by M C Beaton
Agatha finally pulled up outside a giant shopping mall. “How big would you say Timmin’s Field was?” she asked.
“Six acres, I guess.”
“Well, that monstrosity is over six acres. You’re right. With all that building and digging, the treasure’s long gone.”
“And we’re left with a valuable record of the Civil War and we can’t tell anyone how we got it,” said Paul. “Let’s have something to eat and decide what to do next.”
“I want comfort food, junk food,” said Agatha.
“Then turn around and go back a bit. I saw one of those all-day breakfast places.”
Agatha, having demolished a plate of egg, sausage, bacon and chips, sat back in her chair with a sigh. “Now, I can think. First of all, we’ll need to figure out what to do with that book of Lamont’s.”
“I only glanced through it. It’s closely written and full of detail, as far as I could judge. We’ll need to find out if there are any descendants of Sir Geoffrey Lamont, and if we find even one, just post the book to them anonymously.”
“There’s something that is really worrying,” said Agatha.
“What’s that?”
“The secret passage. You noticed that the stairs had been repaired. I think Harry and Carol knew about the passage. They certainly didn’t want us to look for it. We can’t tell the police or we’ll need to explain what we were doing in the house. Even if we found a way of tipping Bill off and the forensic team got down there, they’d find our fingerprints all over the place. We didn’t wear gloves.”
“If either Harry or Carol knew about it, why would they want us to find the murderer for them? I mean, if one or both of them murdered their mother?”
Agatha scowled horribly. Then her face cleared. “What if,” she said, “just what if neither of them committed murder at all, but had been using the passage to try to frighten their mother to death?”
Paul shook his head. “Won’t do. They both knew their mother would not be easily frightened.”
“Wait a minute! I’ve just thought of something. Why was Harry offering her house for sale to that hotel chain before she died?”
“I think we’d better go and ask him, don’t you?”
They called at the shop first but it was Saturday afternoon and there was a CLOSED sign on the door.
“Funny, that,” said Agatha. “A lot of tourists come to Mircester. You would think he’d stay open on Saturdays.”
“Better try his home,” said Paul.
At that moment, Mrs. Bloxby was studying Mrs. Davenport. “You say you want Mrs. Chatterton’s address in Madrid? Why don’t you ask Mr. Chatterton?”
“I would do,” said Mrs. Davenport crossly, “if he were ever at home, but he’s always out with that Raisin woman. Disgraceful, I call it, a woman of her years, and with a married man, too.”
In an even voice, the vicar’s wife said, “Mrs. Raisin and Mr. Chatterton are of the same age. They are investigating this murder. That is all. I hope you will keep this in mind and not go around the village spreading malicious gossip.”
Thwarted, Mrs. Davenport left the vicarage. How could she get that address? Who else might have it? Then she thought of Miss Simms, the secretary of the ladies’ society. She had a list of addresses. Juanita had attended one meeting. Perhaps Miss Simms had taken a note of the address. She headed for the council house estate. She could not understand why such a respectable body as the ladies’ society should have a secretary who was an unmarried mother and lived on a council estate. Definitely Not One of Us, thought Mrs. Davenport grimly as she walked up the neat garden path leading to Miss Simms’s home and rang the bell.
“Oh, it’s you,” said Miss Simms. “I’m just going out.”
“I wondered if you had Mrs. Chatterton’s address in Madrid.”
“I dunno. I’ll have a look. Come in. Hey, wait a bit. Why not ask her husband?”
“He is never at home.”
“Then just shove a note through his door.”
Mrs. Davenport’s bosom swelled. “Be a good little girl and see if you can get me that address. Chop-chop.”
“Shan’t.”
“I beg your pardon?” declared Mrs. Davenport in the tones of Edith Evans saying, “In a handbag?”
“I said I won’t give it to you, so shove off, you old trout. I’ve got a feeling you’re out to make trouble.”
“Well, really!”
Mrs. Davenport stormed off.
