by M C Beaton
“The reason I walked in last time was because one of the locals said they had seen John Deny going into your cottage, and when you didn’t immediately answer the bell I decided to let myself in. You always run to answer the bell, Agatha, and when you see me, your face always falls in disappointment, as if you were expecting someone else.”
“You’re imagining things,” said Agatha curtly. “Come in.”
She switched off the television and turned to him. “So what did he have to say for himself?”
“Derry? He thinks you are an interfering old bag and that Lacey is either out to pinch his girlfriend or prove she murdered her mother.”
“That’s mad. James and I only called on them once. Admittedly James has been seeing more of her since then, but…”
“No doubt they have heard about your reputation for sleuthing. I warned him not to disturb you again.”
“You should have charged him!”
“What with? Yes, he says he threatened you. But I believe he’s just a suly young man.”
“You won’t say that when you find me one dark night planted in my own garden, upside down, and full of weedkiller. He’s strong enough to have hoisted her up on that hook.”
“We’re not sitting on our bums, Agatha.”
“So what do you know that I don’t?”
“That the body has been released for burial.”
“When is the funeral?”
“At a crematorium in Oxford tomorrow. Don’t have any mad ideas about going in the hope that the murderer is lurking in the bushes. We’ve promised Beth Fortune to keep it quiet. She says she doesn’t want nosy villagers or the press.”
“What about the husband? Is he coming over?”
“No, he doesn’t want to know anything about it. Miss Fortune is going to the States to see him during the Christmas holidays. There’s your doorbell. No doubt that’s Lacey returned from his lunch. I’ll get it just in case Derry’s been stupid enough to come back.”
He returned, followed by James. “Well?”
Agatha greeted him. “How did you get on? While you were romancing Beth, her boyfriend was round here threatening me and telling me to warn you off.”
“Why on earth would he do that?”
“He thinks you’re after her money, among other things.”
“I cannot understand what Beth sees in a lout like that.”
“I do. Like to like,” said Agatha, turning her eyes away from Bill’s sharp look.
“She is a highly intelligent girl,” said James stiffly.
“We don’t seem to be getting very far forward,” said Agatha in a placating tone. “I mean, I am beginning to think it must have been someone from outside the village, someone from Mary’s past. If it wasn’t the husband, then it could have been someone she had an affair with. Sorry, James, I meant someone else.”
“We’re working on the American end,” said Bill, getting to his feet. “I’ll leave you two to discuss the case with the usual warning. Don’t get involved and don’t go around suspecting villagers and letting them know it.”
There was a silence after he had left. Then James said, “I made notes on our interviews. Would you like to come next door and we’ll go over them?”
Agatha had a sudden pettish desire to say she would not. Damn Beth, she thought. Somehow Beth had reanimated all those feelings for James which Agatha thought she had lost. Competitiveness was a great part of Agatha Raisin’s character.
“Wait and I’ll get my cigarettes,” she said. “You don’t object to me smoking, do you?”
“I don’t object to anyone smoking. I used to smoke myself.”
“You amaze me. Most of the people who’ve stopped are militant anti-smokers. How did you stop?”
“I got tired of it,” said James, who had actually given up smoking several years ago to please the then-current love of his life.
“I wish I could get tired of it. I don’t even want to stop. Wait until I get the cats in from the garden. No, wait there!” she added sharply, terrified that James would see the bare garden.
“You’re planning to surprise us all on Open Day,” he said. “And yet you don’t seem to spend much time in the garden.”
“I’ve spent all morning working on it,” lied Agatha.
In James’s cottage some few minutes later, Agatha looked around, wondering not for the first time what it would be like if she lived there. And yet the living-room was comfortable, furnished with books and elegant old furniture. There was even a bowl of flowers on the window-ledge. She could not imagine putting her stamp on anything. James was that most irritating kind of bachelor, the kind who obviously does not need anyone to look after him.
