‘I asked about that,’ said Patrick. ‘He’d gone home to Lewisham to bury Wayne and Chelsea. He’s due back tomorrow.’
‘I wonder why on earth he’s coming back here,’ said Agatha. ‘Anyway, Cyril Hammond is my number one suspect. He inherits Geraldine’s money.’
‘Why is he still here?’ asked Harry.
‘He says he wants to wait until the murderer of his precious Geraldine is found.’
‘Hard to believe,’ said James.
Agatha looked at him. ‘He was devoted to Geraldine. Isn’t it odd? I mean, she was a frumpy loud-mouthed woman and yet she could get men devoted to her.’
‘Sounds like you, Aggie,’ said Charles cheerfully. ‘I’m off to get something to eat.’
‘You’re forgetting something,’ said Agatha. ‘Police cars will be arriving shortly to take us to Lewes to make our official statements.’
‘Then I’d better eat fast,’ said Charles. ‘I’ll go to the kitchen and see if they have any sandwiches.’
‘Why don’t you bring in a large plate of them,’ shouted Agatha to his retreating back.
Just when they began to think he had forgotten about them, Charles appeared, following a waitress who was bearing a huge plate of sandwiches.
‘I should have asked for coffee,’ said Charles, ‘but I don’t think we’ve got time now.’
‘I’m a bit tiddly,’ mourned Agatha.
James arranged sandwiches for her on a plate. ‘Here, eat some of these. Good blotting paper.’
Agatha did her best, but each mouthful seemed to stick in her throat.
At last they were summoned to the cars. ‘You don’t need to go,’ said Agatha to Harry. ‘Could you get to Lewisham and see what you can find out about Fred Jankers’s businesses?’
‘Will do,’ said Harry.
They all, with the exception of Harry, exited the hotel and fought their way to the police cars through the shouts of the press and camera flashes.
The whole business of questioning took longer than anyone could have expected. It went on for the rest of the day and then they were put up in a hotel for the night and the grilling resumed the next day.
Agatha found that this time she was being asked questions by the Special Branch. Why had she assumed that the money might be laundered? On and on it went, until she seemed to hear her tired voice echoing in her brain.
And then, all at once, they were free to go. The policeman who was driving Agatha, James and Charles said as they got out of the car, ‘There’s a storm warning. Going to hit here the day after tomorrow.’
They all ate a later meal in the dining room, not talking much, not one of them feeling they wanted to talk much any more.
Agatha had drunk a lot of wine at dinner and she staggered as James escorted her to her hotel room door.
‘Alcohol isn’t the solution, Agatha,’ said James.
‘Oh, pish off,’ said Agatha wearily.
She went into her room, locked the door behind her and put a chair under the door handle. She sat down on the bed and took off her shoes. Then she felt too weary to undress. She slumped back on the bed and hung on to it as it seemed to revolve round the room. Her eyes closed and she plunged into a drunken sleep.
In the morning she awoke with a dry mouth and a blinding headache. She was still dressed and felt as if alcohol had seeped out of her pores and into her clothes.
Agatha forced herself to strip and take a shower. But by the time she emerged from the bathroom, she felt too ill to dress. The phone rang. It was James.
‘How are you?’ he asked.
‘I feel ill,’ moaned Agatha. ‘I’m going back to bed.’
‘I told you that alcohol was not the solution. I –’
Agatha replaced the receiver. She swallowed two painkillers and went back to bed.
Betty Teller turned over the reception desk to Nick Loncar and made her way out of the hotel, looking uneasily at the heaving sea. There had been storm forecasts on the radio all day, the radio she kept under the desk tuned to a pop-music programme. The announcer had even interrupted a fab Robbie Williams record to warn about the approaching storm.
She turned off the seafront into the shelter of a side street and bumped into a handsome young man.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Didn’t look where I was going. But if I’ve got to bump into someone, I’m lucky it was a pretty girl like you.’
Betty looked at him, her mouth hanging a little open. He was gorgeous.
