‘Let’s get something to eat,’ suggested James when they had left the surgery.
They chose a nearby pub – but not the one where Agatha had ruined the hand basin – and began to discuss the suspects, or rather, Agatha discussed the suspects while a preoccupied James frowned into his beer.
‘I don’t believe you’ve been listening to a word I’ve been saying,’ said Agatha crossly.
‘I’ve been half-listening. The fact is I’ve been thinking about committing a crime.’
‘You?’
‘Yes. I’ve been thinking about breaking into the Cotswold and Gloucester Bank.’
‘But that’s impossible. There’ll be sophisticated burglar alarms and laser beams and pressure pads and God knows what else.’
‘Perhaps not. Let’s finish our food and drink and go and take a look at it.’
The bank was a converted shop in a side street where old Tudor buildings with overhanging eaves crowded out the night sky above.
‘Burglar alarm of course,’ said James. ‘We’ll take a look round the back if we can get there.’
They found a lane which ran along the back of a row of shops and the bank. There were a series of lock-ups, garages, and tall wooden fences, all having a closed, impregnable air.
James counted along. ‘This is the back of the bank,’ he said, ‘what used to be the garden. Surely they wouldn’t wire up this wooden door in the wall.’
He took a small wallet of credit cards out of his pocket. Agatha bit back the impatient remark she was about to make – that apart from in the movies, she had never seen anyone open a lock with a credit card. He selected one.
Agatha turned away and looked along the lane, which was lit with sodium lamps, making everything look unreal, and, she thought more practically, probably making her lips look purple.
There was a click and she swung round. The door in the wall was standing open. ‘Amazing,’ said Agatha.
‘Let’s get inside before someone sees us,’ whispered James.
Agatha followed him in. He closed the door behind them and took out a pencil torch. ‘You’ve done this before,’ accused Agatha.
He didn’t reply but led the way up a narrow path between two strips of lawn. ‘Look,’ he murmured, ‘there’s a kitchen at the back.’
‘What does a bank want a kitchen for?’
‘Make tea for the staff. Left over from when it used to be a shop. Now, let me see . . .’
The thin beam of the torch flicked up and down the building. ‘I don’t see any sign of an alarm here,’ he said. ‘I’m going to have a go. Be prepared to make a run for it.’
‘But we might not hear any alarm,’ said Agatha in an agony of nerves. ‘It might just ring inside the police station.’
‘Where’s your sense of adventure?’ he mocked.
He took out the card again. Agatha prayed that he would not be able to get the door open. She imagined police cars swooping up the lane, police with loud-hailers; the reproachful eyes of Bill Wong. But all she heard was James’s voice saying softly, ‘It’s open. Come on.’
Now Agatha’s heart was hammering so hard, she felt sure it could be heard for miles. The kitchen door closed behind them, the torch beam flickered rapidly to right and left. James opened a door leading out of the kitchen and led the way through.
They found themselves in a square room full of desks and computers. ‘The office,’ said James, ‘which is all we need. Just as well. Look at that door over there. That’s the one into the bank proper, where the money is.’
Agatha shivered. There was an alarm box over the door and a steady red light glared down on them like an infuriated eye.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘make yourself comfortable. This might take some time. There are no windows in this room except for that one through to the main bank, which is just as well, for the light from the computer screen could have been spotted from outside.’
Agatha sat down in a dark corner and waited, too frightened to watch what he was doing, although she was aware of a computer screen flickering into life and the soft sound of drawers being opened and shut.
It had been a long day and extreme fear had the effect of making Agatha feel sleepy. Her eyes closed.
She awoke with him shaking her shoulder and cried, ‘We’ve been caught! The police!’
‘Shhh! I’ve found his account,’ hissed James.
‘Good. Can we get out of here?’
‘Yes, I’ve taken notes. Quietly now.’
As Agatha finally followed him down the garden path, she felt sure there must be people living above the adjoining shops, people who were staring down at the two figures in the garden and reaching for their telephones, but when she shot one frightened look back, everything was as dark and silent as before.
