by M C Beaton
Agatha began to think up excuses, maybe saying something like, “I had some grit in my eye,” but decided just to ignore the whole thing.
Mary came back and placed a side table by Agatha’s chair. On it she placed a cup of tea. “Milk? Sugar?”
“Straight up,” said Agatha with a weak smile.
Mary settled herself in an armchair opposite. “You’ll be wanting to know if I had any gossip or if I’ve heard anything. Just speculation, my dear. Now, Mrs. Bull is such an evil gossip, it’s a wonder no one’s attacked her before this. She put it about that I was seducing innocent young girls. I belong to the Big Sisters Club. We sort of adopt some waif or stray and take them out from time to time. Did I threaten the old bat? Sure I did. Said unless she got her gossip right, I’d hex her. Lot of them think I’m a witch. Feeling better?”
“Yes,” said Agatha. “You surprise me. You were not all that friendly before.”
“Sorry. I get malicious sometimes.”
“Why?”
She stretched and yawned. “Boredom, mostly. So I mix things up. I thought if I could get that Charles of yours interested, it would annoy you.”
“Why?” asked Agatha.
“Jealousy, my love. I’m jealous of women with careers.”
“So did it work?” asked Agatha. “Charles, I mean.”
“He only came back in with that story about having left his wallet to get at you. Don’t you pay him enough attention?”
“He’s not all that interested in me,” said Agatha, “and he’ll be even less interested if he finds out what I’ve done.”
“And what’s that? Can’t be nothing too bad.”
Lulled by the warmth of the fire and the caressing voice opposite, Agatha told Mary about her night with Jake.
There was a sudden change of atmosphere in the room, as if the temperature had suddenly dropped. Agatha gave herself a mental shake and rose to her feet. “I’m wasting detecting time, burdening you with my troubles,” she said. “Thank you for the tea. If you hear anything, let me know.”
When she had left, Mary went to her desk and searched through a little pile of cards until she found one marked Charles Fraith. It had his e-mail address on it. Mary switched on her computer and began to type.
* * *
Agatha would have been furious if she had known how little her night with Jake had troubled him. Jake was typical of a lot of young men in thinking that middle-aged women should be grateful for a roll in the hay and not expect anything more than a one-night stand. His attention was firmly fixed on Toni. That was love.
But late that afternoon, Charles walked into the office. “Agatha around?” he asked.
“Due back later,” said Toni. “We’re just finishing up here.”
“Like to go for a drink, Toni?” asked Jake while Simon glared.
“Shouldn’t you wait for Agatha, Jake?” asked Charles in a deceptively quiet voice.
“Don’t need to. I’ve typed out my report. She’ll be pleased. Had a successful day.”
“And a successful time last night in her bed, I gather,” said Charles.
Toni looked shocked, and Jake turned deep red. “We were both a bit drunk and … and…”
“Tell her I’ll call her later,” said Charles.
After he had left, Toni said, “Agatha is not as tough as she looks. I think you should buy her flowers or something.”
“But, Toni. It didn’t mean anything,” wailed Jake.
“Come on, Simon,” said Toni. “Let’s go to the pub.”
Agatha arrived back at the office at eight o’clock in the evening. She saw to her surprise that the lights were still on and even more surprised to find Jake sitting at his desk with his head in his hands.
She stopped on the threshold. Jake was really very handsome.
“Waiting for me?” she asked.
“Yes. I’ve made a mess of everything, and Toni won’t look at me,” said Jake bitterly. “Charles is a bastard.”
Agatha sat down slowly. She had sworn off cigarettes that day, but she found herself scrabbling in her handbag for a pack of Bensons and a lighter. She lit a cigarette and studied the trail of smoke rising up to the fluorescent light and said quietly, “What has it to do with Charles?”
“You shouldn’t have told him we spent the night together!”
“I didn’t! I’ve been down at that poxy village getting absolutely nowhere. So who told him?”
“He just seemed to know. Oh, what a bloody mess.”
And that’s a verdict on a night of lovemaking, thought Agatha wearily. What a bloody mess, indeed.
