Down the Hatch

by M C Beaton

  “I saw her at the coroner’s inquest,” said Agatha. “She didn’t seem too upset about the passing of her husband. We need to talk to Mrs. Cathy Nelson, Toni.”

  “Already on it,” Toni confirmed. “She’s agreed to see us tomorrow morning. She seemed quite keen when I spoke to her on the phone.”

  “Really?” Agatha was surprised. “That’s not the reaction one would expect from a grieving widow. That, I’m sure, will be an interesting meeting. In the meantime, I have something else I need you both to do, but you are absolutely sworn to secrecy.”

  “Naturally,” said Patrick. “Everything we do at Raisin Investigations is strictly confidential.”

  “This isn’t really for the company,” Agatha explained. “It’s kind of personal and involves a close friend—someone who’s a friend to all of us.”

  “It’s not the thing with Sir Charles’s friend, is it?” Toni asked, reaching into her handbag to arm herself with a notepad and pen.

  “No, I’ll deal with that myself,” said Agatha. “What I need you to do is to dig up all the background you can get on this couple.” She slid a piece of paper across the desk. On it were two names.

  “Really?” Toni couldn’t hide her surprise. “You want us to investigate Bill Wong’s parents?”

  “Not investigate exactly,” Agatha said. “I just need to know more about their past, their family history, where they’ve lived, what jobs they’ve had, that sort of thing.”

  “Digging up info on Bill’s family doesn’t feel right,” Toni said. “Are we allowed to ask why?”

  “I’d rather not say,” Agatha said, “but it’s nothing sinister. Just a favour to help make Bill’s life a little easier. So, Patrick, you once spent some time on some sort of exchange thing with the Hong Kong Police, didn’t you?”

  “That was a lot of years ago.” Patrick seemed impressed that Agatha had remembered that detail about his police service. “Most of my contacts there are long since retired, but I daresay they will still know people who know people…”

  “Good.” Agatha nodded. “I was hoping you’d say that. Toni, you’re a local girl and so is Mrs. Wong. See if you can find someone who knew her way back when she got married to Bill’s father. And we need to keep this discreet, okay? Totally hush-hush. I don’t want any of it getting back to Bill or his parents.”

  “You haven’t mentioned Alice once,” said Toni, toying with her pen. “This is about her and Bill, isn’t it?”

  “Clever girl,” Agatha nodded, “but that stays between us three. We have a chance to help them out of a messy situation, but…”

  “… but if Bill or his parents find out, then the whatsit will really hit the fan,” finished Patrick.

  “Precisely,” Agatha agreed. “So tread carefully. Now, I need to get on with making a few notes for another favour—one I promised Mrs. Bloxby I’d do tonight.”

  Patrick returned to his desk and Toni was following him out of the door when Agatha looked up from the notes she had already started scribbling.

  “Oh, and Toni…” she called.

  “Yes?”

  “I’d be proud, too.”

  They exchanged a brief smile and a nod, then carried on as if nothing had happened.

  Chapter Six

  “But you’re not actually a real detective, are you?” Like so many of the other women in the room, this one was wearing her coat indoors, even though St. Jude’s church hall was pleasantly warm. From where she was standing behind a lectern at the front of the hall, Agatha could see that the woman was in fact sitting in the middle of a row of half a dozen similar women, all wearing their coats, all of a certain age, all very well upholstered and all frozen in exactly the same pose, their hands folded in their laps, protectively covering their handbags. Who on earth did they think was going to mug them for their pension books and pocket-sized tissue packs in a church hall?

  There’s always one, Agatha thought to herself. Always one who wants to show off, to be the centre of attention, to let everyone know how clever she is. Then she shook her head, uncomfortably aware that she’d been described that way herself more than once. Well, that gave her an advantage. She knew how to handle this old trout.

