Agatha Raisin and The Potted Gardener ar-3

by M C Beaton

  "I had an agonizing time wondering whether she would drink it or not. At last I said when I was in the navy we used to drink our brandy down in one go, but I couldn't expect a lady to be able to do that. She laughed and said, 'Why not?' and tipped the contents of her glass down her throat.

  "I watched her die. I felt nothing at all. Nothing. I hadn't yet touched my own drink. I poured it carefully into the bottle after I had pulled on a pair of gloves, and then put the top back on the bottle. I put my own glass in my pocket, along with the one she had drunk out of, to take away with me. I sponged the vomit from her mouth off the carpet. I knew traces of it would be found by the police, but I did not want to make matters easy for them.

  "I lifted her up...and well, the rest you know. I wanted her to be found desecrated, the way she had desecrated those gardens and in revenge for killing my fish. I knew she was the one who had tried to destroy the other gardens. She was mad."

  "I'll see if the police have arrived," said Agatha in a thin voice.

  She ran from the garden, round the front and to the cottage next door, where she screamed at the startled lady, a Mrs Bain, to let her use the phone. She called Fred Griggs and then went back reluctantly to join James and Bernard.

  But when she reached the back garden, James was alone.

  "Poor mad old man," said James. "He's gone in to lock up a few things before the police take him away."

  At that moment, Bernard reappeared. "I'll just feed my new family before I go," he said. He crossed to the goldfish pond. With a sigh of relief, Agatha heard the wail of a police siren in the distance.

  James suddenly put his arms around her and she gratefully leaned against him and buried her face in his chest. "That's that," came Bernard's now quavering voice. "I'll just get something from the kitchen."

  Agatha raised her head. "You should go with him. He might run away."

  "We'd better go in anyway. The police will be hammering at the front door."

  They went in by the kitchen door. Sure enough, there was banging on the door. Agatha opened it and Bill Wong and two detectives came in. "We got your message on the police radio. Where is he?"

  Agatha looked wildly around. "I don't know. Somewhere."

  And then a drumming sound reverberated down from the ceiling overhead.

  Bill and his colleagues raced for the stairs. James pulled Agatha back. "Don't go," he said. "It won't be pretty."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I think he poisoned his new fish - and then he poisoned himself. They may be able to pump him out in time, but I doubt it."

  Upstairs, radios crackled as they called for an ambulance. "Let's go and sit in the garden, Agatha," said James. "There's nothing more we can do here."

  Epilogue

  It was two days after the death of Bernard Spott. The rain, which had broken the long spell of good weather, had ceased and the sun once more shone down.

  Agatha and James were sitting in Agatha's garden. James was enthusiastic about the flowers and bushes, so much so that Agatha was almost able to forget about her deception. They had been questioned separately and this was the first time they had got together since they had discovered that Bernard was the murderer.

  "Why did you let him go off alone into the house?" asked Agatha. "Did you guess he would take his own life?"

  "I thought he might. He was a brave man during the war. As soon as I heard that awful drumming sound upstairs, I knew it was his heels drumming on the floor after a swig of poison. He poisoned his new fish as well. I should have kept an eye on him and let him stand trial. My only excuse is that I was so shocked and upset, I didn't really know what I was doing."

  "He may have been a brave man," said Agatha sharply, "but he committed a most dreadful crime and should have stood trial for it."

  Bill Wong appeared around the side of the house, Agatha having no reason to lock the gate any more.

  He sat down and studied them for a few moments and then said, "We were almost on to Bernard, you know."

  "You're just saying that," said Agatha.

  "No, we had been scouring the nurseries far and wide for someone who might have bought that particular brand of weedkiller around the time of the murder."

  "What brand?"

  "Clean Garden. An innocuous name for some quite lethal stuff."

  "But lots of people buy it, surely?"

  "We had photographs of people in this village, even you pair, which we had taken when you weren't looking. We showed them around the nurseries, and right over in darkest Oxfordshire they recognized Bernard Spott. That and his navy background and the fact that he was once a keen yachtsman made him look like our man. The knots on that rope had been done by an expert." He looked at their outraged faces and laughed. "Don't worry. I'm not taking the credit away from you. We had no real proof. What put you on to him? I mean, you said you had watched him helping the boy scouts, but surely that wasn't enough."

