Agatha Raisin and the Curious Curate

by Beaton, M. C.

  ‘I’ll tell the police!’ panted Agatha.

  ‘And what proof will they find? Nothing. You will find that the police, having got her confession, will not thank you for trying to re-open the case. I have powerful friends. Goodbye, Mrs Raisin.’

  Agatha sat very still. She heard the door slam. She heard him driving off. She tried to stand up but her legs were trembling so much, she collapsed back into her chair.

  And then she saw her tape recorder sitting on the desk.

  She had forgotten to turn it off.

  Now a burst of rage and energy flooded her body. She went to the desk and re-ran the tape and switched it on. It was all there.

  Agatha picked up the phone and dialled Mircester police headquarters and explained she had the real murderer. She got put straight through to Wilkes, who listened in astonished silence and then began to rap out questions: when had he left, what car was he driving?

  When Agatha replaced the phone, she wondered whether to call John and then decided against it. Although she would never admit it to herself, she viewed his pursuit of Charlotte Bellinge as a rejection of herself. She phoned the vicarage instead, only to learn that Mrs Bloxby was out. The doorbell went. It couldn’t be the police already. Agatha went into the kitchen and slid a knife out of the drawer and approached the door. She peered through the peep-hole in the door and saw, with a flood of relief, the elderly face of Ralph Crinsted under a dripping hat.

  ‘You’ll never guess what’s happened!’ she cried, brandishing the kitchen knife in her excitement.

  ‘Be careful with that knife, Agatha,’ he said nervously.

  ‘Oh, what? Gosh, I was frightened. The police are on their way.’

  ‘May I come in? It’s awfully wet.’

  ‘Yes, come along.’

  ‘I hope I’m not disturbing you, I thought up a few ideas for the old folks’ club. You seem to be in the middle of a drama.’

  Agatha led him into the sitting-room. ‘I don’t know about you, but I would like a large brandy. Care to join me?’

  ‘Why not.’

  Once the drinks were poured, Agatha got halfway through the story when Bill Wong arrived with another detective.

  He asked to hear the tape. Agatha switched it on, wincing at the earlier bit, which included the start of her will, and then all her bragging. But then Binser’s dry precise voice describing the murders sounded in the room.

  ‘We’ll get him,’ said Bill. ‘We have his registration number. He’ll be stopped before he reaches London. I think we’d better start ferreting in his background. He was up for a knighthood, you know.

  ‘You’d better come back with us to Mircester, Agatha, and make a full statement.’

  Agatha was taken over her statement again and again until she was gratefully able to sign it. She then had a long talk with Bill which depressed her. He was doubtful whether the tape alone would be enough to convict Binser.

  Poor Miss Partle. Had Binser said something to her during his prison visit that had finally tipped her over the edge? Had he always been respectable?

  John Armitage watched her climbing out of a police car that evening. He hurried round to her cottage and listened amazed to the story that Agatha was now heartily tired of telling.

  ‘Did they get Binser?’ John asked when she had finished.

  ‘He was stopped on the road to London. He’s denying everything. He’s got a team of lawyers. Bill says they are digging into his past. He says Binser seems always to have been a pretty ruthless person.’

  ‘And you thought he was straightforward and decent.’

  ‘I got there in the end,’ said Agatha crossly. ‘Get your ring all right?’

  ‘Thank you. As a matter of fact, I’m thinking of moving back to London.’

  ‘Not a good time to sell. The house market’s in a slump at the moment.’

  ‘I’ll take what I can get, and,’ John added with a tinge of malice, ‘I shall think of you down here busy at work on your old folks’ club. So Miss Partle’s off the hook?’

  ‘If she ever recovers her sanity, she’ll probably be charged with aiding and abetting a murderer and attempting to murder me. I’m glad it’s all over. It’s up to the police now to prove he did it.’

  ‘They’ve got that taped confession.’

  ‘Bill told me after I’d made my statement that he might get away with it. He’s saying he only told me a load of rubbish because he thought I was so smug. He’s insisting it was a joke at my expense. Also, I don’t know if that tape would stand up in court. There was no one in authority here, he wasn’t cautioned and he wasn’t on oath.’

  ‘You should be worried. If he gets away with it, he’ll come looking for you.’

  ‘No, he won’t,’ said Agatha. ‘I’m no threat to him. He seemed pretty confident I couldn’t find out anything. And if they don’t get him this time, then they can’t charge him with the same crime twice.’

  ‘Well, I can’t share your confidence. I’d best be off. I’ve got enough in the bank to rent somewhere in London until this place is sold.’

