(17/30 Love, Lies and Liquor

by M C Beaton

  James and Agatha were driving towards Brighton. Agatha could feel a lifting of her spirits. They would escape tomorrow and she need never see Snoth-on-Sea or that terrible hotel again.

  Her mobile phone rang. “Don’t answer that,” said James.

  “I must tell Patrick that I’m leaving,” said Agatha. “It may be him.”

  It was Patrick, a Patrick unusually flustered and shaken.

  “Better get back here,” he said. “Deborah Fanshawe has been shot. She was waiting in your room and some hit man must have thought it was you.”

  “We’ll be with you as soon as possible.”

  Agatha switched off her mobile. “Turn the car, James,” she said wearily. “Something truly awful has happened.”

  * * *

  Chaos in front of the hotel—police, photographers, reporters and television crew. For once in her life, ducking her head and avoiding the questions shouted at her, Agatha let James hurry her into the hotel.

  A policewoman approached them. “Mrs. Raisin?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are to go into the bar. You will be interviewed there.”

  They went into the bar. Charles was there looking white and strained. At another table sat Cyril and his wife, Dawn.

  James and Agatha sat down with Charles. “What really happened?” asked James.

  Charles looked more shaken than Agatba had ever seen him look before.

  “It’s all my fault,” he said. “She was so pushy and she was practically on the verge of proposing to me, so I said I was promised to Aggie.”

  “You what?” Agatha stared at him.

  “I just wanted to get her off my back. She must have got the key to your room and decided to confront you, and some villain thought it was you and blasted her head off with a shotgun.”

  “How do you know it was a shotgun?” asked James.

  “Patrick said half her head was missing and there was blood and brains spattered all over the walls.”

  “Can’t we get a drink?” demanded Charles, looking at Agatha’s white face. “Oh, here’s Patrick.”

  Patrick, looking more lugubrious than usual, slumped down in a chair opposite them.

  “What exactly happened?” asked James.

  “It seems Mrs. Fanshawe got the key from Betty saying she had some stuff of Agatha’s to leave in her room. After Mrs. Fanshawe had gone upstairs, a man in worker’s overalls and carrying a tool bag came in and said he was to repair part of the stair carpet She told him to go ahead. After a short time he came back down and walked out of the hotel.”

  “It wasn’t Brian McNally in person,” said Agatha shakily, “because he was in Carsely putting the wind up Mrs. Bloxby by saying he wanted to buy my cottage. I know it must have been him from her description.”

  “There’s something else,” said Patrick. “My contact told me that Regan Enterprises is no more. Their offices in Dublin burned down last night and the directors have disappeared.”

  “So I was right,” said Agatha. “It must have been dodgy money.”

  “I’m going to get us all some drinks,” said James.

  “I’ll come with you,” said Charles. “Why don’t we just take a bottle of brandy and some glasses?”

  They had just come back from the bar with a bottle and glasses when Superintendent Willerby walked into the bar with Wilkins and Barret and a policewoman.

  “We’ll take you one by one,” said the superintendent. “Starting with you, Mrs. Raisin. Where were you when Mrs. Fanshawe was in your room? That would be, according to the receptionist, at three p.m.”

  “I was with James, Mr. Lacey, driving to Brighton when I got a call from Patrick Mulligan telling me what happened.”

  “What was she doing in your room? She told the receptionist that you had asked her to leave some things in your room.”

  “I never told her any such thing.” Agatha’s beady eyes turned on Charles. “I think Sir Charles Fraith might have an answer to your questions.”

  “Sir Charles?”

  Charles shifted awkwardly in his chair. Despite her shock and distress, Agatha could not help feeling pleased to see the usually unflappable Charles looking uneasy.

  “It was like this,” he said. “Deborah, Mrs. Fanshawe, was pursuing me. She was almost on the point, I felt, of proposing marriage. I panicked and told her I was promised to Aggie.”

