by M C Beaton
‘That’s a good point,’ said Bill, ‘but why not get him to marry her and be absolutely sure? Common sense would tell her that he would leave it all to his son. Then Jane Cutler is rich, and if Mary Owen has fallen on hard times, and she believed he had changed his will in her favour, then she might have bumped him off and then accused Jane to deflect any suspicions from her, although it’s all very far-fetched.’
‘James has disappeared,’ said Agatha. ‘Have you heard anything?’
Yes, Bill had through the grapevine learned that James was masquerading as a member of Save Our Foxes, but he didn’t want to tell Agatha that. He felt the less Agatha saw of James, the better. Out of sight was out of mind.
‘No,’ he lied. ‘Probably off on his travels.’
Agatha pulled herself together. ‘You said they had decided that Struthers had been killed elsewhere and dumped at the spring. Any forensic evidence?’
‘Nothing much. Forensic believes that someone vacuumed the body before dumping it. There was just one thing. A white cat hair in one of his turn-ups. He wore those old-fashioned trousers.’
Agatha’s eyes gleamed. ‘So we are looking for someone with a white cat!’
‘Do you know, there isn’t one white cat in the village of Ancombe?’ said Bill. ‘We went from house to house. Someone could be lying, of course.’
‘It needn’t be an all-white cat,’ said Roy. ‘Could be one of those black-and-white things.’
‘Sorry. I should have explained that the hair was from a Persian cat.’
‘Definitely a Persian, and a cat?’ asked Agatha. ‘It couldn’t have been a dog?’
Agatha would have loved it to turn out to have been Mrs Darry.
‘Definitely a Persian cat.’
‘Still, it’s something to go on,’ said Agatha eagerly.
‘I don’t want to dampen your enthusiasm for amateur detection, but a great number of policemen have been searching for that cat and are still searching.’
‘Does Mary Owen have an alibi?’
‘Yes, on the night of the murder she was staying with her sister in Mircester. She stayed all night.’
‘But he could have been killed earlier in the day!’
‘It’s always hard to estimate time of death, but he was killed earlier that evening. Mary Owen’s sister said she arrived at four in the afternoon and did not leave until the following morning.’
‘A sister would say anything.’
‘True, but she seems a very direct, truthful sort of lady. Now, I’ve really got to get back to work.’
As Agatha and Roy approached Agatha’s car, a large policeman was standing staring at it.
‘Limp!’ hissed Roy.
The policeman swung round and watched their approach. ‘Thank you, dear boy,’ quavered Agatha. ‘I am getting so forgetful. I cannot remember where I left my stick.’
Hoping desperately it was not some policeman who had seen her before, Agatha smiled at him weakly and allowed Roy to help her into the driving seat. As soon as Roy was in behind her, she drove off with a great grinding and clashing of gears.
‘Okay, I’m nervous,’ said Agatha. ‘The minute we stop I’m going to get that sticker off the windscreen.’
‘Where now?’
‘Let’s go back to Ancombe and have a wander around. We might see that cat.’
‘We haven’t eaten and I’m starving.’
‘We’ll eat in the pub in Ancombe.’
‘What about all that food I was going to cook? I’ve got to get the London train this evening.’
‘Next time,’ said Agatha.
James and Zak had agreed not to be seen spending too much time together. There was a member of Save Our Foxes called Billy Guide who drank heavily. James targeted him, buying the grateful Billy as much as he could drink.
A week after Agatha’s interview with Mary Owen, James attended another meeting and his heart beat faster when he learned that the group’s next expedition was to the spring in Ancombe.
Sybil, her fine eyes flashing, said they would take bags of cement and put them into the basin of the spring.
James, who longed to point out that their plan would cause more destruction to the village environment than the water company, kept silent. Why should such a group switch their attention from animals to the matter of spring water? Someone must be paying them for this action. Sybil was saying that the bus would pick them up at the usual place.
He half-listened to her rant, wondering if she believed a word of it.
