by M C Beaton
Agatha told Charles what Mrs. Bloxby had said, but omitting any mention of James. "So many people," mourned Charles. "So many suspects. I feel like going home. What about you? The police can't really keep us here."
But Agatha suddenly did not want to go back to Carsely. In her imagination, James was already engaged to Mrs. Sheppard. And she did not want to be left on her own without Charles.
"We may try a little longer." Charles was putting his coat on. "Where are you going?" asked Agatha.
"I'm going to buy a couple of bolts, one for the back door and one for the front. While I do that, why don't you pop down to the estate agent's and have a word with Amy?"
"All right, but I don't think that woman's got much more in her mind than quilting and church affairs."
Agatha set out. The wind was cold and the ground was frozen and slippery. She made her way cautiously across the village green and then heard herself being hailed from the pub. Rosie Wilden was standing outside, waving to her. Agatha walked back to join her. "Come in, Mrs. Raisin, dear. I've got a bottle of my perfume for you."
"Thanks," said Agatha, following her into the darkness of the pub. "We're not open yet," said Rosie. "Where are you off to?"
"I was just going to call on Amy Worth at the estate agent's."
"You'd better hurry. They close at five-thirty and it's nearly that. Here's your perfume."
"Thanks a lot. Are you sure I can't pay you for it?"
"My pleasure."
Agatha hurried off, thinking that she must get Rosie something to repay her for the perfume and for that free meal.
Amy was just locking up when Agatha came hurrying up.
"What's happened?" she asked.
"Nothing more," said Agatha. "I think enough has happened already. I just wanted a chat."
"I live next to Harriet. Walk round with me and we'll have a cup of tea."
Amy's house was smaller than Harriet's, a trim 1930s bungalow with pebble-dashed walls, looking out of place among the other older houses of Fryfam.
"Is your husband at home?" asked Agatha, following Amy into her kitchen.
"No, Jerry's working late. Sit down. Tea? Coffee? Something stronger?"
"Coffee will be fine. Mind if I smoke?"
"I do, actually."
"Oh, well." Agatha put away the packet of cigarettes she had taken out of her pocket. "I'm at my wits' end trying to figure out who murdered Tolly, and Paul Redfern."
"It's really not your job," said Amy. There was a loose thread hanging down from her droopy skirt. Agatha was wondering whether to tell her about it when Amy giggled and said, "Now tell me all about you and Sir Charles."
There was a decidedly prurient gleam in her pale eyes.
"Nothing to tell," said Agatha defensively. "I mean, you all seem to be up to such shenanigans in this village, you probably think everyone else is at it." A quick memory of Charles's wellmanicured hands on her body came into her mind, and to banish it she said jokingly, "Take you, for instance. I know all about you!"
Amy had just lifted up the kettle to fill two coffee mugs. She dropped the kettle and jumped back as boiling water went all over the kitchen floor.
"You bitch," she hissed. "How did you find out? It's that Jackson woman, isn't it?"
Agatha stared at her in amazement. A steely wind outside rattled the bare dry branches of a tree against the window. Somewhere a dog barked and children laughed. The mysterious Jackson children?
"Sit down," said Agatha. "Look, I'll help you mop up. I was teasing you. I didn't know. But I want to know now. But come to think of it, I don't need to know who it is unless it's Tolly."
Amy slumped down at the kitchen table, her feet in a pool of water.
"I may as well tell you. It's got nothing to do with any of this. It's Mr. Bryman."
"Your boss, the estate agent?" asked Agatha, amazed as she thought of the damp and unlovely Mr. Bryman. "Where does this affair take place? Here, when Jerry's away?"
"No, Cecil-that's Mr. Bryman-said it was too dangerous. In the office on a quiet day."
Where? Agatha wanted to ask. On the desk? Behind the filing cabinets? The mind boggled.
"You won't say anything," pleaded Amy. "It's just a bit of fun."
"No, but where does Mrs. Jackson come into all this?"
"She found out. She used to clean the office one morning a week. But she came in one evening and caught us at it. She said she had to call at the school in the morning because one of her kids was in trouble, so she'd decided to do it the night before. She has a key, of course."
