by M C Beaton
"Leave me alone now, Charles. I've set the alarm. I've got to get back to the hospital first thing. And then there's Sharon's eyes."
"What about them?"
But a gentle snore was the only reply.
Three hours later Agatha was back on the road to Mircester Hospital with Charles driving. "I don't suppose you want to work for Tom again," commented Charles. "Do look at these stupid wood pigeons. All over the road."
"Not really," said Agatha. "But he may be connected to the murders somehow or he may know someone who is. I'll forget about last night and go on as usual."
"What about Sharon's eyes? You mumbled something before you fell asleep."
"Oh, that. Maybe it was because we were all so upset last night but the pupils of her eyes looked like pinpricks. I'll get Toni to find out how she's doing."
"Do you ever think about that jolly fling we had in the South of France?"
Agatha glanced quickly at Charles but his face was calm and neutral.
She manufactured a little laugh. "From time to time. I was so glad to escape from my dreadful fiance." Agatha had been briefly engaged to a villager who had taken her on holiday to Normandy. But he had turned out to be so awful that Agatha had had to phone Charles to come and rescue her. Then she and Charles had driven down to the south of France for a brief holiday.
"And that's all it was?"
"Just the way you put it yourself, dear," said Agatha in a thin voice. " 'Well, that was a bit of fun,' you said, 'but troubles at home and I've got to dash.' Never mind. Let's see how Roy is doing."
Roy looked like a fledgling abandoned by its mother. His head was shaved on one side. The matron came bustling in. "Relatives only."
"Aunt and uncle," said Agatha. "How are you doing?" she asked Roy.
"They're ever so pleased with me," said Roy. "I've got to rest up for a week and not get on any planes. I've got two holes in my head. Look! I feel like a bowling ball."
"Whatever possessed you to do such a dangerous thing?" asked Agatha.
"I thought I could stir something up, just like you. Anyway, I phoned Pedmans and they've given the Bulgarian account to Mary." Mary, a rival public relations officer, was always trying to poach Roy's accounts. "As soon as I get out of here, I'll hand in my notice."
"And do what?" asked Charles.
"Don't know. Maybe something in the country. I could work for you, Aggie."
"It's mostly work out in the countryside and villages, Roy. I always think of you as a town person."
Roy suddenly remembered the sinister darkness and silence of Odley Cruesis with not even one jolly red London bus to break the brooding fear of the place.
"I'll think of something anyway," he said brightly. "Do you know a British surgeon goes out to the Ukraine every year and performs these operations with a Black and Decker electric drill because they haven't the equipment out there?"
Bill Wong and Inspector Wilkes came in to interview Roy, and Agatha and Charles were banished to the waiting room. "I'll be off," said Charles. "See you later."
Agatha flicked through the glossy pages of a magazine. There were photographs of jolly people at openings of this and that and at hunt dinners. How happy they all look, she thought. How the camera lies. Nothing to show the raving row on the road home or the imminent divorce or the threat of bankruptcy or the social pain because Lady Bollocks-to-You snubbed the garage owner's wife. The magazine slipped from her lap and she fell asleep.
Charles came back late in the afternoon and woke Agatha up. "You've been asleep for hours," he said. "Toni and Sharon have been around and Phil and Patrick. Pedmans has sent a hamper from Fortnum and Mason and everyone seems to be eating bits out of it except Roy. His real uncle and aunt have turned up and are going to take him away tomorrow to look after him. Funny that, I never think of Roy as having any family at all."
They approached the room but were told by a nurse that Roy was asleep and it would be better to let him rest.
Agatha looked at her watch. "I'd better get to the office and find out if anyone has discovered anything."
"See you tomorrow," said Charles.
She watched his well-tailored back disappear along the corridor. Had that brief fling in the south of France meant anything to him? He had never mentioned it before today. She took a small mirror out of her handbag and squawked in dismay at her face. Her mascara was lying in little black blobs under her eyes in that irritating way that supposedly waterproof mascara is apt to do. It was a magnifying mirror and she felt her pores made her face look like part of the surface of the moon.
