by M C Beaton
The two brothers began to chortle and nudge each other. “What’s so funny?” asked Patrick.
“Henry the vet, see, he’s been way of courting Miss Andrea from the hall,” said Tom.
“So what’s funny about that?” asked Patrick as Phil came back with the drinks. He told Phil what Tom had just said.
“Cos Miss Andrea do have a temper. Henry was chatting to a young miss outside his office, and Andrea turns up like the wrath of God and slaps that poor girl and sends her running,” said Cedric. “Better’n them soaps on the telly.”
“Do they plan to marry?” asked Patrick.
“No,” said Cedric. “See, Henry don’t want to, but she’ll make him, and that’s a fact. She’s Lord Bellington’s sister, see, and she feels that gives her the right to throw her weight around.”
Patrick and Phil decided to move on, Phil, once they were outside, wondering at the strength of the brothers’ bladders. “I could never hold that amount of beer without rushing to the toilet,” he said.
“Let’s find Orlington Sudbury. If it’s got a pub, I wouldn’t mind a half of beer and a steak and kidney pie,” said Patrick. “Have you got a photo of this Andrea?”
“Only ones out of magazines, hunt balls, that sort of thing. But she’s small and angry-looking. I think I can recognise her.”
Orlington Sudbury turned out to be a large village. It had a sprawling council estate on the outskirts, and then the road twisted and wound through the village. Probably followed a drove road in the olden days, thought Phil. But the village green was there, the pub looking pretty with flowers in the window boxes. It was called the Living End.
“Odd name for a pub,” said Patrick.
“With a name like that,” said Phil, “it’s probably being run by some retired chap who thinks he can run a pub, and all he does is drink the profits. If they’ve any food it’ll probably be listed on a twee menu.”
Two surprises hit them when they walked in. Mine host was a Chinese gentleman, in a white shirt and black jacket and trousers. And seated over in a corner was a woman Phil was sure was Andrea with a good-looking man.
Well, he would have been good-looking, thought Phil, taking another covert glance, if he hadn’t been a bit weak about the mouth. To their dismay, the pub started filling up, until standing drinkers blocked their view of Andrea and who they believed might be the vet.
“I’ll take a look,” said Patrick. He got up and, being tall, was able to see Andrea and the man leaving. The man was protesting, and Andrea was arguing. Patrick shouldered his way through the crowd to the window and looked out. Andrea got in a car and drove off. The man watched her go and trailed off into a door with a brass plate on the other side off the green.
He returned to Phil. “The landlord says that the vet is the other side of the green,” said Phil, “and I ordered steak and kidney pie for both of us.”
“That’s where Andrea’s chap went,” said Patrick.
“What should we do now?” asked Phil. “Charge in there and accuse him of providing Andrea with poison?”
“I’ll think better when I’ve eaten,” said Patrick.
The pie was the best they had ever tasted.
“It’s like this,” said Patrick, “we’d better tell Agatha what we’ve found out. Let’s pay the bill and go outside where it’s quiet and no one can hear us.”
There was a pond in the middle of the village green. A mallard sailed across, leaving a V in the water behind it.
“The pub could do with a car park,” said Patrick. Their car was blocked in by other cars parked at the front. “We’ll go to that bench on the far side of the pond and have a think.”
“I’ll phone Agatha,” said Phil.
Patrick heard Phil tell Agatha about the vet and then heard the excited squawking of Agatha’s voice in reply but could not make out the words.
“Well?” he asked when Phil rang off.
“She says she’s coming here right away.”
“What! Andrea knows what she looks like. If she’s got any of that Oblivon left, one drop of it could be the end of Agatha.”
“And she says we’re to clear off!”
“I don’t think she knows what she’s doing. She’s been down in the mouth lately. And when she’s depressed, she starts to daydream. She’s probably imagining newspaper headlines of how she solved the case.”
“Tell you what we can do,” said Phil. “It’ll be dark by the time she gets here. We’ll wait down the road as soon as we can get to our car and watch for her. Then all we have to do is follow her.”