"I'm beginning to think Mrs. Jackson has keys to places all over the village," said Agatha. "Here, let me help you mop up this water."
"It's all right. I'll do it."
"So what did Mrs. Jackson say?"
"Nothing then. But she dropped in when Cecil was out one day. She began to hint that it would be awful if my husband knew. I don't know whether she meant to blackmail me or not, but just in case, I said, `You'd best be careful what you say, I've got the tape recorder running, and if you blackmail me I'm going straight to the police.' I hadn't got the tape recorder running, but she didn't know that. She got very flustered and said she couldn't understand why I could think such an evil thing. She was a Godfearing woman, and yak, yak, yak. Oh, God, there's Jerry back. You'd better go. He's never forgiven you for that evening in the pub."
"I'm off." Agatha smiled weakly at Jerry as he came into the kitchen and he responded with a glare.
As she walked across the village green, her mind was buzzing with ideas. Must tell Charles. Promising not to tell anyone didn't include Charles.
Somehow, the solution to both murders was there in the back of her head. It was only a matter of looking at things differently.
EIGHT
CHARLES was lying on the sofa with the cats on his lap when Agatha burst into the sitting-room. "I think I've got something," cried Agatha, "but I don't know what it is."
Charles gently placed the cats on the floor and swung his legs down and sat up.
"Sit down, Aggie, take off your coat, and stop your eyes bulging and I'll get you a drink."
Agatha sat down on the sofa. Charles handed her a gin and tonic and then poured a whisky and water for himself. "Begin at the beginning," said Charles. "What did Amy say to get you so excited?"
Agatha carefully recounted everything she had found out. "Now that is interesting," said Charles. "Not about her affair, which doesn't bear thinking about, but about Mrs. Jackson. Let's say Mrs. Jackson is a blackmailer. Who does she blackmail?"
"Lucy," said Agatha. "Back to square one. And yet, I've a feeling we've been looking at things the wrong way round."
"Could be. Mrs. Jackson witnesses the new will. She tells Lucy. Forget for a moment about Lucy's alibi. She subsequently blackmails Lucy."
"So what's that got to do with Paul Redfem?"
"I don't know. Stop asking awkward questions and let me think."
They went over it and over it without getting any farther. At last, they decided to eat and have an early night. But Agatha found she could not sleep. How odd, that affair of Amy's. Agatha began to wonder if she, Agatha, was one of those romantic prudes, always living in dreams. Maybe it wasn't just the young who could indulge in casual sex without conscience. But perhaps Amy was in love with her Cecil.
Her thoughts turned to Lucy. Lucy had suspected her husband was having an affair with Rosie Wilden. Only it wasn't Rosie Wilden, it was Lizzie. But then Lucy had almost seemed to want to forget she had ever mentioned the subject. And why had Lucy asked her, Agatha, to investigate her husband in the first place-a woman, a stranger who only claimed to have had some success as a detective? A blind? Why?
What if, just what if, Lucy was having an affair? Let's turn it on its head. Lucy is having an affair. She wants the money and she wants to get away with her lover. She gets this lover to bump off her husband. First she hears about the will from Mrs. Jackson and steals the Stubbs. Okay, so far, so good. Wh
at prompts her to get rid of it when the insurance money would add to what she's going to get? And what about Paul Redfem? He was murdered after the will was found. Maybe he knew something. Maybe he'd decided to try a spot of blackmail himself.
Agatha groaned and got out of bed. She went into Charles's room and shook him awake.
"Agatha," he said, smiling up at her. "I thought you would never ask."
"It's not that, Charles. Look, I'm nearly on to something."
He sighed and got out of bed. "Let's go downstairs and see what we can work out."
In the sitting-room, he piled logs on the red glow of ash in the hearth. "So let's hear it," he said.
Agatha went over her muddled thoughts, ending up with "So you see, if Lucy had a lover, it would all fall into place."
