She raised her head and banged her pillow with her fist, put out the light, and tried to compose herself for sleep. But sleep would not come as she tossed and turned, tormenting herself with pictures of a world out there full of women all too ready to snatch James away from her.
And then she stiffened. She heard a furtive noise from somewhere downstairs and then the clack of the letterbox, then a sound like water being poured. She pulled on her dressing-gown and ran down the stairs. She opened the door to the hall as a gloved hand threw a lighted match through the letterbox. In that instant Agatha leaped back into the living-room and screamed, ‘James!’ just as a sheet of flame reached out for her.
He came hurtling down the stairs. ‘We’re on fire,’ shouted Agatha. She made to open the door again but he pulled her back.
‘Go up to the bathroom and pour buckets of water on the floor. It’s over the hall. We’ve got to stop the fire getting to the thatch!’
James ran to the kitchen as Agatha scampered up the stairs. Swearing, he filled a bucket of water and running back with it, hurled the contents at the living-room door, which was already beginning to blister and crackle.
Upstairs, Agatha, sobbing with fright, poured water on the bathroom floor. There were shouts and yells from outside. Agatha clearly heard the voice of the pub landlord, John Fletcher, calling, ‘Keep throwing that earth. We daren’t wait for the fire brigade. Oh, Mrs Hardy. More earth. Let’s be having it! That there’s a petrol fire. I can smell it.’
Then, just as James shouted up, ‘It’s all right now, Agatha,’ she heard the sirens of police cars and the fire engine in the distance. She went slowly down the stairs and sat on the bottom steps with her head in her hands.
The living-room door now stood open to reveal the black and smouldering wreck of the little hall, piled high with a mound of earth.
‘Who would do a thing like this?’ demanded James. ‘Someone meant to roast us alive.’
‘Probably Helen Warwick,’ said Agatha, and burst into tears.
Chapter Seven
Suddenly the house seemed to be full of people.
Fred Griggs, the policeman; Mrs Bloxby, with a sweater and trousers pulled on over her pyjamas; John Fletcher, the publican; Mrs Hardy; and various other villagers.
‘You’ve got Mrs Hardy here to thank for quick action,’ said Fred. ‘She phoned the fire brigade and then ran with buckets of earth to put on the fire. Water don’t do much to stop a petrol fire.’
‘Are you all right, Mrs Raisin?’ Mrs Hardy’s normally bad-tempered face registered concern.
‘Bit shaken,’ said Agatha.
‘Who could have done such a thing?’
Agatha shuddered and wrapped her arms closely about herself. ‘I just don’t know.’
By the time the police arrived and then Bill Wong, and two other detectives Agatha did not know, the Carsely Ladies’ Society had commandeered the kitchen and were making tea for all. Agatha was being fussed over and handed home-made cakes. John Fletcher had brought a case of beer along from the pub and was serving out drinks to the men. James was looking around the crowded cottage in a bemused way and wondering whether to put on some music and make a party of it.
But the police cleared everyone out after having heard a report from the fire chief, and the detectives settled down to interview Agatha and James.
‘You’ve been putting that stick of yours in muddy waters and stirring things up,’ Bill accused Agatha. ‘Who did you go to see today?’ He glanced at the clock. ‘Or rather, yesterday.’
James flashed Agatha a warning glance, but Agatha said, ‘Helen Warwick.’
‘What! That secretary who was having an affair with Sir Desmond Derrington? I told you two not to interfere!’
James said wearily, ‘I know you did. But until this murder, or murders, is cleared up, Agatha and I feel we will always be suspects.’
‘I’ll talk to you about that later. Now, who else did you see?’
‘No one else yesterday.’
‘The day before?’
James hesitated. Then he shrugged and said, ‘Mrs Comfort had gone off to Spain with her lover, a Basil Morton who lives in Mircester. We went to see what we could find out about him. He’s married and his wife hadn’t a clue what he was up to, so we left. Then we went to see Mrs Comfort’s ex-husband in Ashton-le-Walls. He threatened to set the dog on us. End of story.’
