Down the Hatch

by M C Beaton

  “All the rain we’ve had turned the grass embankment at the front of the building as soft as a mattress. Cathy has a lot of bruising, plenty of aches and pains and a couple of broken bones, but she’s far from dead,” Agatha explained as Cathy Nelson hobbled into the room, supporting herself with a walking stick in her free hand. “Had it not been so wet, you’d be facing a third murder charge. As it is, you’ll be spending the rest of your lives in jail.”

  Bill placed the Swinburns under arrest and they were led out of the club, their heads bowed.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Raisin.” Cathy Nelson lowered herself carefully into a seat, Toni hovering at her elbow to help if needed. “This has all been a complete nightmare.”

  “I can well believe that,” Agatha sympathised. “What will you do now? Will you sell the flat and move on?”

  “No, I don’t think so.” Cathy sounded positive. “None of this was my fault. I know there will be gossip, but I can cope with that. I don’t see why I should run away. This isn’t a bad place to live, after all. Maybe when I’m better, I might even take up bowls!”

  * * *

  Later that afternoon, Agatha and Toni arrived at The Beeches, a development of modern homes almost hidden from the rest of suburban Mircester by screens of carefully planted fir trees. Toni parked the car outside a house with a front garden consisting of a neat square of lawn and regimented flower borders with pink and white geraniums and fuchsias standing obediently on parade. Although each of the houses in the close was slightly different, the front gardens, with their short driveways leading to identical garages, were indistinguishable. It was a place, Agatha decided, that might have been built as some kind of bizarre scientific experiment and inhabited by human clones, or androids, or insurance salesmen.

  “Wait here, will you, Toni?” she said. “I won’t be long.”

  She pushed open the front gate with its wooden sign announcing the house as “Clarendon” and pressed the doorbell. Electronic chimes clanged out a furious rendition of “Rule Britannia,” and the door was opened by a large woman with an irritated scowl on her face.

  “Hello, Mrs. Wong.” Agatha smiled.

  “What do you want?” Bill’s mother grumbled. “Bill’s not here.”

  “I know that,” said Agatha, ignoring the woman’s rudeness, determined not to deviate from her charm offensive. “It’s you and Mr. Wong I’ve come to see.”

  “Who is it, Mother?” came a voice from the sitting room.

  “It’s that Raisin woman!” yelled Mrs. Wong.

  “Tell her we’re not in!”

  “It’s a bit late for that really, isn’t it?” Agatha kept her smile on full beam.

  “This is Father’s day off.” Mrs. Wong’s voice was sullen. “Father watches the horses on his day off. You can’t disturb his racing.”

  “I won’t take up much of his time, but this is important, Mrs. Wong,” Agatha said. “It’s about Bill.”

  Realising that she wasn’t going to get rid of her visitor, Mrs. Wong gave a deep sigh, opened the door wide and turned her back, lumbering off towards the living room. Agatha followed. The room was every bit as chintzy as she remembered from her previous visits. The carpet was an eye-wateringly pink shag pile and the three-piece suite had protective plastic coverings on the arms and backs. She had suffered Mrs. Wong’s cooking with both Charles and James on separate occasions in this house and had promised herself she would never return. But now here she was, transfixed by the stuffed parrot sitting on its perch in the corner of the room.

  “Five minutes,” said Mrs. Wong. “That’s when the next race starts.”

  Agatha tore her eyes away from the parrot and looked towards Mr. Wong, who pressed a button on his remote control to mute the TV. His moustache was a little more grey than she remembered, his pot belly a little rounder, his cardigan more stained and ratty. Only his tartan slippers were the same.

  “Five minutes,” he grunted.

  Agatha sat on the sofa, uninvited. As she leant on the arm, her elbow shot sideways. She straightened up and embarked on the speech she had been rehearsing in her head since lunchtime.

  “I seem to have been dealing with a lot of family problems recently,” she said, “and I wanted to talk to both of you because, well, the one thing we have in common is your son, Bill. We all care about him and I know that he adores you. That’s why we can’t let a family problem blight his life.”

