by M C Beaton
She mumbled that thought to Charles when he came into her bedroom, demanding to know why she wasn’t getting up.
“Because we are out to clear your name as well, sweetie. Or had you forgotten? Your alibi is only for the evening James disappeared. You’ve got nothing to prove your innocence when it comes to Melissa’s murder.”
“Can you bring me up a cup of coffee?”
“No, you’ll drink it and lie in bed and smoke and gloom. Come downstairs.”
Agatha climbed out of bed. Her knees were stiff and she stared down at them. Here was another bit of body betraying her. She did some exercises and took a hot shower. By the time she had dressed, the stiffness had gone. But, she wondered, was this the beginning of the end? Good-bye healthy life and hullo rubber knickers and support hose? What would it be like to creak about on a Zimmer frame? She had a sudden craving for life, for excitement. She had an impulse to ask Charles to go upstairs to bed with her that minute. Then she thought, was this how James felt? If I can feel like this over a brief ache in the knees, what did he feel like when he learned he might die? He should have been making his peace with God, she answered herself. Would you? sneered a little voice in her head. Agatha slowly shook her head. The God she only half believed in had shaggy grey locks and wore open-toed sandals and disapproved of one Agatha Raisin.
“Agatha! Why are you standing there shaking your head and moving your lips?” asked Charles.
Agatha gave herself a mental shake. “I just wondered what thoughts were going through James’s head when he learned of his cancer.”
“Doesn’t bear thinking of. I’ve made toast and coffee. Eat. Drink. Then let’s get off to Oxford.”
As they drove to Oxford, Agatha driving this time, she switched on the air-conditioning in the car. “The sun’s so hot,” she said. “Going to be one very hot day.”
“Watch out for the speed camera just after Blenheim Palace,” said Charles as Agatha drove through Woodstock. “You just get used to the camera facing one way, and then they come and turn it the other way and catch all the drivers who increase speed when they think they are safely past it.”
“I never speed through towns or villages,” said Agatha virtuously. A car ahead of her, unaware that the camera had turned, went slowly past it and then speeded up. There was a bright flash as he was photographed. “See what I mean?” said Charles with all the satisfaction of one motorist seeing another getting caught by a speed camera.
“I was thinking, Charles, that we have all these suspects whirling around our brains. Well, maybe two suspects, Sheppard and Dewey.”
“Three.”
“Who’s the third?”
“Her sister. She inherits. Maybe she knew she was going to inherit. Melissa, it seems, had money of her own.”
“Yes, but where does James come into it?”
“I’d forgotten about him.”
“Why would the sister attack James?”
“We don’t know what James was up to. Remember, he was like you when it came to trying to find out things.”
“So three suspects…”
“Maybe more. What about Jake and his pals? No one’s going to bother much about a bit of pot these days. But remember, Melissa had once been sectioned for drugs. Maybe she wanted some hard stuff and they were pushing.”
“All possible. But we can’t go to Bill with mere speculation. I can see both Sheppard and Dewey doing it, but I really can’t think of a motive. They were both clear of her.”
“Who knows? Maybe Melissa paid a visit to Dewey’s shop and spat on his favourite doll.”
“Which brings us back to where James came into it.”
Charles groaned. “Okay, let’s see if we can find out anything about Melissa and Sheppard when they were married that he hasn’t told us. I mean, it took nearly a year for the divorce to come through, so he didn’t start divorce proceedings immediately after the honeymoon.”
“It’s a pity we didn’t get the number in Pliny Road. I don’t know whereabouts in Jericho it is. I’ll pull into the lay-by and have a look at the map. You’ll find a street map of Oxford in the glove compartment. Jericho’s that residential area between the Woodstock Road, Saint Giles’ and the canal.”
“I know,” said Charles as Agatha drew the car to a stop. They spread out the map. “Let’s see the index,” said Charles. “Ah, here we are: Pliny Road, off Walton Street, just there.”
“Doesn’t look very long,” said Agatha. “We’ll just knock on doors.”