‘And how did you find out about Mr Comfort? His address? Come to think of it, how did you get the addresses of those other people who were at the health farm?’
Agatha said, ‘Roy Silver employed a detective to find out about Jimmy. She dug up the addresses for us.’
‘Name?’
‘Can’t remember,’ mumbled Agatha.
‘We’ll ask Silver.’
Agatha looked helplessly at James.
‘There’s no need to lie, Agatha,’ said James. ‘We had a short stay at the health farm, Bill, and while we were there, I had a chance to look at the records. Do you think the rest of the questioning could be left until we’ve had some sleep? We’re both rather shaky.’
‘All right. But I expect you both at police headquarters as soon as you can manage it.’
As Bill Wong drove off with the others, his first thought was, I’ve a lot to tell Maddie – followed hard by another thought, I’m damned if I will. It was strange they couldn’t find the Gore-Appleton woman. And yet there was something nagging at the back of his mind, something someone had said, something very obvious he hadn’t thought of doing.
The village carpenter effected temporary repairs, putting up chipboard and a makeshift door the next day while James phoned the insurance company. Mrs Hardy phoned Agatha and asked if she would ‘step next door’ for a chat. ‘I’ll see what she wants, James,’ said Agatha, ‘and then we’d better get off to Mircester.’
Agatha went reluctantly next door. She had taken such a dislike to Mrs Hardy, and yet the woman had done everything she could to help put out the fire. Not only that, she had saved their lives, thought Agatha. That was a wild exaggeration, when they could both have escaped out of the back door.
But it was a changed Mrs Hardy who answered the door to her. ‘Come in, you poor thing,’ she said. ‘What a nightmare!’
‘Thank you for all your efforts on our behalf.’ Agatha followed her into the kitchen.
‘Coffee?’
‘Yes, please.’
Mrs Hardy poured two cups of coffee. They both sat down at the kitchen table.
‘I’ll come straight to the point.’ Mrs Hardy twisted her coffee cup nervously in her ringed hands. ‘I decided to settle in the country for peace and quiet. I was finding it all too quiet, but what happened to you last night was frightening, not my idea of excitement. There’s a maniac on the loose and I want out of here. I am prepared to take your offer of one hundred and ten thousand pounds.’
Agatha had a sudden impulse to say she would make it one hundred and thirty, the sum she had originally offered, but bit it back in time.
‘When do you want to settle at the lawyers’?’
‘Today, if possible,’ said Mrs Hardy.
‘Let me see, we’re just about to go into Mircester to make our statements. We could go on from there to Cheltenham. What about four o’clock?’
‘I’ll fix it.’
‘Tell me,’ said Agatha curiously, ‘what is it about Carsely that you don’t like, apart from murder and mayhem?’
She gave a little sigh. ‘I’ve been very lonely since my husband died. I thought a small village would be a friendly place.’
‘But it is!’ protested Agatha. ‘Everyone’s prepared to be friendly if you just give them a chance.’
‘But it means going to church and talking to the yokels in the pub and joining some dreadful ladies’ society.’
‘I find them delightful.’
‘Well, I don’t. I like cities. I’ll rent in London. I’ll put my stuff in storage and take a service flat for a few weeks a
nd look around.’
But that remark of Mrs Hardy’s about not being able to make friends had gone straight to Agatha’s heart as she remembered her own lonely days before coming to Carsely.
She said, ‘Why don’t you stay? We could be friends.’
‘That’s very kind of you.’ Mrs Hardy gave a wry smile. ‘Don’t you want your cottage back?’
‘Well, I do, but . . .’
‘Then you shall have it. I’ll see you at the lawyers’ this afternoon.’
‘And that was that,’ said Agatha to James a few minutes later. ‘So I’ll soon be home again. She said as I was leaving that provided all the papers were signed, I can move in in a fortnight.’
James felt slightly irritated. A moment before it had seemed that all he wanted out of life was to have his cottage to himself, without Agatha Raisin dribbling cigarette ash over everything. He decided that she ought to look less delighted at the prospect of leaving his home.
