by M C Beaton
“How did you know?” asked Carroll.
“I don’t know,” said Agatha wretchedly. “It was something Charles said about them all being mad. He was joking. But in that moment, I realized that Daisy was unbalanced.”
“In your statement about Mrs. Frances Juddle’s death,” said Carroll, “you said her cat flew at you. So why should you think that Daisy was the murderess?”
“Just intuition,” said Agatha miserably. “Will she live?”
“She’s dead,” said Jimmy.
Agatha put her hands up to her face. “I forgot about the rolling-pin. That’s why she was desperate to get down to the garden. She buried the rolling-pin there.”
“Wait a minute.” They both left the room.
Agatha’s knees were trembling. She put her hands on her knees.
After some time they came back. “She didn’t say exactly where she had buried the rolling-pin?” asked Carroll.
“Only that it was in the hotel garden,” said Agatha.
“We’ll find it. Now let’s go over it again. By the way, whatever cat you have in your room, it does not belong to the late Mrs. Juddle.”
“What! Are you sure?”
“Cliff has the cat. We went to see him yesterday morning for another interview. He had the cat with him. So let’s have it all from the beginning again.”
At last Agatha was free to go. “I’ll be leaving in the morning,” she said.
“I must ask you to be here for the coroner’s inquest next week,” said Jimmy. “You will be told of the time and place.”
“I’ll never get out of here,” said Agatha bitterly.
“Leave us a minute,” said Jimmy to Carroll.
When they were alone, Jimmy said quietly, “Sit down, Agatha.”
Agatha sat down, her eyes filling with tears.
“If it hadn’t been for you, we might not have got her,” said Jimmy. “The reason I want to speak to you is I have enough affection left for you to warn you.”
Agatha took a Kleenex out and dried her eyes. “About what?”
“About Sir Charles.”
“What about him?” asked Agatha, turning pink.
“I assume that the fact he is a baronet and younger than you might have gone to your head, Agatha, but if you have any thoughts of becoming Lady Fraith, I would forget it.”
“I never thought for a moment—”
“Sir Charles said you were nothing more than casual friends who had an occasional fling. He said it meant nothing. I do not belong in your world, Agatha. I do not believe in casual sex.”
“Neither do I, Jimmy.”
“Then you are a sad case. It was definitely casual to him and he made no bones about it.”
Agatha stood up. “I would like to leave.”
He nodded and she went out.
Charles was sitting waiting for her. “I want a word with you,” said Agatha grimly. “Let’s walk.”
When they were outside the police station, Charles said with attempted cheerfulness, “No press yet. But they’ll be all over the place soon.”
“Charles, was it necessary for you to make me feel even more like a tart by telling them I meant nothing to you?”
“I didn’t exactly say that. Your inspector looked so low and I thought I had messed up your life. He’s a really decent chap and you could do much worse. I was only trying to help.”
“Listen, you moron, such as Jimmy Jessop would never even look at a woman who went in for casual sex.”
“Doesn’t he know it’s the nineties?”
“Oh, Charles. You are a pig.”
He tucked her arm in his. “Don’t let’s quarrel. How late is it? I suppose the dining-room at the hotel’s closed. Oh, look, there’s a fish-and-chip shop.”
They ate fish and chips on the road back to the hotel.
Then they went into the hotel.
“No, proper names are not allowed” came Harry’s voice from the lounge. “You know that, Jennifer.”
“They’re still playing Scrabble,” marvelled Agatha. “People get murdered, people fall out of windows, and they still play Scrabble. Oh, by the way, would you believe it, I’ve got the wrong cat.”
“What?”
“Scrabble isn’t Francie’s cat.”
“Then maybe Daisy came to your room to do you wrong. Animals sense danger.”
Mr. Martin approached them. “This is terrible, terrible,” he said. “We’re ruined.”
“Oh, let the press in,” said Agatha wearily. “They’ll drink a lot and spend a lot. And when the Season starts, you’ll have a full house, People are very ghoulish. Your hotel will be famous.”
