by M C Beaton
She got back to the van and slung her suitcase in the back. Now where? At first she thought of driving north and into the wilds of Scotland, but she had read stories of people who did that and found they were more noticeable out in the Highland wilderness than they were in a town.
Scarborough, she thought. A seaside town which would still have a lot of end-of-season visitors. She drove steadily north out of London. By the time she reached Yorkshire, the van engine was making strange clanking sounds. She thought of abandoning it on the Yorkshire moors and then decided against it. The police would be called to any abandoned car. She drove instead into York and parked in a suburb. She took out her suitcases and left the keys in the van, hoping someone would steal it.
Emma then caught a bus to the railway station and took a train to Scarborough. She longed to take a taxi into town because she was beginning to feel weary, but decided, despite her altered appearance, that it would be safe to take the bus. She then found a small, anonymous-looking bed-and-breakfast and checked in.
Only when she was in a small dingy bedroom with the door shut and locked did she collapse on the bed and feel anger like poison bubbling up inside her. Charles had betrayed her. Charles had humiliated her. He had called her a stalker and he should suffer for it if it was the last thing she did.
It was decided after four days to release Agatha and Charles from the safe house. “It's not as if they're prime witnesses to appear in court,” said Fother, “and it's costing the state money.”
“But someone might kill Mrs. Raisin,” said Detective Inspector Wilkes, to which Fother replied sourly, “Good. I can't stand amateurs.”
Fother went to the safe house to tell them they were now free to go about their business. “Emma Comfrey is still missing,” he said. “We found rat poison and the jar of poisoned coffee at the council tip on the old Worcester Road.”
Agatha glared at Terry. “You've been listening at doors.”
“You underestimate the intelligence of the police,” said Fother coldly. “I suggest, Mrs. Raisin, that in future you leave the Laggat-Brown case alone and concentrate on divorces and missing cats.”
Agatha and Charles were driven in a police car to Agatha's house. Charles collected his own car. “I'm going home,” he said to Agatha.
“Aren't you going to help me any more?” asked Agatha.
“I think we need a break from each other,” said Charles coldly. “All you've done in the last few days is pick on me when they weren't interrogating us over and over again.” Agatha had indeed taken her frustration at being cooped up out on Charles but would not even admit to herself that she was guilty of anything.
“Just like you,” she snapped. “Selfish to the bone.”
“You should know,” retorted Charles, getting into his car. “You wrote the book on selfishness.”
He drove off. The police car followed him. Agatha stood forlornly on her doorstep and watched them go. Then she put her key in the lock and went inside.
No cats came to greet her. She phoned Doris Simpson, who said, “I've got them. They've been playing with my cat, Scrabble. I'll bring them around. I didn't want to leave the poor things there. When the police were finished, I scrubbed everything clean.”
“I'll give you a bonus,” said Agatha. “See you soon.”
She phoned the agency. Patrick Mullen answered the phone. “Don't worry about a thing,” he said. “Everything's been running smoothly. There's no such thing as bad publicity and we've got as much work as we can handle. I took the liberty of getting a girl from a temp agency to answer the phones because your MissSimms is a dab hand at detecting. Got a natural bent for it. Are you coming in?”
“I'm waiting for my cats,” said Agatha, “and then I'll be with you in about an hour.”
When Doris arrived, Agatha, suddenly lonely, tried to get her to stay but Doris said she was working a shift at a supermarket in Evesham and couldn't wait.
Agatha sat on the kitchen floor and petted her cats. Then she rose and took some fish out of the freezer, defrosted it and cooked it for them. After they were fed, she patted them again and then left for Mircester.
When she entered the agency and saw Patrick sitting behind her desk she couldn't help thinking he looked like the real thing compared to herself.
“I need some lunch, Patrick,” she said. “Join me and fill me in.”
Patrick said he wanted sausage, bacon and eggs. Agatha, aware that the waistband of her skirt was uncomfortably tight after her days of inactivity in the safe house, opted for a salad.