He switched on the computer. “I’m surprised you don’t turn one of your bedrooms into an office,” said Agatha.
“I like to keep the spare bedroom free for guests,” he said. “My sister and her children came to stay while you were away. Now let me see, I’ll just flash this up on the screen.”
Agatha pulled up a chair beside him and read. Everything was neatly and accurately reported. “If we were detectives in a book,” she said gloomily, “I would stare at the screen and say mysteriously, “There is something there that someone has said which is not quite right.” But all I can see is a lot of uninteresting twaddle.”
“Or I would say,” said James, “that it must be Bernard Spott because he’s the only one who said anything nice about her. Then I would go and make a citizen’s arrest and have my photo in all the papers.”
“Did you really learn anything more from Beth about her mother?” asked Agatha.
“She said a bit curtly that she didn’t want to talk about her mother, that Mary had made her, Beth’s, early years hell with her tantrums and scenes. She seems very fond of her father.”
“If she is as intelligent and charming as you say – although I didn’t get that impression – then why get tied up with a lout like Deny?”
“I think he adores her and she needs that. Gives her stability.”
“Bollocks! You’ve been reading magazines.”
“Don’t be rude, Agatha.”
“Sorry, but it did sound a bit like psychobabble. I say, I wonder if anyone else got a sort of backhanded bequest in Mary’s odd will. Why didn’t we ask Bill Wong?”
“I asked Beth. We were the only ones so favoured.”
“How odd! I can understand her wanting to get at you from beyond the grave for dumping her. But why me? I was quite nice to her.”
“She was very jealous of you.”
“Why? You, me, because of our friendship?”
“A bit, but mainly because of your popularity in the village.”
“My what?”
“You’re very popular, Agatha.”
“Oh,” said Agatha gruffly. She stared in a bemused way at the screen, not really seeing the words. Agatha Raisin popular! She felt quite dazed with happiness and gratitude. And then the temporary feeling of euphoria faded, to be replaced by one of dread. By cheating over this Open Day thing, she was putting such precious popularity at risk.
She got to her feet. “I think I’d better make a phone call.”
He looked at her in surprise. “Aren’t you staying for a cup of coffee? I was just about to put the kettle on.”
“Put it on. I’ll just make a call and come back.”
“Use the phone over there if it’s that urgent.”
“It’s private.”
“I’ll go into the kitchen and shut the door behind me. I won’t be able to hear a thing.”
But Agatha judged other people’s actions by her own. Were the roles reversed, she would most certainly have pressed her ear to the kitchen door and listened.
When she got to her own house, she phoned Roy Silver.
“Aggie,” he cried. “All ready for the planting?”
“No, I’m not, Roy, and I’ve gone off the idea of working for Pedmans. Tell Wilson to tear up that contract. No plants, no deal.”
>
There was a little silence and then Roy said, “Your brain’s become peasantified. There’s nothing in that legal and binding contract which you signed saying anything about a deal, about plants. You can’t get out of it, Aggie, so you may as well have the shrubbery. Come on, it’s the best on offer. You’ll knock them in the eye.”
Agatha felt herself weakening. “Lovely blooms,” he coaxed.
“What if you’re seen?”
“We’ll be there at two in the morning and we’ll be as quiet as mice. If anyone does see any movement, you can say you got some workmen in to lower the fence for the big day.”
“I suppose if I have to work for Pedmans, I may as well get something out of it,” said Agatha sulkily.
“That’s the girl. Is it safe to arrive in that little shop of horrors down there? More murder?”
“The police are working on it.”
“See if you can solve it while I’m there and I’ll get some publicity out of the reflected glory.”
“Anything to oblige,” said Agatha sarcastically and rang off. She went back to James’s cottage.
“Everything all right?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Agatha uneasily. She sat down beside him again and tried to focus on what he had written, but her uneasiness about her garden would not go away.