She’s out to make life hell for our Mrs. Raisin, thought Miss Simms. Better warn her.
But at that moment the doorbell rang again and it was Miss Simms’s new gentleman friend who travelled in soft furnishings, and somehow the whole scene with Mrs. Davenport was forgotten.
Harry opened the door of his home to Agatha and Paul. “It’s you,” he said. “Find out anything?”
“Not yet, but we want to ask you something.”
“Come in.”
He turned round to face them. “What is it?”
“Why did you try to sell your mother’s house to a hotel chain before she was murdered?”
He had been scowling, but his face cleared. “Oh, that’s easy. My business was failing and I wanted to see if Mother would bail me out. She told me, calm as anything, that she had invested unwisely and she had no spare cash. I pointed out that the house was too big for one person. She could sell it, move into sheltered accommodations and live off the interest on the money she could bank from the sale of the house.”
“Mother said she wouldn’t get enough to make her want to move. I said I would prove to her how much she would get. I approached the hotel company. At first they were interested, but then they found that to make the necessary alterations would need planning permission and they were pretty sure they wouldn’t get it. Mother seemed delighted at my failure. But then, she always loved me to fail,” he added bitterly.
“Have you thought of any enemies she might have had?” asked Paul.
“She must have made scores. She delighted in making people’s lives a misery. There’s Barry Briar, for one.”
“The landlord?”
“Yes, him. Mother was teetotal and disapproved of drinking. She was always trying to find ways to get him closed down. Then she was always rowing with people in the village.”
“And you don’t know of any secret passage into the house?”
“There is no secret passage. I would have known about it.”
“What about Peter Frampton?”
“Who’s he?”
“He runs a historical society in Towdey. He was trying to buy the house.”
“Never heard of him.”
Agatha and Paul couldn’t think of any more questions. They left after promising to let him know if they found out anything about the identity of the murderer.
“I still think of him as prime suspect,” said Agatha. “I think we should contact that amateur theatrical group and find out if there was any way he could have got over to Hebberdon that evening.”
“It’s that passage that’s bothering me,” said Paul. “The police must have gone over the whole house, even before her murder.”
“Before the murder, they probably didn’t take her seriously enough to do any real search.”
“But after the murder?”
“Everything in that cellar was very dusty. Runcorn didn’t impress me as the brain of Britain. Anyway, they’d open up the chest and just see curtains. You know what we should do, Agatha?”
“What?”
“We should go back there tonight with gloves on and go exactly everywhere we’ve been and wipe it clean. Then we can get Bill over and say we’re sure an old house like that would have a secret passage and had they looked.”
“And while we’re wiping it clean, we could be wiping away traces of the murderer as well.”
“Anyone with murder in mind would have got rid of fingerprints.”
“All right. But I hate the idea.”
At midnight that e
vening, Mrs. Davenport stood screened by bushes at the end of Lilac Lane and peered along at the cottages of Paul and Agatha. She had been watching on and off all evening. Her patience was rewarded just as the church clock tolled out the last stroke of midnight. Paul Chatterton came out and went to Agatha’s cottage. She came out. He kissed her on the cheek. He was carrying a travel bag. They both got into Agatha’s car and drove off.
Juanita Chatterton has got to be told. It is my duty, Mrs. Davenport told herself.
Seven
AGATHA and Paul worked all night and into the next morning, dusting and wiping and vacuuming. When they left in daylight, they were too exhausted to care whether anyone saw them. The main thing was that they had removed all traces of their visit.
They agreed to go to bed and sleep and meet up in the evening to decide how they could tell the police about the passage.
Agatha’s last dismal thought before she plunged down into sleep was that they were indeed a pair of amateurs, blundering around, without really knowing what they were doing.
They met in Agatha’s kitchen at seven in the evening to plan what to do.
“An anonymous letter?” suggested Agatha.
“Maybe. There must be another way. I wonder whether Peter Frampton knew about the secret passage.”