“While we’re in Oxford,” said Charles, “do you think there’s any point in asking questions at the Randolph? Maybe one of the staff saw something.”
Agatha shook her head. “I’ve a feeling the police will have covered that thoroughly.”
“Still…let’s see how we get on in Jericho first.”
“I hope the traffic’s not too bad,” said Agatha. “They’ve made Cornmarket a shopping precinct and for a while it’s been chaos.”
“Seems clear enough,” said Charles as they drove along me Woodstock Road. He studied the map again. “Turn next right, Aggie.”
“I thought for a while you’d given up calling me Aggie. I wish you wouldn’t. Every time you call me Aggie, I feel as if I ought to be standing at the doorway of a terraced house in a mining area in some northern town with my hair in rollers, wearing a chenille dressing-gown and fluffy slippers, and with a cigarette stuck in my mouth.”
“Sounds like you.”
“I’m driving or I’d hit you. Where now?”
“Turn right on Walton Street and next left.”
“It’s residents’ parking only.”
“So risk it.”
Agatha parked in Pliny Road, and they got out. Tall Victorian houses lined either side of the road. “Where should we start?” she asked.
“Let’s try the middle, although sod’s law probably has it that they lived at the end. You take the left side and I’ll take the right.”
After ringing several doorbells, Agatha began to wonder if she was going to have any success. Perhaps Oxford was like London and people didn’t know their neighbours.
Then she heard a shout from across the road and turned round to find Charles waving to her. He came to meet her. “A woman in that house,” he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder, “remembers them, because she sometimes chatted to Melissa at the corner shop. They lived at number fifteen.”
Number 15 had a poster for the Green Party in the window. Agatha rang the bell. A thin woman with an arrogant face answered the door. She was wearing a long red dress of Indian cotton and vinyl sandals. She was very tall. “What is it?” she demanded. A waft of incense floated out of the house.
“I am Agatha Raisin,” said Agatha. “I am anxious to find out what I can about the Sheppards. Did you buy the house from them?”
“I don’t like reporters. If you ask me, the capitalist press is the ruin of this country.”
“I am not a reporter,” said Agatha. “You see…”
Charles moved forward and smiled pleasantly. “I am Sir Charles Fraith. Haven’t we met before?”
The change in her was almost ludicrous. “I d-don’t think…Oh, do come in, Sir Charles.”
“How kind,” murmured Charles. Agatha followed him, muttering, “Snobby cow,” under her breath.
“I’m Felicity Banks-James,” their new hostess trilled over her shoulder as she led them down to the basement and into a kitchen which looked as if it had been taken straight from one of those photos in glossy magazines urging you to try ‘a French provincial kitchen look.’ Bunches of dusty herbs hung from the ceiling. A brace of pheasant hung from a hook near the cooker, which Agatha gleefully recognized as being stuffed, the kind the taxidermist in Ebrington sold to yuppies. Huge copper pans lined one dresser, looking as if they had never been used. An enormous scrubbed table surrounded by plain wooden chairs dominated the centre of the room. On another dresser, blue-and-white plates stood in rows, also looking as if they had ne
ver been used, to judge from the film of dust covering them. A pile of Marks & Spencer’s frozen dinners was stacked on a corner of the table. “Just got back from shopping,” she said, opening a giant fridge and hiding the evidence of un-chic microwave cooking. “Coffee?”
“That would be nice,” said Charles, beaming at her.
“It’s decaf. I do think caffeine is so…What are you doing?”
“Sorry,” mumbled Agatha, stuffing her packet of cigarettes back into her handbag.
“Decaf will be all right,” said Charles quickly. “What a charming house you do have. You did buy it from the Sheppards?”
“Yes, he wanted to sell me the furnishings as well. Oh, my dear, ghastly three-piece suites, horrible paintings, the kind Boots used to sell, I don’t know if they still do. You know, that woman with the green face and waves on the shore and little kiddies and puppies. They even had a fuzzy pink toilet tidy in the bathroom. Ugh. “Get it all out before I faint,” that’s what I told him. Then I had to rip up all their nasty fitted carpets. And then I found in a suitcase in the basement…Well, you’ll never believe it.”
