Maddie was beginning to think that Bill Wong was not worth all this effort. He was reckoned to be one of the brightest detectives on the force. Maddie was ambitious. She had thought that if she courted Bill, had an affair with Bill, kept close to Bill, then she could pick his brain, maybe solve the case, and get the kudos. But the murder case was still plodding its way through reams of slow, painstaking investigation, and there didn’t seem to be a break anywhere, nor did Bill appear to have been struck by any bright ideas.
She suddenly realized that Mrs Wong was addressing her. ‘Our Bill likes his food,’ said Mrs Wong, ‘so you see he gets it.’
‘The police canteen looks after his needs,’ said Maddie.
‘Mother means when you two are married,’ said Mr Wong.
Maddie was tough, Maddie was selfish and Maddie was strong, but at those words she felt a stab of panic. Of course she should have realized what an invitation to dinner in the Wong family home would mean.
‘We are not getting married,’ she said firmly.
‘I haven’t even asked her yet,’ said Bill with an uneasy laugh.
‘Not that we think you’re old enough to get married,’ Mrs Wong ploughed on. ‘You young people are always rushing into things. Course, as me and Dad were saying the other day, grandchildren would be nice. I always wanted a little girl,’ she said to Maddie, who was now staring at her plate in fixed embarrassment.
Maddie was then interrogated about her parents, her brother and sister, where they all lived, and whether she intended to remain in her job after she was married to Bill.
‘Look,’ said Maddie, her own voice sounding shrill in her ears, ‘there’s been a misunderstanding. I am not going to marry Bill or anyone else at the moment. Now can we change the subject?’
Mr Wong looked insulted and Bill, miserable. He could not in his heart blame his parents, for had he not told them that Maddie was the only girl for him? But Bill could never find it in his heart to blame his parents for anything.
Maddie was only grateful that she had driven herself to Bill’s home. She pleaded a headache directly after dinner and then Bill walked her out to her car.
‘You shouldn’t have given them the impression we were to be married,’ said Maddie harshly.
Bill looked embarrassed. ‘Well, they are apt to look at every girl I bring home as a possible daughter-in-law. Don’t let it spoil things, Maddie.’
‘Goodnight.’
‘When will I see you again?’
‘At police headquarters tomorrow.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘I’m going to be awfully busy in my spare time.’ Maddie slid neatly into the driving seat, closed the door on Bill’s protest and drove off, without, his policeman’s mind noticed, putting her seat-belt on.
He stood there feeling lost. He thought of Agatha and wished she were back in her own cottage, without James. He suddenly wanted to talk to Agatha. She wasn’t married to James. Perhaps he could get her to come to the pub with him.
James looked surprised when Bill Wong, with the air of a schoolboy asking if a mate could come out and play, requested to see Agatha for a private conversation.
Agatha appeared in the doorway as well. ‘Come in,’ said James. ‘I’ll go out for a walk if you like.’
‘No, I’ll take Agatha to the pub, if that’s all right.’
‘Catch up with you later,’ said James.
‘Leave your car,’ said Agatha, joining Bill. ‘We’ll walk to the Red Lion.’
‘I would rather go somewhere more private,’ said Bill. ‘I don’t want Lacey to join us.’
When she was in his car, Agatha asked nervously, ‘Am I in trouble?’
He gave her a sad little smile. ‘No, I think I am. We’ll go to the Royal White Hart in Moreton. Wait till we get there.’
The bar for once was comparatively empty. Autumn had come, the leaves were falling and the tourists had disappeared. One of the difficulties of living in a beauty spot like the Cotswolds, reflected Agatha, was that for a good part of the year it was swamped with tourists; but then one couldn’t complain: anyone moving out of his own village automatically became a tourist.
They took seats at the corner of one of the large tables by the fireplace, where a stack of logs was burning brightly.
‘So,’ said Agatha, ‘what’s up? No one else murdered, I hope?’
He shook his head. ‘It’s me and Maddie.’
Agatha felt an irrational stab of jealousy and then reminded herself severely that Bill was in his twenties and she in her fifties. ‘What’s Hatchet Face been up to then?’ she asked.