Only when they were safely outside did she realize that fear was affecting her physically. ‘I must find a Ladies’ . . . quick,’ she gasped.
‘Are you feeling sick?’
‘No, I’ve got to pee,’ said Agatha. ‘There’s a tide of pee rising up to my eyeballs.’
‘We’ll go back to the pub,’ he said. ‘It isn’t far.’
Agatha cursed her own crudity. But she almost ran back to the pub.
‘Now what?’ she asked, elated because her fright was over and she had used the services of the pub’s toilet.
‘Don’t you want to know what I found out?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Listen to this. In the short time Paul Bladen was in Carsely, he had deposits in his account: one of twenty thousand pounds, one of fifteen thousand, then nine thousand, one of four thousand, five deposits of five thousand, and one for five hundred. That’s apart from his pay.’
‘Who paid him?’
‘There’s the rub. Didn’t say. I’ve been thinking. I would like to get inside that house of his. We could do it tonight.’
‘Last orders, please, ladies and gennelmen. If you please,’ called the barman.
‘As late as that!’ exclaimed Agatha. ‘Well, we could start out tomorrow early and –’
‘No, tonight.’ He looked at Agatha’s cherry-red coat. ‘We need some dark clothes.’
What monster is this I have unleashed? thought Agatha, looking at his animated face. She could tell him to go on his own. And yet, there would be all the excitement of the adventure, which might lead to . . . They fumbled around in the dark of Paul Bladen’s house. ‘What’s that?’ he cried, clutching hold of Agatha. ‘Nothing,’ he murmured, still holding her. ‘Your perfume smells divine. Oh, Agatha!’ And he bent his lips to hers.
‘Agatha! Stop day-dreaming and let’s get on,’ said James sharply and Agatha blinked the rosy vision away, obscurely irritated that he had snapped her out of it before he had kissed her.
Back at her cottage, Agatha changed into a pair of black slacks and a black sweater. She wondered whether he meant her to blacken her face. Better wait and see.
He rang her bell at one in the morning. He too was wearing a black sweater and black trousers. ‘We’ll be causing no end of a scandal,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I only hope no one sees me calling on you at this hour of the night,’ and Agatha thought of Freda and fervently hoped that someone had.
James, who had been drinking mineral water during their last visit to the pub, elected to drive again. Agatha snuggled down in the passenger seat and dreamt they were racing off on their honeymoon.
‘Just to be on the safe side,’ said James, ‘we’ll park a street away and walk.’
Paul Bladen’s house stood quiet and shuttered in a road of Victorian villas. Agatha remembered her last visit and was glad now she had run away.
James looked up and down the quiet street, which was lined with cherry trees in full bloom. A breeze blew down the street and blossom cascaded about them. ‘Isn’t it sad,’ mourned James, ‘that such beauty should be so fleeting?’
‘Too true,’ said Agatha edgily. ‘But if you stand here for much longer admiring the blossom, then someone’s going to
see us.’
He gave a little sigh and Agatha wondered whether he were wishing he was with someone who could share his love of beauty.
‘I think as there is no one around, we should go straight up to the front door,’ he whispered. ‘There’s a dark porch and once we’re there, we’ll be pretty much shielded.’
‘Why bother about dark clothes if we’re not going to sneak around the back?’ asked Agatha.
‘Because it might take me a bit of time to get the door open, and so long as we are dressed in black, there’s less chance of us being noticed from the street by any passer-by.’
When they were in the shelter of the porch, he flicked the beam of his pencil torch at the door and then switched it off. ‘Yale lock,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘Lovely stained-glass panel on the door. I wonder if Peter Rice knows you can get money these days for Victorian stained glass.’
‘Get on with it,’ said Agatha, looking nervously over her shoulder.
And then they heard the sound of slow footsteps coming along the street and stiffened.
‘Stand very still in the corner and turn your face away from the street and don’t move,’ hissed James.
They froze.
