by M C Beaton
“No, I’m going to the opera. I’m waiting for a friend.”
“Female friend?”
“Just a friend. Oh, that’s her. Just about to cross the road.”
Toni was waiting for the traffic light to change. Sunlight glinted on her fair hair.
“If that’s just a friend, what about an introduction?” said Bertie. “What a looker!”
“I’d better go,” said Harry.
Followed by cheers and wolf whistles, he hurried to meet Toni.
“What’s that about?” asked Toni, looking towards the group of young men.
“Idiots! Never mind them.”
Toni felt a flutter of anticipation as they took their seats in the stalls. This would be her first opera. The conductor arrived, the audience applauded and he raised his baton. After a few minutes, Toni whispered, “Is this it? Has it started?”
“It’s the overture,” hissed Harry.
Toni blushed miserably. The curtain rose on a large cage which dominated the stage. Toni tried to enjoy it, but it all seemed brutal and violent. The female worker the other workers tried to rape on the stage was actually stripped naked. She gave a sigh of relief when the interval arrived. “Do you know Stalin walked out when he first saw this opera?” said Harry eagerly as he ushered her to the bar.
“Really?” Toni miserably felt she might have done the same thing if she had been on her own.
Harry got himself a beer and Toni a glass of orange juice. He was just about to explain more about the opera to her when he found himself accosted by his former English teacher, Mark Sutherland.
“How’s Cambridge?” asked Mark, his eyes fastened on Toni.
Mark was a tall, rangy man in his forties with a prominent nose and bright blue eyes.
“Going all right. Oh, Toni, this is my former English teacher, Mr. Sutherland. Mr. Sutherland, Miss Toni Gilmour.”
“Call me Mark. We’re not in school now.” Mark had taken Toni’s hand and was holding on to it. “Where did you find this beautiful lady?”
“Toni works for the detective agency that I used to work for.”
“Indeed! How fascinating. I’ve always wanted to write a detective story. Perhaps, Toni, we could meet for a drink one evening and you can tell me about your work.”
“Mark?”
He swung round impatiently and then his face fell. “May I introduce my wife, Pamela? I thought you didn’t want to come to the bar, dear.” Pamela was small and thin and dressed in a floaty Indian gown which sparkled with little bits of mirror. She had a thin, avid face and glittering black eyes, which she fastened on Toni.
“Well, here I am, dear. You introduced me but not them.”
“Oh, sorry.” As Mark had finished the introductions, the bell went, calling them back to their seats.
Toni sat down again. She felt terribly out of place. She did not understand the music and put it down to her lack of proper education in the arts.
Because of the time factor, there was only to be one interval, so she decided to sit back and think of other things until it was all over.
Harry glanced from time to time at her serene face. Her eyelids were lowered and he noticed how very long her eyelashes were.
When they at last emerged from the theatre and stood blinking in the sunlight, Toni turned round and, to Harry’s surprise, shook him firmly by the hand. “Thank you very much for a most interesting experience. Gotta run.”
And run she did, her slim figure weaving in and out of the pedestrians. Well, thought Harry, I did tell her I had to go straight back to Cambridge after the show. He had known she was pretty, but he had been so busy playing Pygmalion, “moulding her mind,” as he described it to himself, that he had never rightly taken in that Toni could be someone that men of all ages might desire.
He also knew he should never have tried to show off by taking her to a Russian opera that quite a number of people might find difficult to listen to when they heard it for the first time.
And she had so firmly shaken his hand! Just as if he were some elderly uncle! Nobody shook hands much these days.
He drove off and Mircester receded behind him. By the time he reached the flat fields of Cambridgeshire, he felt himself somehow growing smaller in stature.
Toni wondered whether to go round to one of the discos that evening to dance the memory of that opera out of her head. But instead, she got into her car and headed for Carsely.
Agatha was rummaging in her deep freeze to see if she could unearth something for dinner. Most of the packets were frosted over and she scraped busily at some of them, trying to make out what they were. The doorbell rang. Agatha brightened. She belonged to that generation of women who still considered it a sign of failure to be alone on a Saturday night.
