by M C Beaton
Toni finished her drink. ‘I’ll get right back to the office and do it now.’
‘Before you go, maybe you can help me. I have to buy a toy for a friend’s child – a little girl, seven years old. What do you suggest?’
‘There’s a great shop run by May Dinwoody. All the toys are handmade. You’ll find it in Tapestry Lane. It was Simon’s idea, but it was Agatha who did a big publicity stunt on it.’
The days of May Dinwoody’s poverty had gone, but she had not acquired any dress sense. She was wearing a long cardigan over a pink T-shirt, a tweed skirt and Wellington boots decorated with pink daisies.
She mostly worked over the books in an office at the back of the shop, but when she saw the handsome figure of James entering the shop, she decided to serve him herself. He explained what he was looking for. ‘People usually buy dolls for little girls,’ said May in her soft Scottish burr, ‘but sometimes they are not dolly-type girls.’
James laughed. ‘She is a bit of a tomboy.’
‘Let me see. What about this?’
She picked up a beautifully handcrafted wooden black-and-white spaniel. ‘You pull it along by its leash,’ said May. ‘Listen!’ She placed the toy on the floor and pulled the leash. The dog’s eyes lit up, and it said in a rasping voice, ‘Walk me.’
‘And you see,’ said May eagerly, ‘it can become more demanding if you don’t move it.’
‘I said walk me now,’ growled the dog.
‘The little switch under the red collar turns it on and off,’ explained May.
The price seemed terribly steep to James, but on the other hand, he knew the little girl would be delighted. As May wrapped it up, James said, ‘I believe you know my friend Agatha Raisin?’
‘Yes indeed. I owe everything to Agatha and that young man Simon Black. It was Simon who suggested that she publicize my toys. I felt a bittie guilty because I thought she demanded a harsh price.’
‘For publicizing you? That doesn’t sound like Agatha.’
‘Oh, no, she refused to charge a penny. It was at my flat in Oddley Croesus that I heard her talking to Simon when I went to the kitchen to make tea. She said, “I just want to remind you that I am doing this so that you will leave Toni alone for three years. She is too young to get seriously involved with anyone.” You can imagine my relief when I got an invitation to Simon’s wedding and he is marrying an army girl. So it looks as if he might have been the fickle type all along.’
James nodded, but he felt depressed. Agatha had behaved disgracefully. Her famous intuition had not been involved. She had merely wanted to keep a good detective.
When he met Agatha for lunch, her face was glowing. ‘Toni’s decided to stay,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that marvellous?’
‘I’ve just been buying a toy for a friend’s little daughter at May Dinwoody’s,’ said James. Agatha quickly raised the menu to cover her face, but he leaned across the table and pulled it away. Agatha gave him a hunted look from out of her bearlike eyes.
‘So it seems,’ said James acidly, ‘that you exacted a pretty steep price out of Simon for helping the Dinwoody woman.’
‘I thought it was the best thing to do,’ howled Agatha with all the ferocity of the really guilty.
‘You were cruel and selfish. What are you having to eat?’
‘What do you want me to eat? Humble pie? Look. I’m sorry, sorry, sorry. Do you want me to go away?’
‘Oddly enough, no. Did you hear about my rescue of Toni?’
‘Yes, she told me. I wish it could have been me. Make amends in a way, you know.’
‘Just as well it wasn’t. Now, let’s order something and decide what we’re going to do about your murders.’
They were sitting at a table on a terrace at the back of the hotel overlooking the garden. Spring had come at last as March went out like a lamb. The hotel garden was heavy with the scent of blossom. A pale disc of a sun rose through tiny ragged little dark clouds above their heads. It was a place and a night for lovers, thought Agatha gloomily: not for one shamed female detective facing her ex across the table.
‘I gather,’ said Agatha, ‘that whoever killed Gary Beech ransacked his house. They were desperately looking for something. I think Amy was killed because she knew too much, or they suspected she might have known something.’
‘Did she look as if she had been tortured?’ asked James.