The footsteps came nearer, stopping every once in a while. ‘Come on, Spot,’ said a man’s voice irritably. Someone walking the dog.
Agatha could feel sweat trickling down her face.
And then, to her horror, she heard the light patter of paws behind her and then a dog sniffing at her ankles and the sound of the owner walking up the garden path.
‘Come out of there,’ cried the owner sharply. Please God, prayed Agatha, get me out of this one and I’ll never be bad again.
The dog pattered off. ‘I’m putting you on the leash now,’ said the owner’s voice. This was followed by a metallic click and then those footsteps slowly retreated out of the garden and off down the street.
‘Whew!’ said Agatha. ‘That was close. We should have pretended to be a courting couple,’ she added hopefully. ‘Then, if he’d seen us, he would have sheered off.’
‘On the contrary,’ said James, ‘nothing infuriates the suburbanite more than the sight of a couple snogging on someone else’s property.’ He took out a bunch of thin metal implements.
‘Where did you get those?’ asked Agatha. ‘You’re not a retired burglar, are you?’
‘Chap in the regiment. Now, keep quiet while I get to work.’
Agatha stood and fidgeted. She hoped the much-advertised deodorant she had put on was working. He tried one implement after the other until there was a soft click.
A moment later, Agatha stood in the hall where she had panicked before Paul Bladen. ‘Now,’ said James in a normal voice, ‘there’s a good bit of light coming from the street lamps outside and the curtains aren’t closed. So we search around for some sort of study or a desk.’
Agatha opened a door in the hall. ‘I’ll try this side,’ she said. ‘You try the other.’
She could dimly see that the windows of the room she found herself in looked out over the back garden to a railway track. She moved cautiously around in the darkness, feeling with her fingers for a desk. It seemed to be the sitting-room – sofa, coffee-table, easy chairs. Suddenly, with a roar, a late-night passenger train heading for Oxford rumbled along the track at the end of the garden and then crawled to a stop. Agatha crouched down on the floor. The lights from the carriages shone straight into the room. There were a few people sitting reading books or just staring out into space. Then, with a wheeze, the train crawled on, slowly gathered speed, and roared off into the night.
Agatha got up and made her way with trembling legs to the door, fell over something and crashed down, swearing loudly.
James came in and said impatiently, ‘Try to keep it quiet, Agatha. I’ve found the study. Follow me. Other side of the hall.’
‘It’s all right. I haven’t hurt myself,’ said Agatha sarcastically. ‘I knocked something over.’
The torch stabbed down. A canterbury lay on its side, papers and magazines spilled across the floor. ‘You’d think Rice would have thrown these away,’ complained James, picking them up and putting them back after he had righted the canterbury. ‘Hardly add to the value of the house.’
They crept across the hall and into the study. James approached a desk by the window and gently slid open the drawers. ‘Nothing here,’ he mumbled. ‘Maybe lower down.’ He slid out a bottom drawer and then his searching fingers found something at the back of it. He drew out a file. ‘Come out to the hall so I can flash the torch on this.’
In the hall, the thin beam of light showed bank-books and a deposit book and bank statements tucked into the cardboard file. ‘May as well get out of here and take this home,’ said James.
‘Won’t it be missed?’ asked Agatha.
‘No. Rice said he had burnt all the papers. This was jammed at the back of the bottom drawer. He must have missed it.’
Agatha, delighted to be outside again and once more in the fresh air, tripped gaily forward down the garden path and fell headlong over something. There was a curse from Agatha, a yelp of canine pain, and then that dratted voice calling, ‘Spot!’
The dog pattered off to its master. James helped Agatha to her feet.
‘What’s going on there?’ came the dog owner’s voice.
They walked to the garden gate. A man stood under the street light, holding a small white dog, his face pinched with suspicion. ‘Did you kick my dog?’ he demanded wrathfully.
‘My wife tripped over your dog in the dark,’ said James coldly.
‘Is that so? And what are you doing in there at this time of night?’ asked the dog owner.