Various other members made rousing speeches. James stifled a yawn. He roused himself when he heard Trevor ask if the press had been informed.
‘No,’ said Sybil. ‘When the spring is cemented up, we’ll phone them.’
‘Wait a bit,’ slurred Billy Guide, ‘if the basin is filled with cement, that means the water from the spring will flood that woman’s garden – what’s her name? – Toynbee.’
‘And serve her right!’ cried Sybil. ‘It’s all her fault that capitalist commercialism has been allowed to pollute one of our English villages.’
At last the meeting finished. James edged up to Billy. ‘Fancy a drink?’
‘Okay, squire,’ said Billy, ‘but I’m a bit broke.’
‘On me.’
‘Great.’
‘Let’s find a pub a bit away from here,’ said James, knowing that Billy would go anywhere for a free drink.
On the road to the pub, Billy said, ‘My missus is always complaining I come home smelling of beer.’
‘Let’s have vodka,’ said James. ‘That doesn’t smell.’
And may God forgive me, he thought. I didn’t think any of this useless lot were married. Billy already smelt like a brewery, but James was only interested in getting him drunk enough to loosen up.
He didn’t, however, want Billy to get so drunk that he couldn’t think or speak.
‘Have you been married long?’ he asked.
‘Ten years.’
‘Kids?’
‘Four.’
‘You haven’t got a job, have you? What do you live on?’
‘Missus goes out cleaning and the mother-in-law takes care of the kids.’
So much for women’s liberation, thought James bleakly.
Billy went into a long rambling monologue about the unfairness of life.
At last James asked, ‘How did you get into this Save Our Foxes business?’
‘Get a bit o’ drink money.’
‘Do you care about saving foxes?’
Billy gave him a sly grin. ‘O’ course. Got to save the little bleeders.’
‘What I can’t understand,’ said James, ‘is why you’re all so interested in this spring? Who’s paying you?’
‘You know, Jim. We go along. Have a bit of a punch-up. Get forty quid. Not bad.’
‘But, I mean, where does the money come from to pay us?’
‘We’re not supposed to know, Jim. But I heard . . .’
Billy looked thoughtfully down at his empty glass.
‘I’ll get us another,’ said James quickly.
He returned with two vodkas. Billy was never quite drunk, never quite sober. He seemed to be able to sink an enormous capacity without falling over. James was beginning to feel pretty drunk himself, and he was anxious to get some facts out of Billy while he was still able to.
‘You were saying about who was paying us?’ asked James.
‘Was I?’ Billy looked suddenly truculent and suspicious. ‘What’s a posh fellow like you doing with us lot?’ James had given up trying to hide his accent.
‘Because a bit of a punch-up is fun,’ he said.
‘That’s what I thought.’ Billy raised his glass. ‘Here’s to you.’
‘So I mean, who’s paying? Not to mention paying fines for disturbance of the peace?’
Billy leaned forward. ‘Sybil and Trevor like to keep us in the dark about that. Playing at spies, like. But I heard Sybil say something like, I got the money from that O
wen woman.’
Mary Owen. I’ll be damned, thought James, masking his excitement.
To his relief he heard the barman call, ‘Time, gennelmun, pullease.’ Got the information just in the nick of time.
He said goodbye to Billy outside the pub and hurried back to his temporary room. He would hang around a few days to allay suspicion and then he would head back to Carsely and call Bill Wong to tell him he had solved the murder. For if Mary Owen felt so passionately about the spring, then it followed that she must have committed the murder. And James wanted Agatha to be there when he told Bill.
He thought briefly of Zak. Perhaps he should tell Zak – but then James wanted all the glory for himself.
James returned to Carsely early in the morning on the day before the attack on the spring was due to take place.
He phoned Bill Wong and asked him to call at ten in the morning. No, he couldn’t tell him over the phone. It was only fair that Agatha should hear his news at the same time.