By the time she had washed her face and repaired her make-up and had driven to the office, it was to find Mrs. Freedman just about to close up and Sharon brushing out her long tresses, blond streaked with purple.
She told them the latest news of Roy. "The others are all still over at that terrible village trying to find out something," said Mrs. Freedman. "Would you like me to stay on?"
"No, you can go. Sharon, I want a word with you."
Sharon threw down the hairbrush and retreated to her desk. "What is it now?"
Agatha waited until Mrs. Freedman had closed the office door behind her and then said, "What drugs are you taking?"
"I ain't taking none."
"Don't lie to me. What is it? Coke, crystal meth, heroin--what?"
"Nothing. Gotta go."
"The pupils of your eyes are tiny. You're on something. You can't work for me and be on drugs."
"What about you, you boozy old bat with your fags and gin?" demanded Sharon. "Stuff your job."
Sharon rushed out of the office, leaving only an aroma of sweat and cheap perfume behind her.
Why should I bother? thought Agatha mutinously. I'm not her mother.
_______
When she arrived at her cottage it was to find a large bouquet of pink roses on the kitchen table with a note from Doris, which read: "These arrived today. Got yourself a fellow?"
Agatha read the card attached to the roses. "Don't be mad at me. Love, Tom."
Freak, thought Agatha bitterly. She fed her cats and then carried the bunch of roses up to the vicarage. "These might look nice in the church," said Agatha, handing them to Mrs. Bloxby.
"How kind of you!"
"I'm afraid kindness doesn't enter into it. I'm getting rid of them."
"Come in anyway. We'll have coffee. How is Roy? I heard it all on the news."
"He's recovering all right."
Agatha sank down wearily into the feathered cushions on the old vicarage sofa. "The flowers are from Tom Courtney. He took me out to dinner last night. He asked me if I had any sexually transmitted diseases and then he asked me if I had shaved."
"Shaved! Oh, I see." The vicar's wife turned a little pink. "I never will understand the lack of romance in this modern age. We get a lot of couples coming to the vicarage for advice on marriage. They only do it, mainly, because the girl wants a church wedding and usually they've never been near the place since they were baptised. There was one young man who said to his fiancee in front of Alf, 'We're going to Antigua on our honeymoon so she'd better get to one of those tanning parlours and get an allover tan. Don't want her looking like a shark's belly on the beach.' It seems men can make demands these days and without even paying for it like the days when they had to go to a brothel."
"Nothing like the good old days." Agatha giggled.
"Well, no romance like there used to be. Nothing like a bit of frustration for engendering romance. You're surely not still going to go on working for him?"
"Sure. Money's short these days and he pays generously. It's funny. I have a gut feeling that Tom Courtney is the sort who might be capable of murdering his own mother, but he's got such a cast-iron alibi. I wonder, too, about that sister of his. I mean she could have got her friend to swear she was there at the time of the murder. Oh. I forgot. There's no record of her entering the UK."
"There is a such a great deal of money involved," said Mrs. Bloxby.
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"They could have paid someone," said Agatha slowly. "I've a good mind to nip over to Philadelphia and take a look around. I know, I'll go back and see Roy and get him to put it about that I'm taking him off to a health resort and I'll be back in a few days."
_______
Roy was sitting up in bed, eating grapes from a huge basket of fruit on the table beside his bed. "Guess who's just been to see me, Aggie?"
"The fruit fairy?"
"Mr. Pedman himself! He brought me all that lovely fruit. Do you remember that idea of mine of sending an anonymous letter to the police saying the Bulgarians were into sex trafficking?"
"My idea, actually."
"Whatever. Anyway, it turns out to be true. Drugs as well as girls. Bitch, Mary, had been singing their praises and said I had only been reluctant to work for the vulgar Bulgars because I was running out of steam. She is definitely not the flavour of the month. I'm getting a raise in pay!"