  “I think that, had you been listening to my talk over the past hour, my record as a detective, especially when it comes to tracking down murderers, speaks for itself.” Agatha had agreed at short notice to present a talk about investigating murder to a combined audience of Carsely and Mircester ladies’ societies as a favour to Mrs. Bloxby following a cancellation by her scheduled speaker, a beekeeper from Bicester who claimed never to have been stung in more than forty years tending bees. Then she was, on the ear, and suffered a bizarre allergic reaction, causing her ear to swell up to elephantine proportions, making it impossible for her to wear her glasses.

  “But you’ve had no proper training, have you?” The woman was persistent.

  “Do you mean like a police detective?” Agatha asked. This woman was annoyingly familiar and a nagging thought was flashing like a red light bulb at the back of her mind, yet she couldn’t place her. She was certainly part of the Mircester contingent. “I can assure you that not all of them put their training to best use.”

  “So now you’re saying that our police are useless?”

  “I’m saying nothing of the sort. Most of them are highly skilled and thoroughly professional. I have some very good friends who are police officers and one of my staff at Raisin Investigations is a retired policeman.”

  “Aha!” the woman crowed triumphantly. “So you rely on his police training to solve your cases. I suspected as much.”

  “His knowledge and experience are invaluable because—”

  “Because you don’t actually have any training as an investigator yourself?”

  “No, because we need to be able to bring a broad range of talents to bear on a case. I have a great deal of experience in a number of areas that most police officers do not.”

  “Including being arrested. You’ve been arrested a few times, haven’t you? It was in the papers.” The woman turned to her friends sitting either side and nodded smugly.

  “The papers also reported the murders I solved.” Agatha could feel a tension in her jaw and realised that she was now speaking through gritted teeth. “Despite police ineptitude.”

  “Good gracious!” The woman made a play of appearing shocked. “Are you really calling our brave British police officers inept?”

  “Not all of them, but you have no way of knowing the kind of dirty tricks I’ve seen some officers pull to cover their blunders in order to save their jobs and pensions.”

  “I don’t think that you, Mrs. Raisin, never having served in uniform, can be expected to appreciate the dedication and sacrifice made by our boys in blue.” The woman had clearly now gone into full lecture mode, and Agatha’s blood began to boil as she felt herself being scolded like a child. She took a deep breath to calm her temper. She was, after all, in a church hall and doing a favour for her friend, Mrs. Bloxby. “Furthermore,” the woman continued, “I think we can well do without the so-called police scandals manufactured by the gutter press. Perhaps we should all be protected from that sort of muck-raking to preserve our respect for the force. Indeed, as the poet Thomas Gray said, ‘Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.’”

  Agatha hated people firing arty-farty quotes at her, especially when they came from long-dead poets.

  “Well, if ignorance is bliss, you must be as happy as a pig in sh—” She stopped herself just in time.

  “Really, Mrs. Raisin. You need to be more tolerant. A good detective would at least try to see things from my point of view!”

  That was the final straw.

  “Oh, I’m trying all right,” Agatha snarled, “but I’m not sure I can get my head that far up my own backside.”

  “My goodness, is that the time?” Mrs. Bloxby eased Agatha to one side and took her place behind the lectern. “And what a spirited discussion
that turned out to be!” Then, facing the woman in the crowd, she added, “You certainly seem very well informed about police matters, Mrs.…?”

  “Mrs. Wilkes.” The woman nodded with an ungracious smile. “My son is a very important, very respectable police officer.”

  “Your son is DCI Wilkes!” The nagging red light bulb exploded.

  “He is indeed,” said the woman, swelling with pride.

  “Respectable? Really?” Agatha scoffed. “Ask him what he was doing drinking whisky this afternoon in Shirley’s Girlies strip club in Mircester—and yes, before you ask, I do have a witness who can corroborate that statement!”

  The woman’s mouth opened and closed like an old trout now stranded, and a murmur of laughter rolled around the audience. To her left and right, Mrs. Wilkes’s posse each briefly removed one hand from their handbags in order to cover smiles or sniggers.

  “Well, I’m afraid that’s all we have time for this evening.” Mrs. Bloxby was keen to bring the meeting to a close. “Thank you all for coming, and a big thank-you to Mrs. Raisin for her fascinating talk.”

