Down the Hatch

by M C Beaton

  Leaving the bustle of the shopping centre behind, they took a riverside walk where a grassy bank dropped steeply towards the water on one side, while on the other, municipal flower beds erupting with the joyful colours of marigolds, begonias and petunias basked in the sunshine. They passed a couple of comatose down-and-outs quietly fermenting on a bench, an empty bottle of sherry abandoned on the ground in front of them.

  “Sad, isn’t it,” said Toni, “that drink has destroyed them.”

  “Drink hasn’t destroyed them, Toni.” Agatha shook her head. “They destroyed themselves. Drink was their weapon of choice. Whatever problems they may have tried to eradicate with it are probably of little consequence now that their weapon has backfired. The drink is now in control.”

  “I guess we both know how that works.” Toni nodded. There was a short silence. When Toni had first come to work for her, Agatha had helped her to escape from an abusive alcoholic mother. Her own parents had also been hopeless drunks, and her first husband, Jimmy Raisin, had been a thoroughly unpleasant, violent alcoholic.

  “Do you think the Admiral was an alcoholic?” Toni asked. “He clearly thought he was drinking rum from that bottle, and it must have been fairly early in the day.”

  “We’ll find out.” Agatha nodded. “We need to build up a complete picture of the man in order to find out who would have wanted him dead.”

  She glanced at the sherry bottle, saw that it was the same brand that she and Margaret Bloxby enjoyed from time to time at the vicarage, and resolved to buy her friend a case of something more upmarket.

  Rounding a bend in the path, they came upon the apartment building. A wrought-iron sign standing by the path boldly declared it to be Molyneux Mansions. It was a modern, but attractive, three-storey brick-built complex with balconies looking out over the river, patios serving the ground-floor accommodation and a courtyard scattered with raised flower beds bursting with the same energetic profusion of summer colour they had seen near the riverside walk.

  Miss Featherstone’s flat was on the second floor, and the stairwell leading up to it was tidy and clean. There was a welcome mat outside her front door and the doorbell played a cheerful chime.

  “This is a really nice block of flats,” said Toni. “Much better than where I live.”

  “It’s not bad at all, is it?” Agatha agreed, although it was far from the thatch-and-wisteria Cotswolds idyll that had first tempted her away from London to Carsely.

  The door was opened by a dark-haired, bespectacled lady whom Agatha judged to be in her late sixties. She was wearing a green cardigan, a fake pearl necklace and a neat tartan skirt.

  “You must be Mrs. Raisin,” she said, smiling at Agatha, “and you’re the young lady I talked to on the phone, Toni, isn’t it? Do come in.”

  She led them along a narrow hallway with doors to the left that led to a bedroom, a bathroom and a kitchen before the passage opened out into a comfortable sitting room. Windows looked out over the river and there was a small balcony. Two armchairs and a sofa that appeared never to have had anything heavier than a dusting cloth weighed upon their floral-pattern cushions were arranged around an electric fire. The decorative wooden fire surround was populated by a variety of ornaments and figurines ranging from a shimmering ballerina to a sorrowful street urchin and a playful kitten. The room was as neat and clean as Miss Featherstone herself. Agatha noted that there were two pull-cords in opposite corners of the room, just as there had been at either end of the hall.

  “Do sit down,” Miss Featherstone insisted. “I’ll fetch some tea. The kettle’s just boiled.”

  Agatha felt almost guilty about denting the sofa cushions, and Toni lowered herself gingerly down beside her.

  “The place is spotless,” said Toni.

  “Immaculate,” Agatha agreed. “She seems to take care of herself and her flat very well.”

  Miss Featherstone swiftly returned with a tea tray that she set down on a small coffee table in front of Agatha and Toni before filling china cups for them both and offering chocolate shortbread biscuits.

  “Your flat is gorgeous, Miss Featherstone,” said Toni. “How long have you lived here?”

  “Since I retired. I had a small house, but the garden was really too much for me to keep tidy.”

