Agatha Raisin and the Busy Body ar-21

by M C Beaton

  Agatha had seen it in an attempt to widen her horizons but had disliked it so much that she put it down to her tin ear. She didn't know it had truly been dreadful, mainly because the role of Cherubino had been taken by the local newspaper editor's wife, which had ensured that the production received a glowing review despite the fact that Cherubino had a voice that could strip lead off a church roof.

  "Yes," said Agatha.

  "So uplifting."

  "Just so. But we are getting away from the main subject. Think back to the evening Sunday was murdered. Are you absolutely sure no one left the room apart from Miriam and Miss Simms?"

  "No one I can remember. But there was such a lot of smoke from the fire and I had to go out at one point to get the brandy."

  "Neither Tilly Glossop nor Carrie Brother attended."

  "Penelope!" shouted a voice from the vicarage.

  "My husband. I must go." Penelope fled, leaving her hat on top of the angel.

  To his surprise, Patrick found that Tilly Glossop was actually flirting with him. When she served him a mug of coffee, she stretched round him, leaning her heavy breast against his shoulder. He could not quite remember any female flirting with him during his last twenty years when his face had settled into its present lugubrious lines, but he smiled and tried to look flattered.

  "So nice to have a man in the house," said Tilly as she jangled over the coffee table. She had multiple bracelets on her thick wrists and chains with dangling bobbly objects around her neck. She was wearing a long, floating gown of some sort of chiffon material, semitransparent, but enough to show she was wearing a formidable brassiere underneath and a pair of purple French knickers. "Do try one of my cakes."

  "We're still interested in the Sunday murder," said Patrick. "You, having been closest to him, might have heard that someone was threatening him."

  Patrick had seen a woman's lips pout before, but Tilly's whole face seemed to pout, fat and wrinkles all creased forward.

  "Nobody liked him much," she said, plumping herself down on the sofa next to Patrick and releasing a cloud of scent.

  "But you were heard to quarrel."

  "Oh, that was because I told him I had finished with him," said Tilly. "He was amusing for a time, but that's me--easy come, easy go."

  How did she do it? wondered Patrick. She'd need to be the last woman on earth for me to ever dream of fancying her. "I thought it was the other way round," he ventured.

  "Then you were wrong. Most people in the village had it in for him. But the atmosphere of the village had changed before he came."

  "How? Why?"

  "This isn't an Agatha Christie-type village with some lord or some retired colonel at the head of the hierarchy, with the rest of us peasants waiting for an invitation to some fete in the manor grounds. We're all pretty equal. Old George Briggs used to own the manor, but he kept himself to himself. Then Miriam came and wanted to play lady of the village. It upset the balance, see? So folks were already edgy when Sunday came on the scene. Although there was all that fuss about the special ramp for the disabled at the manor and that turned her against him, I think she encouraged his petty little vendettas. She clashed with Giles, the vicar, a lot. She said the church was too high, all bells and smells, and the only reason for it was because he liked dressing up in all those fancy robes. But she did contribute to the church, although I'd swear that man hated her. Hell of a temper."

  Patrick wondered if all this was one hell of a red herring. "What about that photograph of you and the mayor? You must know who took it."

  "It was Sunday. Too many complaints were coming in against him, and the mayor had been swearing to do something about it."

  "So you set him up!"

  "Not me. I told Sunday I was going to have a little fling with him when the mayor's missus was away, that was all. You can't blame me."

  Her cloying scent and proximity were beginning to make him feel queasy. "Someone must be living in this village who is a murderer," he persevered. "There was that attack on Mrs. Raisin's friend, Roy Silver. It could have killed him if it hadn't turned out he had a hard head."

  "I don't think that was attempted murder," said Tilly. "Probably someone just got fed up with this outside nosy parker. Can't we talk about something else?" She leaned against him.

  Patrick got abruptly to his feet. "Thank you for your time. I must be on my way."

