by M C Beaton
"Bad business about Sharon," said Phil. "Mrs. Freedman won't be long. Do you want me to give you a run-down on what we are all doing?"
"Not at the moment. I need to get back to thinking about the murder of John Sunday to take my mind off Sharon's death."
"So you don't think the Courtneys did it?"
"No. It's nagging at the back of my mind that it was someone in that village. You see the trouble with being a town person and not a village person and meeting so many other incomers these days," said Agatha. "I can't help feeling that people like me don't really know village life, what really goes on in the minds of the genuine villagers. It's not even like some of those television series you see based on supposed village life. All so politically correct. If the local retired major was in the army, then he's either a fascist or a closet gay. Gypsies are always good people and not understood. I saw one with eight murders and not a pressman in sight."
"No. I suspect there are undercurrents in an off-the-tourist-map sort of place like Odley Cruesis. Unless it was someone at John's work . . . Oh, Mrs. Freedman, you're back. Would you please look me up the files on John Sunday?"
"No need for that," said Phil. "I've got it all on the computer."
Agatha fetched herself a strong cup of coffee and lit a cigarette. Mrs. Freedman stifled a sigh and opened a window. Agatha sat down in front of the computer and began to read all the reports along with Phil's photographs. Then she said, "Something's missing."
"What?" asked Phil.
"Where did John Sunday live?"
"I remember that. A terraced house. Oxford Lane in Mircester. Patrick said the police could not find anything that related to the murder."
"And who got the house?"
"Wait and I'll get my notebook."
"Phil, it should be in here with the rest."
Agatha bit her lip in vexation. What with the murder of Miriam and then her own hip replacement operation, she felt she had often too easily assumed that both murders were connected.
"Let me see." Phil came back with a notebook and flicked the pages. "Ah, here we are. I went with Patrick. Number seven, Oxford Lane. Two up, two down terraced house. Small front garden. Neighbourhood slightly run-down. He was never married. His sister inherited. A Mrs. Parker. Probably sold the house."
"Maybe not. I'd love a look inside, just in case there's anything left. Let's drive round there."
The house had a small, weedy front garden. As Agatha pushed open the front gate, a neighbour opened her door and called out, "Are you the house clearance people?"
"Yes," said Agatha on the spur of the moment.
"Wait and I'll get the key," said the neighbour. "Mrs. Parker's still up north but she'll be here tomorrow. She's been right poorly and hasn't been able to get round to doing anything about her brother's house before this. She got in touch with you lot to sell off everything. She and her brother had a quarrel a long time ago and she didn't want to have anything to do with his stuff. She came down after his murder--poor man--and took away a few things, but she didn't want the rest."
"We shouldn't be doing this," muttered Phil.
"Shh! This is a great opportunity."
When the neighbour came back with the key, Agatha said, "I'm surprised Mrs. Parker took so long to call us in and put the house up for sale."
"Well, like I said, she's poorly and she couldn't find the time before. Let me have the key when you've finished."
Once inside, Phil said angrily, "And what do we do if the real people turn up?"
"We'll leave the front door open," said Agatha. "If we hear them arriving, we'll just nip out the back way."
The downstairs consisted of a living room and kitchen on one side of the dark passage and a study on the other. Upstairs were two bedrooms and one bathroom.
"I suppose the study's the place to start," said Agatha, "although the police are sure to be still hanging on to all his paperwork until his sister claims it."
"I'll try the other rooms," said Phil. "Have you considered, Agatha, that when the real clearance people turn up, that neighbour is going to report us to the police and give our descriptions?"
"She seemed to be very shortsighted," said Agatha hopefully.
Phil went off and Agatha began to search diligently, but it all too soon appeared that the police had taken away every bit of paper they could get their hands on. She took out the desk drawers in case anything was taped to the undersides, but there was nothing, except on the bottom of one drawer was "A119X" written in felt-tipped pen. Agatha wrote it down.
