by M C Beaton
“The problem,” said Paul, “is where to begin.”
“There’s the daughter,” said Agatha. “She lives over at Ancombe. But it’s too soon after her mother’s death to go calling.”
“I wonder when the funeral is,” said Paul. “I’d like to see who turns up for it. Now the daughter didn’t like her mother, so a call from us wouldn’t shock her or upset her. We can just say we’re friends of her mother and that we would like to pay our respects at the funeral.”
“We could do that. I’ll get the phone book.”
“Better if we call in person.”
“I know, but I’ll get the phone book and find out her address.”
Agatha came back after a few minutes. “I’ve written it down. She lives at Four Henry Street. I know Henry Street. It’s in a council estate at the far end of the village.”
“No time like the present. Let’s go.”
“I’d better change.”
“Pity,” he murmured, eyeing her legs.
“Are you a flirt, Paul?”
“Just an appreciative comment.”
Agatha went upstairs and changed into a long summer skirt, remembered him looking at her legs and changed into a short one, thought that might look as if she was giving him a come-on, and changed back into the long skirt, worried that it looked frumpy, and put on a blue linen dress with a medium-length skirt, redid her make-up and finally went downstairs.
“You were ages,” complained Paul. “I nearly went up to look for you.”
“I’m here now,” saw Agatha, reddening slightly under his gaze.
“So let’s go.”
Most of the council houses on the estate had been bought by the residents from the government, and to advertise their new homeowning status, some had added “picture” windows and fake Georgian porticoes. Number Four, unlike its neighbours, had a neglected air. The garden was weedy and the front door and window frames were badly in need of fresh paint.
Paul pressed the bell and then knocked on the door. “I don’t think the bell works,” he said.
The door was opened by a large, bony woman with grey hair. A strong smell of whisky emanated from her and her faded blue eyes were red-rimmed and watery.
“What?” she demanded.
“We were friends of your late mother,” said Paul. “We wondered whether you could tell us the time of the funeral so we could pay our last respects.”
“I don’t know. Ask Harry. He’s in charge of arrangements.”
“Who’s Harry?”
“My brother.”
“Where can we find him?” asked Agatha.
“Oh, come in. I’ll write the address for you. He’s over in Mircester. I haven’t seen him in years.”
They followed her into a dingy living-room. Agatha’s sharp eyes noticed a half-empty whisky bottle and glass behind a chair. Carol went over to a table by the window and began to search among a pile of papers until she found a notebook. “Here it is,” she said, opening it. “ Number Eight-four Paxton Lane.” She scribbled the address on a piece of paper and handed it to Paul.
“When did you last see your mother?” asked Agatha.
“You mean before I found her dead?”
“Yes.”
“The Saturday before that. I always went over on Saturdays, God knows why. All I ever got was a mouthful of abuse. Did Harry go near her? You bet your life he didn’t. Didn’t give a monkey’s for her and yet she leaves it all to him.”
Carol began to cry, tears rolling down her face and cutting channels in the thick make-up she was wearing. They waited in awkward silence until she finally blew her nose and wiped her eyes. “Mother never forgave me for leaving,” she said. “Wanted me to stay there like a slave. Well, I showed her!”
“Were you ever bothered by the hauntings your mother was complaining about?” asked Agatha.
“No. I think she dreamed all that up to try to get me to go back and live there. I feel sick about the whole thing. I’ve got to go to the inquest.”
“When’s that?” asked Paul.
“Mircester Coroner’s Court tomorrow at ten in the morning. How come you’re friends of hers? She didn’t have any friends.”
“We called on her to help lay her ghosts,” said Paul.
“Then you’re fools. There weren’t any ghosts. She was my mother, God rest her soul, but she was a nasty old bitch.”
“So that’s where we’ll go tomorrow,” said Paul. “It’ll be interesting to see who turns up at the coroner’s court.”
“Aren’t we going to see this Harry?”
“He’ll be there tomorrow.”
“But we might not get a chance to speak to him,” said Agatha.
