The Love from Hell ar-11

by M C Beaton

  When Agatha and Charles had said good-bye to William and were walking down the street, Agatha suddenly said, “But why would James want to hide from me?”

  “Guilt,” said Charles. “Guilt about his fling with Melissa. Let’s go and talk to the dotty Mrs. Ellersby.”

  ∨ The Love from Hell ∧

  7

  MRS. Ellersby looked perfectly sane when she answered the door to them. She had grey hair worn curled and shoulder-length, thick glasses, and a face where all the wrinkles seemed to run downwards to a turtle-neck. Agatha surreptitiously felt her own neck and mentally planned to visit her beautician soon.

  After introductions and explanations, she led them down to her kitchen. These tall Victorian houses, thought Charles, would once have had maids and a cook. Now the residents, if they were lucky, made do with a cleaning woman. The kitchen was neither pretentious nor weird. Fittings, thought Agatha, casting an expert eye around, by Smallbone of Devizes. Must have money.

  “So you want to know about Melissa?” said Mrs. Ellersby. “Before we start, can I get you anything? Tea? Coffee?”

  Both shook their heads. “I met Melissa at a class on Buddhism. I was very taken with her. So full of energy. So anxious to learn all she could. I lent her my books on the subject and we had interesting discussions.”

  “Where is this class?” asked Charles.

  “It’s been disbanded. So sad. It was in a church hall in Saint Giles’.”

  “So you found Melissa a perfectly nice person?” asked Agatha.

  “At first. Then I was disappointed.”

  “Why?”

  “She turned out to be rather silly. She was interested in reincarnation. But only because she was sure she had been someone famous in a previous life. You see, at the beginning, she would listen to me as if she was fascinated by everything I had to tell her, and I must admit I was flattered. When I really got to know her, I was startled that I had not previously for a moment guessed at the sheer shallowness of her brain. She appeared to have a fixation that she had been the Empress Josephine in a previous life.”

  “Did she ever talk about her husband?”

  “Not to me. She talked about herself as Josephine, saying that Napoleon had given her a hard time and on occasions beat her up. I must say, I wondered if she might be referring obliquely to her own husband. I did not like him one bit.”

  “Did you know him?” asked Agatha.

  “Oh, yes. I had a party and I felt obliged to invite both of them. I had gone off Melissa, but she was still so friendly, I felt trapped. How can you say to someone, ‘I wish I had never befriended you’? I had invited some friends. The Sheppards behaved very badly. She kept making pointed little jokes at his expense. You know, that awful type of married woman who humiliates her husband in public. He drank too much, and then he suddenly shouted at her in front of everyone, ‘I must have been mad to marry you.’ I decided after that to have nothing more to do with her. The next time she called, I hid downstairs in the kitchen, waiting for her to go away. But she must have walked down the steps at the front of the house. I was sitting at the kitchen table, holding a cup of coffee. I looked up and saw her face pressed to the glass. We stared at each other for a long time. Then she went away and I never saw her again.”

  “Do you think Sheppard could have murdered her?” asked Charles.

  “Oh, easily,” said Mrs. Ellersby. She turned her mild, myopic gaze on Agatha. “But your husband was attacked, was he not? I can imagine Sheppard attacking her, but not anyone else.”

  “But my husband had been having an affair with Melissa,” said Agatha through gritted teeth.

  “I read about that. But she was divorced. It would take a very jealous man to do that, and it is my opinion that Sheppard hated her so much, he would probably be sorry for any man who became involved with her. Do not think too badly of your husband, Mrs. Raisin. You must wonder how he could ever have become involved with such a person. But she had great charm when one first met her. She exuded enthusiasm and energy and warmth. I’ve always prided myself on being a great judge of character, and yet I was initially taken in by her very easily.”

  “Thank you,” said Agatha. “I needed to hear that.”

  “Is there any news of your husband? I gather from the newspapers that he was ill.”

  “Yes, he had a cancerous tumour,” said Agatha, “but the police have checked all the hospitals. He took his passport with him, but there is no record of him having left the country.”

