by M C Beaton
The email message was short and straightforward.
Okay—I’ll pay it. It has to happen after the mariage. I need her off my back. She’s driving me crazy. I want her dead.
“Charles didn’t write that,” said Agatha. “It doesn’t sound like him at all.”
“And the word ‘marriage’ is spelt wrong,” added James. “Charles is an educated man. He would never do that.”
“I agree,” said Bill. “Somehow someone managed to plant this in Charles’s email account, but Wilkes is determined to charge him. He’s pressing him hard in interviews, waiting for him to slip up.”
“Charles has his lawyer there, surely?” Agatha said.
“Of course,” Bill assured her. “And he’s cooperating fully, but there is more. From the marks on her neck, the pathologist has come to the conclusion that Mary was strangled by someone with small hands—most likely a woman. Wilkes is out to prove that that woman was you, Agatha. He has a warrant to search your house. They’re looking for anything to incriminate you. He and the team will be in here in half an hour.”
“But I will not,” said Agatha, picking up her handbag, car keys and phone and heading for the door. “I have things to do. James, would you stay here and keep an eye on everything for me? Thank you, Bill. I know you’re putting your job on the line by being here. You’d best disappear.”
* * *
Agatha headed for Duns Tew, where she had arranged to meet Toni. She parked her car at the White Horse and walked round to the side road leading to the Lexingtons’ house. The sky was heavy with clouds, spreading a premature gloom of dusk, as she approached Toni’s car pulling her jacket tight against the slight chill. She settled the pearls at her neck and the stylish decorative pin on her lapel. Toni spotted her coming and wound down her window.
“Seen anything suspicious?” Agatha asked.
“Nothing at all,” said Toni, “but there’s no sign of Simon, either.”
“Have you tried calling him?”
“No reply. His phone’s switched off.”
“Wait here and keep trying. I’m going in.”
Agatha walked up to the house and rang the doorbell. Jacob Lexington answered.
“You again!” he snapped. “Still snooping around? I thought I told you to stay away from us.”
“I came to say how sorry I am for what happened earlier,” Agatha explained. “May I come in? I’d like to apologise to Deborah as well.”
“Make it quick. We … She tires easily.”
Agatha was shown into the hall and asked to wait. She glanced into Jacob’s den and saw a suitcase lying beside his weights. She was sure that hadn’t been there before. Jacob reappeared.
“She will see you now.” He waved Agatha into Deborah’s room and closed the door behind her.
The room was dimly lit, the last remnants of daylight filtering through the slatted window blinds. Deborah was lying in her hospital bed, covered with a white sheet but wearing a sweatshirt rather than her silk pyjama top.
“Back again?” she said wearily. “What is it this time?”
“Good evening,” said Agatha. “I wanted to say how sorry I am that all that business with Mary has been raked over again. It must be awful for you.”
She walked towards the bed. The monitors flickered to Deborah’s left as before and the paperback, the TV remote and her water sat on the table to her right, along with the bottle of scent. Agatha sniffed the air.
“Such a pretty perfume,” she said, picking up the bottle. “And I love the crystal bottle. I’ve never seen one quite like it. Must be very expensive. There’s a nice weight to it.” She juggled the bottle from one hand to the other.
“Don’t do that,” Deborah ordered. “Put it down!”
“Of course,” said Agatha. “I would hate to drop it…”
She tossed the bottle from her left hand to her right and it slipped through her fingers. Before it had fallen more than a few inches, Deborah’s right hand shot out to catch it.
“Nice catch,” Agatha congratulated her. “Clumsy of me, but was that just a miracle recovery we witnessed, or does your right arm work perfectly well when you want it to? That might explain why you have your remote control, your water and your treasured perfume—all the things you need most—here on the right. Why would you do that if you couldn’t use your right arm to reach them? Why not have the monitors here and your things to your left?”
Deborah flung back the bedsheet and swung her feet slowly down onto the floor. She was wearing jeans and trainers. She reached inside the neck of her sweatshirt, pulled out the cables and dragged them across the bed. They were attached neither to her nor to the monitors.
