by M C Beaton
During the last act, she turned and looked up but the seat next to the pillar was empty.
I must have imagined it. And why should I feel guilty? thought Agatha angrily.
When the colonel suggested they go for a drink after the performance, she agreed.
‘This is fun,’ said the colonel. ‘Nice to have different company for a change.’
Agatha would have liked to discuss the murders but knew she would not get anything out of the colonel, so she told him about her life in the village and he told her army stories and they sat there amicably chatting until after closing time.
There are men in this world who find me good company, thought Agatha rebelliously. To hell with James Lacey.
She drove the colonel back and dropped him off before they got to the hotel. Before she want up to her room, she said to the night porter, ‘I’m tired. I do not want any calls whatsoever put through to my room, not even calls from the residents of this hotel.’
The night porter made a note. Agatha scuttled up to the sanctuary of her room.
After ten minutes, there came a knocking at the door, followed by Daisy’s voice, shouting, ‘Agatha!’
Agatha pulled a pillow over her head, feeling guilty and threatened. After several more furious bouts of knocking, Agatha was at last left in peace.
In the morning, she breakfasted in her room, fed the cat, and then wondered if she could get out of the hotel without going through the main entrance. She phoned Jimmy and told him she would pick him up along the promenade outside the cinema.
‘When?’ he asked.
‘About fifteen minutes.’
‘Why? Press bothering you again?’
‘No, I’ll tell you about it when I see you.’
Agatha put on her coat and then opened her door and looked cautiously up and down the corridor. There must surely be a fire-escape somewhere.
She walked along silently round the corner, quickly past Daisy’s room, past other rooms to the end. There it was, clearly marked. FIRE-ESCAPE. She pushed down the bar and opened the door. An iron fire-escape led down to the hotel gardens at the side. She could not shut the door from the outside. She would just need to leave it, closed as much as possible, but not locked, until she returned.
It was even colder than the day before and a chill wind whipped at the skirts of her coat as she made her way down. She scuttled around the side of the hotel and into her car and drove off without looking up at the hotel windows, frightened that she would see Daisy glaring out at her.
Jimmy’s tall figure could be seen waiting outside the cinema. He got in the car. ‘This is a very small car,’ said Agatha apologetically. ‘You’d better push that seat back a bit. Now, where do you want to go?’
‘If you drive straight ahead, we can go along the coast a bit. I’d like to talk. What have you been up to?’
‘Not behaving very well. No, I’ve been behaving all right, I think. No, I haven’t.’
‘Out with it, Agatha.’
‘It’s like this. If it weren’t for you, Jimmy, I would sign off at the police station and go home.’
’What! You! The great amateur detective of the Cotswolds.’
‘I’m not the great amateur detective of anywhere. Inspector Wilkes, you know, the one at Mircester, he was right when he said I didn’t solve crimes, I just blundered about in people’s lives until something happened.’ She told him about Daisy and the colonel. She ended by saying, ‘So you see, I was disloyal to Daisy. The colonel’s not the slightest bit interested in her, but she doesn’t know that. First I shatter Mary’s dream and now I’m well on the way to shattering Daisy’s. It was selfish of me. I was restless and bored and the colonel is good company.’
‘Better than me?’
‘No, nothing like that, Jimmy. He’s a polite, elderly gentleman, that’s all.’
There was a little silence and then Jimmy said, ‘You are a very attractive woman, Agatha. You should be very careful. Don’t let Colonel Lyche fall in love with you.’
‘I think that’s highly unlikely, but it’s nice of you to say I’m attractive, Jimmy.’ Agatha privately did not think she was attractive at all. Attractive women were the anorexic ones you saw in the magazines with the glossy pouting lips. They were not stocky middle-aged women with small eyes.
‘Now how do I make my peace with Daisy?’ she asked.
‘You could say you wanted to get the colonel alone to find out what he really thought of Daisy?’
‘That might be raising false hopes. He actually doesn’t rate Daisy very highly. I would need to lie.’
‘Why don’t you move out of that hotel and move in with me?’
