The Witches' Tree--An Agatha Raisin Mystery

by M C Beaton

  * * *

  P.C. Clapper drove back up. He saw that Turret’s car had gone and heaved a sigh of relief. He neither liked nor trusted Turret. Too many whispers and rumours about how he liked to find out something nasty about someone and then torture them with his knowledge. He burped and winced, wondering if he should have eaten that “Fiery Bit of Mexico” hamburger at that place down on the motorway.

  In front of him, the waters of the pond rippled and shone from the light from the streetlamp. It formed a path of white light across the water to the witches’ tree on the other side.

  Clapper peered. There was something up in those branches on the far side, showing glimpses of white.

  “Kids,” he muttered. “If they’ve been messing with a crime scene—if it is a crime scene—I’ll wake the whole village.”

  He unhitched his torch and switched it on. The tree on the far side of the pond appeared to straddle the entrance road but in fact was to the left-hand side. Clapper walked round the huge black bowl of the tree to where something hung, revolving in the wind, first right, then left. The torch shone on a policeman’s uniform and he gave a cry of fright and dropped his torch. Telling himself not to be a fool and retrieving his torch, Clapper shone it up onto the face of the thing. His hand shook as he realised it was someone’s head covered in white plastic.

  He called the emergency services for help. Rory Harris, returning from a late-night call, drove up and shouted out of his car window. “What’s up?”

  “I think it’s Turret strung up and I can’t reach him.”

  “I’ll go,” said Rory. “We might be able to save him.”

  He climbed easily up the thick bare branches. He felt for a pulse but found none. “He’s dead,” he shouted.

  “Leave the body,” yelled Clapper. “It’s a crime scene!”

  * * *

  Molly Harris had felt isolated from the world, locked away in the winter Cotswolds. But now the world had come to her in the shape of the world’s press, some even coming from as far away as Japan. A dead policeman in a city would not rouse much interest, but one hung up on something called the witches’ tree where a dead body had already been found intrigued journalists.

  She had learned to wear her oldest, frumpiest clothes because on the first day of the press invasion, she had gone down to the village shop wearing a short skirt and high heels and had not been amused when her husband had pointed out to her the next day that she was on the front page of The Sun. Molly welcomed a visit from Agatha Raisin because she was feeling very frightened. Her cleaner, a Mrs. Dubble, had said there was a witches’ coven in the village, but clammed up when Molly had demanded more information.

  “Can I offer you something?” asked Molly.

  “To be honest,” said Agatha, “I would like a gin and tonic and an ashtray. Now, go ahead and lecture me and then we can talk.”

  Molly grinned. She put a large glass ashtray down in front of Agatha, opened a cupboard and took out a bottle of gin and then a can of tonic water from the fridge. “I haven’t any ice,” said Molly.

  “You don’t need it,” commented Agatha. “This kitchen is freezing. Doesn’t the Aga work?”

  “We call it the Sagging Aga. It munches packets of firelighter before it goes properly. It’s smouldering for the moment.”

  “Have you any sort of alcohol you don’t like? I mean,” said Agatha, “the sort of rubbish one buys on holiday.”

  “We’ve a bottle of Spanish brandy.”

  “Let me have it.”

  Molly brought down the brandy from a top shelf, Agatha unscrewed the top, lifted the lid of the stove and poured a couple of glassfuls into the smouldering coals. She jumped back as a sheet of flame shot up.

  “There you are,” panted Agatha. “Always works a treat. All these old stoves are raging alcoholics.” She managed to get the lid of the stove back on. It was a dismal kitchen, thought Agatha. It had been painted a sort of sulphur yellow. Cobwebs hung in corners of the ceiling where an old wooden pulley for drying clothes dangled in the shadows.

  Agatha surveyed the vicar’s wife. She wondered if Molly knew how beautiful she was but the woman seemed free of vanity. Where was her friend, Sir Charles Fraith? Would he find Molly attractive? He came and went in her life as heartlessly as a cat.

  “My cleaning woman says there’s a coven of witches in this village,” said Molly.