  “Which hospital was he being treated at?”

  Agatha looked at her and frowned. “I don’t think he had started his treatment.”

  “But he knew he had a tumour, so he would need to be diagnosed.”

  “It would be Mircester General Hospital.”

  “Perhaps if you ask there, you can find out perhaps how bad the tumour was, or if he let slip any of his plans. A lot of people are terrified at the idea of chemotherapy. He may have said something to his doctor.”

  “I never thought of that,” said Agatha eagerly. “We can try there.”

  They said good-bye to Mrs. Ellersby. “I’m hungry,” complained Charles, “and I’m not dashing off to Mircester and neither are you. Let’s leave the car where it is and walk up to Brown’s on Saint Giles’ and eat hamburgers.”

  “All right,” said Agatha. “I’m suddenly weary.”

  Brown’s, as usual, was very busy, but they got a table in the smoking section after only a ten-minute wait. “So many young people,” said Charles when they were seated. “Doesn’t it make you feel old, Aggie?”

  The honest answer to that was that she had been feeling old all day, but Agatha only grunted by way of reply.

  Charles ordered two hamburgers and a bottle of wine. “I’m driving,” said Agatha.

  “So you are. All the more for me.”

  “I would have thought something plebeian like beer would go better with hamburger and chips.”

  “You’re only saying that because you can’t have any.”

  “I can have a glass. That’s below the limit.”

  “Cripes! Look over there. No, don’t stare. Do it casually. The table over in the corner on your left.”

  Agatha took a covert look.

  Then she turned back and hissed, “By all that’s holy, it’s Sheppard and his would-be child bride.”

  “Wonder what they’re doing back in Oxford?”

  “Probably just in for a meal,” said Agatha. “James and I often drove into Oxford for a meal. Do you think he likes her dressed like that?”

  Megan Sheppard was wearing a short black dress with a white Peter Pan collar.

  “She looks quite fetching, Aggie. She can get away with the girlish look.”

  “Humph!”

  “Oh, oh, he’s seen us and he doesn’t look too happy. He’s coming over.”

  Sheppard loomed above them, clenching and unclenching his fists. “Are you following me?” he demanded.

  “Why on earth should we do that?” said Charles mildly. “We’re having a meal here, just like you.”

  He stood staring at them, his face dark with anger. Then he strode away. Agatha swivelled round to see what was happening. He bent over his wife, and then jerked her up by the elbow. He threw some money down on the table and then strode out of the restaurant, practically pulling his small wife after him.

  “Now there’s a man with a guilty conscience,” said Agatha, turning back, her eyes gleaming.

  “Have you ever thought that he might be perfectly innocent,” said Charles, “and that we frighten him?”

  “Us? Why?”

  “If you were questioned and then apparently pursued by two people, one of whom is married to the prime suspect and she herself is suspect number two, wouldn’t you get nervous?”

  “Only if I had done the deed myself,” said Agatha stubbornly. “I swear that man’s a killer.”

  “You had Dewey down as number-one suspect yesterday.”

  “Oh,
well, I mean, that was different.”

  “How?”

  “He was scary, telling us about threatening to take her eyes out. But I mean, striking someone with such a savage blow, like what happened to Melissa, is just the sort of thing Luke Sheppard would have done.”

  “Don’t let your imagination keep running away with you. We have to dig up some hard facts. All we’ve got at the moment is speculation. We set out to find out all we could about Melissa. We felt sure if we really got to know her character, that would lead us to the murderer. But what have we got? A shifting, changing, manipulative woman who, quite frankly, could have been killed by anyone. And the main piece of the jigsaw is James. Without James, we haven’t a clue.”

  “We’ll just need to go on, however,” said Agatha, “as if we’re never going to find James. You say, maybe if we clear his name and wherever he is, he reads it in the newspapers, he may come back.”

  “To you, Aggie? Not still hoping for a happy marriage?”

  “I just want to know that he is still alive,” said Agatha, staring down at her plate and not meeting his eyes.

  “So what’s our next plan of campaign?”

