by M C Beaton
"A bit, but mainly because of your popularity in the village."
"My what?"
"You're very popular, Agatha."
"Oh," said Agatha gruffly. She stared in a bemused way at the screen, not really seeing the words. Agatha Raisin popular! She felt quite dazed with happiness and gratitude. And then the temporary feeling of euphoria faded, to be replaced by one of dread. By cheating over this Open Day thing, she was putting such precious popularity at risk.
She got to her feet. "I think I'd better make a phone call."
He looked at her in surprise. "Aren't you staying for a cup of coffee? I was just about to put the kettle on."
"Put it on. I'll just make a call and come back."
"Use the phone over there if it's that urgent."
"It's private."
"I'll go into the kitchen and shut the door behind me. I won't be able to hear a thing."
But Agatha judged other people's actions by her own. Were the roles reversed, she would most certainly have pressed her ear to the kitchen door and listened.
When she got to her own house, she phoned Roy Silver.
"Aggie," he cried. "All ready for the planting?"
"No, I'm not, Roy, and I've gone off the idea of working for Pedmans. Tell Wilson to tear up that contract. No plants, no deal."
There was a little silence and then Roy said, "Your brain's become peasantified. There's nothing in that legal and binding contract which you signed saying anything about a deal, about plants. You can't get out of it, Aggie, so you may as well have the shrubbery. Come on, it's the best on offer. You'll knock them in the eye."
Agatha felt herself weakening. "Lovely blooms," he coaxed.
"What if you're seen?"
"We'll be there at two in the morning and we'll be as quiet as mice. If anyone does see any movement, you can say you got some workmen in to lower the fence for the big day."
"I suppose if I have to work for Pedmans, I may as well get something out of it," said Agatha sulkily.
"That's the girl. Is it safe to arrive in that little shop of horrors down there? More murder?"
"The police are working on it."
"See if you can solve it while I'm there and I'll get some publicity out of the reflected glory."
"Anything to oblige," said Agatha sarcastically and rang off. She went back to James's cottage.
"Everything all right?" he asked.
"Yes," said Agatha uneasily. She sat down beside him again and tried to focus on what he had written, but her uneasiness about her garden would not go away.
She had meant to stop Roy's coming. For days she had meant to stop his coming. But as more and mote people said they were looking forward to seeing her 'secret garden', the more Agatha felt she had to have something to show them. If she said there had been some sort of disaster and that everything had died and she was keeping the place locked up, some busybody was sure to think her garden had been vandalized like those others and tell the police and the police would say that it had been as bare as Mother Hubbard's cupboard when they had seen it.
So all too soon, in the middle of the warm dark summer night, there was Roy with his team of workmen and gardeners. They finished at dawn and drove off.
"Come along," said Roy. "You can't sit hiding in bed. Take a look!"
Agatha went outside.
A blaze of magnificent colour met her eyes. Flowers and trees and shrubs filled what had all too recently been a bare garden. The cats slid out round Agatha and frolicked on the grass as if they, too, were enjoying the display.
"It's magnificent," said Agatha, awed.
"So now we can go and get a bit of sleep," said Roy. "When do the people start coming?"
"Not till ten. How do I tell them what flowers are what? I don't want to be exposed as a cheat."
"See! Labels tied on all of them, nicely faded and weathered, but legible. You just bend down and read."
They retreated indoors. Roy collapsed fully dressed on the bed in the spare bedroom and went instantly to sleep. Agatha took a last admiring look out of the window of her bedroom, set the alarm for nine and went to sleep as well.
At first they came in ones and twos and then suddenly Agatha's garden was full of exclaiming and admiring people. Roy, at a table by the side gate, collected the fees.
He could hear Agatha's voice describing the plants with all the authority of a real gardener. "Yes, that is a fine example of a Fremontodendron californicum and that's a Wattakaka sinensis. Lovely perfume."
And then Bernard Spott, to whom Roy had been introduced, raised his puzzled voice. "But this is all wrong," he said plaintively. "Mrs Raisin, that is not a Fremontodendron californicum. That's a Phygelius capensis!"
