by M C Beaton
"Well, this one has. So what are the leisured classes doing today?"
James thought quickly. He could hardly say, "Investigating this case to find out if one of you did it."
Instead he said, "We might run over to Stratford and see if we can get tickets for this evening. Ages since I've seen a Shakespeare play."
"Oh, you could run a little errand for me, then," said Peter. "Deborah's over at her mother's. I borrowed a kettle from her, she had a spare, and she keeps nagging me and I always forget to give it back. I've got it here."
"Can't you just give it to her next time you see her?" asked James.
"I could, sweetie, but then I'd forget again. Now, if you took it, it would be your responsibility."
"All right," said James. "Give us the mother's address."
Peter went off and returned with an electric kettle and a slip of paper with Mrs Camden's address. "It's a council estate," said Peter. "Far side of Stratford from here." James made a neat note of the directions.
"Do we really want to go to Stratford? Dreary dump," said Agatha, as they got in the car.
"We're supposed to be investigating. If Deborah's there, she might be able to tell us something more."
As they drove off in the direction of Stratford, Agatha felt relief that she no longer seemed to be obsessed with James, that in a way she had grown up and was content with friendship.
She remembered a typist called Fran she had once employed at her PR agency. Fran had mooned and talked and mooned and talked about a man she fancied who worked for another PR firm. At last Agatha and the rest had pointed out that it was the twentieth century and there was nothing to stop her phoning the man up and asking him out for a drink. They had all stood over her until she had picked up the phone and done just that. He said he would meet her for a drink on the Friday evening after work.
They told her what to wear right down to the underwear and scent. They told her what to talk about and how to behave and then sent her off on Friday.
On Monday morning Agatha stopped by Fran's desk and asked, "How did it go?"
"I didn't meet him," said Fran.
"What!" exclaimed Agatha. "Didn't he show?"
She remembered Fran's little resigned sigh and how she had said, "I went right up to the door of the pub and looked in and he was there at the bar, waiting. So I turned and walked away. You see, I'd dreamt and dreamt about him for so long that I realized he could not possibly live up to my dreams and expectations. I'm not into reality."
But I am...now, thought Agatha, and it feels good.
After several mistakes, they found Mrs Camden's address. It was a terraced council house. The garden was weedy, scraggly flowerbeds surrounding a balding lawn. The gate sagged on its hinges.
The house had a neglected, deserted air, and they were almost surprised when they heard someone approaching on the other side of the door to answer their knock.
The woman who opened the door was somehow recognizable as Deborah's mother. She had the same skinny bleached look, but her shoulders were stooped and the only colour about her was in her work-reddened hands.
"We are friends of Deborah's," said Agatha. "Is she here? It is Mrs Camden?"
"Yes, come in. Deborah's not here, but I was just about to put the kettle on."
"We've got a kettle of Deborah's here," said James, brandishing it. "Should we leave it with you?"
"I'll take it. She might be over this evening." A smile transformed Mrs Camden's thin white face. "She'll be anxious to tell me the news."
"Oh, about the murder," remarked Agatha.
Mrs Camden led them into a small living-room. It contained a few battered chairs, a sofa and a chipped table. There were no books or pictures, only a television set in the corner flickering away. Mrs Camden switched it off.
"Make yourselves comfortable," she said. "I'll get the tea."
Agatha introduced them both to her as Mr and Mrs Lacey, getting the usual little thrill when she mentioned the names. Then she and James sat down side by side on the sofa.
"It's bleak," muttered James.
"She doesn't seem to be working," whispered Agatha. "I wonder if Deborah gives her any money."
The miserable room silenced them. The wind had risen outside. A piece of newspaper blew against the window panes, staring at them like a face, and then blew away.
Mrs Camden returned with a tray on which were china cups decorated with roses, a teapot, milk, sugar and a plate of biscuits.
After tea was poured, Agatha said sympathetically, "You must be very worried about your daughter."
"Oh, because of these dreadful murders? But Deborah has always been the strong one. Thank goodness. And now she's going to be Lady Fraith."