“Oh, it’s you, Toni,” she said on opening the door. “Come in. What’s up?”
“Something’s bothering me.”
“Well, come in. Have you eaten?”
“Not yet.”
“Maybe we’ll go to the pub. I keep throwing stuff into the freezer and then I can never figure out what the stuff is. Yes, let’s go to the pub and get a plateful of comforting cholesterol and you can tell me about it.”
“Oh, they’ve got salads now,” said Agatha, when they were seated in the pub. “Maybe … maybe not. Comfort food is what we need. What about steak and kidney pie and new potatoes?”
“Sounds good,” said Toni.
“That’s a very smart suit,” commented Agatha, “but not like the things you usually wear. Sort of thing one wears for a job interview.” Agatha’s small eyes bored into Toni’s face. “Not looking for another job, are you?”
“It’s not that. Harry took me to the opera.”
“This I must hear. Wait until I order the food at the bar.” When Agatha came back after placing the order, she said, “So what happened? I didn’t know you were seeing Harry.”
“I wasn’t, really. Not until today, that is. He had been texting me, telling me what music to listen to and what books to read.”
“Why?”
“He was trying to improve my mind.”
“Cheeky thing to do.”
Toni sighed. “I thought my mind needed improving. I’m tired of this limbo feeling. You know, not really belonging anywhere.”
“So what was the opera? I saw Carmen once. Great fun.”
“It was by Prokofiev—Lady Macbeth of Minsk. I made an awful fool of myself. I didn’t know what was happening at the beginning, the music sounded so weird, so I said, ‘Is this it?’ and it turned out to be the overture.”
“Maybe we should ask Mrs. Bloxby,” said Agatha. “I’m hardly the person to ask. Most of my life has been work, work, work. I can’t understand Harry. Did he try to make love to you?”
“Never.”
“I thought I knew that young man inside out, but when it comes to romance, I’m the world’s greatest loser,” said Agatha. “We’ll have our food and then take a walk along to the vicarage. I’ve been thinking and thinking about that Comfrey Magna business. The police have more or less given up because they’ve come to the conclusion that it was a prank that went wrong. Somehow, I don’t like to leave it.”
“We could go there tomorrow,” suggested Toni. “Now things have quieted down, people might be readier to talk. How’s Charles?”
“Okay, I think. He is infuriating. I would have expected him to turn up when he heard all that scandal about Jimmy Wilson. Maybe he’s on holiday. No, come to think of it, he’s just behaving like his usual selfish self.”
After they had eaten steak and kidney pie, followed by apple pie and custard, Agatha ordered two coffees, took out a packet of cigarettes and lit one up. John Fletcher, the barman, came hurrying over. “Put that damn thing out, Agatha. The smoking ban’s started and you’ll get me fined.”
“Stalinist bureaucrats,” grumbled Agatha. She saw for the first time that there was no ashtray on the table and handed the cigarette to John, who hurried off with it, h
olding it at arm’s length as if it were a small stick of dynamite.
As they approached the vicarage, Agatha felt guiltily that they should have phoned first. Quite a number of people in the village took their troubles to Mrs. Bloxby, just as if the vicar’s wife should be always there as a sort of personal therapist.
“We should have phoned,” said Agatha. “I always make the mistake of just dropping in.”
“Phone now,” said Toni.
“We’re practically on the doorstep.”
“Phone anyway.”
Agatha fished her mobile out of her bag. She had never learned how to store important numbers and so, instead of pressing a convenient button, she dialled the whole number.
“It’s Mrs. Raisin here,” said Agatha. “I’m with Miss Gilmour. We would like your advice.”
Toni waited. Then she heard Agatha say, “We’re actually practically on your doorstep … You’re sure? Great.”
The door opened as they approached. This must be what the fortunate feel like, coming home, thought Toni suddenly, looking at the slim figure of the vicar’s wife with her gentle smile.
