by M C Beaton
“So what are you doing buried down here?” asked Jake.
“Oh, my parents found out that our neighbour, Charles Fraith, was unmarried. I think they’re brokering a deal.”
“And you’re going along with it? A gorgeous creature like you!” exclaimed Jake.
Olivia could feel her cold retreating as a warm pink glow suffused her body. No one had ever called her gorgeous before.
“Well, you know how it is,” said Olivia. “No one else had come along, and the parents were fretting about not having grandchildren and the line dying out and all that yawning stuff. Charles is cute. Mind you, he’s a lot older than me, and his mansion is really ugly. He’s got a sort of butler, Gustav. Scary. Slab of a Swiss like something out of the Addams Family.”
“But you’re not engaged?”
“No,” said Olivia. “Maybe I’ll chuck Agatha’s job and go back to London and have a think. Once I’m away from the family, I can think clearer.”
“Wish I could go with you,” said Jake.
“Why not? I’ve got a spare room. Gosh! What larks! What will we tell Agatha?”
“Don’t need to tell her anything. I got keys to the office. We can go back and leave them on her desk with a note. I’ll say I’ve gone back to Pa, and you can say you’re too ill, and your cold has got worse.”
“I’ll meet you in London. Wait till I scribble the address,” said Olivia. “Just wait till my friends see you!”
Agatha read Jake’s note in the morning. She thanked her stars she had got him a service flat, to be paid on a weekly basis. She would always think of Jake as That Great Big Red Herring. Of all the red herrings she had encountered, she thought, Jake took the biscuit. Before, all murders had been somehow connected, but not the one of Toby Cross. Then she saw another note from Olivia, cursed, and phoned an agency for a temp.
Then she sat down and scowled horribly. Would they have gone off together? She felt a sudden sharp pang of guilt. She must stop interfering in Charles’s life. Although she was sure it was because Olivia’s family was rich and Charles, she knew, was mercenary, he had seemed genuine.
She heaved a sigh. She would go and talk to Jenny Coulter again and then go to Harby. There was nothing she could do but keep ferreting away. Mrs. Bull was still in hospital and still protesting that she could not remember anything about her attacker.
She longed to take one of her detectives with her for company, but she had a heavy workload, so after telling Toni to take over and allocate the jobs, Agatha set out to see if Jenny was at home.
Chapter Ten
Jenny was at home. Women like Jenny offended Agatha in an odd way. Why should she, Agatha, diet and spend a fortune at the beauticians to hold the years at bay whereas women like Jenny, opening the door wearing a tracksuit and slippers and shaped like a cottage loaf, saw no reason to bother.
“Oh, it’s you again,” said Jenny. “But make it quick. My latest is due here soon.”
“You mean…”
“Yes, dear, so hurry up.”
“Can you think of anything at all to help me?” pleaded Agatha. “Can you think of any little thing? You know Farraday’s been murdered?”
“He’s no great loss, and his wife is a bitch. I gather from the news this morning he told her where he was going.”
“Yes, but she was seen at that sale of work all day,” said Agatha.
“Find out how heavily he was insured,” said Jenny. “Look, there was nothing in Bellington to arouse sexual passion. It’s all about the money. Who stands to gain? Damian. Or the only sexual motive might be because the wife gets back in again with her beloved son. Something of Oedipus about that pair.”
Agatha’s education on the ancient Greeks was sadly deficient, but no one watching television could avoid having heard of an Oedipus complex. There were even dreadful puns from comedians—“Have you given the Oedipus his milk, dear?”
“Don’t let yourself be rushed or pushed,” said Jenny. “Go down to that dreadful hall and say you want a room to look through your notes and see if you can pick something up from the atmosphere.” All at once, Agatha realised Jenny’s charm. She cared about people. She had a strong maternal streak. Smells of fresh coffee and something baking came from the kitchen.
As Agatha left, a man was arriving, a middle-aged business man, expensively tailored and barbered. He had a pleasant face, thinning hair and not much of a paunch. He was carrying a bouquet of a dozen red roses.
