by M C Beaton
‘But we were to march to the spring behind the village band,’ mourned Agatha, ‘and I pictured it all sunny. Now all we’ll get’s a straggling row of umbrella-covered people.’
‘We can only do our best,’ sighed Roy.
Agatha expected the Freemont brothers to blame her for the weather, but they both seemed quite calm and cheerful. ‘Everything looks quite jolly,’ said Guy, ‘and loads of people are beginning to arrive.’
‘What about the press?’
‘They’re already getting liquored up in the press tent.’
‘I’d better go and join them. Come along, Roy.’
Entering the press tent, Agatha’s expert eye ranged over the assembled journalists and her heart sank. There was the Birmingham Mercury – good paper, that – the Cotswold Journal, the Gloucester Echo, Midlands Television and so on, all local. Where were the nationals?
She moved among them, chatting brightly away. Lord Pendlebury would open the fête at eleven in the main tent, then everyone would have a chance to buy things at the stalls. At twelve the village band would lead a procession to the spring.
When Agatha went to the main tent to hear Lord Pendlebury’s speech, she knew the whole thing was a ghastly failure. The rain dampened everything, despite the flowers and heaters inside the tents. The ground was muddy and spongy underfoot and the day was cold. A malicious wind had got up and flapped the sodden canvas.
Lord Pendlebury made a long and boring speech about his military service during World War II. He did not mention the water company and Agatha was suddenly convinced he had totally forgotten why he was there. A baby began to cry. One little boy kicked his sister in the shins; she began to scream and other children screamed in competition.
Teenagers who had travelled down from Birmingham in the hope of seeing The Pretty Girls were drinking beer from cans and looking surly.
When the time for the procession to the spring arrived, all Agatha wanted to do was run away and hide. The plan was that she and the Freemont brothers and Lord Pendlebury would lead the procession. Originally it was to be led by The Pretty Girls. And how often Agatha had fondly imagined that original picture. The crowds, the laughter, the jolly band, the sun beating down.
She saw James talking to an attractive woman in the refreshment tent. He was laughing at something she was saying. Agatha’s misery was complete.
She found Guy at her elbow. ‘Where were you during Lord Pendlebury’s speech?’ she asked.
‘Off somewhere thinking about getting drunk but not doing it. Let’s go and join the procession.’
‘How are the band to play in this rain?’
‘The band leader assures me they’re used to it. Get the press and tell them we’re off.’
The press had obviously been making up for lack of a newsworthy event by swapping stories and drinking hard. They looked reluctant to leave, but they dutifully picked up their gear and followed Agatha out into the rain.
As they approached the spring, the band had opted to play ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’. It sounds like a dirge, thought Agatha, feeling she would like to cry, and this is like a funeral procession.
‘Oh, my God,’ said Guy, grabbing Agatha’s arm.
‘What?’
‘Look there!’
The music behind them faltered off into silence except for the drummer, who did not have a clear view of what was transfixing the rest of them.
Robina Toynbee hung head down over her garden wall. Blood from a gaping wound in her head dripped down into the spring. Boom, boom, boom, went the drum. Then it too was silent.
A woman screamed, high and long and loud.
Chaos erupted.
The galvanized press pushed and shoved to get photographs.
Guy whipped out his mobile phone and thrust it at Agatha.
‘Find a quiet corner and get on to the nationals – quick!’
‘But the police –’
‘I’ll get them. Go!’ He gave her a little shove.
Agatha thrust her way round the edge of the crowd and then ran to the deserted press tent. She sat down and poured herself a stiff brandy and then started to phone while inside her grew a loathing for her job.
She was joined by Roy. She pushed him a list of the media she had already phoned. ‘I’ll do some,’ said Roy. ‘God, I feel sick. That poor woman.’
‘She called me last night, and the news about The Pretty Girls put it straight out of my head,’ said Agatha.
‘Never mind, let’s get on with this. Peter Freemont wants you to mug up some sort of speech for him to make to the press.’