“It’s quite a nice evening,” said Mrs. Bloxby. “I’m sure you would rather sit in the garden and have a cigarette, Mrs. Raisin.”
“Great. Just so long as one of the army of British snoops doesn’t leap out from behind a gravestone in the churchyard.”
“You’re all right outside.” Mrs. Bloxby led the way. “Would you like something to drink? Coffee?”
Toni shook her heard and Agatha said, “No, we’re fine.”
When they were seated under a pale green evening sky, Mrs. Bloxby asked, “Do you want my advice about anything to do with Comfrey Magna?”
“No, it’s not that. But what about Comfrey Magna?”
“I just wondered how that case was going.”
“Not anywhere at the moment,” sighed Agatha. “The fact is, with all the scandal about Jimmy, we’ve all been working like beavers to clear up as many of the cases on our books as possible. I thought the shame of having someone like Jimmy as a detective would have ruined the agency, but it doesn’t seem to have.”
“So what do you want advice on?”
“It’s Toni’s problem. Tell her, Toni.”
Toni gave her a full account, ending up with describing her experiences at the opera, meeting Harry’s friends before it and his English teacher during the interval. “His English teacher even asked me out,” she said, ‘but then his wife joined us and she didn’t look very happy. Harry had told me he had to go straight back to Cambridge after the show, so I shook hands with him and ran off.”
“So I gather there was nothing romantic in your friendship,” said Mrs. Bloxby.
“Nothing at all. He didn’t seem interested in that side of things. Mind you, this was the first date I ever had with him apart from that trip to Comfrey Magna. But I guess it wasn’t a real date.”
“I am no music expert,” said Mrs. Bloxby, “but I should think that particular work would be quite difficult for someone to enjoy who had not heard a great deal of Prokofiev’s other music. I think Harry got carried away with the idea of being a sort of tutor. I am sure his friends found you very attractive, not to mention that English teacher. He will now see you in a new light. If he falls in love with you, would that trouble you?”
Toni bent her fair head. I wonder if I once had that bloom, that innocence, thought Agatha sadly.
Toni at last gave a reluctant laugh. “My friend, Sharon, said he was trying to make me over. She warned me against him. He made me feel silly and stupid and I don’t think I’ll ever forget that.”
“Someone will come along for you when you least expect it,” said Mrs. Bloxby. “But remember—you are now eighteen, are you not? Yes. Remember that the person you love at eighteen will probably not be the person you would love when you are, say, twenty-five. Mrs. Raisin knows you are a very clever girl. Reading good books and listening to classical music is a grand thing, but in your own time and at your own pace. There is one odd thing. The university term at Cambridge finished for the summer on June fifteenth. What is Harry still doing there?”
“I don’t know.”
“He has parents in Mircester, does he not?”
“Yes,” said Agatha. “Since he doesn’t want sex with Toni and he’s still in Cambridge, he’s probably shacked up with some bit of tottie.”
Mrs. Bloxby looked quickly at Toni’s downcast face. “You weren’t in love with him, were you?” she asked.
Toni shook her head. ““I was flattered, that’s all.”
“University students are ten a penny,” said Agatha bracingly, “but good detectives like you are very rare. I know. Work might take your mind off it. Let’s go to Comfrey Magna tomorrow and see if we can dig anything up.”
I wonder what it is that Mrs. Raisin wants to take her own mind off, thought Mrs. Bloxby, but she did not say anything.
Chapter Eight
THE FACT WAS THAT Agatha had forgotten about George turning up half an hour late at the restaurant and that he had ordered her meal. What might have been a squalid night of sex that she would bitterly regret, her romantic mind turned into a dream opportunity that had been missed.
As she parked the car in Comfrey Magna the next morning, she said, “I would like to meet Fred Corrie again. See what you think of her. She’s probably in church. We’ll wait for her.”
“Is that a good idea?” asked Toni. “She might come out with a bunch of people. Did she strike you as the sort of female to go to church?”
