Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet

by Beaton, M. C.

  Agatha Raisin was no longer thinking about who had murdered the vet or Mrs Josephs, all she wanted was her cats back.

  As she approached Josephine Webster’s shop, she saw a white hand twisting the card on the door round from ‘Open’ to ‘Closed’. Of course, half-day in the village. With such a search going on, if Miss Webster had the cats, then she wouldn’t have them in the shop or in her flat above it.

  Agatha returned home and got into her car. She parked a little way away from the shop and waited, not noticing people passing up and down the main street, intent only on Josephine Webster.

  And then Miss Webster came out, neat and trim as ever, and got into her car, which was parked outside the shop. She drove off. Grimly, Agatha followed. Miss Webster drove down into Moreton-in-Marsh and turned along the Fosse. Agatha let a car get between her and her quarry and followed. Miss Webster headed for Mircester, her little red car sailing up and over the Cotswold hills on the old Roman road which ran straight as an arrow.

  Agatha followed her into a multi-storey carpark, parked a little bit away and waited until Miss Webster got out and locked her car, then got out of her own.

  Josephine Webster went first to Boots, the chemist’s, tried various perfume samples, and then bought a bottle. From there, she went to a dress boutique. The day was unseasonably chilly and Agatha shivered as she waited outside. At last, she risked a peek through the shop window. Miss Webster was turning this way and that before a mirror, wearing a low-cut red dress. She said something to the assistant and disappeared back into a changing room. After ten minutes, she came out of the shop, carrying a carrier-bag. From there, she went to a lingerie shop and Agatha again froze and fidgeted outside until Miss Webster appeared carrying a carrier-bag with the lingerie shop’s name on it.

  When she walked on, followed by Agatha, and turned in at the tall Georgian portico of the public library, Agatha was beginning to despair. It was all so innocent. Fear for her cats had tricked her memory. That little petal had probably fallen off the bouquet that morning. But the doggedness, the single-mindedness, and the tenacity that had made her successful in business took over. She waited outside for half an hour and then cautiously walked inside. No sign of Miss Webster.

  Had she seen her and escaped out of a back door? In her frantic search to find a way out of the back of the library, Agatha nearly ran into Josephine Webster, who was sitting in a leather chair in one of the bays, calmly reading, her shopping bags beside her.

  Agatha picked the next bay, took a book at random from the shelves and pretended to read. Her stomach rumbled. She should eat something, but she dare not risk leaving the library.

  After two hours, a rustle of bags in the next bay warned her that her quarry was about to depart.

  She waited a few moments and then cautiously got up and poked her head round the bay. Josephine Webster was disappearing in the direction of the exit. Agatha followed, heart beating hard again now that the pursuit was back on.

  Miss Webster tripped gaily along, as if she hadn’t a care in the world. She turned in at the door of Mircester’s Palace Hotel.

  Agatha, hovering at the entrance, saw her head up a passage at the side of the reception under a sign which said ‘Rest Rooms’.

  She bought a newspaper from a kiosk in the foyer, sat down in an armchair and barricaded herself behind it, lowering it from time to time to make sure Miss Webster had not escaped.

  After a full hour, Agatha saw Miss Webster emerge. She was wearing the new dress and was heavily made up. She had obviously left her bags and coat in the cloakroom. Agatha jerked up the newspaper as Miss Webster crossed the foyer in a cloud of scent and lowered it again in time to see her going into the bar.

  Feeling stiff and hungry, Agatha threw aside the newspaper and looked cautiously round the door of the bar and then jerked her head back.

  Miss Webster was sitting talking to Peter Rice, ugly red-haired Peter Rice, Bladen’s partner. He must have entered the hotel and gone into the bar when Agatha’s whole attention was focused on watching for Josephine Webster.

  She sat down again in the foyer, her mind working furiously. It could be an innocent meeting. Yes, wait a bit. Miss Webster had a cat. She could have taken the cat for treatment to Mircester and struck up a friendship with Peter Rice. No harm in that. But . . . Greta Bladen had said something about Peter Rice being an old friend.