“But our residents won’t like the press here.”
“There’s only the three of them left,” said Charles. “Why shouldn’t you make some money out of all this tragedy? The press are big spenders. They’ll drink your bar dry.”
Mr. Martin brightened. “I suppose they won’t be here that long.”
“Exactly,” said Agatha.
She and Charles went upstairs.
“No funny business tonight,” said Agatha severely.
“You do have a way with words, Aggie,” said Charles.
But Agatha Raisin felt rather peeved when he finally got into bed and started to read one of her paperbacks and was still reading when she went to sleep.
By morning, before they left the hotel, there was a telephone call from the police telling them that the inquest would be on Wednesday at the coroner’s court at ten in the morning.
“Cheer up, Aggie,” said Charles as they drove out of Wyckhadden, “you’ll only need to see the wretched place one more time.”
Agatha tried very hard on the road home to banish thoughts of James Lacey from her mind. But she imagined over and over again the pair of them sitting in some Cotswold restaurant while she told her story.
Finally Charles parked outside her cottage and helped her in with her suitcase and cat box.
“I won’t stay, Aggie. I’ll call round next Wednesday about six-thirty in the morning and pick you up for the inquest. Or, if you like, we could go down the night before.”
Agatha repressed a shudder. “No, I don’t mind an early start.”
When Charles had left, she let the cat out of its box. To her relief her other two cats, Boswell and Hodge, seemed to accept the newcomer. She fed them and turned them out into the garden.
Then she picked up the phone and called James Lacey. There was no reply, nor had his car been outside his house.
She walked along to the vicarage. “Oh, good, you’re back,” said Mrs. Bloxby. She called to her husband, “Agatha’s back.”
The vicar rose and bolted out of the door. “Going to the church,” he called.
“Come in,” said Mrs. Bloxby, “and sit down. It’s all over the newspapers.”
“Do they say it was me who found out the murderess?” asked Agatha.
“No, they say something about the hotel manager having overheard Daisy Jones telling one of the residents she had done it. Was it you? How clever. Tell me about it.”
So Agatha told her story and as she talked in the quiet calm of the vicarage living-room, it all began to seem very strange and far away.
“And what about your inspector? You haven’t mentioned him.”
“It’s all off. He found me in bed with Charles.”
“How awful. But you are not heart-broken.”
“Just very ashamed. Jimmy’s a good man. I regret losing him. I could have made it work.”
“But you don’t love him, and if you married him, you would have to live in Wyckhadden.”
“God forbid. I’ve never known a place with such changes in weather. There’ll probably be a tornado on the day of the inquest.”
“We had bad weather here. Terrible floods. The rescue boats were out in the streets of Evesham and even Moreton-on-Marsh was flooded.”
“So where’s James?” asked Agatha abruptly.
“He left his key w
ith Fred Griggs.” Fred Griggs was the village policeman. “He told Fred he was going to stay with some people in Sussex.”
“So he’ll be back soon?”
“It seems like that.”
So Agatha watched and waited, hoping always to see James Lacey’s car drive up to his cottage.
James arrived home late on the evening before the inquest. He did his laundry and then packed his suitcase again. He had made arrangements to go to Greece. He thought briefly of calling on Agatha in the morning to say goodbye. But he didn’t want to hear her burbling on about her inspector.
The sound of a car stopping outside Agatha’s cottage early in the morning awoke him. He struggled out of bed and went to the side window on the half-landing and looked down at the entrance to Agatha’s cottage. She emerged with Charles. They got in Charles’s car. They looked very happy.
He went back to bed.
He was part of Agatha Raisin’s past now, so he would make damn sure she stayed part of his.
The inquest was less harrowing than Agatha had imagined. She and Charles told their stories.
The press were waiting outside. But Agatha had been too subdued by the sight of Jimmy in the court to grab her moment of glory. She got in Charles’s car, deaf to the questions and ignoring the flashes going off in her face.
