by M C Beaton
She was almost sorry when the car was pronounced ready. “Seriously, Charles,” she said as he drove off, “how did you get to be so mean? It’s not as if you’re short of a bob.”
“I suppose it all started with death duties,” said Charles. “And my father had let the land go to rack and ruin. The farms weren’t paying. It was a hard fight to turn things around, getting a good stockbroker so that money could make money. I couldn’t bear to lose the house and land. I got used to economizing on everything I could and the habit’s stuck, I’m afraid. I even took a diploma in agriculture and a course in bookkeeping so I could do the accounts and save the expense of an accountant. For a while I even opened the house to the public.”
“Don’t want to run down your home,” said Agatha. “But it’s a great Victorian pile, hardly an architectural gem.”
“I invented a ghost,” said Charles. “I engineered an occasion for dry ice to leak out through the walls of the library. Gave the visitors no end of a thrill. They used to come in coach-loads. But the minute I got solvent, I stopped the house tours. That stock-broker is a whiz. He made me a fortune.”
“Mine’s pretty good, too,” said Agatha, and so they talked comfortably about stocks and shares until they reached the outskirts of Worcester. “We may not be lucky enough to find him at home this time,” said Agatha.
And this proved to be the case. No answer to the doorbell, but at least the Neighbourhood Watch woman was nowhere in sight.
“Let’s try next door,” said Charles. “I saw a curtain twitch.”
“No, let’s not,” said Agatha hurriedly. “The neighbour probably last saw us being carted off by the police. I saw a newspaper shop just outside the housing estate. They might know where he is. We forgot to ask him if he worked at anything.”
The Pakistani shopkeeper volunteered the information that Mr. Dewey kept an antique shop in The Shambles opposite the back of Marks & Spencer in the centre of Worcester, and so they drove into the main car-park by the river, where swans sailed majestically up and down. The rain was quite heavy now. Charles produced a large golf umbrella from the boot of the car and under its shelter they walked up and across the main street and through to The Shambles.
It turned out to be a very small shop selling nothing but antique dolls. They stood for a moment looking in the window. “There’s something scary about old dolls, I always think,” said Charles. “All those watching eyes. I sometimes think a bit of the personality of each child who loved them is still there inside them.”
They entered the dark shop and walked in. Mr. John Dewey was sitting at a small table at the back of the shop. He rose to meet them. “Oh, it’s you again,” he said.
“I hope you got my cheque,” said Agatha.
“Yes, thanks.”
“Our conversation was interrupted.”
“I can’t think of anything else to tell you. Do you mind if I go on working?”
He sat down at the table and picked up a large Edwardian doll with only one blue eye. “Just getting a new eye for her,” he said. He had a tray of glass eyes in front of him. “It’s a matter of getting just the right colour and the right size,” he said.
“Ah, perhaps this.” He picked out an eye and carried it to the window. “Mmm, I think this will do.” He returned and sat down and held the doll on his lap. “Soon have you seeing the world again,” he said. With one deft movement he removed the head. “I fix it from the inside,” he said, looking up at them.
He looked so small and neat and absorbed in his work that Agatha blurted out, “How could you marry someone like Melissa?”
“I sometimes ask myself that,” he said. “I’d never bothered much about the ladies before. But then she seemed to have such a knowledge of antique dolls. Wait, I’ll show you something.” He put down the doll he was working on and went into the back shop.
“He’s weird,” muttered Agatha. “If he comes back swinging a hammer, run for it.”
“What made you think of a hammer?” asked Charles. “They never found a weapon.”
“I always thought of a hammer, I don’t know why.” Mr. Dewey came back carrying a doll. “This is my favourite. Eighteenth-century. Do you notice these old dolls often have human faces?”
The doll had a leather face and green eyes. The hair was powdered and the dress was panniered silk. Agatha looked at it uneasily. She thought the doll had a mocking, knowing look. “What’s this doll got to do with Melissa?”
