Agatha Raisin 04 (1995) - The Walkers of Dembley

by M C Beaton

  She approved of the kitchen, which was large and modern. So much more cheerful than the dark-panelled rooms of the rest of the house.

  Sir Charles, as he opened a bottle of wine and listened to her prattling away about her teaching job, eyed her thoughtfully. He intended getting her into bed after lunch but was beginning to wonder how she would react. Her thinness and whiteness still excited him. He liked her shy little voice, so different from the robust tones of the girls he usually dated. Her neck was thin and fragile-looking. It looked as if it could almost be snapped like a flower stalk, he thought. He said, “Any news about Jeffrey’s murder?”

  Deborah shook her head. “They’ve been questioning and questioning all of us. They’ve still got Alice.”

  “The big one? Why her?”

  “She knew Jessica ages ago and lied about it.”

  Sir Charles looked at her shrewdly. “If the police still have her in for questioning, how do you know that?”

  “There’s one of the teachers at the school whose sister works at police headquarters. She told me.”

  “Do you think Alice did it, then?”

  “She could have done,” said Deborah. “She’s got ever such a bad temper.”

  As they ate, Sir Charles wondered how he was going to get around to proposing that they go upstairs to bed. Perhaps he should suggest they have coffee in the drawing-room and get down to work on the sofa first.

  He really loves me, thought Deborah with a fast-beating heart. I can tell by the look in his eyes.

  Conversation was flagging toward the end of the meal and then Deborah said, “Can I go and powder my nose?”

  He saw his chance. “Come upstairs and use my bathroom.”

  He led the way upstairs and along a corridor and opened a door. Deborah glanced quickly about his bedroom. She was disappointed that there wasn’t a four-poster bed but a modern one. The room, like the rest of the rooms in the house, was dark because of the tiny panes of the mullioned windows.

  “In here,” said Sir Charles, opening a door off the bedroom.

  Deborah went in and closed the door behind her. Sir Charles jerked open the drawer of a bedside table to check that the packet of condoms he had bought was still there and that Gustav had not found them and taken them away, an act which would have been perfectly in keeping with Gustav’s character.

  There were shuffling noises from the bathroom. Deborah was taking a long time. The rising wind outside gave a cheerless moan. Sir Charles shivered. His lust was ebbing fast. It all began to seem silly.

  And then the bathroom door opened and Deborah stood there. She was wearing nothing more than a brief bra, a suspender belt and black stockings.

  Sir Charles walked towards her, saying huskily, “Come to bed, Deborah.”

  “Is this as fast as you can go?” asked James.

  “I’m going as fast as I can,” wailed Agatha. “But that poxy tractor won’t move, and I can’t get past it.” She pressed the horn and flashed her lights. The tractor driver raised two fingers. Just when Agatha was thinking she might drive straight into the back of him in a sheer fury, he turned off into a farm gate and Agatha roared past, relieving her feelings with another blast on the horn.

  “But why would he kill Jeffrey?” she asked.

  “He might have a thing about ramblers. If he’s crazy like his father, he might not need a motive.”

  Agatha raced round a bend and screeched to a halt. A line of cars stretched out in front of her. She got out of the car and peered ahead. Some distance in front of the line of cars a truck was slewed across the road. A small Mini was crushed in a ditch.

  “Bugger, an accident,” said Agatha, getting back into the car. She beat the steering wheel with her hands in sheer frustration. Then she saw to her right an open farm gate. She set off, swinging the wheel. The car lurched crazily over a field of wheat.

  “What are you doing?” shouted James. “The farmer will kill us.”

  “I’ll compensate him,” yelled Agatha. “Barfield is over this way. I’m going as the crow flies.”

  And with that the car plunged headlong into a ditch at the end of the field.

  Agatha felt like bursting into tears. “Now what do we do?” she wailed.

  James’s face was grim and set. “We get out and ramble!”

  Sir Charles and Deborah lay on their backs, immersed in their different thoughts. What a mistake, Sir Charles was thinking gloomily. That had been like making love to a corpse. Besides, she smelt like something off the burning-ghats of India. In the bathroom, Deborah had anointed her body with an aromatic oil from a new shop in Dembley called Planet Earth, which specialized in aromatherapy.

