by M C Beaton
Then there was a tremendous whoosh and she heard the upstairs street door close.
In one horrified split second she knew what had happened. Someone had set the house alight!
She switched on the basement light. A dusty room with exercise machines and weights and a desk in the corner-a desk that was under a dirty window.
Later Agatha was to reflect that a cool detective would have seized papers from that desk, but all she could think of was the horror of burning to death.
She climbed on the desk and tugged at the window. It was firmly shut. She climbed down and heaved up one of the heaviest of the weights and hurled it at the window, which broke leaving a jagged hole. She smashed away the rest of the glass round the hole and with her gloved hands dragged herself up and through onto a patch of weedy earth outside.
She was in the garden at the side of the house, between the house and garage.
She crouched on her hands and knees behind a bush. How to get away unobserved? She took the keys from her pocket and threw them back in through the window.
Overhead came a great crack of thunder and the rain came down in sheets, so heavy it blotted out the view of the houses around.
A woman ran past down the street. Agatha had an excuse to be seen running hard.
She belted through the torrent, not stopping until she had reached her car.
Gasping and sobbing with fright, she drove off. She nearly ran into another car on the Four Pools Industrial Estate and realized she had not switched the windscreen wipers on.
She swung out onto the by-pass and made her way slowly and carefully home, through Broadway, up Fish Hill and along the escarpment past the Chipping Camden road, until she turned left and down through the tunnels of trees to Carsely.
She let herself into her cottage just as the rain began to slacken. She slammed the door shut behind her and slumped down onto the hall floor and took the phone onto her lap. She phoned Charles and said in a shaky voice, “Come over. Something dreadful’s happened.”
She found she was still wearing those gloves. She tore them off and carried them into the living room. She put a whole packet of fire-lighters in the fireplace, then a bunch of kindling and lit the lot. When the flames were roaring up the chimney, she threw the gloves onto the fire. Her shoes! If there was anything left of the house, they would scan the carpets and find her footprints. She took off her shoes and threw them on the fire as well and then sat in front of the blaze, hugging herself and rocking to and fro.
When the doorbell rang, she gave a gulp of relief and went to open it. Charles stood there, as neat and immaculate as ever. She threw herself into his arms and began to cry.
“There now,” he said, shoving her inside. “What have you been up to? What’s that dreadful smell? Have you been burning old boots?”
He propelled her into the living-room. “Sit down. I’ll get us a brandy. You’re all smoky and smelly and soaking wet.”
He poured two brandies and handed one to Agatha. “Now drink that and tell Uncle Charlie what happened. Did he rape you? No, you might have a smile on your face.”
“Don’t be coarse. Are you one of those fools who think women like being raped?”
“Oh my God. You poor thing. It was rape. Look, Agatha. It’s no longer the Dark Ages. We’ll phone the police right now and-”
“IT WASN’T RAPE!” screamed Agatha.
“Well, what was it?”
“Sit down. Listen. I’ll tell you. I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid.”
Charles listened while Agatha told of the collapse of Mr. John and how she had stolen his keys, about the house being set on fire.
“God, you’re idiotic, Aggie,” he remarked. “Someone’s bound to have seen you. You might have got away with it if the house hadn’t been torched. Police, forensics, experts from the insurance company, God, they’ll be crawling over what’s left inch by inch.”
“What am I to do?” wailed Agatha.
“Pray.”
“I mean, what am I really to do?”
“Well, if he was sick to the point of collapse and then someone torched his house, it looks to me as if someone tried to murder him. As they got him to the hospital, he’ll probably be all right, and when he recovers he can maybe tell the police who he thinks did it.”
“Now it’s you who are being stupid,” said Agatha. “If he was a blackmailer, then he won’t want to give the police the names of any suspects in case one of his victims tells all.”
“I know, we could pay him a visit, or rather you pay him a visit and tell him about taking his keys. Throw yourself on his mercy.”
“He might think I torched the house.”
“He probably knows who did it.”
“But what if he’s not a blackmailer, but just an innocent philanderer?”
“I’ve a feeling he’s a crook. But let’s go to the hospital anyway.”
When they got to Evesham Hospital, it was to find that John had been transferred to the Mircester General Hospital.
“May as well go,” said Charles.
They drove in silence to Mircester.
“What’s his second name?” asked Charles when he parked in front of the hospital.
“Shawpart.”
“Okay, here we go.”
They got out of the car.
“Oh, Aggie.”
“What?”
“How stupid we’ve been. You visited him twice, legitimately, so that will explain any fingerprint and footprints or loose hair. And how will they know they’re your fingerprints anyway?”
“I got fingerprinted on one of the earlier cases.”
“Still, it’s not too bad when you think about it. If they find the keys, they’ll think the arsonist left them. Wait, that’s odd.”
“What’s odd?”
“You heard someone come in. You didn’t hear anyone break in.”
Agatha stared at him in amazement. “That’s right.”