Agatha opened up her briefcase and took out her laptop and switched it on. Almost without thought, the words came. ‘Ancombe Water, the Water of Life, will be successful because it is the best mineral water on the market. The unfortunate murders will not stop the company from producing it or believing in their fine product. There have already been suggestions that some unscrupulous rival company is going to any lengths to sabotage the launch,’ and so on.
Dimly she was aware of Roy’s voice chattering away.
Among the bottles of booze in front of her, Ancombe Water glittered whitely, the skull on the label etched in black, a little row of serried skulls grinning at her.
‘I’ll need to go home and run this off on the printer,’ she said.
‘I brought it,’ said Roy, who had just rung off after another call. ‘I mean, I’ve got mine. It’s stashed in my case over in the corner. I’ll get it.’
‘When can we expect the nationals?’
‘The stringers will be here any minute and then the heavy mob should make it, traffic willing, in about an hour and a half. We’re going to be busy. Hold on a minute, Aggie. Let’s have a drink and sit quietly. I don’t know about you, but right now I hate this effing job and I want to go and join the Peace Corps.’
‘You know, you’re quite a decent fellow, Roy. I was thinking pretty much the same thing.’
‘Marry me?’
Agatha laughed. ‘You don’t really mean that. I’ve already had brandy. I’d better stick to that. It’s going to be a long day.’
Roy poured two brandies. ‘Listen to that rain. Getting worse. Oh, my gawd, we told the nationals that there would be dark doings. The police are going to think we, or the Freemonts, bumped off that poor woman for publicity.’
‘Bit far-fetched. But I tell you one thing for sure, Roy. I’ve gone off Guy Freemont. Oh, I know he’s got a business to save, but he could at least have got the police and an ambulance instead of handing me his mobile and telling me to get the nationals.’
‘Were you sweet on him?’
‘A bit. Maybe – no. I was flattered, him being so much younger and so good-looking and what with James snubbing me at every turn and then going off and investigating on his own. None of it seems important now. I didn’t like Robina, but who would do this to her, and why? She had been getting those threatening letters and yet she wouldn’t show them to the police.’
‘Talking about the police, you’d better run off your deathless prose. They’ll be with us soon. Did you see any of your suspects around? I mean, it must have happened just before the procession set off.’
‘No. I wasn’t really looking for them. Just glad that none of them had come up to insult me.’
Roy plugged his printer into Agatha’s computer.
As the speech began to churn out, the press tent began to fill up. Voices were soon heard on mobiles, laptops placed among the bottles and glasses.
‘Water of Life,’ Agatha heard one reporter shout down the phone. ‘Water of Death would be a good headline.’
Portia appeared beside Agatha. Her tweed suit, thought Agatha sourly, looked as if it had been painted on. How she managed to get it so tight and yet so smooth must be some miracle of tailoring. ‘Have you got Mr Peter’s speech?’ she asked.
Agatha gathered up the pages from the printer tray and handed them to her. ‘I suggest that Guy makes this speech.’
‘He’s better-looking. Look good on television.’
Portia leaned forward and whispered, ‘Don’t you find your infatuation with Guy a little sad at your age?’
‘Piss off,’ said Agatha furiously.
‘What was that about?’ asked Roy.
‘Never mind. Have we phoned everyone?’
‘Yes, and with this lot telling their news desks, and their news desks telling London, I should think everyone knows. It’ll be out on the radio news anyway.’
The rest of the day passed in a blur of hectic activity for Agatha. Peter Freemont made the speech she had written. There were cameras everywhere, flashing and clicking. Television reporters did their job, which had everyone they could think of making a statement, preceded by the eternal TV film cliche´ of having the interviewee walking. Why, Agatha wondered, did people have to be seen walking before they faced the cameras?
Boom microphones, oblong and furry, were held above heads. The rain drummed relentlessly down. Children, thwarted of their performance in the talent competition, screamed and cried if they were very young and moodily sulked and dug up chunks of grass with their Doc Martens if they were older.