  There was an immediate round of polite applause that lasted for the appropriate length of time before the ladies rose from their seats, some congregating in small groups to chat, others filing out of the hall. Mrs. Wilkes and her group were the first to leave. A few from the audience came forward to shake Agatha’s hand and tell her how much they had enjoyed the evening. One, a tall, slim woman who appeared to be in her late seventies but stood upright and unbowed, immaculately dressed in a dark blue overcoat and with not one strand of her solidly permed grey hair out of place, drew Agatha to one side. She introduced herself as Miss Palmer and thanked Agatha for the talk in a way that offered no doubt there was a “but” left hanging in the air. Then it came, her voice lowered to a clandestine level.

  “But you did not mention the murder of Harold Nelson.”

  “Following the coroner’s inquest this morning, that is something I’m starting to look into.”

  “Yet you already knew he was murdered.”

  “What makes you say that? I had my suspicions, of course, but you seem very interested in this case. Is there something you would like to tell me?”

  “I have a great deal to tell you, Mrs. Raisin. I know how he was murdered, I know why he was murdered and I know who murdered him.” Miss Palmer looked from side to side, scanning the room. “But we can’t talk here. Come to see me on Sunday, after church.” She reeled off her address in Willow Way, and then hurried out of the hall.

  Mrs. Bloxby appeared at Agatha’s side. “Everything all right, Mrs. Raisin?” she asked.

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Agatha replied. “I’ve just had the most extraordinary conversation.”

  “I saw you talking to Miss Palmer. It all looked very serious.”

  “So you know her?”

  “Yes, she’s one of ours, not one of the Mircester lot. ‘A spinster of this parish’ is how she might be described, although they say she almost got married a few years ago. She was very close to that old chap Mr. Nelson who died at the bowling green.”

  “He didn’t just die,” Agatha pointed out. “He was murdered. We’re investigating it now.”

  “Really? Well, I doubt Miss Palmer’s involved. She’s a gentle soul. She was devastated when Nelson ditched her in order to marry a younger woman.”

  “Quite remarkable.” Agatha shook her head in amazement. “From what I’ve heard about him, he doesn’t seem like the kind of man who would have women competing for his attention. Has Miss Palmer always lived around here?”

  “She comes from Mircester originally. She worked for a company there for years before retiring to a cottage on the outskirts of Carsely.”

  “What did she do?”

  “She was a secretary, I believe. Looked after general admin, that sort of thing.”

  “So she would know how to use a typewriter?”

  “Undoubtedly. Most of her working life was way before the computer age.”

  “Mrs Raisin! How lovely to see you again!” A small elderly woman approached them and it took Agatha a moment to realise who she was.

  “Mrs. Swinburn, how are you?” she said, congratulating herself on recognising her. “It’s good to see you up and about. You look like you’ve recovered well from that awful business at the bowls club.”

  “Oh yes. They didn’t keep me in the hospital. I was home that evening, fighting fit again!” The woman smiled and raised a triumphant clenched fist, a gold watch bracelet sliding down her wrinkled wrist. She was wearing too much lipstick and her face was dusted thickly with powder, but the glint in her eyes showed that there was life in the old girl yet. “Anyway, Charlie will be waiting outside, so I must run.”

  Running, Agatha mused, was undoubtedly something Mrs. Swinburn had not done since she left school, yet she headed for the door with a confident stride.

  “She’s the one who found the body on the bowling green,” Agatha explained.

  “That must have been horrid for her.” Mrs. Bloxby was genuinely concerned, one of the many virtues that made her so well suited to life as a vicar’s wife. Agatha marvelled at how this fundamentally good-natured woman could always find a small place in her heart for anyone who needed a kind thought or sympathetic prayer. Although they were firm friends, it was a trait that regularly made Agatha feel somewhat inadequate.

  “I’ll get over it,” she muttered. “I mean … um … she seems to have got over it, doesn’t she? Can I just ask … what time does church finish on Sunday morning?”

