by M C Beaton
“I’m afraid I have.”
She stood up and moved close to him. He moved back and found his legs pressed against the sofa. She raised her arms to put them around his neck, a slow seductive smile on her face. James ducked, stepped up on the sofa and walked over the back, his long legs taking him straight to the door.
“Goodbye,” he said, opened the door, and ran down the stairs.
“Silly old fool,” he said aloud, but he meant himself and not Agatha Raisin.
Agatha had had the foresight to buy two bottles of cheap sweet wine called Irish Blossom. They were the kind of wine bottles with screw-tops rather than corks. She and Roy found a group of down-and-outs near where Jimmy Raisin used to hang out. They were a mixed bunch, but more solid alcoholics than drug addicts, the drug addicts being younger and favouring better sites. The Celtic races predominated, Scottish and Irish, making Agatha wonder if there was any truth in the statement that alcohohsm got worse the farther north in the world one went.
No one seemed to want to know them, until Agatha fished in one of her plastic bags and produced one of the bottles of wine.
The others gathered around. Roy passed the bottle round. The contents were soon gone. An old man came up. He had two bottles of cider, which he proceeded to share. He had an educated voice and told everyone he used to be a professor. Soon they all began to talk, and Agatha and Roy found they were surrounded by jet pilots, famous footballers, brain surgeons, and tycoons. “It’s a bit like those people who believe they had a previous life,” muttered Agatha. “They were always Napoleon or Cleopatra or someone like that.”
“They believe what they’re saying,” whispered Roy. “They’ve told the same lies so many times, they actually believe them now.”
Agatha raised her voice. “We had a mate used to hang around about here,” she said. “Jimmy Raisin.”
The man with the educated voice, who was called Charles, said, “Someone said he got killed. Good riddance, sleazy little toe-rag.”
They must have heard about the murder by word of mouth, thought Agatha. Few of them would ever look at a newspaper.
“What happened to his stuff?” asked Roy.
“Perlice took it away,” said a thin woman with the sort of avid face and glittering eyes of a Hogarth drawing. “Took ‘is box and all. But Lizzie got ‘is bag o’stuff.”
“What stuff?” Roy’s voice was sharp.
“Just who the hell are you?” asked Charles.
Agatha glared at Roy. “I’ll tell you who I am,” he said, his voice slightly slurred. “I’m a big executive in the City. I only come down here evenings because I like the company.”
There was a general easing of tension as the brain surgeons, jet pilots, and tycoons in general regarded what they thought was one of their own kind. “And I’ll tell you something more.” Roy fished in the capacious inside pocket of his Oxfam jacket. “I took this bottle of Scotch out of the desk before I came here.”
This was nothing but the truth, but deep in the dim recesses of their brains they accepted him as a fellow liar. The Scotch was passed round. Since they were all, with the exception of Agatha and Roy, topping up from the last binge, it had the effect of knocking them into almost immediate drunkenness.
Agatha found the avid-faced woman was called Clara and sidled over to her. “Tell you a secret,” she whispered.
Clara looked at her, her glittering eyes slightly unfocused. “I was married to Jimmy,” said Agatha.
“Go on!”
“Fact. So that bag this Lizzie took belongs to me. Where is she?”
“She’ll be along.”
So Agatha and Roy settled themselves to wait. More joined them. More cheap drink. A man built a bonfire in an old oil drum. Clara began to sing drunkenly.
It was an almost seductive way of life, thought Agatha, provided the weather wasn’t too cold. Just chuck up reality, goodbye to work, to family, to responsibility, beg during the day and get stoned out of your mind at night. No conventions to bind you, no getting or spending, no hassle.
“I wash not allush like thish,” slurred Charles at one point. “I wash a profeshor at Oxford.”
Perhaps he was, thought Agatha with a sudden stab of pity. But whatever Charles had been at one time in his life, it had obviously been something better than sitting under the arches in Waterloo scrambling what was left of his brains.
