by M C Beaton
The bar for once was comparatively empty. Autumn had come, the leaves were falling and the tourists had disappeared. One of the difficulties of living in a beauty spot like the English Cotswolds, reflected Agatha, was that, for a good part of the year, it was swamped with tourists; but then one couldn’t complain: anyone moving out of his own village automatically became a tourist.
They took seats at the corner of one of the large tables by the fireplace, where a stack of logs was burning brightly.
“So,” said Agatha, “what’s up? No one else murdered, I hope?”
He shook his head. “It’s me and Maddie.”
Agatha felt an irrational stab of jealousy and then reminded herself severely that Bill was in his twenties and she in her fifties. “What’s hatchet face been up to then?” she asked.
Bill grinned. “I’d almost forgotten how much I liked you.”
Agatha suddenly felt tears welling up in her eyes and fought them back. She wondered if she would ever get used to this new feeling of being liked. It seemed that during her long business life, no one had ever liked Agatha Raisin, and with good reason. The old Agatha had not been either likeable or lovable.
“Go on,” she said.
Bill looked at the firelight shining in the contents of his half-pint glass and said, “You know I was keen on Maddie.”
“Yes.”
Bill sighed. “You know something, Agatha, I was born too late. There’s something awfully old-fashioned about me. I think when a woman goes to bed with me that it means some sort of commitment.”
“And it didn’t?”
“I thought it did. I had the wedding all planned, I had even begun to look at houses. I’d totally forgotten that I had not mentioned any of those rosy dreams to Maddie. I invited her home this evening to meet my parents.”
Agatha was about to say, oh dear, but bit it back. She privately thought that Mr. and Mrs. Wong would be enough to kill love in even the most romantic female breast.
“Well, you know what Mum and Dad are like. They just come out with things. It’s not their fault they’re so honest.”
It’s their fault they’re so bloody rude, thought Agatha, but said nothing.
“So Mum assumed we were going to get married, and to tell the truth, I had pretty much assumed the same thing. But Maddie got scared off and I don’t think she’s going to see me again, outside police work. The pain’s awful, Agatha. She was so fed up with me, she drove off without even her seat-belt on.”
“Maybe she’ll be all right tomorrow,” said Agatha and then cursed herself for raising false hopes.
His face brightened for a moment and then fell. “No, I have a gut feeling it’s over. You know what rejection feels like, Agatha.”
Agatha pressed his hand, and those tears that she could now not hold back welled up and spilled over onto her cheeks.
“Oh, Agatha,” said Bill, “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
But Agatha was crying for herself, for losing James, for what seemed to her years of a wasted loveless life devoted to work.
She dried her eyes and pulled herself together with an effort. “All I can suggest, Bill, is that when you see her tomorrow, you’re just as friendly and casual and normal as possible, so that she has nothing to react against. Maybe take some other girl out. But if she still wants you, she’ll let you know. If not, then you’ll save face.”
Bill grinned. “I’m only half Chinese and my poor soul is pure Gloucestershire. You’re right. But how can any woman make love, spend nights, and then just walk off, just like that?”
Because she thought you were expendable, thought Agatha. Because she thought you would further her career if she could pick your brains, but after meeting your parents and being threatened with marriage, she thought it was all just not worth the effort. Because she’s a cold bitch. There are gold-diggers and career-diggers, and your precious Maddie is a career-digger. Aloud she said, “A lot of women are surprisingly terrified of marriage, particularly if they are interested in their jobs. But I don’t suppose that makes you feel any better. Rejection is a pain in the bum. Have another drink, something stronger.”
“I’m driving.”
“And I feel like getting drunk,” said Agatha. “We’ll take a cab back. James can drive you back to Mircester and then take a cab home.”
“Hadn’t you better phone him and ask him?”
“No, he’ll do it. Let’s drink. Change over to the hard stuff.”
