The Dead Ringer

by M C Beaton

  Feeling it was all too urgent to get off the sofa and go to the landline, Agatha scrabbled in her bag for her mobile phone.

  “Why bother?” came Charles’s lazy voice from the depths of an armchair by the fire. “Your marriage to James was lousy, and now you are acting like a dog in the manger.”

  “He’s awfully stupid when it comes to his choice of women. Remember, he once fell for Toni.”

  “Any man would fall for Toni.”

  “But not all men.”

  “Yes, but he did. This is ridiculous. Instead of wondering who nicked your cats, you are working up some soap opera about your ex.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Leave it.”

  “Come on, Charles. Just simple curiosity.”

  “Nadia Loncar. Croatian. Works in Cotswold Chic in Mircester. And they are getting married this Saturday.”

  “WHAT?! The sneaky bastard never even sent me an invitation.” Overwrought with the adventures of the previous night, Agatha burst into tears.

  “Why do I bother?” said Charles to the cats. “Aggie, shut up and listen. On the left hand side of your desk is a tray labelled Junk Mail. Now, we all get gold- or silver-embossed invitations to gallery openings and things like that. I bet you just threw it in there without looking. Ah, here it is. See?” He waved it in front of her. Agatha turned her face away.

  “Well, watering pot. I’m off. Go to bed and have a proper sleep.”

  * * *

  A transformed Jimmy boarded Eurostar a month later, wearing a smart charcoal grey suit, white shirt and silk tie. He was clean shaven and his hair cut short. He had stashed the money in a leather briefcase. If the briefcase had been opened, then he would have been in trouble but he decided to gamble that he would not be searched and the gamble paid off. He was glad he had got the cats back to Agatha. But she couldn’t be much of a detective. Look at all those murders and she hadn’t even solved one. Bet I’d make a better detective than her any day, he thought. And I’d find out if the bish offed the heiresses.

  * * *

  Agatha was feeling very low indeed. She felt she had been living inside some mad emotional circus. What had happened with Terry? Was it just a matter of chemicals? But it had been the love of legend, of poetry, not like the usual obsessions she fell into.

  Autumn was now holding the countryside in its misty fingers and moisture dripped from the thatch of Agatha’s cottage. She had bought James a wedding present, gone to his wedding and wished him well, although she could not help envying Nadia’s beauty.

  She told herself that she had grown up at last. Now, why had she never gone to see Lawrence Crowther, the farmer who had been engaged to Jennifer? Julian had dispensed with her services and good few weeks ago. Agatha had charged him very little, realising for the first time that her mind had not really been on the job. Her reputation had taken a hard blow, in fact, several blows. She had been shown up as the sort of woman who breaks up marriages and was so stupid about her own security that people just seemed to walk into her cottage, murdering people and thieving cats. She now had metal gates across the front and back of her cottage. “I am the one in prison behind bars,” she muttered.

  Agatha summoned her staff and said she meant, although not being paid for it, to try one last time to find Jennifer Toynby, alive or dead.

  * * *

  She selected Toni to help her and allocated the other jobs to the remaining staff. As Agatha drove out of Mircester in the direction of Crowther’s farm, she asked Toni, “Have you ever been in love? I mean like in romances?”

  “I’ve thought so, but I’ve been lucky so far not to ever have been truly in love. It seems to drive people mad.”

  “Give me an example.”

  “This girl I used to go to school with, well, she thought she was having Elvis’s baby.”

  “I am not talking about idiots. I am talking about moon and June and all the poets.”

  “Let me think. Will this rain never stop? I thought we were going to have a nice summer.” Silence apart from the sound of the engine and the swish of the windscreen wipers.

  “Maybe,” said Toni at last. “But it was so sad. Girl like me. Lousy school. I tried to escape out of it by getting tough. I went to the library. That took courage. On the way home lads would stop me, and snatch my books, jumping up and down on them, while I stood with the tears running down my cheeks. Police did nothing. There was just one other girl like me. Then one day, there was this boy waiting for her, holding a bunch of flowers. He approached her. She blushed a bit and then they walked off together. I saw her a few days later and—oh, this is odd—she looked as if she were walking in a golden cloud. She had a look of exal-whatsit?”