Agatha surveyed Jake. “Think young man! I am not made of iron. I am not your nanny or anyone’s mother figure. And yet you sit there worried about having ruined your chances with Toni?”
“It’s different,” said Jake. “You’re an experienced woman.”
“Oh, you’re down in the hole already so stop digging. Any messages?”
“One from Gloucester BBC. They’re doing a women-in-men’s-jobs week and they’ve been let down by a woman bricklayer and wondered if you could hop along to the studio at eleven o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“Phone them in the morning and say I can’t make it. No, phone them now. They’re a decent bunch, but I don’t feel up to it.”
Jake reached for the phone. “Leave it!” said Agatha suddenly. “I’ve an idea, I’ll go after all. Now, I am off to bed … alone, now and forever. Try for a bit of empathy and humanity. It helps detecting.”
As she turned into Lilac Lane and parked in front of her cottage, Agatha looked nervously around for Charles’s car. Why should I care? she chided herself. But she set off again and drove to the vicarage.
“Is it too late for a chat?” she asked as Mrs. Bloxby answered the door.
“No, Alf’s over at Ancombe and won’t be back until late. Come in.”
In the soft lights of the vicarage drawing room, Agatha studied her friend. The hair was still dyed a soft brown, but she was wearing one of her old droopy skirts and a shirt blouse.
Agatha sank into the old sofa and laid her head against the feather cushions. She dreamily watched the flames on the wood fire on the hearth and felt at peace.
“I’ve made a bit of a mess of things,” said Agatha.
“Sherry?”
“Yes, please.”
Agatha waited until a glass of sherry was placed in her hand. “It all seemed so awful, so disgraceful, but now I am here, it doesn’t seem all that important. You see, I went to bed with young Jake last night. Both of us were drunk and it just happened. But Jake is in love with Toni and looked on me as part of getting drunk and somehow Charles found out. I confronted Jake in the office, and he said he’d lost his chance of getting anywhere with Toni. So here I am. Some ghastly Mrs. Robinson.”
“A lot of women would envy you. A young man like Jake could have his pick.”
“But what on earth has it got to do with Charles? Honestly, Sarah, I don’t understand that man.”
“You called me Sarah!”
“About time. It was fun when the Ladies Society was operational. I always wanted to be a lady. So Mrs. This and Mrs. That seemed OK.”
“One gets possessive of one’s friends,” said Mrs. Bloxby. “I mean, you have no interest in your ex-husband, but you get quite jealous if he is squiring someone else.”
“Why is it that men can hop in and out of bed without any sort of flashes of guilty conscience, and women are left to feel dirty?”
“It is called femininity,” said the vicar’s wife.
“Oh, all that womanly stuff. That went out with the birth control pill,” said Agatha. “Now, it’s come to bed or pay for your own dinner.”
“Perhaps we are not earthy enough,” said Mrs. Bloxby. “A lot of the village women would look on a night with Jake as a gratifying bit of slap and tickle. They wouldn’t be sitting round under clouds of black guilt. Maybe it is one of the penalties one has to pay for being a lady.”
Agatha grinned. “A lady. Me! I like that.”
But when she reached home, she found Jake on her doorstep. He slipped an arm around her waist. “Let’s go inside,” he whispered.
Agatha backed off and glared at him in the security light above the door. “Sod off, you randy pillock,” she yelled. “In future, remember I’m your boss and a lady and not some bedpan. Scram!”
Jake gave her one horrified look and sped to his car.
“And that felt good,” Agatha told her cats as she sat on the kitchen floor and petted them. “I am giving up sex and cigarettes. From now on.”
It was an odd autumn, thought Agatha as she headed to Gloucester the following morning. The leaves were turning, but the colours were more crayon than paint, as if some child were deciding, “I’ll colour this one yellow, and this one orange and again yellow and maybe red.”
The car park at BBC Gloucester was the usual nightmare of trying to find a space. Agatha managed to ease her car in by damaging the wing mirror on an old Ford. She went round to the reception area to report the damage to the wing mirror and leave details of her insurance for the owner. “It’s a very old car,” said the receptionist. “Wait a minute.” She disappeared and came back a few minutes later. “All done. I just clicked it back into place.”
