Agatha Raisin and a Spoonful of Poison ar-19

by M C Beaton

  “Fine.”

  “Madly in love?”

  “We’re just friends. No fire lit. Not for me, not for him, but poor Bill thinks there should be something just because his mum and dad want it.” Toni had wanted to leave the agency and join the police force, but she owed Agatha a great deal. Agatha had rescued her from a brutal home. Perhaps when this case was over, she might find the courage to leave.

  “See you at the office,” said Agatha, stifling a yawn. “Make it eight o’clock. I’ll phone Phil and Patrick and get them there early as well.”

  As Agatha drove up to her cottage, she saw Charles’s car parked outside. She frowned in irritation. She didn’t feel like coping with Charles and she resented the way he used her cottage like a hotel.

  She let herself in. Charles was asleep on the sofa, with the television still on. Agatha switched it off and went upstairs to bed without waking Charles. Sleep did not come easily. She tossed and turned, remembering the events of the catastrophic day. It had all started so well, good-natured crowds flooding into the village and over to a field where a stage had been set up for Betsy. How pretty she had looked with her filmy dress floating in the slightest of breezes. After Betsy had driven off, a great number of people had started to head away. Then the disaster of poor Mrs. Andrews’s flight from the tower. Who had put LSD, if that’s what it was, in the jam? She remembered Toni’s concise report. Her young detective had really shown her up. But she, Agatha, had been running here and there, trying to get the security guards to contain the scene. She fell down at last into a nightmare where Trixie and George were laughing at her because she had turned up at the fête without a stitch on.

  In the morning she stumbled out of bed, feeling immeasurably tired. She showered and dressed and hurried downstairs. Charles was still asleep on the sofa, the cats beside him. She scribbled a note, telling him to feed the cats and let them out into the garden and then she drove off to Mircester where she had her office.

  Phil Marshall and Patrick Mulligan, who had been called in by Agatha that Sunday for an emergency meeting, groaned when Agatha said that she and Toni were going to handle the Comfrey Magna case. Phil Marshall was in his seventies and Patrick was a retired police detective.

  “You’ll need to hire someone else,” said Patrick. “Phil and I can’t cope on our own with the workload. I know a retired detective.”

  “This is getting like the geriatric employment agency,” snapped Agatha, and then seeing the look of hurt on Phil’s face, said quickly, “Sorry about that. Yes. Hire him. Mrs. Freedman will set up a contract for him.” Mrs. Freedman, the secretary, gave a little smile. They had already discussed the idea of hiring someone extra before Agatha arrived, and the retired detective was one of her cousins. Agatha went through the files and allocated work for Monday morning and then turned to Toni. “We’d better be off to the scene of the crime. It’ll be crawling with press, although a lot of them will be doorstepping Betsy in London.” She bit her lip in vexation. She hadn’t had time to look at the Sunday morning’s papers, but she was sure they would have raked up all that old drug scandal about Betsy. Must get the vicar to say something about Betsy being a saint, she thought.

  When Toni and Agatha arrived back at Comfrey Magna, they avoided the mobile police unit and went straight to the vicarage, battling their way through the press.

  To Agatha’s delight, George answered the door.

  “Mr. Chance is in the study with my accountant. We’re counting up the money.”

  Agatha followed George into the study, looking dreamily at his back. He was wearing a shirt as blue as the sky above, chinos and shoes which looked as if they had been handmade.

  “Ah, Mrs. Raisin!” cried the vicar, running around his desk to take Agatha’s hands in his. “We have a fortune here. Various charities will get a generous sum, the church roof will be repaired, and then we will compensate the families of the bereaved.”

  “How much?” asked Agatha.

  “Oh, let me introduce our accountant. Mrs. Raisin, or may I call you Agatha?”

  “Please do.”

  “Agatha, I would like to introduce Mr. Arnold Birntweather. He lives in our village and has kindly offered his services. Tell her how much we have.”

  “We have thirty thousand pounds,” said Arnold.

  He was a very small man, with a dowager’s hump and small eyes magnified by thick glasses. His hair was an improbable brown.

