by M C Beaton
‘I won’t say a word, Buffy. Does Rex come here a lot?’
‘I’m off. If you aren’t out of here in the next few minutes, I’m getting you thrown out,’ said Buffy.
Charles slid off the bar stool and made his way to the door and out into the street.
‘I daren’t wait any longer,’ said Charles when he joined Agatha. ‘Rex is definitely gay. I met an old school friend. Last person you would suspect. Roly-poly politician, wife and two kids. What do we do now?’
‘Let’s go somewhere for dinner,’ said Agatha. ‘I’ve a feeling I’ve been looking at this case the wrong way around.’
Simon and Hattie Chivers were having dinner in Rules in Covent Garden. Looking down the prices on the menu, Simon could only be glad that his parents had relented and had reinstated his allowance.
Hattie was thin to the point of emaciation. Her arms were like sticks. Her brown hair was lank. She asked him to order. Simon ordered the most inexpensive items on the menu, fearing that anything more expensive would turn out to be a waste of food. This turned out to be the case, as Hattie merely picked at her fish.
‘Now,’ said Simon eagerly, after he had heard all Hattie’s complaints about working for the soap, ‘how do you get on with Jessica?’
‘No one gets on with Jessica,’ said Hattie. ‘She’s a right cow.’
‘She struck me as charming.’
‘Well, she would. She does this warmth and friendliness, but she’s always trying to put the knife into someone. You have to be sure to pay homage to her or she’ll get you fired. The producer, Malcolm, is so terrified of losing her that he’ll do anything she wants. There was this old actor Carl Friend. Hadn’t had a part in for ever and couldn’t believe his luck when he landed the role of a lovable old patient. One day, Jessica was late on the set, and Carl joked, “Come on, Jessie, move yer bloody arse.” He was only quoting from My Fair Lady. The next thing we know, he’s been written out.’
‘But that could have been the producer’s decision.’
‘No. I overheard Jessica whispering to him, “That’ll teach you to watch what you say in the future.”’
‘I can hardly believe it,’ said Simon.
‘Men can’t, until they get wise to her.’
‘What’s her relationship with Rex Dangerfield?’
Hattie hid a piece of fish under her vegetables. ‘The terrible twosome. They make a vicious combination. Always trying to throw the other actors off. Malcolm, the producer, thought if he could get rid of Rex, the atmosphere might get better, but Jessica ups and says she’ll leave the series if he goes.’
‘Is he gay?’
‘Is the Pope Catholic?’
‘So why are they so close?’
‘I think our Jessica’s a psycho,’ said Hattie. ‘Got to go and powder my nose.’
She’s jealous, that’s all, thought Simon. But he flicked through the notes on his phone, coming across the bit where George had asked Agatha if she knew anything about psychos.
Hattie eventually came back. Her face was white and covered with a thin film of sweat. Probably been to throw up, thought Simon cynically.
‘Aren’t you jealous of her?’ asked Simon.
‘I thought you invited me out because you liked me,’ complained Hattie, ‘but you’re just another poor sod who thinks Jessica’s a goddess. Well, thanks but no thanks for dinner.’ She got up and marched out of the restaurant.
‘It’s like this,’ said Agatha as she and Charles dined at a Turkish restaurant in Borough High Street. ‘So Rex is gay. Now what if he was the one that had been in love with George? Maybe George swung both ways.’
‘I can’t see it. He had a penchant for motherly women.’
‘Oh, yeah? What about Joyce Hemingway?’
‘We’ve only got her word for it that she and George were an item,’ said Charles.
Agatha’s phone rang. ‘Hello, Simon,’ Charles heard her say. Then Agatha listened intently. Then she said, ‘Come and join us for coffee.’ She gave him directions.
When she had rung off, she said, ‘Simon’s just had dinner with the make-up girl from the soap. He says he might have something interesting.’
When Simon joined them, Agatha asked eagerly what he had found out. Simon finished by saying, ‘Of course, she’s an anorexic wimp and probably as jealous as hell.’
