by M C Beaton
The combination of heat and apple brandy did appear to work wonders. Agatha began to relax. Instead of standing outside looking in, she began to feel part of it again. The chairwoman of the Ancombe Ladies' Society made a speech and told several jokes which were received with gales of laugh-ter.
Stuff London and Mrs. Hardy, thought Agatha. I'm happy here.
James and Agatha went out for dinner that evening. James appeared to have recovered his good humour and he wanted to discuss 'our murder case'. Agatha was too content to have regained her feeling at being at home in the country to crave a more personal conversation, but James did start by asking her to remember all she could about her late husband. "How did you meet him, for example?"
Agatha had quite forgotten that, through snobbery, she had hidden her low beginnings from James, always implying without actually saying so that she had come from a middle-class background and had been to a private school.
"How did I meet Jimmy?" Agatha sighed and put down her knife and fork and looked back down the long years.
"Let me see. I'd just escaped from home."
"Home being Birmingham?"
"Yes, one of those blocks of flats in what they now call the inner city but what they used to call a slum." She was so intent on her memories that she did not notice the flicker of surprise in James's blue eyes.
"Ma and Dad always seemed to be drunk. They wouldn't let me stay at school after I was fifteen, even though the teachers begged them to let me complete my education. They put me to work in a biscuit factory. God, the women seemed coarse, brutal. I was a skinny, sensitive little wimp then.
"I saved as much as I could and took off for London one night when my parents were both drunk. I was determined to be a secretary. The secretaries I had seen up in the offices of the biscuit factory looked fabulous creatures to me, compared to what I was working with on the shop floor. So I got a job as a waitress and went to a secretarial college in the evenings to learn shorthand and typing. I worked seven days a week, and my ambition was so great, I don't think my feet ached once. It wasn't a very classy restaurant. Classy restaurants only employed waiters in those days. It was a bit like one of the Lyon's Corner Houses. Good food but not French, if you know what I mean."
Her eyes grew dreamy. "Jimmy came in one night. He was with a rather tarty blonde, a bit older than he was. They seemed to be quarrelling. Then he started to flirt with me and that made her even angrier. I didn't think he was interested in me. I thought he was only doing it to get back at his girl-friend for something or other.
"But when I left by the back door that night after work, he was waiting for me. He said he would see me home. I had been working the evening shifts as well as the day ones while the secretarial college was closed for the summer vacation. He was very...merry. Very light-hearted. I'd never met anyone quite like Jimmy before.
"We got to my place, which was a bed-sit in Kilburn. I asked him where he lived and he said he had nowhere, because he had just been thrown out of his digs. I asked him where his stuff was and he said it was in the left luggage in Victoria Station. All he had in the world was one suitcase.
"I said he could sleep on the sofa just for one night. He did that. But the next day was a rare day off and we went to the zoo. Funny. I never liked zoos and I still don't, but I had been so very lonely and here I was with a handsome fellow of my own and it all seemed marvelous. Somehow it was agreed, I don't remember how, that he would move in with me. Of course he wanted to sleep with me, but the pill hadn't really got going in those days, and I was terrified of getting pregnant. He just laughed and said we'd get married. And so we did. We went to Blackpool on our honeymoon."
Agatha suddenly looked at James and realized that she had finally betrayed all the truth of her background. Then she gave a little shrug and went on.
"He got a job loading newspapers down in Fleet Street. I was still working as a waitress and going to the college. It took me a month of marriage to realize I had jumped right out of the frying-pan into the fire, that is, I had jumped from a drunken home life into marriage to a drunken husband.
"To this day, I don't know why he ever married me. I mean, he was very attractive to women. He began to hit me. I hit back because I was still thin but pretty wiry. And then, I wasn't drunk, and he was.
