by M C Beaton
“I spoke to Mrs Bloxby, who told me that no one had been complaining about me being chairwoman. It was the opposite. She heard a lot of praise for me. She told me to think no more about it. But I said I thought Mrs Fortune would make a better chairwoman and Mrs Bloxby said, ‘No, that would not do at all.’ I was that riled up with Mrs Fortune that when I met her in the village shop, I says to her, I says, ‘I asked Mrs Bloxby if anyone had been unhappy with me being chairwoman and she said quite the opposite, so there!’ And she looks at me steady-like and then says quietly, ‘Mrs Bloxby is such a kind woman,’ and o’ course that made me feel bad all over again.”
“And how soon after that was your garden attacked?” asked Agatha eagerly.
“Wait a minute, I’ll need to look at my diary.” She went to a veneered sideboard and drew, a leather-bound book out from the back of a knife drawer. “Let me see.” She rummaged through the pages. “Ah, here’s the bit about meeting her in the post office part of the village shop.” She flicked over more pages. “Three days after that, it would be.”
Agatha flashed a triumphant look at James. “But what’s all this to do with that business about the gardens?” asked Mrs Mason.
“We’re following up every lead,” said Agatha obscurely.
“So you’re playing detective again?”
“I’m not playing,” snapped Agatha. “I’m deadly serious.”
“You’ll find it was one of those hooligans down from Birmingham,” said Mrs Mason. “No one here would murder anyone for a few nasty remarks. Another scone?”
“The Boggles next?” suggested Agatha reluctantly. “I mean, someone sprayed their roses black.”
“Must we?” asked James. “It would be more a case of the Boggles putting Mary’s back up than the other way round.”
“I can’t stand the Boggles either,” said Agatha, “but it would be interesting to find out if their roses were attacked shortly after some sort of confrontation with Mary.”
“I think you’re barking up the wrong tree, Agatha. All these attacks on the gardens were within days of each other. If they had been more spaced out, there would have been more of a chance to catch the culprit, but they all happened so quickly.”
“Let’s try the Boggles anyway. Don’t leave me, James. Boggle-interviewing means I need support.”
Mr and Mrs Boggle lived on the council estate at the end of the village. They had bought their council house and named it Culloden, not because either had any interest in the famous Scottish battlefield but because it was a name that had taken their fancy at the local nursery which sold signs for houses.
Usually people in villages have a soft spot for the elderly, and Mr and Mrs Boggle milked this sympathy for all it was worth. They did not go in for subtle blackmail; they demanded days out and trips to town from various people as their right.
“Now remember,” cautioned Agatha, “if they want an outing, say both our cars are off the road. Go in for blatant lying, or they’ll have us driving them to Bath or Bristol or somewhere. I took them to Bath once and it was a nightmare of a day.”
“I think this is a waste of time,” said James uneasily.
“I don’t like them either,” said Agatha, “but they’re so blunt, they might turn out to be more useful than anyone nicer.”
James rang the doorbell, which gave a brisk rendering of the ‘Post Horn Gallop’. Odd shuffling noises came from inside as of elderly animals shifting in their lair.
After what seemed an age, there were the sounds of bolts being drawn back and locks being unlocked and then the door was opened on a chain and Mrs Boggle peered at them.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said. “What do you want?”
“We want to talk to you about Mary Fortune,” said Agatha.
Mrs Boggle’s elderly eyes gleamed with malice. “Why not ask him?” she said. “He must have known her better’n anybody.”
“Can we come in?” asked Agatha patiently.
“Soap’s on. You’ll need to wait till it’s finished.”
The chain was dropped, the door was opened, and Agatha and James followed her dumpy figure into a fusty living-room where a television set blared from one corner. Mrs Boggle was layered in clothes topped with a woolly cardigan and print apron. Her husband, wearing an old shirt, a sweater and a cardigan and thick trousers, was staring avidly at an Australian soap. The room was full of the smell of old Boggle, a strange smell, not of the unwashed but of the decaying.