  "It was the graves in his garden," said Agatha.

  "Graves? What graves?"

  "All those little graves for his poisoned fish, all with crosses and names."

  "We saw those," said Bill. "But we asked him and he explained it was part of his garden which he reserved as an animals' cemetery, and when anyone in the village had a dead cat or dog, they brought it to Bernard. But what I cannot understand is why you two gave him time to poison himself."

  James flashed a warning look at Agatha. "We were in shock," he said blandly. "We did not think he would take his own life."

  Bill gave a little sigh and clasped his tubby hands over his chest. "Mad. All mad. What exactly was up with Mary Fortune, I doubt we'll ever know. She was diagnosed in America as being depressed, which seems to cover a multitude of mental ailments." He looked at James. "Why it was you never suspected anything was wrong with her, considering the circumstances, is beyond me."

  "Even Agatha here did not know she was that deranged," said James. "Look, she seemed a flirtatious, easy-going woman out for a good time, with no strings attached. When she was quite foul to me when I broke it off, I felt so guilty about having misunderstood her - by that I mean that it had never crossed my mind before that she was considering marriage to me - I felt guilty. Then, as other people might have told you, and even Bernard told us, she could be really nasty and then, the next time you met her, so warm and charming, it was as if you had imagined it all."

  "And Beth and John are completely in the clear." Agatha sounded as if she regretted that fact. "I suppose the dreadful couple will be settling in the village."

  "No, they're putting the house up for sale," said Bill. "I expected to see your pictures all over the newspapers, Agatha - 'Village Sleuth Strikes Again'."

  "I thought you might have told them it was I who solved your bloody murder," said Agatha peevishly.

  "Not my decision. My superiors seem to have carefully omitted that fact when they spoke to the press."

  Agatha looked huffy. "You would think, with my reputation, they would have called round here."

  Bill smiled. "You've still got time to let them know it was you."

  "Too late," said Agatha, wise in the ways of newspapers. "The story is dead already. That find of two headless corpses in Birmingham knocked it off the pages. If I step in now, they'll just think I'm some bragging old trout trying to get in on the act."

  "You forget," put in James, "that if it hadn't been for me, you wouldn't have got on to Bernard in the first place."

  Agatha's bearlike eyes fastened on him. "What had you got to do with it? Yes, you did say it was Bernard and then immediately went back on it and if I hadn't insisted on going, if I, I repeat, I hadn't discovered those graves and dug one up, he'd still be at liberty."

  "I doubt it," said Bill. "We found a neatly typed and signed confession to the murder in his desk. It was addressed to police headquarters in Mircester. He'd probably have sent it to us soon enough."

  "Well, I think I did brilliantly," said Agatha, "and if I don't say so, who else is
going to? Oh, here's Mrs Bloxby. Mrs Bloxby..."

  "Margaret."

  "Margaret, I mean. I solve this murder and James and Bill are trying to take the credit away from me."

  Mrs Bloxby sat down. "Such a sad affair. And Bernard had been in this village for quite a long time. Who would have thought it? One never really knows what goes on inside people's brains. I went up to Bernard's after his fish had been poisoned to sympathize with him and he shrugged and said, "They were only fish. I can get more." Bernard Spott was one of the fixtures of the village that no one ever really thought much about. He has a sister, a spinster of seventy-five, called Beryl Spott, who has inherited the cottage. I must warn you, Agatha, that she has already visited the vicarage to say she intends to reside here."

  "Why warn me?"

  "She is convinced that her brother was innocent and that you, Agatha, hounded him to his death."

  "Just as well I'm going to London."

  "Must you?" Mrs Bloxby looked at her sympathetically. "Have you a copy of the contract? There might be some clause in it letting you off the hook due to illness or something like that. I mean, if you were ill, you could not go."

  Agatha brightened. "I'll go and get it. Roy sent me a copy."

  She went into the house and a short time later returned with the contract. She bent over it and scanned every line and then sighed. "No let-out that I can see. I'd better just go and get it over with. It might be fun to be back in harness."

  "You could fail miserably and be a rotten PR," said Bill, "and then they would be glad to send you home."

  "I couldn't do that," exclaimed Agatha. "My pride wouldn't let me. What about my poor cats, Hodge and Boswell, locked up for six months in a London flat?"