“Perhaps. The person who did know was whoever put that chest over the trapdoor and put those curtains on top. It was a very old chest.”
“But it must have been moved at some time. The cellar can’t have been full of junk from day one.”
“We could, you know,” said Agatha cautiously, “throw ourselves on Bill’s mercy.”
“Won’t do. Breaking and entering. Destroying valuable evidence. There’s no way he could cover up for us.”
“So what about an anonymous letter?”
“Risky. They can get your DNA off the envelope flap.”
“There are self-seal envelopes,” Agatha pointed out. “I know, Moreton-in-Marsh police station is closed at certain times. Certainly, I think, during the night. We could just post a sheet of paper through the letter-box. Not typed. They used to be able to trace typewriters. Maybe they’re able to trace computers. I’ve got a new packet of computer printing paper. It’s a common brand.”
Paul sighed. “Okay, let’s try it. But we’d better wear gloves.”
Agatha went upstairs and extracted a pair of thin plastic gloves from a hair-dye kit she hadn’t used and went back to join Paul.
They went through to her desk and Agatha put on the gloves and opened the packet of printing paper and gingerly extracted one sheet.
Holding it by the tips of two fingers, she carried it through to the kitchen. With her other hand, she tore off a sheet of kitchen paper and spread it on the kitchen table and then laid the sheet of paper down on it.
“What should I write?” she asked.
“Keep it simple,” said Paul. “Block letters. Say: ‘There is a secret passage in Ivy Cottage. The entrance is at the bottom of an old chest in the cellar.’”
Agatha tried to hold her breath as she wrote, terrified that even a drop of saliva would betray her to the forensics lab in Birmingham.
“There!” she said. “Now how do we get it through the letter-box at the police station without being seen? There are flats for retired people bang opposite and some old person might be watching.”
“Fold it into a square,” said Paul. “We’ll need to think of some disguise.”
“Mrs. Bloxby’s got a box of costumes she keeps for the amateur dramatic company. Funny thing. They’ve just finished a production of The Mikado. She’ll wonder why we want something. I don’t even want to tell Mrs. Bloxby about this.”
Paul said, “I’ll tell her we’re going to a fancy dress party at a friend’s in London.”
“If we wore The Mikado costumes, that would turn the police’s attention back to Harry-that is, if they ever turned their attention off him.”
“Maybe there’s something else. I don’t think we should both dress up. All we need is one of us in disguise. Nothing dramatic.”
At two in the morning Agatha, wearing a bright red wig and a long droopy tea-dress-from a production of The Importance of Being Earnest-nervously walked round from the back road by the cricket ground where Paul had parked the car. A lorry rumbled past her on the Fosseway, but the driver was staring straight ahead. Moreton-in-Marsh seemed deserted. She scurried up to the police station and popped the note through the door.
She heaved a sigh of relief and started to hurry back. A hand caught her arm. “Evenin,’ gorgeous.”
She swung round. A drunk man, small in stature, and far gone in drink, leered up at her. “How’s about a kiss?”
“Let go of me,” hissed Agatha.
The street lights shone on his glasses. They looked two small orange moons in the light from the sodium lamps.
He was amazingly strong. He twisted her arm behind her back. “Come ’ere,” he said thickly, his breath stinking of what smelt to the terrified Agatha like methylated spirits. She swung away from him and kneed him hard, right in his crotch. He let out an animal cry of pain and released her and then he started to scream. A light went on in the building opposite and Agatha picked up her skirts and ran.
Paul was standing by the car, looking anxiously down the road as Agatha ran towards him.
“Drive,” she panted. “Get us out of here!”
They scrambled into the car and Paul shot off.
“What the hell…?” he began.
“A drunk,” said Agatha bitterly. “I thought he was going to rape me. I hit him where it hurts most. That was what the screaming was about. Paul, we’re blundering worse and worse. I think we should keep a low profile.”
“Suits me,” said Paul. “I’m exhausted.”
