Agatha Raisin and the Busy Body ar-21

by M C Beaton

  "What about Penelope Timson?" asked Agatha. "Anything there?"

  "She is one nervous and flustered lady. She keeps hugging me, although it feels like groping, and says I am the sort of son she would like to have."

  "Be careful," warned Agatha. "Give it another week and then clear out."

  That evening, Simon urged May to take a third glass of wine but she shook her head. "I've had enough. I don't want to turn into a drunk. Oh, I quite forgot. The vicar wants you to report to the vicarage at nine in the morning. He thinks it's time you started helping with the parish duties."

  "But it's not as if I'm employed by the parish," protested Simon.

  "Oh, but it's not healthy for a young man of your age to do nothing. And you have shown such an interest in the church--so rare these days. You will notice that we do not have many young people in the village. We have children but not teenagers."

  Probably got out of the damn place as soon as they could, thought Simon. Aloud, he asked, "What am I supposed to be doing?"

  "I think driving someone somewhere."

  When Simon rang the bell at the vicarage the next morning, the vicar hailed him cheerily. "Just the fellow! Mr. and Mrs. Summers and Mr. and Mrs. Beagle will be here shortly. They want to take a shopping trip to Cheltenham."

  "I don't think for a minute they'll all fit into my car," said Simon.

  "You can drive my people carrier. It's big enough for all of you. Ah, here they come. You might like to take them for a modest meal and I will refund you."

  The vicar tenderly helped the couples into the vehicle. The day was sunny and warm but they all seemed to be well wrapped up.

  "Lovely day," said Simon.

  Silence.

  "Why don't we all sing?" suggested Simon, unnerved by the brooding atmosphere.

  "Shut up and drive," growled Fred Summer, "and keep your eyes on the road."

  It seemed to take ages to reach Cheltenham. Elderly bladders meant frequent stops.

  Cheltenham was the site of a monastery as early as 803. Alfred the Great admired the peace of the place, but the town's sudden rise began in the eighteenth century with the discovery of the famous spa waters. People like Handel and Samuel Johnson flocked to the town to take the restorative cure.

  Simon drove into the Evesham Road car park. He had to let his elderly cargo out before he parked because the parking places there are so small that every vehicle seemed to have just squeezed its way in.

  He caught up with the two couples as they shuffled their way out of the car park. "Here, you," said Fred. "You ain't coming with us. Meet us back here at five o' clock."

  "But I'm supposed to take you to lunch," said Simon.

  "Us'll get our own lunch and charge the vicar. Shove off."

  Simon glanced at his watch. It was only half past ten in the morning. Perhaps Toni could join him. He phoned her mobile.

  "Toni," he began eagerly. "Simon here."

  "Oh, hullo, Lucy," said Toni brightly. "I'm in the office."

  "I'm stuck in Cheltenham. If you can get away for lunch, I'll meet you at that pasta place on the Parade at one."

  "I'll try. Got to go."

  After he had rung off, Simon realised he wasn't much of a detective. Anyone from the village was surely a suspect. He should have followed his passengers and seen what they were up to. They walked so slowly, they couldn't possibly have got far. But as he raced down the slope into the centre of the town, he could not see them.

  He stopped his search when he realised how idiotic he was being. His four passengers had been inside the vicarage drawing room when the murder had been committed.

  He passed a pleasant time looking around the shops and then made his way to the restaurant on the Parade where he hoped to meet Toni. He managed to secure a table outside, ordered a glass of lager and said he would order the meal when his friend arrived.

  Fifteen minutes later, he had just decided she would not be able to come when he saw her bright golden hair and slim figure heading towards him through the crowd.

  "Hi!" said Toni. "What are you doing in Cheltenham? I thought you were stuck in that village looking for suspects."

  "I got stuck with running four of the crinklies here for the day."

  "Which four?"

  "The Summers and the Beagles."

  Toni leapt to her feet, nearly colliding with the hovering waiter. "You idiot!" she said. "They know what I look like. Your cover'll be blown if they see you here with me." And she was off and running.

