by M C Beaton
He introduced himself, sitting down opposite Agatha and arranging the creases in his jeans so that they fell vertically. He introduced himself. Agatha brightened and slammed shut a folder of missing pets.
“How can I help you?” she asked. “Is it about the recent murder in your village?”
“It is indeed.” His voice was high and fluting. “Normally we would leave matters to the police, but we need the case solved quickly. We have been, up till now, a happy village. Now, everyone seems to suspect everyone else.”
“What kind of person was Gloria French?” asked Agatha. “And please do speak ill of the dead if necessary.”
“She bought a house in the village a year ago and at first she seemed an exemplary woman. She read to the elderly and did their shopping for them, she raised money to restore the church, things like that. And then she developed a habit of borrowing things and refusing to give them back. Never anything very valuable, wineglasses for a party she was giving, scissors, a teapot and all sorts of bits and pieces. On her last day, she tried to borrow a bottle of sherry from one of the villagers.”
“Who will fund this?” asked Agatha. “My rates are quite high.”
“I shall pay your rates myself,” said Jerry. “I want my tranquil village back. If you discover the identity of the murderer, I will pay you a generous bonus. I am not a poor man.”
Agatha told Mrs. Freedman to draw up a contract. After she had finished discussing her fee and expenses, Agatha asked, “Have you any idea who might have committed this murder?”
“We do not have incomers in our village. Well, Gloria was one and Peter Suncliff, a retired engineer, the other. But I can’t think of anyone else.”
“But they are accusing each other. Is one person the favourite?”
“There is one ridiculous suggestion from some that it might be Jenny Soper, because Jenny was heard threatening to kill her. But Jenny is a sweet little thing and wouldn’t harm a fly.”
“I have never been to Piddlebury,” said Agatha. “What’s it like?”
“Very small. More of a hamlet than a village. There’s one main street with a church at one end and a pub at the other.”
At that moment, Toni Gilmour walked into the office. With old-fashioned courtesy, Jerry jumped to his feet. Agatha introduced him and said that Toni would be one of her staff helping with the investigation.
Toni was young and beautiful with blond hair, wide blue eyes and a perfect figure. Jerry beamed at her. Men always beamed at Toni, reflected Agatha with a little sour stab of jealousy. I probably won’t live long enough to see her lose her looks, she thought miserably, and immediately wanted a cigarette. But she fought against the urge. She was, once more, desperately trying to give up.
Jerry opened a briefcase and pulled out a selection of photographs. “These were taken at the last church fete,” he said. “I have written the names on the back. I have also here a typed list of the names of most of the villagers and a short description of each person.”
A man after my own heart, thought Agatha.
“When do you plan to start?” asked Jerry.
“Oh, I think we can begin today,” said Agatha, planning to inflict the folder of lost pets on Simon Black.
Jerry signed the contract and took his leave. Five minutes later, Patrick Mulligan walked in. Agatha thought, not for the first time, that Patrick’s appearance always seemed to scream policeman, from his lugubrious face to his grey suit and highly polished black shoes.
After she had briefed Patrick and told him to get in touch with some of his old police contacts to find out what he could about the case, she asked, “Any idea yet what poisoned her?”
“Rhubarb.”
“Rhubarb! But I had rhubarb tart last week and I’m fine.”
“Rhubarb leaves are highly poisonous, particularly when they’re cooked up with soda. It turns out she had a weak heart or she might just have survived. I was talking to an old pal down at police headquarters about it. He said the kitchen door at the back was unlocked because someone came in and took the bottle and glass away. There were bottles of the wine in a crate in the cellar. There were footprints going down to the cellar, some appear to be from Gloria herself and then a set of larger prints, and they were recent footprints. So what is puzzling the police is that although it looks as if the murderer just popped a bottle of the poisoned stuff in with the others and sat back and waited, how would the murderer know that Gloria would drink out of that bottle and when, so as to be on hand to remove the evidence? Also the vicar says that Gloria often entertained him, supplying the cheapest drink possible, and recently she had offered him elderberry wine. It looks as if our murderer didn’t care who he or she bumped off as long as one of the people was Gloria.”