The night wore on. Fights broke out. Women cried, long maudlin wails for lost men and lost children. It’s not a seductive way of life, thought Agatha. It’s a foretaste of hell. There was a brief scramble of activity when the Silver Lady came round, a van with sandwiches and hot coffee, some of them trying to trade their sandwiches and coffee for another swig of drink.
Gradually, like animals, they crept off into their packing-cases. Still this Lizzie had not come.
Dawn was rising over grimy London. A blackbird perched up on a roof-top sent down a chorus of glorious sound, highlighting the degradation and misery and wasted live of those in the packing-cases beneath.
Agatha got stiffly to her feet. “I’ve had it, Roy. Give your detective lady the job of finding Lizzie and double her pay to do it. I’m going home.”
“Haven’t we even got enough between us for the tube?” asked Roy.
Agatha scraped in her pockets and finally found a pound. “That’s for me to take the tube,” she said firmly.
“You’ll have to stick with me, sweetie, if you want to get into the office to get your bag and car keys. I have the keys to the office.”
“Let me have them.”
“No.”
“Do you mean you’re going to make me walk back all that way?”
“Yes.”
Not speaking to each other, each stiff and sore and exhausted from their long night and with queasy stomachs from the awful mixture they had drunk, they headed in the direction of Waterloo Station.
A well-dressed man in evening dress approached them. He stood in front of them, stopping their progress, his face a mixture of pity and disgust. He fished in his pocket, took out his wallet and extracted a ten-pound note. “For God’s sake,” he said to Roy, “get your mother a decent breakfast and don’t spend this on booze.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you.” Roy seized the note.
“Taxi!” he yelled, and, miracle of miracles, a taxi came to a stop. Roy shoved Agatha inside, shouted “Cheapside,” and the cab drove off.
The man in evening dress gazed after them in a fury. That’s the last time I waste money on people like that, he thought.
James had suffered a sleepless night as well. At first he had thought Agatha was staying away to get revenge, but then he began to think something might have happened to her. At last he settled down in an armchair in front of the cottage window, jumping to his feet every time he heard the sound of a car, but there was only, first, the milkman, and then Mrs. Hardy going off early somewhere.
His eyes grew heavier and heavier. Why hadn’t she even phoned?
He fell asleep at last and in his dream he was marrying Helen Warwick. He only knew he did not want to marry Helen but that somehow she had blackmailed him into it. He was standing at the altar, hoping that Agatha Raisin would come and rescue him when the sound of a key in the lock made his eyes jerk open.
He jumped to his feet, shouting, “Agatha! Where the hell have you been?”
Agatha had not bothered to change out of her down-and-out outfit. James stared at the wreck that was Agatha, the black circles under her eyes and the terrible smell of stale booze mixing with the meths with which she had sprinkled her clothes at the beginning of the masquerade.
“Oh, Agatha,” he said, looking at her, pity in his eyes replacing the anger. “I really thought Helen Warwick might have had something else to say, something useful. But if I had known it would upset you so much…”
Agatha sat down wearily. “The vanity of men never ceases to amaze me. I did not go out and get sozzled because my heart was broken, James dear. Roy and I d
ressed up and went down to the packing-cases of Waterloo, where we spent the night. We found out something useful. Jimmy had a bag of stuff which a woman called Lizzie took away. We’re going to get Roy’s detective to try to track her down. Now all I want is to sleep. I nearly drove off the road on the way down here. Enjoy your visit to Helen?”
“No,” said James curtly. “Big mistake. Gold-digger.”
Agatha gave a little smile and headed for the stairs.
“And burn those clothes,” yelled James after her.
EIGHT
SUDDENLY it seemed to Agatha that, after that adventure, everything went quiet. Mrs. Hardy begged an extra week. She had found a place in London but needed the extra time until the flat became available. The Bugle finally learned about the attempted shooting and ran some of the original interview with Agatha. At first there was hope that someone who knew something about Mrs. Gore-Appleton would come forward, but no one appeared to know anything of any importance. In fact, several people had contacted the police, people who had worked for her charity on a voluntary basis. But their descriptions did not add very much to what the police already knew. Bill Wong privately thought that Mrs. Gore-Appleton was probably settled comfortably in some foreign country where they could not reach her.