  “Mrs. Bloxby told me that. But they’ve long gone. Photographed in Picture Post in the fifties, all of them in the nude with their dangly bits hanging and they were the laughing stock of Gloucestershire. And that was the end of the witches. The tree was called that because it was blasted by lightning and hasn’t grown a leaf since then. Why did you marry a vicar?”

  “Love,” said Molly. “That’s all it takes.”

  “Love,” echoed Agatha sadly. “Oh, well…” She lit a cigarette and watched the smoke rise up to the dingy ceiling. “So, I would like to help you, but I’ve a living to make and I can’t see anyone hiring me to look into these murders.”

  “I think the Cotswolds should come with a health warning,” said Molly. “It’s not full of bucolic country people, little lambkins and Morris dancers. It’s damp, cold and the city lights are so far away. It’s all the fault of Agatha Christie.”

  “She had murders in towns and cities.”

  “Yes, but Miss Marple, for example, has a village mind. Justice is always done. I’ve a bit of an idea. Drink up. You are about to meet one of the biggest bores in the county.”

  * * *

  Sir Edward Chumble was in a deep sulk when they called. He had rung various newspaper editors to give his views on the murders and all had shown a definite lack of interest. He had then visited the latest crime scene to give the police and detectives the benefit of his wisdom and had been told by an Inspector Wilkes to “run along.”

  He had a strong feminine streak and promptly was able to price Agatha’s clothes as expensive. His wife was out chairing some committee or other. He reflected that even in a backwater country that everyone but Putin who wanted it back had forgotten, his wife had been able to find a committee to chair. Molly did not match up to his idea of what a vicar’s wife should be. She was too bold, too glamorous and did not give him the respect to which he always felt entitled. But this Raisin woman was an unknown quantity.

  He had considered inviting her to his dinner party but had looked her up on the internet and had decided such a woman would be too bold and unfeminine. But now as he regarded her, he decided she was pretty attractive even though her eyes were too small.

  “Agatha is very busy,” said Molly, after the introductions had been made. “But I said to her, you must come because Sir Edward is an ex-ambassador and has a very shrewd mind.”

  “So you are investigating these murders, Mrs. Raisin?”

  “Agatha, please,” said that lady, giving what she hoped was a winsome smile, but Agatha did not do winsome and so it looked like a grimace. “As I am a private detective and that is how I earn my living, I said I would do a few checks to please Molly, but I cannot continue to throw up all my other work.”

  “But you are very successful?” pursued Sir Edward.

  “Very,” put in Molly quickly.

  “Harrumph. I am disappointed in our police force. I thought they might like my help but some chap called Wilkes was most dismissive.”

  “Always is,” said Agatha.

  He relapsed into silence. A clock ticked busily and the November wind whistled through the thatch. A log shifted in the grate. Agatha surveyed him with displeasure. Pompous fool, she thought. He had thinning grey hair above an open-pored face dominated by a large nose crisscrossed with little red veins. Agatha reached for her handbag.

  “How much do you charge?” he asked.

  Agatha doubled her rates and then said, “Of course, I halve them for a friend.”

  “Harrumph,” he said again. “Look here. You do consider me as a friend, don’t you?”

  A
gatha grinned. “This is so sudden.”

  He masked a sudden flash of dislike. He wanted this woman to find out the identity of the murderer and somehow let him have the glory.

  “I feel it is my duty to do something for the local community,” he said. “I would like to employ you to discover who is doing these awful things.”

  “I shall send someone over with the papers for you to sign,” said Agatha.

  “I am not rich,” he said hurriedly. “I mean, how long are you going to be at it?”

  “I don’t know,” said Agatha. “Look, I’ll do my best for six weeks and if I haven’t found out by then, I’ll give you everything I’ve got.”

  Sir Edward half-closed his eyes. He could see himself leaning against that fireplace, facing a roomful of press. “I am here to tell you gentlemen the identity of the murderer.”

  * * *

  “And that’s that,” said Agatha to Mrs. Bloxby that evening. “It was Molly’s idea. Rory told her how the police had sent the old boy away and how his dignity would be so hurt he might hire me to get even.