  She looked about her. There was a sign pointing to the hotel restaurant. She walked along to it. The staff were just setting up the tables for the evening meal, but the maître d’hôtel was there. Agatha asked him if a Mr Rice had made a booking for dinner. He checked. Yes, Mr Rice had booked a table for two. For eight o’clock. Agatha glanced at her watch. Only six thirty. They wouldn’t leave the hotel. Somehow, she had to see Greta Bladen before returning to the hotel to keep a watch on them.

  She stopped at a phone-box on the road to the car-park and phoned James, but there was no reply. She drove off, praying that Greta would be at home.

  Greta answered the door and frowned when she saw her visitor was Agatha.

  ‘I must speak to you,’ pleaded Agatha. ‘You see, I’ve been threatened. Someone stole my cats to stop me investigating and I think I might know who that someone might be.’

  Greta sighed but held open the door. ‘Come in. I don’t quite grasp what you are saying. Do you mean someone is trying to stop you investigating Paul’s death?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t got your cats.’

  ‘Could you tell me what you know about Peter Rice?’

  ‘Peter? Oh, he can’t have anything to do with it. I’ve known Peter for ages.’

  ‘Tell me about him anyway.’

  ‘I don’t know very much. He lived a couple of doors away from me in Leamington in the old days. We were friends, played tennis together, but never anything romantic. I mean, I never thought any man would look at me that way, and so I was glad of Peter’s company. Then Paul came along.

  ‘I thought Peter would be delighted that I had found happiness at last, but he threw a very ugly scene. He said he had been going to ask me to marry him. I was so much in love with Paul that somehow that made me callous. It was only old Peter behaving in a most odd way. The next time I saw him he apologized for his behaviour and said he was moving to Mircester.’

  ‘And you never saw him again?’ prompted Agatha.

  ‘Well, I did, of course. I met him when Paul went into partnership with him and, as I told you, it was Peter who suggested I check out the site of this supposed veterinary hospital. I told him long afterwards how I had been cheated. After my divorce, we went out for dinner a couple of times, but there was nothing there and I really don’t think there ever was anything there.’

  ‘Then how do you explain the scene when you told him you were going to marry Paul?’

  ‘Oh, that. I think Peter is the kind who would have been jealous if any close friend, male or female, got married. He was a very solitary man. Come to think of it, I suppose I was the only friend he had in Leamington.’

  ‘Why did he decide to open the surgery in Carsely?’ asked Agatha. ‘I mean, there are lots of villages closer to Mircester, and larger ones, too.’

  ‘Let me think. He said something about that when I met him one day in the square. He said, “I’m finding that ex of yours something useful to do. I think it’s better we work apart. I’ve told him to start up a surgery in Carsely. Keep him out of my hair.” I said, “Why Carsely?” and he said that some friend of his who had a shop there said it was a good place for business.’

  ‘Josephine Webster,’ said Agatha. ‘So that’s the connection. And I think I know where my cats are.’

  She got up to leave. She looked wild-eyed and her face was working.

  ‘If you suspect anyone of anything,’ said Greta, ‘go to the police.’

  Agatha merely snorted and went out to her car.

  She thought furiously on the road to Mircester. Josephine Webster could have ti
pped off Peter Rice about Mrs Josephs. She could have been in the pub to hear Freda telling everyone about the discovery of that bottle and warned Rice, or she could have removed the bottle herself.

  Agatha flicked a glance at the dashboard of her car. Eight o’clock. Peter Rice would just be sitting down to dinner.

  She drove straight to the veterinary surgery and parked outside. She got out and took a tyreiron out of the car. The surgery was a low building set at the back of a small car-park. A light was burning over the door. Agatha moved to the side of the building, which was in darkness but with enough light for her to make out a glass-paned side door. She had no time or expertise to emulate James Lacey’s burglary techniques. She smashed a pane of glass in the door with the tyre-iron. A volley of hysterical barks greeted her ears. Grimly ignoring them, she tugged out the remaining glass with her gloved hands, reached in and unlocked the door.

  Eyes glittered at her in the darkness and somewhere among the barks and yelps she heard several plaintive miaows.

  ‘In for a penny, in for a pound,’ muttered Agatha and switched on the light.

