by M C Beaton
“No, I’m going to switch the damned thing off!”
Agatha felt her spirits rise as the miles between her and Snoth-on-Sea increased. Going home! She had never felt so passionately about it before. And when Charles finally turned down the road leading to Carsely, where the trees arched on either side to form a green tunnel, she felt like a hunted animal returning to its burrow.
“I won’t wait,” said Charles, carrying her suitcase up to the door. “I’ll call you.”
Agatha entered her cottage and cried a welcome to her cats. They looked up at her with indifference, a sort of cat’s way of punishing her for her absence. Dumping her suitcase in the hall, she went through to the kitchen. The promised casserole from Mrs. Bloxby was on the kitchen table. “Lamb stew,” said a neat little label on the top.
The doorbell rang, making her jump nervously. She went through to the front door and peered through the spyhole. Bill Wong stood outside. She flung open the door with a cry of welcome.
“Come in, Bill.”
“Mrs. Bloxby phoned me to say you were coming back.”
Agatha’s cats, Hodge and Boswell, ran to Bill, mewing and purring a welcome.
“You’ve been having adventures,” said Bill, following her through to the kitchen.
“I’m glad it’s all over. Coffee? Oh dear, I haven’t any milk.” Agatha opened the fridge. “Yes, I have. God bless Mrs. Bloxby.”
“I’ll have a cup. So it’s all over, is it?”
“The police down there have come to the conclusion that one of Brian McNally’s hit men killed Mrs. Jankers.”
“Why?”
Agatha plugged in the kettle. “Well, because of the jewels from that robbery. He must have demanded them, she said she hadn’t got them, and got killed.”
Bill said, “Somehow, the timing’s out. Charlie Black at that time was out of prison, even if he had an alibi, so it stands to reason that McNally wouldn’t step in until after Charlie got arrested.”
“The police down there are happy,” said Agatha mulishly. “What a long time this kettle’s taking to boil.”
“You’ve only just plugged it in. You must have had several bad frights.”
“Yes, I did. But I find it’s not healthy to brood on them.”
“Not healthy to block everything out of your mind either.”
The kettle boiled. Agatha put instant coffee in two mugs, filled them with hot water, carried them to the table and then lifted the milk out of the fridge.
“What are you trying to say?” asked Agatha. “Do sit down and help yourself to milk.”
Bill pulled a chair up to the table and sat down. Hodge climbed up on him and hung round his shoulders like a fur stole and Boswell lay on his lap.
“I’m saying that I think Geraldine Jankers might have been murdered by someone in that hotel. Just a feeling I’ve got.”
“You weren’t there. I think the police have got it right this time.”
“Where’s James?”
“Still there, as far as I know.”
“I thought you would come back with him.”
“Well, I didn’t,” snapped Agatha. “How’s your coffee?”
“Okay.”
“And how’s your love life?”
“Dormant. Tell you what, run through the Jankers case again for me.”
“Bill, I’m tired. I don’t want to think about it any more.”
“Then I’ll be on my way.” Bill gently lifted down her cats and stood up. “There’s just one interesting thing you might not know.”
“What’s that?” Agatha followed him as he walked to the door.
“Cyril Hammond has a record.”
“Of what?”
“As a young man he assaulted a woman in a pub. Mind you, both of mem were drunk, but he half strangled her before the customers could pull him off. Charged with actual bodily harm and sent to the cooler for eighteen months. Goodbye, Agatha.”
Bill walked out of the front door and closed it gently behind him.
“I didn’t even hear that,” Agatha told her cats. “I don’t even want to have heard that.”
She carried her suitcase up to the bedroom and unpacked her clothes. She looked sadly down at all the ridiculous filmy underwear and then stuffed it all into a bag to leave in the clothes bin at Budgen’s supermarket in Moreton.
After she had had a bath and changed her clothes and put on fresh make-up, she decided to visit Mrs. Bloxby.