“Maybe he’ll be at work.”
“With his mother so recently dead? Oh, if you’ve got better things to do…”
“Don’t sulk. Let’s go.”
“He’s a lot better off than his sister to live here,” commented Paul when Agatha parked in Paxton Lane. “These little gems of houses are all seventeenth-century.”
“I wish we’d asked her what he worked at, just in case he isn’t at home,” said Agatha.
“Too late now. Come on.”
There were no gardens in front of the houses, only small paved areas, but all were decorated with bright tubs of flowers.
Paul rang the bell. A curtain twitched at the side of the door and then after a few moments, it was opened.
“Mr. Harry Witherspoon?” asked Paul.
“Yes, who are you?”
“We are friends of your mother’s. We would like to pay our respects at the funeral.”
He was surprisingly short in stature, compared to his tall mother and sister. He had thick grey hair and a round face crisscrossed with red veins. A small toothbrush moustache decorated his upper lip. His grey eyes were wary.
“The funeral’s on Friday,” he said. “Saint Edmund’s in Towdey. At eleven o’clock. No flowers.”
Agatha remembered that Towdey was a village near Hebberdon. The door began to close.
“Might we have a word with you?” asked Paul.
The door reluctantly opened. “Come in, but just for a minute. Have to get round to the shop.”
“And what shop’s that?” asked Agatha as they followed him in.
“Mircester Antiques in the Abbey Square.”
The parlour into which he led them was furnished with various pieces of antique furniture. Paul recognized a pretty George III table and a Sheraton cabinet.
Harry did not ask them to sit down. He took a position in front of a marble mantelpiece. “Who exactly are you?”
“I am Paul Chatterton,” said Paul, “and this is Agatha Raisin. We visited your mother to see if we could catch the ghost for her.”
“Oh, that nonsense. She was old, you know, and I think her mind was going. Her death was a mercy in a way.”
“When did you last see her?”
“I dunno. Might have been Christmas.”
“That long,” exclaimed Agatha.
His eyes narrowed.
“I don’t see what I do or when I last saw my mother is any business of yours. Now, if you don’t mind…”
“Not much there,” remarked Paul as they got into the car.
“You know, we’re both assuming it was murder,” said Agatha. “Maybe it was just an accident after all. Let’s go round to police headquarters and see if Bill is in.”
At police headquarters, they were put into an interview room and told to wait. To their surprise, after a long wait two detectives entered, neither of which was Bill.
“Isn’t Bill here?” asked Agatha.
“This is our investigation,” said one. “I am Detective Inspector Runcorn and this is Detective Sergeant Evans. We gather from DS Wong that the pair of you spent a night at Mrs. Witherspoon’s house at Hebberdon to see if you could lay the ghost for her. Is that true?”
“Yes,” said Paul.
Runcorn consulted notes in front of him. “Yo
u are Paul Chatterton and you are Mrs. Agatha Raisin?”
They both nodded.
“Okay,” said Runcorn. “I gather you didn’t find any ghosts.”
“That’s right,” said Agatha. “But there was this weird white mist, you know, like dry ice.”
“We’ll start with Mr. Chatterton,” said Runcorn. “Did you think the old woman was gaga?”
“On the contrary,” said Paul. “I thought she was very clear-minded and remarkably fit for her age.”
“Not infirm or tottering in any way?”
Agatha butted in. “Those stairs she’s supposed to have fallen down,” she said eagerly, “they were shallow and well-carpeted.”
“In a minute, Mrs. Raisin. Now, Mr. Chatterton. Were you both there all night?”
Agatha relapsed into a sulky silence.
“I was there longer than Mrs. Raisin,” said Paul.
“Why was that?”
Paul grinned. “Mrs. Raisin had a fright and ran away.”
“What frightened her?”
“I…” began Agatha.
Runcorn held up his hand. “Mr. Chatterton?”
