Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage

by Beaton, M. C.

  A poem she had learned at school suddenly ran through Agatha’s brain:

  Western wind, when wilt thou blow?

  The small rain down can rain, –

  Christ, if my love were in my arms

  And I in my bed again!

  She felt if only the wind would blow away the mist and fog, her spirits would lighten. Autumn seemed to be inside her very brain, darkness and falling leaves and the haunting spectre of decay and old age.

  Miss Purvey lived in a cottage called The Pear Tree in the middle of the village. It was in a terrace of other small cottages, dark, secret and lightless in the fog.

  Agatha had not asked James whether he knew how old this Miss Purvey was and dreaded finding out she was a sophisticated blonde who might capture James’s affections.

  Her first feeling on seeing Miss Purvey when she answered the door was one of relief, the second, contempt accompanied by the thought, what a frumpy old bag.

  The middle-aged, like Agatha, can be extremely cruel about the old, possibly because they are looking at their immediate future. Miss Purvey was, in fact, only about seventy, with a mouth like Popeye, a small nose, twinkling watery eyes and rigidly permed white hair. Her face was wrinkled and sallow. Only in Britain, thought Agatha, looking at the sunken line of the jaw and the thin, drooping mouth, could you still come across women of means who went in for having their teeth removed. It was still George Orwell’s country of people with bad teeth or no teeth at all.

  ‘No reporters,’ said Miss Purvey in a plummy voice.

  ‘We are not reporters,’ said James. ‘Have you had the press here?’

  ‘No, but the police have been asking me impertinent questions. Are you Jehovahs?’

  ‘No, we’re –’

  ‘Selling something?’

  ‘No,’ said James patiently.

  ‘Then what?’ The door began to inch closed.

  ‘I am Mrs Agatha Raisin,’ said Agatha, stepping in front of James.

  ‘The widow of that man who was murdered?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I’m very sorry for you, but I can’t help you.’

  James took over. ‘I feel perhaps you can, Miss Purvey. You look like a charming and intelligent woman to me.’ He smiled and Miss Purvey suddenly smiled back. ‘We are concerned to find out what Mrs Raisin’s husband was doing at the health farm. We need a lady with good powers of observation rather than some dry police report.’

  ‘Well . . .’ She hesitated. ‘Mother always used to say I noticed what the average person missed. Do come in.’

  Agatha followed James into the cottage quickly, feeling that Miss Purvey would have been quite happy to shut the door in her face.

  The cottage was as dark as the day outside. A small fire burned in the living-room grate. There were photographs everywhere, on the many side tables, on the upright piano in the corner, and on the mantelpiece, old photographs taken on forgotten sunny days.

  ‘So,’ began James when they were seated, ‘did you speak to Mr Raisin?’

  ‘Only a little,’ said Miss Purvey. ‘And to be quite frank, I was amazed that such a type of person should be at such an expensive health farm.’

  ‘But you saw him,’ said James. ‘What was your impression of him?’

  She put her finger to her forehead, rather like the Dodo in Alice, and frowned. ‘He was very friendly to everyone, chatting here and there and table-hopping at meals. He had a very loud laugh. His clothes were good, but they didn’t seem to belong to him. Not a gentleman.’

  ‘And Mrs Gore-Appleton?’

  ‘She seemed quite all right. But too old to have her hair dyed that improbable shade of gold and her exercise clothes were much too flashy.’

  ‘Was she in love with Mr Raisin?’ asked James.

  ‘They were very much a couple and I saw him going into her room in the middle of the night.’ Miss Purvey’s lips folded in such disapproval that they disappeared into the lines of her face.

  ‘But you personally did not have anything to do with him?’ Agatha put in.

  ‘He did . . . er . . . come on to me. That is the modern expression, is it not? But I would have none of it.’

  Both Agatha and James were struck by the same thought at the same time that it was hard to imagine Miss Purvey repulsing the advances of any man. There was an avid eagerness about her as she looked at James and she constantly reached out to touch his arm. ‘But then,’ she went on, ‘he turned his attentions to Lady Derrington, or the woman who, I now gather, was not Lady Derrington. I fear these health clinics nurture lax morals.’