"I never liked that Jackson woman," said Charles. "Now if Lucy had a lover, the trouble is it could be a member of the hunt that we haven't even thought about."
Agatha sat forward in the armchair. "Wait a bit. Hunt members would mostly have money. So Lucy could just divorce Tolly and marry her lover."
"Maybe he's married already."
"Then there would be no point in murdering Tolly."
"True. So is it some village swain?"
They looked at each other.
"What about the gardener, Barry Jones?" exclaimed Agatha. "And he's Mrs. Jackson's son. Mrs. Jackson goes on about how loving Lucy and Tolly were and yet by all accounts Lucy hated her. But if Lucy was having an affair with Barry Jones, her son, she would cover up for her. Barry married to the wealthy Lucy would mean money for Mrs. Jackson. So let's suppose that Paul Redfern knows something and tries to blackmail Lucy and she tells Mrs. Jackson and Barry shoots him to keep him quiet. Should we phone the police?"
"Come on, Aggie. They'd think we were mad. What proof have we that Barry was having an affair with Lucy?"
"Someone must know in this village," said Agatha. "It's such a little world. Barry worked as gardener up at the manor. They could have carried on an affair easily, what with Tolly being away a lot romancing Lizzie. Tolly spent a whole month with Lizzie. What excuse did he give Lucy, or did he just have a fling with Lizzie during the day and return at night?"
Charles sighed. "There's not much more we can do tonight. I tell you what. Let's try to have a word with Rosie Wilden in the morning, before the pub opens. I bet she knows all the gossip."
Agatha awoke to a white morning. There had been a heavy frost the night before. Everything glittered in weak sunlight. Even the cobwebs on a bush outside the kitchen door were perfectly rimed in frost.
The cottage felt like an icebox. Agatha lit the Calor gas heaters and put on a pot of coffee before waking Charles. She saw no reason why Charles should lie in bed long enough to wake up to a warm house. Agatha Raisin did not like to suffer alone.
"It all seemed so logical last night," mourned Agatha. "Now it seems like a load of old rubbish."
"Never mind. We'll check out Rosie, and we'll eat a proper breakfast before we go."
They set out an hour later. The sun was now a small red eye of a disc high above, behind a thin layer of hazy cloud. "I don't care how many more murders there are," said Charles. "I'm going to be home for Christmas."
"Christmas," echoed Agatha. "It looks like a Christmas card here already."
"I suppose if we knock at the front door of the pub, no one will answer," said Charles. "Rosie might think it's some drunk. We'll try the back."
They went along a passage at the side of the pub, through a gate, and into a back garden dotted with chairs and tables. "She must use the garden in the summer," said Agatha.
There was a clattering of dishes from the kitchen. Charles knocked at the door. Agatha had a brief hope that a messy Rosie would answer with her hair in curlers, but the Rosie who answered the door looked like any man's dream of femininity. Her thick blond hair was in a knot on the top of her head. She wore a frilly apron over a crisp cotton blouse and tailored skirt and held a mixing bowl under one arm.
"Come in," she said. "I was just about to take a break from my baking." The large kitchen was comforting and warm and smelt of baking and spices. An elderly woman rose as they entered. "My mother," said Rosie.
"I'll just go upstairs," she said, gathering up a bundle of knitting.
"Sit down," urged Rosie. "I've got some coffee ready."
"We came to see if you knew any gossip," began Agatha, plunging right in. Charles thought, as he often did, that Agatha Raisin had all the subtlety of a charging rhino.
"Well, I don't know about that, Mrs. Raisin, dear," said Rosie, pouring two cups of coffee into French-type coffee bowls and then lifting a tray of hot scones out of the Aga. "I hear a lot of gossip but I find it safer to forget about it, if you take my meaning."
She put a pat of golden butter on the table, and tilted the scones onto a plate. "Help yourselves," she said. "Let me see, I think a pot of my black-currant jam would go nicely with those."
She sat down with them and smiled slowly and warmly at Charles. Somehow that smile irritated Agatha, so she crashed tactlessly on. "Was Lucy Trumpington-James having an affair with anyone in the village?"
