Down the Hatch

by M C Beaton

  Agatha recoiled from the smell from the Smuggler’s Breath Dark Rum bottle, wrinkling her nose.

  “And you’d have to be a fool not to see that this man’s been poisoned. There’s more than just rum in that bottle—and why are you handling it without gloves? You’re supposed to treat every sudden death as a crime scene until you know otherwise.”

  “Don’t try to tell me my job!”

  “Well, somebody has to!”

  “May I take that, please, sir?” Bill Wong stepped between Agatha and his boss, carefully grasping the very top of the bottle with his white-gloved fingers. “Forensics will want to take a look at it. Mrs. Raisin, Constable Peters is ready to take a statement from you now.”

  Neatly done, Bill, Agatha thought to herself, glowering at Wilkes before walking over to talk to Alice.

  “Get this mess sorted out, Sergeant,” was the last she heard from Wilkes. “Don’t waste any more time here. I want you back on the Wellington Street burglaries.”

  Alice was looking over at Bill when Agatha joined her. He smiled at them both before being buttonholed by Dr. Charles Bunbury, the pathologist. Agatha had once believed Dr. Bunbury to have the most interesting job imaginable, yet whenever she had spoken to him, he had managed to make it sound a humdrum mix of tedious procedure and interminable form-filling. Meeting him was about as interesting as finding an unopened pair of tights behind your dressing table. Although you know they’re useful, it is undoubtedly one of the least exciting things that will happen to you that day, even if it’s a particularly dull Wednesday. Agatha thought she saw a faintly forlorn look on Alice’s face, and guessed that it had nothing to do with Dr. Bunbury.

  “Seems like Bill’s a busy man,” she said.

  “He rarely gets a break,” Alice sighed. “We hardly see each other at all these days.”

  “That’s not ideal, is it?” Agatha sensed there was more that Alice wanted to say. “Are you two okay?”

  “Oh yes.” Alice nodded, but then her lip trembled and tears welled in her eyes, to be quickly wiped away. “But he’s moved out of his flat and back in with his parents. They insisted it would help him to save money before the wedding. Once we’re married, they want me to move in too.”

  “For goodness’ sake, don’t go.” Agatha shuddered, thinking of the Wongs’ gaudily decorated house and immediately remembering the endemic smell of fried food that clung to everything in the place. “If you do, they may never let you out of their clutches.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of, and…” Alice gave herself a shake. “But this isn’t the time or place. Can you tell me how you came to find the body?” She stood with her notebook at the ready.

  Agatha rummaged in her handbag, retrieving a pen, and a business card on which she scribbled quickly before handing it over.

  “Give me a call,” she said. “I put my home number on the back. I’m not much of an agony aunt, but at the very least we can have a couple of drinks and bad-mouth men together.”

  “Thanks.” Alice smiled. “I’d like that.”

  “I didn’t actually find the body,” Agatha began, “but I was walking through the park—I’ve been going for midday walks to help me stay trim—when I heard a horrible scream. At first I thought…”

  After taking Agatha’s statement, Alice left to follow the elderly couple to hospital. Agatha walked round the bowling green, taking everything in. She was no stranger to the sight of dead bodies, having become entangled in a number of murder cases, but there was something bizarre about the white-clad figure lying on the grass. She stopped at the clubhouse, where the handful of members who had arrived earlier were watching.

  “Was it you what found the body, young lady?” asked one old man whose thick glasses made his eyes look like some strange kind of oyster. Agatha might normally have passed him by without even a nod or a smile, but “young lady” had won her over.

  “Not me. The lady they took to the hospital and her husband found him. I rushed in when I heard her scream. It’s a terrible business.”

  “Oh, terrible, yes, terrible an’ no mistake.” The old man shook his head and a gentle breeze lifted a few long wisps of white hair that were combed over his scalp.

  “Did you know the dead man?”

  “Of course. That were the Admiral. Everyone in the club knows the Admiral. Harry Nelson were his real name. Fine lad he were.”