“As far as I can gather, this Mulligan is known to Special Branch from the days he worked for the Provisional IRA. They are trying to figure out why he came after you. The only case you have, they say, which involved a shooting was the Laggat-Brown one.”
“Laggat-Brown changed his name from Ryan,” said Agatha. “Why?”
“The cynical cops think it was because he wanted to marry Mrs. Laggat-Brown and all that money from dog biscuits, and she didn't think his name was grand enough. But he seems to be squeaky-clean. He left the firm of stockbrokers he was workingfor with a clean bill of health. He runs an import/export agency selling electronic parts here and there. Mainly a one-man operation, but he was trained in electronics. He also got a first in physics from Cambridge University. Parents both dead. Lived in Dublin but moved with young Jeremy to England when he was fifteen. Mother, housewife; father, a plumber.”
“A plumber! Can't have been much money in the family.”
“Then you don't know much about plumbers. They can earn a mint.”
“I had dinner with Jeremy Laggat-Brown. He was charming.”
Patrick looked at her with his lugubrious eyes. “If he asks you out again, don't discuss the case with him.”
“Why not? You say he's squeaky-clean.”
“That's what the police say. But better to be careful. As to Harrison Peterson's death, it seems that he was given a massive dose of digitalis, not in the vodka but in some coffee. He had a dicky heart and that's what killed him. The pathologist who performed the first autopsy said he had missed the real cause of death because he was overworked and it looked from the police report like an open-and-shut case of suicide. They found traces of coffee in his stomach. They think when he passed out that the murderer heaved him onto the bed.”
“So his murderer must have known about his medical condition?”
“Right. So take time off and forget about the Laggat-Browns for the moment.”
Agatha gave a little sigh, thinking that an evening out with a handsome man like Jeremy Laggat-Brown was just what she needed. She suddenly wondered about Patrick. Did he have a wife? A family?
He was in his sixties, tall with stooped shoulders, oily brown hair and a faintly unkempt appearance. “Are you married?” asked Agatha. “I was. But my hours of work broke up the marriage.” “Children?”
“A son and a daughter, both married with children of their own. Let me fill you in on the business we've been doing while you were away.” He crisply outlined new cases, what Miss Simms was following up and what Sammy Allen and Douglas Ballantine were doing.
Agatha began to feel superfluous. “I'd better start doing some work,” she said.
“Why don't you take a couple of days off?” suggested Patrick. “But it would be better to leave the Laggat-Brown case alone until things cool down.”
Agatha was about to protest. She took a mirror out of her handbag to repair her lipstick and noticed with dismay that she had an incipient moustache.
“Maybe just one day,” she said.
She drove to Evesham and to the Beaumonde Beauty Salon where she secured the services of her favourite beautician, a pretty woman called Dawn. After her moustache had been removed and her eyebrows plucked, she indulged in a non-surgical facelift and emerged an hour and a half later feeling like a new woman.
She drove home and played with the cats and then remembered she hadn't checked her phone for messages.
&nbs
p; There was one from Roy Silver, asking excitedly about the poisoning and then one from Jeremy Laggat-Brown, saying that he was worried about her and suggesting that they meet.
Roy could wait. She phoned the mobile phone number that Jeremy had given her.
His pleasant voice said, “Agatha! What about dinner?” “What about your wife?”
“She's gone off with Jason to the funeral parlour. The body's being released. What if I pick you up in half an hour?”
“Can you make it an hour? I need a shower.”
When she had rung off, Agatha leaped up the stairs, noticing there was that twinge in her hip again. Probably strained it, she thought. She had a quick shower and chose a simple black wool dress and black court shoes. That, with a light coat, would not make her look so overdressed as she had been last time.
Emma was sitting at the moment in a pub in Scarborough working her way through an enormous steak pie and chips. She was deliberately putting on weight and noticed with satisfaction that her face was already fatter and that, combined with her cropped hair, made her look very different from the Emma Comfrey the police were looking for.
