‘Was there anyone else about?’ asked Agatha.
‘No, and it must have happened after you reached home, Agatha, or I would have met you on the road or seen whoever killed him. Of course the murderer could have cut across the fields.’
‘We’ll just need to find out who did it ourselves,’ said Agatha.
‘Oh, you’re been through so much. Why not leave it to the police?’
‘Because we want to know who did it,’ said James. ‘I’ve been thinking – what is the etiquette about wedding presents? I suppose we return them.’
‘I would just keep them,’ said the vicar’s wife, ‘and then when you do get married, no one needs to bother giving you anything else.’
‘We will not be getting married,’ said James in a flat voice.
There was a heavy silence. Then Mrs Bloxby said brightly, ‘More tea?’
Roy Silver had had a sleepless night. Not usually plagued with an uneasy conscience, he found he was actually suffering. The story of the wedding-that-never-was, spiced up by the murder of Agatha’s husband, was all over the newspapers, and some enterprising reporter had found out that he, Roy Silver, had been the one who had alerted Jimmy Raisin to his wife’s attempt to marry someone else. The moment he got to his office he phoned Iris Harris, the detective, and asked her to call on him as soon as possible.
He fretted and fidgeted until she arrived. Ms Harris had read the newspapers and listened calmly as Roy said she must find out more about Jimmy Raisin. If Agatha did not kill him, someone did, and that someone might have some connection with his London background. He could not have spent all those years drinking methylated spirits and stayed alive.
Only when Iris Harris had agreed to work for him again and had left did Roy feel more comfortable with himself.
Agatha and James stayed indoors most of the following week, only venturing out at night for dinner. The press besieged James’s cottage at all hours of the day. It would have been normal, Agatha thought, for them to have discussed their relationship, discussed what had happened, but James talked only about the murder, politics and the weather. He worked away steadily at his military history while Agatha played with her cats in the garden and read books.
At night, she slept in the spare room, strangely undisturbed by any longing for the body asleep along the narrow corridor. The shocks of the wedding and the murder had driven passion from Agatha’s mind. She was itching to get started on the murder investigation. Bill Wong had not called and she felt desperate for news. But soon the press would give up and go away to fresh woods and murders new and leave them in peace.
On the morning the doorbell finally stopped ringing and the telephone at last was silent, Agatha decided to go to Mircester to try to see Bill Wong. James said he would stay and work at his writing.
On arriving at police headquarters, Agatha found out it was Bill’s day off. She wondered whether to call at his home, but decided against it. He lived with his parents and Agatha found them rather intimidating. So she shopped for a new dress, although she did not need one, and for a new lipstick to add to the twenty or so already cluttering up the shelf in James’s bathroom. The lipstick promised to make ‘lips full and luscious as never before’. Agatha, who never believed a word of most advertisements, was a sucker for any cosmetic promotion. Hope sprang eternal and she believed every word until she tried it out. She decided to treat herself to a bar lunch in the George, but she would put on that lipstick first.
She went into the pub toilet, read all the claims of the lipstick as if reading her horoscope, unscrewed it and decided to apply it.
She had it halfway to her mouth when a familiar voice said, ‘But Agatha’s my friend. It makes it difficult.’
Agatha turned round, startled. Then she remembered the odd acoustics of the George. There was a fanlight window above the door, usually open, as it was that day, so that any diners sitting at a table on the other side of the door almost sounded as if they were in the toilet itself.
That’s Bill Wong, thought Agatha with a smile. She tucked the lipstick away in her handbag, unapplied, and made for the door.
Then she heard a female voice saying, ‘As far as I am concerned, Bill, Agatha Raisin is still a murder suspect. She could easily have put on a pair of men’s shoes to baffle Forensic, and she’s strong enough to strangle a man. Beefy sort of woman.’
Agatha stood stock-still, her mouth a little open, her hand stretched out to the handle of the door.
‘Look, Maddie’ – Bill’s voice again – ‘I know Agatha, and she would not murder anyone. She’s a lady.’