  “You have pull-cords,” Agatha said. “Are those to summon help if you need it?”

  “That’s right,” Miss Featherstone explained. “In emergencies, they alert the warden who supervises the apartment block.”

  “Did you pull one of the cords when the man was in your flat—your intruder?”

  “Oh no.” Miss Featherstone sounded quite shocked. “The cords are for medical emergencies. I telephoned the police about the man.”

  “But the police could find no trace of him having been here?” asked Toni.

  “Apparently not,” Miss Featherstone shrugged, “yet he’s been in this room several times.”

  “How does he get in?” Agatha asked. “Through the balcony door or through the main door?”

  “I’ve never actually seen him use either door,” Miss Featherstone admitted. “In the evenings I like to sit and read or watch a little television, and suddenly I’ll get that feeling—you know, as if someone’s watching you. I’ll turn around and he’ll be there, standing by the bookcase, or sometimes by the hall door.”

  “Does he say anything, or do anything?” Toni asked.

  “No, he just stands there, staring, hardly moving at all.”

  “That sounds absolutely terrifying,” said Agatha. “Do you scream at him, tell him to get out, or yell for help?”

  “I’m usually so frightened,” Miss Featherstone’s eyes widened alarmingly, “that I can scarcely move, and I daren’t scream. I don’t know what he might do if I did.”

  “What does he look like?” asked Toni, making notes on a pad.

  “He’s always in the shadows,” Miss Featherstone waved a hand towards the places where the man usually stood, “and wearing dark clothes. I suppose he looks quite ordinary.”

  “This is appalling,” said Agatha. “We can’t allow it to go on. We need to find this man. What if we were to put some little cameras in the corners of the room so that we can get pictures of him?”

  “Oh, I don’t think that would work.” Miss Featherstone shook her head. “He won’t show up on cameras. He protects himself from that sort of thing, and from radar. He’s from Venus, you see. He parks his spaceship in orbit above Earth and transports himself down here by laser beam. That’s why the police said they couldn’t catch him.”

  Toni stopped writing. Agatha froze for an instant, then placed her teacup gently back in its saucer on the coffee table.

  “Well, Miss Featherstone,” she said. “I think we have enough to be going on with, don’t we, Toni?”

  “Yes, of course,” Toni agreed. “We’d best be on our way. I’ll be in touch soon, Miss Featherstone.”

  They said nothing until they were back on the path outside Molyneux Mansions.

  “Who did you talk to at Mircester Police about Miss Featherstone, Toni?” Agatha was staring out over the river, her head high and her hands clasped tightly behind her back.

  “It was someone new,” said Toni, consulting her notepad. “A PC Easeman.”

  “First name?”

  “I believe he said it was Paul.” Toni’s hands dropped to her sides and she stared at the ground, shaking her head in disbelief. “I can’t believe I was had like that.”

  “You let someone claiming to be a policeman called Paul Easeman send us on a wild goose chase?”

  “I’m sorry, Agatha, I should have realised…”

  Turning to look at her assistant, Agatha unclasped her hands, let out a long breath and growled, “He must have thought he was being so clever, having such a big laugh at our expense. Well, he’ll regret it when I find out exactly who our policeman Paul Easeman really is!”

  Toni’s face was set in a look of utter dejection. Clearly she felt sh
e had let Agatha down by falling for Paul Easeman’s little jape. Paul Easeman—really? Agatha burst out laughing.

  “Whoever he is, he’s going to need his sense of humour when we work out how to get our own back on him.” She smiled, and Toni’s face brightened. “Now, let’s go find the warden who’s in charge here and make sure that they know about poor Miss Featherstone’s imaginary visitor from outer space. Then we can walk over to the bowling club to have a sniff around.”

  * * *

  Mircester Crown Green Bowling Club was far quieter than it had been when Agatha had last visited. Gone were the inquisitive onlookers, the police officers and the paramedics. Three of the club members were pottering in the rose garden, dead-heading blooms and pulling out weeds. Agatha immediately recognised one of them.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Partridge,” she called, waving. “May we come in?”