‘Can I make it up to you? Buy you a drink?’
Betty did not hesitate for a moment. ‘That would be nice.’
He had curly dark hair and an olive skin. His clothes were casual but expensive. They went together into the Green Man. No pole dancers were performing and the bar was nearly empty.
He bought her a Bacardi Breezer and fetched a half-pint of lager for himself. They sat at a table.
‘Now what does a pretty girl like you do for a living?’
‘I’m a receptionist at the murder hotel.’
‘You mean the Palace?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s a wonder you don’t leave.’
‘I can’t let the manager down,’ said Betty virtuously. The real reason she stayed on was because of the press. Betty had dreams of being ‘discovered’ and becoming a television star.
‘I read about it in the papers,’ he said. ‘That Mrs Raisin must be one tough bird.’
‘I think she’s feeling the strain,’ said Betty. ‘It’s not only the murders. There’s that ex-husband of hers, Mr Lacey. I don’t know what’s going on there except she’s still mad about him. You can see it in her face. I’d guess he divorced her and she wants him back.’
‘Doesn’t he sleep with her?’
‘Nope. Separate rooms.’
He had a slight foreign accent. Betty wished one of her friends would come in and see her with this handsome man. And he was so interested in everything she said. He got her to describe everyone in the hotel and what they were like.
After her third drink, Betty realized she would have to go to the loo. She excused herself.
But when she returned to the bar with her make-up carefully repaired, there was no sign of the young man.
She asked the barman where he had gone, hoping he had gone to the loo as well, but he said her escort had walked out as soon as she left the bar.
Betty felt wretched. She didn’t even know his name.
Agatha joined James for dinner. She was in a foul mood. Her hip had started hurting again. She knew it was arthritic but had gone in for a course of Pilates exercises and the pain had receded. But now it was back again. She felt old, slightly sick and in pain.
James, on the other hand, was buoyant and energetic.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said, ‘that they won’t keep us here much longer and then we can be off. We could go to Paris first and then motor down to the south.’
Agatha looked at him in silence. The wind screamed and howled outside like a banshee.
She thought of her cottage in Carsely and her beloved cats. She thought of the strain of being in James’s company, sleeping in separate rooms, waiting for the love that never came.
At last she looked across the table at him and said, ‘I want to go home.’
‘But some sunshine would do us the world of good.’
‘I do really want to go home, James.’
‘You’re tired and upset and you’ve probably got some of that hangover left. I hope you’re not taking to the bottle.’
Agatha felt a stabbing pain at her hip. She got up stiffly. ‘Don’t lecture me. I’m going back to bed.’
‘Do that. You’ll feel better in the morning.’
Chapter Eleven
Agatha felt she simply had to get out of the hotel the next morning. Despite the warnings of an approaching storm, the day was sunny and blustery. She asked Patrick to accompany her, not wanting to see either Charles or James. Patrick hardly ever spoke unless spoken
to.
Patrick quietly accepted Agatha’s explanation that she needed some exercise and that the hotel was beginning to feel like a prison.
As they walked along and round the streets, she could almost see the quiet fishing village as it must have been in James’s youth. In fact, apart from the widened main street, the centre of Snoth was quite small, with housing estates on the outskirts. The houses in the narrow streets leading up from the seafront to the main street looked as if they had once probably been fishermen’s cottages. It was the large chain stores in the main street and the seedy little shops in the side streets which, she guessed, had robbed the town of its charm and innocence. It was almost as if the town had turned to catering for the unemployed with amusement arcades and sex shops. White-faced, seedy-looking youth hung out at the street corners.
‘I’m feeling better now,’ said Agatha at last. ‘Let’s have a coffee.’
She checked one café after another, peering in the windows to find out if there were welcoming ashtrays on the tables.
At last she found one. It advertised snacks and light refreshments. It was not very cosy, having Formica tables and very hard chairs, but each table had little tin ashtrays of the type the proprietor didn’t mind having stolen.