He decided to walk next door to Agatha’s cottage and give her the invitation. He felt quite like Poirot and only wished he had a library so that he could stand on the hearthrug in front of the marble fireplace and tell them how it had all been done.
But as soon as he stepped outside his own front door he saw a car parked behind Agatha’s, outside her front door.
That chap from the water company. And James was willing to bet he hadn’t been making an early-morning call but had stayed the night.
Muzzy with sex and sleep, Agatha awoke to the shrill sound of the telephone ringing.
She grabbed the receiver.
‘Agatha!’ It was James.
‘Yes?’
‘I have something to tell you and Bill Wong about the murder. Can you be at my cottage at ten this morning?’
‘Yes.’
‘Goodbye.’
‘Who was that?’ demanded Guy, stretching and yawning.
‘Just a neighbour,’ said Agatha. ‘Got to get dressed.’
She went through to the bathroom and leaned on the wash-hand basin and stared at her puffy face and tousled hair in the mirror. When she was young, a night of love-making would leave her looking radiant. Now that she was old, it seemed to do nothing but accentuate the bags under the eyes and the lines down either side of the mouth.
What did James want? And why, oh why, had he chosen this morning of all mornings to phone?
She washed and dressed, made up with care, and went down to the kitchen, where Guy was sitting at the table in one of her frilly dressing-gowns drinking coffee.
He gave her a warm smile. Agatha blinked at him. She wished she had never gone to bed with him again. But James seemed to have been gone so long and they had both drunk rather a lot at dinner the night before.
She wondered if Guy felt any affection for her at all. Charles, that wretched baronet, had seemed to treat her as an easy lay, but he had teased her and laughed at her and had seemed genuinely fond of her in his way. But Guy seemed to be acting a part.
Agatha glanced at the kitchen clock. Five minutes to ten. ‘I’ve got to go,’ she said hurriedly ‘Could you let yourself out? And won’t you be in trouble turning up late at the office?’
He laughed. ‘One of the benefits of being a director is one can turn up late at the office.’
She bent over him and gave him a peck on the cheek. ‘Phone you later,’ said Agatha and made her escape.
It had been raining during the night and the air was fresh and clean, making Agatha feel soiled and depraved. She hoped to have a few words with James, but when she arrived outside his door she was joined by Bill Wong, who had just driven up.
Bill and Agatha stared in amazement at the blond and ear-ringed James who answered the door.
‘What’s happened to you?’ asked Agatha.
‘Part of my disguise,’ said James. ‘I’ve been undercover. Come in and sit down and I’ll tell you who murdered Robert Struthers.’
‘So you’ve been investigating on your own.’ Colour flamed in Agatha’s face.
‘You’ve got a love-bite on your neck,’ said James coldly.
‘Here, now,’ admonished Bill. ‘This is important.’
They all sat down, Agatha and Bill on a sofa facing James, who sat in his favourite armchair.
‘I joined Save Our Foxes,’ said James.
‘So it was you I saw on television,’ cried Agatha.
‘The barbecue? Yes, that was me,’ said James proudly. ‘Well, here’s what I found out. They are going to the spring tomorrow afternoon and they are going to block it off with cement. And that’s not all. I’ve found out who’s paying them to demonstrate. Mary Owen.’
‘But according to gossip, she’s fallen on hard times,’ said Agatha. ‘So she couldn’t afford to pay them.’
‘The gossip, like most village gossip, is probably wrong,’ said James loftily. ‘Anyone who can pay this bunch of thugs to behave badly must have felt passionately enough about the whole affair to have murdered Struthers.’
Agatha was suddenly glad of James’s horribly bleached hair and ear-rings. It was easy to think of him as a stranger. She suddenly felt very tired. All she hoped was that Guy had taken himself off so that she could creep back under the duvet and go to sleep.
‘Did you report this to Zak?’ asked Bill sharply.
‘Who’s Zak?’ asked Agatha.
‘An undercover policeman who made himself known to James.’
Both looked at James. ‘I hadn’t time to get to him.’