Here was an opportunity to find out what life would be like with Jimmy. But she thought of that bright sterile bungalow up at the back of the town and repressed a shudder.
‘Not yet, Jimmy. I’ll stick it out a little bit longer. How’s the case going?’
‘It’s going nowhere. The super doesn’t agree with me. I think it’s the work of a lucky amateur. I think in each murder, he or she saw the opportunity and took it.’
‘But the murder of Francie was planned, surely. The money that was taken. I really don’t think it can be any of them at the hotel, Jimmy. I mean, the idea that one of them could murder Francie and then calmly sit and play Scrabble is beyond belief. And wait a bit, wait a bit! You say she wasn’t murdered in the middle of the night?’
‘No. Early in the evening.’
‘So what was she doing in bed? She was murdered in bed?’
‘Yes.’
‘So she could have been waiting for a lover!’
‘Could be. We’re still trying to find out if there was anyone she was playing around with over in Hadderton.’
‘Any sign of the murder weapon?’
‘Not yet. But we’re pretty sure now what was used.’
‘What?’
‘Cliff told us the other day that Francie always had one of those marble rolling-pins in the kitchen and it’s gone.’
‘Took his time about it.’
‘He was only making a suggestion. I mean, it’s not something that Cliff, or probably even Janine, would notice was missing.’
‘What was he doing in the house?’ asked Agatha. ‘I thought he didn’t inherit anything.’
‘We took him back there and made him go through everything. It was my idea. I was sure it was in a way a murder committed out of fright and rage. The more I think about it, the more I am sure Francie had something on someone.’
‘Blackmail?’
‘It’s possible, and it’s possible her daughter knew who she was blackmailing.’
’That lot at the hotel all went to her, and Harry and Daisy knew her seances were a trick.’
‘But you forget, Agatha, quite a lot of people in Wyckhadden went to her as well, including people from Hadderton who preferred her skills to her daughter’s.’
Agatha sighed. ‘I suppose it will end up one of those unsolved mysteries.’
‘Something usually breaks. I’ve not had any experience of murder apart from that one case I told you about. But I’ve read about cases and heard about them from other police officers. Just when you think you’re at a dead end, the murderer does something to betray himself.’
‘Have that lot at the hotel all got alibis for earlier that evening, I mean the evening of Francie’s murder?’
‘None of them was seen leaving the hotel.’
‘But the murder could have been committed in broad daylight!’
‘Hardly. It gets dark at four-thirty in the afternoon.’
‘Wait a bit,’ said Agatha. ‘I’ve just thought of something. When I left the hotel, I didn’t want to run into Daisy and so I left by the fire-escape. It leads down the side of the building. Any of them could have gone that way and re-entered that way.’
‘Oh, let’s forget about it and enjoy the day.’
‘We seem to have been driving through miles of bleak countryside. What’s up ahe
ad?’
‘There’s a pretty fishing-village called Coombe Briton, I’d like you to see. Only another couple of miles.’
Agatha drove on until she saw a sign COOMBE BRITON pointing to the right and swung off the main road and down a twisty road towards the sea.
It was a picturesque village with cottages painted pastel colours and narrow cobbled streets. ‘There’s an old inn down at the harbour,’ said Jimmy. ‘I thought we could have a drink there, go for a little walk and then have lunch.’
Agatha parked outside the inn and they walked inside to a low-raftered room. Agatha was disappointed. Everything inside had been done up in mock-Tudor: fake suits of armour, a bad oil painting of Queen Elizabeth over a fireplace where fake logs burned in the gas fire. But Jimmy seemed delighted with the place and told Agatha it was famous for its ‘atmosphere’.
Agatha’s dream of being an inspector’s wife flickered and began to fade. She tried to remind herself that pre-James and pre-Carsely she would not have even noticed that this pub was in dreadful taste, and what was good taste anyway? But it did seem silly to have such a genuinely old pub and put fake things in it. A real fire blazing away would have been lovely. Then there were those friends of his, Chris and Maisie at the dance. If she married Jimmy, would she be expected to entertain people like that? Come on, she chided herself, Wyckhadden’s a small town and it stands to reason that Jimmy’s on nodding terms with most of the population.
