled body.
Gerald and Andy were standing with Simon and Toni and the waiting police.
“Didn’t you do that field the night before last, Andy?” asked Gerald.
“Yes, boss. You know that. All day yesterday as well and right on into the evening after dark, it was.”
Agatha arrived with Phil and Patrick. She handed Bill Ruby’s card. “You’d better send someone up to Hackney in London to fetch her to identify the body,” she said.
“There’s still mud down by the millpond lane with a lot of footprints in it,” said Simon.
“Right,” said Wilkes. “We’ll get on to it.” He turned to Agatha. “I want you to leave all this to us. We can’t have private detectives cluttering up the scene.”
“You wouldn’t be cluttering up the scene yourself,” protested Agatha, “if my detectives hadn’t found the body.”
“I want your two detectives to go back to headquarters with you, Mrs. Raisin, and make statements.”
Bill whispered to Agatha, “Call on you later.”
Agatha and her staff, with the exception of Mrs. Freedman, waited anxiously that evening in her cottage for Bill to arrive. Charles had joined them, saying he had ordered steak pies to be delivered from the pub, therefore saving everyone from a selection of supermarket curries from Agatha’s freezer.
Bill arrived just as they were finishing their dinner. “It’s a right mess,” he said. “Yes, it’s Dan Palmer and it’s worse even than you think. The preliminary autopsy shows that he was possibly unconscious but alive when the baler scooped him up and stabbed him as a final insult. He was probably smothered to death.”
“How’s Mrs. Palmer taking it?”
“Pretty easily. In fact, so easily that Wilkes got a check on her, but she was definitely back in Hackney after she left you. Also, she’s too small a woman to hit a man like Dan and then somehow get his body up into the hay field. They estimate the hay was still uncut when the body was dumped but that it was placed just where the baler would be bound to pick it up. Andy swears he saw nothing. We’ve got men going from door to door. We cannot find Palmer’s car.
“There’s another thing, Simon. Are you really sure you saw footprints in the mud in Mill Lane?”
“Yes.”
“Something had flattened them over. Why did you think footprints in Mill Lane were particularly interesting?”
Simon looked at Agatha. “Oh, go on, tell him,” said Agatha.
So Simon told of the attempt on his life and how he had lied to the vicar and told him he could not swim.
“Now, listen to me carefully,” said Bill. “We have set up a mobile unit again in the village and the place is swarming with detectives and police officers, not to mention the press. I want you all to keep clear. We don’t want another dead body on our hands.
“Even out of the village, in Mircester, I want you to be careful. You found the body, so the murderer might consider life safer with one of you out of the way, probably Simon. You’ve got other cases, haven’t you? Get on with them.”
James Lacey sat in his hotel room in Singapore and watched the latest news from Odley Cruesis on BBC TV international news. Agatha was in the thick of it, as usual, he thought. He missed her. He really had to admit that he missed her. But he dreaded the contempt in her bearlike eyes when she looked at him. He wondered if she would ever forgive him for having fallen for that airhead he had so nearly married.
After they had all left, including Charles, Agatha made herself a cup of strong black coffee and lit a cigarette. She had recently given up smoking when other people were around unless they were outside in the open air. She decided to sit up during the night and carefully read all the notes on the case of John Sunday from beginning to end. At last she struggled up to bed with a nagging feeling she had just missed something important.
In the following two weeks, Agatha and her staff diligently went about their work, Agatha trying to put the murders of John Sunday and Dan Palmer out of her mind. The police had drained the millpond in the hope of finding Dan’s car, but there was no sign of it, only the remains of Dan’s listening device.
“I daren’t go back to that village,” said Agatha to Mrs. Bloxby one evening, “but I would like to get another look at all of them. I know!”
“Know what?” asked the vicar’s wife uneasily.
“Well, the Ladies Society here is always hosting other villages and they host us. Why don’t we invite Odley Cruesis for . . . let me think . . . a special cream tea event in the village hall here. Teas at two pounds a head, plus coaches to bring them over. Give the money to charity. Alzheimer’s could do with the money.”
“Mrs. Raisin! Think of the expense. We could not recoup enough to cover our own costs, let alone give anything to charity.”
“I’ll pay for the lot. I will not let this murderer go free. Don’t worry. I’ll organise everything. Oh, and the village band to be hired to play jolly sounds.”
There was a ring at the doorbell. Mrs. Bloxby went to answer it and returned with Charles. “Oh, Charles,” said Agatha, “I’ve had a great idea.”
Charles sat down on the sofa next to her and listened to her plans. “You’d better hire a couple of portaloos as well,” he said. “Think of all the wrinklies that’ll turn up. Think of all the weak bladders and swollen prostates. As far as I remember, the hall has only the one toilet.”
“I’ll fix it,” said Agatha, her eyes gleaming.
“Agatha,” said Charles plaintively, “you haven’t told me why.”
“I want to be able to sit there and study the lot of them.”
“And you think your feminine intuition will kick in and you’ll stand up and shout ‘eureka’ and point at someone. When a photo of a murderer appears in the newspapers, a lot of people say things like, ‘Look at the eyes! Now, there’s a killer.’ Whereas before they were trapped, they probably looked very ordinary.”
“There must be something. Two weeks’ time. I’ll get the posters printed out tomorrow and send them over to the vicarage.”
“What if no one comes?” asked Charles. “I mean, I bet they know you live here and think there might be something fishy.”
“For a cream tea at two pounds a head and free transport, they’ll come.”
“Pity it’s tea and not liquor,” said Charles. “Might loosen them all up a bit.”
“There’s a point,” said Agatha. “What’s that woman’s name, Mrs. Bloxby? The one who sells sloe gin
and elderberry wine at the markets?”
“Mrs. Trooly.”
“Get me her number. Good idea of yours, Charles.”
“Mrs. Raisin,” said Mrs. Bloxby severely, “have you considered that an inebriated murderer might put you, for example, very much at risk?”
“All the better,” said Agatha cheerfully. “Flush ’em out! I think there’s more than one.”
Mrs. Bloxby hoped it would rain on the great day, anything to stop this tea that she considered at best a waste of money and at worst, highly dangerous. But the sun shone down and the coaches bringing the visitors were all full. Agatha had hired caterers. Mrs. Trooly was moving amongst the tables, offering sloe gin and wine. The band was playing old favourites and there was a general air of good will and jollity. Even Giles Timson smiled on Agatha. “How very kind of you. Just what our villagers needed to take their minds off the horrors of the murders.”
Simon and Toni sat together at a table at the door. They had collected the money from the visitors and were now relaxing. “They do seem to be enjoying themselves,” said Simon. “Even May Dinwoody was nice to me.”
“Agatha believes in stirring things up,” said Toni. “What are we to do with the money?”
“Count it up,” said Simon. “Then we give it to Mrs. Freedman to put in the bank and she writes out a cheque to the Alzheimer’s Society.”
“We’d better start,” sighed Toni. “Some of them must have been raiding the piggy bank to pay their two pounds.”
“Agatha thinks of everything. She’s left us piles of these little plastic bags from the bank, some for pennies, some for twenty pee pieces and so on. Let’s see how quickly we can do it and then we’ll go in there and sample the sloe gin, if there’s any left.”
Penelope Timson brought over a chair and squeezed next to Agatha. “This is such fun,” she said.
“Yes,” said Agatha bleakly. No one looked edgy. No one looked frightened or ill at ease. “I’ll just see how the young people are getting on.”