‘We know from him about the protest tomorrow,’ said Bill.
‘So you knew where James was all along,’ said Agatha furiously, glaring at Bill.
‘But Zak didn’t know about Mary Owen,’ said James quickly. ‘I found that out by getting one of the members drunk.’
‘We’ll pull her in for questioning. She has an alibi,’ said Bill. ‘On the night of the murder she was staying with her sister in Mircester.’
‘Her sister could be covering for her.’
‘You haven’t met the sister, a Mrs Darcy, straight-talking, honest. But we’ll check out the alibi again.’
‘You should have told me about this, James,’ said Agatha. ‘We’ve always investigated things together in the past.’
‘I would have done if you hadn’t been preoccupied in screwing around with a toy boy.’
‘That’s enough.’ Bill got to his feet. ‘Come along, Agatha.’
When they had gone, James phoned a hairdresser in Evesham and made an appointment to get his hair dyed back to its normal colour. Agatha and Bill had made him feel small and petty. Bill was right. He should have told Zak.
When Agatha went into her cottage, her phone was ringing. She answered it and found it was Roy Silver.
‘Just calling to see how things are going,’ he said cheerfully.
‘Murder or water?’
‘Murder.’
Agatha told him about James. Roy listened and then said, ‘That was a bit mean of him.’
She warmed to him. ‘Why not come down for the weekend and we’ll go and watch the demonstration?’
‘Great. I’ll get the early-morning train.’
Agatha put down the phone feeling better. However outrageously Roy had behaved in the past, he always popped up again and she felt like company. She remembered Guy and swore under her breath. She had been so stunned after leaving James that she had not even checked to see if his car was still outside.
‘Guy!’ she called up the stairs.
There was no reply. With a little sigh of relief, she went up and stripped the bed and put on a clean sheet, pillow cases and duvet cover. Then she undressed and climbed into bed and plunged down immediately into a dreamless sleep. An hour later, she could faintly hear the phone downstairs ringing. She had switched off the one in the bedroom. She lay until it had finished ringing and then went back to sleep.
In the cottage next door, James replaced the receiver. He had planned to ask Agatha to come into
Evesham with him, but he rang off the minute her answering service came on the line.
Rain was thudding down on to the platform at Moreton-in-Marsh Station next morning as Agatha waited for the arrival of Roy Silver.
A large bouquet of flowers from Guy had arrived just before she left. She had slung them into a bucket of water, planning to arrange them later. She wondered why the idea of having a handsome man send her flowers was so infinitely depressing.
The Great Western train slid smoothly alongside the platform. Roy appeared looking quite ordinary for once in a Burberry worn over cords and a sports shirt and V-necked sweater.
‘Hello, Aggie,’ he said, planting a wet kiss on her cheek. ‘I hope we don’t get this weather for the fête. What will we do?’
‘I’ve already contacted one of those firms that rent out marquees. They’ll have to be decorated and some heat supplied. There’s nothing more dampening than people crowded into damp tents with the rain pouring down. The Freemonts were all for having an orchestra, but I persuaded them that the Carsely village band would be more traditional. They’re actually jolly good. Don’t want to make it too ritzy. When it’s good weather here, I always envisage the fête being held on a cloudless day, but when it’s like this, I picture it as being damp and horrible and full of crying children.’
‘We’ll see,’ said Roy. ‘How could we find out if Mary Owen has money or not?’
‘We could ask Angela Buckley. She’s pretty direct, although, come to think of it, she did warn me off.’
‘Now why did she warn you off? She must have something to hide. Let’s go and see her.’
‘All right. We’ll leave your bags first and have a coffee.’
After Roy had taken his bag up to the spare room, he joined Agatha in the kitchen.
He looked at the flowers in the bucket, and then picked up the florist’s card which Agatha had left on the table. ‘Oho,’ said Roy. ‘“Love from Guy.” That wouldn’t be the delicious Guy Freemont, would it?’
‘We have a close working arrangement,’ said Agatha frostily.