‘What are you thinking about?’ asked Jimmy.
‘I was remembering that couple at the dance, Chris and Maisie. Known them long?’
‘Oh, yes. Chris was a police constable but he left the force. Does security for a factory over at Hadderton. He’s a good friend. He and Maisie were a tower of strength when my wife died.’
They had a drink and then walked along the harbour. How the sea changed from one day to the next, marvelled Agatha. Today it was black with great white horses racing in to crash against the old harbour wall.
‘Hope it doesn’t snow before we get back,’ said Jimmy, looking at the sky.
‘Do you think it will? We haven’t had a bad winter for ages.’
‘Forecast’s bad. Here, come against the shelter of the wall. I’ve got something to show you.’
Jimmy fished in the pocket of his coat and took out a small jeweller’s box. ‘Open it,’ he urged.
Agatha opened it. Nestling in the silk inside was a ruby-and-diamond ring. She looked up at him, startled.
‘I want to marry you, Agatha,’ said Jimmy. ‘Will you?’
Agatha forgot about the pseudo-pub, about Chris and Maisie. All she felt was a surge of gladness mixed with power that this nice man wanted her for his wife.
‘May I put it on?’
And as shyly as a young miss, Agatha held out her left hand. Jimmy slipped the ring on. He bent and kissed her, his lips cold and hard. Agatha felt a surge of passion. Somewhere at the back of her mind a little superstitious voice was screaming that she had tricked Jimmy into this with a love potion, but she ignored it.
Arm in arm, they walked back to the pub for lunch. ‘I ordered in advance,’ said Jimmy.
The first course was Parma ham, like a thin slice of shoe leather on a weedy bed of rocket. The main course, billed as rack of lamb, turned out to be one minuscule piece of scragend of neck surrounded by mounds of vegetables, and was followed by sherry trifle – heavy sponge with no taste of sherry whatsoever. The old Agatha would have called for the manager and told him exactly what she thought of the food, but she was about to be Mrs Jimmy Jessop, and such as Mrs Jimmy Jessop did not make scenes. ‘I have friends in London,’ said Agatha. ‘Would you mind if I sent a notice of our engagement to The Times?’
He smiled at her fondly. ‘I want the whole world to know about us, Agatha.’
So let James Lacey read it and let James Lacey make what he likes of it, thought Agatha defiantly.
‘I hope you like cats,’ she said. ‘I’ve got three.’
‘Three! But of course you’ve got to bring them.’
‘I’ve a lot of furniture and stuff.’
‘I’ll leave it to you to redecorate,’ said Jimmy.
So that’s all right, thought Agatha.
They finished their meal and went out into a white blizzard. ‘Damn,’ said Agatha, ‘I didn’t notice any salt on the road as we came along.’
‘I’ll drive if you like,’ said Jimmy.
‘No, I’m a good driver,’ said Agatha, who was actually a fair-to-middling driver but always liked to be in the driving seat, metaphorically and physically.
Getting out of the village was a nightmare. Going up the steep cobbled street, the wheels spun and struggled for purchase on the icy surface. ‘Pull on the hand brake and change sides,’ said Jimmy. ‘I think I can manage.’
Agatha reluctantly surrendered the wheel and then wondered sulkily how Jimmy managed to urge the little car up that icy street when she had failed. When they reached the main coast road, it was to find a gritter had recently been along, although the road in front was whitening fast despite the mixture of grit and salt.
‘I hope we make it to Wyckhadden,’ said Jimmy, staring out into the blinding whiteness of the blizzard.
‘I could drive now,’ said Agatha.
‘No, darling, better leave it to me.’
Now wasn’t that just what every woman should like to hear? No, darling, leave it to me? But Agatha felt useless and diminished. Only the thought of that announcement appearing in The Times cheered her up.
‘We won’t be going far tonight,’ said Jimmy, parking outside the hotel at last after a gruelling journey. ‘I’ve got to go home and make a few calls. I must tell my children about our engagement. I’ll come back for you later.’
