by M C Beaton
He stood back and she walked into his living-room. John was bare-chested, wearing only a pair of blue silk pyjama trousers. His smooth chest was strong and muscled. Agatha wondered briefly what he did to keep so fit before plunging in. “Secretaries,” she gasped.
“Sit down. Calm down. Begin at the beginning.”
“I met my former secretary, Bunty, at the duck races. She’d married her boss. Mad about him.”
“That’s nice,” said John soothingly. “But why come dashing in here in the middle of the night?”
“I just remembered how secretaries can obsess about their bosses. What about Miss Partle?”
“Binser’s secretary?”
“Yes, her. Do you remember it was because of her that Binser met Tristan in the first place?”
“I think I do.”
“Well, think of this. She could have been charmed by Tristan, enough to effect the introduction, but her real passion was for her boss. When Tristan conned Binser out of ten thousand, she must have been determined to get it back. She may have arranged to get him beaten up. So the ten thousand is returned. Still, Tristan tried a bit of blackmail. He loved money. He was desperate for money and more money. Miss Partle thought it was all over. But somehow Tristan gets his hands on a real piece of blackmail material concerning Binser. He phones Miss Partle. Say he speaks to her because Binser is away. She decides to silence him. She phones him in the middle of the night after you leave. Maybe she reminds Tristan of the beating in New Cross. He decides to make a break for it. He leaves the house and goes to the vicarage. She follows him quietly, not wanting to attack him in the street. Let’s say he doesn’t use his key to the vicarage but goes through the French windows. She sees him open the church box and take the money. She suddenly sees it would be to her advantage to get rid of him in such circumstances. She seizes the paper-knife, and bingo!”
“And what about Peggy Slither and Miss Jellop?”
“Tristan must have told them about what he had, or hinted at it. Miss Jellop, upset at his death, decides to phone Miss Partle. Maybe she thinks Miss Jellop knew more than she did; same with Peggy. She panics. Two more murders.”
“Agatha, Agatha, think calmly. It’s all too improbable. You’re clutching at straws.”
“Nevertheless, I am going up there tomorrow and I’m going to have a word with her and see her reaction. She can’t do anything to me in a busy office.”
John was about to point out that Binser’s offices were in a quiet executive suite but restrained himself.
“Go back to bed,” he said soothingly. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
“Maybe I won’t confront her right away,” said Agatha. “I’ll follow her after work, see where she lives, try to find out what sort of person she is.”
“Yes, dear. Just go home,” said John as if humoring a child.
“So you aren’t coming with me?”
Unknown to Agatha, John had a dinner date for the following evening with Charlotte Bellinge, but he wasn’t going to tell Agatha that. “I have a book to finish.”
“Very well,” said Agatha huffily. “I’ll investigate on my own.”
Agatha decided to be in London when Binser’s offices closed for the night. That way she could follow Miss Partle, see where she lived, perhaps get some idea of her real character. She put on a disguise she had worn before of a blonde wig and spectacles with non-magnifying lenses.
Before she went, she was tempted to phone Bill, but then she remembered John’s sheer disbelief at her deductions and realized Bill would probably feel the same.
Once at Binser’s offices, she took one of the many seats in the large reception area, confident that no one would ask her what she was doing there. People came and went and the seats around her began to empty. Staff began to pour out of the building. The receptionists began to pack up for the night, their places being taken by two security guards. Agatha knew she was beginning to look conspicuous and so she left and lurked outside.
Time dragged on. A cold wind blew along Cheapside. Then suddenly Miss Partle appeared. Agatha sighed with relief. She had been worried that Miss Partle might be wearing a hat or something that might make her difficult to recognize. Keeping well behind her, Agatha followed Miss Partle along to St. Paul’s tube and then down the long escalators to the Central Line platform. Now what to do? she wondered. Get into the same carriage? Why not, she decided. Miss Partle would not recognize her, disguised as she was.