“Everything. We had been talking in the shop for a few weeks and then we occasionally had lunch, always talking about dolls. Then she said she had two tickets to a fancy dress ball in the town hall and would I come? I was very shy and said I didn’t dance, but she said it would be fun to dress up and watch the costumes.”
“What did you go as?” asked Agatha. “I went as Blackbeard, the pirate,” he said. Agatha tried not to laugh, he looked so neat and prim, cradling the doll in his arms. “I said I would meet her there. It’s only a short walk from here to the town hall. I must say, I felt quite different in my costume. I I even swaggered a bit. When I got there I looked around for her and what I saw first was not Melissa but this doll, my precious. She had copied this gown and had her hair powdered. I fell in love on the spot. I was dazed. I asked her to marry me before the evening was over.” He sighed.
“And how did the marriage break down?”
“As soon as we were wed, she stopped talking about dolls, showed no interest in them. And she wouldn’t ever wear the dress again. I asked her to wear it in the house, just for me, but she wouldn’t. She seemed to have become a different person, hard and brittle. I immersed myself in my work. But I wanted to save our marriage. It had been dragging on in a terrible way for over three years. I pleaded with her one more time to wear the dress and she said, ‘That’s it!” and she got a pair of kitchen scissors and she said she was going to cut my favourite doll to ribbons.
“My heart was beating fit to burst but I forced myself to speak in a calm and reasonable voice. I told her she didn’t have a key to the shop, that the metal shutters were down over the window and door and the burglar alarm set. I told her I would never ask her to wear the dress again. I told her to sit and I would fix her a drink. She drank a lot. I said I would mix her a special cocktail. I did. I opened up several of my sleeping pills and mixed up some concoction from the cocktail cabinet. I remember her eyes were hard and glittering as she drank it down. When she passed out, I tied her arms and legs very firmly. With wire.”
Agatha moved close to Charles.
“When she recovered, I said I was going to take her eyes out and replace them with doll’s eyes. Did I say I had gagged her as well? No? Well, I did. I told her I wanted a divorce, I wanted her to leave immediately. I told her to nod her head if she agreed. She nodded. I wanted to frighten her so much, you see, that not only would she leave me and divorce me, but that she would not attack me when I released her. As soon as she was free, she packed and left.”
Agatha looked at him, her eyes gleaming. “But you must have still loved her.”
“Why?”
“You learned somehow that she was having an affair with my husband, so you attacked him first, but he escaped, and you then killed Melissa.”
He gave a gentle little laugh. He did not seem at all upset Agatha’s accusations. “I am not a violent man. Oh, if you could have felt the relief I felt when she had gone. Did I say I could not dance? I meant, I was too shy to dance. But when she had gone, I waltzed around the house.” He took the doll’s tiny hand in his and waltzed round the shop.
Just then a customer walked in and he stopped dancing. “I will be with you in a minute,” he said. He retreated to the back shop with his doll.
“Let’s get out of here,” muttered Agatha.
They walked outside. The rain had stopped and patches of pale-blue sky were appearing among the ragged grey clouds far above them.
“We should tell Bill about this,” said Charles.
“P
hew!” Agatha clutched his arm. “I could use a drink.”
They went into a pub. Agatha asked for gin and tonic and Charles had an orange juice. “Didn’t Bill say he had an alibi?” asked Agatha.
“No, he said Sheppard had an alibi. He didn’t say anything I about Dewey and we didn’t ask. I think we should tell him this. The man’s mad.”
Agatha took out her mobile phone. But she was told when she dialled police headquarters in Mircester that Bill had gone home.
“I hate seeing him at home,” mourned Agatha. “Those parents of his!”
“We’d better try anyway. Drink up!”
♦
The Wongs lived in a builder’s estate much like the one inhabited by Mr. Dewey. Bill’s father was Hong Kong Chinese, and his mother, from Gloucestershire. Mrs. Wong opened the door. She stared at them and then shouted over her shoulder, “Father, it’s that woman again!”
