by M C Beaton
When they were all seated around the kitchen table, Agatha was taken over her statement again. When the questioning was over, she asked eagerly, ‘What’s the latest?’
Bill said, ‘The butcher who was supposed to deliver the pig to the roast was found drugged and bound up in his shop. We still have not established the identity of the dead man. Now, we would like to speak to your assistant, Toni Gilmour.’
By the time the police left, they all felt shaky and very tired. Delayed shock was settling in. Roy said weakly that he would like to go back to bed, and Toni said she would go home. Charles decided to leave as well.
Agatha poured herself a hot-water bottle for comfort and retreated with her cats to her bed. As she drifted off into sleep, she remembered shouting about that awful policeman and wishing he would roast in hell on a spit. Her eyes flew open. Someone or some people had viciously hated whoever it was they had killed. People still shouted the epithet of ‘pig’ at policemen. Too farfetched, she told herself, go back to sleep. But sleep would not come.
She flicked open the address book she kept beside the bed and found Bill Wong’s mobile number.
When he answered, Agatha asked, ‘Any policemen missing?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The dead man,’ said Agatha. ‘People call the police pigs. Just a thought.’
Bill laughed. ‘You should write fiction, Agatha. Forget it. Leave it to the police. I don’t want you meddling in this one. These killers will be highly dangerous.’
Feeling rather silly, Agatha said goodbye and fell into a deep sleep.
‘What did the Raisin woman want?’ asked Wilkes the following morning. He had overheard Bill’s end of the conversation during the previous night.
Bill gave a reluctant laugh. ‘Mrs Raisin has just suggested that the dead man might be a policeman.’
‘And where did that flight of fancy come from?’
‘Policemen are often called pigs, and so she has leapt to that conclusion.’
‘Ridiculous. Now, pass me that roster. I want every man out on this case. Get Police Sergeant Tulloch in here.’
When Tulloch entered the room, Wilkes said, ‘Are they all in the briefing room? I’ll be along in a few moments.’
‘All there,’ said Tulloch, a burly Scot with a shock of fair hair. ‘Oh, except Beech. I’ve phoned his home, but there’s no reply.’
Wilkes and Bill looked at each other in sudden consternation. ‘You don’t think . . .’ began Wilkes.
‘He’s never missed a day before,’ said Bill uneasily.
‘Get round there,’ said Wilkes, ‘and take Detective Peterson with you.’
Bill brightened. Alice Peterson had recently joined them from Gloucester CID to replace Detective Collins, an acidulous woman, who, to Bill’s relief, had finally secured a transfer to London – not to Scotland Yard, her ambition, but to Brixton.
Alice was clever and almost pretty with her neat dark curls and blue eyes.
On the road to Beech’s home, Bill told her about Agatha Raisin’s odd idea. ‘I’ve heard about Mrs Raisin,’ said Alice. ‘She has had a lot of successes in the past. Everyone says she just blunders into things and gets lucky, but I think she must be clever.’
‘In this case, I hope not. Here we are.’
Bill parked in front of a trim little cottage on the outskirts of Winter Parva.
‘Why doesn’t he live in Mircester?’ asked Alice.
‘It’s cheaper here, he says. Let’s go.’
There was no doorbell, but there was a large brass door-knocker in the shape of a lion’s head. Bill performed an energetic rat-a-tat on it.
Silence.
Both detectives looked at each other. They knew from experience that empty houses have a particular silence.
Bill tried the door. ‘It’s locked,’ he said, ‘and the curtains at the front window are closed. I’ll go round the back. You keep an eye on the front.’
The previous night’s fog had thinned to a mist. Bill went along a path at the side of the house. There was a conservatory at the back of the house. Bill looked in.
It was a mess. Plants had been pulled out of their pots and lay on the floor. Bill called Alice, who came hurrying round to join him.
‘We’re going to have to break in,’ said Bill.
‘Try the conservatory door first,’ urged Alice.
Bill turned the handle and the door opened. ‘We’d better suit up,’ said Bill. When they were covered in their blue plastic forensic suits, they stepped inside, calling, ‘Beech!’ in loud voices.