He called round one evening, saying dismally to James and Agatha that he was beginning to fear they would never get her now.
“What’s this Fred Griggs was saying about the murder of Miss Purvey not being connected with the case?”
“There have been a couple of random stabbings in that cinema and we got some nutter for them. He says he strangled the Purvey woman.”
“And you believe him?”
“I don’t, but everyone else seems determined to have one of the murders solved. Have you two found out anything?”
James looked at Agatha and Agatha looked at James. Agatha was still smarting over the Maddie episode. She did not know Maddie was off the case. If she told Bill about Roy’s detective looking for the mysterious Lizzie, then the police would take over, Maddie might get some of the credit, and Agatha felt she could not bear that.
“No, nothing,” she said. “I’m moving back next door.”
“When?”
“Just under three weeks now. It would have been sooner, but Mrs. Hardy begged the extra time. She’s found a place in London.”
“Did that article in the newspaper not prompt anyone to come forward with information about Mrs. Gore-Appleton?” asked James.
“Yes, it did. Mostly rich, retired ladies who did volunteer work for her. Some had contributed quite a lot of money to the charity, but others hung on to their wallets when they realized that Mrs. Gore-Appleton only made a few token visits down among London’s homeless, dispensing clothes and food. The description is pretty much what we had before – hard, middle-aged, muscular, blonde.”
“Didn’t she have any friends among them?”
“No, they only saw her during office hours. They all remember Jimmy Raisin. Mrs. Gore-Appleton was very proud of him, they said. She said it all showed what a little kindness and care could do. Two of the ladies got the impression that Mrs. Gore-Appleton and Jimmy were lovers.”
“Well, we can’t blame Jimmy for corrupting her, as she was running a bent charity when they met. How did she get away with it? She would need to be registered with the Charities Commission.”
“She never did that. Just hung out her shingle, didn’t advertise for volunteers, simply canvassed a few churches. Quite a scam, in a way. One woman gave her fifteen thousand pounds, and she was the only one who would admit to the amount she paid, so goodness knows what she got from the others.”
Agatha thought of the waste of humanity she had spent the night with under the arches, all God’s lost children, and felt a surge of fury. Mrs. Gore-Appleton had, in her own sweet way, been robbing the poor.
“I can’t bear the idea that she should get away with it. At the moment, the villagers have dropped the idea that either James or myself did it, but I met the horrible Mrs. Boggles in the village shop the other day, and she sneered at me darkly about ‘some folks can get away with murder’. If the case isn’t solved, then who knows? Everyone might start to think that way again.”
“I’ll let you know anything I can,” said Bill.
“How are things?” asked Agatha. “I mean with you.”
“Maddie? Oh, that’s finished. My mother is quite pleased, and so is Dad. I thought they would be disappointed, because they both hope to see me married.”
Agatha privately thought Mr. and Mrs. Wong would do anything in their power to drive off any female interested in their precious son, but did not say so, which went to show she had changed slightly for the better. The old Agatha had been totally blind and deaf to anyone else’s feelings.
But she saw the pain at the back of Bill’s eyes and felt a surge of hatred for Maddie.
“So what happens now with you two?” asked Bill.
There was an awkward silence and then Agatha said brightly, “We’ll soon be back to normal – me in my small cottage and James in his. We can wave to each other over the fence.”
“Oh, well, I’m sure you’ll sort something out,” said Bill. “I’m glad to see you’ve given up investigating murders, Agatha. Not that you weren’t a help in the past, but mostly because of your blundering about and making things happen.”
Agatha looked at him, outraged. “You can go off people, you know.”