Bill grinned. ‘I’d almost forgotten how much I liked you.’
Agatha suddenly felt tears welling up in her eyes and fought them back. She wondered if she would ever get used to this new feeling of being liked. It seemed that during her long business life, no one had ever liked Agatha Raisin, and with good reason. The old Agatha had not been either likeable or lovable.
‘Go on,’ she said.
Bill looked at the firelight shining in the contents of his half-pint glass and said, ‘You know I was keen on Maddie.’
‘Yes.’
Bill sighed. ‘You know something, Agatha, I was born too late. There’s something awfully old-fashioned about me. I think when a woman goes to bed with me that it means some sort of commitment.’
‘And it didn’t?’
‘I thought it did. I had the wedding all planned, I had even begun to look at houses. I’d totally forgotten that I had not mentioned any of those rosy dreams to Maddie. I invited her home this evening to meet my parents.’
Agatha was about to say, oh dear, but bit it back. She privately thought that Mr and Mrs Wong would be enough to kill love in even the most romantic female breast.
‘Well, you know what Mum and Dad are like. They just come out with things. It’s not their fault they’re so honest.’
It’s their fault they’re so bloody rude, thought Agatha, but said nothing.
‘So Mum assumed we were going to get married, and to tell the truth, I had pretty much assumed the same thing. But Maddie got scared off and I don’t think she’s going to see me again, outside police work. The pain’s awful, Agatha. She was so fed up with me, she drove off without even her seat-belt on.’
‘Maybe she’ll be all right tomorrow,’ said Agatha and then cursed herself for raising false hopes.
His face brightened for a moment and then fell. ‘No, I have a gut feeling it’s over. You know what rejection feels like, Agatha.’
Agatha pressed his hand, and those tears that she could now not hold back welled up and spilled over on to her cheeks.
‘Oh, Agatha,’ said Bill, ‘I didn’t mean to make you cry.’
But Agatha was crying for herself, for losing James, for what seemed to her years of a wasted loveless life devoted to work.
She dried her eyes and pulled herself together with an effort. ‘All I can suggest, Bill, is that when you see her tomorrow, you’re just as friendly and casual and normal as possible, so that she has nothing to react against. Maybe take some other girl out. But if she still wants you, she’ll let you know. If not, then you’ll save face.’
Bill grinned. ‘I’m only half Chinese and my poor soul is pure Gloucestershire. You’re right. But how can any woman make love, spend nights, and then simply walk off, just like that?’
Because she thought you were expendable, thought Agatha. Because she thought you would further her career if she could pick your brains, but after meeting your parents and being threatened with marriage, she thought it was all just not worth the effort. Because she’s a cold bitch. There are gold-diggers and career-diggers, and your precious Maddie is a career-digger. Aloud she said, ‘A lot of women are surprisingly terrified of marriage, particularly if they are interested in their jobs. But I don’t suppose that makes you feel any better. Rejection is a pain in the bum. Have another drink, something stronger.’
‘I’m driving.’
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‘And I feel like getting drunk,’ said Agatha. ‘We’ll take a cab back. James can drive you back to Mircester and then take a cab home.’
‘Hadn’t you better phone him and ask him?’
‘No, he’ll do it. Let’s drink. Change over to the hard stuff.’
James Lacey was none too pleased to find a tipsy Agatha and Bill weaving on his doorstep at half past eleven at night and to learn that he had to drive Bill to Mircester and then pay for a cab back. Nor was he pleased that Agatha and Bill travelled in the back seat with their arms around each other, roaring out raucous songs.
His face stiff with disapproval, he drove Bill home in Bill’s car, which he had picked up outside the White Hart. Bill phoned for a cab. James planned to give Agatha a piece of his mind on the road home, but she promptly fell asleep and snored, with her head lolling against his shoulder.
After having paid the cab, driven his own car from Moreton, and helped Agatha indoors and upstairs to her bedroom, he went down to the living-room, feeling angry and left out. Why should Wong want to discuss the case with Agatha and leave him out in the cold? What was going on there?