They spent more than an hour searching for secret hiding places but finding none. It was bleakly furnished with the bare essentials. It seemed as if John Sunday had liked puzzles and jigsaws. One of the few human touches in the living room was a bookshelf containing boxes of jigsaw puzzles and crossword books. There were no photographs. A mirror hung over the fireplace reflecting the gloomy room. Phil thought that maybe the house had been built for workers at one time because the terrace faced north and didn't get much sunlight and he had noticed the building bricks were of poor quality.
They even searched under the cushions of the shabby brown corduroy sofa and down the sides of two armchairs. Phil reported that only one of the upstairs bedrooms had been used and that the other was completely empty.
When they left and locked up, Agatha had an idea. She took the key back to the neighbour and, reverting to the Birmingham accent of her youth, she said, "Made an awful mistake, love. Should've been round the corner in Oxford Terrace. Please don't tell Mrs. Parker or we'll get in awful trouble."
The neighbour peered at her. "Don't you be worrying yourself, m'dear. We all get like that when we get older. Didn't I put the kettle on yesterday and clean forgot till it nearly burned dry?"
"That woman can hardly see a thing," muttered Agatha crossly to Phil. "I'm hungry. I need something to eat."
They decided on a pub lunch at The George in Mircester. "I wish I knew what A119X stood for," said Agatha, "and why it was written on the underside of the drawer. He liked puzzles. Nasty, devious mind, he probably had. He was probably the sort who would go to endless lengths to hide something somewhere difficult instead of just renting a safe deposit box."
"Library!" said Phil suddenly.
"What library?" asked Agatha.
"I mean A119X looks like a number on the back of one of the Mircester Public Library books. They send a mobile library van round the villages and I borrow books from them. The library still uses the old card system."
At the library, by asking at the desk, they discovered that A119X was a book entitled Go to the Ant by Percival Bright-Simmel. "I'm afraid it hasn't been returned," said the librarian. "We meant to send out the usual letter reminding the borrower that the book was overdue, but when we found out it was that John Sunday who was murdered, well, we just needed to give it up for lost. We would have got rid of it pretty soon as we're due for an overhaul. No one else had taken that book out for a long time."
"What kind of book was it?" asked Phil.
"It was in the nonfiction religious section."
_______
Outside the library, Agatha said, "We've got to get back into Sunday's house and search the bookshelves. What was so important about that book?"
But when they arrived back at Sunday's house, it was to find a van outside the door bearing the legend Pyrson's House Clearance. The door was standing open. Agatha looked cautiously towards the house next door but there was no sign of the neighbour who had given them the key.
"What are you doing?" hissed Phil as Agatha strode up towards the open door.
"I know what I'm doing," said Agatha. She walked inside. Two men were crating up furniture.
"I'm from Mircester Library," said Agatha. "The previous owner failed to return one of our books. Do you mind if I take a quick look for it?"
"Go ahead," said one of the men. "We ain't got around to them yet."
Phil had tentatively followed Agatha in. They both began t
o search the bookshelves. "Puzzles and more puzzles," muttered Agatha. "Maybe there's something behind the books." She began to pull them out. Phil was standing on a chair searching the top shelves when he said, "Got something here. Yes, this is it. It was down behind the others along with this."
"This" was a full bottle of whisky. "Hey!" shouted one of the removal men. "That there bottle's part o' the house contents."
"You're welcome to it," said Agatha. "All we want is the book."
They handed over the bottle of whisky and, clutching the book, made their way out of the house.
"What if that neighbour sees us?" fretted Phil. "You told her we should have been round the corner at another house."
"Oh, she'll just think we're part of the same business," said Agatha airily. "Let's get back to the office and have a good look, although it's not much of a book." Go to the Ant was a thin, shabby book with an illustration on the front of a blond and blue-eyed Jesus Christ pointing accusingly, rather in the manner of the First World War posters, saying, "Your Country Needs You."