  ‘Did the police broach the subject of blackmail to you?’ asked James.

  ‘Yes, they did. But as I pointed out, there are still ladies around in these days.’ Miss Purvey’s eyes rested briefly on Agatha, as if dismissing her from the lady class.

  ‘Can you think of anyone he might have been blackmailing?’ Agatha’s voice was thin with dislike.

  ‘I don’t know if he was blackmailing her. But there was a certain Mrs Gloria Comfort. He was all over her. Mrs Gore-Appleton didn’t seem to mind.’

  ‘What was Mrs Gore-Appleton really like?’ asked Agatha. ‘I don’t mean her appearance, but her character.’

  ‘Well, as I said, she was a lady,’ said Miss Purvey reluctantly. Again those eyes fastened on Agatha. ‘And although her clothes were unsuitable, they were very expensive. She was well made-up and quite thin, but very fit.’ So goodbye, Mrs Hardy, thought Agatha, conjuring up a picture of that powerfully built woman. Agatha still nourished hopes that Mrs Hardy would miraculously turn out to be the missing Mrs Gore-Appleton, but then she desperately wanted her cottage back.

  Agatha began to fidget. She now loathed Miss Purvey and felt the small dark living-room claustrophobic.

  But James seemed determined to discuss the matter further, and to Agatha’s dismay accepted an offer of coffee. He followed Miss Purvey into the kitchen to help her. Agatha walked around the room looking at the photographs. They all featured Miss Purvey at various stages of her life. Agatha was surprised to note that as a young woman she had been very pretty. Why hadn’t she married? There were parents and what looked like two brothers. There was a photo of Miss Purvey at her coming-out in the days when debs were still presented at court, so the family must have had money. She could hear the voices from the kitchen and then heard Miss Purvey give a flirtatious laugh. Damn James!

  They returned from the kitchen together, Miss Purvey’s old face slightly pink. To Agatha’s amazement, Miss Purvey’s attitude to her had changed. She pressed Agatha to try her cakes and then chatted about life in the village and the work she was doing for the Women’s Institute. ‘Ladies like us, Mrs Raisin,’ she said, ‘must do our bit.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Agatha faintly, wondering what had brought about this change and not knowing that James had whispered to Miss Purvey the lie that Agatha was a niece of the Duke of Devonshire.

  ‘Now although I said Mrs Gore-Appleton was a lady,’ confided Miss Purvey, putting a wrinkled hand on Agatha’s knee, ‘I did get the impression that she had gone to the bad, if you know what I mean. It’s hard to put my finger on it, but there was a raffishness about her, a seediness, and something else . . . I don’t know what, but I was quite frightened of her. As I was telling Mr Lacey, I remember she did begin to talk to me towards the end of my stay. She was talking about money and business and told me she was running a charity. She said that everyone had money worries today and I said I was quite comfortably off, thank you, and she asked me if I would contribute to her charity, but when I heard it was for the homeless, I refused. I said if these people were homeless, then it was their own fault.’

  To Agatha’s relief, James abruptly lost interest in anything further that Miss Purvey might have to say. He put down his cup.

  ‘Thank you for your hospitality. We really must be going.’

  ‘Oh, must you? I could be of help to you, I think.’

  ‘You have already been
of great help,’ said James courteously.

  ‘That’s very kind of you,’ Agatha said, getting to her feet and gathering up her handbag and gloves. ‘But I don’t see –’

  ‘My powers of observation,’ she cried. ‘I would make a very good detective. Now, now, Mr Lacey,’ she said roguishly, ‘you have already marked me down as an expert sleuth!’

  ‘Quite,’ he said hastily. He took out a card and gave it to her. ‘If you find anything, I will be at this address.’

  After they had gone, Miss Purvey paced up and down her small cottage living-room. She felt excited, elated. That handsome Mr Lacey had looked at her in such a way! She walked to the window and peered up, rubbing the glass. The mist had taken on a yellowish light showing that, far above, the sun was trying to struggle through.