“When the mist began to seep in from under the door, I told Mrs. Raisin to run up the stairs to see if Mrs. Witherspoon was all right. Mrs. Witherspoon appeared in a long night-gown and green face pack. Mrs. Raisin screamed, ran out of the house and into her car and drove home. I had to phone her later and ask her to come back and pick me up.”
The three men laughed heartily, bonding together in that moment in their shared amusement at the idiocy of women.
“And after Mrs. Raisin had left, did anything else happen?”
“No, Mrs. Witherspoon told me to let myself out, that she never wanted to see either of us again. I waited for a bit and then, as I said, I phoned Mrs. Raisin.”
“Interesting, that.”
“What I think…” began Agatha desperately.
Both detectives rose. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Chatterton. We’ll be in touch if we can think of anything else to ask you.”
“Just wait one sodding minute!” howled Agatha Raisin. “I am not the invisible woman. I have solved cases for you before. This is the twenty-first century. How dare you all go on as if I don’t exist and have nothing to contribute? Where is Bill Wong?”
“Lunch break,” said Runcorn. He held the door open for them and as Paul passed him, gave him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder.
“You weren’t much help,” raged Agatha outside.
“Calm down. You couldn’t really have added anything, could you?”
“I could have asked a lot of useful questions.”
“Such as?”
“Such as, who apart from daughter Carol had a key? Is there any other way into the house? It’s very old. There could be a secret passage.”
“You’re romancing, Agatha.”
“No, I am not!” she howled, causing several passers-by to turn and stare.
“Remember the Roundheads and Cavaliers?” asked Agatha, lowering her voice. “All around us are old places with secret rooms and passages. I remember hearing there was one old place over near Stratford and they discovered when they were lining the chimney that there was a secret room half-way up the inside of the chimney. Also, how much is the house worth? It’s a thatched two-storied cottage, and very roomy inside. It’s got beams and an ingle-nook fireplace in the living-room, all those little features that so delight estate agents.”
“I went through to the kitchen when you went upstairs,” said Paul. “There’s a very large extension been built on to the back of the house.”
“Furthermore,” pursued Agatha, “it really gets my back up when I am ignored because I am a woman.”
“Never mind. Let’s try that awful pub. Bill might be there and you can fire all your questions at him.”
Bill was there, tucking into a plate of greasy egg and chips. Agatha sat down while Paul went to the bar to get them drinks and launched into a bitter tirade about her treatment.
Bill heard her out and then said mildly, “There’s nothing I can do about it, Agatha. It isn’t my case.”
“But you know something about it?”
“Maybe.”
“Who has keys to the house?”
“The daughter. No one else.”
“What about son Harry, who gets everything?”
“He says he doesn’t have a key. When the hauntings started, Mrs. Witherspoon got all the locks changed. She gave a key to Carol, not to Harry.”
“Why?”
“I gather Harry only called round infrequently and phoned before he did so.”
“What’s his financial situation like?”
“They’re looking into that.”
“Oh, are they?” Agatha’s bearlike eyes gleamed. “So they’re not sure about it being an accident?”
“I think they’re just checking out all the possibilities. It’s a quiet time at the moment, otherwise they might not have become so curious.”
“The stairs were shallow and carpeted.”
“I heard that. There’s something else.”
Agatha looked over at the bar. Paul was still busy trying to get the barman’s attention. She suddenly wanted to know a few facts he didn’t.
“What else?”
“She was evidently offered quite a large sum of money for the place, from Arkbuck Hotels.”
“Go on. For a cottage?”
“It’s not only quite a large cottage but there are several acres of ground at the back belonging to Mrs. Witherspoon. I gathered they planned a sort of expensive country retreat with a genuine Tudor cottage front and a new building, faked-up Tudor, at the back. But she turned down their offer.”
“Did she leave a lot of money?”
“She left close to a million pounds, plus stocks and shares.”
“The old bitch!” exclaimed Agatha. “Her poor daughter lives in a run-down council house.”
“Agatha, Agatha. I suppose it’s useless of me to tell you to stop poking your nose into police cases.”
