The Dead Ringer

by M C Beaton

  Agatha quickly located the source of her unease. In a far corner stood a handsome man snarling something in a low voice at the vicar. Beside them stood Helen Toms. She looked on the verge of tears. Agatha sailed forward. “Helen!” she cried. “Just the lady I want to see.”

  She put a firm clasp on Helen’s arm and drew her away. Agatha escorted Helen out to the lawn and said, “What’s going on? You’re white and miserable! Who’s the handsome fellow?”

  “Julian Brody.”

  “Aha! The one who got his friend to cater otherwise you would have had to do it?”

  “Yes,” mumbled Helen.

  She was wearing a light chiffon stole. A sudden gust of wind blew it half off her shoulders, exposing black bruises on both her upper arms, as if she had been forcefully held down … and raped?

  Agatha could feel fury mounting inside her. “Hey, bishop?” she called.

  Peter came hurrying up with the twins scrambling after him. “Would you give your blessing to a man who rapes his wife?” demanded Agatha.

  “Of course not. I’d report him to the police.”

  “But what if the wife was too intimidated to back up any charge?”

  “What would you do, Agatha? Do tell us.”

  Said the bishop, suddenly not wanting to be drawn into some vicar’s domestic mess.

  “I’d kill him,” said Agatha. “Someone ought to kill Peregrine Toms.”

  There was a startled silence.

  “Our vicar is all that is good and kind,” said Mavis.

  “And I’d bash the head in of anyone supporting him,” said Agatha, enjoying the freedom of being rude, bad and horrible to know. She had already drunk two very large gin and tonics on an empty stomach. The effects now seemed to be evaporating fast and she noticed the lurking distaste in the bishop’s eyes, the whiteness of Helen’s face, and wondered if she had temporarily run mad. But Peregrine had to be stopped.

  She was all too soon to regret her championship of Helen who mumbled that now Agatha had just made everything worse. The bishop with a small Dupin twin on either side of him, like two tugs towing a purple liner into harbour, smiled at Agatha and said, “I am so sorry. I have another engagement this Sunday that I quite forgot about. I will phone you next time I am free.” He strode off.

  “Now look what you’ve done!” said Agatha to Helen.

  Helen burst into tears. “Why is it always my fault?” she shouted. “To hell with you, you interfering bag!”

  “Let’s go,” said Charles. “You were pretty awful, Aggie, but I have to admit this lot are worse than you any day. Your bishop has feet of clay. Rattle, rattle, rattle. He’s probably gay anyway and beats up his dean.”

  “Only on Sundays,” said an amused voice behind him. Charles swung round and found himself facing the dean. “Are you going to punish the vicar, Sir Charles?”

  “Going to castrate him,” said Charles. “Let’s go, Aggie.”

  “Don’t call me Aggie!”

  The bishop narrowed his eyes as he watched them leave. Agatha, he noticed, had very long legs and a high bottom. Maybe he’d reissue that invitation. The whole thing was a bore. He decided to leave.

  * * *

  “I don’t want you to go near the Toms again,” said Charles, sprawling on the sofa in Agatha’s cottage. “Helen Toms is the sort of woman who creates murderers. I mean, that lawyer is obviously besotted with her.”

  “No one is besotted with me,” said Agatha. “You heard the bishop cancelling our date.”

  Agatha’s phone rang. “I’ll get it,” said Charles. “Who are you not at home to?”

  “Everyone.”

  Wondering, not for the first time, why Agatha had had the phone installed in her hallway with extensions in the kitchen and in her bedroom but nothing in the sitting room, Chares answered the shrill ringing.

  “May I speak to Mrs. Raisin?”

  “I am afraid she is out this evening.”

  “This is Peter Salver-Hinkley. To whom am I speaking?”

  “Her fiancé, Charles Fraith.”

  “Ah, yes. We met. Tell her I am free on Sunday after all and I will collect her at eight o’clock.”

  “I won’t tell her. Good evening.”

  * * *

  Agatha looked up as Charles entered the sitting room. “Who was it?”

  “Double-glazing salesman,” said Charles.