To Agatha’s horror, she came across Lord Pendlebury making a statement to the press. ‘It’s all the fault of incomers,’ he said. ‘Nasty people. Never had this trouble when people who belonged in the cities stayed in the cities.’
She quickly moved in front of him and said loudly, ‘We owe much to Lord Pendlebury for lending his support to the launch of Ancombe Water. He will agree with me that anything that brings business and jobs to a rural area is welcome. Do you know that the Ancombe Water Company gave first priority in jobs to the villagers of Ancombe?’
And so on, until the disgruntled lord shuffled off and the press yawned.
Finally she and Roy had to sit down in a police trailer facing Bill Wong.
‘Now, you two,’ he said severely, ‘what on earth were you about, hinting to the press that something awful was going to happen? I can tell you that there are mutterings amongst them that Robina Toynbee was murdered because of a publicity stunt.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ said Agatha.
‘So why did you say such a thing?’
Agatha looked miserable. ‘I felt the press were beginning to lose interest. I didn’t hint at murder. I hinted there might be another demonstration. It could have well happened. It’s my job, Bill. Had to get them here.’
‘You’ve got the lot now,’ said Bill grimly.
‘Why wasn’t Robina at the festivities anyway?’ asked Roy.
‘Part of the arrangement was that Robina Toynbee was to be at her garden wall over the spring when the procession arrived. So she told her neighbour.’
‘And who made this arrangement?’ asked Agatha. ‘I heard nothing about it. The Freemonts?’
‘No, luckily for them, or I really would have begun to think it was some macabre publicity stunt. According to this neighbour, a Mrs Brown, Robina thought up the whole thing herself. She was miffed because she had not been asked to make a speech, considering it was her water. So she planned to be at her garden wall and, when the procession arrived, make a speech. It was found on the grass beside her – her notes, I mean.’
‘Oh, help!’ Agatha stared at Bill, wide-eyed. ‘Robina left a message for me last night. She wanted me to phone her. Then I got the news about the pop group not being able to make it and I forgot all about her. Maybe she just wanted to tell me about her speech.’
‘Could be,’ said Bill. ‘Did you save the message?’
‘Yes, it’ll still be there.’
‘I’ll get along to your place later and listen to it.’
‘So it looks as if we’re back to the ones on the parish council who didn’t want the water company to go ahead,’ said Agatha. ‘The againsts are Bill Allen, Andy Stiggs and Mary Owen. Where were they?’
‘Mary Owen was at home. She said she didn’t want to have anything to do with it. Bill Allen says he was at his garden centre, but as his staff of two young people had been given an hour off to go to the fête, we have no witnesses. Andy Stiggs says he was working in his garden.’
‘In this weather?’
‘He says the heavy rain had battered a climbing rose and he was tying it up. With all that shrubbery in Robina Toynbee’s garden, anyone could have hidden there and as soon as she got to the garden wall, struck her a blow from behind. Most villagers were already at the fête.’
‘Yes, and when we walked along to the spring, apart from those from the fête who were accompanying the procession,’ said Agatha, ‘there was no one about.’
‘I am going to take statements from both of you,’ said Bill. ‘I want you to go over carefully and clearly why you hinted to the press that there might be trouble and then what you were both doing at the time of the murder.’
It seemed to take a long time.
‘I need a drink,’ said Agatha when they were finally free. ‘Let’s go and see the Freemonts. I really want to get away from here.’
They found Guy, Peter and Portia in the press tent. Portia was laughing at something Guy was saying, her hand on his arm. Agatha’s eyes narrowed. Then she reminded herself that she did not want to have anything more to do with Guy, romantically, that is. She had a craving to be her age, act her age, and stop worrying about wrinkles and sagging flesh.
‘Agatha!’ cried Guy, detaching himself from Portia. He gathered her in his arms and gave her a kiss. ‘Isn’t it all too awful? But you handled things magnificently.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Agatha, awkwardly disengaging herself. ‘I heard one reporter suggesting a good headline would be the Water of Death.’