When did any man last bring me roses? Agatha fought off a wave of self-pity.
On the dashboard of her car, within reach, was a supply of e-cigarettes, Agatha deciding that if she couldn’t stop, less was at least better, and if she smoked fake cigarettes when she was driving, then maybe she might come to prefer them.
Chapter Eleven
Usually one associates blazing autumn colours with somewhere like New England, not the British Isles, but the trees and hedgerows were blazing scarlet gold, purple and even green, the oak trees being the last to turn. Agatha thought gloomily that there was something almost frightening in all this beauty. Would people one day be saying, “Do you remember that glorious autumn we had right before World War Three?”
Her thoughts got gloomier. What happens after death? Are we recycled? What if it should turn out like Groundhog Day, and just before you were reborn, you would know that you were being sent back the same person again into the same background to see if you did any better the next time around?
I wouldn’t be ambitious, went her thoughts. I’d find a decent fellow and have children. Oh, yeah? said a voice in her head. With your track record, you wouldn’t know a decent fellow if he leapt out of your soup and bit you on the bum.
Agatha saw the sign that said HARBY approaching. She wished with all her heart that Damian would sack her. For the first time in her career, Agatha felt defeated. It would be wonderful to leave it to the police. But she sighed as she turned in at the gates leading to the hall.
Agatha’s dress betrayed her feelings. She was wearing thick black tights with low heeled ankle boots, black trousers, black sweater and a dark green Barbour. She parked at the front of the hall and hesitated before she rang the bell. What did they do all day? Damian usually looked as if he did nothing. Andrea, when not plunging her hairy body in the pool, was off on some wildlife venture. Their mother flitted here and there, looking busy, but not actually doing anything.
Agatha finally rang the bell. Damian answered the door himself. “Any news?”
“No. I wanted to sit in the hall and go through my notes so that you could all be on hand if I think of asking something I may have overlooked. I know you’ve got loads of spare rooms untouched by the human duster.”
“Yes, lot of them are locked up. Better find one where the central heating still works. I know. There’s one at the end of the west corridor where we keep some junk. Don’t scowl. It’s got heat and a chair.”
The wind whistled round the hall. Agatha looking out a window saw the rising wind sending multicoloured leaves flying off the trees. “Here you are,” said Damian, pushing open a door and switching on the light. “Have fun.” He went off, whistling.
The room was lit by one dusty naked light bulb which swung in a draught from a badly fitted window. Crowded into the room were many animals and birds in glass cases. There was one battered leather armchair. Stacked along one wall were paintings in ornate frames. Like most of the public who watch the Antiques Roadshow, Agatha was persuaded that she would recognise a real master if she saw it. She began to tilt the paintings forward to examine them. But they were all dirty and looked like badly executed family portraits, none of which was recognisable as any of the Bellingtons. Probably, thought Agatha, they had belonged to the previous owners of the hall, who had left them behind with all the Victoriana in the shape of all those creatures under glass.
She opened up her iPad and began to read through all her notes. The wind outside was growing in strength. The light above flickered but stayed on
. Agatha shivered, despite the fact that the room was fairly warm. There was something unnerving about all those glass eyes, staring and staring out of their glass prisons. She was about to continue going over her notes when her eye caught a movement over on the wall behind the stacks of paintings. Because of the shadows, she had not noticed it before. It was a dusty greyish-white curtain, the colour of the walls, and it was slowly moving in a draught. Like a child looking for any excuse not to do homework, Agatha got to her feet and began to drag the paintings aside. That achieved she tried to pull aside the curtain until she saw it had simply been nailed to a strip of wood. She lifted the curtain to one side and looked in. There was nothing in the alcove but an old-fashioned Bath wheelchair. It was one of those she had seen in old prints of the town of Bath where invalids went to take the waters. It was made of basket work, a long seat lined with faded and tattered plum-coloured silk. It had a long handle at the front for the invalid to hold on to, or to enable it to be pulled from the front, and a big one at the back for pushing. Agatha shrugged. This wasn’t getting her anywhere. Back to the notes. “Wooooo!” screamed the wind, making her jump.