  “This case fascinates me,” Agatha went on. “But imagine anyone wanting to solve a case out of wounded vanity.”

  You, for one, thought the vicar’s wife, remembering Agatha’s first case. Instead, she cautioned, “There has always been a nasty atmosphere about that village. Some parts of the Cotswolds, they still practice witchcraft.”

  “Pooh! I think witchcraft is just another name for bitchcraft,” said Agatha. “I’m off to get some sleep.”

  But as Agatha walked down the road to her cottage in Lilac Lane, dead leaves danced and swirled in front of her and she was suddenly aware of a feeling of menace. She quickened her steps and was almost running by the time she reached her front door. There were lights on in her living room. She swivelled round and saw Sir Charles Fraith’s car parked outside.

  With a gasp of relief she hurtled into her sitting room.

  Charles uncurled himself from the sofa. “You look scared. What’s up?”

  Agatha shook her head as if to clear it. “Overdose of imagination. Get me a gin and tonic.”

  Agatha waited until she had taken a gulp of her drink and then surveyed Charles over the rim of her glass. He was as impeccably barbered and tailored as usual. The only man, thought Agatha, who could walk around a bedroom naked and yet looked tailored in his skin.

  She gave a little sigh and began to tell him about the bodies on the witches’ tree, ending with, “A Sir Edward Chumble is hiring me to find out who did it.”

  “Why? What’s it got to do with him?”

  “I think he fancies himself as the local squire. Probably wants me to find out who done it and then pose as Poirot.”

  “So why come in here looking as if the hound of hell was snapping at your heels?”

  “I went to see Mrs. Bloxby and when I left the vicarage, I got this awful feeling that something was stalking me.”

  “‘Like one, that on a lonesome road/Doth walk in fear and dread/Because he knows a frightful fiend doth close behind him tread,’ or something like that,” said Charles.

  “I wish people wouldn’t quote things at me,” said Agatha crossly. “They’re only showing off.”

  “I’ll come with you tomorrow,” said Charles. “Tell me more about it. What’s this vicar like?”

  “Handsome in a sort of rugger-bugger way,” said Agatha. “Beautiful wife.”

  “You said they’d been to a dinner party. That might be a good alibi. ‘I couldn’t have been out there murdering anyone, Officer, because I was having dinner with Sir Edward.’”

  “Molly seemed to think Margaret Darby had been killed somewhere else. Of course, it could turn out to be suicide, but Molly said she was wearing heels and the branches of the tree were slippery and wet, so she surely couldn’t have got up there herself.”

  “So the dinner party isn’t an alibi for anyone?”

  “Looks like it. I’ve got to go to the office first. I’ll send Toni over with the contract and I’ll ask Patrick to get hold of his police contacts and find out what the autopsy has come up with.”

  Charles stood up and yawned. “I’m off to bed. Coming?”

  “You go ahead.”

  Agatha followed him slowly, wondering if he would be waiting for her in her bed rather than in the spare room, but her bedroom was empty. That night, she was glad he was in the same house as a cold wind whistled around the cottage and odd things rustled and moved in the thatch.

  Charles lay awake reading a spy novel. Suddenly he heard an eerie whisper filling the room. “Go away. Death is coming. Death!”

  Darting noiselessly down the stairs, Charles went in to the sitting room and found a packet of firelighters by the fire. He raced upstairs again, put the whole packet in the grate of the bedroom fireplace and set light to it. There was a whoosh as flames shot up the chimney, topped with acrid smoke. He heard someone slithering down the thatch and forgetting he was stark naked, he rushed outside. There was no one in the garden. He ran round to the front. The gate was swinging open. He saw a dark figure at the end of the street and ran towards it. But when he turned the corner of Lilac Lane the only person in sight was the vicar, Alf Bloxby. He scowled at Charles and snapped, “Get some clothes on!”

  “Did you see anyone?” asked Charles. “Someone was up on Agatha’s roof.”

  “No. I did not. For heaven’s sake, man, cover yourself up!”

  “What with?” asked Charles amiably. “Lilac leaves?”