“So unless one of the neighbours saw you, you shouldn’t be in any trouble at all. And if it’s food poisoning, there won’t be such a fuss. He’s probably sitting up in bed, putting in his contact lenses.”
“I didn’t know he wore contact lenses.”
“Aggie, those unnaturally blue eyes.”
“So that’s why when I found him collapsed in the loo his eyes had gone grey?”
“Exactly.” He took her arm. “I make a better detective than you any day.”
FOUR
THEY walked together into the hospital and up to the reception desk. “We’ve called to visit John Shawpart,” said Charles.
She checked her records. “He’s in intensive care. Are you relatives?”
“I’m his sister,” said Agatha, and Charles groaned inwardly.
“If you go up to intensive care, someone will help you.”
“What the hell did you say that for?” hissed Charles as they walked away.
“I can’t leave here without knowing what’s up with him.”
A nurse was sitting at a desk outside the intensive care unit.
“We’ve come to ask about Mr. Shawpart,” said Agatha.
“Are you family?”
“His sister.”
“But surely the police told you… I am so sorry. Mr. Shawpart died two hours ago.”
“What of?”
“Some sort of poisoning, but we will know definitely after the autopsy.”
“Thanks,” said Agatha, seizing hold of Charles’s arm and turning to walk away.
“Wait a minute,” said the nurse sharply. “I’ll need your names.”
“In shock,” babbled Agatha and scurried off with Charles.
When they were outside, Charles said severely, “You seem hell-bent on getting yourself into deeper water. The police will be given a description of you.”
“Never mind that. Someone must have poisoned him.”
“It could still be food poisoning. People do die of food poisoning. He might have had a dicky heart
. We’ll need to wait and see.”
“Let’s drive past his house and see how much of it is left.”
“This is getting tiresome,” grumbled Charles. “Oh, very well.”
Agatha sat as he drove, her mind racing. She remembered James saying in Cyprus that she solved cases only by blundering about until the murderer betrayed himself, and that had hurt. Now it looked as if it were true. But it could not be murder, must not be murder.
When they reached the Cheltenham Road in Evesham and approached the house, they could see the police tape that cordoned off the blackened shell. They slowed down as they went past. A policeman on duty stared at the car suspiciously and Charles sped off.
“There wasn’t much of that left,” he said. “That noise you heard, that gurgling sound, must have been petrol.”
“Looks like it,” said Agatha wearily.
“Cheer up. There won’t be much trace of anything left.”
“Including who he was blackmailing, if he was blackmailing.”
“All we can do is wait and see.”
Agatha waited all the next day but no policeman came. By the end of the second day, she was beginning to relax, beginning to think it might have been a simple case of food poisoning, when a ring at the doorbell made her jump.
She opened the door. Detective Sergeant Bill Wong stood there, his round face stern. He was flanked by a policewoman. “Mind if we come in, Mrs. Raisin?”
Mrs. Raisin. Not Agatha.
Agatha stepped back and let them in. “How nice to see you, Bill,” she chattered. “I’ll just make us some coffee.”
“No coffee. This is business.”
She led them into the living-room. They sat down on a sofa, side by side. Agatha quickly put a fire-guard in front of the blackened mess in the grate, which she had forgotten to clear out.
She sat down nervously on a chair facing them.
“You knew Mr. John Shawpart?” began Bill.
“Yes, he was my hairdresser.”
“Anything closer?”
“Yes, we were friends. We had a couple of meals.”
His eyes were hard. “Let’s begin at the beginning. I see from the list of customers that you were present when he fell sick.”
“Yes.”
“And a woman answering to your description called at the intensive ward at Mircester Hospital, claiming to be his sister.”
Agatha briefly considered lying and then decided against it.
“Well, yes. I wanted to find out what had happened. Why are you handling this case, Bill? Surely Worcester CID is in charge.”
“They’ve asked for our help, and as you live in Gloucestershire, I have the job of interviewing you. You could be in bad trouble for claiming to be a family member.”
“What is this?” demanded Agatha, her face becoming flushed with anger. “What happened to him? I thought it was food poisoning.”
“Ricin.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a poison made from castor-oil beans. John Shaw-part was murdered. And if we hadn’t got a damned clever pathologist who had made a study of ricin poisoning, we’d still be looking. So settle down and tell us everything you know.”
Agatha decided to tell most of the truth but to omit that she had been in his house when it was set on fire.
“It’s like this,” she said. “I heard a rumour that he was a blackmailer and decided to get to know him better and find out.”
“And what made you think he was a blackmailer?”
“Just a feeling. Women talked a lot to him at the salon about their private lives and I saw him with a couple of women and they both looked distressed and frightened.”
“Names?”
Agatha thought furiously. She could not betray Mrs. Friendly after having gone to such lengths to try to protect her.
“I recognized one of them from the salon. I think her first name is Maggie. It’s all first names there.”
“Description?”
“Well, brown hair, sort of ordinary, rather protuberant eyes. She was there the first time I went. She was complaining that her husband didn’t understand her or something and then I went for a trip on the river with a friend and I saw her sitting in that tea garden before the bridge with John and she looked unhappy.”