  Simon watched miserably as her fair head bobbed up and down as she ran through the crowd and then disappeared from view. Simon gloomily ordered a toasted cheese baguette. He felt every bit the idiot Toni had called him. He found her very attractive, but if he was going to make any success of this job, he'd better keep his mind strictly on it until he found out something useful. The only person in the village who seemed prepared to gossip to him was May Dinwoody. The likeliest subject was Tilly Glossop. She had had an affair, as far as anyone knew, with Sunday. He had a photograph of her in a compromising position with the mayor. Nothing of her affair with the mayor had leaked into the press.

  He could only assume that the whole business had been hushed up. In the report which Simon had accessed, Patrick had said that Tilly had claimed it was a brief fling and there was nothing in the mayor's bank statements that revealed he was being blackmailed. How had Sunday got hold of the photo? Tilly swore she did not know.

  I must manage to get friendly with Tilly, thought Simon as he passed a slow afternoon and eventually made his way back to the car park in time to pick up his passengers.

  His charges arrived promptly at five o' clock, carrying various plastic shopping bags. He gathered from their conversation--for not one of them addressed him directly--that apart from shopping they had been "taking the waters."

  On the road back to the village there had to be even more "comfort stops" than there had been on the road in, so it was dark by the time he thankfully reached the village and helped them out of the people carrier before taking it back to the vicarage and leaving it outside.

  Either his imagination was working overtime or Odley Cruesis was an eerie place. As he made his way across the village green and along the lane to the old mill house, it was completely silent. No dog barked, no voices sounded in the still summer air, not even the blare of a television set.

  He sighed. Another evening of polite conversation with May. If only he could find out something, anything, to enable him to get out of this place. There was a large yellow moon in the sky, turning the waters of the old millpond to gold.

  He stood at the edge of the pond, looking at the water. A vicious shove right between the shoulder blades sent him hurtling down into the pool.

  Something prompted him to stay down as long as possible. His terrified mind conjured up visions of medieval-type villagers with pickaxes and billhooks waiting for him to surface. At last, he thrust himself upwards, shaking the water from his eyes and casting terrified looks around but there was no one there. He hauled himself up the steep bank and lay panting on the grass.

  Instead of going to the mill house, he ran to his car and drove as fast as he could to Agatha's cottage in Carsely.

  Agatha answered the door and stared in amazement at the soaking figure of Simon. "Come in," she said. "What on earth happened?"

  Simon told her about the attack on him. "I'm a good swimmer," he said, "otherwise I would have drowned."

  "I'll run you a hot bath," said Agatha. "My friend, Charles, has left a dressing gown and some clothes in the spare room. Brandy? Maybe not. Hot sweet tea is the answer."

  "I know," said Simon, "but I'd rather have the brandy."

  "Leave your clothes outside the bathroom and I'll put them in the tumble dryer. Good thing you were only wearing a shirt and trousers and not your best suit."

  After Simon had bathed and was dressed in Charles's dressing gown and waiting for his clothes to dry, Agatha said, "Well, that's you finished with th
at village. What did you do today?"

  So Simon told her but could not admit he had seen Toni. Yet someone must have seen him. Perhaps the old people. Even so, surely they hadn't had any time to gossip to anyone in the village. Of course they always could have phoned someone. But he said none of this aloud.

  "I want you to type out every little thing you can think of," said Agatha. "Describe your stay at the village from beginning to end, what people said, what impression you had of them. I suppose they all hope that Tom Courtney for some odd reason killed Sunday himself. You may know more than you think you know. Take the whole day tomorrow to do it. I'll break it to the others that you were employed by me after all. Now, do we report this to the police? No, they'll start raging about us interfering. You'd better phone May Dinwoody and tell her that you're visiting a friend and then you're moving out. I know. I'll phone her and say I am your aunt. I'm very good at accents."

  Agatha phoned May and adopted what she cheerfully thought was a Gloucestershire accent. After she had finished calling, she told Simon cheerfully, "She's a bit upset about losing you. Do you want me to get Patrick or Phil to go and collect your stuff? It does seem as if someone in that cursed village guessed you were working for me."