Agatha and James waited patiently until the soap ground to its syrupy end. It was one of those irritating episodes where a well-loved character has died and so there were seemingly endless close-ups of Australian faces swimming in tears. And why were the women all so tiny? wondered Agatha. What of all those goddesses one saw in films of Bondi Beach? Maybe the undersized female in Australia went in for acting.
When it was finally over, Mrs Boggle reluctantly switched it off. “Well?” she demanded.
“What did you think of Mrs Fortune?” asked Agatha.
“Tart!”
Agatha stifled a sigh. “I mean, did she upset you in any way?”
“Bitch!” muttered Mr Boggle.
“Perhaps you could tell us what happened.” James’s voice was patient.
“Her had told Mrs Bloxby she wanted to help in the community…and it’s no use you two expecting tea or coffee. I’ve got more to do with my savings,”
Agatha ignored this. “Go on,” she said. “Mary asked Mrs Bloxby how she could help out in the community?”
“Yes, so she told that Mrs Fortune to take us out for the day. The painted hussy called round here, mutton dressed as lamb, if you ask me.
“I said we wanted to go to Bristol to look at the ships. Didn’t I, Boggle?”
“Yurse,” said Mr Boggle morosely.
“Her said, ‘Oh, come now, that’s too far. What about Evesham?’
“I said, didn’t I, Boggle, that it was her duty to help the old get about? I told her that not all of us had money to go gallivanting around in large cars. Yes, and I told her that the way she was going on with Mr Lacey here was a fair scandal. In my day, we got married, that’s what I told her. I was never one to mince my words, was I, Boggle?”
“No,” said Mr Boggle, staring at the blank television screen.
“To which Mary replied?” prompted Agatha.
“That Mrs Fortune then had the cheek to say that we would be better off in the old folks’ home than leeching off people. Can you imagine? Did you ever hear the like? I told her to get out and take her trollopy ways with her.”
“Have you any idea who damaged your roses?” asked James.
“Never had any doubt,” said Mrs Boggle. “It was her, Mary Fortune. Did it out of spite. Knew we would take first prize with them roses.”
“But you didn’t get a prize,” said Agatha.
“Cause we didn’t have nothing left for the show to match them roses,” said Mr Boggle suddenly and violently. He leaned forward and switched on a large electric fire and a blast of heat scorched into the already hot room. Outside, the sun was blazing down out of a clear sky. The temperature must have been in the high seventies. The room was suffocating. The windows were covered in thick white net, and curtains which looked as if they had been made out of red felt blocked out what was left of the light. The very stifling air seemed to be full of years of shared marital venom.
“The wicked shall be cut down like the green bay tree,” Mrs Boggle quoted inaccurately but viciously.
“You mean you are glad Mrs Fortune is dead?” asked Agatha.
“Course. That one got what was coming to her. Unnatural to sneer at the poor aged like us. We never did get that trip to Bristol. We – ”
“Good heavens! Is that the time?” Agatha leapt to her feet. “Come along, James. Thank you for your time, Mrs Boggle.”
Seeing her prey escape her, Mrs Boggle also got to her feet, but by the time she did that, Agatha and James had made their escape.
“Whew,” said Agatha. “Wouldn’t it be fun if it turned out they did it? At the back of my mind, there’s always a fear that the murderer might turn out to be someone quite nice who was temporarily deranged by Mary. But who could feel sorry for the Boggles?”
“Mrs Raisin!” Mrs Boggle’s voice sounded from Culloden. “Come back. Boggle’s fainted.”
James took a half-step towards the garden patih but Agatha seized his arm. “Running for the doctor,” she shouted back and set off down the street, with James after her.
“Are we going for the doctor?” asked James when he caught up with her.
“Waste of time. She wanted us back there so she could bully that trip to Bristol out of us. But I’ll phone the doctor when I get home, just to be on the safe side. Yes, I know they’ve got a phone there, but it would be just like one of them to die to spite us. Come and have a coffee with me while I phone and then we’ll try Miss Simms.”
