A Spoonful of Poison

by M C Beaton

  “Look here. I’d like to see this village. I’ve got my bike parked in the square. Why don’t we take a trip over?”

  “All right,” said Toni. “Maybe we’ll find out something.”

  Chapter Five

  TONI ENJOYED HER RIDE on the back of Harry’s motorbike. He parked beside the churchyard wall.

  “That was ace,” cried Toni, removing her helmet and handing it to Harry.

  “It’s a good way of getting around Cambridge,” said Harry. “The traffic can be awful. Goodness, it’s quiet here. You’d never think it was a Saturday.”

  The cobbled village street led down from the churchyard, the cottages on either side leaning towards the road, like so many elderly people, looking for support. Somewhere up on the hills surrounding the village came the sound of a tractor. A dog barked from the other end of the street. But all those sounds seemed to do was intensify the silence. It was very hot despite a little breeze.

  “Where do you want to start?” asked Toni. She turned round and saw Agatha’s car. She suddenly did not want her day with Harry to be spoiled by encountering Agatha.

  “I know,” she said quickly. “Back on the bike. There’s this pig farmer, Hal Bassett. He likes me. I think there’s a lot more he can tell us. It’s straight down the main street and up the hill.”

  “Isn’t that Agatha?”

  “Don’t let her see us,” urged Toni. “Bassett doesn’t like her and he won’t talk freely.”

  They put their helmets on and raced off down the village street. “Morons,” grumbled Agatha as they roared past, not recognizing either Toni or Harry in their helmets.

  The farmer seemed delighted to see Toni again. “The wife’s over in Mircester,” he said. “Who’s this?”

  “Harry Beam,” said Toni.

  “This your fellow?”

  “Harry used to work for Agatha Raisin. He’s now studying at Cambridge,” explained Toni.

  “Got away from the old bat, did you? You should do the same, Toni.”

  Toni was about to flare up in Agatha’s defence but stopped herself just in time. Arguing with Hal wouldn’t elicit any information.

  “Come into the house,” he said. “And we’ll have some tea, unless you would like something stronger.”

  “Tea’s fine.”

  They followed him into the kitchen. Harry looked around. “Your kitchen’s cool,” he said.

  “It’s the stone flags and the thick walls that keeps it that way,” said Hal, not recognizing the slang. “Sit down. What brings you?”

  Toni remembered studying Agatha’s notes on the case. Hal had his back to them as he plugged in the electric kettle.

  “I wondered if you had thought about what happened at the fête and come up with any ideas,” said Toni.

  “Are you sure it wasn’t one of the visitors?”

  “I’ve got a feeling it was someone in the village.”

  “Then it must have been someone mad. And if you want someone mad, try Sybilla Triast-Perkins.”

  “Why her?”

  “I think she had her head turned when she fell in love with George Selby. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that she pushed Mrs. Selby downstairs. Now, George has got his eye on the vicar’s wife, folk say. So jealous Sybilla could have poisoned the jam in the hope that Trixie got some of it. Now, here’s the tea. Don’t use sugar or milk. This is white tea.”

  “You should just have given us ordinary tea,” protested Harry. “That stuff is very expensive.”

  “What is white tea?” asked Toni.

  “It comes from the same plant as green tea,” said Hal, “but the leaves are picked and harvested before the leaves open fully. This is Silver Needle. Best way is to let it infuse in water just below boiling point. Little caffeine and full of antioxidants.”

  Toni sipped her cupful cautiously. It tasted light and sweet and was very refreshing.

  “Now, as I was saying…” Hal was just beginning when his wife strode into the kitchen.

  She went straight up to the table, lifted the lid of the teapot and sniffed. She turned a furious face on her husband. “What the hell are you doing serving my white tea to this lot?”

  “It’s my money that pays for it,” shouted the farmer.

  Toni and Harry got to their feet and began to edge towards the door. Mrs. Bassett glared at Toni. “You’re that little snoop. Get out of my house!”

  Outside, they hurriedly put on their helmets and climbed on the bike just as a teapot came sailing through the open kitchen window and shattered at their feet.