  Agatha wanted to say, ‘Will you miss me? Did you care anything for me at all?’ But fear of rejection kept her silent.

  Instead, she said, ‘I suppose you’ll be seeing a lot of Charlotte Bellinge.’

  ‘That silly woman,’ he said viciously. ‘No. She turned out to be a terrible bore. I shall be glad to return to all the fun and lights of London. The thought of being buried down here in the winter is an awful prospect. I don’t know how you cope with it.’

  ‘Some people would think three murders was enough excitement for anyone.’

  ‘Anyway. See you around, maybe.’

  John went back to his cottage and stood looking around. May as well think of packing some things up. He’d be glad to get away. And whoever it was that Agatha was romancing, he wished her the joy of him. He didn’t care. She meant nothing to him. Infuriating woman. And as a proof of his lack of interest in Agatha Raisin, he kicked the wastebasket clear across the room.

  Epilogue

  Despite Agatha’s assurances to John that she was not worried that Binser would come looking for her, she felt edgy and nervous.

  She tried to call Bill several times only to be told that he was not available, and her heart sank. She really should have apologized to him about her remarks about Alice.

  So when she opened the door to him a week after Binser had been arrested, she flew at him, crying, ‘Oh, Bill, I’m so sorry about those dreadful things I said about Alice.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘Let’s go in. I’ve some good news for you. Never mind about coffee,’ he said, walking with her into the kitchen to a glad welcome from the cats, ‘I want to tell you right away.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’ve got Binser all sewn up.’

  ‘How? What happened?’

  ‘Well, I phoned the top psychiatrist at that psychiatric prison she’s in and asked how Miss Partle was getting on. He said he was just drafting a report. He said he was rapidly coming to the conclusion that she was faking madness. Maybe she was tired of keeping up the act, but he said twice he had surprised her reading a book with all the appearance of intelligent enjoyment. I talked to my superiors and arranged an interview. She sat drooling in front of me, all blank-eyed. I told her that Binser had confessed. I didn’t tell her he might get away with it.

  ‘She looked at me, startled, and then she began to cry. She switched the mad act right off. She said when he had visited her in prison, she had asked him whether he had told his wife yet that they were going to get married. He said, not yet. He would wait until she was free and then they would run off together. It was that, she said, that suddenly made her realize he was lying, for she knew he would never leave his work. He relished his position and he relished power. But she did not know what to do. She still loved him, however, still hoped. She said she had sunk so low that all she wanted to do was live in the hope of seeing him again. He told her if she f
aked madness, then she wouldn’t stand trial.

  ‘I was wondering how to get some actual proof of his culpability out of her, so I said there was no death penalty and she could wait for him, for the charge of conspiracy to murder plus attempted murder would carry less of a sentence. She said she would not have killed you. She had phoned him and he had said to frighten you as much as possible while he worked out what to do. She said she wouldn’t actually have hit you with that hammer.’

  ‘So how did you get the goods on Binser out of her?’ asked Agatha.

  ‘I told her that Binser had told you that he had never loved her and she was easy to use, that he had no intention of ever leaving his wife. She started to cry again, and after a bit she became very angry. Miss Partle said that he had written a confession to the murders so that after his death, she would be exonerated. Why she fell for that one, I do not know, as he could have outlived her. I asked where the confession was. She said they had various subsidiary companies, and in the safe of an office in Docklands, we would find a confession.

  ‘Once started, it seemed she could not stop. She told me about insider trading deals, intimidation of companies he wished to take over, the lot. I couldn’t believe my luck. I phoned Wilkes, who said he would be down hotfoot with two detectives and a tape recorder. I was terrified while I waited that she would regret the whole thing and slip back into her pretended madness. We raided the safe of a company called Hyten Electronics, and there was the confession along with a set of account books he certainly would not want the income-tax people to see. So he’s been charged.’

  ‘What a relief,’ said Agatha. ‘I told John I was sure he wouldn’t come looking for me, but I’d begun to jump at every sound.’

  ‘Where is John? There’s a FOR SALE sign outside his cottage.’

  ‘He’s going to rent a flat in London. He’s already sent off most of his stuff.’

  ‘That’s quick work.’

  ‘Oh, it’s easy to rent a flat in London if you’ve got the money.’

  ‘So no engagement?’

  ‘No, there wasn’t enough there. I gave him back his ring.’

  ‘Did that upset you?’ Bill looked at her shrewdly.