Toni was sitting at her computer typing up notes when they went into the office. Agatha noticed that the girl looked pale and listless. Must hire another young person, she thought. Maybe that will cheer her up. Agatha knew that the murder of Sharon had hit Toni hard.
"Stop typing, Toni," she said, "and help us with this." She told Toni about how and why they had found the book.
The book turned out to be a sort of extended religious tract, written in 1926. It was a series of moral tales about unfortunate people who had behaved like the grasshopper and ended up starving to death or living in the workhouse.
"You wouldn't think he was a religious sort of person," said Phil. "I mean, he made trouble for two churches that we know of. There are no clues here. No words underlined."
"Let me see." Toni took the thin book and began to riffle through the pages. "I think I've got something." She ran her hand lightly over one of the pages. "There are some pinpricks under some letters."
"Good girl!" Agatha seized a pen. "Read them out."
"This page has a u and then an n. Nothing next page. Wait a bit. Other page a d and an e." She steadily worked her way through the book until she had one whole message. It read, "Under the garden shed."
"I'd better get back there tonight," said Agatha. "But why a secret message to himself? If he buried something under the garden shed, then why bother to go through this elaborate business? Are you game for another visit, Phil?"
Toni saw the reluctant look on Phil's face and said to Agatha, "I'll come with you."
"Go and get some rest," said Agatha. "I'll call for you around midnight."
When she got back to her cottage, there was no sign of Charles. She felt suddenly bereft. Surely she should be used to him dropping in and out of her life? She petted her faithless cats, who wriggled away from her and stood by the garden door waiting to be let out.
She microwaved herself a dish of lasagne and moodily ate it at the kitchen table. Agatha decided to put an advertisement in the papers for a trainee detective. If Toni had a young person to train, it might take her mind off Sharon. What if, she wondered guiltily, I hadn't told Sharon to leave Toni's flat? Would she still be alive? No, she decided, she might even have started to bring the bikers to Toni's place and there might have been two dead bodies instead of one.
Agatha changed into dark clothes, set the alarm for eleven thirty and lay down on the sofa. As she drifted off to sleep, she wondered why she had never put a cat flap on the garden door.
Agatha parked her car round the corner from where John Sunday's house lay and she and Toni made their way quietly along the deserted street. A thin drizzle was falling, and water was beginning to drip down from the trees that lined the street.
They opened the gate quietly and made their way along a brick path at the side of the house which led to the back garden. Agatha risked flicking the thin beam of light from a pencil torch round the small area of garden. There was an unkempt lawn, several laurel bushes and the black silhouette of a small shed in the far right-hand corner.
Agatha flicked her torch on again and shone it on the door. "There's a padlock," whispered Toni.
"I thought there might be," said Agatha, opening up a carrier bag and hauling out a pair of wire cutters. "Soon get this open."
"But what if the sister finds the broken padlock and reports the shed has been broken into?"
"I brought another padlock," said Agatha cheerfully. "No one will know the difference."
She cut through the padlock and opened the door. The shed had a wooden floor. Agatha handed Toni the torch and said, "Your eyes are better than mine. Crouch down there and see if you can find any marks where something might have been hidden. We don't want to smash up the whole floor."
Toni crawled around and then shook her head. "Nothing."
"I was afraid of that," said Agatha gloomily. "We're going to have to try and lift all the planks up."
"Wait a bit." Toni sat back on her knees. "This shed is raised up a bit from the ground. What if all we have to do is go outside and have a look underneath?"
"Great! Let's try it. I'll put this new padlock on just in case anyone comes after us and we have to make a quick getaway."
Toni lay down on the wet grass and shone the torch under the shed. "There's something here," she said.
A voice sounded from next door. "I assure you, Officer, I heard voices coming from Mr. Sunday's garden."
"Snakes and bastards," muttered Agatha. "Grab whatever it is and we'll run."
Toni pulled out a small metal box. They ran to the end of the small garden, Toni vaulted over the gate clutching the box, and Agatha threw her carrier bag over and heaved herself over the wooden gate and fell in a heap in the lane outside.