  Harry revved up and they raced off. He stopped again at the churchyard wall. “Whew,” he said, as they took off their helmets again, “I’d hate to be married to Mrs. Bassett. Let’s have a look at the church.”

  “Why?”

  “I like looking at old churches.”

  They walked into the dark quiet of Saint Odo The Severe. “It must have been a Saxon church at one time,” said Harry. “The pews are quite modern. Do you know, Toni, that before Tudor times, there weren’t any seats? People had to stand. But by the reign of Elizabeth the First, sermons had got longer and longer, sometimes four hours, so they had to start letting people sit down. There would have been a rood screen between the chancel and the nave, but I’ll bet Cromwell’s soldiers hacked it down.”

  Toni felt very alone. Harry was from another world. In her world, people didn’t go to church or even think of enthusing about church architecture. Harry had the ease of manner which obviously came from a comfortable background. Why couldn’t I have fancied Bill? wondered Toni. I never felt out of place with Bill.

  Agatha and Roy drove to the manor house, parked outside, and stood for a moment, Agatha wondering what she should say to Sybilla. Her usual method of detective work was to ask people question after question, like shaking a tree, in the hope that some piece of valuable information would come loose.

  The air was very still and hot. Not a leaf on the trees moved. It was as if the whole countryside were waiting for something.

  Roy looked up at the cloudless sky and said, “Going to be a storm soon.”

  “What do you know about anything?” demanded Agatha huffily. She now prided herself on being a countrywoman.

  Roy shrugged his thin shoulders. “I feel it coming.”

  “You shouldn’t wear hair gel in this heat,” said Agatha. “It’s melting and you’ve got a snail trail of gel down one cheek.”

  Roy squawked in dismay and scrubbed at his face with a handkerchief. Agatha rang the bell.

  Following the shrill ring of the bell, silence descended once more.

  “Must be out,” said Roy.

  “Maybe she’s in the garden and didn’t hear the bell. Let’s walk round the back.”

  Agatha pushed open a wrought-iron gate at the side of the manor and, followed by Roy, walked along a weedy path and round into the garden at the back. There were a few signs to show that it had once been a large and beautiful garden. A central path framed by a few struggling rose bushes led to a dry fountain where dusty marble dolphins cavorted over a wide marble basin. Weeds now choked the flower beds.

  Agatha walked up shallow steps to a long terrace. “One of the French windows is open,” she said. “Come along, Roy.”

  “We can’t just walk in,” said Roy.

  “We’ll call out. Mrs. Triast-Perkins!” yelled Agatha.

  Silence.

  “Let’s get out of here,” hissed Roy.

  Agatha walked in through the open French window and found herself in the over-furnished drawing room where she had previously talked to Sybilla.

  Roy hovered just inside, prepared to flee.

  Agatha walked through the long drawing room and out into the hall. Perhaps Sybilla was taking an afternoon nap. She stood at the bottom of the curved eighteenth-century staircase and decided that they had better leave. Sybilla probably often left that window open, dating as she did from the days when it was safe to do so.

  Agatha hal
f turned away and stumbled over a high-heeled shoe lying on the floor. She picked it up and looked upwards and let out a cry of shock.

  Sybilla was hanging by the neck from the rail of the balcony on the first floor. Her face was distorted. She was wearing only one shoe.

  Agatha dropped the shoe she was holding and hurried out to join Roy. “She’s dead,” she gasped.

  “Murder?”

  “Looks like suicide. Outside now, while I call the police.”

  Toni and Harry emerged from the gloom of the church and stood blinking in the sunlight. Police cars were racing past and police and detectives were tumbling out of the mobile police unit. Villagers were standing outside their doors.

  The vicar came panting up. “What’s happened?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s the manor house they’re going to,” said Arthur Chance.

  Toni and Harry followed the vicar up to the manor house. But a policeman was already on guard at the gate and they were not allowed to pass.

  “That’s Agatha’s car parked outside,” said Toni, looking up the drive. “I hope she’s all right.”