They both stared at her.
"Are you sure?" asked James.
"Yes, she's gone over there today and she knows he's going to pop the question."
"Are you sure she isn't imagining things?" asked James cautiously.
"Oh, no," said Mrs Camden with supreme confidence. "Deborah always knows what's what. Mind you, it was a bit of a blow when she said that me and Mark and Bill - that's her brothers - couldn't come to the wedding."
Agatha looked at her in a dazed way. "Why not?"
"It wouldn't be fitting. I mean, we're not of Sir Charles's class."
"Neither is Deborah," pointed out James.
"But she's made herself that way," said Mrs Camden. "I'm that proud of her. She was always the hope of the family."
"Are you working?" asked Agatha. It seemed later an odd thing to ask, but there was something about Mrs Camden's stooped figure which seemed to suggest years of drudgery.
"I have my cleaning jobs," she said. "And then I work in the supermarket at weekends."
"Deborah must be able to help you out a bit," said James.
"She can't."
"Why not?" asked Agatha.
"She needs all her money to keep up the right appearance. She's amazing. Even when she was little, she would say, "Mum, I'm going to the university and I'm going to be a teacher." And so she did. So when she said to me, "I'm going to marry Sir Charles Fraith and live in that big house," I knew she meant it."
"And what of your sons?" asked Agatha.
She sighed. "They take after their father. They're both in a council flat in Stratford, on the dole, but at least they're not under my feet."
"Do you know where your husband is?" asked Agatha.
She shook her head. "Don't want to know, either. He was a violent man. I'm not complaining. Deborah's my whole life. Let me show you something." She stood up and walked from the room and they followed her.
She pushed open a door. "This was Deborah's room." She stood aside to let them pass.
James and Agatha stood shoulder to shoulder and looked in awe at the bedroom. It was a sort of shrine. The bed had a pretty coverlet and was covered with dolls and stuffed animals. The walls were covered with photographs of Deborah. Deborah as a baby, as a toddler, at school, at university. There were long low bookshelves containing books, the shells of Deborah's life, from the brightly coloured children's books right through to the works of Marx.
The wind moaned louder and the branches of a dead tree tapped against the window.
"Very impressive," said Agatha in a weak voice.
They returned to the living-room which, after the bright bedroom, hit them afresh with its sad, shabby dullness.
Mrs Camden sat down again with a sigh. "It was something to work for," she said. "You know, seeing Deborah had the best of everything."
"Surely you don't need to work so hard now?" suggested James.
"Well, girls always need something extra these days. She needed help getting her little car, and things like that. How did you come to meet my girl?"
"We are both retired," said James, "and we joined the Dembley Walkers, just after the murder."
"Good exercise," commented Mrs Camden.
James looked at her in surprise. "You do not seem very frightened
for the welfare of your daughter, considering there have now been two murders."
"Sir Charles will look after her," she said comfortably. "She says the first thing she's going to do as soon as they are married is get rid of that servant, Gustav. Is that his name?"
"She seems very sure of herself," was all Agatha could think of saying.
"Mmm." Mrs Camden's face was again illuminated with that smile. "Although I won't be at the wedding, I'll read about it in the society magazines. Just think of that!"
"Deborah must have been upset at Jessica Tartinck's death," said James.
"What?" Mrs Camden came out of her rosy dream. "Oh, that strapping big woman. But Deborah told me she was always getting people's backs up. I mean, it was bound to happen sooner or later."
Agatha stood up. She suddenly wanted to get away. She had never considered herself a particularly sensitive person, but she was now assailed with such a feeling of impending doom that she was desperate to get out of that shabby living-room.
"We must go," she said abruptly.
As if suffering from the same feelings, James leaped to his feet and held open the door for Agatha.
Once they were in the car, Agatha, who was driving, said, "Let's find somewhere quiet. I need to think."
She drove out of Stratford and parked in a lay-by and switched off the engine and looked blankly at the wind whipping through the trees at the side of the road.
"Why is it," she said in a thin voice, "that I feel I've just escaped from a madhouse?"