‘I only looked at her face. It was unmarked and peaceful – dead peaceful, if you know what I mean. She hadn’t been strangled. I didn’t touch the body or turn it over. The police said she had been stabbed.’
‘Did Gary Beech leave a will?’ asked James.
‘Yes. He left everything to Amy.’ She pulled out her mobile and dialled Patrick. When she rang off, she said, ‘No further news. There are the diamonds, of course. That’s probably what they were looking for. Maybe Amy put the house up for sale. The police have surely finished with it.’
‘Let’s just enjoy our dinner, go home and change, and then we’ll break in.’
Agatha grinned happily. ‘Quite like old times.’
Chapter Seven
They had decided to set off at two in the morning. As Agatha got ready, wearing a dark blue blouse and black trousers, she wished with all her heart that she had never interfered in Toni’s life. James had been pleasant over lunch, but there was a certain coldness and reserve about him. He had forgiven her a lot in the past. She wondered now if he would ever forgive her for her behaviour that had driven off young Simon. ‘Creepy,’ was James’s comment as they drove into Winter Parva.
‘I think it’s because there are no trees or gardens,’ said Agatha. ‘The houses front straight on to the high street. You have to drive right through the village to the far end. Yes. Now make a right, a left and a right again. It’s that cottage at the end separated from the others by a bit. Patrick gave me directions.’
‘No point in advertising our presence. I’ll park in that field under the trees and walk.’
A FOR SALE sign glimmered whitely outside Beech’s cottage. ‘We could, of course,’ whispered Agatha nervously, ‘have simply gone to the estate agent tomorrow and asked for the keys.’
‘Might not work,’ said James. ‘There’s a recession on and they’re desperate for sales and would probably send someone to show us around. No, we won’t go in the front gate. Go along outside the side of the garden and then we’ll climb over the fence.’
Which Toni could probably have leapt in one bound, thought Agatha.
‘Right,’ said James in a low voice. ‘Over here and we can try to get in through the conservatory at the back.’
Agatha tried to scale the high wooden fence but fell backwards on to the ground.
‘I’ll give you a boost,’ said James. He held out his clasped hands, and Agatha gingerly placed one foot in them. He gave a great heave. Up she went and over, landing, winded, on grass on the other side.
‘That was dangerous,’ grumbled Agatha. ‘What if it had been a greenhouse I landed on?’
‘Stop wittering. We’ve got work to do.’
James went up to the conservatory door. He took out a pencil torch and flashed a beam at the lock. He took out a thin piece of metal and inserted it between the lock and the doorjamb. There was a satisfying click as the door sprang open.
They eased their way quietly inside, and James closed the door behind them. The place had all been cleaned up. Whatever plants there had been in the conservatory had been removed.
They moved from room to room. Agatha could not see any of the expensive pieces of furniture that Bill had mentioned. Amy must have sold them.
‘There are no drawers or anything left to search,’ she muttered dismally. ‘Where could he have hidden something that neither the police nor his killers could find? The garden?’
‘It’s been all dug over. The police will have searched there as well.’
‘I wonder if there’s a loft. People often hide things up in lofts.’
They fe
lt their way up the stairs in the darkness. The upper floor contained two bedrooms, a bathroom and a cupboard with a hot-water boiler. James shone his torch at the ceiling. ‘No evidence of any loft.’
‘Nothing but fake olde world beams on the ceiling. How naff,’ said Agatha.
‘Now there’s an interesting thing.’ James studied the beams. ‘He might have made a hollow in one of those beams to cache something.’
‘I don’t see how he could have done that without leaving some trace,’ said Agatha. ‘Oh, let’s get out of here.’
‘You can go and wait in the car if you like.’
‘Not on my own. I’ll stay here until you are finished. I mean, James, they’re not thick original beams. They’re just really slats made to look like beams.’
‘Wait a minute.’ James got down on his knees and began to delicately run his hands along the skirting board.