  “Of course, Mrs. Raisin,” replied the man with the oyster eyes, flattening his comb-over. “How nice to see you again. You’re most welcome.”

  Agatha introduced Toni, and Stanley Partridge showed them to a bench nestled between a large pink rose bush festooned with flowers and an equally abundant white rose.

  “What brings you back here, Mrs. Raisin?” he asked.

  “I really liked the look of your lovely club,” said Agatha. “It started me thinking that I might take up bowling to keep me occupied when I retire.”

  “It’s a grand sport.” Mr. Partridge nodded. “Right sociable it is.”

  “My goodness.” Agatha sniffed the air. “Your roses have a wonderful scent.”

  “Fragrance is stronger later in the day.” Mr. Partridge nodded and smiled. “The pink is Gertrude Jekyll an’ the white is Desdemona. Both are good varieties for fragrance. Desdemona has a more lemony scent—the Jekyll is far sweeter. It’s a nice balance in this spot.”

  “They’re beautiful. You certainly know your roses, Mr. Partridge,” Agatha congratulated him.

  “They give a great deal of pleasure in return for a little effort,” he replied.

  “It seems very quiet here today,” Toni commented.

  “The rose garden’s always a champion place for a bit of calm,” Mr. Partridge chuckled, “even when they’re hard at it out on the green.”

  “Is no one playing today?” Agatha asked.

  “No, no, Mrs. Raisin. The police were happy for us to do whatever we liked once they left, but we decided it were right to stop all play for a week. Sort of a mark of respect for the Admiral, you know.”

  “Did the Admiral enjoy working in the rose garden with you?” Toni sniffed one of the white Desdemonas, then immediately sneezed and scrabbled in her handbag for a tissue.

  “He hated the roses.” Mr. Partridge shook his head, the corners of his mouth turned down in an expression of disgust. “You might say he were a fine lad in some ways, but he had some right barmy ideas. Can you believe he wanted to rip out all these wonderful bushes and plant vegetables?”

  “Why on earth would he want to do that?” Agatha was genuinely appalled.

  “Because he had some stupid plan about making rum out of sugar beets and carrots!” Mr. Partridge was becoming agitated. “He’d have done it, too. He were always one to get his own way in the end.”

  “Did he have much to do with the garden?” Toni dropped her tissue into a litter bin.

  “He always acted like he were in charge of everything.” Mr. Partridge sounded quietly bitter. “Liked throwing his weight around, he did, telling everyone what’s what. The paths were his thing. He kept them neat. Said they was our ‘defensive line’ to keep weeds from spreading onto the green. He used weedkiller on the paths fairly regular.”

  “Where did he keep his weedkiller?” Agatha asked.

  “In the shed back there.” Mr. Partridge pointed over his shoulder. “The police took a quick look. I’ll show you.”

  He led them down a paved walkway through the rose bushes to the tool shed Agatha had seen on her previous visit. Inside, the sun fought its way through murky windows, shafts of light picking out the tiniest motes of dust drifting in the air and wafting through the open door. Mr. Partridge pointed to a collection of Smuggler’s Breath rum bottles standing in a neat row on a shelf at the very back of the shed. There were six full bottles and one half full.

  “That’s where he kept the stuff.” The old man’s face looked grim again. “It weren’t a normal brand. Powerful stuff. Very poisonous. Been banned in this country for years, but he bought it off some dodgy bloke at Mircester Market. He claimed he kept it in them bottles as a measure—one bottle would treat all the paths.”

  “You don’t sound like you believe that’s why he used the rum bottles,” Toni noted.

  “It may well have been one reason,” Mr. Partridge nodded, “but he also used them bottles so as no one knew what it were. He didn’t want to get caught with the illegal weedkiller. We all knew it weren’t rum in the bottles, of course. I mean—who keeps a shelf of rum bottles in a garden shed? Mind you, one or two actually did have rum in them. He were a devil for his rum. I warned him that having weedkiller in them bottles were a bad idea. Too easy to get his rum mixed up with his weedkiller. In the end, it looks like that’s what happened. It were a nasty accident.”