  Again, Agatha was tempted to suggest that they pay her for the services of the security firm and then again decided it would look too mean. Also, any builder these days with the expertise to repair the church roof would take most if not all of the money.

  “Where is Trixie?” asked Agatha, looking around for what she had privately damned as the “competition.”

  “My poor wife has gone to the hairdresser. She has been so shocked by the events of yesterday. She felt like some type of beauty treatment to calm her nerves. Now I must get to the church for morning service.”

  “Could you please say a few words to the press outside after the service about Betsy?” asked Agatha. “Something nice about such a famous pop star giving up her time?”

  “Of course,” said Arthur.

  “I’ll come with you,” said George.

  “Good idea,” said Agatha brightly.

  “Shouldn’t we be out there interviewing people?” whispered Toni.

  “They’ll all be in church,” muttered Agatha as the vicar rushed off, clutching his sermon.

  The church of Saint Odo The Severe had not escaped the attentions of Cromwell’s troops. There was no stained glass in the windows and bright shafts of sunlight shone through mullioned panes of clear glass. The church was full. Toni fretted. Instead of getting on with the job, they were now trapped inside for a full morning service.

  Agatha wondered where the vicar’s wife had managed to find a hairdresser on a Sunday.

  As the service dragged on, Agatha’s conscience began to get the better of her. George was in the pew in front and all she could do was stare at the back of his head.

  She pinched Toni’s arm in the middle of a rendering of “Abide with Me” and jerked her head to indicate they should leave.

  They both emerged, blinking in the sunlight. Boy Scouts and Girl Guides—or did they call them Girl Scouts these days?—were moving about the village, filling up plastic bags with rubbish. Either they had drafted in troops from surrounding villages, thought Agatha, or this was a very fecund village. “We’ll start with Hal Bassett, the pig farmer,” said Agatha.

  She stopped one of the Scouts and asked the boy if he knew where Bassett’s pig farm was. “I don’t come from here,” said the boy, moodily poking a plastic bag with a pointed stick. “Ask her over there, the girl with the carroty hair. She’s from here.”

  The girl when questioned said that Hal Bassett’s farm was outside the village up on the hill to the left.

  “Is it far?” asked Agatha. She was wearing high-heeled sandals.

  “No,” said the girl, pointing to the left. “You go along to the end of the village and walk straight up the hill. You’ll see a sign to the farm. It’s called Bassett’s Piggery. You can’t miss it. It smells.”

  “What if he’s in church?” asked Toni as they set off.

  “Don’t think so.” Agatha had convinced herself that a jam-loving pig farmer would not be religious.

  It was a long straggling village, possibly built along one of the old drove roads. The church was at one end and the road leading to the farm at the other. The small cottages on both sides of the road did not have any gardens at the front. They seemed to crouch beside the road, small, old and secretive. Nobody moved on the deserted main street. Unlike Carsely, there were no streets leading off the main one. One main street was all there was to Comfrey Magna. In a few gaps between the houses, Agatha could see gardens at the back full of spring blossom, but no one had thought to plant anything in the little bit of earth between the houses and the roa
d in the front. The place was deserted.

  The street was cobbled. A heel of Agatha’s sandal got stuck between the cobbles and was wrenched off.

  “You wait here,” said Toni. “I’ll run back and get the car.”

  Agatha enviously watched her flying figure as Toni raced off down the street. Toni’s fair hair gleamed in the sunlight. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and flat sandals. Why did I get all dressed up? mourned Agatha in all the glory of a mustard-coloured linen suit with a short skirt. Because you wanted to get Gorgeous George’s attention, said the inner governess. Agatha was not plagued by any inner child but by this governess, who yakked on, “Why were you so stupid? What do you know of George? Has he shown any wit, humour, charm or anything? No. So here you are, all dressed up like a dog’s dinner.”

  Agatha began to wish Toni would hurry up. It was as if there was a feeling of dislike emanating from the very stones of the old cottages. She kept feeling there was a face at one of the windows, just seen out of the corner of her eye, but when she whipped round, the window was empty and blank.