Although he accepted her invitation, Agatha, still relishing her new freedom, realized that she would not have been devastated if he had turned it down.
She phoned the doctor, a new one in the village, a woman called Dr Sturret, and reported Mr Boggle’s ‘faint’. Then she made coffee for herself and James.
“I’m beginning to wonder if there is anyone in this village that Mary hasn’t riled up,” said Agatha.
“And it’s all making me feel a bit of a fool.” James looked at her uneasily.
“Surely you have nothing to reproach yourself with,” said Agatha. “Think of Mary as an easy lay.”
“I am not in the habit of thinking of women as easy lays,” said James crossly. “Can we drop the subject of my affair? I’m heartily sick of hearing about it.”
“Okay,” said Agatha reluctantly, because there was still enough of her old obsession for James left to make her enjoy the trashing of Mary Fortune. “When you’ve finished your coffee, we’ll call on Miss Simms.”
“Why don’t we call on Mrs Bloxby first?”
“Why her?”
“As the vicar’s wife, she must hear a lot of gossip. And the women of the village will talk to someone like her more openly than they would talk to anyone else.”
“Maybe, after Miss Simms, if we have time,” Agatha pleaded.
“You know what, Agatha, I get a feeling Mrs Bloxby told you something and you don’t want to tell me.”
“She told me something in confidence, James. It bears no relation to the murder. I can’t tell you.”
“Fair enough. Miss Simms it is. Isn’t she working?”
“Not any more. She stays at home and looks after the kids. The new man in her life is pretty generous.”
“It’s amazing,” said James, “how the ladies of Carsely not only accept having a blatantly unmarried mother in their midst but even make her the secretary of the Ladies’ Society.”
“I think it’s because villages have always accepted an unmarried mother or two in their midst before it became fashionable,” said Agatha. “Let’s go.”
Miss Simms answered her door. She was wearing the very high stiletto heels which she always wore, winter or summer. “This is nice,” she said when she saw them. “Come into the lounge and put your feet up. Gin? Lots of ice and tonic?”
“Lovely,” said Agatha, reflecting it was a treat to call on Miss Simms after such as the Boggles. Miss Simms was a pale, anaemic-looking woman in her late twenties. She had a long pale face and long mousy hair. She wore a short tight jersey skirt and a cheap frilly blouse, transparent enough to show a black brassiere underneath. Mrs Bloxby had told Agatha that Miss Simms was a competent and hard-working secretary and did a great deal of voluntary work in the village. Agatha found Miss Simms a very pleasant sort of girl. She had seen glimpses of her latest gentleman – a thick, beefy, florid man who drove off with her in the evenings.
“Are you investigating this murder?” asked Miss Simms after she had poured them drinks. She was sitting with her skirt hitched up, unselfconsciously exposing a border of frilly French knicker.
“Just asking a few questions,” said Agatha self-importantly.
“So what can you ask me?”
“We thought that if we could find out more about Mary, we could find out why someone killed her, and if we could find out why, we might find out who.”
“I know that line,” said Miss Simms. “It was in Morse, or one of them detective things. Well, let me see. Mary…I didn’t like her, of course. Sorry, Mr Lacey.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said gloomily. “I’m beginning to think I didn’t know her at all, although I can’t get anyone to believe me.”
“I can,” said Miss Simms. “I had a gentleman over in Pershore once. We had a few good times and then the police came around and said he’d disappeared with the firm’s takings. He worked for Padget, the paper people. I was shocked, but could I tell them a blind thing about him? I said he had a loud laugh and he wore his socks in bed, but the police said that was no good at all.”
“So what about Mary?” asked Agatha. “I mean, I thought you liked everyone.”
“Usually. But that one got up my nose. She wanted to chair the Ladies’ Society. I told her roundly we was all happy with Mrs Mason, but if she had any doubts about that, she could call for a vote. She said a few nasty things about Mrs Mason and I told her what I thought of her. No one criticizes any of my friends to me.” Miss Simms paused and took a birdlike sip of her drink. “So then she got stuck into me.”