They were travelling west. The carriage was crowded. Agatha strap hung, peering occasionally through the press of bodies to where Miss Partle was standing, farther down the carriage.
The secretary got out at Notting Hill Gate and Agatha doggedly followed her. Miss Partle went quickly along Pembridge Road and to Agatha’s disappointment went into a Turkish restaurant. Still, I’m disguised and I may as well eat something, thought Agatha. The restaurant was quiet. Agatha was placed three tables away from Miss Partle.
The secretary took the Evening Standard out of her briefcase and began to read. Agatha ordered kebab and rice and a glass of house wine. The restaurant began to fill up. Finally Miss Partle finished eating and reading and called for her bill. Agatha did the same. As Miss Partle was paying her bill, Agatha was overcome by a desire to pee. Cursing, she dived down the stairs to the toilet. When she emerged upstairs again, it was to find Miss Partle gone. Agatha paid her bill and rushed out into the night, looking to right and left. She saw the figure of Miss Partle turning left into Chepstow Villas and set off in pursuit. She paused at the end of the street and looked along. The sturdy figure of Miss Partle moved from pool of lamplight to pool of lamplight. Apart from a woman walking her dog, the street was empty. Then Agatha saw Miss Partle turn in at the gate of one of the early-Victorian houses. It had a holly tree at the gate. Agatha waited and then walked slowly along and once outside looked up at the house, wondering what to do next. She had learned nothing. Miss Partle had met no one, talked to no one. Agatha knew as little about her as she had always done.
She missed John. She missed someone to talk to. She took a notebook out of her handbag and made a note of the address. Perhaps she should check into a hotel for the night and try again the next day. Try what? jeered a voice in her head.
The more Agatha stood there and thought about Miss Partle being the killer, the more ridiculous it began to seem.
She decided to go home. After all, she hadn’t told Doris Simpson to look after her cats. She had left dried food out for them, which her spoilt cats hated. No, it was time to go home and leave it all to the police.
John Armitage had endured a humiliating evening. He had arranged to meet Charlotte in a smart restaurant in the Kings Road. Charlotte had turned up half an hour late accompanied by a handsome young man. “This is Giles,” she said. “Giles, John Armitage. You don’t mind if Giles joins us, do you, darling?”
So John, who had hoped for a romantic evening, was forced to entertain Giles as well as Charlotte, and Giles was a man of few words. Apart from saying he thought reading books was a waste of time, he drank a lot and said little else. John began to hope that when the meal was over, maybe Charlotte would get rid of this boring young man and invite him home.
The price of the meal made him blink, but ever hopeful, he paid up. To his chagrin, once outside the restaurant, Charlotte thanked him firmly but sweetly for dinner, tucked her arm in Giles’s and walked off with him down the Kings Road in the direction of her home.
John cursed himself for a fool. He found himself missing Agatha. He would have been better off to have gone with her on whatever mad-goose chase she was on. Agatha could be infuriating and bossy, but she was never boring. He had tried to discuss the case with Charlotte until he realized her beautiful eyes were glazing over with boredom. Charlotte, when not talking about herself, only liked to hear things she was interested in, like which restaurant or fashion designer was in and which was out.
The lights were out in Agatha’s cottage when he arrived hom
e. He decided that on the following day he would drive to Mircester where there was an excellent butcher and buy some steak and invite Agatha for dinner.
Agatha awoke the next day with the beginning of a sniffle. She was afraid she must have caught a cold with all that hanging around Cheapside in the cold wind. But somehow her belief that the murderer might be Miss Partle was renewed. She paced up and down her kitchen. Perhaps the thing she should have done was simply to confront the woman and see if she betrayed herself in any way.
Determination rose in her. She swept the morning’s mail off the mat, including a note from John inviting her for dinner, and placed it on the hall table without looking at any of it. She served her cats chopped lambs’ liver and then put a warm coat on and made her way out to her car.