She was joined by Mr. Wong, who shuffled forward in a pair of carpet slippers. “May we speak to Bill?” asked Agatha. “It’s very important.”
“You should’ve phoned first to make an appointment.” He stood in the doorway with his wife at his side and neither of them showed any signs of moving. How could Bill ever hope to get married, thought Agatha, living as he did with these possessive parents?
She suddenly shouted, “Bill!” at the top of her voice, and was relieved to hear his answering voice, “Agatha?”
Reluctantly his parents backed away from the doorway and then Bill stood there, beaming. “Come in, come in. Perhaps we could all have some tea, Ma?”
“I’m not making tea for nobody,” grumbled his mother.
“Can we go into the garden, maybe?” suggested Agatha. “We’ve got some news that might interest you.”
“Sure.” Bill led the way through the house into the garden at the back, which was his pride and joy. They sat down at a garden table surrounded by a riot of flowers.
“What have you got for me?”
Agatha described John Dewey and then related the story of his marriage, ending up with asking, “Did he have an alibi?”
“There are witnesses to testify that he was working late in his shop the night Melissa was killed, and that Neighbourhood Watch woman saw him returning home around midnight. Of course, we can’t pin-point the exact time of death. He could easily have driven over to Carsely. We’ll keep an eye on him. Anything else?”
Agatha told him about the visit to the disco, about learning that Melissa at one time had been sectioned for a drug addiction and diagnosed as a psychopath. Then she said, “Of course, there is the other husband, Sheppard.”
“But Luke Sheppard and his wife spent that night at the Randolph in Oxford.”
“Still, that’s not far. He could have driven to Carsely, done the deed, and driven back. It takes about three quarters of an hour to get to Oxford. Half an hour if someone broke the speed limit.”
“We checked. The night staff didn’t see him leave.”
“It’s impossible,” groaned Agatha. “It could well be someone from way back in her past. She told my cleaner she was engaged on secret work for the government. Now I know that’s another of her lies, but what prompted that lie? Could she have been tied up with some MP or army man?”
“Like James?” suggested Bill, and then regretted saying it as a haunted look appeared in Agatha’s eyes.
“Is there no word of him, Bill?”
“Not a thing. We regularly check to see if he’s drawn any money, but there’s nothing. Look, why don’t you stay here and relax and then we’ll all have dinner.”
Agatha repressed a shudder. His mother was a dreadful cook and his parents would grumble about their presence all through the meal. She was always amazed that Bill could not see how awful they were, but he obviously adored his father and mother and could see no fault in them. “No, thanks,” she said. “We’d better get on.”
“Thanks anyway for your news. We may pull in Dewey for questioning again. If he could tie her up like that and threaten to take her eyes out, then he could easily have killed her.”
♦
“Where to now?” asked Charles. “Call it a day and go for dinner?”
“I’m tired. But we could just catch Luke Sheppard again before he closes his shop.”
“And what can we ask him we haven’t asked him already?”
“We could tell him about Dewey. I mean, ask if he’d ever met Dewey. Ask him whether Dewey ever called on Melissa.”
“All right,” said Charles amiably. “We’ll give it a try.”
Agatha looked at him with a sudden burst of affection. “I don’t know what I would do without you, Charles!”
His face took on a tight, closed look. Damn, though Agatha. Rule number one. Never tell a man you need him. In a moment or two, he’ll tell me he wants to go home and pack. But to her surprise, he drove steadily and said nothing until they drove into the main car-park at Mircester.
“I feel our Sheppard is a bad-tempered man,” said Charles. “Let’s hope he doesn’t exercise it on us.”
“You could buy something,” suggested Agatha. “That would put him in a good mood.”
“From that shop? You must be joking.”