  ‘Shhh!’ she whispered desperately to the cages of animals. Her eyes ranged along them. And there, together in a cage, were Hodge and Boswell.

  With a glad cry, she undid the latch and opened the cage.

  The barking and yowling suddenly died abruptly. Agatha, reaching in to get her cats, was aware of a heavy air of menace. She heard a soft footfall and turned around.

  Josephine Webster smiled up at the waiter as he pulled out her chair for her in the restaurant. Peter Rice sat down opposite. The maître d’ bowed over them and presented menus and made suggestions.

  When their order had been taken by one of his minions, he gathered up the huge leather-bound menus and then suddenly said, ‘Will the other lady be joining you?’

  ‘What other lady?’ demanded Peter Rice, and Miss Webster giggled and said, ‘One of your harem, Peter?’

  ‘A lady came in earlier and asked if you had booked a table for this evening.’

  ‘What did she look like?’ asked the vet.

  ‘Middle-aged, straight brown hair, expensively cut, quite smart clothes.’

  ‘No, she won’t be joining us,’ said Peter. ‘Hold my order. I’ve got to do something in the surgery. Give Miss Webster a drink and look after her until I get back.’

  James Lacey was worried. He had called at Agatha’s cottage several times without getting a reply. He had not been able to get much more out of Freda. Her friend with the silver hair stayed with her all the time, and James could not manage to get a word with her in private.

  He decided to pass the time until Agatha’s return trying to write his book, but instead he found himself writing about the case. He wrote on and then gave an exclamation, took out one character and tried to fit the evidence he had to it.

  He was roused from his efforts by the doorbell. Bill Wong stood there with Inspector Wilkes. ‘Where’s Agatha?’ asked Bill.

  ‘Isn’t she back? We were supposed to meet at six. Isn’t her car there?’

  ‘No, I’m getting worried. We’ll need to ask around and see if anyone saw her leaving the village.’

  ‘I’ll go out and try to find her myself,’ said James. ‘Here, take a look at my notes, Bill, and see if you come to the same conclusion.’

  James went straight to Josephine Webster’s shop. It was in darkness, as was the flat above, and he got no reply to his banging and knocking. A head popped out of a window next to the flat above the shop and a man’s voice said, ‘Ain’t no use you ringing and banging, fit to wake the dead. Her goes to Mircester on half-day.’

  James went back and got his car and told Bill he thought Agatha might be in Mircester. He suddenly knew where Agatha had gone and prayed he would not be too late.

  Agatha slowly straightened up.

  Peter Rice stood in the doorway, looking at her. She was aware again of the strength of that body which supported the disproportionately small head. She had left the tyre-iron lying beside the shattered door. Her eyes flew this way and that, seeking a weapon.

  ‘Don’t even think of it,’ he said. He produced a small automatic pistol from his pocket. ‘Through to the examining room, Mrs Raisin,’ he said. ‘We won’t be disturbed there.’

  Even though she felt weak with fear, even though she felt her bladder was about to give, Agatha gave the door of the cage with her cats in it a kick as she passed and tried to send them telepathic messages to escape. Rice switched off the lights in the room with Agatha’s cats and the other animals and switched on the lights in the small examining room.

  Keeping the pistol trained on Agatha, he asked, ‘How did you know it was me?’

  ‘I didn’t really,’ said Agatha. ‘But I guessed Josephine Webster had been the one to take the cats and leave that note. I followed her and saw her with you. You can’t shoot me. The police will find my body and they’ll know it was you.’

  ‘Mrs Raisin, you broke into my surgery. I saw the light and a figure inside who rose, I thought, as if to attack me. I shot you. I was defending my life and property.’

  ‘I left a note, saying where I would be,’ said Agatha.

  He studied her for a few moments and then smiled. ‘No, you didn’t, or that Lacey fellow would be here. Anyway . . .’ He raised the pistol an inch.

  ‘It was because of Greta, wasn’t it?’ said Agatha.