  He moved rapidly for such a big man and before plump Tilly could struggle out of the depths of the sofa, she heard the front door slam behind him.

  Patrick, Toni and Agatha met up on the village green. Only one of them had found out anything and that was that Tilly had told Sunday about her proposed fling with the mayor. Suddenly a clod of earth struck Agatha on the cheek. She swung round in a rage. She had not noticed any teenagers in the village before, but now there was a group of them, seizing stones and tussocks of earth and throwing them viciously, screaming, "Get out! You ain't wanted here!"

  They ran to their cars and met up again at the office. "Do we report them to the police?" asked Toni.

  "I don't think we should," said Agatha. "But as I ran to the car, I saw Giles, the vicar, looking out of the vicarage window. He made no move to run out and stop those boys. Well, let's get on with our other cases and forget Sunday for a bit. How are you getting on, Simon?"

  Simon swung round in his chair. "I've printed out all my notes. You told me to put in everything, no matter how small."

  "Great. I'll go over them later. No one is now paying us to find out who murdered Sunday, so we all need to begin to concentrate on our paying clients."

  _______

  When Agatha returned to her cottage that evening, she found Charles waiting for her. "I've got something to report," he said.

  "About Sunday?"

  "Forget Sunday. I was driving through Moreton-in-Marsh and who should I see walking boldly along the street but Dan Palmer?"

  "I wonder what he's doing there?"

  "Let's just hope he isn't looking for revenge. I heard through my contacts that he'd lost his job. I thought I'd keep you company just to be sure. How's the Sunday business going anyway?"

  Agatha gave him the latest news. She ended with "I think this is one case that's never going to be solved."

  Dan Palmer craved a drink. But he promised himself one later in the day, just one. He had taken notes of Agatha's cases with him before he had left the newspaper office and found the unsolved case of John Sunday. It was then he had a great idea. If he could solve the case, then he would set himself up as a private detective in competition with Agatha Raisin. He knew if he stayed sober, he could beat her hands down because he was prepared to use some dirty tricks that she probably wouldn't even contemplate.

  He decided the best time would be around ten o'clock in the evening. He had a high-powered listening device. All he had to do was wait until everything was quiet and listen in to various conversations in the cottages. An old police contact had told him that the police were sure the murderer was one of the villagers.

  He checked into a motel on the outskirts of Mircester on the ring road. There was no minibar in the room. He drove to a roadside restaurant and ate an all-day breakfast and felt better, although there was still a great hole inside him needing to be filled with alcohol. Just one drink wouldn't hurt.

  At a pub in Mircester, he confined himself to two large vodkas. With a great effort, he got off the bar stool and back to his car, where he switched on the overhead light and studied an ordnance survey map until he located the road to Odley Cruesis.

  The village was dark and silent. The little cottages around the green seemed to be crouching there. He drove out of the village and parked his car under a large horse chestnut tree on the crest of a hill. The sky was overcast. Clutching his listening device, which had cost him a fortune but had been the source of many scoops, he cautiously made his way back to the churchyard on foot, crouched behind a large tombstone, switched on the device and pointed it at the vicarage.


  A man's voice came over, loud and clear. He cursed and turned down the sound so that only he could hear it. Must be the vicar. "I'm off to bed," he said. "Coming?"

  "In a minute, dear," came a woman's voice. "Just finishing the dishes."

  And that was that.

  Great, just great, he thought. Let's try somewhere else. He was wearing dark clothes with a dark wool hat pulled down over his eyes. The evening was warm and humid and he was beginning to sweat. He emerged cautiously from behind his tombstone and then let out a scream. A tall hatted figure was staring down at him.

  By the time he had recovered enough to see it was a stone angel with a hat on top, the vicarage door had opened and a tremulous woman's voice demanded, "Anyone there?"

  He crouched down again, his heart thudding until she closed the door. He crept off. Down in the village, lights were shining from a tall building. He made his way there. A little road leading to the building had a sign saying Mill House Lane.