“If you’ve worked it all out, then I don’t need to pretend with these any more,” she said.
“I should have worked it out sooner,” Agatha admitted, “but Mary had made so many enemies and you had laid so many false trails to follow. The perfume should have told me pretty much straight away. You waft it around so much that poor Jacob must have walked through a cloud of it when he was dressed up for the masked ball. I smelt it on him when he danced with me.”
“The masked ball,” Deborah snorted. “What a hoot. Not really for me, though.” She stood to face Agatha. “I can walk, even run a bit now, but I’ve never been much of a dancer.”
“You’ve been building yourself up in secret. The weights in Jacob’s den that Toni thought were too light for him were actually being used by you. You’ve been mobile for some time, yet to the outside world, even to your closest friends, you still appeared to be an invalid.”
“Things aren’t always what they seem,” said Deborah.
“So I keep hearing,” Agatha agreed. “The friend who came to see you showed you her invitation to the ball—what did you do? Send her off to make a coffee? She had no idea you could move, no idea when she came back into the room that you had been through her handbag and stolen the invitation.”
“That,” Deborah admitted, “really was a stroke of luck. We knew the Brown-Fields would have security. It’s one of their ways of showing off.”
“You knew your way around Barfield House from when you were kids. There are dozens of ways into the main house and Gustav is never entirely conscientious about keeping them all locked, but the Brown-Fields’ security people probably would. So you needed someone on the inside. We had Gustav to let us in—we even saw your friend who had lost her invitation causing a scene at the door—and you had Jacob, all dressed up and disguised. I’m assuming he used his computer and design skills to doctor the invitation.”
“He’s good at that sort of thing.” Deborah nodded. “That party came along at just the right time for us. It was too good an opportunity to miss. Once we were in, we just had to coax Mary out of the ballroom. She didn’t know Jake. He was going to charm her with some rubbish about horses and tempt her out to the stables. Then you cropped up and made that part easy for us.”
“But why dress her in the riding gear?”
“We had to dress her in something. If we were spotted carrying a body, we might have been able to pass her off as a drunk who had passed out, but not when she was naked, straight out of the shower.”
“Why move her at all? That was a risky thing to do.”
“We know the house. We were pretty confident we could get her down to the stable block without being seen.”
“Ah yes, the stables,” said Agatha. “That was a big statement from you, wasn’t it?”
“I wanted her found there. She did this to me,” Deborah pointed to the bed, “and it was all because of her obsession with riding. She was supposed to die there, but you forced her to go upstairs to change.”
“What about the faked suicide?” Agatha asked. “You must have known that would have been exposed sooner or later.”
“We were hoping for later,” said Deborah. “Anything to buy us a bit of time. Maybe people would have seen the suicide as a statement too. She was a failure as a rider, she was a failu
re as a human being—that sort of thing. Frankly, I was happy for people to read into it whatever they liked, as long as it dragged out the investigation.”
“Ah yes, sowing confusion, seeding false leads to cause delays. You knew that Charles would be the prime suspect, naturally, and I take it that Jacob hacked his email account to plant a message apparently sent to a hit man. A false lead. Planting the costume at Tamara’s house was another false lead. You had us running around tracking down anyone involved in the show-jumping circuit. You knew that would provide plenty of suspects.”
“We were pretty sure Charles would involve you, Mrs. Raisin, and that just served to muddy the waters even further. More delays, more time for us.”
“And time is money, isn’t it? You sold this house, but when it comes to property, there are a lot of checks and balances to be observed, especially when this much money is involved. There are rules about the transfer of money, rules that ensure the money is going to the right person, rules that make sure there’s no fraud involved, that there is no kind of money laundering going on … It all takes time, even when the buyer and seller are happy with the deal.
“Even once you got your hands on the money, you couldn’t take the chance that it might be frozen in your bank account. That could have happened if you had skipped the country too soon. The suitcase in Jacob’s room—you’re ready to go, aren’t you?”