  And then he was aware Deborah was speaking. “When we’re married – and I hope you don’t mind this, Charles dear – I would like to paint all that wood panelling white.”

  “Married?” croaked Sir Charles.

  “Of course your aunt will need to find somewhere else to live. Can’t have two women in one house. My mother says…my mother used to say, it never works. Isn’t there a dower house or something?” asked Deborah with vague memories of Georgette Heyer novels.

  Sir Charles swung his legs out of bed and began to struggle into his clothes.

  “You should have a bath, darling,” chided Deborah. She stretched and yawned. “Run one for me.”

  “Okay,” said Sir Charles gloomily. He zipped up his trousers and padded on his bare feet into the bathroom and turned on the taps.

  He turned round and let out a squawk of dismay. Deborah must have moved like lightning. She was standing behind him wearing his dressing-gown.

  He turned away and stared down at the rushing water. “Look, Deborah,” he said, “we’ve had a bit of a fling, that’s all. I never said anything about marriage.” He tried to laugh. “Not the marrying kind, me.”

  “But you’ve got to marry me!” Deborah sounded more surprised than angry.

  “No, Deborah,” he said firmly. “I am not marrying you or anyone. I said absolutely nothing to give you that impression. I would never have had sex with you if I thought you were going to jump to this mad conclusion.”

  “Mad?” Her voice was thin and brittle. “Mad?”

  “We had a bit of fun, dear, let’s leave it at that.” He turned back to the bath. “Would you like some old–fashioned bath salts? Now, where did I put them?”

  “Here, dear!” Deborah brought a glassy jar of rose-scented bath salts down on his head.

  Agatha’s tights were ripped and she had pulled off the sweater she had been wearing over a blouse and thrown it away because she was sweating so much. She had a blister on one heel and a stitch in her side. James had taken her hand as they raced together through crops of golden oil-seed rape and fields of blue flax flowers, wheat and turnips.

  “Are you sure we’re going the right way?” shouted James.

  “Yes,” shouted back Agatha, who enjoyed studying Ordnance Survey maps as a pastime. But one bit of the countryside was beginning to look so much like another that she could hardly believe it when at last at some distance across the fields she saw the bulk of Barfield House.

  She plunged gamely on, forgetting about the blister on her heel and the stitch in her side. Deborah was in danger. She, Agatha, the great detective, had been called in to help Deborah, and help Deborah she must.

  Deborah turned off the bath taps and looked down at the unconscious Sir Charles Fraith as he lay on his own bathroom floor. The air around smelt of roses.

  She sat down on a bathroom chair and stared bleakly in front of her. It had all been for nothing. All of it. And yet her mind felt quite cold and set. She knew what she had to do.

  She dressed neatly and carefully and then went around and wiped every surface she might have touched, scrubbing and polishing, cocking her head occasionally in case there was the sound of an approaching car. Then she seized Sir Charles by the ankles and began to drag him out of the bathroom, out of the bedroom, slowly along the corridor and then,
bump, bump, bump, down the stairs and then slid him easily across the polished floor of the hall, along the corridor at the end and, bump, bump, down the two steps to the kitchen.

  She then set about cleaning up the kitchen, clearing and washing the remains of the meal, her mind carefully sorting things out. Gustav would tell the police she had been invited. But she had been incredibly lucky so far. It was Gustav’s word against her own. All she had to do was to stick to her story. She pulled Sir Charles over to the oven and turned on the gas. She frowned. Wasn’t there something about North Sea gas not doing the job the way the old coal gas used to? Perhaps she was worrying over too much. She heaved his head into the oven, then looked around. She picked up two dishcloths and got out various cleaning rags. She went out and shut the kitchen door behind her and stuffed the cloths and rags under the space at the bottom of the door.

  She went into Sir Charles’s study, where she remembered seeing a typewriter. All she had to do was find some documents with his signature on them, and forge his signature to a typed suicide note, in which he also confessed to the murders of Jeffrey and Jessica. But a handwriting expert would no doubt find the signature to be a forgery. Oh, well, she thought on a sigh, she would just need to leave an unsigned note. It was such a pity about handwriting experts; without their interference it might have been possible to make out a will supposed to be from Sir Charles, leaving everything to her. Everything.