  “I take it you’re not considering attending?” Mrs. Bloxby smiled with raised eyebrows. “Otherwise you would have asked what time church started on Sunday.”

  “I’m afraid your husband might die of shock if he saw me sitting in one of his pews,” Agatha laughed. “Miss Palmer wants to meet me after church.”

  “You may be right about Alf.” Mrs. Bloxby chuckled. “He sometimes runs over, but the service starts early and usually ends about ten thirty.”

  Agatha said her goodbyes and headed home, leaving Mrs. Bloxby to organise the stacking of chairs and the sweeping of the floor. Once the hall was cleared, she had more stacking to do, this time in the dishwasher, taking care of the cups, saucers, plates and cutlery that had been used for the tea and cake before the talk, the two ladies’ societies clearly having competed to outdo each other in the Victoria sponge stakes.

  “Is it safe?” Alf Bloxby poked his head round the kitchen door.

  “Yes, they’ve all gone.” Mrs. Bloxby laughed. “You can come out of your study. Would you like some cake?”

  “That would be splendid,” Alf said, with genuine enthusiasm. He knew that all the sponges, along with their jam fillings, would be home-made to a scrumptious standard, such was the pride of the women involved. “It’s not that I didn’t want to meet them, but I was very busy with paperwork. I will admit, however, that a hall full of women with that dreadful Mrs. Raisin at their head is a daunting prospect. Anything might happen if she got them riled up—insurrection, revolution, anything.”

  “Mrs. Raisin is nowhere near as frightening as you seem to think,” she smiled, handing her husband a large slice of cake, “and she was a big help to you when that poor curate was murdered. She got you off the hook.”

  “That was a terrible time,” Alf admitted, disappearing with the cake back in the direction of his study, “and I was thankful. Yet she is a dangerous person to be around. Murder follows in her footsteps.”

  “Quite the reverse actually, my dear,” Mrs. Bloxby said softly, mainly to herself. “She stalks the perpetrators of murder, and they are truly dangerous people. Stay safe, Agatha. I will pray for you.”

  * * *

  The following morning, Agatha rose early, slipped into a dressing gown and made her way downstairs. Boswell and Hodge wound themselves around her legs, threatening to trip her in a desperate bid for breakfast.

  “You can’t be this hungry again,” she reasone
d with them. “I gave you huge portions when I got home last night.” The cats, whom she often suspected could understand every word she said, simply stared up at her with big eyes, feigning ignorance.

  She made her way to the kitchen, filled their bowls to a chorus of delighted meows and purrs, then opened a window to dispel the smell of cat food. She picked up the container from the previous evening’s chicken tikka ready meal, which she had nuked in the microwave the moment she arrived back from the church hall, and dropped it in the bin. James had been in London, being wined and dined by his publisher, and a microwave supper was all she had the energy for. Yesterday had been pretty full-on. The tidying-up had been forgotten when a couple of glasses of Shiraz had made a TV documentary about the successful reintroduction of the red kite to the wild in Britain seem unmissable.

  Then Roy had arrived, struggling under the weight of a mountain of suitcases. He had demanded to be brought right up to date on the investigation, and thankfully that hadn’t taken too long, because he had already read about the body on the bowling green. His excitement had been infectious, giving Agatha a second wind that had carried her through to the wee small hours, chatting and reminiscing with him. She assumed he was still upstairs in her spare bedroom. She hadn’t bothered checking.

  Reaching for the coffee pot, she debated whether to go for instant and then had the sudden feeling that something was missing. She looked round at the worktops, the hob and the kitchen table. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it. What was it that wasn’t there? Then it came to her. Not so long ago, her breakfast would have consisted of two cups of strong coffee and four cigarettes. Now there was no lighter, no ashtray and no packet of king-size filter tips. Smoking was now so much in her past that she had almost forgotten about the old addiction.

  “Well, I don’t need those things any more, do I, boys?” She grinned at the cats and fancied, quite without foundation, that they grinned back. Her phone rang and she snatched it off the table. Maybe it was James. She hoped it was, but she didn’t recognise the number on the screen.