Before she left she remembered guiltily that she had sent Harry to find out about Fred’s businesses in Lewisham. She phoned him up and told him to forget it.
“Why?” demanded Harry.
“Because the police say she was murdered by some associate of McNally’s.”
“You believe that?”
“Yes. I’ll see you in the office tomorrow.”
“Are you all right? I read about the last attempt on your life in the papers.”
“I’m fine. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
The vicar seemed to delight in telling Agatha that his wife was not at home, so Agatha retreated to her cottage, heated up a portion of the casserole in the microwave and ate it at the kitchen table.
She had just finished when the doorbell rang. Again Agatha peered through the spyhole and saw Mrs. Bloxby.
She flung open the door in welcome. “My husband told me you were looking for me,” said Mrs. Bloxby, “but I was out on parish duties.” Actually, what her husband had said was, “That bloody Raisin woman’s been round here asking for you.”
“Come in. I’ve just eaten some of that casserole you gave me. Delicious. Thank you so much. We’ll go into the sitting room. Doris has left the fire ready to be lit. What a summer! At least it’s stopped people complaining about global warming.”
Agatha lit the fire. As she straightened up, that stabbing pain in her hip struck her again.
“Drink?”
“I’d like a sherry,” said Mrs. Bloxby. “I am really quite tired.”
Agatha poured her a glass and then one for herself. Mrs. Bloxby sat down on the sofa and Agatha in an armchair beside the fire. “I should use this room more,” said Agatha, looking around. “I always seem to live in the kitchen.”
“Are you feeling all right after your adventures?”
Agatha sighed. “I feel safe now that I’m home. It’s all made me grateful for what I thought were the piffling little cases at the agency—you know, lost dogs and cats.”
“They are very important,” said Mrs. Bloxby. “Think how you would feel if your cats went missing. And how are things with James?”
“Definitely finished. Do you know he even gave me an ultimatum? He offered me this holiday trip again and said it was my last chance.”
“Oh dear.”
“It’s a good thing in a way. It’s brought me to my senses at last.”
“I hope you have not only finished with James but with everything to do with that dreadful place.”
“Snoth? What a name! Yes, definitely. Everything solved.”
“Including the murder of Geraldine Jankers?”
“Yes, the police have decided it was one of McNalry’s hit men.”
“How convenient,” murmured the vicar’s wife.
“What do you mean by that?”
“It’s just that it seems too neat. Perhaps it was because I was part of it for a little while.”
“For once in my life,” said Agatha, “I’m going to accept the police decision. In fact, now that Harry and Patrick will be back at the agency, I can relax. I might even take time off and do something with the garden.”
Mrs. Bloxby sipped her drink and looked at the flames in the hearth. She knew Agatha had two obsessions. One was James Lacey and the other was danger. She wondered how long Agatha would last before she started to stir things up again.
But the weeks moved past and as the weather turned fine, Agatha showed no signs of either approaching James Lacey or worrying about Geraldine Jankers. She had told everyo
ne in her office not to talk about the case to her. An Indian summer bathed Carsely in golden misty mornings and hot bright days.
She did pedestrian detecting during the day and sat in her garden in the warm evenings, watching her cats playing on the grass. She had hired a gardener, having decided she really did not want to do the work herself, and admired the smooth green of the lawn and the gaudy splash the dahlias made in the flower beds.
And then her friend Roy Silver arrived to stay one weekend. He had once worked for Agatha when she had run her own public relations firm. Agatha told him to meet her in her office on the Friday evening.
Roy appeared wearing a white Indian-style suit and leather sandals. His hair was dyed black. His face was brown with fake tan.
“What’s with the Indian look?” asked Agatha.
“I’m dressing fashionably for the hot weather,” said Roy. “Are you ready?”
“Just a few things to wrap up.” Agatha stared at her computer. “Won’t be a moment.”