‘Oh, come on, Bill, the way you go on about the old trout, one would think you were her toy-boy. And ladies don’t go around belting chaps over the face.’
‘What you are asking me to do is spy on Agatha,’ said Bill, ‘and I don’t like it.’
Maddie Hurd’s voice came sharp and clear. ‘All I’m asking you to do is police work, Bill. If she didn’t do it, and Lacey didn’t do it, then the clues as to who did lie in Jimmy Raisin’s background. I mean, I’m surprised you haven’t called on her before this.’
‘I would have done,’ said Bill, ‘if you hadn’t made me feel like a traitor.’
Maddie’s voice softened. ‘You know I wouldn’t ask you to do anything bad, Bill. Did you enjoy last night?’
Bill’s voice, husky with tenderness, replied, ‘You know I did.’
‘Let’s go or we’ll miss the start of the movie. But you will find out what you can?’
‘I’ll take a run over there tonight.’
There was a scraping-back of chairs, then Agatha heard their retreating footsteps.
She felt desperately alone now. Bill’s friendship had always been rock-solid. He had been her first friend in a hitherto friendless life. Now she felt she had no one to trust, certainly not James, who seemed to be handling the current situation by treating her as impersonally as he would another man.
And yet Bill Wong was obviously very much in love. What could he see in such a hard-faced bitch?
James looked at Agatha’s gloomy face on her return and demanded to know what had upset her.
Wearily, Agatha told him of the overheard conversation.
James listened, his blue eyes intent. Then he said, ‘You cannot blame Bill for falling in love with an ambitious woman detective. I don’t think it’ll last long. You can’t choose his girlfriends for him.’
‘When he calls this evening,’ said Agatha huffily, ‘I’m not speaking to him.’
‘And what good will that do? He’s our only contact with the police. Instead of going into a huff, Agatha, you should simply tell him what you overheard. Maddie said some nasty things about you, but Bill said none.’
‘I don’t want to speak to him again!’
‘Agatha, be sensible.’
‘I’m sick and tired of being sensible,’ shouted Agatha and burst into tears.
He gave her a clean handkerchief, he fetched her a stiff brandy, he suggested she lie down.
And Agatha, who had suddenly and desperately wanted a shoulder to cry on, a shoulder to lean on, pulled herself together and said on a sob that, yes, she would see Bill.
She would have been comforted could she have known that James felt as if he could cheerfully strangle both Bill Wong and Maddie, but James showed none of this as he returned to his computer. Agatha went up to bed for a nap, James tried to work, but his doorbell sounded shrilly. He thought it must be some persistent member of the press. Normally he would not have answered the door, but he had a desire to relieve his feelings on somebody, even if that somebody was Bill Wong.
So he opened the door and found Roy Silver on the step.
James took the hapless Roy by the throat and shook him hard. ‘Get the hell away from here, you little worm,’ he roared. James gave him a final shake and then a push and Roy staggered backwards and fell into the hedge.
‘I only came to help,’ said Roy shrilly. ‘Honest. I’ve got information about Jimm
y Raisin. I’ve found out things which might explain why someone murdered him. I did it to help Aggie.’
James, who had been about to slam the door, hesitated. ‘What are you talking about?’
Roy extricated himself from the hedge and tittuped forward cautiously. ‘I hired a detective to find out about Jimmy Raisin. I’ve got her report.’ He held up the briefcase he had managed to hang on to during James’s assault on him.
‘Oh, very well,’ said James. ‘Come in and I’ll see if Agatha’s prepared to listen to you.’
When Agatha came down the stairs, Roy backed nervously behind a chair. He had blonded his hair, which somehow made his face look weaker and whiter.
But Agatha had had time to think. If Roy had any worthwhile information, then she and James might solve the case and that would leave Bill and his precious Maddie with egg all over their faces.
‘Sit down, Roy,’ she said. ‘If you’ve got anything of importance, I’d like to hear it, but don’t think I’m ever going to forgive you for what you did to me.’
‘He stopped you from committing bigamy,’ said James.
Agatha glared at both of them.