James Lacey was none too pleased to find a tipsy Agatha and Bill weaving on his doorstep at half past eleven at night and to learn that he had to drive Bill to Mircester and then pay for a cab back. Nor was he pleased that Agatha and Bill travelled in the back seat with their arms around each other, roaring out raucous songs.
His face stiff with disapproval, he drove Bill home in Bill’s car, which he had picked up outside the White Hart. Bill phoned for a cab. James planned to give Agatha a piece of his mind on the road home, but she promptly fell asleep and snored, with her head lolling against his shoulder.
After having paid the cab, driven his own car from More-ton, and helped Agatha indoors and upstairs to her bedroom, he went down to the living-room, feeling angry and left out. Why should Wong want to discuss the case with Agatha and leave him out in the cold? What was going on there?
SIX
IN the morning, a hung-over Agatha Raisin crept downstairs to receive a taste of what marriage to James might have been like.
“That was incredibly selfish behaviour last night, Agatha. You should be ashamed of yourself!”
“James, can’t you wait till I get a cup of coffee?”
“Selfish!” James paced up and down the small kitchen. “I thought we were in this investigation together, and yet you pair go off. I went to the Red Lion but you hadn’t gone there. The next thing I know, you are both back here drunk at closing time. I have to run you back to Moreton, leave my car, run Bill home, get a cab back to Moreton to pick up my own car – well, it’s just too much.”
Agatha poured a cup of coffee with a shaking hand and then lit a cigarette. James angrily jerked open the kitchen window, letting in a blast of cold autumn air. “And that’s a filthy habit, Agatha. This whole house is beginning to stink of cigarette smoke.”
“Leave me alone,” wailed Agatha, slumping down at the kitchen table.
There was a ring at the bell. James stumped off to answer it. Soon he was back. “It’s that Mrs. Hardy for you. I didn’t invite her in.”
Curiosity momentarily banishing her pounding hangover, Agatha went to the door.
“Good morning,” said Mrs. Hardy. “I am reconsidering your offer.”
Hope shone in Agatha’s eyes. “You mean I can buy my cottage back?”
“If you wish.”
“I’ll get dressed and come along and see you,” said Agatha eagerly.
“Don’t take all day about it. I’m going out.”
Agatha went upstairs and hurriedly washed and dressed. “Going next door,” she called to James. “The Hardy woman’s prepared to sell.”
Seated a few minutes later in Mrs. Hardy’s kitchen and studying her covertly, Agatha wondered if she herself in the not-so-far-off days had been a bit like this Mrs. Hardy, blunt and abrasive.
“Why do you want to sell?” asked Agatha.
“Does it matter? Carsely does not suit.” She poured herself a cup of coffee but did not offer Agatha any.
So they got down to business. Agatha at last rose at the I end of it, feeling weak and not only with hangover. Mrs. Hardy drove a hard bargain. Agatha would have to pay a lot more to get her cottage back than Mrs. Hardy had given her for it. Later, Agatha was to Wonder why she had not tried to hold off a little, to drive the price down, but she was so eager to have her old home back and get from living with James that she had agreed to the price Mrs. Hardy had named.
“Great news,” she said to James when she returned. “The Hardy creature is selling me back my cottage.”
“A lot’. ‘Is it worth it, Agatha? You can stay here as long as you like.”
Agatha threw him a frustrated look. She could not be herself, living with James. He did most of the cooking and cleaning. She realized that even if they had married, it would probably have been just the same. She lived as if in a hotel, carefully keeping her clothes and belongings to the spare room; trying to remember to scrub out the bath every time, realizing that she was quite a messy person. Housekeepers, thought Agatha, were born, not made. Being a good housekeeper was a separate talent, like being a ballet dancer or opera singer. Being brought up in a slum, where food came out of cans and cleaning was sporadic and clothes often were not washed from one week to the other, didn’t help one in future life. While she had had her own house, James had only seen the best of her. Had she suffered then from this hangover, she would have stayed indoors until she got rid of it, and then emerged, made up and dressed to kill. She ran an exploratory finger over her upper lip. A stiff, little couple of hairs were sprouting there. She felt they were waving their antennae at James like insects. She made a hurried excuse and went up to the bathroom, waxed her upper lip clean, opened the bathroom window and tossed the wax out into the bushes, planning to retrieve it later and hide it in the kitchen garbage where James would not spot it. It’s such hard work being middle-aged, thought Agatha bleakly, and it will get much worse when I’m old, what with farting and incontinence and falling hair and teeth. God, I wish I were dead. And on that cheerful thought she went back downstairs.