  “No family problems here,” mumbled Mr. Wong. “Are there, Mother?”

  “No family problems in this house,” Mrs. Wong agreed.

  “Well, there will be,” Agatha warned. “In fact, there are already. I know you persuaded Bill to give up his flat and come back to live with you. I also know that when he marries Alice, you want to try to force them both to live here with you.”

  “Bill will need to save up for a house,” said Mrs. Wong. “Cheaper for us all to live together.”

  “That’s not why you want him here at all, is it?” Agatha shook her head. “You just don’t want to let him go, and if that causes a rift between him and Alice, then as far as you’re concerned, she’s not right for him—not right for you, more like.”

  Mr. Wong shifted uncomfortably and Mrs. Wong lowered her bulky frame onto the protective plastic of the second armchair.

  “I know you think Bill will give up the police one day and come to work with you, Mr. Wong, but that’s never going to happen. Apart from anything else, he earns far more as a detective sergeant than you do from your dry-cleaning shop. I know—we’ve run a business assessment on your place. As a couple, Bill and Alice earn more than twice what you do. They can already afford their own home and you need to let them do that. You need to let them build their own life. You’ve driven other girls away in the past, but this time, you risk driving Bill away as well.”

  “You’re talking rubbish!” said Mrs. Wong.

  “Rubbish!” her husband agreed.

  ‘Am I? Think back, both of you. You know how family rifts develop. What did your family think when you started seeing your wife, Mr. Wong? They weren’t happy that you’d taken up with an English girl, were they? They wanted you to marry a nice Chinese girl.

  “And you had much the same family problem, didn’t you, Mrs. Wong? Your parents didn’t want you being with a young Chinese man, did they? So you two struck out on your own—a brave thing to do—and you’ve had no real contact with your families since.”

  Agatha’s phone rang and she retrieved it from her handbag.

  “Hmph!” snorted Mr. Wong. “Now she’s taking calls in our house!”

  “I’ve been waiting for this call, but it’s not for me, Mr. Wong.” Agatha turned the phone’s screen to face him. “It’s a video call for you. Recognise him? It’s your father in Hong Kong.”

  Mr. Wong’s mouth fell open and he stared at the screen. There was a burst of rapid-fire Chinese from the phone, and he took it from Agatha’s hand, his eyes fixed on his father’s image. He responded with a few words in Chinese, and after a few seconds, Agatha saw, for the first time ever, a smile on his face. A moment later, there was a tear on his cheek. Mrs. Wong looked amazed.

  Agatha reached into her handbag again. “Take a look at this picture, Mrs. Wong.” She handed over a small photo in a grey cardboard frame. It showed a young girl with blonde hair smiling with pride, dressed in a university graduation gown and holding a diploma.

  “That’s … that’s my sister!” Mrs. Wong gasped. “But she never went to university.”

  “Your sister didn’t,” Agatha agreed, “but that’s not your sister—it’s your niece. You’ve never met her, but she’s almost as old as Bill and is now a doctor. She wants to meet you. Your sister wants to see you again, too, and the whole family wants to meet Bill. You two are all the family Bill has ever known, but he deserves to know his other relatives. It’s time to let bygones be bygones.

  “Give Bill the space he needs to live his own life, or he will end up doing what you did and walk away.”


  Agatha stood and accepted her phone from Mr. Wong, the screen now blank, the call ended. Bill’s parents looked up at her, not uttering a word.

  “Think about it,” she said, “then do the right thing.”

  Agatha hurried back to the car, where Toni was waiting patiently.

  “How did it go?” she asked.

  “Better than I thought.” Agatha sounded relieved. “It’s up to them now.”

  “Okay.” Toni started the engine. “Do you still want to do this next visit today?”

  “No time like the present,” said Agatha. “Barfield House, please, Toni.”

  * * *

  Agatha sat opposite Charles at his ornate desk in the library at Barfield House, sipping tea reluctantly delivered in an offhand manner by Gustav shortly before they saw him rushing past the terrace windows wearing his yellow hard hat.

  “He’s busy,” said Agatha, “but he loves this house. He must be enjoying overseeing the work that’s going on.”