‘Let’s hear what he has to say,’ said James mildly.
Agatha nodded. Roy edged round the chair and sat down nervously, his briefcase on his lap. ‘I assume,’ said Agatha, ‘that you initially hired this detective out of spite to find out if I was still married, and hired the detective again because you couldn’t live with yourself, you creep!’
Roy cleared his throat. ‘Always looking for the worst motives, aren’t we, Aggie? I thought your husband was dead and I thought you would thank me if I gave you conclusive proof of that death as a wedding present. And you can huff and puff but that’s the truth, or may God strike me dead!’
Agatha looked at the beamed ceiling. ‘I’m waiting for the thunderbolt to fall on you, Roy.’
‘This is getting us nowhere,’ said James sharply. ‘Let’s hear your report.’
Roy opened the briefcase and took out a sheaf of papers.
‘I wondered how it was that Jimmy had managed to live so long,’ he said. ‘But it seems that at one time a philanthropist, a Mrs Serena Gore-Appleton, had taken Jimmy up as a worthwhile cause and borne him off to an expensive health farm. Although the place was hardly the Betty Ford Clinic and more a place where rich boozers went to dry out to recover and drink another day, it seemed to have worked for Jimmy, who became clean and sober and subsequently worked as a counsellor for Mrs Gore-Appleton’s charity, Help Our Homeless. Now here’s the interesting bit.
‘Jimmy always seemed to have a lot of money to flash around. How my detective, a Ms Iris Harris, found that out was because Jimmy liked to queen it in front of his old down-and-out cronies. Then, after a year of sobriety, he suddenly went downhill amazingly quickly and soon reappeared among the beggars, junkies, and general drop-outs of the London streets.
‘One down-and-out who has recently sobered up offered the information that Jimmy delighted in finding out things about people, and even in his lowest stage was not above blackmailing someone for a bottle of meths with some threat such as reporting them to the social security if he found out they had work and were still drawing the dole, that kind of thing.’
Roy beamed about him triumphantly. ‘So you see, sweeties, this agile brain of mine came to the conclusion that if Jimmy could blackmail the poor, why not the rich while working with this Gore-Appleton female? Maybe he saw one of his pigeons in Mircester and the pigeon saw a likely opportunity of killing Jimmy and took it.’
‘It all seems too much of a coincidence,’ said James slowly. ‘Agatha here decides to get married in Mircester. Had it not been for that, Jimmy would never have come down to the Cotswolds. Why on earth should one of his victims suddenly appear as well?’
Roy looked downcast. Then his face brightened. ‘Ah, but do you know where the health farm he went to is situated? At Ashton-le-Walls, ten miles outside Mircester.’
‘Yes, but people who go to health farms don’t usually come from the immediate neighbourhood, do they?’ asked Agatha. ‘I mean, they come from all over the country.’
‘Oh, you are such a pair of downers!’ said Roy petulantly. ‘And coincidences do happen in real life. Do you remember that Australian friend of mine, Aggie? The tourist from hell?’
‘Yes, I thought he was rather nice. Steve, that was his name.’
‘Anyway, him. I thought he was back in Australia, never to return. The other week I was in a pub and I got talking about Steve to this friend, about his dreary camcorder and his dreary guidebooks, and I was just saying I hoped I would never see him again when I felt these eyes drilling into the back of my head and I turned round and there was Steve! He flounced off but I can tell you, it gave me a turn, and it was in a pub in Fulham I’ve never been to before.’
James turned to Agatha. ‘He’s at least given us something to go on. We should start off tomorrow by going up to London to try to find this Mrs Gore-Appleton.’
Agatha brightened visibly at the thought of taking some action.
The doorbell rang. ‘That’ll be Bill Wong,’ said James, getting to his feet.
Agatha grabbed his sleeve. ‘Let’s not tell him anything about this, James. Let’s keep it to ourselves for a bit.’
He looked about to protest and then slowly nodded. ‘All right, but no getting yourself into danger again, Agatha. You’ve been involved in some scary murders in the past.’
Bill Wong came in and stopped short, surprised to see Roy.