  “Don’t talk such rubbish, Stanley Partridge!” A woman with tightly permed white hair tinged a delicate shade of pink stood with her fists clenched in anger. “A drunken monster is what he were—an absolute monster!”

  “Now, Marjorie, we mustn’t talk ill of the dead,” said Mr. Partridge softly.

  “He were no monster. A tragedy, that’s what this is.” A small man with jet-black hair looking so suspiciously out of place perched above his ancient, wrinkled face that Agatha was immediately convinced it must be a wig joined in the debate. “The Admiral were the best thing that ever happened to this club!”

  Several people now began talking at once, and seeing Dr. Bunbury saying goodbye to Bill Wong and preparing to leave, Agatha excused herself from the bowls group, hurrying over to her friend.

  “So what’s the verdict, Bill?”

  “Ah, hello, Agatha.” Bill grinned. “Sorry about DCI Wilkes. You two really know how to get under each other’s skin, don’t you?”

  “He’s an idiot. Our dead man was poisoned, wasn’t he?”

  “Dr. Bunbury was in no doubt about that,” Bill admitted. “He certainly drank something that did him no good. We’ll know more after the post-mortem, and once we get the test results back on the contents of the bottle.”

  “Accident or suicide or…” Agatha raised an eyebrow.

  “There’s nothing to suggest he was murdered, if that’s what you’re getting at.” Bill shrugged. “We’ll talk to the people here and take a look at the premises to see if that sheds any light on what happened.”

  “But you can’t rule out murder?” Agatha sounded a little too eager to hear the very worst news, and Bill felt too harassed to humour her.

  “We can’t rule out anything, Agatha, but it doesn’t look like murder.” He waved her away and headed towards the pavilion. “I don’t know how many times I’ve said this in the past, but I’m saying it again now. You have to leave this to the police. You really mustn’t get involved. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do. You’ve given your statement. If we need anything else from you, either Alice or I will be in touch.”

  “Bill, about Alice, I—”

  “Not now, Agatha.”

  * * *

  “Yes, we took the soil samples from the sites you marked on the map.” Sir Charles Fraith leaned back in the leather chair, holding the phone in one hand and plucking his coffee cup from the desk with the other. “We’ll have the analysis report back by the end of the week.”

  He sipped the coffee, silently cursing himself for allowing it to go cold. He rested his head against the high back of the chair, his neatly combed hair looking boyishly fair against the dark, aged leather.

  “Do we have to wait that long?” He placed the china cup back in its saucer. “Your mind will be elsewhere if you’re riding. Can you make it for a flying visit this weekend? Good. I’ll pick you up at the airport. Yes, of course, he would be most welcome to come. I’d be delighted to see him. Wonderful. I’ll see you on Friday evening, then.”

  After a brief goodbye, he triumphantly plunged the phone back into its charger base and rang a small brass bell on his desk.

  “GUSTAV!”

  “You rang—and howled—Sir Charles?” Gustav made a point of using the white cloth he was holding to flick some dust from the shelf as though it caused him great offence before approaching Charles’s desk.

  Charles generally found Gustav’s manner reassuringly amusing. A stranger might think him merely an impudent servant, but Gustav was far more than that. He had worked for Charles’s father, and Charles had grown up with him as a
constant presence in his life. Gustav liked to give the impression that he was a butler, but in the past, when money had been tight, he had been pressed into service as a plumber, electrician, cleaner and general handyman—the bedrock of Barfield House, the Fraith family seat. He still laundered, pressed and hung Charles’s clothes, maintaining his employer as what Agatha Raisin had once described as “a crumple-free zone.” Of slim build, yet wiry and strong, Gustav had become integral to the character of Barfield.

  “We will be having a couple of guests to stay this weekend,” Charles informed him as Gustav retrieved the cup and saucer, tutting while wiping a couple of spots of coffee from the leather inlay on the antique oak desktop.

  “Are we sure that’s wise, sir?” Gustav clasped a hand to his chest and made wide eyes in mock theatrical horror. “The last time we had guests to stay was for the masked ball following your marriage—and that didn’t end well, did it?”