  “Exultation.”

  “Yeah. Creepy. Felt it should be the look of a saint, not some girl who’d just lost her cherry.”

  “How do you know she wasn’t a virgin?”

  “Talk of the boys’ toilets at school and getting louder. Well, she got to hear that he’d bet the others he could screw her. He was a slimy devious bastard and he did the romantic bit pretty well. She couldn’t see it. She had been walking on air.”

  “I can hardly bear to hear the end of this saga but I suppose she topped herself?”

  “It has a happy ending.”

  “Get on with you!”

  “It’s true,” said Toni. “The star of the football team, Roger McVee, felt sorry for her and began walking her home from school. Next thing he goes and beats the crap out of her seducer. Next thing she’s got a ring on her finger and the envy of every girl in the school!”

  Agatha sighed. “You made that last bit up.”

  “Just for once,” said Toni, “it would be great to have a happy ending.”

  “So, what really happened?”

  “Overdose. Pumped out. Life saved. Parents moved to another town. The end. But she really did have her moment of glory. You’ve never seen anything like that aura she had. You’ve … Oh, forget it. We’re nearly there, aren’t we?” For Toni had suddenly remembered Agatha’s brief fling with Terry.

  “Yes.”

  “And no one’s paying us?”

  “Nope. But I have a feeling the bishop pinched my cats.”

  “Agatha, whoever killed Terry and whoever stole your cats seems to have been able to get past the burglar alarm system very easily.”

  “After Terry, I got the system replaced and again after the cats were stolen.”

  “So, it figures that an employee of that company is crooked. The church often has sessions to reform criminals. Do you really think Bishop Peter would go to such lengths?”

  “Might. He’s a money-grubbing scumbag. Oh, I do hate farms and farms in the rain mean mud.”

  “No mud here,” said Toni. “Nice tarmacked drive.”

  Agatha parked in the farmyard. Her fingers searched nervously for the can of pepper spray she usually kept in her pocket. The door opened and a young man stood looking at her. He was wearing what looked like a caftan, swirls of green and gold. His face was small and triangular and his eyes, black as pitch.

  “What?” he asked.

  Rapidly, Agatha outlined the reason for her visit.

  He turned and walked back into the house. After a moment’s hesitation, they followed him down a stone-flagged passage and into a small study, lined with books.

  “Sit!” he ordered, pointing to a sofa. Outside the rain grew heavier and a sad wind howled in the eaves.

  “You are still searching for Jennifer?” he asked after Agatha had explained the reason for her visit.

  “Yes.”

  “Think I bumped her off?”

  “Don’t know. Did you?”

  “No, but I wouldn’t put it past the dean. I asked her why she had broken up with Peter and she said he was only after her money.”

  “There have been mentions of some American preacher,” said Agatha.

  “I heard those. Everyone seemed to know about it but no one could give me a name or a descr
iption. I think she’s dead.”

  They were seated in the farmhouse kitchen and it did look like a room in a working farmhouse. From her host’s appearance, Agatha had expected something more interior decorated. “Are you really a working farmer?” she asked curiously.

  “I could ask if you are really a private detective. Neither of us fits the stereotype.”

  “How did you meet Jennifer?”

  “At a hunt ball, crying her eyes out in the corner. The bishop wanted a cheque for his old folks’ home and her financial advisors told her not to pay until they had gone over the books. So, he refused and she refused and he threw a tantrum and she said the dean threatened to break her legs. I told her to go to the police. Anyway, a week later we were engaged…”

  “Why?” asked Toni.

  Those black eyes looked her up and down. “Because I fell in lurv, sweetie. That answer your question?”

  “No,” said Toni. “You are not the type to fall in love just like that. I think you are a farmer because of tax benefits and I think you may have looked on Jennifer as another one.”