Chapter Six
In the morning, a hung-over Agatha Raisin crept downstairs to receive a taste of what marriage to James might have been like.
‘That was incredibly selfish behaviour last night, Agatha. You should be ashamed of yourself!’
‘James, can’t you wait till I get a cup of coffee?’
‘Selfish!’ James paced up and down the small kitchen. ‘I thought we were in this investigation together, and yet you two go off. I went to the Red Lion but you hadn’t gone there. The next thing I know, you are both back here drunk at closing time. I have to run you back to Moreton, leave my car, run Bill home, get a cab back to Moreton to pick up my own car – well, it’s just too much.’
Agatha poured a cup of coffee with a shaking hand and then lit a cigarette. James angrily jerked open the kitchen window, letting in a blast of cold autumn air. ‘And that’s a filthy habit, Agatha. This whole house is beginning to stink of cigarette smoke.’
‘Leave me alone,’ wailed Agatha, slumping down at the kitchen table.
There was a ring at the bell. James stumped off to answer it. Soon he was back. ‘It’s that Mrs Hardy for you. I didn’t invite her in.’
Curiosity momentarily banishing her pounding hangover, Agatha went to the door.
‘Good morning,’ said Mrs Hardy. ‘I am reconsidering your offer.’
Hope shone in Agatha’s eyes. ‘You mean I can buy my cottage back?’
‘If you wish.’
‘I’ll get dressed and come along and see you,’ said Agatha eagerly.
‘Don’t take all day about it. I’m going out.’
Agatha went upstairs and hurriedly washed and dressed. ‘Going next door,’ she called to James. ‘The Hardy woman’s prepared to sell.’
Seated a few minutes later in Mrs Hardy’s kitchen and studying her covertly, Agatha wondered if she herself in the not-so-far-off days had been a bit like this Mrs Hardy, blunt and abrasive.
‘Why do you want to sell?’ asked Agatha.
‘Does it matter? Carsely does not suit.’ She poured herself a cup of coffee but did not offer Agatha any.
So they got down to business. Agatha at last rose at the end of it, feeling weak and not only with hangover. Mrs Hardy drove a hard bargain. Agatha would have to pay a lot more to get her cottage back than Mrs Hardy had given her for it. Later, Agatha was to wonder why she had not tried to hold off a little, to drive the price down, but she was so eager to have her old home back and get from living with James that she had agreed to the price Mrs Hardy had named.
‘Great news,’ she said to James when she returned. ‘The Hardy creature is selling me back my cottage.’
‘How much?’
‘A lot.’
‘Is it worth it, Agatha? You can stay here as long as you like.’
Agatha threw him a frustrated look. She could not be herself, living with James. He did most of the cooking and cleaning. She realized that even if they had married, it would probably have been just the same. She lived as if in a hotel, carefully keeping her clothes and belongings to the spare room; trying to remember to scrub out the bath every time, realizing that she was quite a messy person. Housekeepers, thought Agatha, were born, not made. Being a good housekeeper was a separate talent, like being a ballet dancer or opera singer. Being brought up in a slum, where food came out of cans and cleaning was sporadic and clothes often were not washed from one week to the other, didn’t help one in future life. While she had had her own house, James had only seen the best of her. Had she suffered then from this hangover, she would have stayed indoors until she got rid of it, and then emerged, made up and dressed to kill. She ran an exploratory finger over her upper lip. A stiff little couple of hairs were sprouting there. She felt they were waving their antennae at James like insects. She made a hurried excuse and went up to the bathroom, waxed her upper lip clean, opened the bathroom window and tossed the wax out into the bushes, planning to retrieve it later and hide it in the kitchen garbage where James would not spot it. It’s such hard work being middle-aged, thought Agatha bleakly, and it will get much worse when I’m old, what with farting and incontinence and falling hair and teeth. God, I wish I were dead. And on that cheerful thought she went back downstairs.
‘Bill and I weren’t talking about the case,’ she said to James’s rigid back as he stood over the cooker scrambling eggs. ‘Maddie’s rejected him and he is deeply hurt.’