Agatha sat on the floor, feeling sore after her crash over the fence. ‘If I wanted to hide something in the skirting board,’ she said wearily, ‘it would probably be behind my bed.’
‘There’s a thought. I wonder which room he slept in.’
‘The bigger of the two, I suppose,’ said Agatha nervously. ‘Can’t we just leave?’
‘Not long now.’
James went into the larger bedroom. There were two closets in the right-hand wall. He was just making for them when they heard a car coming along the road and lights shone across the ceiling. He took a quick look out of the window. ‘It’s the police. Damn it. Someone must have seen us. Let’s get into that closet and hope when they find the doors locked that they’ll go away.’
The closet they crowded into had once been used as a wardrobe. A few steel hangers hung from a rod.
Then they heard the voices of the police outside the house. ‘Looks all locked up,’ said one voice. ‘Try round the back, Harry.’
There was a silence and then Harry’s voice. ‘Locked up round the back. Shall we leave it?’
They were joined by a woman. ‘I was walking my dog and I’ll swear I saw two people going up the side of the house.’
‘What were you doing walking your dog at this time of night?’ demanded the policeman called Harry.
‘I couldn’t sleep right, not after that horrible murder, I couldn’t,’ she said.
‘Better phone it in,’ said Harry’s companion.
‘What are you doing?’ demanded Agatha as James switched on his torch.
‘Still desperately trying to find something that might make them forgive us if they find us. There’s something down here on the floor.’
Harry’s voice sounded. ‘They’ve roused the estate agent. He’ll be along in a minute or two with the keys.’
‘Sunk,’ said Agatha.
‘There’s this odd knothole thing. I wonder if I push . . .’
The back of the closet slid open, revealing a small room beyond. ‘It’s like Narnia – The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,’ said James excitedly. ‘We can hide in here until they’re gone.’
They sat down on the floor, huddled together, after he had shut them in. Agatha’s hormones gave a treacherous lurch. Not now, she told them.
After what seemed an age but was only a quarter of an hour, they heard the arrival of the estate agent. Then the unlocking of the front door and the clump of policemen’s boots. Then came the fretful voice of what Agatha guessed was the estate agent. ‘It’s no use looking for fingerprints or footprints,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how many people have been through this house, and believe me, they all turned out to be ghouls, wanted to look at a house where a murder had been committed.’
Footsteps came up the stairs and into the bedroom.
‘Oh, God, I’m going to sneeze,’ said Agatha.
James twisted her face round and kissed her full on the mouth. Her senses reeled. She faintly heard a voice say, ‘Nothing here.’
‘Why, James!’ said Agatha softly.
‘Anything to shut you up,’ he muttered.
Agatha’s hormones packed up their bags and left again.
They waited until the police had left the house, waited while they heard the complaints of the estate agent for having been dragged out in the middle of the night, waited while the dog-walking woman grumbled her way off down the lane, frightened to move until the police car drove off.
‘Now,’ said James, switching on the torch. ‘What have we here?’
‘There’s a light switch,’ said Agatha, ‘and no windows. We could risk switching it on.’
James went to the switch in the wall. A naked light bulb shone down on them.
Both of them looked around. The tiny secret room contained only a crumpled sleeping bag in one corner and, beside it, a ledger. ‘We could take this home and read it in comfort,’ said Agatha.
‘No,’ replied James sharply. ‘Got your gloves on? Good. We take a quick look and then, somehow, we’ve got to let the police know where to look for it.’
James gingerly opened the ledger. ‘It’s in some sort of code or something,’ he said. ‘I should have brought a camera. I know, let’s get out of here and borrow it for a bit. It means we’ll have to sneak back here and replace it. We’ll need to make sure there’s not a trace of a fingerprint or footprint. Damn, that really is messing up any police evidence. Well, we got this far and they didn’t. Might just photograph the thing and post it to them.’
Agatha agreed. She felt it was wrong, but on the other hand, to notify the police meant explaining that they had broken into Gary Beech’s house.