There was little to do with her days but eat large meals, change her boarding-house, and walk along the promenade watching the surging waves and plotting revenge.
Her hate focused on Charles Fraith, who had deliberately led her on, only to betray her. It was because of him that she was on the run. The fact that she had tried to poison Agatha Raisin did not cause her one pang of guilt. It was all Charles's fault. She had seen her photograph flashed up on the television news programmes, but it was an old one from her Ministry of Defence days and she knew that her new appearance bore no resemblance to the face on thescreen. She also deliberately “commonized” her accent, adopting the singsong tones of Birmingham.
In the past two days, her name and photograph had disappeared from the newspapers. A few more days, and she might make her way south when she had formulated a plan about what to do to Charles.
NINE
AGATHA did not enjoy the dinner as much as she had expected. She found she was worrying about Charles.
In her working days in London, she had been friendless. Her public relations firm was successful and consumed all her energies. Since moving to Carsely, Bill Wong had been her first friend, and then Mrs. Bloxby and Charles. She realized with a guilty pang that she had always taken Charles for granted. He came and went, often staying with her for quite long periods of time. She worried more about the emotional welfare of her cats than she did of that of Charles.
“You haven’t told me how you’re progressing with the case,” said Jeremy. “I’ve asked you twice, but you were staring off into space and not listening. There seems to have been a black-out on it in the newspapers. They only published that a murdered man had been found in your kitchen but nothing about who he was.”
“I’m sorry,” said Agatha. “I’m a bit distracted at the moment. I really must phone your wife. I have been instructed by the police and Special Branch to leave the case alone for the moment.”
“Special Branch? Why them?”
He smiled into her eyes, but Agatha remembered Patrick’s warning and so she lied. “They wouldn’t tell me.”
“And where were you for the last few days? I called several times.”
“I stayed at some hotel with Charles. I didn’t want to go home while the house was crawling with forensic people. Then the press usually come round in swarms.”
“So you don’t know who the man was?”
“No.”
“You’d never seen him before?” His eyes teased her. “Not a rejected lover, hey?”
Agatha smiled. “Nothing like that.” What was Charles doing? Had she been so very rude to him? “Bugger rocket,” she said, poking at the green mound on her plate.
He looked startled.
“Sorry,” said Agatha. “I didn’t realize I had spoken aloud. Rocket’s not my favourite vegetable.”
“I heard you were in Paris when the murder took place. What took you there?”
“I needed a break and Charles wanted to look up an old friend’s daughter.”
“What’s her name?”
Agatha began to feel a tinge of unease. “I don’t know because we never saw her. The police hauled us in and that was that. Never mind the dreadful murder. Let’s talk about something else. Are you going to the funeral?”
“No, I’ve got to work. Might be away for a bit.”
“Are you reconciled with your wife?”
“Pretty much. But only for Cassandra’s sake. She wants us to be together. But it’ll be a marriage in name only.” He smiled at her again. “We’ll be able to see a lot of each other.”
“I don’t date men if their living with their exes,” said Agatha.
He laughed. “You are now.”
“But that’s different. You’re part of a case I’m working on.” “I thought you weren’t working on it.” “As I said, not at the moment. And you are the ex-husband of a client.”
He took her hand. “And is that all?”
He was extremely handsome and possibly, if she had not been worrying about the absent Charles, she might have succumbed to his charm. But she drew her hand away gently and said, “I’m not in the mood for a flirtation at the moment, Jeremy. This murder and all has frightened me out of my wits. You do see that.”
“Of course, of course.” He began to talk about other things and then drove her home.
Agatha said goodbye to him on the doorstep. He tried to kiss her on the lips, but she turned her face so that the kiss fell on her cheek.
Once inside, she decided to phone Roy.
“You seem to be having a hairy time, sweetie,” he said. “Want me to come down?”