There is always something kindly and cosy about local BBC radio stations, reflected Agatha. They do so much for the local communities. Certainly, they were worth thinking of when yet another pseudo-Scandinavian crime thriller clunked onto the screen and made everyone wonder if the licence fee gave value for money. And why did TV detectives have to be riddled with mental problems and angst? Thank God for Colombo. No private life. Saved from even seeing Mrs. Colombo.
“Mrs. Raisin? Come this way.” Agatha walked through to the studio to be interviewed by Claire Carter.
Nancy Sinatra was belting out, “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’,” as Agatha took a seat at a microphone facing Claire, who switched off the sound and said, “I will be asking you if being a woman in a traditional man’s job a drawback or an advantage. You’ve been on before, Agatha, so you’ll know what to do.”
Claire was a deft and experienced interviewer, one of those rare birds who can get people to relax and bring out the best in them. Agatha explained that woman’s intuition was a valuable tool as she did not have the benefit of autopsy reports, DNA or other forensic reports. “So it’s observation and guesswork,” said Agatha. Claire broke off to give a travel report and play another record. “I’d like to ask your permission to appeal to the public for help in the murder of Lord Bellington.”
“Go for it,” urged Claire.
So when Claire came back on again, she said, “Agatha is going to ask you, the folk out there, for your help. Go ahead, Agatha.”
Agatha succinctly outlined what she knew about the murder of Lord Bellington and then said, “Someone out there knows something. I feel it. One of you knows who this murderer is, and unless you step forward, I fear this person may murder again. He or she is ruthless. Poor Mrs. Bull was thrown down the well and nearly died. If you have any information, however slight, phone this number.” Agatha gave out her three office numbers and the e-mail address. “Think hard,” urged Agatha. “If there is another murder, and you knew something and did nothing to stop it, then you are as guilty as if you committed the murder yourself!”
As she moved out of the car park, Agatha began to fret. I hope that gets to someone, thought Agatha. Oh, I do not want to go to the office and run into Jake and all his rampaging hormones. Why am I so squeamish? A lot of women my age would be thrilled to bits. Look at all those sad sacks who read Fifty Shades of Grey? Maybe I’m old-fashioned, out of date. But I do crave romance. What woman doesn’t? What are all the poems about, the love songs, the yearning? Surely I’m not alone?
She became aware her phone was ringing. She fiddled her hands-free apparatus and asked, “Yes?”
“It’s Nigel Farraday. I need your help. I may have something for you.”
“Lost our wallet again? I am rather busy.”
“No! Listen. It’s important. Don’t come here. Do you know the Green Man at Ossbury?”
“No, but I’ll find it. I’m in Gloucester. Is Ossbury near you?”
“You go through Chipping Norton and go on as if heading to Oxford. Turn off at the Glympton Road, and a few hundred yards along on the left is the pub.”
“Okay. Give me about an hour to get there,” said Agatha and rang off. She then rang Toni and told her where she was going.
The day was turning dark, and rain began to smear the windscreen. The wind rose, and swirls of coloured leaves danced about her car. Agatha felt suddenly hungry. Surely it wouldn’t matter if she were a few moments late. She pulled into a garage with a Tesco Express store and bought an egg sandwich and two cans of Red Bull. She felt guiltily that she should have bought a healthy fruit drink instead. “My life these days,” said Agatha to her car windscreen as she sat in the garage car park, “seems to be one long guilt trip so the hell with it.” She popped open a can and drank the contents. When she finished her egg sandwich, she checked her face. Egg sandwiches, she knew, can be tricky beasts, depositing little clumps of egg unnoticed beside the mouth. Was that a wrinkle? “I’m fifty-three, that’s all,” she told the mirror. “That’s the new forty.”
A man knocked at her window, and Agatha lowered it. “Sorry to trouble you, but my wife and I are having an argument. She says you are talking to yourself. I said you were on a hands-free phone. Which is it?”