  Agatha racked her brain. She did not want to tell him she was at a dead end, in case he would pack up and go home and she would be left with her own company. What had happened to the old Agatha Raisin, who had not needed anybody? Maybe I did, she admitted ruefully to herself, and wouldn’t admit it.

  Then her face cleared. “Of course. The hospital! At least as his wife I can ask the doctor what his condition was.”

  “All right. We’ll go tomorrow.” Agatha heaved a sigh of relief. “But before we do, I think we should sit down and start to make notes, put everything in order. Oh, and then there’s Melissa’s sister, Julia. I really think we should make the effort and go to Cambridge to have another word with her. We’ve been looking at sex and passion and forgetting about the other prime motive, and that’s money.”

  ♦

  Agatha was up early the next morning and anxious to leave for Mircester, but Charles insisted, “Notes first.”

  Agatha switched on her computer. Her cats were in a playful mood that morning and were insisting on doing what cats like to do, namely jumping up on the keyboard and jumping on the keys. Charles carried them out into the garden and returned to sit down beside Agatha.

  “Let’s start with Sheppard,” said Agatha. “He has a good alibi for the night of Melissa’s murder and that in itself is suspicious. Usually innocent people do not have any alibi. Motive? Mehssa may have known something about him that he did not want anyone else to find out.”

  “So where does James come into it?”

  “Rats! James. Well, Melissa might have tried to tell him that something. James flees after avoiding being killed.”

  “So why not just kill Melissa and leave James alone?”

  “I’ll never get anywhere if you insist on playing devil’s advocate.”

  “All right. Go on.”

  “Maybe Sheppard continued to hate her. Maybe – ”

  “I’ve a thought. Maybe James does not know anything about Melissa’s murder. He shot off after he was attacked. He may have amnesia. He may not have read the papers.”

  “You mean, if he’s alive, he may have information that would solve this case?”

  “Something like that. Then what about what our genteel friend Miss Simms calls rough trade, Jake and his friends? She was sectioned for drugs. That’s it!”

  “What’s what?”

  “We ask the sister when she was sectioned, where, and what were the circumstances. Was she into really heavy mainlining stuff?”

  “She certainly wasn’t on anything last time I saw her,” said Agatha. “No dilated pupils, no track marks on her arms. I really don’t think we’ve enough at the moment, Charles, to make notes. Please let’s go to the hospital.”

  “I know you’ll never settle to anything until we do go. Come on, then.”

  ♦

  Mircester General Hospital lay on the outskirts of the town, a gleaming modern building which had replaced the old Victorian hospital in the town centre, now a hotel. “Look at that!” said Agatha, outraged, as they drove into the hospital car-park. “We’ve got to pay for parking.”

  “I suppose they’ve got to try to make any money they can, these days. I mean, you must remember when me National Health Service started, Aggie.” Agatha winced at this reference to her age. “It was going to be easy free treatment for everyone. Now it’s all breaking down. And the reason it’s breaking down, apart from sheer bad management, is all the new operations that everyone now expects – free hip replacements, free heart transplants, and all that costs a bomb.”

  “I still think it’s a lousy trick forcing people to pay for parking,” muttered Agatha. “How long do you think we’re going to be?”

  “Put in enough money for a couple of hours.”

  With Agatha still complaining, they walked into me hospital. To their request to see the consultant or doctor who had diagnosed James Lacey, they were told to wait. And they did. They waited and waited. Agatha flipped nervously through pages of old Good Housekeeping magazines, barely taking in what she was reading. She was just about to approach the reception desk and make a very Agatha-type scene, when a tall, thin man in a white coat came up to them. “I am Dr. Henderson. I was a friend of James. I am so sorry, Mrs. Lacey. I gather there is no news?”

  “I’m afraid not,” said Agatha. “I wanted to talk to you about his condition.”

  “Come with me. I can spare you a little time.” He led them along gleaming hospital corridors to a small cluttered office. “Please have a seat. I can only tell you what you must know already, that he had a brain tumour. We were going to try chemotherapy. He was due for an appointment, his first treatment, when he disappeared.”

