The Love from Hell ar-11

by M C Beaton

  “I don’t feel very brave,” she whispered to Roy as they walked up Greenway Road. “He’s a very belligerent man.”

  “Maybe we should forget about the whole thing,” said Roy uneasily. “I hear there’s some good French cooking down at the Crown. We could walk about a bit and then have lunch.”

  But his cowardice spurred Agatha on. “Don’t want to think we’ve walked all this way for nothing. If he’s mad at us, he can slam the door in our faces.”

  Walking close together, they approached the door of the Sheppards’s cottage. Agatha rang the bell.

  After a few moments, Megan Sheppard answered the door. She was wearing a brief pair of hot pants over a gingham blouse. Her hair was tied in two bunches with pink ribbons. “Oh, it’s you,” she said. She called over her shoulder, “Luke, it’s that woman from Carsely who’s been pestering you.”

  Luke Sheppard loomed up behind her. “Get away from here,” he growled.

  “We thought you would like to know,” said Agatha bravely, “that we’re pretty sure it was Melissa’s first husband, Dewey, who killed her.”

  What was that odd look that had flashed in his eyes? wondered Roy. Relief?

  The truculence left his face. He said mildly, “You’d better come in and tell us about it.”

  They followed the Sheppards through the cottage and out into the garden. After they had all sat down round the garden table, Roy told them all about his visit to Dewey’s shop.

  “You poor thing,” said Megan, looking into his eyes. “You must have been frightened to death.”

  “I tell you,” said Roy, delighted to have such an appreciative audience, “I thought my last moment had come.”

  “So have you told the police all this?” asked Luke.

  “Yes,” said Agatha. “They are going to pull him in for further questioning. Did I ask you this before? Did you know Melissa was sectioned at one time?”

  He looked genuinely surprised. “No. Was it drink?”

  “Drugs.”

  “When was this?”

  “A long time ago, when her father was still alive. Did you ever know her sister?”

  “No, Melissa didn’t have anything to do with her.”

  “Do you know if she had a friend from the past, someone she might have met when she was in the psychiatric unit?”

  “No, come to think of it, she didn’t have any real friends. I mean, she would strike up a friendship with someone but it would never last very long. People would go off her.”

  “Just like you, dear,” said Megan, and stroked his hand. And yet Agatha noticed that one of Megan’s smooth tanned legs was pressed against Roy’s.

  “Is there anything you can think of,” pursued Agatha, “any little thing that might help us find out who murdered Melissa?”

  “What’s this?” The anger had returned to Luke Sheppard’s face. “You told us it was Dewey.”

  “We’re sure it is. But still – ”

  “I think you should get a life,” said Luke.

  “Don’t be hard on her, dear,” cooed Megan. “Some of these old village women lead empty lives.”

  Roy cackled with laughter and then put a hand over his mouth when he saw Agatha’s furious face. But Luke went on as if she had not spoken. “Where do you get off, nosing around, poking around into people’s lives? Get out of here.”

  Agatha stood up, her face flaming. “Come on, Roy.”

  They both marched out. The Sheppards stayed where they were.

  “Insufferable man,” raged Agatha, “and she’s nothing more than a little bitch.”

  “Clever, though,” said Roy. “Even if he hadn’t lost his temper, her crack at you would have made you leave.”

  “I keep wondering where James fits into all this,” said Agatha. “Oh, why doesn’t he turn up? He should be getting treatment. He may be dead.”

  She began to cry. Roy put an awkward arm around her shoulders. “The living can keep out of the road of the police, Aggie. The dead find it difficult. Cheer up. Let’s try the Crown for lunch.”

  ♦

  After Agatha had taken Roy down to catch the London train that evening and returned to her cottage, she found herself thinking more and more about Jimmy Jessop, that police inspector in Wyckhadden she had so nearly married. Yes, at the time, she had hoped to make James furious and jealous. And if the wretched Charles hadn’t turned up at a moment when she was weak and shocked, she would never have had sex with him. She thought of Jimmy’s nice smile and the way his eyes used to light up when he saw her. Roy had gone, Charles showed no sign of coming back. She had a longing for masculine company.