‘I thought they would have killed you.’
‘Aggie and I are old friends,’ said Roy defensively. ‘I only wanted to give her Jimmy’s death certificate as a wedding present.’
Bill gave a him a slanting cynical look. ‘If you say so.’
Roy picked up the papers, which James had left on the table, and thrust them into his briefcase.
‘What’s that?’ asked Bill.
‘PR stuff,’ said Roy. ‘I came down here to get Agatha’s help.’
Bill looked around at the three faces. There was a wary, almost hostile atmosphere in the room. He decided ruefully that James and Agatha must be under a great strain. He should have called before this.
‘I wish I had some good news for you,’ he said, ‘but we still cannot find out any reason why your late husband was murdered, Agatha. If it had been among the down-and-outs in London, then it might have been decided he had been killed for no greater reason than the bottle in his pocket. But here, in the Cotswolds?’
‘Haven’t the police in London been questioning his old cronies?’ asked James.
‘Of course. But that lot have only to see a police uniform to clam up, and they can smell a detective at a hundred paces. I wish I could go there myself and see what I could dig up. How’s the village taking it?’ said Bill, who lived in Mircester.
‘I gather Agatha and I are being regarded as first and second murderer,’ said James. ‘Tell us about the forensic evidence, Bill.’
‘Pretty much still what I told Agatha. He had been strangled with a man’s silk tie. Now that sounds like a good clue, but it is a Harvey Nichols tie and can be bought at just about any good outfitter’s in the country. It’s also quite old and frayed at the edges.’
‘That was Jimmy’s own tie,’ said Agatha suddenly. ‘He wasn’t wearing it when I last saw him but he had it on at the wedding. Wait a bit. Maybe he had it in his pocket. He wouldn’t surely stand there and let someone fish in his pockets for a murder weapon?’
‘What did the tie look like?’ asked Bill. ‘I can’t remember.’
But Agatha did. She thought every horrible fact and item of that day would be burned into her brain forever. ‘It was one of those ones which look like an old school tie but aren’t – discreet stripes. Dark blue, gold and green.’
Bill whipped out a notebook and scribbled busily. Then he said, ‘We’ve found out he got cleaned up in a Salvation Army hostel before he came down here and th
ey gave him clothes. Of course, they probably gave him the tie as well.’
‘Was he hit with anything first?’ asked Agatha.
‘Only the back of your hand.’
‘He can’t just have stood there and let it happen.’
‘I think I know,’ said Roy triumphantly. ‘He’s lying there in the ditch after Aggie here swiped him. Now, if you’re a drunk and someone swipes you and you fall in the ditch, the first thing you’d do would be to take that bottle out of your pocket to make sure it hadn’t got broken. Then you’d take a good swig out of it. Maybe when he pulled the bottle out of his pocket, the tie came out as well. Enter murderer. Jimmy in ditch, Jimmy with bottle to his mouth, tie sticking out of pocket, seizes tie, strangle, choke, one dead body.’
‘Thank you, Mr Jingle,’ said James. ‘Mind you, it’s possible. What do you think, Bill?’
‘I think you all know something you aren’t telling me,’ said Bill, looking at them.
‘How’s dear Maddie?’ asked Agatha sweetly.
His round face flushed. ‘Detective Constable Hurd is well, thank you.’
‘Do, please, please, give her my regards.’
Bill wondered in that moment whether Agatha had guessed that Maddie had sent him to find out what he could and then decided that love was making him paranoiac.
‘I’d best be going.’ Bill got to his feet.
‘See you around,’ said Agatha. James showed him out.
Bill stood outside the cottage for a moment, irresolute. He had not received his usual welcome. It was unlike both Agatha and James not to offer him a drink or a cup of coffee. He wondered for a moment whether he should go back and tell Agatha the truth, that he had not come near her before this because Maddie had urged him to do so. He took half a step back towards the door and then gave his round head an angry little shake and went towards his car instead.
So the three amateur detectives inside were free to start their investigations, unhampered by any help from the police.
Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage Page 4