‘Well, if you’re ready,’ he said, ‘let’s get to police headquarters.’
Leaves fluttered down in front of them as they drove off, autumn leaves, dancing and whirling, blown down by a great gusty wind from a sky full of tumbling black, ragged clouds.
The whole countryside was in motion. Showers of nuts pattered on the roof of the car. A woman getting out of a car at the Quarry Garage clutched at her skirts to hold them down. An old newspaper spiralled up and then performed a hectic dance through the furrows of a brown ploughed field. And somewhere, thought Agatha, crawling around out there is a murderer.
‘It must be something to do with that Helen Warwick,’ she said.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ snapped James. ‘Do you mean she travelled down from London to pour petrol through our letterbox? Why?’
‘Because I swear she knows something.’
‘Oh, really. Then I had better go back and see her.’
‘Yes, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?’
‘Very much. I found her a charming woman.’
‘Men are so blind. She was sly and devious. And mercenary.’
‘In your jealous opinion, Agatha.’
‘I’m not jealous of that plump frump. We could have been killed last night.’
‘Not with a back door to the garden.’
‘What if we had both been asleep?’
There was no answer to that.
They completed the drive to Mircester in silence.
There were many questions to answer at police headquarters. Detective Inspector Wilkes was in charge of the questioning this time, flanked by Bill Wong. Agatha found herself beginning to sweat. She was terrified either she or James would let something slip and Wilkes would know about their burglaring.
When it was at last all over and they had signed their statements, Wilkes said severely, ‘I should charge both of you with obstructing police business. But I’m warning you for the last time. We may seem to you very slow, but we are thorough.’
They left feeling chastened. From an upstairs window, Maddie Hurd watched them go. She bit her thumbnail and stared down at them. She had not been invited to join in the interrogation. She had not been asked to do anything further on the case at all. She had been given a series of burglaries to investigate instead. She blamed Bill Wong for turning her superiors against her.
Although Bill had not opened his mouth, her jilting of him had a lot to do with it. Bill Wong was very popular, Maddie was not. Women, even in the police force, were expected to be womanly. Women in the police force were not expected to jilt fellow officers. So, although Chief Inspector Wilkes did not sit down and say, ‘We don’t want Maddie Hurd on the case because of the way she has treated Bill Wong,’ he had, without even thinking about it, decided she was not the right officer for the job.
Agatha completed the business of buying her cottage back, although conscience prompted her finally to offer £120,000. She felt she had misjudged Mrs Hardy, that here was a fellow spirit.
When they were leaving the lawyers’, Agatha said impulsively, ‘Look, there’s a dance at the village hall on Saturday evening. Why don’t you come with me and James? No, don’t refuse right away. I thought I would hate things like that, but they’re really rather fun. And it’s in a good cause. We’re raising money for Cancer Relief.’
Mrs Hardy gave a weak smile. All her aggression seemed to have left her. ‘Well, maybe . . .’ she said hesitantly.
‘That’s the thing. Think about it.’ Agatha waved goodbye and headed off to the car, where James was waiting for her.
‘Well, that’s that,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Do you know, she’s not that bad? I’ve asked her to come to the dance with us on Saturday.’
James groaned. ‘I didn’t know we were going.’
‘Of course we are. What would a village dance be without us?’
Agatha put on a chiffon evening blouse and black velvet skirt for the dance on Saturday, wishing the days of proper evening gowns even for a village hop were not gone forever. Full evening dress was glamorous. She was regretting her decision to ‘mother’ Mrs Hardy at the dance. And yet surely there was no one in the village to catch James’s wandering eye. And he did have a wandering eye, witness his interest in Helen Warwick.
He must have meant something hopeful by that ‘Give me time.’ Perhaps they could go away together to northern Cyprus just for a holiday. It wouldn’t need to be a honeymoon. She sat at her dressing-table, a lipstick halfway to her mouth, her eyes unfocused by dreams as she imagined them walking along the beach together, talking.
