by M C Beaton
‘Oh, sod off,’ said Agatha. ‘Is this protest your idea?’
‘No, but it goes to show that people all over Britain are not going to sit back and see the life of the country ruined.’
Agatha shrugged and moved away, only to bump into Bill Allen. ‘You’d better be careful,’ he said in his odd, strangled Savoyard voice. ‘You have stirred up deep feelings.’
‘Are you threatening me?’
‘Just a warning, Mrs Raisin.’
A silence fell on the crowd as eleven o’clock came and went. Agatha suddenly saw James’s tall figure at the edge of the crowd. She longed to join him but was frightened of being snubbed. And yet he had phoned her. She was just edging her way towards him when someone shouted, ‘Here they come!’
A small procession was heading towards the spring. At the front were gentle-faced middle-aged people, but behind them came burly young men with tattoos, camouflage jackets, earrings, and trouble written all over them. Five policemen were standing in front of the spring.
The onlookers cleared a way for them. A woman with a face like that of a worried sheep turned to face the crowd and took out a sheaf of papers.
‘We are here,’ she said in a wavering voice, ‘to protest against the commercialization of this spring. Our village life must be protected.’
‘Where do you live?’ shouted Agatha.
The woman blinked, opened and shut her mouth, then held on to her notes more firmly and went on. ‘As I was saying, we must protect –’
‘Where do you live?’ demanded Agatha again.
‘Shut your face!’ shouted one of the tattooed young men.
‘No, I will not shut up,’ yelled Agatha. ‘Does this woman know anything about village life? Or did you all come from Birmingham or London to make trouble?’
The tattooed man began to work his way towards Agatha. He had thick lips and a beetling brow. Agatha wondered whether to flee. But the police were there. And James – James, who had miraculously appeared at her side.
‘I think she should answer the question,’ came Jane Cutler’s voice. ‘These protesters look as if they come from the slums of Birmingham. They are strangers to the country, and to the bath, from the smell of them.’
‘That’s torn it,’ muttered James.
The truculent young man had reached Agatha. ‘You shut your mouth or I’ll shut it for you.’
James moved in front of Agatha. ‘You’ll get nowhere with your protest uttering threats.’
In time, James saw the bulletlike head moving forward to head-butt him and jumped to one side. Several women screamed. The police moved forward.
A scrawny woman wearing, of all things, a flak jacket, grabbed hold of Jane Cutler and pulled her hair. Jane screamed like a banshee. The police wrestled the woman to the ground. Sirens sounded in the distance as police reinforcements began to arrive.
Agatha’s would-be assailant was trying to land a punch on James. James was dodging and weaving, knowing that these days if he landed a punch on the man himself, he could well end up in court for assault.
The spokeswoman for the demonstrators was now crying helplessly. Agatha saw Mrs Bloxby go up to her, say a few words and then begin to lead the weeping woman away.
Police swept into the crowd. They grabbed the young man who had been trying to hit James and carried him off. ‘Pigs!’ he was screaming. And as he was dragged backwards, his burning eyes looked straight at Agatha and he shouted, ‘I’ll fix you.’
‘Come along,’ said James, taking Agatha’s arm. ‘We need a drink.’
‘Where? Here? In the village?’
‘No, let’s go back to Carsely.’
The Red Lion was quiet and they found a table in a corner next to the log fire which had been lit, for the day was cold.
‘Bill Wong told me you had better success with Jane Cutler than I had.’
‘So he told you?’
‘Why not? I hope we are not going to work against each other.’
‘I don’t think I’m going to be working on this at all,’ said Agatha. ‘I’ve got to go up to London next week. Got a lot of journalists to see.’
‘Oh, so I’m on my own?’
‘For the moment. It certainly looks that way.’ Agatha wondered what on earth had prompted her to say such a thing. Had she kept her mouth shut, they could have gone on discussing the case.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said James. He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Just a friendly word of advice, Agatha. Don’t take this the wrong way.’