  For one moment, her eyes filled with weak tears. All her dreams. Everything. She had imagined holding fêtes and garden parties at Barfield, with her in a wide shady straw hat greeting the guests, maybe making the opening speech. She blinked her tears away. She sat down at Sir Charles’s desk and began to type.

  Agatha and James ran up the drive of Barfield House. Behind them in the distance they could hear the wail of police sirens. “Something must have happened,” panted Agatha.

  “I think we might be what’s happened,” said James. “Angry farmers phoning in with reports about trespassers. God, this is beginning to seem ridiculous.” He grabbed Agatha’s arm, forcing her to stop. “We can’t go bursting into Barfield House, shouting, “We know you did it because your father was mad.””

  “Deborah’s car’s there,” said Agatha stubbornly. “You can do what you like, but I’m just going to walk in and say I knocked and no one answered.”

  She heaved the handle of the massive door and let out a sigh of relief when it swung open. James followed her into the hall. He was beginning to think the only person who was mad was Agatha. How on earth were they going to explain themselves?

  And then Agatha said, “Gas. There’s a smell of gas. Where’s the kitchen?”

  “The smell seems to be coming from there,” said James pointing off the hall and down the corridor. They ran along and immediately saw the rags under the door. They pulled open the door. Agatha rushed across to the oven, turned off the gas, and flung open the kitchen windows.

  “I’ll call the police,” said James.

  Approaching sirens wailed from outside.

  “They’re here,” said James. “I’ll go and meet them. Oh, God, it was Deborah all the time, unless Gustav has murdered both of them.”

  He went back out, but as he was approaching the door, he heard the sound of a typewriter coming from the study. He pushed open the study door. Deborah was sitting typing, her back to him. He took off his belt and crept up behind her, then whipped it round her to pin her arms to her side.

  The loud screams of invective that burst from Deborah’s lips drowned out the sound of the sirens.

  James and Agatha sat in the flat in Sheep Street that evening, sharing a bottle of wine and waiting for Bill Wong to call on them as he had promised. Both felt that it was unfair that the reason for the convenient police presence at Barfield House had been because both of them had been charged with trespass, some irate farmer reporting how two hooligans had driven their car right through his crop, dumped their car in the ditch, and taken off across the fields to trample down more crops on foot.

  “Deborah! I just don’t understand it,” said Agatha, for seemingly the umpteenth time. “Oh, there’s the doorbell. That must be Bill.”

  James rose and went to let him in. Bill looked weary. He accepted James’s offer of a glass of wine, saying he was off duty, and then turned to Agatha. “How did you suss out it was Deborah?”

  Agatha flashed James a little warning look and said airily, “Woman’s intuition. But we’d rather hear all about it from you, Bill.” She did not want to lose face by admitting to Bill Wong that they had thought the murderer was Sir Charles.

  Bill shook his head in bewilderment. “She must be crazy. She told us the whole thing in this little-girl voice, on and on and on. She had always driven herself on to get away from her background, aided and abetted by her doting mother. The reason she had an affair with Jessica was not because Deborah is lesbian but, would you believe it, because she thought Jessica was ‘good class’. Jessica had been to Oxford, you see. Deborah had adopted the politics of Jessica and her friends as a passport to a better society. I think it was on the fatal day Sir Charles invited her for tea that something in her snapped. Even over the first cup of tea, she saw a chance of becoming Lady Fraith. “Jessica was in my way,” she kept saying over and over again. She was terrified Jessica might tell Sir Charles about that lesbian affair, terrified that Jessica would spoil her chances by creating a scene. Can I have some more wine?”