“Well, she was running that tombola stand, so probably. I know, we’ll drive along to her cottage and wait.”
The day was unusually cold. There were large heavy grey rain clouds on the horizon. “What a lousy summer it’s turned out to be,” mourned Agatha.
“It really is an odd village,” said Toni. “So quiet.”
“They’re all probably in church.”
“That’s one of the things that’s odd. It seems to me as if only a few old people go to church these days.”
“There seem to be a lot of old people here.” Agatha peered in the rear-view mirror. “Oh, God’s waiting room full of villagers is just coming out.”
“Do you see Fred?”
“Not yet. George is there.” Agatha’s heart gave a lurch. She had a sudden impulse to reverse right back up the village street to the church, but she controlled it.
“I think Fred is at home,” said Toni. “I saw one of the curtains twitch. We’d better go and knock. She’ll be wondering what on earth we’re doing sitting here.”
Agatha experienced a certain reluctance as she got out of the car. She knew Fred’s fey appearance was going to make her feel lumbering and ungainly. If the chemists could ever come up with a bottle of something labelled “Self-Respect” that actually worked, they could make millions, she thought.
The door opened just as they arrived on the step. Fred, as dainty as ever, was wearing an emerald-green smock over white linen shorts, and her feet were bare. Her toenails were painted emerald green.
“Really sorry to trouble you again,” began Agatha, “but I wanted to ask you some more questions.”
“Such as? Oh, you’d better come in.”
Although the windows were open, Toni smelled the faint scent of pot.
“Now what?” asked Fred. Agatha sank down onto a very low sofa and immediately regretted it. She twisted her legs sideways so as not to expose her knickers.
“I keep harking back in my mind to the morning of the fête,” said Agatha. “You were out very early.”
“I told you that,” said Fred in a bored voice.
“Can you remember anything that might help? A sound?”
“Like what?”
“A car moving off, footsteps, someone scrabbling to unfasten the tent flap?”
“Just the usual dawn chorus.”
“Have you lived in the village for long?” asked Toni.
“For five yea
rs.”
“I wondered if you heard any gossip,” pursued Toni. “Anything about anyone that might lead you to suspect them of being capable of putting LSD in the jam.”
“I am used to country life,” said Fred. “This is a tightly knit community. Most people are churchgoers. All very respectable.”
“And yet,” said Agatha, “there is a rumour that Mr. George Selby’s wife was murdered by Miss Triast-Perkins.”
“Rubbish! Utter rot! And why are you still poking about? Sybilla committed suicide and confessed.”
“But in her suicide note she referred to one murder, only one.”
“The woman was as nutty as a fruitcake. Are you short of work or something, considering one of your own detectives took the church money and killed Arnold? Just go away and stop wasting my time.”
She watched with cold eyes as Toni helped Agatha out of the depths of the sofa.
After Agatha had parked the car beside the churchyard wall, Agatha asked Toni, “What did you make of her?”
“She smokes pot.”
“You sure?”
“Yes, she had opened the windows, but I could smell it.”
“And to think she got so upset when I wanted to light up a cigarette! I tell you, it’s positively PC these days to smoke pot but not nicotine.”
“Not any longer,” said Toni. “They say the new stuff on the market is so strong it causes things like schizophrenia.”
“If she’s into pot, she could be into something stronger, like acid.”
“A lot of people smoke pot. It’s easily come by,” said Toni.
“I’d send you round the clubs trying to find LSD, but I don’t want you to get into trouble again.”
“It wouldn’t work,” said Toni. “Ever since I was on television on that last case, everyone will know I’m a detective and back off. I can ask my friend, Sharon. I wonder what the life of LSD is. Whether it has a sell-by date?”
“Why?”
“Because it might be an idea to find out if any of the suspects has had a wild youth.”
Agatha frowned in thought. “We’ve got to start somewhere. I know, let’s go to the vicarage and ask if they’ve got a collection of photographs of previous fêtes. See if anyone looks odd. Maybe they’ve got some old photographs.”