  “He is.” Charles smiled. “The old place was desperately in need of some TLC.”

  “I saw all the scaffolding,” Agatha said. “It must be costing a fortune.”

  “It is,” Charles sighed, “and the cash injection that came from my marriage won’t last forever. The estate has to earn more. That’s why I want to get the vineyard business up and running, and why I was glad that Rupert suddenly got in touch. He’s an investor, lots of money, family backing.”

  “You might not be so keen on old Rupert when you hear what I’ve got to tell you.” Agatha placed her cup back in its saucer. “He was using you, Charles, and trying to use me. He wanted us to find the father of Philippa Miller’s baby, and I think any potential candidate would have done. We did a bit of digging into his situation, you see, and it would appear that this isn’t the first paternity suit he’s had to deal with. At least three other young women have been paid off by the family, and Rupert was on his last warning—if it happened again, he was to be cut off without a penny. No more family backing to play with. No more income at all.”

  “He swore the child could not possibly be his.” Charles looked stern. “Have you found out who the father is?”

  “Oh, it’s Rupert’s child all right.” Agatha sounded positive. “The DNA proves that. It’s a harsh and brutal thing, DNA. It tells the truth whether you want to hear it or not.”

  “But Rupert wouldn’t submit to a DNA test,” said Charles.

  Agatha produced a plastic evidence bag containing a crumpled tissue and held it up for Charles to see.

  “I collected one of these off the floor when I was last here,” she explained. “I wasn’t about to waste my time running around chasing my tail without having eliminated the most obvious suspect first. The baby is his. The only good news for him is that Philippa doesn’t want his family’s money, so maybe they’ll go easy on him this time.”

  “Well, I won’t,” said Charles, grimly. “Everyone will know what a swine he is by the time I’m finished.”

  “You’ll lose your investor,” Agatha warned.

  “He’s not the sort I want to do business with,” Charles replied. “There are other investors—and some things are more important than money. I … I heard about you ending up in the river,” he added. “You must have been terrified. I was worried about you. I came to the hospital, but I was told you had just flung out all your visitors and you were sleeping. I waited, but—”

  “I know,” Agatha said. “They told me you had been. It was sweet of you to come.”

  “Well,” Charles rubbed his hands and smiled, “in lieu of a visit, how about dinner? James too, of course. Let’s push the boat out. It’ll be just like old times.”

  “Maybe not quite like old times,” she smiled, standing to leave, “but that would be nice. Now I must go. I’ve left Toni outside. I’m using the poor girl like a taxi service.”

  Charles escorted her to the front door, then stood awkwardly, as if unsure what to say or do. His arm moved as though he were about to shake her hand. She put a hand on his arm, leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.

  “I … I’ve been wanting to build bridges…” he said.

  “Consider a bridge built.” She smiled. “I don’t want to end up in a river again any time soon!”

  * * *

  “Was it really necessary to get up quite so early?” Agatha yawned, staring out of the car window at a morning that was still struggling to get off the starting blocks.

  “Early?” James laughed, pulling out of the hotel car park. “Dawn was just after five. It’s now nearly six. If I’m to supply photographs to accompany the story of this road trip, I want to start with sunrise over the white cliffs of Dover on the first morning.”

  “I know,” Agatha stifled another yawn, “and it’s a nice idea.”

  “The rest of the day will be more relaxing,” James promised. “We’re on the first ferry out of Newhaven to Dieppe, and then we simply wander down through France to the Med. I’m so glad you’re coming with me. You need this time away from work.”

  “I think I probably do,” Agatha agreed. “It’s been pretty hectic of late.”

  “Whatever happened to Cindy Snakehips?” James asked.

  “I wondered how long it would take you to ask about her.” Agatha laughed. “Miss Higginbotham resigned from her job in the warehouse. It seems she heard that two women from a talent agency visited Shirley’s Girlies, and decided to sign up to an agency herself. She now has so many bookings for her act that she’s concentrating entirely on what she apparently refers to as her ‘stage career.’ She’ll be travelling all over the country.”