Paul returned with the drinks in time to hear the last remark. “No use at all,” he said cheerfully. “Here’s your drink, Agatha. Bill tell you anything?”
“Not much we didn’t know,” said Agatha.
“I’ve got to get back,” said Bill. “See you.”
“So what did he say?” asked Paul.
Agatha fought a silent war with herself. Why shouldn’t she keep the information to herself and investigate herself, as she had done in previous cases? But he was wearing a sky-blue linen shirt open at the neck, and his silver hair and black eyes were such an alluring combination.
She caved in. “Buy me lunch and I’ll tell you.”
He looked up at the menu on the blackboard.
“No, you don’t,” said Agatha. “Not here!”
He grinned. “All right. There’s a French bistro on the other side of the square that’s supposed to be pretty good. Come on.”
Agatha was hungry but found to her disappointment that the bistro still favoured nouvelle cuisine, tiny amounts of food exquisitely arranged on beds of that vegetable that Agatha so loathed-rocket.
“Stop grumbling,” said Paul, “and tell me what you’ve got.”
Agatha relayed what Bill had told her. “Great!” exclaimed Paul when she had finished. “When we get home we’ll look up the headquarters of this hotel chain and go and see them.”
“Won’t take us long to finish,” said Agatha gloomily. “It’s about a mouthful per course.”
At the end of the meal, Paul blinked a little at the cost of the meal, only glad that they had not had any wine. “You and I are in the wrong jobs, Agatha,” he said as they left the restaurant. “We should open a restaurant and starve the customers at great expense.”
“Bloody French,” muttered Agatha, still hungry.
“You’re a racist, Agatha.”
“Not I. Anyway, the French are about the last race on earth you can insult becau
se they don’t give a damn what anyone says about them.”
Back in Agatha’s cottage in Carsely, Agatha went through the London business directories without finding the headquarters of Arkbuck Hotels. “Try the Internet,” said Paul.
Agatha switched on her computer. After a few moments, she said, “I’ve got them. They’re in Bath.”
“Well, that’s not too far from here. Let’s go.”
When they reached Bath, the terraces of Georgian houses were gleaming white under a darkening sky. The head offices of Arkbuck Hotels were situated in an elegant house in the Royal Crescent.
“Posh,” murmured Paul. “I expected something a bit seedy.”
They walked into the reception area where an efficient grey-haired lady sat behind a Georgian desk, the sort of woman who, before the advent of computers, Agatha thought, could type eighty words a minute on an old Remington.
Paul introduced them and said they were interested in finding out about the bid for Mrs. Witherspoon’s cottage in Hebberdon.
Agatha expected to be told that everyone was busy, but to her surprise the receptionist said, “I think Mr. Perry is free.”
“Who is Mr. Perry?” asked Agatha.
“Our managing director. Wait here.”
She walked up an elegant staircase. Paul studied photographs of the firm’s hotels on the walls of the reception area. “Doesn’t look as if there’s anything sinister about this lot,” he said. “Converted manor-houses, that sort of thing.”
The receptionist came down the staircase again, followed by a leggy secretary, who said, “Come with me. Mr. Perry will see you now.”
The secretary was wearing a very short skirt. Agatha noticed Paul eyeing the long legs walking up the staircase in front of them and felt a stab of jealousy. It just wasn’t fair on middle-aged women. If she eyed up a young man she would be considered a harpy. But a man of the same age, provided he had kept his figure, would never be regarded with the same contempt.
The secretary led them through her office on the first landing and opened a door, ushered them in, and closed it behind them.
Mr. Perry was a man in his fifties with a smooth, glazed face, small grey eyes, and large bushy eyebrows. He was impeccably tailored and he rested his manicured hands on the desk as he rose to meet them. “What can I do to help you?” he asked in an Old Etonian accent, and Agatha’s inferiority complex gave a lurch somewhere in the region of her stomach. She sometimes wondered if it was the inferiority complexes of people like herself that kept the British class system alive and well, rather than any behaviour of the upper classes. I mean, why should she feel inferior?