"Quietly," hissed Toni, feeling that Agatha charging off down the lane was making as much noise as a stampeding elephant.
With relief, they reached the safety of Agatha's car and drove off.
Once back at the cottage, Toni put the metal box on the kitchen table. "It's locked," she said. "Now, what do we do?"
Agatha opened a kitchen drawer by the sink and took out a chisel. She also handed Toni a thin pair of latex gloves and put a pair on herself. She wedged the end in the slit by the lock and prised down hard. There was a loud snap and the lid flew back.
There was a package wrapped in tough white plastic. Agatha took the kitchen scissors and cut it open. There were photographs and letters. "Look at this!" exclaimed Agatha. "That's a naked Tilly Glossop on top of some man, but who's the man?"
"It's hard to see his face, all contorted like it is. But it looks suspiciously like the mayor of Cirencester. I'll look him up on your computer and get a photograph."
"You go ahead. I'll look at these others. Oh, my!"
Toni paused in the doorway. "Oh, what?"
"It's a photo of Penelope Timson necking passionately with some fellow who isn't the vicar. The dirty little man must have been blackmailing people." As Toni went through to the computer, Agatha studied the few letters. They were passionate love letters from people she did not know and written to people she did not know, either.
She lit a cigarette and wondered what to do. Toni came back in. "Yes, it's the mayor all right. Shall we go and confront him tomorrow?"
"No," said Agatha. "He'll call his lawyer. The police will be called in. Where did we get this? Why were we withholding evidence? Penelope Timson is a friend of Mrs. Bloxby. I'll keep that photo back. We'll wipe everything we've touched carefully and send the package to the police. No, that won't do. They've got to find it themselves. Damn, we've got to put it back."
"What about the broken lock?"
"I've got a metal box just like it. I used to keep jewellery in it until I got a proper jewel case. I'll get it, we'll pop the stuff in and back under the shed it goes."
"And how do the police find it?"
"I'll call them from a phone box. I've got this nifty little machine. It's a po
rtable voice distorter."
This time they were able to enter and exit the garden without being heard. Agatha made the phone call to police headquarters and then they drove to an all-night restaurant out on the motorway for an early breakfast.
After a breakfast of sausage, bacon, egg and chips and two cups of black coffee, Agatha said, "First, we should both get some sleep. I think I'll talk to Mrs. Bloxby about Penelope and suggest we both approach her. Now, the big question is Tilly Glossop. She and Sunday may have been blackmailing the mayor together. I mean, someone had to be on hand to take that photograph."
"Do you want me to try Tilly?"
"I think maybe Patrick might be a better idea. He still looks like a cop and he might frighten her into some sort of confession or slip-up."
Agatha snatched a few hours' sleep and turned up in the office at nine in the morning to brief Patrick. Then she told Mrs. Freedman to put in an advertisement for another detective. "A trainee, mind," cautioned Agatha. "Some student in his or her gap year would do. I'm off to see Mrs. Bloxby about something. Seems a quiet morning. Want to come, Toni?"
Toni agreed. She still mourned her lost friend, Sharon, and felt the vicarage and Mrs. Bloxby's quiet presence very soothing.
Despite the loud protests from the study from the vicar, shouting, "This place is getting like Piccadilly Circus," Mrs. Bloxby settled them in the vicarage drawing room. Rain was falling steadily outside. "They said it was going to be a barbecue summer," said Agatha. "Such a shame for all the families who booked their holidays in Britain this year."
"Amazing thing, British tourism," remarked Mrs. Bloxby when she returned from the kitchen with a laden tray. "People flit by air to countries and never really understand other races or cultures, like dragonflies flitting over a pond. Can't see the murky depth underneath. You are looking unusually serious, Mrs. Raisin."
Agatha opened her capacious handbag and drew out a white envelope and handed it to the vicar's wife. "Before you look at that, I'll tell you how we came by it."
