When she let herself into her cottage, the kitten scampered about in welcome, and Agatha found she was delaying her preparations by giving the little creature milk and food and then letting it out into the garden to play in the sun. She strapped on the tape recorder and arranged the switches in her pockets and then tested the machine to make sure it worked properly, which it did.
Now for Vera Cummings-Browne!
It came as a let-down to find there was no answer to her knock at the door of Vera’s cottage. She asked at Harvey’s if anyone had seen her and one woman volunteered that Mrs Cummings-Browne had said she was going out of the village to do some shopping. Agatha groaned. All she could do was wait.
At Mircester Police Headquarters, Detective Chief Inspector Wilkes stopped at Bill Wong’s desk. ‘Have you phoned your friend Mrs Raisin to tell her we caught John Cartwright?’
‘I forgot about it,’ said Bill. ‘I was more interested in this.’ He held up a black-and-white photograph of Vera Cummings-Browne receiving first prize for her flower arrangement.
‘What’s that?’
‘That is what Mrs Raisin was after yesterday. I heard she had called on a Mr Jones and thought I would call on him too to find out if she had stirred anything up. She had taken a photograph from him but he gave me the negative. I’ve just had it printed. And that’ – Bill stabbed a stubby finger in the middle of the flower arrangement – ‘looks exactly like cowbane, the plant Mrs Cummings-Browne professed to know nothing about. Mrs Raisin’s hit on something. Maybe I’d better get over there.’
How many times, wondered Agatha, had she trekked through the stifling heat up to Vera’s cottage, only to find it locked and silent? She was sweating under her blouson.
And then, at last, she saw Vera’s Range Rover parked on the cobbles outside the door.
With a quickening feeling of excitement, Agatha knocked at the cottage door.
There was a long silence punctuated by a rumble of thunder from overhead. Agatha knocked again. A curtain at a side window twitched and then the door was opened.
‘Oh, Mrs Raisin,’ said Mrs Cummings-Browne blandly. ‘I was just going out.’
‘I want to talk to you,’ said Agatha pugnaciously.
‘Well, wait a moment while I put the car away. I think it’s going to rain at last.’
A stab of doubt assailed Agatha. Vera looked completely calm. But then Vera could not possibly know why she had called.
To be on the safe side, she followed her out and watched her put the car away in a garage at the end of the row of cottages.
Vera came back with a brisk step. ‘I’ve just got time for a cup of tea, Mrs Raisin, and then I really must go. I am setting up a flower-arranging competition at Ancombe and someone needs to show these silly village women what to do.’
She bustled into the kitchen to make tea. ‘Take a seat in the drawing-room, Mrs Raisin. Won’t be long.’
Agatha sat down in the small living-room and looked about. Here was where it had all happened. A bright flash of lightning lit up the dark room and then there was a tremendous crash of thunder.
‘How dark it is in here!’ exclaimed Vera, coming in with a tray of tea-things. She set them down on a low table. ‘Milk and sugar, Mrs Raisin?’
‘Neither,’ said Agatha gruffly. ‘Just tea.’ Now it had come to it, she felt almost too embarrassed to begin. There was something so normal about Vera as she poured tea – from her well-coiffed hair to her Liberty dress.
‘Now, Mrs Raisin,’ said Vera brightly. ‘What brings you? Starting another auction? Do you know, it’s actually getting cold. The fire’s made up. I’ll just put a match to it. In fact, the fire’s been made up for weeks. Hasn’t this weather been fierce? But it’s broken now, thank goodness. Just listen to that storm.’
Agatha nervously sipped her tea and wished Vera would settle down so that she could get the whole distasteful business over and done with.
Trickles of sweat were running down inside her clothes. How on earth could Vera find the room cold? The fire crackled into life.
Vera sat down, crossed her legs and looked with bright curiosity at Agatha.
‘Mrs Cummings-Browne,’ said Agatha, ‘I know you murdered your husband.’
‘Oh, really?’ Vera looked amused. ‘And how am I supposed to have done that?’