  “No, it did not.” Charles’s aged aunt, Mrs. Tassy, breezed into the room clad in a waft of chiffon so dark green it was almost black. A tall woman with slender limbs, she had lived at Barfield House as long as Charles could remember. She slotted a book she was carrying onto a bookshelf high above Gustav’s head, perused a lower shelf and selected another slim volume. “You were arrested for the murder of your wife, Charles, remember? I’d like to say how much I miss the girl and her parents, but that would be a dreadful lie, so I won’t bother. Might I have some tea, Gustav?”

  “Yes, tea would be a good idea, Gustav.” Charles looked at his aunt, shaking his head. “We really need to put that whole episode behind us, Aunt. We have to move forward. So, two rooms to be made ready for two guests this weekend, Gustav. A young lady and her uncle.”

  “Would that be the young French lady, sir?”

  “Surely not the one who sent you packing, Charles?” Mrs. Tassy sounded suddenly interested. “Immune to your charms? Quite a rarity. I shall look forward to meeting her.”

  “She did not send me packing,” Charles insisted. “There was no romantic entanglement when I visited her in France—just business. She is coming here to advise about the possibility of establishing our own vineyard.”

  “Très bien.” Gustav headed for the kitchen. “Then the wine will not be tainted with bitterness.”

  “I hope he’s going to be on his best behaviour this weekend,” Charles sighed, watching Gustav leave the room and knowing full well he would be listening. “I want to make a good impression on these people.”

  Mrs. Tassy settled in a comfortably firm armchair by the French windows that overlooked the lawn and sat quietly for a few minutes, reading her book. “These people,” she eventually piped up in her reedy warble, “or just the young lady?”

  “I told you, there’s nothing like that going on.” Charles smiled. He was enormously fond of his aunt and very much aware that while she maintained a sternly old-fashioned attitude of disapproval when it came to his romantic liaisons, secretly she delighted in the intrigue of it all.

  “I’d like to believe you, Charles, but I suspect you see this one simply as more of a challenge than some of the others, such as Mrs. Raisin, for example.”

  “Agatha is a very dear friend.” Charles ran his hand through his hair, a sure sign, his aunt noted, that he was becoming irritated. “At least she was until … No, she is a very dear friend. I just need to mend a few bridges there. Now,” he shuffled some papers on his desk, “do you intend taking your tea here? I have a great deal of work to get through.”

  “As I believe I have told you many times, Charles, this is the library, where one comes to read books. There are countless other rooms in the house you could use as an office. I have come in here to read, the purpose for which this room is intended. I shall be as quiet as a mouse. Far quieter than the mice that were stomping around behind the skirting in my room last night, at any rate.”

  “Yes, yes, so you keep saying. I’ll have Gustav sort out something for the mice.”

  “I doubt mice are partial to Earl Grey,” Gustav commented, returning with a tea tray. “Perhaps a Garibaldi?”

  * * *

  Harvey’s only had three frozen lasagne ready meals left. Agatha scooped them all into her wire shopping basket. Carsely’s village shop stocked an impressive range of fresh food for such a small establishment, but Agatha was the most enthusiastic and regular patron of their deep freeze. She added a couple of frozen shepherd’s pies and caught a disapproving look from a woman in a pink woollen coat and a hat that looked like a sculpted blancmange. Agatha shrugged and moved on. It had been a long day and she was looking forward to getting home. She didn’t need anyone criticising her. She enjoyed dining on deliciously well-prepared food when she ate out, but at home she had neither the patience nor the passion to spend time in her kitchen creating fantastic dishes.

  In truth, she knew she was not the world’s greatest cook. Not that she couldn’t be if she really wanted, but in all honesty, she couldn’t include culinary skill on a list of her virtues. Who could forget the year she invited all her staff to a sumptuous Christmas dinner at her cottage, then found the turkey was too big to fit in her oven? She’d used the big oven in the village hall instead, incinerating the turkey and almost burning down the hall along with it. She’d had to pay for the hall to be redecorated. Ironically, the incident had endeared her to the locals. Previously they had been less than friendly, almost hostile, towards her, but once the hall was repainted and every woman in the area heard of the Christmas dinner nightmare that so many of them had themselves come so close to in the past, Agatha was endowed with a degree of sympathy that, for a newcomer like herself, took her one step closer to being accepted as a Carsely villager.