Now, Agatha knew as well as anybody that when someone says, ‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ the best thing to do is to stop them saying anything, but something inside her seemed to have pressed the ‘destruct’ button that morning, so she said, ‘Go on.’
‘I think you are making a spectacle of yourself with that young man from the water company. This new taste in young men is a bit sad. There was Charles in Cyprus and now this one. It doesn’t matter if the man is wealthy; toy boy is the label stuck on him if he consorts with a woman as old as you.’
Agatha’s face had turned a muddy colour with hurt.
She stood up, knocking her chair backwards as she did so. ‘Damn you,’ she said in a choked voice.
James got up as well. ‘Look here, Agatha. I only –’
‘Shut up!’ screamed Agatha. ‘Just shut up!’
As she raced out of the door, she saw Mrs Darry standing at the bar, her face avid with curiosity.
James slowly finished his drink, aware all the time of curious eyes turned in his direction, of the fact that Mrs Darry was eagerly grabbing hold of every newcomer and whispering fiercely.
He rose and went out and walked slowly home. He could not admit to himself he had been at fault, or that his remarks had been prompted by jealousy. He was overwhelmed instead by a burning desire to find out something about this murder. Then perhaps, just perhaps, he would tell Agatha what he had found out. Her scene in the pub had been unforgivable.
Chapter Four
The following Monday, Agatha packed her bags and headed for London. She had a heavy week’s work ahead of her talking to journalists. James’s words still burnt and hurt.
The Charles he had referred to was Sir Charles Fraith, a baronet in his forties with whom Agatha had enjoyed a fling in Cyprus. Although she had only gone to bed with Charles out of pique over James’s own unfaithfulness, she knew he had no more forgiven her for that brief affair than for trying to marry him when she was already married.
Charles had phoned Agatha several times since their return from abroad, but she had always told him she was too busy to see him and so he had stopped calling.
She was glad she was leaving. There was a police force to cope with murder investigations. She would concentrate on her work and forget James and forget murder and forget Carsely for a little.
She passed a busy week in London, cajoling journalists into promising to come to the fête. Instead of bringing the new brochures over to Carsely as he had promised, Guy had sent them to her hotel in London.
At the end of her week’s work, Agatha finally accepted an invitation to lunch from Roy Silver.
Roy took her to an old City restaurant where the public relations company they both worked for had an account. It was quiet and stately, mahogany and brass and solid old-fashioned City food. It was hardly Roy’s scene. He would have preferred a trendy wine bar full of bright young things, but he had no intention of paying for the meal when he could charge it to the firm.
Roy was wearing an Armani suit which looked a size too large for his thin figure. His tie was a noisy psychedelic glare in the gloom of the conservative restaurant.
They both ordered roast beef, Agatha eating hers with every appearance of enjoyment and Roy poking at his and occasionally eating little nibbles.
They discussed various aspects of the fête, who was definitely going to attend, who was iffy. Then Roy leaned back in the chair and ran his fingers through his hair. He had a thin face, a
weedy body and sharp clever eyes. After working for Agatha and taking up his present job, he had adopted a more sober style of dress – if you discounted the tie – and the hole in his left ear where he used to wear an ear-ring was the only mute sign of his discarded image.
‘You haven’t mentioned James Lacey or murder all week, Aggie,’ he said.
‘Been too busy,’ said Agatha. ‘I wonder if I should have a pudding?’
‘It’s your waistline, sweetie.’
Agatha signalled the waiter. ‘I’ll have the spotted dick.’
Roy giggled. ‘What a name for a pudding! Sounds like a case of syphilis. So, like I said, how’s murder?’
‘I told you, I’ve been too busy.’
‘Not like you. What’s happened to that famous curiosity of yours?’
‘I’ve decided to do my job and leave the police to do theirs.’
‘So what happened with you and James in Cyprus?’
‘He went off with a tart. He claims it was all part of his investigations into drugs.’
‘And you don’t think so? Come on, Aggie. Our James isn’t the kind to go with tarts for any reason other than investigation. Too much of a puritan.’