‘Oh.’ James’s back relaxed. ‘And you didn’t tell him about our visit to Gloria Comfort?’
‘No,’ said Agatha. ‘We got drunk to comfort him. Stupid, I know, and you were really good to take him home. Maddie may be a pill, but he’s mourning her all the same.’
James slid a plate of fluffy scrambled eggs under Agatha’s nose. ‘Eat that and you’ll feel better.’
‘Nothing will make me feel better but the passing of time and the first stiff Scotch,’ said Agatha, but she managed to eat some of the egg and a piece of toast.
The doorbell went again and she clutched her head and groaned. ‘If that’s anyone for me, get rid of them, James. I can’t even bear to see Mrs Bloxby.’
But James returned with Bill, Maddie and Wilkes. Agatha felt her stomach lurch.
‘Now,’ said Wilkes severely, ‘I gather from descriptions received that you and Mr Lacey here called on a Mrs Gloria Comfort yesterday.’
Agatha bleakly marvelled at the life of the English village. It had seemed completely deserted when they had called on Mrs Comfort, but hidden eyes had probably taken in every detail of their appearance.
‘She’s not dead, is she?’ asked Agatha.
‘Mrs Gloria Comfort packed up after you left, deposited her keys at the local police station, and said she was going on holiday to Spain. She took a flight to Madrid from Heathrow, hired a car at the Madrid airport and took off for God knows where. Now what we want to know is what did you say to her?’
‘And why,’ said Maddie in a flat voice, ‘were you calling on any suspect when you had been told not to?’
‘It’s a free country,’ said Agatha. ‘Anyway she hadn’t much to say. She said she wasn’t being blackmailed by Jimmy even after we told her the police would probably examine her bank accounts to make sure. She said nothing about going to Spain.’
The questioning began in earnest. They told them everything, except the bit about Mrs Comfort spending the night with Jimmy.
At last they rose to go. Maddie leaned over Agatha and said, ‘Just butt out, will you?’
‘Oh, go away,’ snarled Agatha. ‘Your face gives me a pain.’
Bill looked at Agatha bleakly, but said nothing.
After James had closed the door on them, Agatha said, ‘That’s a turn-up for the book. Why would she run like that? What had she to fear?’
‘Let’s go and break into her cottage tonight,’ said James.
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‘What if we’re caught? And look how many people seemed to notice our visit and describe us. What if they phone the police?’
‘They won’t see us if we go in the middle of the night.’
‘Security lights? Burglar alarms?’
‘She had neither. I noticed that.’
Agatha looked at him doubtfully. ‘These Cotswold villages are crammed with geriatrics, James, and old people don’t sleep much. They’d hear the car.’
‘We’ll drive a little way to Ancombe and then walk the rest. We’ll wear dark clothes but nothing too sinister-looking in case someone meets us on the road. Now, if I were you, I would go back to bed and sleep off that hangover. You’ll need all your wits about you tonight.’
Agatha felt better physically by that evening, but apprehensive about the night to come. She knew in her bones that if they were caught breaking into Mrs Comfort’s cottage, they could certainly be arrested for that and also for interfering in police business. Roy Silver phoned from London and Agatha asked him if he could check up on the woman who had posed as Lady Derrington at the health clinic and find out what he could.
They set out at two in the morning. James parked the car beside a farm gate outside the village and they got out and began to walk. It was a dark, moonless night with a rising wind. Beech nuts crunched under their feet and more beech nuts hurtled down from the trees which arched over the narrow road. ‘I’ve never seen so many beech nuts,’ complained Agatha. ‘Is this the sign of a hard winter, or what?’
‘Everything’s always the sign of a hard winter in the country,’ said James. ‘If people go on saying it often enough, they’re bound to be right one of those years. Shh, we’re nearly at the village.’
They moved quietly. The darker bulk of the church rose against the black sky. ‘Not a sign of life anywhere,’ whispered James, but nervous Agatha was sure sleepless old people were sitting behind their net curtains, watching their approach with beady eyes. The silence seemed absolute. Nothing stirred except the wind in the trees.
Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage Page 10