  "I'll take them," said James suddenly. "I like cats. I'll look after them until you come back."

  "Thank you," said Agatha. "I'd feel better about things knowing they were with you." She brightened. If James had her cats, then she would have plenty of excuses to phone him up to ask how they were.

  "And you will be able to come down at weekends, surely," said Mrs Bloxby.

  Agatha shook her head. "They'll work me to death. It'll be weekends as well most of the time."

  "I'll take care of your garden," said Mrs Bloxby. "It's so lovely, and by the time you return, spring will be here again."

  Agatha had a sudden thought. "Did you ever find out about that couple, Bill? You know, the ones we heard out on the road the night Mary was murdered."

  "Oh, them, it's hard to believe. After we learned about them, we put out an appeal on television for them to come forward, without any success. Then, after the solution to the murder had been reported in yesterday's papers, they walked into the police headquarters as bold as brass."

  "Who are they?" asked James. "Why didn't they come forward before?"

  "It was a young fellow who lives on the council estate, Harry Trump, and his girlfriend from Evesham, Kylie Taylor. When asked why they hadn't come forward before, they said that you could never trust the police and we might have pinned the murder on them. I must go. Call in and see me before you leave for London, Agatha."

  "There's some time to go before then," said Mrs Bloxby, getting to her feet as well.

  After they had left, James said, "I'd better be getting along. See you in the Red Lion later, Agatha, and don't forget you owe me dinner."

  He bent down to kiss her cheek, but at that moment she turned her head and the kiss landed full on her mouth, a mouth which was warm and tingling. As James straightened up, Agatha looked up at him in a dazed way.

  "Goodbye," he said abruptly and strode out of the garden.

  Agatha could not quite believe those last weeks before her departure for London. It was like the bad old times. James was polite to her when he met her in the pub, but quite distant. She invited him out for dinner several times but he always had an excuse ready. She began to long for her departure as much as she had so recently dreaded it.

  At last the day arrived and she delivered her cats to James. She had already said goodbye to her other friends. She stood in James's hallway, the cat baskets at her feet, and said awkwardly, "I'm off, then,"

  "Have a good time," he replied.

  "I'll phone."

  "Yes, of course."

  "Well, er, goodbye."

  "Goodbye, Agatha." He held open the door for her.

  Agatha went out stiffly to her car and climbed in. She drove off without looking out of the window. James watched her go. He should not have been so cold towards her but that kiss had alarmed him. He wondered if he would ever get over the shame of his affair with Mary Fortune. He did not even want to think of any emotional entanglement. Perhaps once he was feeling better about himself, he might travel up one day and take her out to lunch. He went back in and stared at the computer screen. It was a cold, windy day and leaves were swirling down from the trees outside.

  The horror had left the village and Carsely was settling down for its long winter sleep, safe and calm and untroubled. And boring, he thought dismally, half his mind still occupied with that forlorn figure of Agatha getting into her car.

  Agatha arrived at Pedmans at Cheapside on the Monday. The receptionist took a note of her name and phoned upstairs. Then she smiled at Agatha. "Your secretary, Peta, will be down in a minute."

  But Agatha waited a whole ten minutes before a lank girl in an Armani trouser suit drifted down the stairs.

  "Oh, there you are, sweetie," Peta said by way of greeting. "Follow me and I'll show you to your sanctum."

  Agatha grimly followed her. She looked around a small dark office and bared her teeth. "Let's get one thing straight, Peta," she said. "When you have informed Mr Wilson that this office is an insult and found me a better one, you will remember to never dare call me sweetie again. I am Mrs Raisin to you at all times. And when you've finished doing that, get me a cup of coffee."

  Peta made a brave stand. "We all get our own coffee in this firm. Secretaries are not waitresses, you know."

  "Just do it," barked Agatha, "or find yourself another boss. Jump to it!"

  And Peta jumped.

  A short time afterwards, Agatha was ensconced in a larger office while Peta silently placed a tray of coffee and biscuits in front of her.

  For one brief moment, Agatha thought of James, of Mrs Bloxby, of her cats, her home, her garden, and closed her eyes in pain.

  Then she opened them again and pulled the phone towards her.

  She was back in business and there was work to be done.

  Carsely could wait.

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  M.C. Beaton

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