“You could really do with some good magazines,” complained Roy, flicking through a pile on the coffee table in front of him. “Dear me. Old colour supplements are not the thing.” He shifted them to one side and found a file marked “Jankers.”
He opened it up. Harry Beam had written up everything to do with the murder of Geraldine Jankers. Roy had taken a course in speed reading and soon finished it.
“Ready,” said Agatha.
“Ready. Just been reading up on the Jankers case. Fascinating.”
“Where did you get that?”
“It was under these tatty magazines. Harry Beam’s done a good job.”
“I haven’t read it.”
“Why?”
“Because that case is closed.”
“Okay. Let’s have dinner. I’m starving. I want to go to an Indian restaurant.”
“In that outfit? The waiters will think you’re taking the piss. I feel like comfort food—roast beef, steak-and-kidney pud, that sort of thing.”
“Well, it’s your waistline, duckie.”
* * *
They went to a pub called the Foxy Ferret. Roy chattered on about his latest PR ventures with a pop group called Hellish People. “I tried to tell them the gothic look was out,” he said. “But they insist retro-punk will soon be all the rage. Very hard to sell a line about them to the newspapers.”
“What’s their music like?”
“Hellish.”
“Lost cause.”
“I hate lost causes,” said Roy petulantly. “It’s not my fault I can’t publicize them, but the boss seems to think it is. Talking about lost causes—what about the Jankers case? I didn’t read in the newspapers of any arrest. Who do you think did it? Cyril Hammond, who inherited close to a million? But then, how would Cyril know that Wayne would get shot so he could inherit? Fred Jankers, whose businesses were on their last legs and who got the insurance money? Or that old boy, Archie Swale, who for some reason your Harry thinks is a possible candidate?”
Agatha said in an even, measured tone, “I won’t say this again, Roy. It’s over. Case solved. One of the drug baron’s men did for her.”
“There was nothing about that in Harry’s file.”
“Shut up about it.”
But that night, while Roy slept in the spare room, Agatha’s memories of all the violence she had endured came flooding back. She remembered her fear when Brian McNally had abducted her and then when Deborah had been found shot. Once again memory dragged her back to the bar of the Palace Hotel and Brian McNally pointing a gun at her as the waves came crashing through the window.
She fell into an uneasy sleep and dreamed of being in James’s arms once more, awakening at last to another sunny day and filled with longing for him.
As she went downstairs to prepare breakfast for Roy, she found all her old obsession for James was back and along with it a nagging restlessness. James, for Agatha, was as strong an addiction as cigarettes.
Roy padded into the kitchen wrapped in a gaudy Chinese dressing gown. His face was covered in black streaks.
“Your hair dye’s run during the night,” said Agatha. “Take a look. There’s a mirror over the sink.”
Roy peered at his face and let out a squawk of horror. “What am I to do?”
“Go upstairs and take a shower and shampoo all the colour out.”
While she waited for him, Agatha’s mind turned over what Roy had told her about Harry’s report. There had been things she had not known.
Roy appeared again half an hour later, his hair now a mousy brown and wearing a denim shirt and blue jeans.
“Really,” said Agatha, “you look almost human.”
“I look like a nerd,” said Roy. “What’s the programme for today?”
“I might just go back to the office and look at that file.”
TWELVE
AGATHA had given her staff the weekend off. While Roy fidgeted around, she read the file. Harry had not bothered about Brian McNally. The whole focus of the report was on the murder of Geraldine Jankers.
When she had finished reading she looked up at Roy, who was walking about. “I’m beginning to feel I should have asked further questions.”
Roy said, “From all you’ve told me about that dreary watering hole, I’ve no intention of ruining my weekend by going there.”
“Nobody will be there now. The hotel will be boarded up for repairs.” Agatha went to her computer and rang up a list of addresses that Patrick had inveigled from his contact. Fred Jankers was in Lewisham, as was Gyril Hammond. That left only Archie Swale in Brighton.