"Okay. In return for my help--my help, mind--I want you to do something for me. Tell everyone who calls on you, including Bill--especially Bill--that I've gone off to a health farm for a few days and, no, you don't know which one."
"Do you want to see my picture in the local paper?"
"No, Narcissus. I'm off."
Chapter Five
Agatha was feeling very low as it was announced that the plane was approaching Philadelphia. She had begun to question her own motives in taking this expensive trip. What did she know of men these days? Maybe they all went around asking intimate questions before they'd even opened the bedroom door. It had been a gut conviction that there was something seriously weird about Tom Courtney that had driven her on.
Alibis had been checked by the police on both sides of the Atlantic. What on earth did she expect to find out?
Once through immigration, she took out the Google maps she had run off her computer before leaving and asked a taxi driver to take her to Sellivex Drive, home of Dr. and Mrs. Bairns.
What if they're not at home? fretted Agatha as the taxi eventually swung round into a leafy drive. She asked the driver if he would wait. "Sure thing, lady," he said. "But pay this part first."
Agatha did, and added a generous tip.
The house was pseudo-Colonial, built of red brick and with white columns at the entrance. Manicured lawns separated it from its identical neighbours on either side. No children played.
Agatha went up the red brick path which ran along the right side of the lawn, past a garage pretending to be a stable with a brass horse on the roof and so round to the door.
She pressed the doorbell. A voice from inside called out, "See who that is, Sally."
The door opened. A stout woman with grey hair stood there. "Yes?"
Agatha presented her card. "Mrs. Bairns, please."
"Just you wait heah."
Agatha waited.
After a few moments, Sally reappeared. "Step this way, ma'am. Remove your shoes first."
Agatha walked into a blast of freezing air conditioning and through to a large, spacious room furnished with very little indeed. The Bairns family seemed to prefer minimalism. The walls were white. The paintings seemed to be totally black. There were only three leather chairs with spindly steel legs in the room and one black marble coffee table.
Mrs. Amy Bairns remained seated. She was a tall blonde with that California face-lift look which makes a lot of face-lifted women look the same--like creatures from the Planet Botox.
She did not smile. Probably would crack her face if she did, thought Agatha.
"How can I help you?" asked Amy. Agatha sat down.
"Tom Courtney has asked me to help find out who murdered your mother," began Agatha.
"So what brings you here?"
"As you are his sister, I thought you might remember something, something that might give me a clue as to who might want your mother dead. Did she have any enemies?"
"Mother was not popular. But, no, no one hated her enough to kill her."
"Perhaps I might have a word with your friend Harriet Temple."
"Are you trying to tell me you dare to doubt my alibi?"
"No, nothing like that. But she may remember something about Mrs. Courtney."
"She barely knew Mother. Now, my time is valuable even if yours is not." Amy must have pressed a hidden bell somewhere because Sally promptly appeared.
"Mrs. Raisin is just leaving."
Agatha threw her a baffled look. Why such animosity when all she was doing was trying to find out who murdered the woman's mother?
She followed Sally out into the hall, sat down on a white leather chair and put on her shoes. Agatha drew a hundred-dollar bill out of her wallet. "Meet me later?"
Sally knelt down at Agatha's feet. "You got a speck on that there shoe. I'll just wipe it off." And in a whisper, "Jimmy's Bar down on Peach Tree. Eight o' clock."
Agatha nodded. She went out to her waiting taxi and asked to be driven to the nearest hotel. "There's a motel out on the freeway, not far," said the driver. "But you ain't got a car."
"Give me your card and I'll phone you if I need you." He passed over a grimy card.
"And where is Jimmy's Bar on Peach Tree."
"That's just one block behind the motel."
"Great."
"Look, lady, if you goin' to need me tomorrow, you'd best fix a time, see. I cain't afford to sit around waiting for a fare."
"Pick me up at nine in the morning."
_______
The motel was clean and efficient. Agatha unpacked a few belongings from her overnight case. She was feeling dizzy with jet lag. She turned her alarm clock back five hours to set it to American time. Then she telephoned Patrick.