“We were unlikely suspects, given my condition—or what people thought was my condition. I had plenty of time to lie in a bed thinking of nothing but how to get my own back on that little cow. I came up with dozens of plans for her murder, but no one could know that I was getting better. Me being bed-bound was central to every plan I dreamt up. If I was suddenly to disappear abroad, it would arouse suspicion and that could put our money at risk. It had to go into our regular bank account in the normal way. Then we could safely transfer it out of the country and disappear.”
“That’s not going to happen now, I’m afraid.” Agatha pointed to the decorative button on her lapel. “Camera. We’ve got it all recorded. Are you getting all this, Toni?”
The door crashed open.
“Yes, she is,” Jacob said, throwing Toni’s laptop onto the floor. He flung Toni straight after it. Her wrists were bound in front of her with gaffer tape, and a strip of the stuff covered her mouth. Her feet were not bound, but Jacob had spun her off balance. She groaned as she hit the floor.
“Toni, are you—” Before Agatha could utter another word, Jacob had crossed the room and grabbed her arms, holding them by her sides. His sister quickly looped the monitor cables around her, tying them tight, pinning her arms. Then she pushed her backwards into one of the visitors’ chairs.
“Get more tape,” she ordered Jacob. “We need to secure this one, too.”
“In a second,” said Jacob. “Let’s have everyone join the party.”
He left the room and returned dragging Simon, bound hand and foot with tape and gagged. He dumped him beside Toni, who had propped herself into a sitting position, then stepped back into the hall to retrieve his roll of tape for Agatha.
“You won’t get away with this,” said Agatha.
“I bet you’ve said that loads of times, Mrs. Raisin,” Deborah sneered, “but this time you’re wrong.”
Jacob returned with the tape but had taken no more than three steps into the room when Simon launched himself across the floor, rolling like a log and knocking Jacob’s legs from under him. Jacob staggered forward and fell to his knees, but he was up again in an instant, turning towards the helpless Simon, who did his best to shuffle away.
“You stupid little piece of shit!” Jacob yelled, landing a kick in Simon’s stomach. In the blink of an eye, Toni was on her feet, clutching the laptop in both hands.
“Look out, Jacob!” his sister yelled, but it was too late. Toni brought the laptop crashing down on Jacob’s head.
Agatha winced. In the movies, that would have been enough to knock Jacob unconscious, but this wasn’t a movie. Agatha knew that in real life when you bashed someone on the head, unless it was with something heavy enough to smash their skull in, all it did was make them angry. It hurt, the shock disorientated them for a second, and then they hit back.
“Run, Toni!” Agatha screamed, but it was too late. Jacob flung out an arm and caught Toni across the face with the back of his hand. She was knocked to the floor again. Agatha struggled to stand, throwing kicks at Deborah, but then froze when Deborah held the blade of an open pair of scissors to her throat.
“Tape her to the chair, Jake.”
Jacob held a hand to his head, then examined the blood on his fingers. He frowned and turned towards Toni.
“This one first,” he said. Toni was winded, gasping for breath through the gaffer tape gag. He grabbed her by the wrists, and dragged her towards him in order to reach her ankles and run the roll of tape around them. “Don’t want her popping up again all of a sudden.”
He then knelt to wind the tape around Agatha’s ankles.
“Can’t have been much of a life for you, Jacob,” said Agatha, “after your sister’s accident.”
“It was no accident,” Deborah corrected her. “That bitch could have killed me.”
“All the same,” Agatha reasoned, thinking fast and trying to keep a conversation going as long as she could. Now it was her turn to be buying time. “A young man like you, you should have been out there in the big wide world—parties, holidays, girlfriends…”
“Tamara has always been besotted with you, hasn’t she, Jake?” his sister sniggered.
“Everything might have been different,” Jacob said, wrapping tape around Agatha’s arms, fixing her to the chair, “if it hadn’t been for the Brown-Field girl. She deserved all she got.”