  * * *

  But Charles in his lazy way forgot all about his lies so it was a startled Agatha who opened the door on Sunday evening to find the bishop on the doorstep.

  “Dinner?” said Peter. “Didn’t your fiancé tell you?”

  “I haven’t got a fiancé.”

  “Charles Fraith?”

  “Definitely not.”

  “Right. Let’s go.”

  “I’m not suitably dressed,” said Agatha, who was wearing an old housedress.

  The bishop grinned. “Then slip on something tight and let’s go.”

  Agatha appeared back downstairs in record time in a fuchsia chiffon blouse with a high frill at the neck and a pair of black velvet trousers. She had not worn the blouse before but felt it was the right combination of flattering colour and yet rather prim lines.

  She thought she noticed a startled gleam of lechery in Peter’s eyes but decided it must be a trick of the light.

  “There’s a new restaurant in Mircester,” said Peter. “Greek. Supposed to be pretty good.”

  “I hope the food is hot enough. I was in Greece last year and everything served seemed to be tepid.”

  “Ah, you innocents abroad,” mocked Peter. “Always stick with the other tourists.”

  “Don’t patronise me,” said Agatha sharply.

  Shouldn’t have asked her out, thought Peter. Hard as marble. Oh, well. Quick bite to eat. Call my chauffeur to take her home and get rid of her quick.

  The restaurant had a car park at the back. He helped Agatha out of the car. Greek music was blaring from loudspeakers. A young man dressed as an evzone, a Greek ceremonial guard, was marching up and down clutching a toy rifle.

  “They always look as if they are wearing white tutus and about to dance Swan Lake. Very touristy-looking place,” added Agatha maliciously.

  But Peter had decided that Agatha was definitely a waste of space and just wanted the evening to end quickly. “Oh, but they do say the food is good.”

  When they walked into the restaurant, they were seated at a table opposite a large mirror. Because the evening was warm, she had not bothered to wear a jacket or coat and noticed for the first time that her new blouse was transparent, showing her frilly black brassiere underneath. She turned almost the same colour as her blouse and hissed, “Lend me your jacket.”

  “Why?” he demanded, deliberately obtuse.

  “There’s an underslip goes with this damned blouse and I forgot to put it on.”

  “Oh, very well.” He took off his white linen jacket and passed it over to her. “I will order for us.”

  Agatha wanted to say sharply that she preferred to choose what she would eat herself but she was still too embarrassed about her see-through blouse to protest. They started with dolmades, followed by moussaka, both dishes being tepid. He ordered a carafe of retsina, a wine that tasted to Agatha like paint stripper. Agatha asked for some ordinary red wine instead.

  “Any interesting cases at the moment?” he asked.

  His beautiful face was a study in anticipated boredom and Agatha found herself saying, “Funnily enough, it’s not one of my cases. It’s about that disappearing heiress, Jennifer Toynby.”

  “What on earth has that got to do with you?”

  “It is such a glamorous mystery,” said Agatha. “I mean, a bishop, an heiress, and all that. Rumour has it you were going to be married.”

  “Rubbish. She contributed a good bit to the church and my dean persuaded me to squire her about a bit. She had a boyfriend, Lawrence Crowther, a great hulking bull of a farmer. Now, they were about to get engaged just
before she disappeared. Excuse me.”

  He took out his phone and walked a little way away from the table, raising his voice to try to be heard above the loudspeakers, now belting out “Zorba the Greek.”

  The waiter politely turned down the volume just as the bishop was saying, “Yes, John, I want you to bring the limo round and take my guest back to Carsely.” He dropped his voice, but Agatha heard him say urgently, “Bored out of my skull, dear boy. Oh, you are just around the corner? Good, that’s great.”

  Now, Agatha Raisin had been insulted by experts, but never before had anyone said they found her boring. Although middle-aged, she felt suddenly young and insecure. Agatha had always rated her looks as low, and it did not dawn on her that her questions were annoying him.

  “We were talking about the missing heiress,” said Agatha when he had sat down again.

  “You were. I wasn’t. Oh, here is my driver with the car. I must beg you to leave me with the bill and then I have to rush home to deal with an urgent matter.”