‘Well, I had a bit of a fling with someone and he got miffed.’
‘Naughty old Aggie. You really ought to do something about this murder.’
‘Why?’
‘Be a good bit of publicity if you found out who did it. I mean, haven’t you got one teensy-weensy suspect?’
‘There’s one I would like it to be.’
‘Give.’
‘Some old bat called Jane Cutler. She’s a walking monument to the plastic surgeon and the beautician. In her sixties, but all face-lifted. She’s poison. The things that go on in villages. She seems to specialize in marrying men on their last legs with cancer and then benefiting in their wills. She’s a parish councillor. One of the others, Angela Buckley, fortyish, strapping, was keen on the late Percy Cutler, but the older Jane Cutler snatched him out of her grasp. Actually, Angela warned me off.’
‘So you think it might have nothing to do with the water?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Anyone else warn you off? Any trouble?’
‘Andy Stiggs, another councillor, one of the ones who are against the water company. He warned me off when there was that ruckus from Save Our Foxes.’
‘Who the hell are they?’
‘Some environment group who have transferred their attention from the plight of foxes to the sacrilege of taking water out of the spring. Usual lot. Nice people really interested in a batty way in protecting village life followed by the usual trouble-making skinheads. There was a bit of a dust-up. James nearly got hurt protecting me.’
‘So is he doing anything about finding out about anything?’
‘I don’t think he’s interested in anything other than insulting me.’
‘Shows he’s still interested, Aggie. Wouldn’t insult you otherwise. Why don’t you ask me down for the weekend? We could ferret around together.’
Agatha opened her mouth to refuse and then closed it again. She did not know if Guy meant to have an affair with her, or whether it was to be regarded as a one-night stand. Suddenly the idea of going back on her own made her feel vulnerable. Roy could be tiresome and malicious, but they had known each other since he had started work for her as an office boy.
‘Yes, all right,’ she said. ‘I suppose it might be interesting to trot around and ask a few questions.’
‘You’d better eat that stodgy pudding. It’s getting cold.’
Agatha regretted her invitation when she met Roy at Paddington Station on Saturday morning. He was dressed in skin-tight jeans and a black leather jacket and talking into a mobile phone, looking around all the while to see if people noticed he was talking on a mobile phone, just as if millions of people hadn’t got the damn things, which Agatha thought had been expressly designed to irritate the travelling public.
‘If you use that on the train,’ snarled Agatha when he had rung off, ‘I’ll throw it out of the window. And you’re only in your twenties. I thought men only went in for jeans and black leather when they hit the male menopause.’
‘And I thought middle-aged women only took to eating roast beef and fattening pudding when they thought they were past attracting anyone.’
‘Oh, stop bitching,’ snapped Agatha.
She passed the journey to Moreton-in-Marsh by ignoring Roy and reading a novel set in the Cotswolds about middle-class, middle-aged infidelity, marvelling as she did so at her own attitude that the well-off middle classes should not have any passions and remembering the days of her youth when it was the lower classes who were supposed to be immune to the sensitivities of soul suffered by their betters. At one point in the journey, Roy’s phone rang but he retreated with it down the carriage before Agatha’s basilisk glare.
Bright yellow fields of oil seed rape slid past the carriage windows, and lilac trees heavy with blossom leaned down over railway embankments. With that now familiar feeling of coming home, Agatha gathered up her belongings as the train finally slid into Moreton-in-Marsh Station.
With Roy carrying his own weekend bag and Agatha’s suitcase, they made their way to Agatha’s car. The sky was blue and birds sang in the trees bordering the station car park. Flower baskets moved in the light breeze.
‘When I’m as old as you,’ said Roy, ‘I’ll move down here.’
Feeling ancient, Agatha drove off, negotiating the heavy traffic in Moreton and then swinging out along the A44 and up the long steep slope through Bourton-on-the-Hill and so down the winding road under tunnels of arched trees to Carsely.
James’s cottage had an empty look, she noticed, and Roy suddenly said, ‘Going to call on Lacey?’