‘I do not see it is any business of yours, but my wife and I were looking at our new home. We have just put in an offer for this house and so I would like to take this opportunity of telling you that you ought to keep that animal of yours on a leash and stop it straying over private property. Come, Agatha.’
Agatha, all too conscious of how odd they must look in their black clothes, edged past the dog owner with a weak smile.
She could feel his suspicious eyes boring into their backs at they walked to the car.
‘Let’s get home,’ said James. ‘I’m dying to have a look at those bank statements. What a horrible man. What sort of man goes wandering around the streets with his dog at this time of night? Probably a sex maniac.’
Agatha giggled. ‘He’s probably just a respectable suburban insomniac, or his dog’s incontinent and he is now wondering what kind of people decided to view a house in the dead of night.’
‘It’s all your fault,’ said James. ‘You should look where you’re going.’
‘How was I to know the damn dog would be there?’ retorted Agatha
‘I don’t know. You never seem to have anything sensible on your feet, always limping about and falling over things.’
‘Are we having our first quarrel?’ asked Agatha sweetly.
There was a long silence. Then he said, ‘I am sorry. I was a bit strung up. Shouldn’t take it out on you. The fact is, I’m not used to burglary.’
‘You’re forgiven.’
‘It was not an apology,’ he said, ‘simply an explanation.’
‘Then why did you say you were sorry?’
They bickered the whole way home but neither of them could bring themselves to stalk off to their respective residences until that file was examined.
They went into James’s house. He lit the fire, which was already set. He sat down in an armchair on one side of the fire and Agatha took the armchair opposite.
‘Ah, here’s the deposit book,’ he said. ‘Good heavens!’
‘What? What have you found?’
‘A cheque from Freda was paid in – twenty thousand pounds.’
‘Women’s Lib,’ chortled Agatha maliciously. ‘Not often the woman pays the man.’
‘The others are, let me see: fifteen thousand pounds from Mrs Josephs, nine thousand fr
om Miss Webster, five thousand from Mrs Parr, four more deposits of five thousand, all from Freda, and five hundred from Miss Simms. Oh, and four thousand from Mrs Mason.’
‘Freda!’ Agatha looked triumphant. ‘Do you realize the payments to Bladen come to forty thousand pounds? Now any woman cheated out of that amount of money would feel like murder.’
He looked uncomfortable. ‘I know Freda pretty well. She seems to be awfully rich . . .’
‘No one’s that rich,’ put in Agatha.
He stretched and yawned. ‘I’m tired. Better leave it for tonight. Should we turn this lot over to the police tomorrow?’
Agatha looked horrified. ‘And have to explain how we came by it?’
‘We could say we were viewing the house.’
‘What! At two in the morning? And the estate agents would point out that we never approached them.’
‘All right,’ said James, ‘we’ll tackle these women tomorrow. You had best leave Freda to me.’
Agatha thought furiously about how she might be able to dissuade him from seeing Freda alone, but decided to sleep on it.
But as it turned out, she was the one to tackle Freda after all.
She struggled from a deep sleep the following morning with the sound of her own doorbell ringing in her ears.
She pulled on a dressing-gown and thrust her feet into slippers and went to answer the door. Freda stood there, her noisy dog cradled in her arm. ‘James here?’ she asked brightly. ‘I can’t get any reply at his house.’
‘No,’ said Agatha, ‘but come in and keep that dog of yours away from my cats.’
‘Yes, I think I want a word with you.’ Freda followed Agatha through to the kitchen. Agatha caught a glimpse of herself in the hall mirror: tousled hair, unmade-up face. Freda was as cool and fragile as a figure in a Fragonard painting. She sat down at the kitchen table, put her dog on the floor, and crossed her long legs. Agatha opened the back door and let her cats out into the garden.
‘You’ve been running all over the place with James,’ said Freda. ‘He’s a bit of a softy. You shouldn’t take advantage of his good nature.’
‘And just what’s that supposed to mean?’
Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet Page 12