Agatha and Patrick ordered coffees and Agatha lit a cigarette and then watched the blue smoke drifting in a sunbeam shining through the plate-glass window.
Sunbeams were the enemy of smokers, thought Agatha, highlighting just how much of the poisonous stuff you were sending out into the surrounding air.
‘I can’t help thinking about Deborah,’ she said. ‘I didn’t like the woman, but she was so very brave to have survived that sea. What am I going to do, Patrick? James wants me to go off on holiday with him, but I only want to go home.’
Said Patrick, ‘The best thing then would be to persuade James to go home for a couple of weeks to see everything is all right.’
‘That might be a good idea. I should really get back to the office. Poor Phil must be sadly overworked.’
‘I spoke to him last night. He said to send Harry back as soon as possible. He says he can manage all right with Harry, but he finds it tough being on his own. Of course, he’s in his seventies.’
‘I hate the idea of getting old,’ said Agatha. She shifted in her chair. No nasty twinges this morning. ‘How do you fancy Cyril Hammond for the murder of Geraldine? He seems to have been devoted to her, but that could all be an act.’
‘He’s certainly one person who might have persuaded her to leave the hotel. My contact at the station is trying to find out if he has any sort of criminal record. If you get permission to leave, will you really go and leave the murder of Geraldine unsolved?’
‘I don’t know. I would like to go home, but at least here there are a lot of police around. Brian McNally has been seen in Carsely. I would be an easier target there.’
‘In that case, perhaps James’s idea is sound – get out of the country and disappear for a bit.’
‘The trouble is, I don’t really know what James thinks of me. I thought when he suggested a holiday together that perhaps he might want to marry me again. But when I was married to him before, it wasn’t comfortable. It was like being a houseguest rather than a wife. He found fault with everything I did. So why should he want to get back together with me?’
‘Perhaps he’s thinking of approaching old age and doesn’t want to be alone. Men always like to think there’ll be some woman there to look after them in their dotage.’
‘Hardly a romantic picture,’ said Agatha drily. ‘What do you plan to do today?’
‘Hang around the police station and see what I can pick up.’
‘I need a break from it all,’ said Agatha. ‘I’ll drive off somewhere and spend the day alone.’
‘Is that wise? McNally or one of his villains could still be looking for you.’
‘But I’ll feel like a sitting duck if I stay in the hotel. Phone me if you find out anything.’
Agatha drove out of the underground car park experiencing a feeling of freedom. She drove up over the downs and then cruised through small villages. She stopped for lunch at a pub and then returned to her car, still reluctant to go back to the hotel.
She went down into Brighton, parked the car, and walked to the Pavilion, that famous folly of the Prince Regent. She walked around the rooms, wearying at last of so much garishness and so much gold leaf.
Then Agatha spotted a second-hand bookshop in the Lanes, bought herself a chick-lit book, found a café and settled down to read.
It was the usual mixture – the good girlfriend, the gay friend, the handsome friend whom the heroine had always regarded as a brother and the usual catalogue of Versace dresses and Jimmy Choo shoes.
But it was undemanding reading and she enjoyed it. When she finally left the café, the sky was becoming black overhead and the seagulls, wheeling and screaming, looked startlingly white against the inky backdrop.
A classic cinema was advertising Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday. Agatha remembered someone telling her it was very funny. She bought a ticket and went in, buying herself a tub of popcorn and a Coke at the little shop in the foyer.
There were very few customers in the cinema. Agatha settled down in the dark and prepared to enjoy herself.
She found the film very funny indeed, and laughing at Jacques Tati’s antics enabled her to forget about murder.
When she emerged after the film, the wind was blowing in great violent gusts.
Back in the shelter of her car, she still did not feel like returning to Snoth and decided to have dinner in the pub where she had had lunch earlier. She ate a generous helping of roast duck and followed it up with an equally generous helping of sticky toffee pudding covered in double cream.
The waistband of her skirt was uncomfortably tight when she left, but she felt soothed and relaxed.