‘You must have had it planned for some time,’ said Agatha heavily. ‘You had already baked a poisoned quiche and put it in the freezer in the school hall along with the other goodies that the ladies use when the tea-room is in operation. You were waiting for a good chance to use it. Then I gave you that chance. You naturally did not want your husband to die after appearing to eat one of your own quiches. When I said I was leaving mine, you saw your chance and took it. You got rid of mine with the rest of the rubbish left over after the competition. You took your own quiche home, defrosted it, and left two slices for your husband’s supper. I don’t know whether you checked to see whether he had died when you came home.
‘Then you heard I had actually bought that quiche in London. You’re a greedy woman, I know that, from the way I was conned into paying for that expensive meal in a lousy restaurant in which you own part of the business. You saw an opportunity of getting money out of poor Mr Economides, and so you went straight to London to tell him you were suing him. Who knows? You probably hoped he would settle out of court. But he confessed that the quiche had come from his cousin’s shop in Devon. His cousin grew his own vegetables and there is no cowbane in Devon. So you told the police you had decided to forgive him and not press charges. You said you did not know what cowbane looked like. But you borrowed a book on poisonous plants from the library, and furthermore, I found out from a photo Mr Jones had given me that you had used cowbane already in one of your floral arrangements. So that’s how it was done!’
Agatha triumphantly drained her teacup and stared defiantly at Vera.
To her surprise, Vera’s only reaction was to get up and put coal on the blazing wood on the fire.
Vera sat down again. She looked at Agatha.
‘As a matter of fact, you are quite right, Mrs Raisin.’ She raised her voice above the noise of the thunder. ‘You just had to go and cheat in that competition, didn’t you, you silly bitch? So I thought I’d get some financial mileage out of it and yes, I did hope that Greek would volunteer to settle out of court. Then he let fall the bit about Devon. But at least I had him so frightened, he didn’t even examine the quiche closely. I had a bad moment thinking he would and that he would say it wasn’t his. So everything looked safe. I was tired of Reg’s bloody philandering, but I turned a blind eye to it until that Maria Borrow came on the scene. She turned up here one day and told me Reg was going to marry her. Her! Pathetic mad old spinster. It was the ultimate shame. I knew he didn’t mean to divorce me but sooner or later this Borrow fright was going to tell everyone he did and I wasn’t standing for that. Do you know I thought it hadn’t worked? I came home and saw the lights burning and the television on but no sign of Reg. I was a bit relieved. He’d gone out before and left everything on. So I just went to bed. When they told me in the morning he was dead, I couldn’t believe I had caused it. I used to dream of getting rid of him and I almost thought that the baking of that poisoned quiche and the substitution for yours had all been in my mind and that they would tell me he’d died of a stroke. What’s the matter, Mrs Raisin? Feeling drowsy?’
Agatha felt her head swimming. ‘The tea,’ she croaked.
‘Yes, the tea, Mrs Raisin. Think you’re so bloody clever, don’t you? Well, only a crass fool would drop in to accuse a poisoner and drink tea.’
‘Cowbane,’ gasped Agatha.
‘Oh, no, dear. Just sleeping pills. I found out from Jones what you had been asking, and from that woman in the library. I followed you to Oxford. I had seen your car the night before parked up in one of the lanes. I was waiting for you when you drove off. So I went to Oxford, too, to a quack I’d heard of, a private doctor who give
s all sorts of pills to anyone. I said I was Mrs Agatha Raisin and couldn’t sleep. Here are the pills.’ Vera dug in a pocket of her dress and held up a pharmacist’s bottle. And with your name on them.’
She stood up. ‘And so I just spread a few of these leaflets advertising the flower-arranging competition about the floor, and I help a live coal to roll out of the fire on top of them. I will tell everyone that I told you to make yourself comfortable and wait until I returned. Such a sad accident. Everything is tinder-dry with the heat. You’ll have quite a funeral pyre. I’ll just drop what’s left of these sleeping pills into your handbag and put it in the kitchen by the window and hope it survives the blaze.’
It was like a dream of hell, thought Agatha. She could not move. But she could see . . . just. Vera spread the leaflets about, frowned down at them, and then went into the kitchen and returned with a bottle of cooking oil. She sprinkled some of that about and then took the bottle back to the kitchen. ‘Such a good thing this cottage is heavily insured,’ she remarked.