  For a moment there was something almost reptilian in those eyes of his and then he gave a reluctant laugh. “Something like that.”

  “Can you describe her character?” asked Agatha.

  “I think she’d been on drugs at one time. Waiting for Godot sort of person. Looking for some sort of enlightenment. What she really wanted was a substitute mother or father. Met her parents? Enough to turn anyone’s brain.”

  “Which one of you broke off the engagement?” asked Agatha, looking longingly at a glass ashtray on the table in front of her and wondering if she dare light up.

  “I did. Couldn’t stand the weeping bouts or the clinging. Perhaps she committed suicide.”

  “I think if she had, we’d have found her,” said Agatha. “Suicides like to be found.”

  Toni said, “Unless she committed suicide at her parents’ home.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Agatha. And to their host, “Mind if I have a cigarette?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you mean, yes, you mind, or yes, I can smoke?”

  “I mind.”

  “It’s like this,” said Toni. “I remember a case in the papers two years ago about a teenager who had hanged herself at her home and left a note blaming the parents. They couldn’t bear the idea of the scandal and buried her in the back garden where a neighbour saw them and reported it to the police.”

  “We may never know,” he said sententiously. “You have taken up enough of my time. Good-bye.”

  * * *

  “Well, what did you make of him?” asked Agatha, pulling into the nearest pub car park. “I mean, can you imagine him up at dawn to milk the cows?”

  “From where I was sitting,” said Toni, “I could see through the window into the yard and he employs quite a lot of people. Either he terrifies them or pays high wages but they were so quiet. I mean, I know I was inside and the glass in the window panes was thick but I noticed that they didn’t even talk to each other. Which reminds me, I have something to tell you. I’ll wait until you have a drink.”

  * * *

  To Agatha’s delight, the pub had what they called a “smoking terrace” which meant tables and chairs sheltered by plastic. She ordered a large gin and tonic and lit up a cigarette.

  “Aren’t they about eleven pounds a packet now?” asked Toni.

  “So what? It is a luxury. I thought you had something to tell me.”

  “I wonder if I should. It’s about James’s marriage.”

  “Oh, do tell.”

  “I was on a date last night. Bit of a disappointment. Went to the bar at the George. He had seemed a nice fellow but once in the George he became all Hooray Henry, talking loudly and laughing a sort of braying laugh. I said I had to go to the ladies’ just to get a break from him. You know, it’s off the dining room. I saw James and Nadia. They were seated at a corner table. She looked like a model. You know, black chiffon dress and—”

  “I don’t care what she was wearing,” said Agatha in a thin voice. “Get to the point.”

  “They weren’t speaking to each other.”

  “And that’s it! Marital tiff. That’s all.”

  “They looked bored with each other.”

  “Why the hell did he want to marry her in the first place?”

  “She’s gorgeous, Agatha.”

  “Mark my words, Toni, as the song says, love is a many splendored thing with a drooping hemline and colours that fade in the wash.”

  Toni giggled. “I don’t remember that bit.”

  “Oh, well, James is a difficult man.”

  “I haven’t seen Charles lately.”

  Agatha raised her hand and ordered more drinks. “This is about the longest he’s been away. Probably romancing some other heiress.

  “Let’s talk about the murders,” she continued. “Now, we can guess why that policeman was murdered. He was about to leak something to the press. Terry was murdered in my cottage, no doubt to try to get me to drop the case. Or it was me they were after and they ran into him. But how did he get in? Someone must have let him in.”

  “You’ve forgotten. Doris’s husband let him in.”

  “That’s right. Okay. Now, let’s think. Why Millicent?”

  “She must have found something out. And she was always hanging around the bishop. Let’s go and ask Mavis,” said Toni.

  “They’ve got steak and kidney pie on the menu,” said Agatha wistfully.

  “But we’ll feel sluggish afterwards and won’t feel like trying to get information out of such as Mavis.”

  “All right. I just wish we never had to see that village again.”

  “Look, Agatha, she has demonstrated that she is very jealous of you so all you are going to get is abuse. Let me see her alone.”