There was a veil over Rosie's blue eyes now, like the cloud veiling the sun. After a little hesitation, she said, "If she was, then it was her business, if you take my meaning."
"Come on, you can tell us," urged Agatha.
"Don't reckon as how I can. I'd have no customers if I talked about folks' private lives."
"But surely Lucy didn't drink in the pub?"
"No, but there's others who do."
"Meaning she had a lover and he drank in the pub," exclaimed Agatha. "That narrows the field. It's really only the ordinary villagers who drink in your pub, not the members of the hunt."
"Now you're going on as if only rich aristocrats hunt," chided Rosie. "Mr. Freemantle, Mr. Dart and Mr. Worth all hunt. So does Mrs. Carrie Smiley. Real attractive she looks in her hunting costume, too."
Agatha leaned forward. "But you know."
"I don't know anything," said Rosie sharply. "You're letting your coffee get cold."
Charles spoke. "I think you left the cats out in the garden, Agatha, and the frost will hurt their paws. You'd better go and let them in." He looked blandly at Agatha and Agatha took it that he meant that as she was getting nowhere, she'd best leave it to him.
She affected a look of dismay and said, "I'm sorry, Rosie. I forgot about the cats. Got to go."
Outside, she wondered what to do. She could not lurk around outside the pub waiting for Charles. Yet, on the other hand, she was reluctant to return to the cottage. She decided to walk out of that village to the lake, to see if she could clear her thoughts and put them in some sort of order.
As she entered the road leading out of the village, she marvelled how quiet the day was and how very still.
The pine trees on either side looked ready for Christmas with their frosting of white. On she went until she crested the hill again and looked out across the great vast flat silence of Norfolk.
When she got to the lake, she sat down on a flat rock again. Ice had formed on the edges of the lake. She wondered if people skated on it when it was completely frozen over. What if they had skating parties, with Rosie handing out glasses of mulled wine and mince pies? And what if a visitor like herself should come across such a scene? She would envy them, thinking they all led a safe, typically English sort of life, unaware of all the passions that lurked beneath the surface. A little breeze rippled across the glassy waters of the lake and she shivered and rose to her feet again. She could not go any further in her thoughts without some proof. It was as she approached the gates to the manor that Agatha suddenly remembered the maintenance man. What was his name? Joe something. And would a maintenance man have a cottage on the estate? She turned up the drive and then took the fork which led to Redfern's cottage. As she rounded the bend, she could see police tape fluttering in front of it and Framp on duty outside, stamping his feet and rub
bing his arms to keep the cold at bay.
Agatha retreated. She did not want to be caught by Hand talking to the policeman. She reached the fork of the road again when a small truck stopped beside her. She recognized the maintenance man. "Looking for something?" he demanded. "The police don't want any press or trespassers around here. Wait a bit, I saw you when Paul was shot."
"I found the body," said Agatha.
"So what's your business here? Mrs. Trumpington-James is sick of snooping busybodies."
Agatha was about to say she had wanted to ask him a few questions but decided against it, he looked so suspicious and truculent.
"I am a friend of Lucy Trumpington-James," she said haughtily. "I took the wrong road to the house."
"That way," he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. Agatha walked towards the house. She stopped a little way away from the truck and looked back. He was still parked there and watching her in his rear-view mirror. She would need to call on Lucy.
The windows of the house were red in the sunlight, like so many accusing red eyes staring at her.
She rang the bell and the door was immediately opened by Lucy. She was wearing a thick Arran sweater and jeans. Her hair was tied up in a chiffon scarf and her face was clean of makeup, making her look younger and softer.
"I saw you coming up the drive," said Lucy. "I could do with an excuse to stop work and have a drink."
Agatha walked into the hall and looked at the packing cases. "Are you leaving already?"
"I can't," said Lucy. "Not with coppers all over the place refusing to let me until the murder is solved." She walked into the drawing-room and Agatha followed her. "What'll you have to drink?"
"Gin and tonic, please."
"I don't have ice."
"Doesn't matter," said Agatha. "The day's cold enough."