  ‘In a way. But I didn’t think of killing him then. I didn’t even think of it when she told me how he had been cheating her. No, it was when he started cheating me, ah, then I began to get really angry. That famous veterinary hospital of his. So good for conning gullible women. We had a receptionist here, a nice girl. Paul got his claws into her. She was to persuade the customers to pay cash as much as possible and pass the money to him. Did she get a cut of it? Of course not. All was to go to that hospital which, of course, was to be named after the receptionist. I had taken a long fishing holiday. This is a wealthy practice. I had hired a young vet to stand in for me when I was away and to work with Paul because Paul mostly handled all the cases of horses and farm animals. When I came back, I remarked that trade had dropped by a considerable amount. I suspected the temporary vet, but then one day I was talking to one of the customers in the square and we were complaining about taxes and business taxes in general. “I suppose,” says she, “that’s why you want so much money in cash. To avoid tax. The girl always asks for it.” Of course I got hold of the girl and she broke down and said she had only been stealing for the greater good, namely the founding of that fictitious hospital. I sacked the girl but not Paul. Oh, no. He was going to have to pay me back. But I wanted him out of my hair. Josephine said Carsely was a good place, and so I told him to set up a business there and trick the ladies with his stories if he liked, but every penny was to come to me, and just in case anything happened to him, I got him to make out his will in my favour. I said unless he paid me back in full, I would go to the police.’

  Agatha stayed rigid, seeing out of the corner of her eye that her cats had slid into the room beside her.

  ‘I still wouldn’t have killed him. But one of the women he tricked was Miss Josephine Webster, whom I had come to love. She came to me, crying and sobbing, and told me the whole story. I knew he was up at Pendlebury’s. I was going to curse him, sack him, punch him on the nose, that was all. The stables were empty apart from Paul. I saw him with the syringe, I knew what was in it, what the operation was and something took over and the next thing I knew he was dead. I slipped off without anyone seeing me. I thought I was safe. I was furious when I realized he had taken a double mortgage out on that house, so instead of gaining by his death, I lost. Josephine and I were going to announce our engagement after the fuss had died down. She knew what I had done. Then that Josephs woman came here. She said Paul had tricked her and she was going to tell the police the truth. She said Paul had told her that I had encouraged him to dupe the women out of money. I promised to pay her back. Then
I panicked when Josephine phoned me and told me that you, you Nosy-Parking bitch, were about to hear all from Mrs Josephs. Josephine told me she suffered from diabetes. But still I didn’t mean to do it if she saw sense. I tried to give her the money back, but the silly old bat wouldn’t take it. She said she was going to the police after talking to you. I jabbed the Adrenalin into her. The minute she was dead, I went into a blind panic. I dragged her upstairs in the hope that when she was found dead in the bathroom, they would think it suicide or accident. I chucked the empty bottle out of the car window, as if by getting rid of it, I had got rid of the stain of murder. But you had to interfere again, you and that Lacey. “Take her cats,” said Josephine. “That’ll shut her up.” What a mess. What a bloody mess. But I’m going to marry Josephine, and nothing’s going to stop me.’

  Hodge jumped up on the examining table and sat looking from one to the other.

  Agatha could suddenly smell her own fear, rank and bitter, and so could the cat. Its tail puffed up like a squirrel’s.

  ‘So, Mrs Raisin, I need to get this over with. I advise you to stand still and take what’s coming to you.’

  His finger began to squeeze the trigger. Agatha dived under the table as a shot rang harmlessly above her head.

  One beefy hand dragged her out from under the table. Panting, he threw her against the wall. Hodge flew straight into his face, clawing and spitting. In his panic, the vet tried to shoot the cat off his face but the shot went wild, smashing into a cabinet of bottles.

  Agatha tried to drive the examining table into his stomach as he tore the cat from his face and flung it across the room. She had seen people in films doing that, but it was bolted to the floor. She dived to the side as he fired again, wrenched her ankle and fell on the floor.

  She shut her eyes. This was it. Death at last. And suddenly Bill Wong’s voice like a voice from heaven said, ‘Give me the gun, Mr Rice.’

  There was another shot and a cry from Bill. Agatha screamed, ‘Oh, no!’ and then felt strong hands tugging at her and James Lacey’s voice in her ear, saying, ‘It’s all right, Agatha. Don’t look. Rice has shot himself. Don’t look. Come with me. Keep your head turned away.’