  “What was his state of mind when you saw him?” asked Charles.

  “He was deeply shocked and upset. He asked a lot about alternative methods. He was very interested in mind over matter. He had heard that in California they have tapes which you play which train you to combat the illness mentally. He also asked about diet. I said that miracles sometimes did happen, but that in his case, I could only recommend chemotherapy. I am afraid I do not believe in miracles.”

  “But you said they sometimes do happen,” pointed out Agatha.

  “Not in my own experience, but some of my colleagues have experienced such. Sometimes people can have some leap of faith which seems to restore the immune system, but I am an agnostic, and I believe that it is down to coincidence. James did ask to see a psychiatrist. No doubt he was hoping to be instructed in some mental tricks.”

  “A psychiatrist? At this hospital?” said Agatha.

  “A Dr. Windsor.”

  “May we see him?”

  He picked up a phone on his desk. “A moment. I’ll see if he is free.” He turned away from them and dialled an extension. “I have James Lacey’s wife and a friend of hers with me,” they heard him saying. “Can you spare them a minute?”

  A voice quacked from the receiver. “Right,” said Dr. Henderson. “I’ll send them along.”

  He replaced the receiver. “You are lucky. He has fifteen minutes to spare between patients. If you go out of here and turn left, walk back along the corridor and through reception and follow the signs to the psychiatric unit, you will find a small reception area and he will be waiting for you.”

  They hurried off and, following his instructions, arrived at the psychiatric unit. Agatha had been expecting a stereotype psychiatrist, a heavy-set bearded man with a German accent, and was startled to be greeted by a small, slim man in a sports jacket who looked to her eyes far too young to be a psychiatrist.

  “I am Dr. Windsor,” he said, shaking hands with them. “Please sit down. Is your husband still missing?”

  “I am afraid so,” said Agatha. “We gather that James came to see you because he was interested in finding out if it might be possible to cure
cancer by mind over matter.”

  “Actually, it was not that at all. I normally would not discuss any patient’s business, even to the nearest and dearest, but his question seemed to me to be academic, so I do not think there is any problem in telling you what he wanted to know.”

  “Which was?” Agatha crouched forward in her chair, her bearlike eyes fixed on his face.

  “He was asking me about the symptoms of antisocial personality disorder. He said he was not asking about anyone in particular. He needed details for a book he was writing.”

  “I am surprised you could give him your time when he wasn’t a patient,” said Charles.

  “He was paying for my time. I saw him at my private consulting rooms in the town.”

  “We read up on that mental illness,” said Agatha, disappointed, and slumping back in her chair. So James had diagnosed Melissa before they had. Big deal.

  But Charles asked, “Was there any specific point he wanted clarified?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, there was. He wanted to know that if such a personality were rejected by someone, would they stalk, would they chase after that person. I said, not often, for although such a personality does not suffer from guilt, he or she suffers from intense feelings of bitterness and resentment. He then asked if two such people could be friends. I said that two such people might get together to aid and abet each other, but friendship, no. He wanted to see me again, but I refused.”

  “Why?” asked Agatha.

  Dr. Windsor’s face darkened. “I had a personal phone call while he was with me. I went into another room to take it. It was quite a long phone call. When I returned, he was sitting where I had left him. But after he had gone, I found several things that disturbed me. Two of the drawers on my desk were slightly open, as if someone had hurriedly tried to shut them, and several files in my cabinet – old files which I had removed from the hospital and kept in my rooms – I could swear had been disturbed. Papers were sticking out the tops of some of them. And yet the filing cabinet had been locked. I could not accuse my receptionist because she was having an evening off. Did I tell you it was evening? No? Well, it was because I could only fit him in after hours, so to speak. I phoned him up and accused him of having broken into my filing cabinet. He denied the whole thing, and very vehemently, too. But I said I could not see him again. I did not trust him. I was not long enough with him, but perhaps he, too, suffered from this mild form of psychopathy, and yet I am sure it must be almost impossible for anyone suffering from this form of mental illness to know they have it.” He glanced at his watch. “That is all I can tell you.”