  “Good for her. Do you think our travels might take us to Bordeaux?” said James. “I hear the wine at Chateau Duvivier is particularly fine.”

  “Why not?” replied Agatha. “They are good friends, after all.”

  “They are,” James nodded.

  “Did you see that?” Agatha said suddenly. “Just back there. That green Land Rover.”

  “Calm down, my dear,” James said gently. “You’ve been seeing green Land Rovers from the time we left The Red Lion in Carsely to when we checked in at The White Lion in Seaford. There are a lot of them about.”

  They headed down to the seafront, passing Seaford’s Martello tower, which James explained was “an intriguing circular fort” built in the first decade of the nineteenth century as one of a chain of gun emplacements designed to defend Britain against invasion by Napoleon. In the watery grey light of dawn, the lone cannon mounted on the roof of the building looked to Agatha like the handle on the lid of a gigantic white casserole pot. Beyond the tower, they found a parking space at the shingle beach near the base of a path that meandered uphill onto the cliffs. The top of the path disappeared into a haze of mist.

  “That’s where we’re heading.” James looked across at Agatha and raised an eyebrow. “Sensible shoes?”

  “Don’t worry, I’ve come prepared for anything,” said Agatha. “These are the same shoes I wore for our quokka hunt.” She opened the car door, retrieving her pink handbag from the footwell.

  “You might as well leave that in the car,” said James. “You won’t be needing it.”

  “Even after all these years,” Agatha sighed, stepping out of the car with her handbag, “you still know nothing about women, do you?”

  Heading up onto the cliff path, Agatha plucked her sunglasses from a jacket pocket. She was squinting against the sunlight, which was startlingly bright when it broke through the thin mist yet still dazzling when the mist closed in as it seemed to bounce around inside the haze, reflecting unpredictably from almost every direction. The sunglasses defended not only against the glare, but also against the squint wrinkles she could feel forming. She knew they’d be there to stay if she gave them the chance.

  The mist became increasingly patchy as they walked, and to the left, Agatha could see there was a golf course. To their right, beyond a short expanse of long grass and bracken, was no
thing but sea and sky.

  “Look!” James’s voice was triumphant. He popped the lens cap off his camera. “That’s exactly the shot I want.” In the distance, the cliffs of the Seven Sisters were shrugging off a veil of mist to bathe in a glory of sunshine, looking impossibly white, the line of the clifftops rising and falling like the back of a ghostly serpent.

  James moved off the path towards the cliff edge, searching for the perfect camera angle, and Agatha followed.

  “Be careful, my dear,” he warned. “Standing too close to the edge is a bad idea. It all gets a bit unstable.”

  “It’s a long way down.” Agatha was already peering over the edge and backed away. “Are the cliffs at the Seven Sisters as high as this?”

  “Higher,” said James. “Go back to the path. I don’t want you—”

  “Getting hurt?” The voice came from the path, where a bulky figure with a shaven head that seemed to sit on his shoulders with little need for a neck stood facing them.

  “Mr. Carver,” said Agatha, “we meet at last.”

  “Just Carver,” said the man, stepping forward, trapping Agatha and James between him and the cliff edge. “It’s not ‘mister.’ Carver’s not my name. It’s just what they call me.”

  “Why would they call you that if it’s not your name?” James asked.

  “Because it’s what I do,” the man answered, reaching behind his back to retrieve from his waistband a large, ugly long-bladed knife. He moved close enough that both Agatha and James were within striking distance.

  “Put that down!” James barked. “What do you think you’re doing, man?”

  “Taking care of you two,” came the reply. “That’s what I was told to do—and I do as they tell me. I take care of you, or they’ll take care of me.”

  “There’s two of us,” Agatha pointed out nervously. “You might have that knife, but you’re outnumbered.”

  “He don’t worry me much,” Carver scoffed, giving James a look of utter derision. He was not quite as tall as James, but he possessed a muscle bulk and an air of menace that made him seem like a giant. “And I’m going to enjoy slicing you up, Mrs. Private Eye. You’ve really screwed things up for me, and you’re going to suffer for it.”