“It’s not too late for you, you know, Jacob,” said Agatha. “Deborah strangled Mary, not you. You could still walk free if you play your cards right.”
“We are both walking free, Mrs. Raisin,” Jacob replied. “We’re heading for a place in the sun. We’re leaving all this behind and starting a whole new life. Nothing can stop that now.”
“You won’t be able to hide forever,” said Agatha. “The police will catch up with you eventually.”
“Not a chance,” Jacob assured her. “New names, new passports, new everything. Jake and Debbie will no longer exist. We’ve been planning this for a long time, and our flight leaves tonight.”
“Unfortunately,” added his sister, spreading her hands around Agatha’s throat and squeezing gently, “you have given us a few loose ends to tidy up.”
“What do we do with them?” asked Jake.
“A fire, I think. We’ll burn the place down with them inside.” She released Agatha’s neck.
“The new owners,” Agatha wheezed, sucking air, “won’t be too pleased about that.”
“Property developers,” Deborah laughed. “They won’t care. We’ll be doing them a favour. They would only tear the place down anyway. They’ll fit four new houses on this site.”
“There’s a can of petrol in the garage,” said Jacob. “I’ll—”
Suddenly there was a huge crash, the roar of an engine and the honking of a car horn. Bright lights beamed in through the blinds.
“There goes your garden fence,” Agatha said. “Bella has arrived.”
The front door flew open and a stream of uniformed officers rushed into the room, filling the air with calls of “Police! Stay where you are! Nobody move!” Then Bill Wong was at her side, cutting the tape and untying the monitor leads.
“Are you all right, Agatha?” he asked.
“Fine,” said Agatha, turning to look over her shoulder to where Alice Peterson and another police woman were releasing Toni. Toni nodded to her. A medic was tending to Simon. He saw Agatha looking towards him and gave her one of his wide, wrinkled grins. “They seem fine too. Boy, am I glad to see you, Bill. I was beginning to think you might not make it in time.”
“I got the first call fro
m Toni,” said Bill, smiling. “We were already on our way when the Colonel demanded reinforcements.”
“Agatha, my dear girl!” The Colonel marched into the room carrying his green ledger. “Jen and I were having a damn fine dinner down at the White Horse. Watched it all from there. Boys in blue cut it a bit fine, eh?”
“Colonel, you have been amazing.” Agatha went to shake his hand, hesitated, then threw her arms round him. “Thank you so much for all your help.”
“Glad to be of service,” he said. “Now I must get Bella home. Looks like it’s going to rain again. Don’t like her out in the rain. Mustn’t forget Jen. Left her finishing off an apple and walnut strudel.”
“We’ll want to talk to you later, Colonel,” said Bill, “and Agatha…”
“I know,” Agatha said, watching Deborah and Jacob being led away in handcuffs. “It’s going to be a long night.”
Chapter Ten
Two days later, Toni and Agatha were driving down the road towards Barfield House, the swish of the tyres on the wet road surface drowning out the noise of the engine. Sunshine flickered through the leaves of overhanging branches, reflecting off the road in patches of glassy glare. The heatwave had broken with a series of heavy rain showers and the Cotswold spring was now settling into its more usual gentle, milder weather.
Following a harrowing Monday night of questions, form-filling and more questions, Agatha had given her entire team the day off on Tuesday, with her secretary left holding the fort in the office. Mrs. Freedman had let the phone ring off the hook and spent most of the day drinking tea, reading a rather raunchy bodice-ripper lent to her by Agatha and shouting, “No comment!” down the stairs when reporters rattled the letter box, just as Agatha had instructed. Today they were all back at work, and now that the file marked “Fraith Murder Inquiry” was complete and nestling safely in Agatha’s briefcase, things were beginning to get back to normal. There were more missing pets, more employers with security concerns … and lots more divorces. Murder, Agatha decided, was actually quite good for business, unless, of course, you were the victim, in which case you could consider yourself liquidated.