Chapter Twelve
As Agatha was hurrying from the office, she bumped into Charles. “Have you seen Olivia?” he asked.
“She disappeared the same day as Jake. Work it out,” snapped Agatha.
“Which is what you planned,” said Charles. “Where are you off to?”
“Mind your own business,” shouted Agatha. “I am working. I am about to solve these murders. So why don’t you push off and find yourself another deb whose family has pots of money?” The fact that Charles had asked about Olivia had brought all Agatha’s feelings of worthlessness back.
Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. She brushed past him and walked to her car.
Charles made his way up to Agatha’s office. Toni was there. He asked her if she knew where Agatha had was going.
“She said she was going to Orlington Sudbury.” Charles wondered whether he should go after her. The hell with Agatha, thought Charles bitterly. Let her cope with her own mess for once. Why had she turned nasty again?
Agatha had not stopped to consider the wisdom of what she was doing. She was furious with the idea that Damian may have considered her incompetent and had only hired her because he guessed his sister to be guilty. Also, the episode with Jake still hurt.
It was late when she got to Orlington Sudbury, but she saw the pub was open, welcome lights from its windows reflected in the village pond. There was no light on at the vet’s. Agatha had located the surgery on the other side of the pond. She suddenly wished she had asked Patrick and Phil to wait for her, not knowing the pair of them had seen her arrive. They had parked behind a stand of trees at the entrance to the village.
She decided to go to the pub and see if she could pick up any gossip. The dinner hour was over, and there were only a few drinkers in the dim lights of the pub’s lamps. And then Agatha saw Gerald Devere, sitting at a table by the window, looking across to the vet’s surgery.
“Oh, it’s you,” he said sulkily. “Shove off. I’ve got the vet coming to have a drink with me, and I don’t want him frightened off.”
“No, I will not shove off,” said Agatha. “I worked it all out. Obviously you did the same thing.”
“You are not muscling in on my table. Go away!”
“Why haven’t you called the police?” asked Agatha.
“Because it’s time you country clodhoppers learned from a decent detective. Go away!”
Agatha hesitated only a moment. Then she walked straight out of the pub and right over to the veterinary surgery and rang the bell. The name on the brass plate beside the door said, HENRY JESSOP, VETERINARY SURGEON.
Had Gerald still been watching the surgery from the pub, he would certainly have run after her, but he was distracted by some old gypsy tugging at his sleeve. “White heather, mister,” she said in a cracked voice. She smelled awful. Gerald shouted to the owner. “Get her away from me.”
The owner hurried over and propelled the old woman out of doors.
When Gerald returned to his vigil, there was no sign of Agatha. He did not know that, getting no answer when she rang the bell and seeing a light on inside, she had decided to search round the back. He had felt very clever at joining the clues of Oblivon with a vet and Andrea’s love of animals. Now he felt put out that Agatha had come to the same conclusion.
He took a gulp of his drink. It dawned on him that Agatha had probably gone straight to the vet to steal a march on h
im. He tried to get to his feet, but his legs had no strength. He slowly sank to the floor and drifted off into unconsciousness.
The landlord phoned for an ambulance.
Agatha, in the darkness of the back of the vet’s, felt her phone vibrate. She glanced at the dial. Patrick. She whispered into the phone. “I’m at the vet’s, but don’t come yet. Gerald Devere is in the pub. See if you can distract him.”
She tried the handle of a door at the back. Locked. What if he were lying there dead? What if Andrea had learned that he was about to talk to Gerald and had finished him off? If she were in the police force, thought Agatha, she could have claimed to have heard what sounded like a scream and break a glass panel on the door. But being a veterinary surgery with drugs inside, it probably had a sophisticated burglar alarm system. Wait a bit. He surely didn’t live in the place. Where was his home?
She walked back round the front and jumped as a man’s voice said, “Are you looking for Mr. Jessop?”
Agatha swung round. A tall thin man stood there, leaning on a stick. “Yes,” said Agatha. “Do you know where he lives?”