  Roy and Agatha sat on the stone steps of the terrace. They had been told not to move until the police were ready for them.

  Agatha puffed at a cigarette.

  “What are you going to do when the smoking ban comes in July?” asked Roy.

  “Smoke, of course. Unless the bastards bring in a law that says you can’t smoke in your own home.”

  “But the countryside’s such a healthy place.”

  “No, it’s not. I just read that a farting cow produces more damage to the ozone layer that a four-wheel-drive. Oh, here’s Wilkes, but without Collins. I hope she’s finally left. Bill said she was going to Scotland Yard.”

  “Right, Mrs. Raisin,” said Wilkes. “While the forensic team are busy, I want you to come to the police unit and make a statement.”

  Agatha saw Toni’s anxious face as she drove past.

  “That was Harry Beam with Toni,” said Agatha. “I wonder what he’s doing here?”

  “I wish I could wash and brush up,” said Roy.

  “Why?”

  “There will be press here shortly.”

  “I think the police will keep this quiet as long as possible. Wait a minute! When you said you were going down the garden for a pee, did you phone anyone?”

  “What do you take me for?”

  “I take you for someone who loves getting his picture in the papers.”

  “Agatha! Really!” Roy suddenly felt his mobile phone burning a hole in his pocket. Would the police check it? Would they find out he had phoned two of the nationals? He eased it out of his pocket and let it slide to the floor of the car.

  When they got out of the car, Roy looked up at the sky. “There you are. I knew a storm was coming.”

  Great black clouds were building up to the west.

  They got out of the car. “You first, Mrs. Raisin,” said Wilkes.

  The inside of the police unit was like an oven.

  Wilkes left the door open and switched on an electric fan. Bill Wong was there. He put a tape in the recorder, stated the time, day, and who was interviewing whom, and the questioning started.

  Agatha was beginning to suffer from delayed shock, so she made just a brief statement of how she had come to discover Sybilla.

  “Why did you go to see her?” asked Wilkes.

  Agatha hesitated. She had really wanted to know if there was any way in which Sybilla could have killed George’s wife, but she didn’t want to think about George and had no proof at all, so she said instead, “I just wondered if she had heard any gossip around the village, any feuds or competition in the jam-making business. Stuff like that. Was it suicide? Did she leave a note?”

  “Yes. It’s a straightforward case of suicide.”

  “Was the note typewritten?” asked Agatha eagerly.

  “This is not Morse. This is real life,” said Wilkes. “The letter was in her own handwriting as far as we can judge at the moment.”

  “And what did it say?” asked Agatha.

  Wilkes hesitated. He hated giving Agatha any information at all. Then he said reluctantly, “It said, ‘I cannot continue to live with a death on my conscience.’ And it is signed.”

  “A death? One death? But there were two deaths. Could she have been ref-Never mind.”

  “But we do mind,” put in Bill Wong, his almond-shaped eyes shrewd. “Did you have another death in mind?”

  “No, no, I don’t know what I meant,” said Agatha hurriedly.

  The questioning went on. At last she was glad to escape and dragged Roy away from a group of reporters and told him the police were waiting for him.

  “Don’t say anything about us thinking Sybilla might have murdered George’s wife,” she hissed.

  She gave a succinct statement to the press about how she and Roy had found the body and then hurried to her car. They followed her, but she switched on the engine and turned on the air conditioning until they retreated.

  There was a gentle rise outside the churchyard where she was parked and she could see the road dipping down into the village. Huge black clouds were towering up in the sky above the end of the village. Seeing that the press had decided to leave her alone, Agatha opened the windows and switched off the engine.

  The sunlight was retreating before the menacing black cliff of clouds. There was a blinding white flash of lightning and then a tremendous clap of thunder. With a great whoosh the rain came pouring down. Agatha closed the windows. The rain was so heavy, so monsoon-like, that it was like being parked in the middle of a waterfall.

  The passenger door was wrenched open and Roy tumbled in. “I’m soaked,” he wailed. “I asked them to let me stay in the unit for a bit until the rain eased off, but they wouldn’t let me.”