She settled back in her chair and began to read. The voice of her ex-husband sounded in her brain. “The trouble with you, Agatha,” she remembered James saying, “is that you solve your cases by ending up a sort of tethered goat. The murderer realises you are on to him, and he decides to bump you off.”
What do the other private detectives do? wondered Agatha. Probably leave murders to the police and stick to divorces, missing people, missing dogs and cats and don’t end up in a draughty hall with a feeling of failure.
When she got to the bit in her notes about Mrs. Bull ending up down the well, she suddenly twisted round and looked thoughtfully at that alcove. What if the murderer wasn’t a big powerful man but an ordinary-sized person? Something like that Bath chair could be used to transport a body. She got up again, slowly cleared the paintings which were blocking the alcove to the other side of the room and wheeled the chair out, putting on a pair of latex gloves first. No use looking for blood. She was drugged. She should phone Bill, get a forensic team to look at it. But Bill would have to tell Wilkes, and Wilkes would say she was fantasising, because he was a snob and did not want to believe the upper classes capable of murder.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Agatha jumped nervously and straightened up from her examination of the chair. Lady Bellington stood framed in the doorway, one hand resting high up on the jamb as if posing for a Russell Flint painting.
“Just examining this old chair,” said Agatha.
“That chair and everything else in this room is going off to auction next week. What is it to you?”
“I was thinking about Mrs. Bull. It could have been used to transport her body to the well. Damian told me to use this room to…”
“Just get out of my house!”
“What’s up?” Damian’s voice sounded from behind his mother.
“This creature is poking around.”
“I’m paying the creature to poke around. Leave her alone. Wait a minute. What are you doing with that Bath chair, Agatha? Planning your retirement?”
“It could have been used to cart Mrs. Bull to the well.”
“What an imagination you do have. But my belief in your reputation is beginning to wear thin. I’ll give you one more week.”
“Honestly, darling,” jeered his mother, “you sound like a TV drama, except on TV, the detective is only given twenty-four hours. She’s bound to solve it now! As if.”
Her tinkling laugh echoed back as she walked off. I hate women with tinkling laughs, thought Agatha.
“I’ll leave you to it.” Damian glided out.
“Can I take this chair with me?”
“Got a big enough car?”
“I can put it on the roof rack.”
“It is a valuable antique and it’s raining like hell.”
“Okay, I’ll rent a small van,” said Agatha. “I’ll get it to a private lab and see if Mrs. Bull’s DNA is anywhere about.”
“If you must.”
Agatha drove back to Mircester where she rented a small van. She phoned Toni to tell her what she was doing and asked her to find out if Mrs. Bull was still in hospital, try to get a visit and pinch something with her DNA on it. It was only when she had rung off that Agatha realised how much she depended on Toni.
Agatha should have asked about all the electronic devices and how they worked before driving off. She went down a narrow one-way street in Mircester, and, because it was a dull stormy day, tried to switch the sidelights on and found she had switched on the windscreen washer by mistake and people on the pavement on either side were shouting at her.
As she approached Harby, she began to feel like the amateur detective that Wilkes damned her as. If the Bath chair were a valuable clue, and if someone in the castle were responsible for the murders, then a murderer might be waiting for her. Fireworks burst in the night sky, reminding Agatha it was the fifth of November, celebrating the time that Guy Fawkes had tried to burn down the Houses of Parliament.
At the gates of Harby Hall, the lodge keeper came out and handed Agatha a slip of paper. “That be me phone number,” he said. “Next time you do be a-coming, phone me and give me a time. I can’t be running in and out for the likes o’ you.”