In London, she parked her car in the underground car-park at Hyde Park and took the tube to Notting Hill Gate. The area was crowded as people made their way to the antiques market in the Portobello Road.
Agatha went straight to the house in Chepstow Villas and rang the bell and waited. There was no reply. She stood for a moment, irresolute, and then decided to take a look at the stalls in the Portobello Market. It felt odd to be surrounded once more by the smells and crowds of London. Agatha walked from stall to stall, examining jewellery, military badges and old clothes. She saw a handsome silver paper-knife and decided to buy it for Alf Bloxby. He would need a new one. The stall owner wrapped it up in tissue paper and Agatha slid it into her coat pocket.
She was just making her way through the crowds, past a man with a hurdy-gurdy and with a parrot on his shoulder when a voice in her ear said, “Mrs. Raisin?”
Agatha swung round. There was Miss Partle, surveying her.
“What a surprise!” said Agatha. “Isn’t this market fascinating?”
“It is, if you can tell fake from genuine. But I like looking,” said Miss Partle. “Like a coffee?”
“Thanks,” said Agatha. “Where shall we go? It’s so long since I’ve been here.”
“I live close by. I was just going home.”
They walked together chatting amiably about how London had changed and all the while Agatha was thinking, I must have been mad to suspect this nice woman.
In Chepstow Villas, Miss Partle unlocked the door. Agatha followed her into a sitting-room which led off a narrow entrance corridor. It was furnished with good antiques and some fine paintings. The room, which had originally consisted of front and back parlours, was now one long room with long windows front and back.
Miss Partle went to a thermostat on the wall and turned it up. “Keep your coat on. It’s chilly in here but it will soon warm up. Come downstairs to the kitchen and I’ll make coffee.”
“This is a fine house,” said Agatha when they were downstairs, looking around the gleaming modern kitchen. “You’ve put a lot of work into it.”
“I bought it with an inheritance from an aunt back when Notting Hill was still pretty unfashionable and got work done on it every time I could afford it. Take a seat and tell me why you were following me yesterday in that strange disguise. The coffee will be ready in a minute.”
Agatha laughed. “You are never going to believe this. I must have had a rush of blood to the head. I didn’t know you had spotted me last night.”
“That’s a very distinctive ring you are wearing. You should have left it off. And the wind must have disarranged your wig. I noticed in the restaurant that a strand of brown hair had escaped. I studied you when you thought I wasn’t looking and finally I was able to place you and then I saw you standing outside my house. So what were you doing?”
“I may as well tell you. I hope you are not going to be too furious with me. It all started at the duck races.”
“This sounds weird. Duck races? What has that got to do with me? Oh, the coffee is ready. How do you take it?”
“Just black. Do you mind if I smoke?”
“Yes, I do.”
“I’ll live without one.”
“Here’s your coffee. Now tell me why you were following me.”
“Well, at these duck races in the village, I met my former secretary, Bunty, who had married her boss. I got to thinking about secretaries who were in love with their bosses and I thought that if Mr. Binser had been under some sort of threat from Tristan, you might have stepped in to protect him. It all seems fantastic now I’m here talking to you.”
“I should be angry but I suppose three murders in and around your village must have made you want to grasp at straws. So the police have no leads?”
“Not unless the one I’ve just given them comes to anything.”
“And what was that?”
“Mrs. Feathers, the elderly lady Tristan was living with, she told me she had once seen him using a mobile phone. I told the police. You see, he might have got a phone call on the night he died that frightened him. I think he broke into the church box to take the money because he planned to make a run for it and wanted some petty cash. So if there was a call, they’ll be able to trace who it was.”
A cloud crossed the sun, darkening the garden outside, where two starlings pecked for worms in the small lawn.
“You don’t see many of them nowadays,” said Agatha.
“What? Mobile phones?”
“No, starlings. London used to be full of them. I was looking at the starlings on your lawn.”
“Tell me about these duck races,” said Miss Partle. “It sounds very primitive. It’s a wonder you didn’t have the animal-rights people after you or the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.”