Agatha gave a gay laugh and turned away from him to another visitor, but Bernard went on. "And you said, Agatha, that that was a Hydrangea paniculata Grandiflora. Firstly, it's nothing like a hydrangea. It is, in fact, a Robinia pseudoacacia called Frisia. And this - "
"You don't know what you're talking about," snapped Agatha.
"He's right," came a woman's voice, a visitor to the village, a hard-faced woman in a straw hat and print dress. "I would say all these flowers and plants have the wrong labels on them." Her hard eyes fastened on Agatha. "I've been listening to you and you do not know the first thing about the plants in your garden. I think you just bought them lock, stock and barrel from some nursery and the nursery put the wrong labels on them."
There was a silence. Agatha was aware of Mrs Bloxby standing listening, of Bill Wong, who had just arrived in time to hear it all.
"Would anyone like some tea?" asked Agatha desperately.
People began to shuffle out of the garden until there was only Agatha, Roy, Mrs Bloxby, and Bill Wong left. "Lock the side gate," Agatha ordered Roy. "What a disaster!"
"What happened?" asked Mrs Bloxby.
"I'll tell you what happened," said Bill. "Our Agatha has been cheating again. You did get all those plants from a nursery, didn't you? Just like you said you would."
Agatha nodded miserably.
"That's no crime," said Mrs Bloxby. "A lot of the villagers buy extra plants and flowers and things to put in before Open Day. The nurseries around here do a roaring trade. It is only a pity that the nursery you went to proved to be so incompetent."
"They're the best there is," said Roy defensively. "They'd never have got the wrong labels."
Bill leaned forward and peered into a flowerbed. "Come here, Agatha," he said. He pointed downwards. "I don't think any of your dedicated gardeners would tramp over your flowerbeds."
In the soft earth was a clear imprint of a large booted foot.
"I brought men with me to put them in," said Roy. "Probably one of them."
Bill turned to the vicar's wife. "Could someone possibly have switched the labels?"
Mrs Bloxby put on her spectacles and went from plant to flower to tree, reading the labels. Then she straightened up. "Why, how clever of you! That's exactly what is wrong."
"Are you sure?" demanded Agatha. From inside the house came the sound of the doorbell.
"I'll get that," said Roy, disappearing inside.
"I think that's what happened," said Bill. "Someone's played a trick on you, Agatha. When could they have done it?"
"It must have been sometime between, say, five in the morning and nine."
"Daylight. Someone might have seen something."
Roy came back into the garden with James Lacey. Agatha groaned.
"You've done magnificently, Agatha," said James.
"You may as well know the truth." Agatha looked thoroughly wretched. James listened to the tale of her deception, his eyes crinkling up with laughter.
When she had finished, he said, "You don't do things by halves. All these months of hiding behind that high fence - I'm glad to see you've got it lowered at last - and all the lies and secrecy, and all for one Open Day in an English village!" He stood and laughed while Agatha stared at her shoes.
&nb
sp; Mrs Bloxby's gentle voice cut across James's laughter. "You know, I think it might be a nice idea to have tea out here among these lovely flowers and things. I see you have a little garden table and chairs there. I'll help you get the tea-things."
Agatha, glad to escape from James's amusement, went inside with her.
Bill turned to James. "Look, you're her nearest neighbour. Did you see anyone around this cottage this morning?"
"I saw a few people. Let me think. I was up very early. Mrs Mason has just got herself a dog. She came walking past and called out a good morning. I was tidying up my front garden. Then there was Mrs Bloxby."
"What would she be doing along Lilac Lane?" asked Bill. "It doesn't lead anywhere."
"She often goes for a walk about the village in the early morning. Then along Lilac Lane, away from the village end, I heard a couple, a man and a girl, I think. I heard the girl laugh." He stood for a moment, looking bewildered. "That's odd!"
"What's odd?"
"I just remembered. The night Agatha and I discovered Mary had been murdered, as we were waiting outside her house to see if she would answer the bell, a man and a girl passed behind us on the road. I heard the girl laugh."