  She heaved a sigh of relief when she saw Toni arriving with her car at last. Agatha climbed in. “I’ve got a pair of flat shoes in the back,” she said. “I’ll put them on when we get to the farm.”

  The farm turned out to be nearly at the top of a very steep hill leading out of the village. “I bet he looks like one of his pigs,” said Agatha. “All that jam. He’s probably round and pink like a porker.”

  “It does pong something awful,” said Toni when she drove into the farmyard.

  “I hope he’s at home after all this.” Agatha put on a pair of flat sandals and flexed her toes with relief.

  “It was a funny time of year for a jam tasting,” said Toni. “I mean, you would think maybe after the strawberries came out.”

  “In this backward dump, they probably make jam out of weeds,” said Agatha. “The farm door’s open. Hullo! Anybody at home?”

  A thin, commanding-looking woman dressed in jeans and a washed-up cotton blouse appeared in the doorway. She had thick grey hair, grey eyes and a thin mouth.

  She looked Agatha up and down and sighed. “You Jehovahs,” she said in an upper-class accent. “Dragging your poor children from door to door.”

  “I am not a Jehovah,” snapped Agatha. “My name is Agatha Raisin and this is one of my detectives, Miss Toni Gilmour.”

  “Oh, so you’re the female responsible for the deaths yesterday.”

  “Look,” said Agatha, “I would like to speak to Mr. Bassett.”

  “I am Mrs. Bassett.” Her eyes raked Agatha from head to foot. You could leave the Birmingham slum, thought Agatha, but it was always there, deep inside, waiting to make you feel inferior.

  “It’s Mr. Bassett I want to speak to.” Agatha’s small eyes bored truculently into Mrs. Bassett’s face.

  “Come in,” she said abruptly.

  They followed her into a kitchen which was like something out of the pages of Cotswold Life magazine. It shone and gleamed in the sunlight, from the latest utensils to the copper pots hanging on hooks above a granite counter.

  “Wait there,” commanded Mrs. Bassett, pointing towards a kitchen table surrounded by Windsor chairs.

  She strode out the back door and called in stentorian tones, “Hal!”

  There was a faint answering cry.

  “He’s coming,” said Mrs. Bassett, striding back into the kitchen.

  As usual, Agatha’s eyes ranged around the room looking for an ashtray, but she could not see a single one.

  Mrs. Bassett began to grind coffee beans. She had her back to them and seemed unaware of their very existence.

  Hal Bassett came into the kitchen. Mrs. Bassett swung round. “Boots!” she said.

  Hal retreated to the doorway, sat down on a small stool at the entrance and tugged off his green wellies.

  “Who are they?” he asked.

  “It’s that Agatha Raisin woman and her sidekick,” said Mrs. Bassett.

  Hal walked up to the kitchen table, twisted a chair round and straddled it. I hate men who do that, thought Agatha.

  He was a tall brown-haired man dressed in a checked shirt and cords. He smelt strongly of pig. “So you’re the female responsible for the mayhem yesterday,” he remarked. His voice was light and pleasant. He had a square regular face. He did not look at all like the kind of person to haunt a jam-tasting exhibition.

  “I’m not responsible for the LSD in the jam—if that is what the drug was,” said Agatha.

  “What did you expect, encouraging a load of riff-raff to come here?” said Hal.

  “It seems as if it had nothing to do with the visitors,” said Agatha. “The exhibition was set up in the marquee early in the morning by the organizers, Mrs. Glarely and Mrs. Cranton. The only people to visit the tent before the opening were yourself, Miss Triast-Perkins, the vicar and his wife and Mr. Selby. Did you taste any of the jam?”

  “No,” said Hal. “I tried to buy a pot of plum jam from the ones on sale, but I was told I’d have to wait. Mrs. Cranton wouldn’t let me try any of the samples until the place was open to the public. Fair carried away with all this pop-singer nonsense.”

  “Did you go back?”

  “Couldn’t. Got a sow in farrow. I had to get back here.”

  Toni smiled at him. “We aren’t suggesting you had anything to do with it. Of course not. But we wondered whether you might have seen anything when you were in the marquee.”