  * * *

  While Agatha sat puffing on a cigarette in the car, Toni tried the manor house. Getting no reply, she made her way to the church.

  Agatha and her detectives had become accustomed to Toni’s beauty of fair hair, blue eyes and a perfect figure, but to Mavis, hearing a sound behind her and turning around, it was like some sort of visitation. A rare gleam of sunlight was shining down through a stained-glass window onto the long white cotton dress Toni was wearing. But as Mavis was about to sink to her knees, the church grew dark again and she realised angels did not carry handbags.

  “Have you come to see the church?” she demanded. “I am sure I have seen you before.”

  For some reason, Toni decided not to mention she was a detective. “I was here at the bishop’s visit,” she said.

  “Ah, my very dear bishop.” Mavis moved closer up the aisle, her sturdy brogues making hardly any sound as she moved so slowly. “We are to be married, you know.”

  “Was the announcement in the newspapers?”

  “Oh, no. Too many jealous women. And I am not only doing it for me, but for my poor, dead sister.” She suddenly gave Toni a sly look and then solemnly winked. “Also, I know who the murderer is.”

  “And who is that?”

  Mavis’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I’ll tell you after the wedding.”

  Although the day was warm and humid, Toni felt the hairs rise on her arms. Mavis was quite close now. She looked somehow lit up from within. “I will be marrying a good man. He will make the announcement of our betrothal on Saturday.”

  “What happens on Saturday?”

  “It is the official opening of the bishop’s old folks’ home.”

  “Some personalities can give you claustrophobia.” Toni remembered Agatha saying that once. Whatever it was that Mavis was emanating was making Toni feel nauseated. She gave a jerky little nod of the head and fled the church.

  Chapter Eight

  When Mrs. Bloxby phoned to invite Agatha to the opening of the old folks’ home, Agatha was tempted to refuse. She had begun to look forward to her days off and once more toyed with the idea of turning
the agency over to Toni. And yet, somewhere, in a file in her brain marked Unfinished Business, lay all the notes she had made on the murders.

  But the bishop’s mother was to attend after visiting Thirk Magna first and Agatha was curious to see her with the bishop.

  On Saturday morning as she dressed, she heard the sound of the bells of Thirk Magna sounding across the wolds. She could see them all in her mind’s eye: Mavis Dupin, Helen Toms, Harry Bury, Julian Brody, Colin Docherty, Joseph Merrydown and Gloria Buxton. What an odd assortment!

  As Mrs. Bloxby got into Agatha’s car, Agatha said, “Tell me again about bell ringing. Are the people who go in for it all crazy?”

  “Such a mathematical pastime, like chess,” said the vicar’s wife, “so usually very sensible people take it up. Of course, there have been Sunday supplement articles recently about how it is good for the figure. That probably was the initial attraction for Mrs. Gloria Buxton, although her desire to become the lawyer’s wife soon took over. Of course, Mr. Brody will be losing interest in Mrs. Toms and will be out there looking for someone else to save. I seriously doubt if he will ever save anyone because he does not like to be committed, you see.”

  “Are you usually so cynical?”

  “One gets that way being a vicar’s wife. I am an unpaid counsellor. In my opinion someone mad has committed these murders and I think it was the same person who did them all. I think they all knew something that the murderer was frightened they would talk about.”

  “Here’s buggering gawdawful Thirk sodding bejesus Magna again,” said Agatha and burst into tears.

  Mrs. Bloxby put an arm round Agatha’s shoulders, feeling awkward because one did not really hug such as Agatha Raisin. “It is grief,” said the vicar’s wife.

  Agatha finally dried her eyes. “How can I grieve over such a sordid little affair?”

  “But it was the power and glory while it lasted,” said Mrs. Bloxby sadly. “We can go home if you like? I did not say this before because of the upset in your life but I feel I must say it now. It is your Christian duty to use all your talents to find this killer.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “And as you wiped away your tears with a dirty rag, you had better take one of my face cleansers and repair your makeup.”