“Yes, but he’s not on duty this evening. In fact he’s gone off to the disco in Mircester with Penny, my daughter.”
“Do you know which disco?”
“You must be desperate. But you’ll just have to wait until the morning. I am not going to spoil my daughter’s night out.” He walked off just as Agatha’s phone vibrated.
“What is it, Patrick?” she whispered.
“Gerald’s been taken off in an ambulance.”
“I didn’t hear a siren.”
“Wasn’t one. Ambulance men must have thought they were picking up a drunk.”
“Try to find out what happened to him. Our vet is in Mircester. I’m going there.”
Once in Mircester, Agatha phoned Toni and asked her to name a likely disco.
“There’s only two. The most popular is the Rooba in Abbey Lane. Want me to come with you?”
“No. Well, maybe.” Agatha told her what it was about.
“I’d better go,” said Toni. “Someone of your age barging in and asking questions might put the wind up him.” Agatha winced. “I’ll get Simon, and we’ll both go. What does this vet look like?”
“Haven’t seen him.”
“What’s his name?”
“Henry Jessop.”
“I’ll see if there’s anything on the Internet before I start searching for him. What are we asking him?”
“Ask him if he knows Andrea Bellington and see his reaction. Take it from there.”
“Where will you be?”
“Phone me when you get the right disco, and I’ll wait outside in my car.”
When she had rung off, Agatha took out her iPad to see if she could find a photograph of Henry herself. There was nothing there. She tried Andrea. Some photographs, one with a fairly good-looking man. She phoned Patrick. “What does Henry look like?”
“Fairly handsome but weak chin, brown hair, medium height, but pointy ears like Dr. Spock.”
“Right. What about Gerald?”
“I’ll try my police contacts as well.”
Agatha rang off and then rang Toni and passed on the description. “I think I have it,” said Toni. “Hunt ball last year with Andrea.”
Toni and Simon tried the Rooba first. They gyrated their way around the dance floor, always studying the faces shining in the lights from the revolving crystal ball over the floor. The music stopped. A voice behind Toni said, “Sorry, Penny, I’d better take this.”
Toni drew Simon aside and said, “That’s him. Going to the gents. He’s taking a phone call.”
Simon sped off. He nearly bumped into Henry, who was just inside the door, speaking on his mobile. Better pretend to pee, thought Simon, and it’ll have to be pretend because I don’t feel like it.
“I don’t think we should be seen together for a while,” Henry was saying. “In fact, I’m due leave. I’ll go abroad. What? Don’t threaten me. What? Damned music. Can’t hear a thing.” For the disco music had started up again and was piped into the toilets.
Toni was sitting on a stool at the bar with Penny, having complained of being thirsty and having invited Penny for a drink. Penny had initially stared at her blankly and rudely and had turned away, so Toni went to the bar alone. To her surprise, she was joined five minutes later by Penny.
“Sorry,” she said. “My date seemed to have disappeared.”
“What’ll you have?”
“Rum and coke.”
“Okay.” Toni gave the order.
Simon emerged from the toilet, saw Toni over at the bar with Penny, and decided to join them. Henry had disappeared into one of the cubicles. Simon was sure he would join his date when he emerged.
As he approached the bar, he wondered why the fairly handsome Henry had chosen to date this Penny. She was obviously young, in her late teens. She was wearing a glittery sweater across heavy breasts. The pink stripes she had sprayed with an inexpert hand on her blonded hair looked more Hallowe’en than chic. She had a penetrating voice, which was just as well for Toni because the music had started up again. It was a high, arrogant sort of Yah-Yah voice.
“Of course, if we get married, Daddy will be pleased. I mean he’s got simply thousands of cattle over at our farm in Belgium and a vet in the family would be useful. Where is he?”
“Is he in the gents?” asked Simon with pretended innocence.
“Oh, this is Simon,” said Toni.
“Yes, Henry went there, ages ago.”
“I’ll go and look,” said Simon, suddenly uneasy.