Agatha’s eyes gleamed with excitement. ‘Suppose she’s telling the truth and her producer would do anything to keep Jessica sweet. He may even have lied to the police about where she was at significant times and given her those alibis.’
‘Why don’t we just tell Bill Wong what we’ve got,’ said Simon uneasily, ‘and let the police get on with it?’ He had not got over the shock of being bitten by an adder, not to mention being hit over the head.
‘What would they do?’ demanded Agatha. ‘Same as before. The producer, Malcolm Fryer, will stick to his guns and there’s nothing they can do about it. Do you know if they are on location tomorrow, Simon?’
‘As a matter of fact, they’re going back to the Malvern Hills.’
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Agatha, her eyes gleaming with excitement. ‘I don’t need to be landed with a long walk like you and Toni had. I’ll go by the route near the road that they take.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Simon eagerly.
‘No,’ said Agatha. ‘You’re too smitten with Jessica to see straight. Charles and I will go.’
‘Can’t,’ said Charles. ‘Hosting the village cricket match.’
When Charles dropped her off at her cottage, Agatha had a sudden weak longing to beg him to stay. In the excitement of the new discovery, she had forgotten her nighttime fear of adders. It was almost as if Charles had sensed what she wanted to say because his face wore a closed-down, shuttered look. He gave her a brief goodbye and drove off.
Agatha let herself into her cottage, petted her cats and trailed into the kitchen. She phoned Toni and told her all about the latest developments and asked the girl to accompany her on the following day. Toni arranged to meet Agatha in the office at nine in the morning. ‘What time do they start filming?’ she asked.
‘I forgot to ask Simon and I don’t want to phone him. He’s so besotted he might turn up.’
‘These location things usually take all day,’ said Toni. ‘We’ll set off at nine.’
That night there was a tremendous thunderstorm. Agatha tossed and turned, imagining snakes slithering down from the thatch and under the doors. Her cats joined her on her bed. At last the storm rolled away and she fell into an uneasy sleep.
When she joined Toni in the office, she again felt a pang of envy as she surveyed the girl’s good looks and glowing healthy face. She looked at her own face in a mirror on the wall. She had dark shadows under her eyes and the lines on either side of her mouth seemed more pronounced. Not so long ago, thought Agatha, women of my age just let themselves go. They let the lines come and the hair go grey and the figure to droop and thicken. I need a complete body transplant.
‘How are you going to go about this?’ asked Toni as they drove off in Agatha’s car.
‘I’ll work my way round to it,’ said Agatha uneasily, because she had not really worked out a plan of campaign. ‘Maybe I’ll let you try to chat him up.’
‘You should have warned me,’ said Toni. ‘I’m not wearing chat-up clothes.’
She was dressed in shorts and a striped T-shirt, her long legs ending in sandals.
‘At your age and with your looks,’ sighed Agatha, ‘it doesn’t matter what you wear.’
The day looked as if it had been washed clean by the storm. Water glittered on the leaves on the trees as the sun shone down from a clear sky. Agatha switched on the radio and then almost immediately switched it off again. ‘If there’s one thing I can’t stand,’ she said, ‘it’s cheeky-chappie DJs who sing along with the records or talk through them. That man is a garrulous prick.’
‘Want me to try Classic FM?’ asked Toni.
‘No, don’t bother. Full of ads.’
‘What about Radio 3?’
‘You can forget that one as well. Some pontificating moron will be saying something like, “We will now play a piece of music not often heard by Austrian composer Freidrich Bummergritch,” or something like that and I feel like screaming that the reason it’s not often heard is because nobody wants to hear the damn thing.’
Agatha relapsed into silence and drove steadily on. She found herself thinking about that listening device in the office safe. So easy just to take the thing out and bring it along. No wondering about which questions to ask.
At that very moment, Simon was thinking about the listening device as well. He wanted to see Jessica. Did she ever talk about him? His duties for the day lay in finding one cat and one dog. He began to speculate that Agatha would not mind if he said he could not find them and would try again the next day. To make sure, all the same, he checked with the animal shelter. He managed to find the dog and returned it to its grateful owners. No sign of the cat. He phoned the cat’s owner to see if she had any news and heard to his delight that the cat had returned home.