  “If this stuff is illegal,” Agatha pondered, “why didn’t the police take it all away?”

  “They didn’t spend too much time at the club,” Mr. Partridge explained. “That young sergeant … um…”

  “Sergeant Wong?” Agatha suggested.

  “That’s the fellow,” Mr. Partridge agreed. “He had his boys and girls on their hands and knees going over the whole bowling green and garden. He were doing a proper job. Then the older policeman showed up again.”

  “DCI Wilkes?” asked Toni.

  “Yes, him,” said Mr. Partridge. “He ordered them all out because he needed them somewhere else. He never gave them a chance to search back here.”

  “Do you think it really was an accident?” Agatha examined the bottles, unscrewing the cap on the one that was half full and taking a sniff. It was definitely weedkiller, not rum. “Did the Admiral have any enemies—anyone who hated him enough to want him dead?”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Raisin,” said Mr. Partridge, suddenly seeming more than a little flustered, “but I need to get back to the roses. I have to finish that bed this afternoon, you see, and…”

  “We’ll let you get on with it, then.” Agatha smiled. “Thank you, Mr. Partridge.”

  They followed the old man back through the rose garden and waved farewell from the gate.

  “He seemed like a nice man,” said Toni as they walked back towards their office, “but he got really nervous when you asked him whether anyone hated the Admiral.”

  “I think the direct question caught him off guard,” Agatha agreed. “Clearly there are people around here who were not fans of the Admiral, including Mr. Partridge himself.”

  “And what was all that about you retiring?”

  “Forget it, Toni.” Agatha made a chopping gesture with her hand as though to cut off the thought. “That’s never going to happen.”

  Chapter Three

  James Lacey paused on the pavement outside the antiques shop that sat below Raisin Investigations’ first-floor office. A red military drum draped with white rope sitting alongside a British infantry “stovepipe” shako hat had caught his eye. A former army officer, James frowned at the regimental badges on each, taking no more than a second to dismiss them as fakes. Then he saw his own reflection, not in the shop window but in a large, elaborately gilded mirror standing behind the drum. He drew himself up to his full height and smoothed a palm over the front of his sports jacket. He considered himself still to have a military bearing. He was tall, well over six feet, but carried his slim frame upright, shoulders set square with no hint of a stoop. His dark hair had picked up a trace of grey in recent years, but unlike so many of his old army chums, he still had plenty of it. In his estimation, he was shaping
up pretty well. Agatha was a fine-looking woman, but surely he was a worthy partner for her? He still had a youthful twinkle in his blue eyes, didn’t he? He moved his head left and right, searching for a twinkle, squeezing his eyes closed and then popping them open in an effort to generate one. That was when he saw Mr. Tinkler watching him with a very peculiar look on his face. He smiled sheepishly, gave him a curt nod and moved on.

  The rest of her team having left for the day, Agatha was alone in the office when the entryphone buzzer sounded. During the day, the street door was generally left unlocked, but she knew that one of the others would have slipped the latch as they left, to keep her secure on her own outside normal office hours. It was a kind thought, but it meant that she would have to leave the case files spread out on her desk and cross to the outer office to answer the buzzer. She decided to ignore it. She was trying to concentrate. It buzzed again. She tutted, jumped to her feet and thundered across the floor to jab her thumb on the answer button.

  “We’re closed!” she snapped. “Go away!”

  “That’s not very good customer relations,” came James’s voice.

  “And you’re not a customer, James. What do you want?”

  “Can I come up?”

  “No.”

  Agatha released the button and the buzzer immediately sounded again. She sighed, knowing that he wasn’t going to give up, and pressed the button to unlock the door. His footsteps echoed up the stairwell, taking each tread with military precision, marching double time.

  “Good evening,” he said, smiling as he entered the office. “What are you doing working so late?”