“Oh, would you?” Agatha was suddenly flooded with gratitude.
“I’ve got a few days owing. I’ll be down tomorrow. There’s a train gets in at Moreton around twelve-thirty.”
“I’ll be there.”
Agatha then phoned Charles’s number. Gustav answered the phone. “Who’s calling?” he asked in reply to her demand to speak to Charles.
“Agatha Raisin.”
Gustav promptly rang off and Agatha gazed at the phone in a fury.
She was just about to turn away when the phone rang. Agatha answered it with a cautious “Yes.”
“It’s Mrs. Bloxby here. Someone in the village said you were back. Are you on your own or is Charles there?”
“I’m on my own. Charles has left.”
“I think I should pack a bag and spend the night with you.”
Agatha was just opening her mouth to say that would be wonderful when she heard the vicar’s voice grumbling in the background, “Honestly, Margaret, you’re running yourself ragged. That Raisin female is old enough to look after herself.”
“Wait a minute,” said Mrs. Bloxby. She covered the receiver with her hand, but Agatha could hear faint sounds of an altercation.
When Mrs. Bloxby came back on the phone, Agatha said hurriedly, “I’m really all right. Honestly. Roy’s coming tomorrow to stay.”
“If you’re sure …”
“Absolutely.”
The day before, the owner of the Sea View bed-and-breakfast—a view of the sea was only possible if one walked one hundred yards down the road—was becoming nervous about one of her guests.
This Mrs. Elder was a good customer and paid cash, but she had begun to talk to herself—not out loud, but her lips were constantly moving and her eyes glaring. The owner, Mrs. Blythe, was a widow and wished she had a man around to advise her. The holiday season was over and she had to rely on weekend visitors.
Emma, who had adopted the name of Mrs. Elder, had been in the television room. She passed Mrs. Blythe in the hall, her eyes glazed and her lips moving. Mrs. Blythe made up her mind. “Mrs. Elder!” she said sharply.
Emma started and focused on her.
“Em sorry this is such short notice, but Ell be needing your room.�
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Emma stared at her for a long time. Mrs. Blythe expected her to protest, but Emma decided this was The Sign she had been waiting for. Time to go south.
“Thank you,” she said mildly. “I shall leave after breakfast.”
Mrs. Blythe watched her visitor mount the stairs. Why, Mrs. Elder had sounded quite normal.
Agatha was glad when morning dawned. She had drifted in and out of an uneasy sleep. The trouble with old thatched cottages was that beams creep and things rustle in the thatch. The first winds of autumn had risen during the night and the lilac tree in the front garden scraped its branches against the window.
She went down to the general stores as soon as they opened to buy treats for her cats. There were several other people in the shop and the atmosphere was frosty. Agatha was still being blamed by the villagers for having brought in violence from that outside world of murder and mayhem.
But Agatha was too worried and edgy to notice the atmosphere. She bought pate and cream and frozen fish for the cats, went home and fed them, and drove to her office in Mircester. The wind was sending leaves skittering across the road in front of her car. Autumn was the only time when Agatha missed London. One didn’t notice the seasons much in the city. But in autumn in the country, you could practically feel everything dying and became aware of your own mortality.
In the office, Patrick seemed to have everything in hand. Agatha decided to visit Harrison Peterson’s former wife, Joyce, again. Her new partner was obviously capable of violence.
Thoughts of Emma still at large floated uneasily through Agatha’s mind. But she wouldn’t dare try again. Would she?
The autumn mist of earlier.that morning had lifted and a small white sun shone down over the brown ploughed fields.
Agatha drove steadily along the Fosseway, her eyes flicking occasionally to the speed dial because the police with speed cameras had started using unmarked vehicles.
She turned off on the road down into Shipston-on-Stour and drove into the car-park opposite Joyce Peterson’s house. Agatha found the last parking place available with a feeling of triumph because a car which came in after her had to circle round and round, waiting for someone to leave.