She picked up a glowing coal from the fire with the brass tongs and dropped it on the leaflets and then stood patiently while it smouldered on the floor. With a click of annoyance, Vera struck a match and dropped it on the leaflets, which leaped into flame. She edged towards the door. There was a stack of magazines in a rack by the fire. It burst into flames. Then she locked the living-room windows. With a little smile, Vera said, ‘Bye, Mrs Raisin,’ and let herself out of the cottage. She walked to her garage, glancing over her shoulder. She had taken the precaution of closing the curtains. She would have to get away quickly all the same.
With one superhuman effort, Agatha shoved one finger down her throat and was violently sick. She fell off the chair on to the blazing carpet. Whimpering and sobbing, she crawled away from the roaring fire, dragging herself to the kitchen. Vera had locked the front door. No use trying that way. Agatha feebly kicked the kitchen door closed behind her. The noise in her ears was deafening. The thunder was crashing outside, the fire was roaring inside.
Agatha’s weak hands scrabbled upwards until she grasped the edge of the kitchen sink. Sinks had water and behind the sink was the kitchen window, which that hellcat might have forgotten to lock.
But despite the fact she had been sick, Agatha had swallowed quite a large amount of sleeping pills, or draught, or whatever it was that Vera had put in her tea. Blackness overcame her and she made one last effort heaving herself up, gazing out of the window, her mouth silently opening to form the word ‘Help,’ before she fell back on to the kitchen floor, unconscious.
‘I don’t see why we’re working overtime on this Raisin woman, Bill,’ grumbled the detective chief inspector. ‘The fact that Mrs Cummings-Browne had cowbane in her flower arrangement could be coincidence.’
‘I’ve always been sure she had done it,’ said Bill. ‘I told Mrs Raisin to mind her own business because I didn’t want her getting hurt. We’ve got to ask Vera Cummings-Browne about this photograph. What a storm!’
They were cruising in the police car slowly along Carsely’s main street. Bill peered through the windscreen. A flash of lightning lit up the street, lit up the approaching Range Rover, and lit up the startled face of Vera behind the wheel. Almost without thought, Bill swung the wheel and blocked the street.
‘What the hell!’ shouted Wilkes.
Vera jumped out of her car and began to run off down one of the lanes leading off the main street. ‘It’s Mrs Cummings-Browne. After her,’ shouted Bill. Wilkes and Detective Sergeant Friend scrambled out of the car, but Bill ran instead through the pounding rain towards Vera’s cottage, cursing under his breath as he saw the fierce red glow of a fire behind the drawn curtains of the living-room.
The kitchen window was to the left of the door. He ran to it to try to force a way in and was just in time to see the white staring face of Agatha Raisin rising above the kitchen sink and disappearing again.
There was a narrow strip of flower-bed outside the cottage, edged with round pieces of marble rock. He seized one of these and threw it straight at the kitchen window, thinking wildly that it was only in films that the whole window shattered, for the rock went straight through, leaving a jagged hole.
He seized another one and hammered furiously at the glass until he had broken a hole big enough to crawl through.
Agatha was lying on the kitchen floor. He tried to pick her up. At first she seemed too heavy. The roar of the fire from the other room was tremendous. He got Agatha up on her feet and shoved her head in the kitchen sink. Then he got hold of her ankles and heaved, so that her heels went over her head and out through the window. He seized her by the hair and, panting and shoving, thrust the whole lot of her through the broken glass and out on to the cobbles outside and then dived through the window himself just as the kitchen door fell in and raging tongues of flames scorched through the room.
He lay for a moment on top of Agatha while the rain drummed down on both of them. Doors were opening, people were coming running. He heard a woman shout, ‘I phoned the fire brigade.’ His hands were bleeding and Agatha’s face was cut from where he had shoved her through the broken glass. But she was breathing deeply. She was alive.
Agatha recovered consciousness in hospital and looked groggily around. There seemed to be flowers everywhere. Her eyes focused on the Asian features of Bill Wong, who was sitting patiently beside the bed.
Then Agatha remembered the horror of the fire. ‘What happened?’ she asked feebly.