  Before she fell asleep, listening uneasily to the night sounds, things rustling in the thatch, the creaks as the old cottage settled down for the night, she decided that the next morning, she would get up bright and early and go to Wyckhadden.

  ♦

  As she drove out of Carsely the next morning, she turned on the radio. Stepping Out were still top of the pops with their rambling song. I wonder if they ever thank me for getting them fame, thought Agatha. Then she began to wonder if she should have tried to phone Jimmy first. The woman he had married instead of her had warned her in no uncertain terms not to come round again, so she couldn’t have phoned him at home. Then his colleagues at the police station all loathed her and would no doubt lie to her and tell her he wasn’t available. No, the best thing to do was to go to that pub where he usually had his lunch-time drink and see if he turned up there.

  She remembered Wyckhadden as a seaside town plagued with extremes of weather and was quite surprised to find a pale misty sun shining down on a placid sea. She had left home at dawn and so it was an hour before lunch-time when she arrived. She walked along the pier and back again, and then followed the familiar route to the pub. She ordered a gin and tonic and sat at the table they had always sat at and waited, looking up hopefully every time the door opened. Outside, the street suddenly darkened as a cloud crossed the sun. What am I doing here? wondered Agatha. Was it because she was sure that James was still alive and that he had not contacted her because he did not want to see her again? Had she nourished some mad hope that Jimmy might still feel something for her, that he would get a divorce, marry her and give her a shoulder to lean on for the rest of her life?

  She swallowed the last of her drink and reached for her handbag. The pub door opened and Jimmy walked in. He stood looking at her in surprise and then that old familiar slow smile lit up his face.

  “Why, Agatha!” he said, sitting down opposite her. “This is a surprise. What brings you here?”

  Agatha suddenly wanted to lie, to say she had just wondered: if the place was still the same, but she found herself saying simply, “You. I came to see you.”

  “I’ll get us drinks. Wait there.”

  Jimmy went to the bar, a tall, competent, safe figure.

  He came back with a pint of beer for himself and a gin and tonic for Agatha. “I assumed you’re still drinking the same,” he said.

  “Yes. Thanks. How’s marriage?”

  “Great. We’ve got a son, Paul. Apple of my eye. What did you want to see me about? Is it all this stuff about you I’ve been reading in the papers?”

  “Yes, that’s it. My brain’s in a muddle. I seem to have a suspect, but I can’t pin anything on him.”

  “You shouldn’t go on like this,” said Jimmy. “You should leave these matters to the police. Oh, I know you helped me down here, but still…You’ll get yourself killed one of these days. Okay. Go on. Tell me about it.”

  Agatha began at the beginning. She left nothing out, all the rows with James, the bad marriage, his brain tumour, and then went on to what she knew about Melissa and her ex-husbands. Jimmy took out a large notebook and began to make neat short-hand notes.

  When she had finished, he asked, “What sort of village is Carsely?”

  “Normally old-fashioned, sleepy and quiet. Nice people.”

  “But a close-knit community?”
<
br />   “Not exactly what it would have been in the old days. Cotswold villages get a lot of newcomers, people buying second homes and only using them at the weekends. There isn’t the gossip and curiosity about each other there would have been not so long ago. It all gets a bit Londonified, you know, everyone minding their own business a little too much, but they do rally round if someone is in trouble. Do you mean, why when James was being attacked and Melissa murdered did no one see or hear anything?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Well, they didn’t.”

  “I think,” said Jimmy, “if I was on the case I would ask around the village again. In my experience, you’ll find someone really did see something. Might be an idea to keep asking. It’s infuriating the way people might come up with something like, ‘I saw old Mr. Bloggs walking down the street about that time.’ ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ ‘Oh, it was only old Bloggs. Didn’t seem worth mentioning.’ That sort of thing.”

  “I’ll try,” said Agatha. “Now if you were making a guess as to who did it, who would you pick?”