"He lost his job and drifted from one to another after that, but mostly was out of work. I stuck it for two years. But I'd landed a job in a public relations firm as a secretary and I wanted money for good clothes and I wouldn't keep him in drink any more. I came back one evening and he was lying on the bed, snoring, with his mouth open. On the mat the post was lying unopened and in the post was a package of literature from Alcoholics Anonymous that I'd sent for. I pinned it on his chest, packed my things and left.
"He knew where I worked and I fully expected him to come after me, looking for money. But he never came. Gradually the years went by and I was really sure he was dead. I thought no one could drink that much and go on living. Ambition took over completely. So what did I know of Jimmy? He had great charm. Hard for you to believe now. When I first met him, he had a way of making me feel like the only woman in the world that mattered, and he was the only man in my life who ever made me feel pretty. He never said anything clever and his jokes were always feeble, but before it all went sour, he made me feel good, made me feel exhilarated, as if the world was a funny place where nothing much mattered." Agatha heaved a little sigh. "Will the real Jimmy Raisin stand up? I don't know. At first, after each drinking bout he would be genuinely contrite. Oh, I know. He always talked about making money and he was always sure he would make it. I suppose he lived on dreams."
"And I gather," said James harshly, "that he was a budding con artist when you met him. Too lazy to work. He got a taste through you of the benefits of being kept by a woman. You had got wise to him. So he probably sobered up just long enough to get some other female involved. What you have described, Agatha, is a greedy, selfish man. A natural blackmailer."
"I suppose I've told you nothing you didn't know already," said Agatha in a small voice.
"Not really. Except I did not know that you had such a hard life."
"Did I? Ambition is a great drug, you know. I just forged ahead the whole time. Never really looked back at yesterday. Anyway, to get back to this murder, or murders. It must be one of the people that Jimmy met at the health farm. I've come back to that idea. I wish that Comfort woman hadn't escaped us. I think she was lying to us."
"There was certainly something about our visit that sent her running off to Spain," said James. "Then there's her ex. He was very truculent."
"But he wasn't even at the health farm," protested Agatha. "How would he know what Jimmy and Miss Purvey looked like?"
"It could be the something that Gloria wasn't telling us. Perhaps Jimmy didn't write to Mr. Comfort. Perhaps he called on him."
"Fine. So what about Miss Purvey?"
"If Miss Purvey's murder was not connected to Jimmy's, it might make the field wider."
"I think our only hope is that Roy's detective might find something in that bag that the mysterious Lizzie took."
Agatha sneezed.
"Are you getting a cold?" asked James.
"I don't know. I might have a bit of a chill. That church hall was freezing today during the concert."
"Home and bed, then. We'll think some more about it tomorrow."
As they were driving down into Carsely, a car passed them going the other way. James braked suddenly. "I think that was Helen Warwick! She must have been to see us."
"To see you, you mean," said Agatha.
"I'd better catch up with her." James swung the wheel around.
"What for?" demanded Agatha as they began to race back up the way Helen Warwick had taken. "You said she had nothing more to tell us."
"But she must have had, for why did she come all this way to see us?"
"To murder us in our beds," said Agatha gloomily.
All the way down th
e hill and towards Moreton-in-Marsh, James looked ahead for Helen's car. She had been driving a BMW. He saw one ahead at the first roundabout in Moreton. They managed to catch up with it on the Oxford Road, only to find that the driver was an elderly man, not Helen Warwick.
They drove on a few more miles before James said reluctantly, "That's that. We've missed her."
"I'm not sorry," said Agatha. "She only came down here to chase after you."
"Probably right," agreed James, and Agatha scowled at him in the darkness. By the time they got home, she was coughing and wheezing and her head felt as if it were on fire.
At James's urging, she took two aspirins and went to bed and plunged down into a hell of noisy dreams, of raging fires, of gunshots, and of running and running along the Embankment in London with Roy at her heels, both of them fleeing from someone they did not know.
The next day Agatha felt too ill to care about anything at all. She lay in bed all day, drifting in and out of sleep. James carried her in snacks on trays and bottles of mineral water. Agatha refused to let him call the doctor, saying that all she had was a bad cold, and if there were a cure for the common cold, it would have been front-page headlines by now.