  "No, I'll go myself," said Simon. "May and I got very friendly. I don't want her to know."

  "If you like. But I would go as soon as your clothes are dry, because I bet the gossip will be all round the village by the morning."

  On his return to the mill house, Simon discovered that Agatha's fond interpretation of a Gloucestershire accent had not fooled May one bit. "It was that Raisin female," she said. "I recognised that bullying voice of hers the minute she spoke."

  Chapter Nine

  May listened while Simon told her how someone had pushed him into the millpond.

  "You've only yourself to blame," said May. "This is a nice village. You'll find the murderer was that Tom Courtney. One of the village boys must just have been playing a wee joke on you."

  "I haven't seen any boys around," protested Simon. "Everyone seems pretty old to me."

  May bristled with outrage. "You're not much of a detective, are you? We have a few boys and girls who are bussed over to the school at Chipping Campden."

  Simon suddenly remembered the vicar asking him if he could swim. Not wanting to be drawn into any village activities, he had said he could not. Penelope had been there.

  "Anyway, just you pack your things up, laddie, and leave now. I don't like cheats."

  Simon mumbled an apology and went off to pack.

  The next day found Agatha Raisin in a militant mood. Firstly, she was annoyed that her famous accent hadn't worked, and secondly, she decided it was time she went back to that village with Toni and Patrick to start the questioning all over again.

  Patrick had told her through his police contacts that the office end of John Sunday's life had been thoroughly investigated and nothing sinister had been found. Tilly Glossop had been questioned over and over again but they could get nothing further out of her. Sunday, apart from the photograph of the mayor, had several e-mails from staff members he had printed off. Each contained something they would not like the boss or the wife or husband to know but they all had cast-iron alibis for the time of Sunday's death. Sunday, it appeared, had not been a blackmailer, merely using his knowledge as power to do what he liked in his job.

  Agatha thought guiltily of that compromising photo of Penelope Timson. She should never have suppressed it.

  When they arrived in the village, she decided to visit Penelope herself. Patrick was sent to see if he could get anything at all out of Tilly Glossop and Toni was dispatched to Carrie Brother.

  Toni had been glad to see Simon back in the office. Agatha had briefly outlined Simon's adventures. She wondered what her old school friends would make of Simon. With his beaky nose and long mouth, he looked a bit like a Bavarian puppet. But it was his warm smile and the way his grey eyes sparkled under his thick thatch of curly black hair that made her find him endearing. And he had been kind to her.

  Toni rang the bell of Carrie's cottage and listened to the cacophony of barking from Carrie's tape recorder before the lady herself opened the door. Her large face was blotched with tears.

  "What's the matter?" exclaimed Toni. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

  "Yes, there is. Come in."

  Toni followed her into her cluttered parlour which still smelled of dog. Carrie rounded on her. "You're a detective. I want you to solve a murder."

  "But that's why we're here."

  "I'm not talking about that snoop, Sunday, who deserved to die. I'm talking about my Pooky."

  "Pooky?"

  "My little dog, my precious boy."

  "What happened?"

  "It was yesterday. I was out on the village green and put Pooky down so that he could have a little run around. I saw him get hold of something and start eating it. By the time I got to him, he had finished it, whatever it was. I said, 'Pooky, bad boy. You're not supposed to eat anything that Mummy doesn't give you.' " Her eyes filled with tears. "And Pooky just licked my nose and looked up at me with his little eyes. I took him home and put him in his basket. I went for an afternoon nap myself and when I woke up, he was dead! I took the body to the vet and demanded an autopsy."

  "Have you had the result?"

  "Not yet. The stupid vet tried to tell me it was probably the result of overeating and not enough exercise."

  "How old was Pooky?"

  "Nearly twelve years."

  "It's a good age for a dog."

  "Nonsense. He had years left in him."

  "Please sit down and let me make you a cup of tea," urged Toni. "You've had a bad shock."