  He flicked through his notes. “Well, I would be thinking of the sister. I mean, forget all this mystery about psychopaths. There’s money involved. And I should think a good degree of hatred.”

  “But why James?”

  “He may have ferreted something out, told Melissa, she tells her sister and the sister tries to kill James.”

  “But Melissa and her sister weren’t on speaking terms!”

  “You only have Julia’s word for that. If their father had a big estate and left all to Melissa, and by your report Melissa didn’t use much of it, then it must have been some sum worth killing for. Then, if Melissa and Julia were supposed to be estranged, why did Melissa leave the money to her? You don’t leave money to someone you hate.”

  “I know. But she did not have any friends. Husbands both finished with. Maybe when she was making out her will, she found Julia was the only logical person to leave it to.”

  “Still, it’s odd. It would have been more like her to leave it to the cat’s home to spite Julia. I think your first move should be to start questioning the villagers again. That’s what police work is, Agatha,” he added sententiously, “plod, plod, plod.”

  He glanced at his watch and gave an exclamation of dismay. “I’ve got to get back and I haven’t even had any lunch. Need to grab something from the police canteen. Tell you what, I’ll phone the wife. Why don’t you spend a nice day pottering round the shops and come home with me for dinner?”

  Agatha repressed a shudder. His wife would probably throw the dinner in her face. “No, I’ve got to get back. Got things to do.”

  They both stood up. “Well, as I’ve said before, Agatha, if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be happily married now.” Jimmy smiled down at her.

  Agatha felt like crying. But she said, “You deserve to be happy, Jimmy. You’re a good man.”

  They emerged from the pub. The sky had clouded over and torrential rain was beating down. “Wyckhadden’s the same as ever,” mourned Agatha. “Dramatic weather.”

  “Where’s your car?”

  “Not far. In the central car-park.”

  “Give me your keys and I’ll go and get it for you. You’ll get soaked otherwise. Tell me the make and registration number.”

  Agatha was fishing in her handbag for her keys. She looked up and saw Jimmy’s wife, Gladwyn, bearing down on them, her eyes glittering with rage. “Get it myself,” gasped Agatha and took off, running as hard as she could. When she got to her car, she was soaked to the skin. She sat there miserably until the rain thinned and then stopped. She climbed out of the car and walked to a large department store which sold cheap clothes and bought herself a sweater and skirt, underwear and shoes, and, after she had paid for it all, put the lot on in the fitting-room and stuffed her wet clothes in a carrier bag. She was about to leave the store when she noticed it was raining again, so she retreated back in and bought a raincoat and umbrella. When she emerged, the sun was shining. “I hate this place,” she said loudly, and several passers-by edged nervously away from her.

  As she drove the long road home, she told herself severely that the next man she became involved with would be someone who really loved her, not someone she irritated every minute of the day as she had irritated James, or a fickle lightweight like Charles.

  If Charles comes around again, she told herself, I’ll tell him to get lost.

  But when she turned the corner into Lilac Lane, and saw Charles’s car parked outside her cottage, she experienced a feeling of relief. Not yet, she told herself. I’ll tell him to get lost when all this is over.

  ∨ The Love from Hell ∧

  9

  Charles had let himself in, having kept the spare key, and was watching television and drinking whisky.

  “Back again,” he said lazily. “Where have you been?”

  “Just around. Oh, you may as well know – I went to Wyckhadden.”

  Agatha sat down with a weary sigh. Charles studied her. “I’d better not ask you why you went there. Whisky or gin?”

  “Whisky with water.” Charles rose and poured her a drink and handed it to her.

  “I went to tell Jimmy – remember Jimmy?”

  “Could I forget? Found us in bed together and broke off your engagement.”

  “I thought if I told him all about the case, he might come up with something.”

  “And did he?”

  “He had an idea. He said usually in cases, people would say they had seen or heard nothing, but if we asked again, someone might come up with something they thought was too ordinary or insignificant to mention.”