They entered the kitchen. Every canister, box of cereal and bag of flour had been emptied on to the floor. They then went to the living room, followed by a search of a small dining room, and then went upstairs to the bedrooms. Chaos was everywhere: drawers pulled out, clothes thrown around, mattresses slit open. Everywhere in the house appeared to have been frantically searched. Floorboards were torn up, curtains pulled down and carpets ripped up.
The sinister silence of the house and the outside village seemed to press on their ears. Bill opened the door to the bathroom and let out an exclamation of dismay.
There was blood everywhere. It was spattered up the walls and all over the bath.
They retreated outside and sat in their car with the engine running to keep warm. ‘Agatha was right,’ said Bill. ‘How does she do it?’
‘I noticed something odd,’ said Alice.
‘What’s that?’
‘I’ve a brother in the antiques business. Some of those pieces of furniture in the living room are very valuable. How could a mere constable afford, say, a Georgian bureau?’
‘Beats me. I hear sirens. There’s nothing we can do now until the Scenes of Crimes Operatives are finished. I hope they find the head.’
‘What?’
‘Gary Beech’s head. I wonder what happened to that?’
Agatha and Roy went to the pub for dinner that evening. The pub was crowded, but Agatha managed to thrust her way through to the only vacant table, reaching it before a stocky villager, Mrs Benson, was about to claim it.
‘I’ll just need to join you,’ said Mrs Benson.
‘You can’t,’ said Agatha, still too upset by the horror of the murder to be polite. ‘We want to talk in private.’
‘Well, I never did!’ exclaimed Mrs Benson.
‘Then start,’ said Agatha, sitting down and turning her back on the woman.
Mrs Benson glared at her and then left the pub in a huff. She looked at her watch. It was coming up to seven o’clock. If she hurried, she could listen to The Archers on Radio 4 and make some toasted cheese.
Before The Archers, the news came on. She listened as the announcer said that the murdered man was a policeman named Gary Beech. All of a sudden, Mrs Benson remembered Agatha Raisin shouting threats against Beech in the village shop and saying he should be roasted on a spit. The Archers forgotten, she phoned police headquarters in Mircester.
The last train to London had left Moreton-in-Marsh, so Agatha drove Roy to Oxford and waved him goodbye.
As she drove back, snow was beginning to fall. She still felt very tired after a gruelling drive. Her car had skidded several times on the road down into Carsely.
Her heart sank as she saw a police Land Rover parked outside her cottage.
‘Now what?’ she demanded of the uncaring white wilderness outside.
As she got out of her car, a policeman approached her and said, ‘You are to come with us to police headquarters.’
‘Why?’ demanded Agatha truculently.
‘You’ll find out when you get there,’ said the policeman.
Mircester looked like a Christmas card with the tall towers of its snow-covered and floodlit abbey looming behind police headquarters.
Agatha was told to wait in the reception area. It had recently been redecorated in the hope that it might look more people-friendly, but the plastic palms were dusty and the walls painted sulphurous yellow. Agatha wondere
d if it had been painted on the cheap, because little patches of the former institutional green were showing through in places.
Detective Alice Peterson appeared and summoned Agatha, who followed her to an interview room. Agatha sat opposite Bill and Wilkes. Alice put a tape in the recording machine and the interview began.
‘We are awaiting DNA results,’ said Wilkes, ‘but a search of policeman Gary Beech’s house led us to believe he is the victim. Now, you were heard in the village shop in Carsely threatening Gary Beech’s life and saying that you hoped he would roast on a spit in hell. What have you to say to that? And despite the thick fog at Winter Parva, you immediately identified the supposed pig as a man.’
Agatha briefly remembered when she had first moved to Carsely that it had been more of a close-knit village community. Now newcomers came and went. Who had reported her? Her thoughts flew to Mrs Ada Benson.
‘We’re waiting,’ snapped Wilkes.