  “Let’s go home,” said Agatha. “There’s nothing more we can do here in this storm.”

  ____________________

  Toni and Harry had run to the church again for shelter. Toni began to feel awkward in his presence. He obviously came from a well-to-do family while her background of a slummy house, drunken mother, brother who had committed suicide and a father she did not know weighed heavily on her.

  Harry, seemingly unaware of her discomfort, chatted on about his life at Cambridge.

  At last, Toni interrupted him. “I think the storm’s rolled over.”

  They went outside into a yellow, watery sunlight. Everything glittered with raindrops and a golden river ran down the middle of the village street.

  They mounted Harry’s bike and set off. When they reached her flat, Toni dismounted and said awkwardly, “Thanks for the ride.”

  “What about this evening?” asked Harry cheerfully. “Fancy a bit of dinner?”

  “No. I’ve got a date,” lied Toni.

  “Oh. Right. See you around.”

  Agatha was pacing up and down the living room of her cottage, a gin and tonic in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

  “I wonder if Sybilla left everything to George in her will.”

  “But it seems a clear case of suicide,” said Roy.

  “Suicides can be faked.”

  “The note was clear enough. I’m watching Law & Order. We’ll talk later.”

  Agatha glanced at the screen. “The rich kid did it.”

  “You’ve seen it before!”

  “No, I haven’t. American television can be terribly snobby. If there’s a rich college kid, he’s always the murderer.”

  “I want to see it,” complained Roy.

  Agatha retreated to the kitchen and was just sitting down at the table when the doorbell rang. She opened the door and found Bill Wong looking quizzically at her.

  “Come in,” said Agatha. “Where’s your boss?”

  “This is unofficial. You were about to say something. Why were you surprised that only one death was referred to in the suicide note?”

  “I wasn’t.”<
br />
  “I know you of old. Out with it. Agatha, you’ve got into trouble before and nearly got yourself killed by not telling me the full story.”

  Agatha capitulated. “Oh, sit down. Drink?”

  “No, I’m driving. Coffee would be nice.”

  “Right. There’s some still hot in the percolator.”

  When Bill was seated at the table, with Agatha’s cats climbing over him, Agatha began to outline the idea she had formulated that George Selby’s wife had been pushed down the stairs by Sybilla. “Those two jam-making lesbians, Maggie Tubby and Phyllis Tolling, seem pretty sure of it. Mind you, they are a malicious pair of women. But I had the idea that if I could solve that case-assuming there was a case to be solved-then it might lead to whoever poisoned the jam. And if Sybilla was so dotty about George that he suggested she bump off his wife, he might have driven her to suicide, hoping to inherit her money.”

  “We found Sybilla’s will. She had a sister, Cassandra. Cassandra gets the lot. She is a Mrs. Unwin, married well. Husband is head of a building contractors’. Pots of money.”

  “But George might have thought she would leave it all to him.”

  “I know you’ve had far-fetched ideas before that turned out to be true, but this one is ridiculous. Also, I don’t think the poisoning of the jam was intended to kill anyone. I think it was a senseless prank that went wrong. Think about it. There seems to have been no specific target. That’s what was making it so difficult trying to find out who did it. But now we are sure it was Sybilla. There is no other explanation for her suicide or for that note. As far as Wilkes is concerned, the case is closed. He told the vicar his conclusions, so I’m afraid, if you want to go on pursuing the matter, you won’t be paid for it.”

  ____________________

  Agatha was increasingly busy in the following weeks and put the Comfrey Magna case out of her mind. She needed to build up a healthy bank balance to make up for all she had spent on the fête. It was suddenly considered fashionable by all sorts of people to hire a private detective. Women wanted to find out if their partners or husbands were cheating on them and were prepared to pay Agatha fifteen hundred pounds each for her agency’s skills. Agatha could remember a time when only the rich took foreign holidays in winter. Now loads of ordinary odds and sods crammed the airport departure lounges. Once, a visit to the beautician was for people with money. Now it was a growth industry. Hiring a private detective seemed to be the latest thing to do.