At seven in the evening, she heard the doorbell and then the sound of voices and James's voice raised in sudden shock. "What!"
She groaned and fumbled for her dressing-gown. Cold or no cold, red nose or no red nose, she simply had to find out what was going on.
She made her way down the stairs and into the living-room. At first she thought the scene before her eyes was part of a fever-induced hallucination. There was Wilkes, flanked by Bill Wong and two constables.
She blinked and realized they really were there and said, "Why are they here, James?"
James's face was set and grim.
"Helen Warwick has been murdered."
Agatha sat down suddenly.
"Oh, no. When?"
"Today. Strangled with one of her scarves. And she tried to see us last night, Agatha. She was here, in Carsely, last night, and now she's dead."
Wilkes said, "Unfortunately no one at the flats where she lives saw anything. We guess the murder took place somewhere in the middle of the afternoon. We are taking statements from everyone who knew her."
"As you can see," said James, pointing at Agatha, "Mrs. Raisin was in no fit state to go anywhere, and J was acting nursemaid. I was down at the local store twice to get groceries. They will vouch for me."
"You went to see her," said Bill Wong suddenly. It was a statement, not a question. "Couldn't you have left it to us?"
James said wearily, "I honestly don't see that our visit was any different to a visit from you, say."
They took James over and over again what Helen had said, and then why he had gone back. Agatha coughed and shivered. She was beginning to feel too ill to care.
At last the police left.
"Back to bed, Agatha," said James. "There's nothing we can do tonight."
But Agatha tossed and turned for a long time. Somewhere out there was a murderer, a murderer who, having tried to burn them to death, might try again.
James was just about to go upstairs to bed himself when the phone rang.
Roy Silver was on the other end of the line, his voice sharp and excited. "Agatha there?"
"Agatha's very ill with a bad cold. Can I help?"
"It's that woman, Lizzie. Iris has found her. She's got Jimmy's things."
"Good. And what's in them?"
"I don't know. The old bat is asking for a hundred pounds."
"Well, pay her, dammit."
"I don't have any spare cash, James."
"What's the arrangement for paying her?"
"She'll be at Temple tube station tomorrow at noon."
"I'll be there, with the money."
"Iris'U be there as well, with me. She'll point the old bat out to us. Sure I can't speak to Aggie?"
"No, she's too ill. See you tomorrow." James replaced the receiver and went upstairs. "Who was that?" called Agatha. James knew that if he told Agatha the truth, she would insist on coming. "Just some reporter from the Daily Mail," he said soothingly. "Try to sleep."
The next day, when Agatha finally crept downstairs, it was to find a note from James on the table saying he had gone to police headquarters in Mircester. James did not want there to be any danger of Agatha following him to London.
Agatha trailed into the kitchen and made herself a cup of coffee. The cottage seemed quiet and sinister without James, and it still smelt of burnt wood and paint from the fire. The temporary chipboard door erected by the carpenter to make do until James's insurance claim went through seemed a flimsy barrier against the outside world.
She let her cats out into the garden after feeding them. Her legs felt like jelly. She had another cup of coffee and two cigarettes, each of which tasted vile, and then crawled back to bed.
James approached Temple tube station with a feeling of excitement. If only there would be something, somewhere in Jimmy's things that might give him a clue. He was worried about leaving Agatha alone. It was ten minutes to twelve when he arrived at the tube station. On impulse, he phoned Mrs. Hardy and asked her if she would phone Agatha or pop round and see if she was all right. Mrs. Hardy answered cheerfully that she wasn't doing anything else and would be happy to look after Agatha, and, reassured, James put the phone down.
He turned round to see Roy and his formidable detective waiting for him. Roy made the introductions.
"Now where is this woman?" asked James, looking around. "What if she doesn't show?"
"She'll show," said Iris. "Just think of all the booze one hundred pounds will buy her."