"Why didn't you tell me this?" demanded Bill sharply.
"It slipped my mind. It didn't seem important. Just a village sound. I mean, they weren't coming away from the house or anything like that."
Agatha and Mrs Bloxby came into the garden carrying tea-things.
James swung round. "Agatha, do you remember that couple on the road the night we discovered Mary dead?"
"Yes," said Agatha. "I do now. I'd clean forgotten about them."
"And now James here says he heard a couple at the end of this road this morning, early."
"They could have been walkers," said Mrs Bloxby. "There's a lot of them about the Cotswolds. Although Lilac Lane doesn't lead anywhere. I mean, you can't drive anywhere, there is that footpath across the field at the end of it."
"You were out early, Mrs Bloxby," said Bill. "Did you see anyone?"
"I only saw Mr Lacey's bottom. He was leaning over a flowerbed in his front garden, weeding, I think."
"Do you think it could have been that Beth Fortune and her boyfriend?" asked Roy eagerly, who had been told all the details of the murder during the night by Agatha.
"I think I'll pay a call on them," said Bill.
"Where exactly were Beth and John on the night of the murder?" asked Agatha.
"They were in Beth's rooms in college, studying."
"Any witnesses to that?"
"No, but usually only guilty people arrange cast-iron alibis."
"Come back when you've seen them and let us know what they say," urged Agatha.
When he had gone and James, Agatha, Roy and Mrs Bloxby were seated around the table, James said, "Even if it turns out that John Deny and Beth played a trick on you, Agatha, it's a far cry from murder."
"Perhaps not," said Agatha. "I mean, surely the destruction of the gardens ties up somewhere and somehow with Mary's death. I wish I had never thought of this silly scheme. Now I have to go and work for Pedmans, the PR firm, in the autumn, and for six months, too."
"I don't understand," said Mrs Bloxby. "How did that come about?"
Roy kicked Agatha under the table. She yelped, rubbed her ankle, and glared at him. "I'm going to tell them," she said. She explained about the deal.
"You must be very good at your job," said Mrs Bloxby. She tried to surreptitiously feed Hodge, the cat, with a piece of muffin. Agatha had bought a packet of a product new on the market which promised 'real American blueberry muffins from your own microwave'. They tasted like wet cardboard. Hodge took it from her fingers and then spat it out on the grass. James crumbled his, so that his plate was covered in muffin crumbs. He hoped Agatha might think he had eaten some of it.
"She is," said Roy. Somehow Mrs Bloxby, without saying anything, was making him feel guilty about getting Agatha to sign that contract. Away from the world of PR, away from London, things which passed as normal business in the city had a way of appearing, well, shabby in this rural tranquillity.
He gave himself an angry little shake, like a wet dog. People didn't go about planting people in London; mugging, raping, knifing and shooting, but not planting.
"I think," said Mrs Bloxby in her quiet voice, "that the full enormity of Mary Fortune's death is striking me at last. Someone in this village is mad enough and deranged enough to have killed her and left her body in such a dreadful way. What on earth could she have done to engender such hate?"
"So you believe she was a murderee?" asked James. "I mean someone who is going to get murdered because of some flaw in their character?"
How can you talk about Mary with such academic interest when you once made passionate love to her? thought Agatha. Aloud, she said, "If only it would turn out to be an outsider!"
"You sound more like a villager every day, Agatha," said Mrs Bloxby. "I must go and look at some of the other gardens. Why, James, what about yours?"
"It's open," he said easily. "I do what the others do and just leave a box at the gate for the money."
"Then I'll have a look. Agatha?" Mrs Bloxby turned to her. "Care for a walk?"
Agatha shook her head. "I couldn't bear the looks and whispers."
"I wouldn't worry about it. Yes, they will most of them be laughing over it, but I think with affection. You are regarded as something of a character."
"That's me," said Agatha. "The village idiot complete with cats. So where do we go from here?"
Bill came back into the garden. "Until this murder is solved, Agatha," he said, "you should keep your front door locked at all times. Come to think of it, with that expensive security system in your garden, the lights must have been blazing while the men were working. Or did you switch it off?"