Now, the listening device drew him like a magnet. He staked out the office until he saw Mrs Freedman leaving for lunch and then went cautiously upstairs. The office door was locked, which meant that Patrick and Phil were out as well. He unlocked the door and went in. He went quickly to the safe and put in the combination – a combination that Agatha had left on a piece of paper in the top drawer of her desk.
He was just lifting out the machine when he heard footsteps coming up the stairs. He grabbed the listening device, quickly relocked the safe and scurried into the toilet in the corner of the office.
He heard someone come in and the rustle of paper. Then a knock at the toilet door. Mrs Freedman’s voice. ‘Who’s in there?’
‘It’s me, Simon.’
‘Can you hurry up?’
‘I’ve got constipation.’
‘I can’t wait much longer.’
‘Coming!’
Simon put the machine under his jacket and zipped it up. He emerged, clutching his stomach.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Mrs Freedman. ‘I decided to buy a sandwich and have my lunch in the office.’
‘Yes, a bit of tummy trouble.’
When she went into the toilet, Simon scurried down the stairs and headed for his motorbike. If anyone opened the safe and found it gone, he would say he took it home to be on the safe side, or that he could sell it on eBay, or something like that. The day was fine and at the end of the road to the Malvern Hills was his goddess. He stowed the machine in his bike and roared off.
When Agatha and Toni arrived, there were a few sightseers, standing at the perimeter, taking photographs.
They edged forward to get nearer to the filming. A security guard barred their way. ‘You can’t come any closer,’ he ordered.
‘Oh, yes we can,’ said Agatha. ‘We’re guests of Malcolm Fryer.’
‘All right then, but be quiet.’
Toni and Agatha edged as close as they could. ‘We’ll just do that scene again,’ Malcolm was saying. ‘Jessica has been bitten by an adder. Rex, you go frantic because you can’t get your mobile to work. So you’ve got to suck out the poison.’
‘Right. Cool,’ said Rex. ‘Why can’t we use a real adder? I’ve got one here.’
‘For God’s sake, get rid of it. Health and Safety would go bananas. We’re going to cut to a library shot of an adder. What if she really got bitten?’
‘I know how to handle snakes,’ said Rex sulkily.
‘Forget it. Silence everybody. Camera. Action.’
Just at that moment, Rex looked across and saw Agatha and Toni. ‘What’s she doing here?’ he shouted.
The producer swung round. ‘It’s that amateur nosey tec from the village,’ said Rex. ‘I can’t act with her around.’
Malcolm strode up to them. ‘I must ask you to leave. What are you doing here?’
‘I’m wondering why you lied to the police about Jessica’s alibis,’ said Agatha.
Toni suppressed a groan. And to think Agatha often prided herself on what she saw as her tact and diplomacy.
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ raged Malcolm. ‘Just get the hell out of here!’
Jessica came up to them. ‘What’s up?’
‘This wretched woman is claiming that I lied to give you alibis.’
Jessica gave a silvery laugh. ‘Oh, that’s our Agatha for you. Agatha, why don’t you wait in my trailer? We’ll sort all this out later.’ She signalled to the security guard. ‘Show these ladies to my trailer.’
‘But . . .’ began Malcolm.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Jessica. ‘All will be explained.’
Agatha and Toni sat in Jessica’s trailer and waited . . . and waited. ‘I’m hungry,’ complained Toni.
As if on cue, the door of the trailer opened and a girl entered carrying a tray. ‘Miss Fordyce said you might like to eat something. She says she’ll only be about another hour.’
‘Where did you get this food from?’ asked Agatha suspiciously.
‘I collected it from catering,’ said the girl, looking surprised.
When the girl had left, Agatha eyed the tray of chicken sandwiches and coffee. ‘Come on,’ said Toni. ‘She’s not going to poison us with all these people around. And at least we can now tell the police that Rex knows how to handle adders.’