She had meant to stop Roy’s coming. For days she had meant to stop his coming. But as more and mote people said they were looking forward to seeing her ‘secret garden’, the more Agatha felt she had to have something to show them. If she said there had been some sort of disaster and that everything had died and she was keeping the place locked up, some busybody was sure to think her garden had been vandalized like those others and tell the police and the police would say that it had been as bare as Mother Hubbard’s cupboard when they had seen it.
So all too soon, in the middle of the warm dark summer night, there was Roy with his team of workmen and gardeners. They finished at dawn and drove off.
“Come along,” said Roy. “You can’t sit hiding in bed. Take a look!”
Agatha went outside.
A blaze of magnificent colour met her eyes. Flowers and trees and shrubs filled what had all too recently been a bare garden. The cats slid out round Agatha and frolicked on the grass as if they, too, were enjoying the display.
“It’s magnificent,” said Agatha, awed.
“So now we can go and get a bit of sleep,” said Roy. “When do the people start coming?”
“Not till ten. How do I tell them what flowers are what? I don’t want to be exposed as a cheat.”
“See! Labels tied on all of them, nicely faded and weathered, but legible. You just bend down and read.”
They retreated indoors. Roy collapsed fully dressed on the bed in the spare bedroom and went instantly to sleep. Agatha took a last admiring look out of the window of her bedroom, set the alarm for nine and went to sleep as well.
At first they came in ones and twos and then suddenly Agatha’s garden was full of exclaiming and admiring people. Roy, at a table by the side gate, collected the fees.
He could hear Agatha’s voice describing the plants with all the authority of a real gardener. “Yes, that is a fine example of a Fremontodendron californicum and that’s a Wattakaka sinensis. Lovely perfume.”
And then Bernard Spott, to whom Roy had been introduced, raised his puzzled voice. “But this is all wrong,” he said plaintively. “Mrs Raisin, that is not a Fremontodendron californicum. That’s a Phygelius capensis!”
Agatha gave a gay laugh and turned away from him to another visitor, but Bernard went on. “And you said, Agatha, that that was a Hydrangea paniculata Grandiflora. Firstly, it’s nothing like a hydrangea. It is, in fact, a Robinia pseudoacacia called Frisia. And this – ”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” snapped Agatha.
“He’s right,” came a woman’s voice, a visitor to the village, a hard-faced woman in a straw hat and print dress. “I would say all these flowers and plants have the wrong labels on them.” Her hard eyes fastened on Agatha. “I’ve been listening to you and you do not know the first thing about the plants in your garden. I think you just bought them lock, stock and barrel from some nursery and the nursery put the wrong labels on them.”
There was a silence. Agatha was aware of Mrs Bloxby standing listening, of Bill Wong, who had just arrived in time to hear it all.
“Would anyone like some tea?” asked Agatha desperately.
People began to shuffle out of the garden until there was only Agatha, Roy, Mrs Bloxby, and Bill Wong left. “Lock the side gate,” Agatha ordered Roy. “What a disaster!”
“What happened?” asked Mrs Bloxby.
“I’ll tell you what happened,” said Bill. “Our Agatha has been cheating again. You did get all those plants from a nursery, didn’t you? Just like you said you would.”
Agatha nodded miserably.
“That’s no crime,” said Mrs Bloxby. “A lot of the villagers buy extra plants and flowers and things to put in before Open Day. The nurseries around here do a roaring trade. It is only a pity that the nursery you went to proved to be so incompetent.”
“They’re the best there is,” said Roy defensively. “They’d never have got the wrong labels.”
Bill leaned forward and peered into a flowerbed. “Come here, Agatha,” he said. He pointed downwards. “I don’t think any of your dedicated gardeners would tramp over your flowerbeds.”
In the soft earth was a clear imprint of a large booted foot.
“I brought men with me to put them in,” said Roy. “Probably one of them.”
Bill turned to the vicar’s wife. “Could someone possibly have switched the labels?”