‘It’s like this,’ said Agatha. ‘Gary Beech gave me a ticket for blowing my nose while my car was parked in a queue of cars on the Carsely road because of roadworks. He then ticketed me for doing thirty-two miles an hour. I was very angry and let off steam in the shop. I had a guest for the weekend.’
‘Name?’
‘You know who.’
‘Stop being obstructive and answer the question for the tape.’
Agatha heaved a weary sigh. ‘Roy Silver.’
‘And?’
‘And I saw the pig roast advertised amongst local events. My detective, Toni Gilmour, was invited and she came with a friend, Paul Finlay. Charles Fraith opted to join us as well. When we got to the pig roast . . . I’ve told you all this already.’
‘Just go over it again.’
‘When I got to the pig roast, the fog shifted a bit and some of the villagers were holding flaming torches – flambeaux. I saw a tattoo on what I at first took to be the pig’s haunch. Then I realized it was a heart with an arrow through it and the name Amy.’
‘Other people,’ said Wilkes, ‘would have assumed someone had been having fun with the pig.’
‘I shone my torch on the pig’s head and saw it had been stitched on. In a flash, I realized it was the body of a naked man,’ said Agatha defiantly.
‘Had you ever come across Gary Beech before he charged you in those two incidents?’
‘No.’
‘And yet you suggested to Detective Sergeant Wong here that the body might be that of Gary Beech? That seems very suspicious.’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sakes,’ howled Agatha, ‘I didn’t mention his name. I suggested the victim might be a policeman. If I had anything to do with the pillock’s murder, would I have made such a suggestion?’
‘You may have done.’ And so the questioning went on and on until Agatha, warned not to leave the country, and with her eyes gritty with fatigue, was allowed to leave.
Alice ran her home. ‘I’ll be glad to get some sleep,’ she said. ‘And I hope I don’t get nightmares.’
‘What was at his house?’ asked Agatha.
Alice was sure Wilkes would be furious with her for discussing the murder, but Agatha was a friend of Bill’s and she liked Bill.
‘Blood everywhere in the bathroom, in the bath and up the walls. Why did you really think the dead man might be him?’
‘I didn’t. But he must have infuriated an awful lot of people apart from me,’ said Agatha. ‘You see, I rely a lot on intuition, as I don’t have the resources of the police. Was he married?’
‘Divorced. The ex-wife is on holiday in Florida.’
‘Really? Does she have a lot of money of her own?’
‘Not unless she met a rich man we don’t know about. Before her marriage, she worked as a checkout girl at a supermarket. But Gary must have had some money because I spotted some good antiques in his living room. The place had been ransacked.’
When they arrived at Agatha’s cottage, Alice said hurriedly, ‘Please don’t tell anyone I discussed the case with you. I could get into the most awful trouble.’
‘Not a word,’ promised Agatha. ‘Thank goodness the snow’s stopped and they’ve gritted the road.’
Agatha tried to find out more about Gary Beech but was held back by having to attend to the cases where she was being paid for her detective work.
Some of the work involved a lot of standing around in the cold and watching houses for signs of erring spouses. Agatha hated divorce cases, but the country was in a deep recession and she just had to be grateful for any work.
The weather continued to be bitterly cold. People were beginning to wonder if all this global warming was some trick of the nanny state to bully them into fines for not separating their rubbish, for having to employ a chimney sweep every three months, and wondering how soon it would be before spy planes flew over their houses to check their carbon footprints.
The villagers of Carsely, united in misery, had marched on the Town Hall in Mircester to protest against the frequent power cuts.
Agatha decided to buy a generator, thinking it would be simple to install. The contractor was a lugubrious man who seemed to see fire and disaster all about.
Agatha’s suggestion that he put the generator in the kitchen caused him to raise his red mottled hands in horror. ‘Can’t do that, love,’ he said. ‘The gases that come out o’ that there petrol machine are lethal. Needs to be outside the house. But ’er can’t be getting wet. You’ll need a liddle hut for ’er.’
But at last a carpenter had finished building a little shed outside the kitchen door and the contractor had departed, after leaving Agatha with a handbook in six languages, the size of a Bible.