  Crouching in bushes by the side of the pond, he switched on the powerful listening device. "I wish that young man hadn't left," said a woman's voice. "He was so nice. I'm sorry he turned out to be a snoop. The rent made such a difference. It's a bit hard to make ends meet these days and--"

  A savage blow struck Dan in the back of the neck. He fell forwards. The listening device was picked up and thrown into the golden ripples of the moonlit pond.

  Two days later, when Agatha was about to shut up the office for the evening, she received a visit from a Mrs. Ruby Palmer.

  She was a small, crushed-looking woman with mousy brown hair in tight permed curls. Her weak eyes blinked rapidly. She was wearing a droopy green cardigan over a cotton blouse of violent-coloured zigzags and a long white cotton skirt.

  "I'm Dan's wife," she said.

  "You mean Dan Palmer? I'm sorry, Mrs. Palmer, but if you've come to give me a row about your husband losing his job, forget it."

  "No, it's not that. You are a detective?"

  "That's what it says on the door."

  "I need your help. Dan's gone missing."

  "He did drink a lot, Mrs. Palmer. Maybe he's sleeping it off somewhere."

  "It's not that. He had this idea of outdoing you as a detective. He said he was going to go to that village and find that murderer. You see, he had this illegal listening device. The newspaper didn't know about it. You can stand outside people's houses and hear what they are saying. I would like to employ you to find him. Not that I miss him, mind you, because he was really nasty when he had taken drink. But he recently inherited a good bit of money from an uncle. He paid me only a little housekeeping money. If anything's happened to him, I won't get the money until they find his body. I filed a missing person's report with the police in Hackney but they weren't much interested."

  "All right," said Agatha. "I won't charge you unless I find him. Have you a card?"

  Ruby produced a card from her shabby handbag. "Are you staying in Mircester?"

  "No, I'm driving back to Hackney."

  "That's quite a drive."

  "I'm used to it. Dan was usually too drunk to drive."

  "What kind of car does he drive?"

  "An old Volvo."

  "Here's a piece of paper. Write down the registration number. Good. I'll be in touch as soon as I find out anything."

  When she had gone, Agatha began to phone round to all the hotels in the neighbourhood, at last hitting on the motel where Dan Palmer had last stayed. The desk clerk said he had not returned and if he was not back by the following day, they were going to pack up his things and leave them in the hotel storage room.

  Agatha introduced herself and told them to leave the room as it could be a police matter.

  She then phoned Simon and asked him if he would like to work late. "I don't want to call the police in at this juncture because Palmer is such a drunk, he may have forgotten which hotel he was staying at. I want you to go and park outside and wait and see if he returns. Give it until about midnight.

  "I'll stay here and start to phone round the pubs. Find out if he had a minibar in his room and then phone me back. If he didn't, I'm sure he would be feeling thirsty."

  After half an hour, Simon phoned back to say there was no minibar.

  Agatha diligently began to phone round all the pubs in and around Mircester, but Dan Palmer could have passed in any crowd unnoticed. She bit her thumb in vexation. If he did not show up that evening, then she really would have to tell the police what he had been up to.

  By midnight, Simon called to say there was no sign of the missing reporter.

  Reluctantly, Agatha phoned Bill Wong at his home, to be told by his mother that Bill was working nights.

  She locked up the office and made her way to police headquarters and asked for Bill, saying she had vital information in a murder case.

  Bill came out and led her through into an interview room. It was more like a hotel lounge with comfortable chairs and magazines.

  "Have you gone people friendly?" asked Agatha, looking around.

  "We needed somewhere comfortable for the rape victims, abused children, things like that. So, out with it. What's going on?"

  Agatha described everything Ruby had told her. Bill took rapid notes. Then he said, "You look worn out. Leave this to us."

  "But keep in touch with me," said Agatha. "After all, you'd never have known if I hadn't told you."