“Bill and I weren’t talking about the case,” she said to James’s rigid back as he stood over the cooker scrambling eggs. “Maddie’s rejected him and he is deeply hurt.”
“Oh.” James’s back relaxed. “And you didn’t tell him about our visit to Gloria Comfort?”
“No,” said Agatha. “We got drunk to comfort him. Stupid, I know, and you were really good to take him home. Maddie may be a pill, but he’s mourning her all the same.”
James slid a plate of fluffy scrambled eggs under Agatha’s nose. “Eat that and you’ll feel better.”
“Nothing will make me feel better but the passing of time and the first stiff Scotch,” said Agatha, but she managed to eat some of the egg and a piece of toast.
The doorbell went again and she clutched her head and groaned. “If that’s anyone for me, get rid of them, James. I can’t even bear to see Mrs. Bloxby.”
But James returned with Bill, Maddie, and Wilkes. Agatha felt her stomach lurch.
“Now,” said Wilkes severely, “I gather from descriptions received that you and Mr. Lacey here called on a Mrs. Gloria Comfort yesterday.”
Agatha bleakly marvelled at the life of the English village. It had seemed completely deserted when they had called on Mrs. Comfort, but hidden eyes had probably taken in every detail of their appearance.
“She’s not dead, is she?” asked Agatha.
“Mrs. Gloria Comfort packed up after you left, deposited her keyes at the local police station, and said she was going on holiday to Spain. She took a flight to Madrid from Heathrow, hired a car at the Madrid airport and took off for God knows where. Now what we want to know is what did you say to her?”
“And why,” said Maddie in a flat voice, “were you calling on any suspect when you had been told not to?”
“It’s a free country,” said Agatha. “Anyway, she hadn’t much to say. She said she wasn’t being blackmailed by Jimmy, even after we told her the police would probably examine her bank accounts to make sure. She said nothing about going to Spain.”
The questioning began in earnest. They told them everything, except the bit about Mrs. Comfort spending the night with Jimmy.
At last they rose to go. Maddie leaned over Agatha and said, “Just butt out, will you?”
“Oh, go away,” snarled Agatha. “Your face gives me a pain.”
Bill looked at Agatha bleakly, but said nothing.
After James had closed the door on them, Agatha said, “That’s a turn-up for the book. Why would she run like that? What had she to fear?”
“Let’s go and break into her cottage tonight,” said James.
“What if we’re caught? And look how many people seemed to notice our visit and describe us. What if they phone the police?”
“They won’t see us if we go in the middle of the night.”
“Security lights? Burglar alarms?”
“She had neither. I noticed that.”
Agatha looked at him doubtfully. “These Cotswold villages are crammed with geriatrics, James, and old people don’t sleep much. They’d hear the car.”
“We’ll drive a little way to Ancombe and then walk the rest. We’ll wear dark clothes but nothing too sinister-looking in case someone meets us .on the road. Now, if I were you, I would go back to bed and sleep off that hangover. You’ll need all your wits about you tonight.”
Agatha felt better physically by that evening, but apprehensive about the night to come. She knew in her bones that if they were caught breaking into Mrs. Comfort’s cottage, they could certainly be arrested for that and also for interfering in police business. Roy Silver phoned from London and Agatha asked him if he could check up on the woman who had posed as Lady Derrington at the health clinic and find out what he could.