Gusts of wind buffeted the car as she drove back towards Snoth-on-Sea. When she parked the car and emerged from the underground car park, she could only be glad it was not yet high tide. Already the roar of the waves was deafening.
A pile of sandbags blocked the hotel entrance and she had to climb over them. As she collected her key, Nick Loncar handed her a note. It was from James, typewritten as usual, thought Agatha, as if he considered the written word too intimate.
It read: ‘Patrick tells me you went off for a drive. Meet me for breakfast at nine o’clock. There is something we need to discuss. James.’
Agatha crumpled it up in disgust. No ‘Love, James’ or ‘Affectionately yours, James.’
‘Bad news?’
Agatha turned and saw Charles standing there. ‘Where have you been?’ he asked.
‘Got fed up with the hotel and went off by myself for the day. Why are you still here? Didn’t you get permission to leave?’
‘I can go tomorrow. Let’s have a talk, Aggie. I’m worried about you.’
‘Can’t I just go to bed? I’m tired.’
‘Just one drink in the bar.’
‘All right. Just the one.’
Charles ordered a whisky for himself and a gin and tonic for Agatha.
‘So what’s all this about?’ asked Agatha.
‘It’s about you and James.’
‘What about it?’
‘I was talking to James today. He seems confident that you and he will take this holiday together.’
‘I’m not confident we will. I just want to get home.’
‘I feel somehow sure that James will persuade you at the last minute. Although I behave like a callous rat sometimes, I am your friend. Have you ever seriously considered that the attraction James holds for you is because he is nearly always unavailable in some way? You go on like a battered wife, always returning for another helping of abuse. Maybe you need some form of therapy.’
‘There is nothing up with me,’ retorted Agatha. ‘As a matter of fact, I am going to go home as soon as I can.’
‘We’ll see. Just don’t go
back and after a few weeks start mourning what you might see as a lost opportunity.’
‘Charles, I am sure all this lecturing is well meant, but I am tired. That shrieking storm is getting on my nerves.’
‘I hope the hotel lasts the night,’ said Charles. ‘But think about what I said.’
At one in the morning, Nick Loncar looked up from the football magazine he was reading and saw a man standing in front of him. Nick could hear the waves thundering over the sea wall and wondered how this man had managed to keep dry.
‘Do you want a room, sir?’ he asked.
The man smiled. He had a pleasant, tanned face and he was expensively dressed. ‘I am from Lewes CID,’ he said. ‘I am afraid I’ll need to have another word with Mrs Raisin. Something’s just happened.’
‘May I see some ID?’ asked Nick cautiously.
He flashed a card at him.
‘We’ll use the bar,’ said the man. ‘What we have to discuss is top secret, so I want you to put on the lights in the bar and make yourself scarce.’
‘Will do.’ Nick hesitated. ‘How did you manage to get in here without getting wet?’
The man’s eyes narrowed. ‘You are impeding the police in an investigation,’ he said in a voice heavy with menace.
‘All right, all right,’ said Nick. ‘I’ll call her.’
He rang from the desk and spoke to Agatha. When he put down the phone he said, ‘Mrs Raisin says to give her ten minutes to get dressed.’
‘Right. Just put on a couple of lights in the bar and get lost.’
‘I’ll be in the manager’s office if you want me.’
Agatha walked down into the reception area and was immediately deafened by the roar of the storm. The wind howled and great waves crashed against the door of the hotel.
She went into the bar. Only two lamps were lit. She saw a man sitting over by the long windows, his back to her.
She approached. ‘You asked to see me?’
Nick sat at the manager’s desk, biting his thumb nervously and eyeing the phone. He had received a rocket from the police after the murder of Geraldine because he had said he had not noticed anyone leaving the hotel around the time she was murdered. The fact was, he had gone into the bar and stretched out in one of the armchairs for a sleep. Nick also worked during the day at a pub in Snoth as barman.
Agatha Raisin and Love, Lies and Liquor Page 15