  It was only when Agatha was finally dropped outside his cottage that she realised she was still wearing his jacket.

  She was somehow grateful to Charles. Had she anticipated the invitation, she would have begun to weave rosy fantasies. As it was, she could face up to the fact that he was an arrogant man with a beautiful face, but eminently forgettable.

  Chapter Three

  Occasionally, in the weeks that followed, Agatha thought briefly about the bishop. Charles wanted to know about her date, but Agatha only said that her question about a missing heiress had seemed to rattle him. There was a lot of work still pouring into the agency and so her mind was soon taken up with other things, one of the other things being the return to Carsely of her ex-husband, James Lacey. He was a travel writer and often absent. He lived next door to her and called on her two days after he got back.

  Agatha was always taken aback at how handsome he was when she had not seen him for some time. He was tall with thick black hair going grey at the sides, and with bright blue eyes in a tanned face. Agatha as usual reminded herself that the label chauvinist pig applied to James.

  “Have you eaten yet?” he asked.

  “Haven’t had a chance,” said Agatha. “Just got home.”

  “I got a free voucher to a Greek restaurant in Mircester,” said James. “Like to try it? Dinner for two.”

  “Been there,” said Agatha. “Cold food and sour wine.”

  “It says ‘new management.’”

  “Oh, well, I was about to defrost a hamburger. You’re on.”

  Agatha was just getting into James’s car when Charles came hurrying up. “Where are you off to?”

  “Greek restaurant,” said James.

  “Can I come too?” asked Charles. “Nobody loves me.”

  “I can understand why,” mocked James, “if you keep trying to push your way into other people’s dates. Oh, hop in.”

  * * *

  The first person Agatha noticed on entering the restaurant was the bishop, who was entertaining the two Dupin sisters to dinner. Why? Money, thought Agatha. “Charles,” she said aloud, “we all know you chase women who’ve got money.”

  “Keep your voice down, you horrible thing,” hissed Charles.

  “What prompted that?” asked James curiously.

  “Over there is the Bishop of Mircester.”

  “You mean the Greek god and two frumps?”

  “Cruel, but yes.”

  “Why would an unmarried bishop take out two ladies like that for dinner?” asked Agatha.

  “I neither know nor care,” said James. “Order some food, Agatha.”

  * * *

  “Oh, there’s that hard-faced detective creature,” said Mavis Dupin.

  Peter Salver-Hinkley looked across the restaurant. Agatha Raisin seemed to be keeping two men entertained. He recognised Charles from the village party. Who was the other man?

  As if in answer to his thoughts, Mavis said, “The handsome one is her ex-husband, James Lacey.”

  “Wasn’t there some scandal about their marriage?” Mavis started.

  “Oh, yes,” said Mavis eagerly. “The first time they tried to get married, Agatha’s husband turned up. She had forgotten to tell everyone she was still married. Then he was murdered.”

  “Of course,” said the bishop. “It was all over the newspapers. But they got married anyway and then split up. She is attractive.”

  “Oh, go along with you.” Mavis gave him what was meant to be a playful punch on the arm but it nearly knocked him out of his chair. “She’s got such small eyes, hasn’t she, Millicent?”

  “I’ve got a teddy bear with eyes like that,” said Millicent.

  The Raisin woman’s got a whole cupboard full of skeletons, thought the bishop. I shouldn’t have been in such a hurry to brush her off.

  Charles said, “I don’t like the look of this place. There’s a good Italian place round the corner. Let’s go there.”

  “Oh, all right,” said Agatha.

  “Wait a minute,” said James crossly. “I wanted Greek food and I still want it.”

  “I’ve eaten here before,” said Agatha. “You’ve heard of chicken in a basket? Well this is yuk in a bucket.”

  “I am surprised you want to leave, considering the fact that the Greek god over there seems fascinated by you.”

  Agatha followed his gaze. Peter smiled and nodded. Agatha gave a chilly little nod back.

  “So, who is he?” asked James.

  “He nearly was Agatha’s latest squeeze,” said Charles. “He took her out for dinner to this very restaurant but our Aggie starts to nose into his guilty past and so he freezes her.”