‘Don’t worry. You should know. By the time all this blows over, all they’ll remember is the name. We’ll be world headlines tomorrow. We’ve got a great marketing manager. We’ve sent complimentary supplies to every restaurant round about, and to the top restaurants in London. It’s a clever bottle. It would have been cheaper to put the water in plastic ones, but we think the success of Perrier, say, is that because it’s in a glass bottle with a screw-top, it doesn’t go flat, like the stuff in the plastic ones.’
‘Have you made statements to the police?’
‘Yes, everything’s over and done with. Don’t worry, Agatha. It’s all worked out all right.’
‘Well, the arrangement was that my job would finish on the day of the fête,’ said Agatha. ‘I won’t be seeing much of either of you again.’
‘Did we make that arrangement?’
‘Yes,’ said Roy, moving forward. ‘I’ve got the week off, Aggie. So if you can put up with me putting up with you, I’d like to stay on.’
‘Okay,’ said Agatha.
‘Wait a minute,’ said Peter quickly. ‘Perhaps you could drop into the office on Monday. We haven’t got a replacement for you. We needed an expert to get this off the ground, but now with the murder and all, we could do with your services.’
‘Let me have a week off,’ said Agatha quickly, ‘and I’ll think about it.’
She and Roy left the press tent and emerged into blazing sunlight. ‘Typical,’ said Agatha, and then she began to cry.
Chapter Seven
Bill Wong arrived at Agatha’s cottage with Chief Inspector Wilkes and a policewoman. They listened carefully to Agatha’s answering service.
‘She sounds agitated,’ said Wilkes.
‘Robina could have received more of these threatening letters,’ said Agatha. ‘She’d been getting them and I told her to take them to the police, but she wouldn’t. I told you about them, didn’t I, Bill?’
‘You’d better go over again, for the chief inspector’s benefit, everything you’ve found out.’
So Agatha began at the beginning. It all seemed such a muddle, and the idea that one of the respectable members of the Ancombe Parish Council should suddenly turn murderer was too strange to believe.
There was a ring at the
doorbell.
Roy went to answer it and came back followed by James.
Agatha looked at him stonily, in her heart blaming him for her affair with Guy.
‘Good,’ said Bill, looking up from his notes. ‘We were going to call on you, and this saves time. Do you think any of those Save Our Foxes people could be mad enough to commit murder?’
‘Could be,’ said James, sinking down in an armchair. ‘It might explain the second murder, but surely not the first. No one knew which way old Struthers meant to vote.’
‘It’s a pity about Mary Owen,’ said Agatha. ‘She was my prime suspect. She’s strong enough and nasty enough.’
‘There seems enough proof that she was where she said she was, at her sister’s.’
‘Have you thought about the water company?’ asked James. ‘They’ve got world-wide publicity out of today. They would have got very little if it hadn’t been for the murder. No pop group. Nothing to draw them.’
‘I think that’s ridiculous,’ said Agatha hotly.
‘Well, you would.’ James’s voice was cold. ‘But if we can keep emotional involvement out of this and look at it objectively, this publicity is worth millions to the Freemont brothers.’
‘If you keep jealousy out of it,’ said Roy, ‘and think about it, it shouldn’t do them all that much good. Two dead people dripping blood into that spring!’
‘Why on earth should I be jealous?’
‘Because of Aggie’s ring-a-ding wish Guy Freemont.’
‘Rubbish,’ said James.
‘There is nothing between me and Guy Freemont,’ howled Agatha.
‘Oh, so his car just happens to be parked outside your cottage all night by accident,’ said James nastily. ‘What were you doing all night? Drinking water?’
‘Get out of here!’ shouted Agatha, tears starting to her eyes.
‘Calm down, all of you,’ said Wilkes. ‘I want the three of you to report to police headquarters tomorrow morning and we’ll go over it again.’
James left with the police.
‘What now?’ asked Roy. ‘Should we think of somewhere for dinner?’
‘Let’s go for a drive first,’ said Agatha. ‘I know, we’ll go into Mircester. There’s a new Chinese restaurant.’