“Keep at it, Patrick,” said Agatha, rapidly taking notes. “Toni and I will pop over there and suss the place out.”
* * *
As Agatha and Toni got out of Agatha’s car in the main street of Piddlebury, Toni thought it looked like a picture postcard. A few thatched houses crouched on either side of the street intermingled with slate-roofed ones of a more recent date, probably Georgian, thought Toni, unlike their Tudor neighbours. The steeple of the church at one end of the village, like one enormous sundial, cast a shadow as the sun moved behind it.
Gloria’s cottage was recognisable because of the police tape outside it and the white tent erected over the door.
“Where do we start?” asked Toni.
“The pub,” said Agatha. “I’m hungry.”
* * *
The pub, the Green Man, was a square building of mellow golden Cotswold stone. An old wisteria covered most of the front. The painting of the green man, that ancient fertility symbol, had a singularly evil-looking face with vines sprouting from his nostrils.
Agatha and Toni entered the cool dark bar. “I hope, since this village is not on the tourist map, that they have some real food,” whispered Agatha. She approached the bar. “Do you serve lunches?”
The tall thin greying man behind the bar held out his hand. “You’ll be the detective ladies Mr. Tarrant was telling us about.”
“Yes, that’s us,” said Agatha. “You are…?”
“Moses Green, owner of this here establishment.”
“We’re hungry. What do you have?”
He handed Agatha a menu. Agatha looked at it with a sinking heart. Lasagne and chips, egg and chips, sausage and chips, ham and chips, ploughmans and tomato soup. Her face fell.
“Haven’t you any real food?”
“Seeing as it’s you, you can have a bit of the wife’s roast lamb, if you’d like that?”
“Great.” They ordered two halves of lager and retreated to a corner table.
“We’re the only customers,” whispered Toni.
When Moses arrived with their food, Agatha asked, “Is it always as quiet as this?”
“Oh, folks are here but they’re out in the garden at the back. The smokers like it there.”
Agatha was about to suggest joining them, but realised how hard she was trying to stop smoking, but compromised by saying that they would take their coffee in the garden after they had eaten. After all, she reminded herself, she was here to interview the locals.
The lamb was excellent. After they had finished eating, they walked along a stone-flagged corridor and into the garden at the back. The hum of conversation stopped and the diners turned and looked at them.
“I am Agatha Raisin, private detective,” announced Agatha in a loud voice. A loud hectoring voice, thought Toni uneasily. “And I am here to investigate the murder of Gloria French. Can any of you help me?”
In that moment, Toni wished that someone of her own age, Simon Black, say, was investigating this case with her. Being with Agatha was like being towed along in the wake of a battleship.
Everyone bent their heads over their food and soon a murmur of conversation rose again. Hands on hips, Agatha viewed them with frustration.
“Let’s
sit down and have our coffee and I’ll take it one table at a time,” said Toni. “I think you frighten them.”
“I don’t frighten people,” said Agatha crossly. “People warm to me.”
“Not this lot,” said Toni. “Sit down, drink coffee, have a cigarette and leave it to me.”
“You forget who’s in charge here,” said Agatha crossly.
“Believe me, not for a moment.”
“Oh, do your best,” said Agatha sulkily.
As Toni approached the nearest table, Agatha opened her file of photographs. Toni was now talking to Peter Suncliff and Jenny Soper. She rather hoped they would give Toni the brush-off, but to her irritation she saw Peter pull out a chair for Toni and soon they were deep in conversation.
Agatha lit a cigarette, the first of the day, and felt her head swim. She cursed under her breath and stubbed it out, frightened by visions of having to walk around with a portable oxygen tank.
To her relief, she saw Toni waving to her. She rose and walked over.
Toni introduced them. “We’ve been talking about Gloria. They can’t help much,” she said.