“What did she say?”
Miss Simms turned pink. “Reckon as I don’t want to say.”
“You mean what she said hurt.” Agatha looked at her sympathetically. “You’re not the only one.”
Miss Simms looked at her in surprise. “I’m not? But everyone else said how she was an angel.”
“Because no one wanted to tell about the things she had said to them,” said Agatha. “Come on, you can tell us.”
“I s’pose. She said that unmarried mothers like me living off the state should be shot. She said that if she got the chair of the Ladies’ Society, the first thing she would do would be to find a more respectable secretary. I told her I took nothing off the state. “You don’t have to,” she says. “You get the men to pay, and that’s the same as being a prostitute.” I said to her that we didn’t all have money and the fact that she was doing it for nothing…Sorry, Mr Lacey. Anyway, I told her to get out and that was that. Do you know the next time I saw her, she was ever so nice to me that I began to think I’d imagined the whole thing.”
“This is dreadful,” said James. “I never knew she was as bad as that.”
“That’s us women for you,” said Miss Simms cheerfully. “We always show the fellows our best side. Any idea who dug that big hole in my lawn?”
“No,” said Agatha. “And the more I think about those attacks on the gardens, the more puzzled I am. It must have taken a great deal of daring, combined with a great deal of malice. It was dug on your front lawn, wasn’t it? Anyone passing could have seen what was happening.”
“Fred Griggs asked all the neighbours and the people across the road, and no one saw anything,” said Miss Simms. “But then, sometimes when I come back with my gentleman friend early in the morning, there’s not a soul around.”
“What about your children?” Miss Simms had a boy of four and a girl aged two. “Mrs Johns, next door, takes care of them,” explained Miss Simms.
“And she didn’t see anything?”
“Not a thing. My gentleman friend, he’s from the north originally, and he says that the air down here is so heavy that it makes everyone sleep like the dead.”
Agatha had to accept the truth of this statement. Any time she came back to Carsely after some time away, she found it hard to keep awake.
“You weren’t at the last meeting of the Ladies’ Society,” said Miss Simms.
“I was busy,” mumbled Agatha. The truth was she had known that Mrs Bloxby had been going to ask for a volunteer to take the Boggles on
a day’s outing and so had not gone, fearing that the gentle vicar’s wife would somehow, by her very presence, constrain Agatha to offer to drive the horrible couple.
“There’s another meeting tonight,” said Miss Simms.
“I’ll be there.” Agatha stood up. “I think we’d better go. Anything to ask, James?”
He shook his head. “I think I’ve heard enough.”
Outside, James said, “So you won’t be going to the Red Lion?”
“I’ll join you there after the ladies’ meeting. What about rounding up the day with a visit to Mr Spott?”
“All right. But that one will have nothing but praise for Mary.”
Mr Spotfs cottage, like Agatha’s, was thatched. The external woodwork was painted bright harsh blue; window-frames, front door and fencing. It made the cottage look unsuitably garish, like a children’s drawing executed in chalk colours. He had a small garden fronting on the road.
“The pond must be at the back,” said Agatha as James rang the doorbell.
Bernard Spott answered the door promptly. He was in his shirt-sleeves and gardening trousers, but his thin hair was as carefully greased across his bald spot as ever.
“Come in, come in,” he said.
They followed him into a pleasant living-room, low-beamed and with some fine old pieces of furniture.
“We have been trying in our amateurish way to find out what happened to Mary Fortune,” said James pleasantly. “Strange as it may seem, Agatha and I feel we never really knew her and wondered if you had any insights.”
“It was a shocking murder,” said Bernard, “really shocking. All that beauty and life extinguished in such a barbaric way.” He took out a handkerchief and blew his large nose in it with a trumpeting sound. “It hardly bears thinking about.”
“How did you find Mary?” asked Agatha. “I mean, being chairman of the horticultural society, you must have known her quite well.”
“Yes, we were very good friends,” said Bernard. “She not only was a superb gardener, she used to bake me cakes and bring them round.”