“What an old charmer you are,” said Agatha. But she took the slip of paper and drove on. As she approached the house, a firework shot up over the building and sent a scarlet fountain of red stars to light the sky. The car park was full of cars. Agatha cursed. They must be having a party. No one came to answer the door. She guessed they must be all out in the garden. She tried the handle. The door was not locked. Good, thought Agatha. I can get that chair and disappear with it. She had forgotten which room the chair was in and ran along the corridors opening and shutting doors, wondering why on earth there were so many small rooms on the ground floor. At last she found the right room. She switched on the light and hurried to the alcove, pulled aside the curtain and let out an exclamation of dismay. For the alcove was empty.
Grimly, Agatha marched along the corridor and out into the garden to the sound of whooshing rockets and cheers. All she could see at first on the terrace was a line of backs silhouetted against some light coming from the garden. Then she smelt smoke. A dreadful idea shot into her mind. Ignoring protests, she elbowed her way to the front. A great bonfire was blazing away. On top of it was perched the ‘guy,’ a stuffed dummy sitting in that very Bath chair that Agatha so desperately wanted. “No,” she cried. “Damian, put the fire out. I need that chair.”
She ran forward and was halted by the immense heat from the bonfire. She gazed upwards. The dummy was alight, and the basket work of the chair was covered in flickering flames.
Damian pulled her back. “Who put the chair up there?” panted Agatha.
“Blessed if I know,” he said. “I never even noticed it was the old chair you wanted until I heard you shouting.”
“Find out for me,” said Agatha wearily.
“I’ll get you some mulled wine, you old party-pooper,” said Damian. “Find yourself somewhere to sit.”
Guests were beginning to find seats on bales of straw placed in a circle around the fire. Agatha retreated dismally to a seat at the back of the terrace. Damian handed her a mug of mulled wine. “I’ll find out from Giles Bennet, the factor. He organises the thing every year.”
After he had gone, Agatha cautiously sniffed the wine. Then she saw, on a white-clothed table on the terrace, a coffee machine. She poured her mulled wine into the flower pot and decided to have a cup of coffee instead.
She took an e-cigarette out of her pocket and puffed away, swore, put it back in her pocket, pulled out a packet of Bensons, and lit up. Bliss! Unreformed, unholy bliss, thought Agatha.
Damian appeared with Giles. Said Damian, “Giles says he had left the dummy on an old kitchen chair at the back of the bonfire and told the
gardener to get a ladder and put it on the top. The gardener says when he went round to the back, there was no chair. The wheelchair was in the hall and Dinky said, they could take it. He said it was awkward getting it up there, and they had to ask the under gardener to bring another ladder so they could carry it up between them. That was a valuable antique.”
“Only you and your mother knew I was coming for it and why,” said Agatha.
“Here’s Mother. Let’s ask her. Did you give that Bath chair to be used on the bonfire?”
“No, I didn’t. Oh, dear, that tiresome little woman is back again.”
“Did you tell anyone else?” asked Agatha.
“Only the housekeeper. I told her to leave it out by the front door so you could collect it.”
“I would like to talk to the housekeeper,” said Agatha.
Damian went off. Agatha had a sudden paroxysm of coughing. She stubbed out her cigarette. It couldn’t be the cigarette. Must be the smoke from the bonfire.
Damian came back, leading a small, aggressive-looking middle-aged woman. “I ain’t done nothing wrong, me lord,” she said in a high complaining voice. Of course, thought Agatha. Damian inherited the title.
“Just tell the nice lady what happened, Dinky,” said Damian, “and do get on with it. We’re missing the party.”
“Well, me lady says as how I was to leave the chair outside on the step because a lady would be coming for it. Fred, the gardener, he came in looking for an old chair. ‘Wot about yon on the step?’ says he. ‘Some lady’s coming for that,’ says I. ‘Better leave it,’ says he.”
Agatha said, “Damian. I really do need to speak to your gardener.”
“Well, make it quick.”
Agatha lit another cigarette and was immediately assailed by another bout of coughing. The spectre of lung cancer rose up to haunt her. Bollocks, thought Agatha fiercely, old Mr. Dent smoked twenty a day for years and years and he died aged ninety. But she stubbed the cigarette out.