  Without waiting for an answer, Toni found the kitchen and made a cup of strong sweet tea and took it back to Carrie. Carrie swallowed a gulp of tea and then said gruffly, "You're a kind girl. No one else seems to care. They said that my Pooky fouled the village green."

  "If your dog was poisoned, who could have done it?"

  "Any one of them could have done it. This was a nice village. Oh, we were all fed up with Sunday snooping around but it drew us closer together. While we had our little rows now and then, we were a close-knit community. Even Miriam fitted in. We let her play lady of the manor because she did a lot for the village. For a while, everything was back to normal because people were sure Tom Courtney had done it, but now it seems as if he couldn't and we have a murderer amongst us."

  "Who do you think could have killed Sunday? I mean, perhaps it might turn out to be the same person who killed your dog."

  Carrie looked steadily at Toni for a long moment, her eyes red-rimmed with weeping. "I'll tell you," she said at last. "It was the vicar, Giles Timson."

  "But why?"

  "He wouldn't let me bring Pooky to church. 'What about all things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small?' I asked him. And he sneered at me and said God created things like pythons and cockroaches. Now, would I want any of those in the church? And Pooky bit his hand. And you should have seen the evil look he gave me. Besides"--she lowered her voice--"I saw his wife in a coffee shop in Mircester with John Sunday and she was crying as if he were breaking up with her."

  Probably the photograph, thought Toni. "Here is my card," said Toni. "Phone me the minute you get the result of the autopsy."

  Agatha found Penelope in the churchyard, clearing grass and long weeds away from the base of some of the old tombstones. She was wearing a pink straw hat with a wide brim and with pink-and-white dotted net wrapped around the crown.

  "Splendid hat," commented Agatha.

  "Oh, this." Penelope straightened up and pushed it to the back of her head. "I only use it for gardening. I hate it. I bought it to wear at someone's wedding, someone I really didn't like, so I never felt again like wearing this hat for dressing up. Silly, I know. Did you want something?"

  Toni had phoned Agatha while Agatha had been searching around the vicarage for Penelope
.

  "I heard there was a young man staying here with May Dinwoody. Someone pushed him into the pond last night."

  "Simon? Such a nice young man. Why would anyone do that? Probably just a joke." She lowered her voice. "There are people in this village who drink too much."

  "Or someone who thought he could not swim," said Agatha. "What I really wanted to ask you was this. Look, it seems you were once seen in a cafe in Mircester with Sunday. Was it about that photo? What did he really want? Money? Tell the truth this time. He had that photo, didn't he?"

  "Yes, but he didn't want money. Giles had bought a plot of land outside the village some time ago. He said when he retired, we could build a house there. I didn't want to go on living in the village. I'm a town person myself."

  "Which town?"

  "I'm from Moreton-in-Marsh originally."

  Hardly a buzzing metropolis, thought Agatha.

  "So what did Sunday want? The building plot?"

  "Yes, he wanted me to persuade Giles to sell it to him or he would send that photo to Giles."

  "When was this?"

  "A week before the murder."

  "Why on earth would he want to live in Odley Cruesis?" asked Agatha.

  "I think," said Penelope, passing an earthy hand over her face and leaving streaks, "that he wanted to build up a little microcosm of power. He liked bullying people."

  "So what did you do?"

  "I invited him to tea and let him ask Giles if he could buy the plot. Giles refused point-blank. He asked Giles if he had a happy marriage. Giles gave him a curt yes, and John laughed and said, 'Enjoy it while it lasts.'

  "I actually fantasised about killing him. That was when I told Giles about the photo. Do you really need to find out who did this murder? Are you sure it wasn't Tom Courtney?"

  "Absolutely sure. And look at it this way. If the murderer is never found, you'll all go on suspecting each other and this village will never be the same again. If it ever was much to write home about in the first place."

  "Oh, it was lovely and peaceful and we all got along. Boring at times, of course." Penelope took off the offending hat and put it on the head of a stone angel. "And one could always go into Mircester for some culture. Did you see the local company's production of The Marriage of Figaro last year?"