‘Can’t I run you home?’
‘No, it’s safer to walk.’ Jimmy got out and locked the car and as she came round, handed her the keys. He bent and kissed her. ‘See you later,’ he said, and hunching his shoulders against the blizzard, he hurried off.
Agatha went into the reception. Daisy came shooting out of the lounge as if she’d been on watch.
‘I want a few words with you,’ she began.
Agatha pulled off her glove and exhibited the engagement ring. ‘Congratulate me!’
Daisy went quite white and put a shaking hand on to the reception desk to support herself.
‘Yes, Jimmy has just proposed,’ said Agatha brightly.
‘Oh!’ Colour began to appear in Daisy’s cheeks. ‘You mean your inspector. I am so very happy for you, Agatha. I thought . . . never mind.’
‘What weather,’ said Agatha cheerfully. ‘Has it been like this before?’
‘Sometimes. But it never lasts very long. Engaged! I must tell the colonel.’
Daisy tripped off. Agatha went up to her room and showed the ring to Scrabble. Then, taking out her credit card, she phoned The Times and arranged for the announcement of her engagement to be placed in the newspaper on the following morning.
After she had replaced the receiver, the phone rang. She picked it up. It was Jimmy. ‘I’m afraid I’ve been called out, Agatha.’
‘Anything to do with the murders?’
‘No, something else.’
‘How can they expect you to go out in weather like this?’
‘They do. I’ll call you when I’m through to say goodnight. You’ve made me a very happy man, Agatha. I love you.’
‘Love you too, Jimmy,’ lied Agatha. ‘Hear from you later.’
She sat down suddenly on the bed and automatically stroked Scrabble’s warm fur. ‘I’ll need to go through with it,’ she said. ‘I want to go through with it,’ she added fiercely. ‘I don’t want to spend my old age alone.’
Then she decided to phone Mrs Bloxby. She told the vicar’s wife the news. There was a little silence and then Mrs Bloxby said, ‘Do you love him? I mean, are you in love with him?’
‘No, but I think that will come.’
‘And is he in lov
e with you?’
‘Yes, he is.’
‘It can be very suffocating and guilt-making to be married to someone who is deeply in love with you and then find yourself faced daily with a love you cannot return.’
‘I’m not a young thing any more,’ said Agatha crossly. ‘Love is for the young.’
Again that little silence and then Mrs Bloxby’s voice came down the line. ‘I am only saying this because I care for you. James will be upset, yes, but then it will pass and you will be married to a man you don’t love. Never try to get even, Agatha. It doesn’t ever work.’
‘Jimmy is a good man and I am very fond of him and I will be delighted to spend the rest of my life with him,’ said Agatha. ‘I haven’t thought about James once since I met him.’
‘Will it be in the papers?’
‘The Times tomorrow.’
‘I don’t think James is the sort of man to read the social column.’
But someone else in the village will, thought Agatha. And someone else will tell him.
She asked after her cats and about what was going on in the village and then rang off, feeling flat. ‘I did not get engaged to Jimmy just to get revenge on James Lacey,’ she told the cat fiercely. Scrabble gave her a long, studying look from its green eyes.
Agatha went down to dinner that evening to find that although it was freezing and snowing outside, the atmosphere inside had thawed towards her. Daisy had told them the news of her engagement and they all crowded around her table to admire the ring and congratulate her.
After dinner, the colonel suggested the usual game of Scrabble and they all gathered in the lounge just as all the lights went out.
‘Power cut,’ said the colonel. ‘They’ll be in with candles in a minute.’
They sat in front of the fire. Agatha thought the light from the flames flickering on their faces made them look sinister.
Two elderly waiters came in carrying not candles but oil-lamps. Soon the room was bathed in a warm golden glow.
‘Very flattering light. You look quite radiant tonight, Agatha,’ said the colonel. Daisy glared, little red points of light from the fire dancing in her eyes. ‘In fact,’ went on the colonel, ‘I have always found that one wedding leads to another. Who’s next? You, Harry?’