"Aggie should be here," said Roy. "How is she?"
"Pretty poorly," said James. "Look, I didn't tell her about this or she would have come racing up to London and she's not fit."
"There she is," said Iris.
A small woman in layers of shabby clothes was shuffling into the tube station. Her eyes were sunk into her head and she had no teeth. She was bent and aged-looking and her hands clutching two plastic bags were twisted and crippled with arthritis.
"Hallo, Lizzie," said Iris briskly. "Give us the bag."
"Money first," said Lizzie. "I want a thousand pounds."
Before James or Roy could say anything, Iris said, "Well, that's that, Lizzie. We'll take our hundred pounds and go. I doubt if there is anything in there worth even a fiver."
And James saw from the look in Lizzie's eyes that she had already gone through the late Jimmy Raisin's effects and agreed with Iris.
"'Ere, wait a minute." A claw-like hand clutched at Iris's sleeve. "You got the money?"
Iris nodded to James, who took out his wallet and extracted five twenty-pound notes. Lizzie's eyes gleamed.
"Bag, Lizzie," prompted Iris.
"The money," said Lizzie.
"Oh, no. Is this the right bag?" Iris took it from her. "I'll just have a quick look in here first. It could be nothing but old newspapers."
Iris looked inside and fumbled around. All Jimmy's worldly goods seemed to consist of a few photographs, a corkscrew, some letters, and a battered wallet.
"All right," said Iris.
James handed over the money. "I hope you are going to buy yourself some food with this."
Lizzie looked at him as if he were mad, seized the money and stowed it somewhere under her layers of clothes, and then shambled off.
"Let's go somewhere and look at what we've got," said James.
"We'll go to my office," said Iris. "But you're going to be disappointed. Seems to be nothing but scraps of paper and a few photographs."
They took a taxi to Iris's office in Paddington and, once there, tipped the contents out on the desk.
There were love letters from various women, damp and crumpled and stained. Jimmy had probably kept them to gloat over. There was a photograph of a thin girl with small eyes and heavy dark brown hair. That was in the wallet and the only thing it c
ontained. James said, "By God, it's our Agatha as a girl. You can hardly recognize her." There were various other photographs of women, and then one of Jimmy on a beach. A middle-aged blonde woman in a swimsuit was rubbing oil on his back. She was thin and muscular. Her face was turned away from the camera. "Damn, I wish we could see her face," muttered James. "I bet that's Mrs. Gore-Appleton."
"Let me see those other photos again." Iris bent her head and went through them. "There," she said triumphantly. "That's the same woman."
James found himself looking at a hard-faced blonde with a thin, aggressive face.
And then, as he stared down at that face, he found himself becoming sure he had seen it before. Agatha had changed amazingly from the days of her youth. People changed. Women changed in middle age, often put on weight.
And suddenly he knew who it was. Let the blonde hair grow out and put on a few stone and you had Mrs. Hardy. Yes, the mouth was the same, and the same hard eyes.
"Oh, my God," he said, "and I've told her to look after Agatha."
"Who?" screeched Roy.
"Mrs. Hardy. That's Mrs. Hardy, our next-door neighbour."
"I told Agatha it was probably her all along," said Roy.
James phoned home. No reply. Then he phoned Mrs. Hardy. The engaged signal. Beginning to sweat, he phoned Bill Wong and talked urgently.
NINE
AGATHA finally decided that if she had a bath and dressed, she might feel better. She soaked for a long time in the bath and then, returning to her room, dressed in a warm sweater and slacks, looking forward to the day when she could return to her cottage and blast the central heating as much as she wanted. James had his central heating system on a timer so that the radiators pushed out two hours' heat in the morning and two in the evening, which Agatha thought mean.
The phone rang. It was Mrs. Hardy. James had said Agatha was ill. Did she want food made or anything?
Agatha was suddenly anxious to get out of the house, even for a short while. "I'd like a cup of coffee," she said. "Be along in a minute."