"Deborah appears to have been selfish from the day she was born, but the thing that frightens me is this wedding business. There's something else," said James. "It just occurred to me. There was something very hush-hush about Sir Charles's father's death. I remember someone telling me he died mad."
"What kind of mad?" asked Agatha. "I mean, no one ever says mad these days."
"Does it matter? For some reason Sir Charles has been leading Deborah into thinking he's going to marry her. I don't believe he means to for a moment."
Agatha stared at him. "And Deborah's there. Now. At Barfield House."
"Fast as you can, Agatha," said James. "I don't like this. I don't like this at all."
Eight
Deborah sailed up the drive to Barfield House in her little car. Her heart was light. Sir Charles had told her that Gustav had been given the day off and that his aunt was in London.
Sir Charles answered the door. He was wearing an old open-necked shirt and jeans, making her glad that she wasn't too 'dressy'. She was wearing a pink silk blouse from Marks & Spencer and a short navy acrylic skirt with a slit at the back and white sandals.
She approved of the kitchen, which was large and modern. So much more cheerful than the dark-panelled rooms of the rest of the house.
Sir Charles, as he opened a bottle of wine and listened to her prattling away about her teaching job, eyed her thoughtfully. He intended getting her into bed after lunch but was beginning to wonder how she would react. Her thinness and whiteness still excited him. He liked her shy little voice, so different from the robust tones of the girls he usually dated. Her neck was thin and fragile-looking. It looked as if it could almost be snapped like a flower stalk, he thought. He said, "Any news about Jeffrey's murder?"
Deborah shook her head. "They've been questioning and questioning all of us. They've still got Alice."
"The big one? Why her?"
"She knew Jessica ages ago and lied about it."
Sir Charles looked at her shrewdly. "If the police still have her in for questioning, how do you know that?"
"There's one of the teachers at the school whose sister works at police headquarters. She told me."
"Do you think Alice did it, then?"
"She could have done," said Deborah. "She's got ever such a bad temper."
As they ate, Sir Charles wondered how he was going to get around to proposing that they go upstairs to bed. Perhaps he should suggest they have coffee in the drawing-room and get down to work on the sofa first.
He really loves me, thought Deborah with a fast-beating heart. I can tell by the look in his eyes.
Conversation was flagging toward the end of the meal and then Deborah said, "Can I go and powder my nose?"
He saw his chance. "Come upstairs and use my bathroom."
He led the way upstairs and along a corridor and opened a door. Deborah glanced quickly about his bedroom. She was disappointed that there wasn't a four-poster bed but a modern one. The room, like the rest of the rooms in the house, was dark because of the tiny panes of the mullioned windows.
"In here," said Sir Charles, opening a door off the bedroom.
Deborah went in and closed the door behind her. Sir Charles jerked open the drawer of a bedside table to check that the packet of condoms he had bought was still there and that Gustav had not found them and taken them away, an act which would have been perfectly in keeping with Gustav's character.
There were shuffling noises from the bathroom. Deborah was taking a long time. The rising wind outside gave a cheerless moan. Sir Charles shivered. His lust was ebbing fast. It all began to seem silly.
And then the bathroom door opened and Deborah stood there. She was wearing nothing more than a brief bra, a suspender belt and black stockings.
Sir Charles walked towards her, saying huskily, "Come to bed, Deborah."
"Is this as fast as you can go?" asked James.
"I'm going as fast as I can," wailed Agatha. "But that poxy tractor won't move, and I can't get past it." She pressed the horn and flashed her lights. The tractor driver raised two fingers. Just when Agatha was thinking she might drive straight into the back of him in a sheer fury, he turned off into a farm gate and Agatha roared past, relieving her feelings with another blast on the horn.
"But why would he kill Jeffrey?" she asked.
"He might have a thing about ramblers. If he's crazy like his father, he might not need a motive."
Agatha raced round a bend and screeched to a halt. A line of cars stretched out in front of her. She got out of the car and peered ahead. Some distance in front of the line of cars a truck was slewed across the road. A small Mini was crushed in a ditch.