  Miss Purvey had a sudden longing for the lights and shops of Mircester. She had one close friend, Belinda Humphries, who ran a small dress shop in a shopping arcade in Mircester. Miss Purvey decided to go and see her, relishing the joys of describing James Lacey and the way he had looked at her. Of course, he had had Mrs Raisin with him, but she had asked him in the kitchen if they were going to be married after all and he had said quietly, ‘Not now,’ and she, Miss Purvey, was only a teensy bit older than Mrs Raisin.

  She put on her coat and that sort of felt hat beloved by middle-class Englishwomen and damned as ‘sensible’, and made her way out to her Ford Escort, which was parked on the road outside the cottage.

  Driving slowly and carefully, she joined the dual carriageway road some miles outside the village, and moving into the fast lane, drove at a steady thirty miles per hour, seemingly deaf to the furious horns and flashing lights of the drivers behind her.

  To her dismay, the fog began to thicken as she approached Mircester. She found a parking place in the central square, got out, locked her car and went to the shopping arcade. A neat sign hanging on the glass door said CLOSED. She gave a little cluck of dismay. She had forgotten it was half-day in Mircester.

  She felt too strung up to go home. Of course she could have gone to Belinda’s cottage, but that lay in a village twenty miles in the opposite direction out of Mircester from where she herself lived.

  Miss Purvey decided to treat herself to a visit to the cinema. A Bruce Willis Die Hard movie was showing and Miss Purvey found Bruce Willis exciting. She had seen it before but knew she would enjoy seeing it again.

  She bought a ticket at the kiosk and took a seat in the still-lit cinema. The programme was due to start in a few minutes.

  Miss Purvey settled down and took a packet of strong peppermints out of her handbag, extracted one and popped it in her mouth. There were not many people in the cinema. She twisted round to see if there was anyone she knew and then her gaze fastened on the person in the row behind her, a little to her left. She turned away and then stiffened in her seat. Surely she had seen that face before.

  She twisted round again and said in her loud, plummy voice, ‘I’ve seen you somewhere before, haven’t I?’

  Rose, the usherette, was fifty-something, with bad feet. The days when usherettes were pert young things with trays of ices had long gone. The ices and popcorn were bought at a kiosk in the foyer, and inside, tired middle-aged women showed people to their seats and then searched while the cinema was empty to make sure no one had left anything valuable.

  Rose saw the solitary figure sitting in the middle of one of the rows in the centre and thought, here’s another old-age pensioner fallen asleep. It was hard to be patient with these old people. Some of them didn’t even know where they were or who they were when they woke up. The Cotswolds were turning into geriatric country.

  She edged along the row behind the still figure and, leaning forward, shook one shoulder. It was like a Hitchcock movie, thought Rose, her heart leaping into her mouth. The figure slowly keeled sideways. Rose gasped, leaned over and shone her torch into the figure’s face, for although the lights were on in the cinema, they were still quite dim.

  The bulging eyes of Miss Purvey stared glassily back at her. A scarf was twisted savagely around the old scrawny neck.

  Shock takes people in strange ways. Rose walked quickly to the foyer and told her fellow usherette to call the manager, and then she phoned the police. She told the man in the ticket office to come out and close the cinema doors and not let anyone else in. Then she lit a cigarette and waited. The police and an ambulance arrived, the CID arrived, the pathologist, and then the forensic team.

  Rose told her story several times, was taken to the police station, where she repeated everything again, and then signed a statement.

  She accepted a lift home in a police car and told the pretty young policewoman that she would be perfectly all right after she had had a cup of tea.

  When she let herself into her house, her husband shambled out of the living-room. He was wearing his favourite old moth-eaten cardigan and he had bits of boiled egg stuck to his moustache.

  ‘I hate you!’ screamed Rose, and then she began to cry.

  Chapter Five

  James and Agatha walked through the fog back to Lilac Lane from the Red Lion that evening. They were silent. The villagers had decided that they were not murder suspects and so, instead of a chilly silence, they had received a warm greeting and then had had to endure a heavy sort of banter, being teased about when they were going to tell everyone the date of their wedding day.