Returning home after a cold day’s work two weeks after the murder of Gary Beech, Agatha found the electricity was off again. She carefully followed the instructions, the generator roared into life and the electricity came on.
She was relaxing in front of the television set with a large gin and tonic in one hand and a cigarette in the other when her doorbell rang.
When Agatha opened the door, she found the vicar’s wife there, and behind her, two elderly couples.
‘May we come in, Mrs Raisin?’
‘Of course,’ said Agatha. ‘What’s up?’
‘This is Mr and Mrs Friend and Mr and Mrs Terence. They do not have money for fuel, and they are too old to cope with this biting cold. Could you possibly give them shelter until the power comes on?’
Agatha wanted to scream, ‘No!’ But the calm eyes of the vicar’s wife were fastened on her face.
‘All right,’ she said reluctantly.
‘I’ll phone you as soon as the power comes on,’ said Mrs Bloxby, ‘and then I’ll come and pick them up.’
When she had left, Agatha helped the elderly people out of their coats and wraps and settled them in the living room. She asked them if they had eaten, and they said yes, they had. She then asked them if they would like something to drink, and they all murmured in agreement. Being old, they all needed frequent trips upstairs to the bathroom. The Terences were all right, but the Friends needed assistance up the stairs. To exhausted Agatha, it seemed as if she had just got one of them settled when the other would pipe up that he or she had to go to the ‘you-know-what’.
And as the hours passed, the generator continued to chug away. Agatha kept opening the front door and gazing anxiously down the street to see if the lights had come on again in the village. The contractor had warned her that the wiring could not take the load of both generator and restored power or ‘the house will burn to ashes’.
Mrs Bloxby phoned. ‘This is terrible,’ she said. ‘I keep phoning the electricity company and they say, “Power will be restored momentarily”, but nothing happens. How are they?’
Agatha walked with her new cordless telephone to the living-room door. ‘They’ve all fallen asleep. Look, I’ll give it a little longer.’ As she replaced the receiver, the lights came on. She rushed to switch off the generator.
Mrs Bloxby phoned ba
ck. ‘I’m on my way.’
Agatha woke her sleeping guests. Mr Friend struggled to his feet. ‘I hope you never find who murdered that copper,’ he said.
‘Why?’ asked Agatha.
‘He was going to get me up in the court and do me for flashing.’
‘What! How did that happen?’
‘I was out for a walk with the missus, and I had to pee. Went behind a bush. No one about, or so I thought. That damn Beech, he came out of nowhere and charged me with exposing myself. Me! I’ve been a churchgoer all me life. The shame of it. I could ha’ murdered the man meself.’
‘Did you go to court?’ asked Agatha.
‘No, but it got in the local paper, and mud sticks. I’m telling you, missus, I don’t know how the police are going to find the murderer because there’s so many wanted him dead.’
Chapter Three
Agatha overslept. As soon as she poked her nose over the duvet, she felt the room was cold. She switched on the bedside lamp and nothing happened.
She struggled out of bed and picked out her warmest clothes. Clumping downstairs later in a pair of fleece-lined suede boots, she wondered if she would ever wear high heels again. Nothing more depressing than flat-heeled footwear.
She did not want to switch on the generator, for the thought of operating the machine gave her a stab of techno fear.
Agatha phoned the electricity company and gave them a blast of abuse that didn’t bring the power on but made her feel much better.
The radio in the car informed her that salt was being imported from abroad. Agatha wondered how they could spare it, as the European continent was pretty much snowed up.
Her office was in an old building in a narrow winding street near the abbey. She pounded up the stairs to the first floor and swung open the frosted glass door of the office.
Toni, Patrick Mulligan and Phil Marshall were all talking excitedly as Agatha came in.
‘What’s up?’ demanded Agatha, taking off her coat.
‘We’ve got a client,’ said Toni, ‘and you’ll never guess who it is.’
‘Enlighten me,’ said Agatha crossly, irritated with herself for being late.
‘Gary Beech’s ex-wife,’ said Toni. ‘She’s employing us to find out who murdered her ex-husband.’
