Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage

by Beaton, M. C.

  ‘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 was lying about. 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 the 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 I 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’ll 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.

  ‘Hello, 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 contained. 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.

  Chapter 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.’

  She let the cats in from the garden, fed them and, putting her cigarettes in her handbag, went out and headed for next door.

  It was only when she was inside and ensconced in the kitchen that Agatha regretted having come. All Mrs Hardy’s remarks about the village and the villagers came back into her mind. Also, Agatha began to suspect that Mrs Hardy found her not only an object of pity but slightly amusing. There was a mocking glint in Mrs Hardy’s eye when she looked at Agatha, although her voice was kind as she gave her a cup of coffee and said, ‘Here. That’s some of the good Brazilian stuff from Drury’s. You look truly awful. Are you sure you should be out of bed?’

  ‘Yes, I actually feel better than I look,’ said Agatha. She cast a proprietorial look about the kitchen. Soon the whole cottage would be hers again.

  ‘What’s Mr Lacey doing in London?’ asked Mrs Hardy.

  ‘Oh, he’s not in London. He’s at police headquarters in Mircester. He left me a note.’

  ‘That’s odd. He phoned me and told me to look after you. I did the 1471 dialling thing as soon as he had hung up. It was a London number.’

  ‘Maybe he decided to go on from there,’ said Agatha.

  The phone in the living-room rang out. ‘Excuse me.’ Mrs Hardy went to answer it. Agatha heard her say, ‘No, I haven’t seen her today.’ The phone was replaced. It promptly rang again. Agatha realized with surprise that Mrs Hardy must have answered it for in the quiet of the cottage she could hear a little tinny voice yapping from the other end and yet Mrs Hardy said nothing in reply. When Mrs Hardy came into the kitchen, Agatha said, ‘There’s someone on the line. I can hear the voice from here.’

  ‘Oh, it’s one of those nuisance calls. Heavy breathing and all.’ Mrs Hardy went back and slammed down the receiver and then took the phone off the hook.

  ‘I’ve just remembered,’ said Mrs Hardy. ‘I have to go out. But stay there and finish your coffee while I go upstairs and get some things.’

  Agatha nodded and sipped her coffee. Finally, feeling bored, she got up and looked in the kitchen cupboards in a nosy sort of way. Then she slid open the drawers. In one were some photographs. She flipped through them idly and then stared at amazement. She was looking down at the face of her husband, sitting next to a hard-faced blonde woman, somewhere in France at an outdoor café.

  And then as she looked closer she remembered something about this Mrs Gore-Appleton having taken Jimmy to the south of France. The face looked familiar. Those eyes with the mocking look, that hard mouth.

  She slowly closed the drawer and stood hanging on to the kitchen counter. What fools they had all been. It was so dreadfully simple. Mrs Hardy was Mrs Gore-Appleton. It must have been she who recognized Miss Purvey in the cinema that day, even though she had said she was going to London. The mercenary Helen Warwick must somehow have decided to call on James and have spotted Mrs Gore-Appleton and recognized her. They must have spoken.

  Mrs Gore-Appleton was so changed in appearance that Helen might have said something like, ‘Aren’t you that woman I met at the health farm?’ Something like that. And did Mrs Gore-Appleton try to bribe her? Say she would call on her in London? What was the address? That sort of thing. And Helen might have gone along with it, hoping to make some money.

  The sound of Mrs Gore-Appleton coming down the stairs made Agatha’s blood freeze.

  Had Agatha not been so disoriented by the fever, which was rising again, she would have done the se
nsible thing and left immediately and called the police. But a sort of dizzy outrage took hold of her and she said, ‘Mrs Gore-Appleton, I presume.’ She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. ‘I saw the photo of you and Jimmy in that drawer.’

  ‘You truly are a village person, poking your nose into things.’ Mrs Gore-Appleton was standing, her bulk blocking the doorway.

  Agatha could have asked her why she had murdered three people, but instead she heard herself saying stupidly, ‘Why Carsely? And why this cottage?’

  ‘I wanted out of London,’ said Mrs Gore-Appleton. ‘I’d tried living in Spain, but it didn’t suit. I’d asked a house agent to look for a place in the Cotswolds. I was sent several brochures and decided to come down and have a look around. I heard your name mentioned as one of the sellers. I didn’t know you had been married to Jimmy, he never mentioned your name or that he had been married, but the name amused me, and so I bought this.’

  ‘And Jimmy came back and recognized you and tried to put the screws on?’

  ‘Exactly. I’d changed my name to Gore-Appleton with some false papers. When I wound up the charity, I just reverted to my old name.’

  ‘Why didn’t you kill me?’ asked Agatha, her eyes darting this way and that, looking for a weapon.

  ‘Well, do you know, I did try by setting fire to Lacey’s cottage but in case some villager saw me at the scene, I had to look as if I was trying to put it out. Then I took rather a liking to you, and I saw a further way to remove any suspicion from myself and so hired someone to play the part of the gunman. That kick of mine was very well rehearsed.’

  ‘Who was that on the phone just now?’ demanded Agatha. ‘The police?’

  ‘No, it was the interfering vicar’s wife, demanding to know where you were for some suspicious reason.’

  Agatha braced her shoulders. Mrs Gore-Appleton had no weapon. ‘I am going to walk past you and phone the police,’ she said.

  Mrs Gore-Appleton stood aside. ‘I am not going to stop you, I am tired of running. At least they don’t have the death penalty any more.’