James was wearing a dark leather jerkin and had the ledger zipped up inside it. ‘Don’t you think,’ whispered Agatha plaintively, ‘that there might be a back gate to this garden?’
‘I suppose there might be,’ said James, wondering why on earth he hadn’t thought of it before.
They made their way quietly out of the house. James risked flashing his torch around the garden. ‘There’s a gate at the end over there, but it’s going to be the same problem. It’s solid and it’s as high as the fence. It’s padlocked.’
‘Can’t you pick the lock?’
‘It’ll take a few moments. It’s a pity you’re not more agile. We could just have shinned over it. You should get that hip replacement.’
Agatha remained mulishly quiet while he got to work picking the lock. She did not like anyone, particularly James, knowing that she had been operated on for a hip replacement. Also, she was stiff and sore from getting over the fence. At last the padlock clicked open. James let Agatha out into the lane at the back, relocked the padlock and climbed nimbly over the fence.
‘Now, if we go quietly along this lane at the backs of the houses, we should reach my car. That way there’s no fear of someone in the houses seeing us.’
‘Someone could be looking out of a back window.’
‘Too many trees and bushes at the back, and I can’t see a light in a window anywhere. Come on.’
Agatha was so grateful to be finally back in her cottage kitchen. ‘Coffee would be nice,’ said James.
‘A stiff gin and tonic would be nicer,’ said Agatha.
‘Well, make a strong coffee for me. I’ll nip next door and get my camera. Don’t touch that ledger with your bare hands!’ James was Agatha’s nearest neighbour.
When James returned, Agatha had moved to her living room and was stretched out on the sofa asleep, a glass of gin and tonic perilously balanced on her chest and a smouldering cigarette in one hand.
He gently removed her drink and stubbed out her cigarette. He decided to leave her to sleep while he had a look in the ledger himself.
The entries in the ledger were baffling. There were long lines of columns with cryptic entries such a c.h. b. P.L., t. r. P.L. and so on in the same style. He woke Agatha, who blinked up at him and then came fully awake, crying, ‘What did you find?’
‘Nothing but a lot of gobbledygook. Come and have a look before I photograph the pages. There are only about five pages of entries. If thi
s is what the killers were looking for, then I wonder why they wasted their time.’
Agatha followed him into the kitchen and stared in bafflement at the entries.
‘Now what do we do?’ she asked.
‘I photograph all the entries and then, so help me, I’ve got to take the book back, make sure the place is swept clean so there’s no trace of our visit and then drop an anonymous line to the police.’
Agatha awoke the next morning with the feel of James’s lips burning into her memory. In his way, he had been passionate in bed when they were married, but somehow only during the sex act itself. When it was over, he had rolled over to his side of the bed and gone to sleep as if she didn’t exist. Agatha tried to erase her feelings over the kiss by remembering how awful the marriage had been: all his infuriating pernickety bachelor ways such as complaining about the laundry, trying to forbid her to work. She gave herself a mental shake. She did not want to end up in the miserable depths of an obsession for James again.
But in its way, obsession was as necessary to Agatha Raisin as drink to an alcoholic. In the way that an alcoholic will endlessly chase the dream of when drink brought pleasure and escape, Agatha usually remembered only the beginning of obsessions, when the days were brighter and she felt young again.
She wondered whether to call on James before she went to the office but steeled herself against the urge.
Agatha was just about to leave her cottage after letting her cats out into the back garden for the day when the postman arrived with a large parcel. ‘Grand day,’ said the postman.
Agatha could almost smell the countryside coming to life after the bitter winter. The sky above was pale blue, and somewhere nearby a blackbird poured down its song.
It was on mornings like this that Agatha realized why she loved living in the Cotswolds so much. Perhaps, she thought, there is nowhere more beautiful in Britain than this man-made piece of England with its thatched cottages and gardens crammed with flowers.
The parcel was very heavy. She heaved it in and on to the kitchen table. It was addressed to her in block capitals. There was no return address.