  "I promise."

  Chapter Ten

  The next morning Agatha said to Simon and Toni, "You've heard all about how Dan Palmer is missing. I want you both to go to that wretched village and start to search. You won't be in any danger because the place will be crawling with police."

  Agatha did not know that Wilkes had turned down flat any idea of a search. "He's a reporter and a drunk and a grown man," Wilkes had said. "I'm not wasting the manpower."

  So when Toni and Simon arrived, it was to find that there was not one policeman in sight. "Well, it's a bright sunny day," said Simon. "They'll hardly attack us during daylight. Let's start looking. We need to find the car first."

  But there was no sign of Palmer's Volvo either in or around the village.

  "Let's go and speak to May Dinwoody," suggested Simon. "I know she was angry with me, but I think she'll still have a soft spot for me and might have seen something."

  The lane to the mill house was still damp as it was shadowed by trees and had not dried up after the recent rain. "Look," said Toni, "lots of footprints in the mud here. The police should be along taking casts." They sidestepped the footprints and went to the mill house, but there was no answer to May's doorbell.

  "I'm hot and hungry," said Simon. "What if we buy some lunch and drive up out of the village and find a pleasant place for a picnic?"

  "But not at the local store," said Toni. "I can't bear any more of their hate. You said they wouldn't attack us in daylight, but remember those kids throwing clods of earth at us."

  "School's in so we should be safe. But there's a shop at a garage out in the ring road. We'll get some stuff there."

  Armed with sandwiches and soft drinks, they drove back through the village and up to the top of a hill where there was a bench overlooking a hay field.

  The hay had been bundled up into great round bales. "How peaceful and rural it all is," said Toni as a tractor made its way across the field, picking up each bale with a spear mounted at the front and heading back to the barn.

  "They have to get the spear right in the middle of the bale," said Simon. "If it scrapes against the ground, it can foul the whole thing up. Have a salmon sandwich."

  "Thanks. Here comes the tractor again."

  The tractor chugged back. The spear was thrust into the next bale. Simon stared. Something black, which yet glinted red in the sunlight, was oozing out from the bale. He vaulted the fence, crying, "Stop! Stop!"

  The tractor driver could not hear him above the noise of the engine but saw Simon shouting and yelling as he raced across the field.

  He s
witched off the engine and asked truculently, "What's up with ye?"

  "There's blood coming out of that bale," gasped Simon.

  "So what? Probably a fox or rabbit or something."

  "Don't move that bale another inch. I'm calling the police."

  "I've already phoned them," said Toni, joining him. "Call Agatha."

  A tall man in a blue pen-necked shirt and jeans strode rapidly across the field. "Here's the boss," said the tractor driver with gloomy relish. "You're for it now."

  "I'm Gerald Fairfield, the farmer," said the man. "What's up, Andy?"

  "This 'ere precious pair's screaming there's blood coming out of the bale."

  "So it's some animal or other," said Gerald impatiently.

  Toni rapidly explained about the missing journalist.

  Despite his shock, Simon noticed the farmer was quite handsome. His angry face softened as he looked at Toni as she blurted out the explanation about the missing reporter.

  "Well, young lady," he said. "We'll wait until the police get here, but I think you'll find you've just made great fools of yourselves."

  Bill Wong was the first to arrive, followed by two policemen. He studied the bale and then said, "We've got to wait for SOCO to arrive."

  "You're surely not taking this seriously," protested Gerald.

  "Very seriously," said Bill. "Here come the Scenes of Crimes Operatives. I suggest we all back off before we're accused of compromising what may be a murder scene."

  They all retreated to the edge of the field as the white-coated figures advanced with their equipment. Simon found a pair of binoculars in his car and studied the scene. The wire around the bale was cut and SOCO began its search.

  Out of the hay finally tumbled a crumpled body.

  Gerald and Andy were standing with Simon and Toni and the waiting police.