“Let me see,” she said. “Fred and Cyril are in Lewisham—”
“I am not, repeat not, going to Lewisham.”
“And Archie Swale is in Brighton.”
“Now Brighton I don’t mind.”
“Maybe we could just run down there and have a word with him. It’s a lovely day.”
“All right.”
In the car Roy switched on the radio to a “golden oldies” pop station. The voice of Gloria Gaynor belting out “I Will Survive” filled the car.
“Listen to that,” said Roy. “She’s singing your tune—the anthem of the dumped.”
“Turn it off.”
Roy switched off the radio. “You’ve never mentioned James Lacey.”
“Why should I?”
“He’s right next door to your cottage and yet he hasn’t called, you don’t speak about him, and you never looked in the direction of his cottage once.”
“That’s finished. I don’t want to talk about him.”
“Thank goodness for that. I feel your heart has bled enough.”
“I wonder just exactly how much Cyril got from Geraldine’s will,” said Agatha. “And how much was her life insured for. I don’t think Fred killed her for the insurance. I’ll bet the whole thing was her idea. She would strike a deal where she insured her life and he insured his.”
“So what has this Archie Swale got out of it? Nothing at all, if I remember Harry’s report properly.”
“He’s got a vile temper,” said Agatha. “He was in the paratroopers. He’s got strong wrists.”
“But how could he get her to dress and come out into the night and walk down to the beach? Fred was in the room. There was no phone call. He says he fell asleep before she went out, butif there had been a call he would have known about it. So it must have been prearranged.”
“If it was Archie Swale,” said Agatha, “what could he say to entice her down?”
“Maybe she liked power. Maybe she kept in touch with him. Maybe she said she was going to Snoth and he arranged to meet her, saying he had a present for her. Did you ever tell the police about those items of jewellery Geraldine had stashed under the mattress?”
“I couldn’t. I would have had to tell them how I knew.”
“Harry says in his report that he’s sure Fred did not know they were there.”
“Let’s see what Archie has to say, although he�
��ll probably slam the door in our faces.”
“What! You mean we’re going all this way just to get a door slammed in our faces?”
“I thought you’d be delighted, Roy. Brighton is hailed as the San Francisco of the British Isles.”
“It’s no use you implying I’m gay. I’m thinking of getting married. Watch out! You nearly hit that man on the pedestrian crossing.”
“You amaze me. Who’s the lucky girl?”
“I haven’t got one yet.”
“So why get married?”
“It’s my boss, Mr. Pedman. He only invites members of staff to parties at his home if they’re married.”
“You can’t just get married to please your boss and go to a few parties.”
“I want to further my career,” said Roy primly. “There are plenty of single girls out there.”
“Think hard about it before you do anything,” said Agatha. “I mean, you could find a nice quiet girl and then, after you were married, she might start to bully the life out of you. What about children? I can’t see you with children.”
“Then you know bugger all about me. Drive.”
To Agatha’s amazement, not only was Archie Swale at home, but he actually seemed pleased to see them.
“Come in,” he said. “It’s Mrs. Raisin, isn’t it?”
“Yes, and this is my young friend, Roy Silver,” said Agatha, heartily glad that Roy was not wearing his Indian outfit.
“I was just about to have a little tincture,” he said. “Drink?”
“I’m driving,” said Agatha. “Oh, well, one won’t hurt. I’ll have a gin and tonic.”
He went over to a small side table laden with bottles. “I’ve no tonic, but I do have bitters. What about a pink gin?”
“No, thank you. Sherry will do if you have any.”
“Yes, I do. What about you, young man?”
“The same.”
When the drinks were served and they were all seated, Archie said, “I’m so glad that dreadful case is solved. Poor Geraldine. I didn’t like the woman, but I would have gone on wondering who killed her. I remember when I was in Northern Ireland…” His voice droned on in a long military anecdote while Agatha wondered how she could ask him some pertinent questions.