  “Meaning Mrs. Raisin.”

  “Yes.”

  “Go on.”

  “She was a very pushy woman and I feel she was waiting for Agatha to have it out with her.”

  “The light in that room is very dim. She was sitting facing the sea,” said Willerby. “I am afraid we have to assume that the murderer mistook her for Mrs. Raisin.”

  Patrick said, “Do you think Brian McNally sent a hit man after Agatha? He wouldn’t know exactly what Agatha looked like.”

  “It’s a possibility. Now I will take each of you in turn…”

  “Thank goodness that’s over,” said Agatha after what seemed like hours of questioning.

  “There’s one bad thing about it,” said James. “We can’t leave.”

  Charles said, “Do you mean you pair were thinking of leaving? That’s not like you, Aggie.”

  “Oh, shut up!” said James furiously. “You should be worried about yourself. Willerby doesn’t quite buy the hit-man suggestion, which leaves you number-one suspect.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you. They’ve searched my room and haven’t found any weapon.”

  “It’s all your fault,” said Agatha bitterly. “What were you doing chasing after Deborah anyway?”

  “She was, at first glance, a very attractive woman.”

  They were still sitting in the bar. Agatha looked across the room in surprise as Harry walked in.

  “What are you doing here?” asked Agatha.

  “I thought you could do with some more protection,” said Harry, joining them. “What’s going on? The hotel is crawling with police. Some ferocious-looking woman even demanded a DNA sample. I nearly gagged when she shoved that stick in my mouth. Then I had to produce identification and all that.”

  Agatha told him about Deborah’s murder. Harry listened carefully and then said, “You should change your room again.”

  “The police have done that for me,” said Agatha. “Their forensic people are working on my old room. Patrick, I keep forgetting to ask you. Did you find out if the police discovered anything in that flask of coffee?”

  “Nothing in it, or the milk, sugar or biscuits. She may have had orders to kill you and took along that tray to look like room service. She says she was supposed to wait for you and give you a warning, but she chickened out.”

  “I’m getting out of this place as soon as I can,” said Charles. “I know the chief constable. I mean, if I leave my address, it should be enough.”

  James’s blue eyes glinted. “You mean you’re not going to stay around to help us guard Agatha?”

  “Lots of you here,” said Charles callously. “I’m starving. Hey, wait a bit! You know who was missing when we were all in the bar? Fred Jankers.”

  “I asked about that,” said Patrick. “He’d gone back to Lewisham to bury Wayne and Chelsea. He’s due back tomorrow.”

  “I wonder why on earth he’s coming back here,” said Agatha. “Anyway, Cyril Hammond is my number-one suspect. He inherits Geraldine’s money.”

  “Why is he still here?” asked Harry.

  “He says he wants to wait until the murderer of his precious Geraldine is found.”

  “Hard to believe,” said James.

  Agatha looked at him. “He was devoted to Geraldine. Isn’t it odd? I mean, she was a frumpy loud-mouthed woman and yet she could get men devoted to her.”

  “Sounds like you, Aggie,” said Charles cheerfully. “I’m off to get something to eat.”

  “You’re forgetting something,” said Agatha. “Police cars will be arriving shortly to take us to Lewes to make our official stateme
nts.”

  “Then I’d better eat fast,” said Charles. “I’ll go to the kitchen and see if they have any sandwiches.”

  “Why don’t you bring in a large plate of them,” shouted Agatha to his retreating back.

  Just when they began to think he had forgotten about them, Charles appeared, following a waitress who was bearing a huge plate of sandwiches.

  “I should have asked for coffee,” said Charles, but I don’t think we’ve got time now.”

  “I’m a bit tiddly,” mourned Agatha.

  James arranged sandwiches for her on a plate. “Here, eat some of these. Good blotting paper.”

  Agatha did her best, but each mouthful seemed to stick in her throat.