“A body?” asked Agatha sourly.
She ignored her and said to Charles. “It was a fox coat!”
“What horror!” said Charles, accepting a green mug of coffee.
“Exactly. To think of all the effort I and my friends have gone to, to sabotage the hunt. I phoned up Sheppard. He’s a shopkeeper, gents’ outfitting, how quaint. She, that woman who was killed, Melissa, it was she who came to collect it.”
“Mrs. Banks-James – ” began Charles.
“Oh, do call me Felicity, Sir Charles.”
“Just Charles will do. Felicity, what did you make of her?”
Agatha and Charles had seated themselves at either side of the table. Felicity sat down beside Charles and went on as if Agatha weren’t there.
“Came as a shock, actually.”
“In what way?”
Agatha stood up abruptly. “Do you mind if I go out into your backyard there and have a smoke?”
“Be my guest,” said Felicity, not taking her eyes off Charles.
Agatha stumped off. Felicity waited until the door had closed and murmured, “What a grumpy woman, if you don’t mind my saying so, Charles. Not exactly one of us.”
Charles bit back the remark he was about to make, which was, “What do you mean, one of us, you pretentious raddled bitch?”
Instead he said mildly, “You were saying you were surprised about Melissa.”
“Well, my dear, after all that ghastly furnishing, she was not what I expected at all. She was very pleasant-looking and very smartly dressed. After introducing herself, she said, ‘I’ve come to rid you of that horrible coat.’ You could have knocked me down with a feather. She said he had bought it for her and she couldn’t bear to wear it without crying when she thought of all those dead little foxes. We had a long chat. She said she was so glad to be free of him. And then she began to cry and she said it had been a nightmare. After she had pulled herself together, I said I was surprised that such a sensitive person – I am very sensitive myself, some people say I am psychic – would have such furnishings, and she said he had chosen it all himself. She said he beat her. I told her to take him to court, but she said now that she was free, she just wanted peace and quiet. She promised to come out with the hunt saboteurs and left me a phone number, but when I tried it, it didn’t exist. She was so upset, she must have made a mistake. So I phoned Sheppard and asked him if he knew his ex-wife’s phone number and he snarled, ‘Get lost,’ and slammed the phone down. He did it, mark my words.
“Oh, Agatha Raisin! That’s the woman whose husband is missing. Poor her. No wonder she looks so fierce.”
“We really must be going,” said Charles. He felt he had suffered enough of Felicity’s company.
“Oh, must you…?” she began but Charles was walking to the kitchen door, which he jerked open and said, “Come on, Aggie.”
Felicity led the way up the stairs. “Charles, dear,” she cooed, “do give me your phone number and we can have a further chat about poor Melissa.”
“I’m living with Agatha at the moment,” said Charles smoothly.
“And my phone’s been disconnected,” said Agatha. “Come along, Charles.”
“Right with you, dear heart. ‘Bye, Felicity.” Charles trotted after Agatha and muttered to her, “Back to the car.”
He repeated everything Felicity had said, doing a very good impression of Felicity’s voice until Agatha was helpless with laughter. After she had recovered, she said, “I bet you Melissa did furnish that house. She was doing her chameleon bit, changing to suit whoever she was with. I bet she wore that fur coat as soon as she could. She probably hid it in the basement so that Luke Sheppard wouldn’t give it to his new wife.”
“We’ll wait here for a bit and then, when we’re sure Felicity isn’t looking, we’ll try the neighbours. I feel we’re getting somewhere at last.”
“I wonder what it would be like to live in a street like this,” mused Agatha. “So peaceful.”
“Lot of car crime in Oxford. You’d probably lose that expensive radio that you’ve got in yours and never play. Why don’t you play it?”