  “Not surprised,” said James. “Why did he ask you in the first place? What? Did I say something wrong?”

  “Oh, no,” said Charles. “Clumsy as an ox as usual. Our Aggie fascinates fellows. They drop at her feet. See what I mean? The bish is heading this way.”

  “Good evening, Agatha,” said Peter. “You still have my jacket.”

  “I kept meaning to send it to you,” said Agatha. “Oh, you don’t know James. James, Peter Salver-Hinkley, Bishop of Mircester. Peter, James Lacey.”

  “You are that famous travel writer,” said Peter. He pulled out a chair and sat down.

  “Are yiz ready tae order?” demanded a hairy, thickset waiter.

  “And I thought it was Edinburgh that used to be called the Athens of the North and not Glasgow,” said Charles.

  “Here, mac! You takin’ the piss?”

  “No, he is just being silly,” said James quickly. “Do excuse us, Peter, but I am really hungry and your ladies are waiting for you. Agatha, what would you like?”

  “I won’t have a starter,” said Agatha. “They’ve actually got fish and chips. Oh, and anything but retsina.”

  “I’ll have the same,” said Charles.

  James shrugged and said he would settle for one dish as well but ordered moussaka.

  To James’s dismay, the Dupin sisters came over and pulled up chairs at his table, squeezing in on either side of the bishop.

  “Isn’t this cozy,” said Charles, his eyes alight with mischief.

  “Dear ladies,” said Peter, “I was just about to rejoin you.”

  Sharp and bony Dupin knees pressed in on either side of his legs. He scowled. The only reason he had asked them out was because they had hinted they would give money to the abbey. He stood up abruptly. “I’ve just remembered. I am expecting an important phone call. Do forgive me.” And with that, he fled from the restaurant.

  “Well, really!” exclaimed Millicent. “You must have said something rude, Mrs. Raisin. We heard you are famous for your rudeness.”

  “Nothing I have ever said could begin to compete with you two witches. So, bugger off,” said Agatha gleefully.

  As the outraged sisters fled to their table, James said, “That was unwarranted, Agatha.”

  “Oh, come on, James,” said Charles. “They were fla
shing warrant cards.”

  “But Agatha always attracts men,” said James, “and those two haven’t a hope in hell. You should be more charitable, Agatha.”

  Charles saw Agatha smiling fondly at James because of his remark and felt suddenly bad tempered. “What the hell is this?” he demanded as the waiter put a slate with a greasy pile of fish and chips in front of him. “Why the slate? Am I supposed to write a comment on this heap of grease?”

  “Lissen here, mac,” growled the waiter. “I dinnae cook the stuff. So, eat it or shut up.”

  “Mine is the same,” said Agatha. “Take it away and give it to your twenty-five children.”

  The waiter stared at her. James clenched his fists. Then the incredible happened. The waiter began to laugh. He said when he had finished laughing, “You’re no’ frae Glesca, are ye, hen?”

  “No, and they wouldn’t dare serve muck like this.”

  “The waiter placed a chair next to Agatha and sat down. He poured himself a glass of wine and said, “On the hoose.”

  Charles opened his mouth to protest but Agatha kicked him under the table. With one of her odd flashes of intuition, she said to the waiter, “You know who I am and you’ve got something to tell me about our bishop.”

  Agatha translated the waiter’s tale in her head into standard English. What it amounted to was that the bishop had brought the now missing heiress, Jennifer Toynby, to the restaurant. The waiter had heard them arguing; He was not serving their table that evening but he said dramatically that when she had gone to the toilet, the bishop had looked after her with murder in his eyes.

  “Why does he bring people here?” asked Agatha.

  “He has shares in this place, see?” said the waiter. “Here comes the boss.”

  The boss was as low-browed and tattooed as the waiter. He gave a curt nod. Their waiter said, “He says if yiz goes tae the Napoli in the square, it’s on the hoose.”

  Agatha slipped the waiter a hefty tip as she wanted to interrogate him further when she was on her own.

  James wanted to go home but Charles pointed out that the Napoli had a good reputation and a free meal was a free meal. What Charles had not explained was that the Napoli was mostly a takeaway pizza parlour with only two tables in a corner.