“This still does not explain why you thought he was a blackmailer, or, if you thought he was, why then were you prepared to go into business with him?”
Agatha turned red. “How did you hear that?”
“He told his assistant Garry about it.”
“I was stringing him along. I wanted to see if he would betray himself.”
“This still does not explain why you leaped to the conclusion he was a blackmailer.”
“It was just an intuition,” said Agatha desperately. “Look, I was having dinner with him one night in a restaurant, and when we were leaving, this woman was staring at him and her face was a mask of fear.”
“What woman?”
“I didn’t recognize her,” lied Agatha.
“Description.”
“A small sort of weasel woman, black hair, glasses,” said Agatha desperately.
“Hum. And who was this male friend who accompanied you to the hospital?”
“Charles, Sir Charles Fraith.”
Bill took out a mobile phone. “Phone number?”
“I can’t remember off hand.”
“Then go and get me the phone book.”
Agatha wanted to speak to Charles before Bill got to him. She went into the hall and picked up the phone book. The door was standing open. She threw the phone book out over the hedge.
She went back in. “Can’t find it.”
He gave her a cynical look, dialled directory inquiries, got Charles’s number, dialled it while Agatha prayed that Charles would not be at home. But with a sinking heart she heard Bill say, “Sir Charles, we are with Mrs. Raisin. I wonder whether you could join us. There are some questions we would like to ask you. Good. See you soon.”
There was a scrabbling of paws and Mrs. Dairy entered the room. In one hand she clutched a phone book. “Really, Mrs. Raisin,” she said, “if you want rid of your phone book, you should put it in the bin.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” said Agatha.
“You nearly hit my little poochie with it. You threw it over your hedge.”
Agatha snatched the phone book from her. “Would you mind leaving? I’m busy.”
Mrs. Dairy’s eyes gleamed with curiosity.
Bill rose and said, “Yes, this is private business, so if you don’t mind.
Mrs. Dairy left, her thin shoulders seeming to radiate frustrated curiosity.
“So let’s go back to the day John Shawpart was murdered,” said Bill. “Tell us about it.”
Relieved for the moment to get away from the blackmailing question, Agatha described how he had looked ill, had gone to the toilet, how she and everyone else in the salon had heard the terrible retching, how she had got the tool-box and broken the lock of the toilet door and had found the hairdresser collapsed on the floor.
“I thought it was food poisoning,” she said. “How could I think anything else? We had eaten a Chinese meal at his house the evening before…”
“So you were with him the evening before he died. Do you know how he got the bruising on his face?”
“Oh, that. I was at his house before that. I was told at the salon that he was ill and I found his address and went there. I was shocked at the state of his face. He said he’d been in a car accident but hadn’t bothered to report it. He said he hadn’t been wearing his seat-belt and had hit the windscreen, but when I left I noticed his car was at the side of the house and that it was unmarked, so I thought maybe some jealous husband might have socked him.”
“And why should you think that?”
“Well, it was seeing him with that customer, Maggie, and then he did come on to me. I supposed he made a habit of chatting up women.”
&nbs
p; “Do you know his house was set on fire on the day of the murder?”
“Yes, someone told me,” lied Agatha. “I forget who.”
“It was arson. Someone poured petrol over the place and set it alight.”
“Was anyone seen?”
“The people in the surrounding villas all unfortunately work and the few exceptions that don’t were not looking.”
Agatha stifled the sigh of relief that had risen to her lips.
He looked at her directly. “Did you have anything to do with that or know anything about it?”
So many lies, thought Agatha wearily. “No,” she said.
“We’ll leave that for the moment. Go over what happened at the salon again.”
Agatha described again in detail what had happened. Then she heard a car drawing up outside. Charles! What on earth was he going to say?
Charles breezed it. “Hallo, Bill. What’s this? The third degree?”
“Sit down, Sir Charles.”
“Formal, hey? Okay, it must be about that damned hairdresser. Murdered, was he?”
“Yes.”
“How?
“Ricin poisoning.”
“Ricin? Pretty exotic. That’s the stuff that killed that Bulgarian defector when he was working with the BBC in London in the seventies. Markov. That was his name. Stuff of spy fiction, Aggie. He got stabbed in the leg with an umbrella and the ricin was injected into him that way. They found a metal pellet had been injected into his leg. Hey, I remember them saying that ricin is almost impossible to detect and has no antidote. So how did they get on to it?”
“The pathologist, by coincidence, had been fascinated with the Markov case and had read all the medical notes on it. The tiny platinum sphere, just 1.77 millimetres in diameter and drilled through with two tiny 0.35 millimetre holes to carry the ricin, is now in the Black Museum at Scotland Yard.”
“Was the same thing done to this hairdresser?”
“No, he appears to have swallowed the ricin. There were traces of gelatin. We believe it might have been put into pills of some sort.”
“Lifex,” said Agatha suddenly.
“What’s that?” demanded Bill.