  Hal smiled back. “What’s a pretty thing like you doing being a detective? No, I didn’t see anything out of the way. But if I remember something, I’ll phone you. Got a card?”

  Toni took out one of her business cards, but before he could take it, it was snatched by Mrs. Bassett, who said icily, “Hal has work to do. If you’ve finished, we’d like to get on.”

  They were just getting into the car in the farmyard when Hal came hurrying out. He thrust a packet of sausages at Toni. “Here you are,” he said. “Prime pork. My own pigs.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” said Toni. “Does it always pong like this round here?”

  He laughed. “I’ve got a load of pig muck stacked up to sell to the farmers for fertilizer. It’ll be cleared out tomorrow. My pigs don’t smell. Come back sometime and I’ll give you a tour.”

  “Hal!” called Mrs. Bassett from the doorway.

  “Coming.”

  “You’ve made a conquest there,” said Agatha, feeling low. How great it would be to be young and pretty like Toni. George would surely pay attention to her.

  “George was in the tent as well,” said Toni. “I forgot about that. Do you know anything about him?”

  “No, only that his wife died.”

  “Maybe he poisoned her.”

  “Just drive,” said Agatha sourly. “And find the manor house. We’d better have a word with Miss Triast-Perkins.”

  Toni drove back down into the village. “Aren’t we supposed to be reporting to the police?”

  “Later.”

  People were returning from the church service. Toni lowered the window and asked for directions to the manor, and was told it was at the other end of the village, just beyond the church. “Did you see the way they were all looking at us?” asked Toni. “They’re all in their Sunday best, but if you put them in, say, medieval dress, their faces would fit. They looked as if they would really like to lynch us. I bet there’s a lot of nasty things go on behind closed doors here—wife beating, incest and drunkenness.

  “Or maybe they’re too God-fearing to get up to anything nasty,” said Agatha. “Anyway, I could imagine one of them poisoning the jam with some nasty poisonous plant. But LSD? I don’t think any of them would even know where to get it.”

  “Oh, oh.” Toni braked suddenly.

  “What is it?”

  “Bill’s waving us over to the mobile police unit.”

  Another hour and a half of rigorous questioning by Collins and Wilkes left Agatha beginning to feel
as if she had put the LSD in the jam herself.

  When she and Toni were finally allowed to go, Agatha looked around, hoping to see a sign of George, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  They got in the car and drove to the manor house. The large iron gates were propped open. Beside the gates was a lodge house, fallen into disrepair. “I wonder why the lodge was left like that,” said Agatha. “With the clamour for housing these days, you’d think she’d have sold it off.”

  The manor house was a square Georgian building, the front of which was covered by the twisting branches of an old wisteria just coming into flower. Like the village, it had a blank, secretive air. Several of the windows had been blocked up from the days when owners tried to avoid the window tax.

  They got out of the car and Agatha rang the bell. They waited patiently. Turning round, Toni noticed that the garden was unkempt—just a weedy lawn and several bushes planted around it.

  The door opened. “Are you Miss Triast-Perkins?” asked Agatha.

  She was a small thin woman with grey hair worn straight from a centre parting. Her face was thin and her large eyes were pale blue. She was wearing a faded print summer dress.

  “You are that woman who organized the fête,” she said. “You’d better come in.”

  They followed her into a gloomy sitting room where nothing seemed to have been changed since Victorian times: heavy furniture, stuffed birds in glass cases, framed photographs, and a grand piano covered by a fringed shawl.

  “You were in the jam-tasting exhibition before it opened,” began Agatha. “I wonder if you noticed anyone lifting the covers over the jam.”

  “No. I asked Mrs. Glarely if I could see that my marmalade was in a prominent position, but she went all bossy and refused to let me see. Those normally quiet sheepish women can turn quite bullying when they are put in charge of anything. Mr. Bassett came in to see if he could get a taste, but she refused him as well. Mr. Bassett and I talked to the vicar and that silly wife of his, who had just turned up. Oh, and dear Mr. George Selby. Poor man. He does mourn for his wife. She was such a pretty woman and did a lot of work for the parish.”