"Bugger, an accident," said Agatha, getting back into the car. She beat the steering wheel with her hands in sheer frustration. Then she saw to her right an open farm gate. She set off, swinging the wheel. The car lurched crazily over a field of wheat.
"What are you doing?" shouted James. "The farmer will kill us."
"I'll compensate him," yelled Agatha. "Barfield is over this way. I'm going as the crow flies."
And with that the car plunged headlong into a ditch at the end of the field.
Agatha felt like bursting into tears. "Now what do we do?" she wailed.
James's face was grim and set. "We get out and ramble!"
Sir Charles and Deborah lay on their backs, immersed in their different thoughts. What a mistake, Sir Charles was thinking gloomily. That had been like making love to a corpse. Besides, she smelt like something off the burning-ghats of India. In the bathroom, Deborah had anointed her body with an aromatic oil from a new shop in Dembley called Planet Earth, which specialized in aromatherapy.
And then he was aware Deborah was speaking. "When we're married - and I hope you don't mind this, Charles dear - I would like to paint all that wood panelling white."
"Married?" croaked Sir Charles.
"Of course your aunt will need to find somewhere else to live. Can't have two women in one house. My mother says...my mother used to say, it never works. Isn't there a dower house or something?" asked Deborah with vague memories of Georgette Heyer novels.
Sir Charles swung his legs out of bed and began to struggle into his clothes.
"You should have a bath, darling," chided Deborah. She stretched and yawned. "Run one for me."
"Okay," said Sir Charles gloomily. He zipped up his trousers and padded on his bare feet into the bathroom and turned on the taps.
&nb
sp; He turned round and let out a squawk of dismay. Deborah must have moved like lightning. She was standing behind him wearing his dressing-gown.
He turned away and stared down at the rushing water. "Look, Deborah," he said, "we've had a bit of a fling, that's all. I never said anything about marriage." He tried to laugh. "Not the marrying kind, me."
"But you've got to marry me!" Deborah sounded more surprised than angry.
"No, Deborah," he said firmly. "I am not marrying you or anyone. I said absolutely nothing to give you that impression. I would never have had sex with you if I thought you were going to jump to this mad conclusion."
"Mad?" Her voice was thin and brittle. "Mad?"
"We had a bit of fun, dear, let's leave it at that." He turned back to the bath. "Would you like some old-fashioned bath salts? Now, where did I put them?"
"Here, dear!" Deborah brought a glassy jar of rose-scented bath salts down on his head.
Agatha's tights were ripped and she had pulled off the sweater she had been wearing over a blouse and thrown it away because she was sweating so much. She had a blister on one heel and a stitch in her side. James had taken her hand as they raced together through crops of golden oil-seed rape and fields of blue flax flowers, wheat and turnips.
"Are you sure we're going the right way?" shouted James.
"Yes," shouted back Agatha, who enjoyed studying Ordnance Survey maps as a pastime. But one bit of the countryside was beginning to look so much like another that she could hardly believe it when at last at some distance across the fields she saw the bulk of Barfield House.
She plunged gamely on, forgetting about the blister on her heel and the stitch in her side. Deborah was in danger. She, Agatha, the great detective, had been called in to help Deborah, and help Deborah she must.
Deborah turned off the bath taps and looked down at the unconscious Sir Charles Fraith as he lay on his own bathroom floor. The air around smelt of roses.
She sat down on a bathroom chair and stared bleakly in front of her. It had all been for nothing. All of it. And yet her mind felt quite cold and set. She knew what she had to do.
She dressed neatly and carefully and then went around and wiped every surface she might have touched, scrubbing and polishing, cocking her head occasionally in case there was the sound of an approaching car. Then she seized Sir Charles by the ankles and began to drag him out of the bathroom, out of the bedroom, slowly along the corridor and then, bump, bump, bump, down the stairs and then slid him easily across the polished floor of the hall, along the corridor at the end and, bump, bump, down the two steps to the kitchen.