  “He’s got a point there,” said Charles. “We never really questioned the villagers. That’s all been left to the police. Oh, God, that means going from door to door.”

  “Maybe not. I’ve an idea. We could see Mrs. Bloxby and suggest a meeting in the church hall. Give them all sheets of paper and ask them to write down anything at all they might have seen or heard on the day James was attacked and on the night Melissa was murdered.”

  “That’d be a start. I can’t help myself, Aggie. Did you actually go to Wyckhadden to kindle the old flame?”

  “Of course not,” said Agatha quickly. “What about Tara?”

  “What about her?”

  “What about this gorgeous creature you were straining at the bit to see.”

  “Didn’t work out.”

  “What went wrong?”

  “Well, I took her out for dinner. She said she was a feminist – she works for some magazine – and believed in women paying their own way, so we decided to split the bill. We went to Pere Rouge, a new place in Stratford. When the bill came round, she gave me exactly half. I said, ‘Wait a minute, you had the oysters to start, a whole dozen; I only had one glass of wine and you had the rest of the bottle; I had pasta and you had fillet steak; I didn’t have pudding and you had crepes Suzette;’ so I took out my pocket calculator and worked out her share of the bill, which seemed fair enough to me. Then I worked out the tip; she hadn’t even offered to cover that, and told her the total. She looked at me in a cold way and asked me if I was joking. I said I couldn’t see anything funny. She got to her feet, said, ‘Be back in a minute,’ and then she didn’t come back. So I had to pay the whole bill. Then when I got home, it was to find she had arrived before me in a taxi, kept the taxi waiting, packed her things and headed off.”

  “Oh, Charles, couldn’t you just have left it? I mean, taking out a pocket calculator.”

  “What’s up with that? She said she would pay her share and I wasn’t going to let her get away with just paying a measly half when the greedy cow had gorged her way through the most expensive things on the menu.”

  “Charles, that meanness of yours will keep you a bachelor until the end of your days.”

  “I am not mean. I take people at their word. If someone says they’ll pay their share, I expect them to do so.”

  “Nev
er mind. Let me tell you what happened this weekend.” Agatha told him about the fête and Roy’s encounter with Dewey.

  “Everything does seem to point to him. Did Jessop suggest anything else?”

  “He did seem to think it was Julia. He said there were two good motives, money and hate. Also I still think it odd that Melissa left everything to Julia. And did Julia know about the will?”

  Charles groaned. “I’ve a feeling we might have to make another trip to Cambridge.”

  “Let’s try this village meeting first. We’ll see Mrs. Bloxby in the morning.”

  ♦

  The next day, Mrs. Bloxby listened carefully to their suggestion. “I do not see what harm it will do,” she said. “Wait until I get the book and see when the hall is free. It had better be an evening, so that everyone will be back from work.”

  She returned with a ledger and ran her finger down the pages. “Let me see, next Saturday evening is free. I’m afraid Alf might expect you to pay for the rental of the hall.”

  “What! After all the money Aggie raised at the fête!” exclaimed Charles.

  “That money went straight to charity,” said Mrs. Bloxby.

  “I don’t mind,” said Agatha. “I’ll pay half and Charles will pay the other half.”

  Charles opened his mouth to protest but saw the gleeful look in Agatha’s eyes and closed it again.

  Mrs. Bloxby carefully entered the hall booking and said, “You are both going to have a busy day.”

  “Why?” asked Agatha.

  “Because everyone will have to know there is a meeting. You’ll need to run off fliers from your computer and post them through all the doors.”

  Agatha groaned. “Can’t I just put up a notice in the village shop?”

  “A lot of people shop at the supermarkets and might not see it.”

  “I know,” said Charles. “The schoolchildren are still on holiday. We could get some of them to distribute fliers.”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” said Mrs. Bloxby. “It’s been tried. They even get paid for it, but children are so lazy nowadays. One cottage usually ends up with several hundred fliers pushed through the one letter-box and then the little angels come round to the vicarage demanding their money.”