‘No. If you get the cases, I’ll open the door.’
While Roy carried the bags in, Agatha petted her cats, who had been looked after in her absence by her cleaner, fed them and then let them out into the garden.
After they had unpacked, they settled down over coffee in the kitchen and Roy said, ‘Well, let’s begin. Who have we on this council?’
‘For the water company, we’ve got Mrs Jane Cutler, Angela Buckley and Fred Shaw. Against, we’ve got Mr Bill Allen, Andy Stiggs, and the most vehement protester, Mary Owen. The woman whose garden the spring rises in is Robina Toynbee. We might try her first. She might have had threats. She might even know which way the late Mr Struthers was going to vote.’
‘Aren’t we going to eat first?’
‘I’ll take you to the pub.’
‘None of your microwave specials?’
‘I can cook now,’ said Agatha defensively. ‘I didn’t know you were coming, so I didn’t get anything in.’
When they entered the Red Lion, her eyes flew around the pub looking for James, but he was not there. ‘Our Mr Lacey’s taken off again,’ said the landlord as he served their drinks and took their order for lunch.
‘Oh,’ said Agatha bleakly and then asked as casually as she could, ‘Any idea where he’s gone?’
‘No, Mrs Darry saw him driving off.’
‘How long will he be gone?’
‘Nobody knows. He stopped at the shop to buy the newspapers and then he went to the police station and left his key with Fred Griggs and said he planned to be away for a bit.’
Agatha felt very low. Life had suddenly lost colour and meaning. Her fling with Guy Freemont began to seem to her distinctly sordid.
She had again lost interest in any investigation. When they had finished their – typically English – pub meal of lasagne and chips, Agatha said, ‘I’d like to go to Gerry’s in Evesham first. It’s that new supermarket.’
‘Why?’ asked Roy. ‘One of the councillors work there? I thought they were all pretty well-heeled.’
‘No, it’s just I have no food in the house and need you to carry the bags.’
‘If you must. Do you know there is a circle in hell where I will probabl
y end up which is one huge supermarket? The shopping trolleys always go sideways, the children always scream, I always have at least one item of shopping which doesn’t have the bar code on it and so I wait and wait until someone goes and finds one with the bar code and the people in the lengthening crowd behind me hate me. Or when I get to the check-out at the Express Lane, Nine Items Only, three people in front of me have at least twenty items and I haven’t the courage to protest. Or the woman at the till who knows everyone in the line except me indulges in long and happy chit-chat and when it gets to me she decides to change the roll of paper in the till. Or the woman in front of me watches all her groceries sliding along and stares at them without packing them, and then she slowly takes out her cheque-book and slowly proceeds to write a cheque and then insists on carefully packing her plastic shopping bags according to type of grocery. And then, when it’s all over and I get to the revolving doors and see daylight outside, I suddenly find myself back at the beginning of the whole process.’
‘Let’s go anyway,’ said Agatha, who had not been listening to him.
Gerry’s was jammed with shoppers. Roy suddenly decided that he would do the cooking and so proceeded to look for esoteric herbs and spices. ‘Keep away from the frozen food, Aggie,’ he warned. ‘I can see from the gleam in your eye that you’re just dying to microwave something.’
‘You, for a start,’ said Agatha. ‘Are we ever going to get out of here?’
When they eventually got to the check-out, the trolley which, yes, slewed to one side, was piled high. The line moved forward and soon the end was in sight, only one thin woman in front of them.
‘Hazel!’ cried this woman to the check-out assistant. ‘I didn’t know you did Saturdays.’
‘Need the money, Gladys,’ said Hazel, one fat red hand hovering over the first item.
‘Isn’t that a fact,’ said Gladys. ‘I put in for my hip operation.’
‘You’ll need to wait awhile.’
‘It’ll be worth it. My Bert said, he said, no creature should have to endure the pain I’ve had. But you know what the National Health Service is like. My turn’ll come round when I’m in me grave.’