"It switched itself off ages ago," said Agatha. "I'll phone the security people and get them to fix it. What did Beth and John have to say for themselves?"
"John did it," said Bill, sitting down. "And he's quite unrepentant about it."
"What!" screeched Agatha. "Have you charged him?"
"It's up to you. But for a schoolboy trick? And have your deception come out in court?"
"But if he did that to me, maybe he did it to the other gardens. What was his reason for switching those labels?"
"He said he went out for a long walk because he couldn't sleep. He turned along Lilac Lane. As he passed your house, he saw the truck outside leaving. Wondering if it might be a burglary, because it was dawn and no one was about, he started to go up to the front door. He heard voices from the back garden and went to the side path and listened. He heard someone say, "So now we can go and get a bit of sleep. When do the people start coming?""
"Roy," breathed Agatha.
"And then your voice saying, "Not till ten. How do I tell them what flowers are what? I don't want to be exposed as a cheat." And then Roy here replying, "Labels tied on all of them, nicely faded and weathered, but legible. You just bend down and read." So he thought he would pay you back for 'meddling in his life', as he put it, by switching the labels. He went down the lane a little and sat by the hedge and waited until the house became quiet. Then he went into the garden and moved all the labels around. I still can't think him guilty of anything else. He seems to me typical of a certain type of Oxford University student, boorish and somewhat sulky."
"Damn him," muttered Agatha. "I would look a fool if this ever came to court."
"Thought I'd let you know," said Bill.
"How did the funeral go?" asked James. "You did go to it, didn't you?"
"Yes, I was there at the crematorium. Very sad. Only me and two other detectives and Beth and John."
"Some of us from the village should have gone," said Agatha, suddenly conscience-stricken because all at once it was hard to think of the Mary who had been exposed since her death. She could only remember Mary's warmth and charm. Agatha suddenly became more determined than ever to
see what she could do about solving Mary's murder. Whatever Mary had been, she had not deserved such a death.
Nine
Agatha remembered Bill Wong's warning when she was putting on make-up in her bedroom and heard her front door open the next day and someone walk into the hall. She was looking wildly at her dressing-table for some sort of weapon and seeing only the nail scissors when James's voice called up, "Agatha, are you there?"
"Coming," she yelled, and put some Blush Pink lipstick over her chin, swore dreadfully, wiped it off, and applied it properly.
She ran down the stairs. "What's the matter?"
"I wondered whether you would fancy a trip into Oxford," said James. "I remembered this professor friend and phoned him up. He's at one of the other colleges but he's got us an introduction to a don at St Crispin's. I phoned him and asked him to lunch. That way we can find out more about John Deny."
"And Beth," said Agatha eagerly. "Wait a minute. I'd better change."
He looked appraisingly at her flowered blouse and plain skirt. "You'll do. We're lunching at Brown's and no one dresses for that. I'll drive."
And Agatha was happy as they drove off. She tried to persuade herself that she was happy because the day was sunny, because she was getting out of the village and ahead with the investigation. She did not want to admit that James's company was beginning to exert its old magic.
He took the road through Chipping Norton and Woodstock. "Do you think anything will come out of this lunch?" asked Agatha.
"It might. I don't think either Beth or John Deny had anything to do with the murder, but we may as well try everything."
"I wonder what he'll be like, this don. What's his name?"
"Timothy Barnstaple."
Perhaps he'll be attractive, thought Agatha.
James parked in the underground car-park at Gloucester Green and they walked back along St Giles and so to Brown's Restaurant on the Woodstock Road.
"This is silly," said James. "I forgot to ask what he looked like."
"Did you book a table?"
"No. We're meeting him now, at twelve, so it won't be too crowded, and it is the university holidays."
They entered the restaurant and looked about. A thin middle-aged man got up as they walked in. He was leaning on a stick. He was dressed in a black jacket and black trousers. His black hair was greased back from a tired lined face. Porter from one of the hotels, thought Agatha and turned her eyes elsewhere.