  ‘Not very much. He was a bore,’ said Agatha, unconsciously echoing John’s remark about Charlotte Bellinge. ‘And I hope everything is all right with you and Alice?’

  ‘Well, no, it isn’t.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Bill. It was that dreadful wine. I should never have let her have any.’

  ‘I’d got over that. People say things when they are drunk they don’t really mean. She was rude to Mother.’

  Agatha felt a pang of sympathy for Alice.

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Well, Mother always does jump the gun a bit. She was saying how Alice and me could save money after we were married by moving in with them – Mum and Dad, that is. Alice said to her, “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve already picked out a nice bungalow for us.” I pointed out it was the first I’d heard of it. Alice said, “I couldn’t live here. They’d drive me mad.”

  ‘I got very angry but I still thought it was maybe the wrong time of the month or something. Alice insisted we drive out of Mircester on the other side of the ring road, where she said this bungalow was. It was quite large. An estate agent was showing a couple round. I asked how much it was selling for and he said one hundred and eighty thousand. I pointed out to Alice I could never afford that. My pay isn’t great, you know. She asked why I hadn’t saved anything, living at home. I said I paid Mum and Dad for my keep. She went absolutely ballistic and called me all kinds of a fool. So I told her I never wanted to see her again.’

  ‘Don’t you want to live on your own?’ asked Agatha curiously. ‘There’s police accommodation in Mircester, isn’t there? Get your independence.’

  ‘I have my independence,’ said Bill, puzzled. ‘All my meals are prepared for me and I have my own room at home.’

  Agatha decided to drop the subject. ‘I feel a fool the way I went on,’ she said. ‘I was completely taken in by Binser.’

  ‘He’s the fool,’ said Bill. ‘He was very lucky no one ever saw him. Mrs Bloxby saw you leaving Tristan’s at midnight. Pity she didn’t look out of the window later on in the night. Miss Jellop’s neighbours happened to be away or busy. Peggy Slither often played loud music and her neighbours aren’t all that close to her. Maybe it takes an amateur to find an amateur.’

  ‘Except I got the wrong amateur. Did Binser say what he planned to do with me? I mean, I had told John I was going to see Miss Partle.’

  ‘He’s already accused of enough, so he sticks

  to the story that he had told Miss Partle to frighten you so that you would drop the whole thing.’

  ‘I can’t see her believing that.’

  ‘She was so much in love with him and already in such a state of panic that she didn’t think clearly.’

  ‘I never saw a less frightened woman.’

  ‘Maybe he planned to dump your body somewhere and then arrange things so that it would look as if you had left the country. I don’t know. I think you should take things easy from now on, Agatha.’

  ‘I plan to.’

  In the weeks leading up to Christmas, Agatha threw herself into preparations for the old folks’ club. She raised money by deciding after all to hold an auction and then held several bingo evenings in the school hall, much to the distress of the vicar, who felt it was encouraging gambling.

  The opening party on Christmas Eve was a great success. The ladies’ society organized a roster of drivers to take the infirm elderly to the club.

  In the new year, Ralph Crinsted started his chess classes. Agatha felt mildly guilty that she had done nothing about taking further lessons from him, although he seemed to have a good few willing pupils.

  It was the end of January before she realized that the FOR SALE sign outside John’s cottage had gone.

  Agatha hurried along to the vicarage. ‘Who’s my new neighbour?’ she asked Mrs Bloxby.

  ‘I believe it is a certain Mr Paul Chatterton, some sort of computer expert.’

  ‘Oh, some computer nerd. Anyway, I’m not interested in men any more. I thought John might have called at least once.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about him. I think he was a bit of a lightweight.’

  Agatha looked at her in surprise. It was highly unusual for the vicar’s wife to say anything critical about anyone.

  Mrs Bloxby coloured. ‘I do not like the way he treated you. I do wish you would find someone suitable.’

  ‘I tell you, I’ve given up. There aren’t any suitable men when you get to my age, anyway.’

  ‘God will provide,’ said Mrs Bloxby sententiously.

  Agatha grinned as a vision of a handsome bachelor, gift-wrapped, and descending from heaven, entered her mind.

  When she walked back to her cottage, she saw there was a removal van outside. Overseeing the unloading of it was what was obviously the new owner. He was middle-aged but tall and fit-looking. He had a shock of white hair and a thin, clever face and sparkling black eyes.

  Agatha hurried indoors. She picked up the phone and made an appointment with the hairdresser and then the beautician.

  Not that she was interested in men any more.

  Still, it didn’t do to let oneself go.