  James had not wanted to say firmly that he would never marry Agatha because that would have been rude, and so it was the blunt Agatha who had suddenly said loudly, ‘We’re not suited; we’re not marrying, and that’s that!’

  And instead of being grateful to her for having sorted the whole business out, James felt obscurely that Agatha had given him a public rejection and was in a mood remarkably like a sulk.

  Agatha grabbed his arm. ‘Look!’ she cried.

  Under the security light outside James’s door stood Detective Chief Inspector Wilkes, Bill Wong and Maddie.

  ‘What’s happened now?’ asked James. ‘Oh, God, I hope that Purvey woman hasn’t committed suicide as well.’

  Wilkes waited until they approached and then said, ‘We’d better go inside.’

  James let them in. They all stood around in the living-room.

  ‘Sit down,’ said Wilkes, his dark face serious. ‘This might take some time. Did you call on a Miss Janet Purvey today?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Agatha. ‘What is this about?’

  ‘And where were you both this afternoon?’

  ‘Before you go any further,’ said James, ‘I thought it was only in the movies that the police keep asking questions without telling anyone the real reason they are being questioned. So, out with it! Something awful has obviously happened to Miss Purvey.’

  Bill Wong spoke up, his narrow eyes scanning both their faces. ‘Miss Purvey was found strangled in the Imperial Cinema in Mircester this afternoon. So we must ask again, what were you both doing this afternoon?’

  ‘You should know, Bill, that neither of us could have anything to do with her murder,’ exclaimed Agatha.

  ‘Just answer the question.’ Maddie, her voice flat and hard.

  ‘Yes, we saw Miss Purvey this morning,’ said James. ‘As far as we could gather, she had not been blackmailed, nor had she had much to do with either Mrs Gore-Appleton or Jimmy Raisin when she was at the health farm. After we left her, we stopped at a pub over in Ancombe for sandwiches, then we came back here. Agatha went into Moreton to do some shopping and I remained here. Mrs Bloxby called on me when Agatha was out and stayed for coffee.’

  Bill turned to Agatha. ‘Did anyone see you in Moreton?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Agatha. ‘I went into Drury’s, the butcher’s, and then to Budgen’s supermarket . . . oh, and then I went to that bookshop in the arcade. Then I had a coffee at the Market House Tea Room. People should remember me.’

  ‘We’ll check all that,’ said Maddie and Agatha threw her a look of pure dislike.

 
; Wilkes leaned forward. ‘So to get back to the beginning. I gather Wong here told you not to do any more amateur detecting. But you had to go ahead, did you not? So begin at the beginning of your visit to Miss Purvey.’

  James described all they had talked about but with one important omission that Agatha noticed although she kept quiet about it. He said nothing about Miss Purvey’s wanting to play detective as well.

  Wilkes then turned to Agatha and she had to tell her version of events.

  The questioning went on and on. Finally Wilkes said, ‘We’ll need you both to come to the station and make a statement. Another death is just too much to swallow. Like I said, I gather that Wong here told you to mind your own business and leave the detecting to the police.’

  ‘Why did she go to Mircester after we left her?’ asked Agatha.

  Wilkes sighed. ‘Presumably to go to the cinema. We can only guess the rest. She may have been holding something back and telephoned someone and arranged to meet them. Or someone saw her in the cinema, recognized her and judged her to be a threat. Just leave things to us.’

  They all asked more questions before taking their leave.

  Agatha and James stared at each other in gloomy silence.

  At last James said, ‘Look, Agatha, none of this is our fault. We didn’t strangle her. But there is one good thing, if you can call it good, that will come out of all this. Press interest in the case will be renewed. They’ll run that interview with us. People will know we are looking for Mrs Gore-Appleton, and someone is bound to come forward.’

  ‘I wish the whole mess were over with,’ said Agatha wearily. ‘Perhaps we should leave the whole thing to the police.’

  ‘Well, we’ve only got one more name,’ pointed out James. ‘There’s a Mrs Gloria Comfort and she lives right in Mircester, near the abbey. And even if The Bugle doesn’t run the story, some other newspaper will want to talk to you. It would take a world catastrophe to knock this out of the papers.’