“A thought, that’s all.” As they walked along the street where Sheppard’s shop was situated, they saw him outside, pulling down the shutters. They quickened their step and came up to him. “Oh, it’s you pair,” he said ungraciously.
“We wondered if you could spare us a minute,” said Agatha.
“Okay, but a minute is all I’ve got. Let’s go to the pub.”
Once inside, Agatha asked him what he wanted to drink, not wanting Charles to start on one of his tales about a missing wallet.
She carried the drinks over to the table. She had bought an orange juice for herself as well as Charles. She would offer to drive them home.
Agatha told Luke Sheppard about their meeting with John Dewey and then asked him, “Did Melissa ever talk about her previous marriage? Or did Dewey ever try to see her?”
“She said he was weird. She said he loved his dolls more than humans. But she didn’t volunteer much else except it was one marriage she was glad to get out of.”
Agatha was disappointed. “She didn’t say anything about being frightened of him?”
“No, I saw him once. Curiosity, you know. I went to that shop of his. Insignificant little chap, if you ask me. Wouldn’t hurt a fly. She didn’t have any trouble divorcing him.”
Charles said, “But he forced her into a divorce. Didn’t she tell you?”
He looked genuinely surprised. “No, she told me he had agreed to the divorce without a murmur.”
“Here’s what really happened,” said Agatha, and told him about Dewey’s dragging Melissa and threatening her.
He goggled at her. “She never said a word. But she was secretive. She had a lot of money of her own. But she never discussed it with me. She kept her bank-books and bank papers locked up. Mind you, that didn’t bother me much. I wanted rid of her after the honeymoon.”
“What happened on the honeymoon?” asked Agatha eagerly.
He glanced impatiently at his watch. “I’ll make it quick. It was like this. We went to Paris. It was August and there weren’t many French people around. All gone off on me annual holiday. She was a great know-all. Had memorized the guidebook. We trudged round everywhere – Notre Dame, Versailles, Sacre Coeur – you name it. I don’t speak French. She said she spoke it like a native. I said, ‘How come then the natives don’t understand a word you’re saying’? She’d dropped the act of hanging on my every word, being the perfect partner. She demanded attention the whole time and not only from me, from about every man who crossed her path. I often wondered how she would get on in a roomful of men with different personalities, trying to be all things to all of them. I’m telling you, by the time we got back, I detested that woman.”
“So how did you get her to agree to a divorce?”
He looked agai
n at his watch. “I’ve really got to go.”
“Quickly,” said Agatha. “Did you ask for a divorce and did she agree to it just like that?”
“Yes, something like that.” He got to his feet. “See here, I’ve given you pair enough of my time. Don’t come round here again.”
“Where were you living when you were married?” asked Charles.
He half-turned. “Why?”
“Just wondered.”
“Oxford.”
“Where in Oxford?”
“Jericho. Pliny Road.”
He marched out of the pub.
“What did you make of that?” asked Charles.
“I think,” said Agatha, resting her chin on her hands, “that he threatened her just like Dewey.”
“I think you’re right. That’s why I asked for his old address.”
“Why?”
“Because we will go there tomorrow and ask the neighbours about Sheppard and Melissa. I wonder, why Oxford? It’s an hour-and-a-halfs drive at least from Oxford to Mircester.”
“We should have asked Melissa’s sister more questions.”
“We can still do that. I’ve got her card. She lives in Cambridge. The other university town.”
“Do we need to go all the way there? It’s quite a drive.”
“Maybe we’ll phone her. Let’s get out of here and have some dinner.”
“Come home and I’ll make us something.”
“Anyone who eats microwaved curry for breakfast is not to be trusted with dinner. Plenty of good restaurants in Mircester.”
♦
A wave of black depression hit Agatha as soon as she awoke the following morning. She had been dreaming about James, and in her dream they had been walking along a sunlit beach together and he had been holding her hand. Where was he? Was he alive? Did he ever think of her? Why was she going to all this trouble to clear his name?