Agatha looked at him in amazement. “It’s cold and raining,” she said. “Get a life.”
She shut the window and drove off.
Chapter Nine
Jake was feeling sulky. They treated him like a pariah at the morning briefing, although he brightened when he was told that he was to accompany Toni. Toni had told him firmly that if Charles called again, Jake was to say he had never bedded Agatha and that they had all been joking at Charles’s expense. He was just about to leave with Toni where he got a peremptory call from the police to say he had to present himself at New Scotland Yard at two in the afternoon to be interviewed regarding the murder of Toby Cross. He caught the looks of relief as he made his excuses and left the office. He paused on the stairs and heard Simon saying loudly, “I wish the police would find out he did murder Toby and get the randy bastard out of our lives.”
You’d think I’d screwed Miss Marple, thought Jake furiously, instead of a sexy woman who is … what? Late forties? Somehow he must put things right. It wasn’t all about Toni. He loved the job and felt he could be good at it. He brightened. Maybe if he played the eager, willing-to-help role with the police, they might give him some titbits about the Bellington case.
* * *
Nigel Farraday waited for Agatha and wondered what story to give her. He wanted revenge because her report had ended in arrest and stopped from driving for a month. “Oh, get over it,” his wife had said. “I’m off to help at the sale of work in Harby. Dead bore but I’ve got stuff I want rid of, and those old village tarts will buy anything.”
“Help me. What shall I tell her to get her running in the wrong direction? And I want her to drink over the limit. Then I’ll report her and see how she likes that. My pet PC Plod at Mircester said a pal of his saw Agatha in the phone box when I drove off that night.”
“They’ll all wonder why you didn’t open the fête this year as Damian refused and they’re stuck with Lady Bellington and they can’t stand her.”
“Oh, tell them I know who murdered Bellington, and I’m meeting her in a secret rendezvous at the Green Man on the Glympton Road to spill the beans. May as well stir up the peasantry. Maybe someone will oblige me by doing her in.”
“You do waste your time on petty revenge,” snapped his wife. “Oh, go on. Men! Schoolboys all of them.”
Agatha could not find any pub called the Green Man and began to wonder if Nigel was maliciously sending her off on a wil
d goose chase. At last, after knocking on doors, an old man told her it hadn’t been called the Green Man for some years and was now the Hen and Basket.
Suddenly reluctant to join him now that she was parked outside the right pub, Agatha got slowly out of the car. A tall tree in the car park had one large branch scraping against another in the wind, and it gave out a ghostly creaky sound like the door of Count Dracula’s castle being slowly opened.
She walked over to a sign that said LOUNGE BAR, walked down a short flight of steps and opened the door. It was an old-fashioned pub with a log fire at one end and high settles forming booths in front of tables. Agatha suddenly found herself thinking of Charles. She felt almost as if he were standing beside her. She shrugged off the feeling and went from table to table. There were only four men at one table and a couple, looking like elderly man and wife, at another.
She walked up to the bar. “I was to meet someone here, a Mr. Farraday. My name is Raisin. Has anyone been asking for me?”
“No, no one of that name.”
“I’ll have a gin and tonic.”
“I’m sorry, our ice maker has broken down, but the tonic will be out the fridge.”
“Okay.”
Agatha took her drink over to a settle the fire. Outside the wind grew stronger, and a flurry of beech nuts struck the glass, making her jump nervously. She looked at her watch. It had taken her just a little over an hour to drive from Gloucester. The settle was very old and very hard. Agatha thought it might have originally been a church pew where the Sunday sinners were not supposed to relax and get comfortable. As if reading her thoughts, the barman came over and handed her a cushion. “Forgot to give this to you. The regulars always know to ask for one. Ready for another?”
Agatha would have loved another, but she suddenly wondered if that was what it was all about. Maybe Nigel hoped to turn up by the time she had exceeded the limit and then report her. “I’ll have a black coffee instead.”
“Will you be wanting lunch? We’ve got lamb and leak pie, and it do go quick.”