“These were plastic ducks, the little yellow ones.” Agatha told her all about the races and the drunken Morris men.
“I didn’t realize there was so much fun to be had in a village,” said Miss Partle. “What on earth made you decide to poke around in murder?”
“Insatiable curiosity, I guess. But I have no intention of giving up until I find out who did it.”
“Well, you know what they say: curiosity killed the cat. Would you like to see the rest of the house?”
“Not really,” said Agatha. “I think I’d better be getting back down to the country.”
“You were talking about all that wine the dead woman’s sister gave to the races. I’ve built up quite a cellar. Not homemade, mind. Good stuff.”
“You have a cellar?”
“Yes, here.” Miss Partle opened a door in the kitchen. “Come on. You can choose a bottle.”
Agatha walked to the cellar door and peered down some stone steps. “You go on down,” said Miss Partle behind her. “I’ll just switch off the percolator.”
“Is there a light switch?” said Agatha, uneasily reminded of being trapped in Mrs. Tremp’s coal cellar.
“On the inside of the door on your right.” Agatha was searching inside the door for the switch when a massive blow struck her on the back of the head and she fell headlong down the steps and lay in a heap at the bottom.
Agatha could feel pain all over though she was still conscious, but as she heard Miss Partle coming down the stairs, with what was left of her wits she realized she had better look as if she were unconscious.
Then she felt her ankles being bound and then her wrists. A piece of strong adhesive tape was put over her mouth. “Interfering bitch,” hissed Miss Partle. “I thought that phone had been got rid of. I phoned from a call-box round the corner. I hope they don’t realize the phone-box is near where I live. What’ll I do now? I’ll be back. Oh, God, why couldn’t you leave things alone!”
Agatha heard her footsteps mounting the stairs and then the cellar door banged shut. At first Agatha was in such a state of pain and fright that her brain did not seem to be able to work at all. Then she thought dismally that she should have told Bill her suspicions. When she went missing, John would tell him, and he would then question Miss Partle and maybe her body would be found.
John Armitage carried his groceries to his car parked in the public car-park in front of Mircester police head
quarters. Bill Wong hailed him. “On your own? Where’s your fiancée?”
For one split second, John wondered whom he was taking about and then rallied and said, “Oh, Agatha. She must still be up in London. Any luck with that mobile phone?”
“There was a call to him the night he was murdered. It came from a call-box in Notting Hill.”
“Pity. Look, Bill, I hope she isn’t getting herself into trouble.”
“You’d better tell me.”
“It’s just that she had this mad idea that the murderer was Miss Partle – you know, Binser’s secretary.”
“Why on earth should she think that?”
“It’s because she met her former secretary at the duck races. Former secretary married her boss. Agatha starts thinking about secretaries who are in love with their bosses and comes to the mad conclusion that the respectable Miss Partle must have gone around bumping off people to protect Binser. I just hope she doesn’t get into trouble. She’s gone to find out about her. Binser’s got powerful friends.”
Bill stood very still. “I’ve often thought,” he said slowly, “that although Agatha might sometimes do silly things, she is possessed of an almost psychic ability to leap to the right conclusion.”
John looked unconvinced. “Unless Miss Partle has any connection with Notting Hill, the whole idea remains farfetched.”
“I have the addresses of everyone concerned with the murder cases in the station,” said Bill. “Do no harm to have a look.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“All right.” Bill led the way into police headquarters and told John to take a seat and wait.
John waited and waited, feeling increasingly uneasy. Bill was taking an unusually long time.
At last Bill came out. “Miss Partle lives in Notting Hill,” he said. “I’ve phoned Kensington to pull her in for questioning just in case, and hope Binser doesn’t sue us.”
“Give me the address,” said John.
“No, one amateur is enough. Leave it to the police.”
John raced to the post office and asked for the London phone directory. He located Miss Partle’s address, got back into his car and set off at speed for London.