They set out at two in the morning. James parked the car beside a farm gate outside the village and they got out and began to walk. It was a dark, moonless night with a rising wind. Beech-nuts crunched under their feet and more beechnuts hurtled down from the trees which arched over the narrow road. “I’ve never seen so many beech-nuts,” complained Agatha. “Is this the sign of a hard winter, or what?”
“Everything’s always the sign of a hard winter in the country,” said James. “If people go on saying it often enough, they’re bound to be right one of those years. Shh, we’re nearly at the village.”
They moved quietly. The darker bulk of the church rose against the black sky. “Not a sign of life anywhere,” whispered James, but nervous Agatha was sure sleepless old people were sitting behind their net curtains, watching their approach with beady eyes. The silence seemed absolute. Nothing stirred except the wind in the trees.
James quietly opened the front gate to Mrs. Comfort’s cottage and once more they made their way around the back. Agatha was comforted somewhat by the secluded darkness of the garden.
James took out a pencil-torch and gave it to Agatha. “Shine that at the door,” he whispered, taking out a bunch of lock-picks.
For the umpteenth time, Agatha wondered what a seemingly respectable retired colonel was doing with a bunch of lock-picks.
In the movies, locks were picked with amazing speed and ease. Agatha hugged herself and shivered as half an hour dragged past.
“How much longer are you going to be?” she hissed.
“Keep your hair on. I’ve done the Yale. It’s the second lock that’s the problem.”
A light came on in a cottage on the other side of the back garden, a shaft of yellow light cutting through the sheltering trees. James froze and Agatha let out a little whimper of alarm. Then the light went out again and they were plunged back into comforting darkness.
At last, just when Agatha was about to suggest they give up the whole mad scheme, James gave a grunt of satisfaction and the door swung open.
He reached for Agatha’s hand and led her in behind him, flashing the pen-light on and off.
“Upstairs,” said James. “I didn’t notice anywhere in the living-room where she might keep letters or papers.”
Soon the thin beam from his torch was flickering over the chaos of the bedroom. Drawers hung open at crazy angles and the wardrobe stood open as well.
“Someone has been here before us,” said Agatha. “The police?”
“I think it’s panic-packing. You sit on that chair over there by the window and peer through the curtains and keep a look-out and I’ll search around.”
After searching th
rough letters and papers in the dressing-table drawers, James gave a muffled exclamation and brought a letter over to Agatha. “Get down on the floor while I shine the torch on this,” he said. “It’s worth reading.”
Agatha squatted down on the floor and read the letter.
Dear Gloria,
Please, please reconsider. I’ve said I’m sorry so many times. We had a good marriage and could have a good marriage again if only you would see me, listen to me. We could go away somewhere, anywhere you like, and mend fences. Just see me the once anyway. What harm could it do? You can’t still be bitter after all this time. I love you.
Please call.
Geoffrey.
The letter had been typed on business paper, a Mircester firm called Potato Plus.
Agatha looked up in amazement. “So what was all that about the ruined marriage when she could have had it all back? She must have gone off with him.”
“Looks like it. But let me have another look.”
After an hour he said, “No, nothing else. I think we’d better leave it at that. Give me that letter, Agatha, and I’ll put it back exactly as I found it.”
As they went down the stairs, Agatha suddenly grabbed his arm, making him jump.
“The living-room. She’s got an answering machine. Let’s check it for messages before we go.”
“All right,” said James. “But I doubt if we’ll learn more than we have. That letter from the husband was dated three days ago. It’s clear to me she’s gone off with him.”
They went into the living-room. James played back the answering machine. “This is Jane,” said a voice. “I’m sorry I was out when you called, Gloria. Yes, I’ll look after your garden. I’ve still got your keys. Have a good trip. Bye.”
Then a man’s voice. “Hallo, Basil here, sweetheart. I’ve got the tickets and I’ll see you at Heathrow at four-thirty at the check-in. Don’t be late.”
They looked at each other in surprise. “Basil?” exclaimed Agatha. “But her husband’s name is Geoffrey. And she must have phoned him after we left to arrange the trip because he says nothing about Madrid, only that he’s got the tickets.”