  At last they were summoned to the cars. “You don’t need to go,” said Agatha to Harry. “Could you get to Lewisham and see what you can find out about Fred Jankers’s businesses?”

  “Will do,” said Harry.

  They all, with the exception of Harry, exited the hotel and fought their way to the police cars through the shouts of the press and camera flashes.

  The whole business of questioning took longer than anyone could have expected. It went on for the rest of the day and then they were put up in a hotel for the night and the grilling resumed the next day.

  Agatha found that this time she was being asked questions by the Special Branch. Why had she assumed that the money might be laundered? On and on it went, until she seemed to hear her tired voice echoing in her brain.

  And then, all at once, they were free to go. The policeman who was driving Agatha, James and Charles said as they got out of the car, “There’s a storm warning. Going to hit here the day after tomorrow.”

  They all ate a later meal in the dining room, not talking much, not one of them feeling they wanted to talk much any more.

  Agatha had drunk a lot of wine at dinner and she staggered as James escorted her to her hotel room door.

  “Alcohol isn’t the solution, Agatha,” said James.

  “Oh, pish off,” said Agatha wearily.

  She went into her room, locked the door behind her and put a chair under thedoor handle. She sat down on the bed and took off hershoes. Then she felt too weary to undress. She slumped back on the bed and hung on to it as it seemed to revolve round the room. Her eyes closed and she plunged into a drunken sleep.

  In the morning she awoke with a dry mouth and a blinding headache. She was still dressed and felt as if alcohol had seeped out of her pores and into her clothes.

  Agatha forced herself to strip and take a shower. But by the time she emerged from the bathroom, she felt too ill to dress. The phone rang. It was James.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  “I feel ill,” moaned Agatha. “I’m going back to bed.”

  “I told you that alcohol was not the solution. I—”

  Agatha replaced the receiver. She swallowed two painkillers and went back to bed.

  Betty Teller turned over the reception desk to Nick Loncar and made her way out of the hotel, looking uneasily at the heaving sea. There had been storm forecasts on the radio all day, the radio she kept under the desk tuned to a pop-music programme. The announcer had even interrupted a fab Robbie Williams record to warn about the approaching storm.

  She turned off the waterfront into the shelter of a side street and bumped into a handsome young man.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Didn’t look where I was going. But if I’ve got to bump into someone, I’m lucky it was a pretty girl like you.”

  Betty looked at him, her mouth hanging a little open. He was gorgeous.

  “Can I make it up to you? Buy you a drink?”

  Betty did not hesitate for a moment. “That would be nice.”

  He had curly dark hair and an olive skin. His clothes were casual but expensive. They went together into the Green Man. No pole dancers were performing and the bar was nearly empty.

  He bought her a Baccardi Breezer and fetched a half pint of lager for himself. They sat at a table.

  “Now what does a pretty girl like you do for a living?”

  “I’m a receptionist at murder hotel.”

  “You mean the Palace?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a wonder you don’t leave.”

  “I can’t let the manager down,” said Betty virtuously. The real reason she stayed on was because of the press. Betty had dreams of being “discovered” and becoming a television star.

  “I read about it in the papers,” he said. “That Mrs. Raisin must be one tough bird.”

  “I think she’s feeling the strain,” said Betty. “It’s not only the murders. There’s that ex-husband of hers, Mr. Lacey. I don’t know what’s going on there except she’s still mad about him. You can see it in her face. I’d guess he divorced her and she wants him back.”

  “Doesn’t he sleep with her?”

  “Nope. Separate rooms.”

  He had a slight foreign accent. Betty wished one of her friends would come in and see her with this handsome man. And he was so interested in everything she said. He got her to describe everyone in the hotel and what they were like.

  After her third drink, Betty realized she would have to go to the loo. She excused herself.

  But when she returned to the bar with her make-up carefully repaired, there was no sign of the young man.

  She asked the barman where he had gone, hoping he had gone to the loo as well, but he said her escort had walked out as soon as she left the bar.