“Goodbye forever,” she said as Charles drove out of the town.
TEN
THREE months later, Agatha Raisin stood behind the tombola stand at a fund-raising venture for Save the Children. It was a worthy cause and she had worked hard on the organizing committee to make the fair a success. She felt her eyes should now look out on the world with the same quiet glow of serenity in them that she saw in Mrs. Bloxby’s eyes. She took out her compact and looked in the little mirror. A pair of bearlike eyes stared bleakly back at her.
James had gone to Greece and Agatha had to admit to herself that she was bored. “I bought three tickets and all I got was a tin of sardines,” grumbled old Mrs. Boggle.
“With tickets at twenty pee each, you got a bargain,” snapped Agatha.
“I know what it is,” said Mrs. Boggle, “you’re keeping all the best prizes for yourself.” Agatha ignored her and sold more tickets. To her delight and under the envious eyes of Mrs. Boggle, the next two people won, respectively, a bottle of whisky and a hamper of selected cheeses. Mr. Boggle bought another ticket. She won a bottle of shampoo. “There you are,” said Agatha brightly. “You can’t complain about that.” But of course Mrs. Boggle did, saying she had wanted the whisky. The day wore on. The jingly-jangly music of the morris dances began to get on Agatha’s nerves.
She was restless and wanted some excitement. She had phoned Charles, but he had cheerfully said he was busy and Agatha knew that “busy” with Charles meant he was in pursuit of some female.
On this sunny day, with bunting fluttering in the lightest of breezes, her thoughts turned again to Jimmy. Her cottage at night no longer seemed a sanctuary, a refuge, but lonely and boring, with only the television for company. Mrs. Bloxby had tried to help the “new” Agatha to sainthood by suggesting that their next move would be to help out at a charity fete in Long-borough.
If I had married Jimmy, thought Agatha wistfully, I would be part of a pair, I would be Mrs. Jessop. The police had returned the love potion and hair restorer. Agatha had sent them both to a lab in Birmingham for analysis. The love potion turned out to be aniseed-flavoured water and the hair restorer was a bottle of commercial stuff, available on the market for twenty-five pounds. All Francie had done was remove the label. But it meant that no magic had made Jimmy fall for her. He was not like James Lacey, bad-tempered and chilly, or Charles, fickle and amoral. He was a decent man and he had loved her and he had given her his ring.
Wyckhadden had been all right, thought Agatha, automatically selling tickets and smiling and handing out prizes. It was only the murders and the dreadful weather which had made it seem so awful.
And then she began to wonder if she could get Jimmy back. She could explain about Charles, explain that she had been upset and had drunk too much. He would give her that warm smile of his and she would feel secure. She began to forget that stab of relief she had experienced when she had known that the engagement was over.
Why not go back to Wyckhadden and just see if she could talk to him?
The idea of taking action, some action, any action began to get a grip of Agatha.
She began to feel happy in a way that no amount of good works had managed to make her feel.
At the end of the day, she began to help clear up. Mrs. Bloxby, looking with some surprise at Agatha’s happy face, thought that perhaps Agatha really was meant for good works.
That was until Agatha told her she planned to go back to Wyckhadden and see Jimmy. Mrs. Bloxby was about to protest that Agatha would probably only meet with rejection, Mrs. Bloxby being more used to the Jimmy Jessops of this world—that is, ordinary decent people—than Agatha, but decided against it. Perhaps Jimmy might turn out to be the man for Agatha after all. She had only Agatha’s word for it that he was an ordinary decent man. And the world was full of women who had married for companionship and security, so why not Agatha? So she fought down the voice of her conscience that was telling her that Agatha Raisin would be miserable with less, and wished her luck.