"Don't tell anyone, Patrick, but I'm in America. Have you got any notes of the Courtney murder with you?"
"Got them somewhere here."
"Tom Courtney's sister's alibi is someone called Harriet Temple. You didn't manage to get an address out of the police?"
"Can't remember. Hang on."
Agatha waited impatiently. Outside on the freeway, the traffic swished past like some great mechanical ocean. At last Patrick came back on the phone. "Got it. Harriet Temple . . . got a pen?"
"Yes."
"Divorcee. Address, Camden Court, Apartment 5, Number 252. Didn't get a phone number."
"Thanks, Patrick. I'll tell you about it when I get back."
Agatha showered and changed into a cool shirtwaist dress and then went out to look for Jimmy's Bar.
As the driver had said, it was indeed only one block from the hotel, a red flashing light above the door proclaiming Jimmy's into the still, dark evening air.
Agatha opened the door and went in. There were a few men at the bar and some men and women seated in red imitation leather booths along one wall.
She sat down in one of the booths which afforded a good look at the door. It was exactly eight o' clock.
Then Agatha realised there was no waiter service. She went up to the bar and ordered a bottle of Budweiser. "May I have a glass, please?"
She braced herself for the usual sort of are-you-English questions but the barman looked too tired to waste time on starting a conversation. "I'll be having a Bud as well," said a voice at her elbow. Agatha turned and saw Sally. She paid for the drinks and led the way over to one of the booths.
"So what you want of me?" asked Sally.
"I thought you might have an idea if Mrs. Courtney had any enemies."
"Can't right say she could've had any. See, hardly anyone was allowed in her house, and that's a fact. Didn't like to take your money for nothin' but maybe you'd like to see these. Miz Bairns asked me to burn 'em and I clean forgot. Old family photos. Might help."
Agatha took out her wallet and handed over a couple of hundred. She knew she probably didn't have to pay anything for them but there was a beaten-down weariness in Sally's brown face that went to her heart.
"Why do you stay in such a job?" asked Agatha.
"Pay's good. But
with this money you just done give me I'm off back home to Atlanta in the morning. I'd rather go back to waiting table than work for her. Been only there three weeks. She follows me around like a cat. Looks for dirt. Crazy about dirt she is. She pays me end of the week, which is tomorrow. I'll collect that and then leave her a note. Now, I best get back."
"Who worked for her before you?"
"Don't rightly know. I know she's only lived there a couple o' months."
Agatha thanked her and wished her luck. She put the album in her briefcase. Now, she thought, as she headed back to the hotel, let's see why Amy was so keen to have this lot burned.
Agatha found to her surprise that there was a bowl of fruit and a bottle of sparkling wine on the bedside table. A note read, "With compliments."
Now that's nice, thought Agatha. How odd that such a functional type of roadside motel should go to such a courtesy.
She picked up the phone and got through to reception. "I just want to thank you for the fruit and wine," she said.
"We didn't give no fruit or wine to your room, ma'am. It's Mizz Raisin, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"Maybe you got an admirer."
Agatha slowly replaced the receiver. If by any chance the wine was drugged, she could pour some off, then pretend to be asleep and see if anyone came into the room.
On the other hand, that someone might kill her. She did not want to go to the police because it would take ages waiting for the contents of the wine bottle to be analysed, the American police would contact Mircester, who would no doubt be furious at her interfering in their investigation.
She went downstairs to reception and said to the clerk. "I'm expecting a friend to arrive from England late tonight. May I book another room?"
"Sure, just fill up the form. There's one along the corridor from you. That do?"
"Fine."
Agatha returned to her room and poured half the bottle of wine down the toilet after rinsing some of it around in a glass.
She made up the bed to look as if someone were asleep in it, finally placing a wig she kept for travelling stuffed with newspapers on the pillow. She opened the bedside drawer and took out a copy of the Gideon Bible and put it in her briefcase in the place of the photo album.