He hurried back, edging his way round the edge of the floor. There were a lot of young men in the toilets. At the end of the urinals were two cubicles, but both doors were open, showing they were empty.
Phil and Patrick had joined forces with Agatha when Simon called to say that Henry had disappeared from the nightclub after getting a phone call.
“Right,” said Agatha. “You may as well go home now, Simon, and tell Toni to do the same.”
She turned to Patrick and Phil. “We’ll all get into Phil’s car. It’s the least noticeable. We’ll hide near the entrance to Harby Hall.”
“Maybe I should wait here,” said Patrick.
“All right. I’ll go on with it, and we’ll phone you if he turns up at the hall.”
Phil drove under the shade of a thick stand of trees, which provided enough cover for them despite the fact that most of the leaves had gone.
“He’ll need to rouse the lodge keeper,” said Phil.
“Yes,” replied Agatha. “Odd that, in this day and age. Oh, snakes and bastards! We should have brought two cars.
“There must be another entrance. Say, a tradesman’s entrance. I can’t see that grumpy old bugger of a lodge keeper leaping out the whole time. In fact, if I were Henry, I wouldn’t use this entrance at this time of night. Better call Patrick and get him up here to watch the front entrance instead of us just in case.”
Phil started up the car and they cruised slowly, following the dry stone wall that bordered the estate. “There!” said Agatha, seeing an entrance in the headlights.
But the bumpy, rutted road led to stables. “Rats!” said Agatha.
“The stables are near the house,” Phil pointed out. “If a vet were legitimately visiting, he’d call at the stables.”
“You’re right.” Agatha stared gloomily through the windscreen. “But to go forward, we’ll need to get out from under the cover of these trees. There’s nothing now in front of us and the stables but grassy fields.”
“The stables are in blackness,” said Phil. “Nobody to look out at us. We could just walk it, keeping to the side. There’s a big cloud coming up to cover the moon. Good time to go.”
Agatha groaned inwardly but was glad she had flat shoes on that she used for driving.
“What are we going to do when we get there?” asked Phil.
“See if Henry turns up, see if
we can see them together and hear something.”
“Circle well away from the stables,” said Phil. “They may have security cameras.”
“They don’t have any. That came out during the investigation.”
They crept past the stables. A horse whinnied and stamped, making them clutch each other. Then they moved on past the stables and towards the bulk of the house.
“How long have we been at Harby?” asked Agatha. “I mean since leaving Patrick.”
“Must be at least three-quarters of an hour,” replied Patrick.
“Then if he’s coming here, he should be here any moment, or if he came in by the front, he could already be here. The trouble is, there are so many rooms in the place, so many small rooms. Odd. It’s as if it used to have salons or something, and some mad person got the builders in and had them all cut up.”
“Could have been someone with a cottage mentality,” said Phil. “Felt overawed by large drawing rooms. We’re nearly at the house. We’d better whisper.”
“There are lights shining at the back,” said Agatha. “It’s where there’s a terrace overlooking the pool. I’ve forgotten my tape recorder. Have you got one? Someone might say something incriminating.”
And someone might not turn up, thought Phil gloomily. Agatha is willing something to happen.
But as they crept up the terrace towards the long windows because one window was slightly open, they could hear a breathless man’s voice say, “I came as soon as I could.”
Phil switched on the tape recorder.
The same voice again. “What’s the panic?”
Andrea’s voice. “My dear brother here says if we don’t get the hell out of the country, he’s going to the police. It’s all Father’s fault, Damian. He should have given me the money for that donkey sanctuary.”
“And I wouldn’t give you any either,” said Damian. “Was I next?”
“How did you find out?” asked Andrea.
“One of the grooms mentioned you had been using an old room above the stables and wondered if he could rent it. I said I’d take a look at it. I found Oblivon. I found plans for the donkey sanctuary. I found the remains of antifreeze. And if that weren’t enough, you put the lot on a computer, you silly cow. I fired that detective. So last chance. I don’t want any scandal. Get out the country, and take your precious vet with you.”