“Sorry. Just my joke. But you’ve nearly got yourself killed in the past. Don’t do it again.” His face beamed. “I’d hate to lose you.”
Agatha smiled suddenly. “There are times when I wish you were much older, Bill.”
He smiled back. “And there are times I wish I were, Agatha.”
“Do you want coffee, Bill?” asked James sharply.
“What? Oh, no, I’ve got to be going.”
Agatha followed him to the door. “Don’t stay away too long. When I’m back in my own place, come for dinner.”
“That’s a date. And nothing microwaved either.”
He kissed her on the cheek and went off whistling.
“Oh, God,” said Agatha, coming back into the living-room, where James was moodily kicking at the rug in front of the fireplace. “I’ve just remembered. We’re hosting the ladies’ society from Ancombe. I’d better get along to the village hall. I know what. I’ll see if Mrs. Hardy wants to come.”
“Do what you want,” muttered James.
Agatha stared at him. “What’s got into you?”
“I haven’t been writing,” he said. He went and sat down in front of the word processor and switched it on.
Agatha shrugged and went upstairs. Love sometimes came in waves, like flu, but she was temporarily free of the plague and hoped to make it permanent.
She came back downstairs whistling the same tune she had heard Bill whistling when he left. James was glowering at the screen of the word processor.
“I’m off,” said Agatha brightly.
No reply.
“It was nice of Bill to call.” She gave a little laugh. “I sometimes wonder why he bothers with me.”
“He comes,” said James acidly, “to get a tan from the light that shines from the hole in your arse.”
Agatha stared at James, her mouth dropping. James turned bright red.
“You’re jealous,” said Agatha slowly.
“Don’t be ridiculous. The thought of you and a man as young as Bill Wong is disgusting.”
“But definitely intriguing,” said Agatha. “See you later.”
She went out feeling an unaccustomed little surge of power.
Mrs. Hardy was at home, and after a certain show of reluctance said she would accompany Agatha to the village hall.
“What’s in store?” asked Mrs. Hardy.
“I don’t really know,” said Agatha. “I’m usually very much part of the arrangements, but with all the frights and running around, I’ve had nothing to do with this
one. But whatever it is, you’ll enjoy it.”
Agatha’s heart sank when they entered the hall and she learned from Mrs. Bloxby that the Carsely Ladies’ Society were giving a concert.
“How can we do that?” hissed Agatha. “I didn’t think we had anyone who could perform anything.”
“I think you’ll be surprised,” said Mrs. Bloxby blandly and moved away to help the grumbling Mrs. Boggle out of her wraps.
Mrs. Hardy and Agatha were handed printed programmes.
The first performer was to be Miss Simms, the society’s secretary, who was billed to sing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’.
But the opening number was a line-up of the village ladies performing a Charleston, dressed in twenties outfits. Agatha blinked. Where on earth had the portly Mrs. Mason come by that beaded dress? Mrs. Mason, she remembered, had threatened to leave the village after her niece had been found guilty of murder, but she had finally elected to stay and no one ever mentioned the murder. The ladies did quite well, apart from occasionally bumping into one another on the small stage.
Then Miss Simms walked forward and adjusted the microphone. She was still wearing the skimpy flapper dress she had worn for the opening number. She opened her mouth. Her voice was thin and reedy, screeching on the high notes and disappearing altogether in the low notes. Agatha had never realized before what a very long song it was. At last it was mercifully over. Fred Griggs then took up a position on the stage in front of a table full of rings and scarves. Fred fancied himself as a conjurer. He got so many things wrong that the kindly village audience decided he was doing it deliberately and laughed their appreciation. The only person not joining in the laughter was Fred, who grew more and more anguished. At last a large box like a wardrobe was wheeled on the stage, and Fred nervously asked for a volunteer for the vanishing-lady trick.
Mrs. Hardy walked straight up the aisle and climbed on the stage.
Fred whispered to her and she went into the box and he shut the door.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Fred. “I will now make this lady vanish.”