Then she gave a shrug and, leaning forward, applied the lipstick with a careful hand. The dream James always talked so well, always said all those delightful things she longed to hear. The real James would probably talk about books or the political situation. She stood up. Her skirt was loose at the waist. No thanks to that brief stay at the health farm. It was a result of living with James and eating James’s carefully prepared meals – no fries, no puddings. There was no incentive either to snack before meals because she still felt obliged to ask him for everything, and it was easier not to eat anything between meals than to request something and maybe be damned as a glutton. Her face was thinner and her skin clear. I could pass for forty – maybe, thought Agatha.
When they collected Mrs Hardy and they began to walk towards the village hall, Agatha glanced sideways at her and thought she might at least have made some effort with her dress. Mrs Hardy was wearing a rather baggy green tweed skirt and a black blouse under a raincoat.
‘I don’t think this is a very good idea,’ said Mrs Hardy. ‘I don’t like dancing.’
‘Stay for a bit and have a drink,’ urged Agatha, ‘and then, if you still don’t like it, you can go home.’
Light was streaming out of the village hall and they could hear the jolly umpty-tumpty sound of the village band. ‘It’ll be old-fashioned dancing tonight, not a disco,’ said Agatha. ‘No heavy metal.’
‘You mean “Pride of Erin” and the military two-step, things like that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, I can do those,’ said Mrs Hardy. ‘I didn’t know anyone did those sort of dances these days. I thought they just took ecstasy pills and threw themselves about like dervishes.’
They left their coats in the temporary cloakroom manned, or ‘womanned’, by old Mrs Boggle. ‘That’ll be fifty pee each,’ said Mrs Boggle, ‘and hang your own coats up.’
‘It’s the first time I’ve ever been charged for a cloakroom ticket at the village hall,’ said Agatha suspiciously.
‘You don’t think I’m going to do this for nothing,’ grumbled Mrs Boggle.
James paid the money and then led them both into the village hall. ‘The next dance is a Canadian barn dance,’ announced the MC, vicar Alf Bloxby.
James turned to Mrs Hardy. ‘Care to try?’
‘I don’t know . . .’
‘Oh, go on,’ said Agatha, determined to be charitable and reminding herself that she would soon be moving back into he
r old home.
James and Mrs Hardy took the floor. Agatha moved over to the bar, where the publican, John Fletcher, was working, having left his wife and son to manage the pub. ‘Gin and tonic, John,’ said Agatha.
‘Right you are. How’s that murder investigation going? They caught anyone?’
Agatha shook her head.
‘It’s odd, isn’t it? And then the murder of that poor woman in the cinema. Mind you, the police don’t think now that the two murders are related.’
‘Since when?’
‘I dunno. Fred Griggs was saying something like that the other day.’
He turned away to serve someone else.
Agatha found Mrs Bloxby next to her. ‘Mrs Hardy appears to have come out of her shell,’ said the vicar’s wife.
Agatha turned round and surveyed the dance floor. Mrs Hardy was dancing with unexpected grace. She was laughing at something James was saying.
‘And if I am not mistaken, that’s quite a flirtatious look in her eyes. Not,’ added Mrs Bloxby hurriedly, ‘that she is any competition. You are looking remarkably trim and well these days.’
‘Must be James’s cooking,’ said Agatha. ‘We brought along Mrs Hardy to cheer her up. I only hope now she doesn’t cheer up too much or she will decide to stay.’
‘But you have your cottage back?’
‘Yes, everything’s signed and agreed on.’
‘In that case, she can do nothing about it.’
‘I hope James is not going to get carried away by my good Samaritan act,’ said Agatha. ‘If he asks her for the next dance, I’ll murder her . . . oh, dear, how easily one says things like that. I don’t think we’re ever going to find out who murdered Jimmy.’
‘Let’s sit over there in the corner, away from the noise of the band, and you can tell me about it,’ said Mrs Bloxby.
Agatha hesitated. The dance had finished. But James was asking Miss Simms for the next dance.
‘Okay,’ she said. They carried their drinks over to a couple of chairs in a corner of the hall.
Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage Page 13