Agatha did not immediately dash off. She went to the beautician’s and had a facial and her eyebrows shaped. Then the hairdresser’s, then into a new boutique beside the hairdresser’s in Evesham to choose something new. She hesitated between selecting something pretty and feminine or something sharp and businesslike. At last she bought a biscuit-coloured linen suit and a soft, pale yellow silk blouse to go with it. Then she drove back to Carsely and called round to see her cleaner, Doris Simpson, to tell her that she was going away again, but just for a few days, and that there was now an extra cat to feed.
Feeling more and more confident, she had a good night’s sleep and set out on the long road to Wyckhadden early the following morning.
As she drove into Wyckhadden past neat little villas and bungalows on the outskirts, she looked at them with new eyes. She could live a life in one of those, mowing the lawn and polishing the car.
She drove straight to the Garden Hotel. The weather was warm on the beach and the kiosks in the pier were open. The sea, which had looked so threatening in the winter, was tamed into calm deep blue. A ship puffed along the line of the horizon, looking like a child’s toy.
In the hotel, there was now a glamorous receptionist behind the desk and guests were coming and going.
The receptionist smiled and said Agatha was lucky. They had received a cancellation that morning. There was a smart young foreign porter in new hotel livery to carry her bag up to her room. The old hotel had an air of life and prosperity. Agatha wondered whether Harry, Jennifer and Mary were still in residence or if the big influx of new guests had driven them away. But then, they had said they were used to visitors.
Agatha picked up the phone and got through to the police station. “Wyckhadden police” came the voice of the desk sergeant. “I would like to speak to Inspector Jessop,” said Agatha.
“Yes. May I ask who’s calling?”
“Agatha Raisin.”
“He’s out on a case,” said the desk sergeant sharply.
“When is he due back?”
“We don’t know. Not for a long time.”
“I am staying at the Garden Hotel. Would you ask him to phone me?”
“If I see him,” said the desk sergeant ungraciously and replaced the receiver.
She changed into the new linen suit and blouse and walked down to the hall. She asked for Mr. Martin.
Mr. Martin came out of his office and looked at her like the Ancient Mariner spotting the albatross. “Oh, dear … I mean, how nice to see you again.”
“I wondered if Miss Stobbs, Miss Dulsey and Mr. Berry were still in residence.”
“Yes, they are.” He looked at the line of ke
ys behind the desk. “They all appear to be out at the moment. Er, will you be staying long?”
“A couple of days,” said Agatha.
Agatha went out into the sunshine and walked along the pier. She wished she had brought her coat, for although the sun was warm, the sea breeze was somewhat chilly. She then saw that among the souvenir kiosks, there was a new booth: MADAM MYSTIC, FORTUNE-TELLER.
May as well pass the time until I figure out what to do, thought Agatha.
Madam Mystic was dressed in a long black robe and wore a turban on her head.
“Sit down,” she said. “Your fortune will cost you ten pounds.”
“Right.”
“Money now.”
Agatha paid over a ten-pound note.
“Let me see your hands,” said Madam Mystic.
Agatha held out her hands. “You are a healthy, determined woman with a lot of success and money in her life, but not love.”
“And will I get any?” asked Agatha, wondering, why did I come to this charlatan?
“Perhaps, but you must go to look for it. You live in a small place where nothing happens.”
That’s what you think, thought Agatha.
“The love of your life is in Norfolk. He is tall with fair hair. He is a widower. You must go in search of him.”
“Norfolk’s a big county. Where? North, south, east or west?”
“You drive to Norfolk and something will guide you.”
She fell silent.
“Anything else?”
“You must not stay in Wyckhadden. Forget what brought you here and go home.”
“What? Not to Norfolk?”
“You will go there eventually. I cannot see any more.”
I must stop wasting money, Agatha chided herself. She walked out into the sunshine.
And there she saw Harry Berry, leaning on the rail of the pier watching some anglers.
Agatha went up to him. “Hullo, Harry.”
He turned round. “Oh, it’s you,” he said. “What brings you back?”
“I was at a loose end. I thought I would look up Jimmy Jessop.”
Harry eyes shone briefly with amusement.