Agatha spent a miserable time the following day. She knew she was a successful public relations officer. She had thought she was a successful detective. Now, she felt like a failure. With the help of Paul, she had probably destroyed valuable evidence. They had in their possession a valuable historical document. She suddenly groaned aloud. Why, oh, why had they not put the diary back where they had found it and left it for the police to find?
In the cottage next door, Paul’s thoughts were pretty much the same-with one difference. He blamed Agatha. It was her fault she had got him embroiled in all this madness. He totally forgot that it had been his idea in the first place. What if they had left even half a fingerprint? He forgot that he had recently found Agatha attractive. Now he thought of her as a pushy middle-aged woman who might be mad. He had a longing to talk to his tempestuous wife, but when he phoned Madrid, her mother said she was out and she didn’t know when Juanita would be back.
He had just replaced the receiver when the phone rang. “Yes?” he said tentatively.
“Look, Paul, it’s Agatha here. I was thinking…”
“I haven’t time to talk to you at the moment,” he said harshly. “Goodbye.”
Agatha slowly replaced the receiver and a fat tear rolled down one cheek. She felt old, stupid and very much alone. She decided to call on Mrs. Bloxby. Not that she would tell her anything, but the vicar’s wife was soothing company and her friendship unwavering.
Mrs. Bloxby opened the door of the vicarage to her. “Agatha?” she said. “My dear, do come in and tell me what has upset you so much.”
Agatha burst into floods of tears. Mrs. Bloxby piloted her into the living-room, pressed her down on the comfortable feather cushions of the old sofa, handed her a large box of Kleenex and then took her hand. Agatha dried her eyes and blew her nose. “I feel such a fool,” she gulped. “I shouldn’t really be telling you anything.”
“You don’t need to tell me anything if you don’t want to,” said Mrs. Bloxby in her kind voice. “But do remember that I never repeat anything you say without your permission.”
In a halting voice, Agatha told her about the finding of the tunnel, the diary, and of how they had gone back and wiped every
thing so clean that any evidence had been destroyed. Then she told her about putting the anonymous note through the door of the police station and being attacked by the drunk man. “I’ll give you back the costume,” ended Agatha mournfully. “I was disguised, you see. I was wearing a red wig and that tea-dress from The Importance of Being Earnest.”
Mrs. Bloxby sat with her head bowed and her shoulders shaking. She let out a snort of laughter and then gave up and leaned back against the cushions and laughed and laughed.
“Mrs. Bloxby!” Agatha half-rose to her feet, her face red with mortification.
“No, no.” Mrs. Bloxby pulled Agatha back down. “Don’t you see how funny it is?”
Agatha gave a reluctant grin. “Not funny, just stupid.”
Mrs. Bloxby composed herself. “I’ll make some tea. We’ll have tea and toasted teacakes in the garden because the sun has come out. Go into the garden and have a cigarette.”
Agatha, feeling calmer, went into the garden. A purple clematis tumbled down the mellow walls of the old vicarage behind her and in front of her the garden was a blaze of old-fashioned flowers: marigolds and stocks, delphiniums, and lupins, gladioli and lilies.
She took out a packet of cigarettes and glared at it. How irritating to have one’s life ruled by the compulsion to smoke. She put the packet away again.
Mrs. Bloxby came out carrying a laden tray. “Here we are. I made the teacakes myself. I always think the shop ones don’t have enough substance. Help yourself to milk and sugar.”
“There’s something else,” said Agatha. “There’s Paul. I tried to phone him and he said he was busy and hung up on me.”
“He’s probably feeling as frightened and silly as you are. But of course you must remember he’s a man.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“Men when they feel stupid and silly always look around for someone to blame.”
“That’s very unfair!”
“Oh, he’ll get over it. Let’s look at the problem. The damage is done. But whoever frightened and murdered Mrs. Witherspoon, assuming that one person did both, would be very careful to wear gloves. The police had no idea there was a secret passage and never would have done if you hadn’t found it. So you have added to the investigation, rather than taken away from it.”