From the other side of the bed came the stern voice of Detective Chief Inspector Wilkes. ‘You nearly got burnt to a crisp, that’s what,’ he said, ‘and would have been if Bill here hadn’t saved your life.’
‘You’ve got to lose weight, Mrs Raisin,’ said Bill with a grin. ‘You’re a heavy woman. But you’ll be pleased to know that Vera Cummings-Browne is under arrest, although whether she’ll stand trial is another matter. She went barking mad. But you did a silly and dangerous thing, Mrs Raisin. I gather you went to accuse her of murder and then you calmly drink a cup of tea which she had made.’
Agatha struggled up against the pillows. ‘It’s thanks to me you got her. I suppose you found her taped confession on my body.’
‘We found a blank tape on your body,’ said Bill. ‘You had forgotten to switch the damn thing on.’
Agatha groaned. ‘So how did you get her to confess?’ she said.
‘It was like this,’ said Bill. ‘I wondered what you were up to seeing this Mr Jones. I found out about the photograph you had taken, he gave me the negative, I got it developed and found the cowbane in it. We were heading to her cottage to ask her a few questions when we saw her driving along. I blocked the street. She got out and ran for it, and when Mr Wilkes caught up with her, she broke down and confessed and said it would be all worth it if you died in the fire. I managed to get you out.’
‘What put you on to her in the first place?’ asked Wilkes crossly. ‘Surely not one piece of cowbane in a photograph?’
Agatha thought quickly. She had not switched on the tape. There was no need for them to know that her quiche had come from Devon or anything about Mr Economides’s cousin. So instead, she told them about the school-hall kitchen and the library book.
‘You should have brought information like that straight to us,’ said Wilkes crossly. ‘Bill here got his hands cut badly rescuing you and you were nearly killed. For the last time, leave investigations to the police.’
‘Next time I won’t be so amateur,’ said Agatha huffily.
‘Next time?’ roared Wilkes. ‘There won’t be a next time.’
‘The thing that puzzles me,’ said Agatha, ‘is why didn’t I notice the taste of the sleeping pills in the tea? I mean, if she had ground all those pills up, at least it surely would have tasted gritty.’
‘She got gelatine capsules of Dormaron, a very powerful sleeping pill, from some quack in Oxford who is being questioned. The stuff’s tasteless. She simply cut open the capsules and put the li
quid in your tea,’ said Wilkes. ‘I’ll be back when you get home to question you further, Mrs Raisin, but don’t ever try to play detective again. By the way, we got John Cartwright. He was working on a building site in London.’
He stomped out. ‘I’d better be going as well,’ said Bill. For the first time Agatha noticed his bandaged hands.
‘Thank you for saving my life,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry about your hands.’
‘I’m sorry about your face,’ he said. Agatha raised her hands to her face and felt strips of sticking plaster. ‘There’s a couple of stitches in a cut in your cheek. But the only way I could get you out was by shoving you through the window, and I’m afraid I tore a handful of your hair out as well.’
‘I’ve given up worrying about my appearance,’ said Agatha. ‘Oh, my kitten. How long have I been here?’
‘Just overnight. But I called on your neighbour, Mr Lacey, and he offered to keep the cat until your return.’
‘That’s good of you. Mr Lacey? Does he know what happened?’
‘I hadn’t time to explain. I simply handed over the cat and said you’d had an accident.’
Agatha’s hands flew up to her face again. ‘Do I look awful? Did you tear out much hair? Is there a mirror in here?’
‘I thought you didn’t care about your appearance.’
‘And all those flowers? Who are they from?’
‘The big one is from the Carsely Ladies’ Society, the small bunch of roses is from Doris and Bert Simpson, the elegant gladioli from Mrs Bloxby, the giant bouquet from the landlord of the Red Lion and the regulars, and that weedy bunch is from me.’
‘Thank you so much, Bill. Er . . . anything from Mr Lacey?’
‘Now how could there be? You barely know the man.’
‘Is my handbag around? I must look a fright. I need powder and lipstick and a comb and I’ve some French perfume in there.’
‘Relax. They’re letting you home tomorrow. You can paint your face to your heart’s content. Don’t forget that dinner invitation.’
Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death Page 18