  He strode off, giving the outraged vicar a good view of his bottom illuminated in the streetlight.

  Chapter Three

  Both Agatha and Charles were short-tempered the next day when they drove to Sumpton Harcourt in Agatha’s car. They had spent a good part of the night reporting the mysterious haunting to the police. And it was a furious Wilkes who had interviewed them. Because of the worldwide press interest, he had left instructions that he was to be told of the smallest clue, no matter what the time. He had not been told that the clue involved his pet hate, Agatha Raisin. His dislike for her rose out of the way she solved cases by bumbling about, often putting herself and everyone else in danger, and then getting to the right conclusion by a flash of intuition. Then she would somehow let the press know that it was she who had broken the case and not the police. Alf Bloxby was also grilled. Wilkes longed to arrest Charles for indecent exposure, but knew the wretched man was a friend of the Chief Constable and so took out his fury on the pair by questioning them over and over again.

  The day was dark with great gusts of wind sending ragged clouds tearing across a grey sky. “That’s the tree,” said Agatha.

  “Looks creepy enough,” said Charles. “All those thatched cottages. Amazing it isn’t on the tourist route.”

  “Doesn’t cater for tourists,” said Agatha. “No gift shop, only a rather dreary pub called … you’ll never guess.”

  “Don’t want to.”

  “It’s called The Hanged Man. Look! Over there.”

  A much-weathered inn board swung in the wind showing a man mounting the scaffold.

  “And who was the hanged man?” asked Charles.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Not much of a detective, are you?”

  “There hasn’t been time, geddit?” snarled Agatha. “This is the vicarage.”

  Charles eased himself out of Agatha’s Peugeot. “Must be like living in the middle of a bush,” he said. “I bet if all that ivy was stripped off, the whole place would fall down. Bet that ivy has eaten deep into the stone.”

  “Are you going to help me with these murders or are you going to stand there wittering all day?” complained Agatha.

  “May I remind you, you are not my boss. If you want me, and if you have decided to be civil, you’ll find me in the pub.”

  Agatha opened her mouth to call an apology to his retreating back but somehow the words would not come out. She had never felt such a resentment towards Charles before. But now, w
hen she saw him, all she could think about was the time they had shared a bed and yet he went on as if … as if … dammit, as if she were a male friend.

  But at the moment, he’s all you’ve got, nagged her inner governess. And whose fault is that? If you would only stop looking for romance from unobtainable people.

  A tear ran down her face. Charles would now be in the pub, sitting in front of a roaring fire.

  “The pub’s closed,” said Charles’s voice behind her. “Doesn’t open until noon. Ring the bell. I’ll get a coffee if I have to make it myself. There’s a whopping great raindrop cutting a furrow through your war paint.” He took out a clean handkerchief and dabbed at the tear. He smiled and kissed her on the nose. “Let’s go.”

  But the door opened and Molly stood there. “I heard the voices and peeked through the curtains to see who it was. Come in.”

  Agatha made the introductions. “What sort of a sir are you?” asked Molly. “Hereditary, or did you or your daddy pay enough to the Prime Minister?”

  “Is it global warming?” asked Charles plaintively. “Everyone’s accusatory this morning. I am a baronet.”

  “Sorry,” said Molly. “Come into the kitchen. Thanks to Agatha’s Spanish brandy recipe, the stove works. The study is better but Rory is writing his sermon and doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

  As Molly poured coffee and dished out Garibaldi biscuits, Agatha told her about the mysterious voice coming down the chimney in her spare room.

  “Someone has discovered you’re investigating and pretty quickly, too! Look at this. I’m going to show it to the police but later on. Right now, another interview would make me scream.”

  She fished in her pocket and handed over a folded sheet of paper. Agatha fished in her capacious handbag and brought out a pair of latex gloves. “It’s a bit late for that,” said Molly guiltily. “I should have thought about fingerprints.”

  “I don’t want mine on it,” said Agatha. “I’ve had enough of interviews as well.”

  The interview was typed in large black letters: TELL THE RAISIN WOMAN NOT TO INVESTIGATE OR SHE DIES.