They ate and drank, listening to the noise of the cast and extras outside. Agatha’s vision began to blur and her head swam. ‘Toni’ was all she managed to gasp before falling unconscious. Toni tried to stand but fell headlong on the floor, feeling reality slip away.
Simon had parked his bike and was now making his way on foot towards the filming site, which was in a natural amphitheatre. He took out a pair of binoculars and scanned the site. He could not see Agatha anywhere, but there was Jessica with Rex, just emerging from the catering trailer. He set up the listening device and switched it on. He was hidden behind a thick clump of gorse.
He pointed the listening device towards Jessica and put on the earphones. ‘It’s too hot,’ Jessica was complaining. ‘My make-up’s beginning to melt.’ Simon watched and listened as the acting went on.
He saw the scene where Jessica pretended to be bitten by an adder in her thigh and Rex trying to call for help on his mobile and failing.
At last, the day’s filming was over. He put his binoculars to his eyes again and saw Jessica and Rex going into a trailer. Now perhaps Jessica just might say something about him. Simon did not stop to wonder about the idiocy of his behaviour or wonder why on earth Jessica should even remember him.
Then he heard Jessica say, ‘Well, they’re both out cold. What do we do with them?’
Rex’s voice came loud and clear. ‘We’ll wait until everyone has gone to bed. I’ll bring the van round and get the bodies into it. I’ll get them into their car and drive it up on the moors. Give the couple of snoops some adder bites and leave them to rot.’
‘No, don’t do that,’ said Jessica. ‘The police will be over us like a rash. It’ll bring the focus right to us. Take the bodies to the Freemantle woman’s garden and dump them there. Have they got enough of the drug in them to knock them out for that long?’
‘Got the stuff at a club last night. Told it was prime.’
‘I wish we had never started this,’ said Jessica.
‘It was your idea,’ complained Rex. ‘You went off your chump when Marston turned you down flat. You said if I didn’t help you, you’d get me off the show.’
‘Oh, stop whining and pour me a drink.’
Simon lay behind the bushes, trembling.
Chapter Ten
Simon knew if he phoned the police, the call could be traced to his mobile. He could head off and find a phone box. Could he disguise his voice? Agatha and Toni were drugged. He would need to wait and watch and see if there was some way he could follow Jessica a
nd Rex when they went to finish the job and then call the police. If they were caught in the act outside Mrs Freemantle’s cottage, that would be the best way.
He felt ill when he thought of all Toni’s beauty and youth wiped out.
The evening wore on into night. Jessica and Rex had dinner in the catering van and then returned to the trailer. ‘Set the alarm for two in the morning,’ ordered Jessica. ‘I’m bushed.’
The hours dragged on. Simon was too frightened and upset to fall asleep.
At two o’clock, he heard the alarm go off, and Rex say, ‘I’ll get old Rosie’s wheelchair.’ Rosie Buxton was an elderly actress who played the part of a wise old Malvern woman.
Simon’s brain worked furiously. Surely there was a gleam of hope. They had talked about a drug and giving them snakebites. But they hadn’t said anything about them being dead. He decided to phone the police.
Simon left the listening device under the gorse bushes, and began to run across the moors to where he had parked his motorbike.
Toni groggily came awake. She blinked her eyes. She saw she was in the backseat of Agatha’s car and that Rex was driving with Jessica beside him. She quietly leaned towards Agatha, put a hand over her mouth and pushed and prodded her.
Agatha’s eyes flew open. Toni put her hand to her lips. Agatha stared at the back of Rex and Jessica’s heads.
Simon was standing with the police at a road barrier set up outside Carsely. ‘You’re sure of this?’ asked Bill Wong.
‘I told you,’ said Simon. ‘I suspected them all along and was listening outside their trailer.’
Simon had decided to stop at the first phone box when he got out of the area in Malvern and had phoned the police.
‘Aren’t you searching the roads from Malvern?’ he asked desperately.
‘Yes, there’s an all-points alert,’ said Bill. ‘We’ll get them . . . unless you made the whole thing up.’