Mrs Bloxby put on her spectacles and went from plant to flower to tree, reading the labels. Then she straightened up. “Why, how clever of you! That’s exactly what is wrong.”
“Are you sure?” demanded Agatha. From inside the house came the sound of the doorbell.
“I’ll get that,” said Roy, disappearing inside.
“I think that’s what happened,” said Bill. “Someone’s played a trick on you, Agatha. When could they have done it?”
“It must have been sometime between, say, five in the morning and nine.”
“Daylight. Someone might have seen something.”
Roy came back into the garden with James Lacey. Agatha groaned.
“You’ve done magnificently, Agatha,” said James.
“You may as well know the truth.” Agatha looked thoroughly wretched. James listened to the tale of her deception, his eyes crinkling up with laughter.
When she had finished, he said, “You don’t do things by halves. All these months of hiding behind that high fence – I’m glad to see you’ve got it lowered at last – and all the lies and secrecy, and all for one Open Day in an English village!” He stood and laughed while Agatha stared at her shoes.
Mrs Bloxby’s gentle voice cut across James’s laughter. “You know, I think it might be a nice idea to have tea out here among these lovely flowers and things. I see you have a little garden table and chairs there. I’ll help you get the tea-things.”
Agatha, glad to escape from James’s amusement, went inside with her.
Bill turned to James. “Look, you’re her nearest neighbour. Did you see anyone around this cottage this morning?”
“I saw a few people. Let me think. I was up very early. Mrs Mason has just got herself a dog. She came walking past and called out a good morning. I was tidying up my front garden. Then there was Mrs Bloxby.”
“What would she be doing along Lilac Lane?” asked Bill. “It doesn’t lead anywhere.”
“She often goes for a walk about the village in the early morning. Then along Lilac Lane, away from the village end, I heard a couple, a man and a girl, I think. I heard the girl laugh.” He stood for a moment, looking bewildered. “That’s odd!”
“What’s odd?”
“I just remembered
. The night Agatha and I discovered Mary had been murdered, as we were waiting outside her house to see if she would answer the bell, a man and a girl passed behind us on the road. I heard the girl laugh.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this?” demanded Bill sharply.
“It slipped my mind. It didn’t seem important. Just a village sound. I mean, they weren’t coming away from the house or anything like that.”
Agatha and Mrs Bloxby came into the garden carrying tea-things.
James swung round. “Agatha, do you remember that couple on the road the night we discovered Mary dead?”
“Yes,” said Agatha. “I do now. I’d clean forgotten about them.”
“And now James here says he heard a couple at the end of this road this morning, early.”
“They could have been walkers,” said Mrs Bloxby. “There’s a lot of them about the Cotswolds. Although Lilac Lane doesn’t lead anywhere. I mean, you can’t drive anywhere, there is that footpath across the field at the end of it.”
“You were out early, Mrs Bloxby,” said Bill. “Did you see anyone?”
“I only saw Mr Lacey’s bottom. He was leaning over a flowerbed in his front garden, weeding, I think.”
“Do you think it could have been that Beth Fortune and her boyfriend?” asked Roy eagerly, who had been told all the details of the murder during the night by Agatha.
“I think I’ll pay a call on them,” said Bill.
“Where exactly were Beth and John on the night of the murder?” asked Agatha.
“They were in Beth’s rooms in college, studying.”
“Any witnesses to that?”
“No, but usually only guilty people arrange cast-iron alibis.”
“Come back when you’ve seen them and let us know what they say,” urged Agatha.
When he had gone and James, Agatha, Roy and Mrs Bloxby were seated around the table, James said, “Even if it turns out that John Deny and Beth played a trick on you, Agatha, it’s a far cry from murder.”
“Perhaps not,” said Agatha. “I mean, surely the destruction of the gardens ties up somewhere and somehow with Mary’s death. I wish I had never thought of this silly scheme. Now I have to go and work for Pedmans, the PR firm, in the autumn, and for six months, too.”