“And I’d help you if I could,” said Jenny. “I was heard hoping that someone would kill her. Of course I didn’t mean it, but it was infuriating the way she would pretend to borrow things when she had no intention of ever handing them back or paying anyone for what she took. You’ll have a difficult job getting anyone else to talk to you. The police have questioned everyone in the village. All that’s done is to stir up trouble. Everyone is pointing the finger at everyone else.”
“That’s the trouble with the police,” said Agatha. “They make everyone feel guilty. Don’t worry. I’ll find this killer if it’s the last thing I do.”
Agatha was not to know that it would turn out to be nearly the very last thing she did do.
Chapter Two
When they left the pub, Agatha said, “Let’s try the vicar. Jerry Tarrant said Gloria did a lot for the church.”
The church of St. Edmund’s was small, but with its tall steeple pointing up to the summer sky. The vicarage, a pleasant Georgian building, stood beside it.
Agatha rang the bell. The door was opened by a truculent woman with a very red face over which hung wisps of grey hair.
“Mrs. Enderbury?” asked Agatha.
“You want her indoors,” said the woman. “I’m just the help. Visitors!” she yelled into the cool gloom of the vicarage hall behind her.
A tall thin woman emerged from a room off the hall and approached them. “Thank you, Mrs. Pound,” she said. The cleaner retreated to the nether regions. The vicar’s wife looked at Agatha enquiringly.
Agatha introduced herself and Toni. “Do come in,” said Clarice. “Such a hot day. Jerry told us he had employed you.” She raised her voice. “Darling! It’s the detective lady.”
A door in the hall opened and the vicar came out. He was as tall and thin as his wife, with heavy-lidded eyes and a long nose. “I’m just finishing a sermon,” he said, after the introductions had been made. “Clarice, why don’t you take the ladies into the garden and give them some lemonade and I’ll join you shortly.”
“Good idea,” said his wife. She led the way along a stone-flagged corridor at the end of the hall and out into a sunny garden, crammed with flowers. There was a table on a little terrace overlooking the garden, shaded with an umbrella.
“Do sit down,” she urged. “Lemonade?”
“No, thanks,” said Agatha. “We’ve just had lunch in the pub.” They sat round the table.
The vicar’s wife removed a sun hat, revealing a head of thick red hair, tied up in a knot. Her eyes were very large and green. She had a long face and a small mouth. She was wearing an old print dress and sandals.
“What can you tell us about Gloria French?” asked Agatha.
“She did a lot of good work for the church,” said Clarice. “Guy was very grateful to her.”
“But what did you think of her? Really think of her?” asked Agatha.
Clarice hesitated. Then, to their surprise, she fished down into her brassiere and produced a crumpled packet of cigarettes and a lighter. She lit a cigarette and watched a puff of smoke drift across the garden.
“We really need to know,” said Toni quietly. “There must have been something about her character to make someone want to kill her.”
“Well, I suppose in that case … She was a cow,” said Clarice. “A nasty, bullying woman. Guy said she must be a really good Christian to do so much work to raise funds for the church, but it was all manipulation and control. She even had the cheek to flirt with my husband in front of me. She made my skin crawl. People say she borrowed things and wouldn’t give them back. I think she stole things as well. I had a pretty Crown Derby bowl in the Welsh dresser in the sitting room. One day it went missing. When we visited Gloria, there was my bowl. She denied it. I insisted. She burst into tears. Guy said I must be mistaken. Guy and I had a terrible row. I really did hate her. I suppose you really do have to find out who killed her?”
“Poisoning is a nasty, premeditated murder,” said Agatha. Unable to bear the smell of the vicar’s wife’s cigarette smoke, she lit up a cigarette herself. “If someone had just hit her on the head, it wouldn’t be so bad.”
There came the sound of approaching footsteps. Clarice said urgently, “Here!” and handed her cigarette to Toni before thrusting her lighter back into her brassiere.