  James filled his glass. Bill took a sip of wine and went on. “She was amazingly lucky. She drove to the Barfield estate. She said she wanted to catch up with Jessica before she did any damage. She found Jessica at the edge of that field. When she let out that she was keen on Sir Charles, how Jessica had laughed! It seems Jessica, once the gloves were off, was a middle–class snob of the worst kind. She sneered at Deborah for her accent, background and clothes, said she hadn’t a hope in hell, said she would let Sir Charles know about Deborah’s lesbianism. Then Jessica started stamping her way across that field. Deborah saw the spade and saw red at the same time. She ran up behind Jessica, keeping in her tracks, and brought the spade down on her head. When she found Jessica was dead, she scraped and dug that shallow grave – when you think of all those plant roots, it must have taken manic strength – buried the body, wiped the shovel and took off.”

  “But she asked Mrs Mason for my help,” cried Agatha. “Why would she do that?”

  Bill looked rueful. “You’re not going to like this. Evidently Mrs Mason had given Deborah the impression that you were an inept amateur, taking credit for police work, and so she thought that by hiring you, she would look innocent and yet be in no danger of being found out.”

  “I will never speak to Mrs Mason again,” said Agatha wrathfully. “Old toad. I never liked her anyway.”

  Bill smiled at her and took up his story. “As I say, she was amazingly lucky. Her car had been seen on the road out of Dembley, but no one had actually seen her going into the estate. Then the waters were muddied by Sir Charles’s lying about what he had been doing and by the others’ lying as well.”

  “But why Jeffrey?” asked James.

  “Ah, well, she had let slip in the pub that she was going to dinner at Barfield House. Jeffrey, who had got a bit tipsy after his confrontation with Ratcliffe, phoned her up just as she was leaving for Barfield House and asked her to come round, saying he was a better bet any day than Sir Charles. Deborah told him to get lost. He then told her, maliciously, that he had a good mind to tell Sir Charles about her affair with Jessica. Deborah said, still in that awful little voice, that she didn’t take it really seriously until she was on her way back from the dinner at Barfield House. She decided to ‘silence’ him. So she changed and went round to his flat. She suggested they should get even with Ratcliffe. She and Jeffrey should drive out and cut the chain that held that padlocked gate and then both return to Jeffrey’s flat for a bit of whoopee. So Jeffrey went like a lamb, cut the chain, and got struck on the head by
Deborah, who had searched around while he was doing it and found that rock.

  “She had somehow persuaded herself when Sir Charles asked her for that lunch he was all set for marriage. When he told her he had no intention of marrying her, she went right round the twist. That was why she was still working on that fake suicide note when you found her, James, even though she heard the police sirens outside. She was bewildered. All her life, she said, she had been driving towards the top. Do you know, in the beginning, getting to be a schoolteacher, for Deborah, was like an actor winning an Oscar. For a while, I think that was enough.”

  “It was the mad father who set us off to Barfield House,” said James, and then stifled a yelp as Agatha kicked him. Agatha was determined that Bill should think they had guessed that Deborah was the one who had committed the murders.

  “Oh, yes, Deborah’s father,” said Bill to Agatha’s surprise. “Yes, we found he’s in that prison for the criminally insane, Tadmartin. He’d murdered a woman he was living with, the one he left Mrs Camden for.”

  “Did either Mrs Camden or Deborah know this?” asked James.

  “I don’t think so,” said Bill.

  “Lots of madness in this,” said James, drawing his legs out of Agatha’s reach. “There was something in the back of my mind that Sir Charles’s father died mad.”

  “No, he died drunk,” said Bill. “Terrible old sot, he was. It’s a pity you two are going to have to appear in court yourselves for trespass and damage to crops after all your hard work.”

  “Yes, I think you might have overlooked that,” commented Agatha.

  “Can’t,” said Bill. “The irate farmer won’t let us.”

  “How’s Sir Charles?” asked James.

  “Lucky to be alive,” said Bill. “He’s in Dembley Central Hospital suffering from a bad concussion and cracked ribs. He got his ribs cracked when she dragged him down the stairs. She hit him on the head with a bottle of bath salts and then dragged him down the stairs to the kitchen. Well, I’d best be off. Thanks a lot, you two. We’d have got Deborah all right in the end. There was no way she could really cover up the murder of Sir Charles. We wouldn’t have believed that suicide note for a moment. But it’s thanks to you two that Sir Charles is alive. I suppose you’ll be heading back to Carsely?”