  Betty felt wretched. She didn’t even know his name.

  Agatha joined James for dinner. She was in a foul mood. Her hip had started hurting again. She knew it was arthritic but had gone in for a course of Pilates exercises and the pain had receded. But now it was back again. She felt old, slightly sick and in pain.

  James, on the other hand, was buoyant and energetic.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said, “that they won’t keep us here much longer and then we can be off. We could go to Paris first and then motor down to the south.”

  Agatha looked at him in silence. The wind screamed and howled outside like a banshee.

  She thought of her cottage in Carsely and her beloved cats. She thought of the strain of being in James’s company, sleeping in separate rooms, waiting for the love that never came.

  At last she looked across the table at him and said, “I want to go home.”

  “But some sunshine would do us the world of good.”

  “I do really want to go home, James.”

  “You’re tired and upset and you’ve probably got some of that hangover left. I hope you’re not taking to the bottle.”

  Agatha felt a stabbing pain at her hip. She got up stiffly. “Don’t lecture me. I’m going back to bed.”

  “Do that. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

  ELEVEN

  AGATHA felt she simply had to get out of the hotel the next morning. Despite the warnings of an approaching storm, the day was sunny and blustery. She asked Patrick to accompany her, not wanting to see either Charles or James. Patrick hardly ever spoke unless spoken to.

  Patrick accepted quietly Agatha’s explanation that she needed some exercise and that the hotel was beginning to feel like a prison.

  As they walked along and round the streets, she could almost see the quiet fishing village as it must have been in James’s youth. In fact, apart from the widened main street, the centre of Snoth was quite small, with housing estates on the outskirts. The houses in the narrow streets leading up from the waterfront to the main street showed they had once probably been fishermen’s cottages. It was the large chain stores in the main street and the seedy little shops in the side streets which, she guessed, had robbed the town of its charm and innocence. It was almost as if the town had turned to catering for the unemployed with amusement arcades and sex shops. White-faced, seedy-looking youth hung out at the street corners.

  “I’m feeling better now,” said Agatha at last. “Let’s have a cof
fee.”

  She checked one café after another, peering in the windows to find out if there were welcoming ashtrays on the tables.

  At last she found one. It advertised snacks and light refreshments. It was not very cosy, having Formica tables and very hard chairs, but each table had little tin ashtrays of the type the proprietor didn’t mind having stolen.

  Agatha and Patrick ordered coffees and Agatha lit a cigarette and then watched the blue smoke drifting in a sunbeam shining through the plate-glass window.

  Sunbeams were the enemy of smokers, thought Agatha, highlighting just how much of the poisonous stuff you were sending out into the surrounding air.

  “I can’t help thinking about Deborah,” she said. “I didn’t like the woman, but she was so very brave to have survived that sea. What am I going to do, Patrick? James wants me to go off on holiday with him, but I only want to go home.”

  Said Patrick, “The best thing then would be to persuade James to go home for a couple of weeks to see everything is all right.”

  “That might be a good idea. I should really get back to the office. Poor Phil must be sadly overworked.”

  “I spoke to him last night. He said to send Harry back as soon as possible. He says he can manage all right with Harry, but he finds it tough being on his own. Of course, he’s in his seventies.”

  “I hate the idea of getting old,” said Agatha. She shifted in her chair. No nasty twinges this morning. “How do you fancy Cyril Hammond for the murder of Geraldine? He seems to have been devoted to her, but that could all be an act.”

  “He’s certainly one person who might have persuaded her to leave the hotel. My contact at the station is trying to find out if he has any sort of criminal record. If you get permission to leave, will you really go and leave the murder of Geraldine unsolved?”

  “I don’t know. I would like to go home, but at least here there are a lot of police around. Brian McNally has been seen in Carsely. I would be an easier target there.”

  “In that case, perhaps James’s idea is sound—get out of the country and disappear for a bit.”