The vicar joined them at the table. “Dear me,” he said, looking at Toni. “I thought young people knew all about the perils of smoking.”
“Never mind that,” said Agatha hurriedly. “I am trying to find out all I can about the late Gloria French. You see, the very character of the murdered person can give me a clue to the identity of her murderer.”
“The woman was a saint,” said the vicar. He flicked a quick warning look at his wife. “She was indefatigable in raising funds for the church. She was a tireless worker.”
“Just what I was saying, dear,” said Clarice.
“I have heard reports that Gloria was in the habit of borrowing things and not giving them back.”
“I think you will find the poor woman had a bad memory.”
Agatha realised the vicar had no intention of speaking ill of the dead. Toni was looking wildly at the long ash at the end of her cigarette, not wanting to follow Agatha’s example of flicking ash into the shrubbery. “I’ll get you an ashtray,” said Clarice, producing one from under a flowerpot.
As Toni stubbed out the cigarette, Agatha asked for directions to Mrs. Ada White’s farm and wrote them down.
* * *
Agatha did not like visiting farms. They all seemed cursed with muddy yards and savage dogs. But the Whites’ farm was trim and clean, a building of mellow Cotswold stone basking in the sunlight.
Ada White came out to meet them. She was a small sturdy woman with rosy cheeks and thick, grey hair. “I was hoping you would call,” she said. “Jerry Tarrant told me he had employed you. It’s been awful. I know some nasty people have been whispering that it was my wine that poisoned her.” Her brown eyes filled with tears. “My elderberry wine has never poisoned anyone. Come into the kitchen.”
It was a model kitchen with bunches of aromatic herbs hanging from the ceiling and sunlight shining on large copper pans hung on the walls. A big square wooden table surrounded by Windsor chairs dominated the room. Coffee bubbled in a percolator and there was a smell of fresh baking mingling with the smells of coffee and herbs.
“I have to use the gas stove in this weather,” said Ada. “It’s too hot for the Aga. Do sit down. Coffee?”
“Please,” said Agatha.
Ada bustled about putting mugs, sugar and milk on the table along with a plate of freshly baked scones, a large square of butter and a dish of strawberry jam.
“Do try my scones,” she said.
Toni took one and spread it liberally with butter. Agatha could feel her waistband tightening at the very sight of t
hem, but she persuaded herself that one wouldn’t hurt. Agatha was always impressed by the sort of women who put the milk in a jug and everything else in its appropriate dish. She always served the milk in its bottle and everything else in whatever container it came in from a shop.
“Now,” began Agatha, “who would want to kill Gloria?”
“I think everyone in the village had taken against her,” said Ada. “But I can’t think of anyone who might be a murderer. We don’t have lots of incomers and tourists like the other Cotswold villages.”
“Anyone not quite right in the head?” asked Agatha.
“Not a one. In the old days, I believe there were often cases of inbreeding, but everyone has cars these days and the young people even go to the clubs in Birmingham for entertainment. There’s nothing to do here and the smoking ban nearly closed down the pub. We all had to start using it to save it.”
“That smoking ban has been the death of thousands of pubs,” said Agatha bitterly, “but the politically correct won’t even breathe that that’s the reason. Why couldn’t they let pub owners and restaurants just put a smoking or non-smoking sign on their doors and give people a choice the way they do in Barcelona? Now even shops are being ordered to cover up the shelves of cigarettes. Why not cover up the shelves of alcohol? Oh, no, just let the young people go on getting liver damage. Do you know that there are people in their twenties with liver damage? Do you know…?”
“Agatha,” interrupted Toni. “What about this murder?”
“Sorry,” mumbled Agatha. “What goes into elderberry wine?”
“Just fresh elderberries, sugar, yeast, water and a Campden tablet,” said Ada.
“What’s a Campden tablet?” asked Agatha.
“Potassium metabisulfite.”
“Who would know about rhubarb leaves combined with soda being poisonous?” asked Toni.