  Would she ever really belong? She pondered the point for the millionth time as, drawn by an artistically arranged pyramid of red-wine bottles, she crossed the shop floor to a row of rough wooden crates that had been pressed into service as rustic display shelves. She perused the wine while pondering her situation in Carsely. Even though her high-profile murder investigations had established her as one of the most recognisable residents of the village, did she really fit in here? Did she even care about fitting in any more? She had to admit that she did. She had chosen to live in Carsely and she wanted it to be her home. She needed it to feel like her home. In times past, she had often been so frustrated and disillusioned with rural life in the Cotswolds that she had felt like chucking it all in and scurrying back to London. She had even put her cottage up for sale. Nowadays she rarely felt like running away; she was determined to stay put, either with the blessing of the locals or in spite of them.

  She found herself staring at a bottle of Primitivo, a wine from Puglia in Italy. She had visited the region on holiday many years ago and loved the time she’d spent touring the coast, taking in the sights, sampling the wine and trying out basic Italian in village cafés. She smiled, picking up a bottle to study the label. Would it have been any more difficult to fit in there than in Carsely? Of course it would, she told herself. Your Italian never progressed beyond reading aloud from a menu and calling to the waiter for “Più Primitivo, per favore!”

  “A fine choice, Mrs. Raisin!” Margaret Bloxby, wife of Alf, the local vicar, was suddenly by Agatha’s side, a shopping basket over her arm. Agatha immediately saw that she had picked up a cauliflower, carrots, onions and apples—a far more wholesome haul than her own.

  “Mrs. Bloxby, how nice to see you!” Even though the two women had known each other for years, they maintained the quaint tradition, followed rigidly by the Carsely Ladies’ Society, of never using each other’s first names. Agatha watched the vicar’s wife smile. They didn’t always adhere quite so rigorously to the formality as the Ladies’ Society did, but it amused them to do so in public. In private, especially over a glass of sherry, first names could sometimes slip out. “I didn’t realise you were a fan of Italian wine.”

  “I learned a little about it when Alf swapped our church here in Carsely with an
other vicar on a foreign exchange trip. It was a wonderful experience.”

  “You were in Puglia?”

  “Oh no, Mrs. Raisin. I shouldn’t think there would be much call for a Church of England vicar there. We went to California, and an American vicar, Dwight I think his name was, came here. Alf and I took a wine-tasting trip in the Napa Valley, where they have Zinfandel, which is the same grape as Primitivo. The Italians even export Primitivo to the United States labelled as Zinfandel. I became quite partial to it.”

  “You are a font of knowledge, Mrs. Bloxby. Care to share some of this with me?” Agatha held up the bottle, then turned back to the display. “Maybe I should pick up another one.”

  As she turned, the corner of her basket clipped one of the display crates and its wooden side collapsed, turning the pyramid of wine bottles into a clinking avalanche. Agatha squeezed her eyes closed, waiting for the inevitable crescendo of shattering glass. It never came. The bottles tumbled onto the shop’s forgiving wooden floorboards, rolling and clanking together without a single breakage. She tentatively opened her eyes to see an assistant hurrying over, assuring her that there was no harm done and that it was all his fault for having built such a rickety display. Agatha knew that Blancmange Hat and the three or four other customers would now be staring, but chose not to turn and glower at them. Instead, she stooped to retrieve a bottle of wine from the floor.

  There was a sharp pop and a ripping sound. At first she thought she might have torn a muscle in her back. Then she realised it was much worse than that. She had torn something far more vital.

  “Agatha,” Mrs. Bloxby leaned in close to whisper, “your skirt has split down the seam at the back.”

  “Did they all get an eyeful?” Agatha muttered out of the corner of her mouth.

  “A bit of racy lace.” Mrs. Bloxby draped her raincoat over Agatha’s shoulders. “Enough to keep them chattering for a week or two. My coat is long enough to restore your dignity.”