“I like popular music when I’m driving, but the BBC’s going in for disc jockeys, particularly in the afternoon, who shout at you in estuary English, talk too much and sometimes sing along with the records.”
“Get your head down! Felicity’s coming out.”
They both crouched down in the front seat.
After a few moments, Agatha whispered, “I’m getting cramp. Has she gone?”
“Wait a bit longer.”
Agatha counted to ten, then twenty. She had nearly reached thirty when Charles said, “All clear.”
“Ooof!” Agatha straightened up with a groan.
“Let’s go. I think I saw someone behind the curtains in that house to the right of Felicity’s.”
They walked down the street, keeping a careful look-out in case Felicity should come hurrying back. They mounted the steps to the neighbour’s door and rang the bell. A thin, stooped man opened the door.
Agatha went through the introductions and the reason for their visit. “Come in,” he said. “I am William Dalrymple. I’ll tell you what I know, but it isn’t much. Can I offer you something?”
“No, we’re all right,” said Agatha. He ushered them into a pleasant sitting-room on the first floor. It was lined with bookshelves. There was a desk by the window overlooking the garden, piled high with books and papers.
“Do you teach at the university?” asked Agatha.
“Yes, history.”
How James would have loved to meet him, thought Agatha. James, where are you?
They sat down. “What precisely do you want to know?” asked William.
“We want to know,” said Agatha, “if you met Melissa Sheppard. What impression did you get of her, and were there any rows?”
“I can’t help you about the rows, because the walls of these houses are very thick. But Melissa called round several times until I told her not to.”
“Tell us about it,” said Charles.
“Shortly after they had moved in, Melissa came round and asked if she could borrow a screwdriver. I invited her in and went to look for one. When I came back, she had taken one of my books off the shelf, Arthur Bryant’s Age of Elegance, and was reading it. She asked if she could borrow it. I warned her that I thought it was in places a rather glamorized version of early-nineteenth-century history. She said she liked glamorous things and flirted a bit. I am an old bachelor and I must confess I was flattered. But I sent her on her way with book and screwdriver.
“She came back a few days later to return them. She said she had found the book fascinating, and asked if I had anything on Marie Antoinette. I realized then that she probably was only interested in history in the Hollywood sense – you know, Joan of Arc, Mary Queen of Scots, that sort of thing. I said I
didn’t have what she wanted but I was sure Blackwell’s could find her something. She began to talk about herself. She said she believed in reincarnation and was sure she had been Josephine – you know, Napolean’s missus, in a previous life. I said it was amazing how people who believed in reincarnation always believed they had been someone important in a previous life, like Cleopatra or someone; I mean, never a scullery maid. We were both sitting on the sofa and she put a hand on my knee and said, ‘Oh, William, can you see me as a scullery maid?’ I removed her hand and said rather testily that I had a paper to prepare. I thought that would be the end of it. But she came back one more time.
“It was late at night. I heard the bell ringing and ringing. I opened the door and she flung herself into my arms and said her husband did not love her and could she stay with me.
“I thrust her away and told her never to call on me again. I slammed the door in her face. I thought she was mad. I mean, look at me! I’ve never been the sort of man that women go for.”
Agatha, looking at his gentle face, his droopy cardigan, and his other-worldly air, thought that before Melissa threw herself at him, there had probably been many approaches made to him which he had not even noticed.
“It’s all I can tell you,” said William. “Except I was not surprised to read of her murder. She was intensely narcissistic.”
“Do you happen to know if she was friendly with anyone else in the street?” asked Charles.
“She did say during her mad reasoning on incarnation that a Mrs. Ellersby at number twenty-five shared her views.”
“Right, we’ll try her.”
Agatha felt suddenly weary of the whole thing. She would have liked to stay longer in William’s pleasant sitting-room. “I was sorry to hear about your missing husband,” said William as he walked them to the door. He gave Agatha an awkward pat on the back. “Don’t worry. I always feel that no news is good news. Live people can hide, dead people usually get found.”
