by M C Beaton
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 J 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’U 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.
“Hallo, 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.
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 not only found her 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 one-four-seven-one 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 realised 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 had 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 sensible 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.”
She stood aside.
Agatha marched past her and into the living-room. She put the receiver back on the hook and lifted it again and began to dial Mircester Police Headquarters.
Mrs. Gore-Appleton, who had crept up behind her, brought a brass poker down hard on Agatha’s head.
With a groan, Agatha slumped to the floor.
“Silly woman.” Mrs. Gore-Appleton gave her a kick and replaced the receiver.
She went out into the back garden and into the potting-shed at the end and found a spade. She tore out some of Agatha’s finest shrubs and tossed them on the lawn and then began to dig a grave, thankful that the soil was loose and easily dug.
Then she returned to the living-room and felt the unconscious Agatha’s pulse. She was still alive, but burying would soon solve that problem, thought Mrs. Gore-Appleton. She seized Agatha by the ankles and dragged her through the kitchen and out into the garden, Agatha’s wounded head leaving a trail of blood across the paving-stones just outside the door. Then across the lawn she was dragged and tipped face-down into the grave.
“RIP, Agatha dear,” she said, and threw the first shovelful of earth into the grave. She was so intent on her job, with her back to the house, that she was not aware of anyone arriving until Fred Griggs seized her and threw her to the ground while Bill Wong jumped into the grave and frantically began shovelling the earth from Agatha with his bare hands.
Agatha regained consciousness in hospital to find Bill Wong sitting beside the bed. “You’re all right,” said Bill. “But take it easy. I’ll get a statement from you later.”
Agatha looked around in a dazed way. She was in a private room. There were flowers everywhere. Then her eyes widened. “It was Mrs. Gore-Applet
on all along. What happened?”
“You had a narrow escape,” said Bill. “She hit you hard with the poker, dug a grave in the garden, and then tried to bury you alive. Are you up to all this? I’ll go if you want to.”
“No, stay,” said Agatha weakly, but her eyes began to close and she fell asleep. When she awoke again, she felt much stronger and found out from a doctor that part of her hair had been shaved off and stitches put in her head. After more checks, she was told she would do very well provided she rested quietly. Agatha’s next visitor was Mrs. Bloxby.
“I am so glad to see you alive,” said the vicar’s wife, arranging a bunch of grapes in a bowl. “Do you know, it was quite a coincidence. I thought and thought what Mrs. Hardy – I think I’ll call her that because that is her real name – well, I thought what she had said and then I began to think of the fire and the gunman and I began to get a bad feeling. I phoned her to see if you were there, for I had called your cottage first. She said you weren’t there and somehow, I cannot explain why, I thought you were. I phoned again and demanded if she had seen you and then I realized she had walked away from the phone. Then I thought I heard your voice in the background before the receiver was replaced. I put on my coat and hurried along to Lilac Lane and saw the police car outside. She tried to bury you alive. Such wickedness.”
Bill Wong came in. “I brought you some chocolate,” he said.
“Sit down,” urged Agatha, “and tell me all about it.”
“She talked and talked,” said Bill. “I think she’s a bit mad. She had been running her bent charity when she came across Jimmy. He must have been a wreck, but I tell you something. She actually fell in love with him, hence the slim figure and blonded hair and holiday in the south of France. The blackmailing after the health-farm stay was Jimmy’s idea, but she went along with it.
“And then, by coincidence, Jimmy saw her the day of your wedding and decided to blackmail her. She gave him her address and told him to call on her early in the morning. She witnessed his row with you, but she was already waiting for him, dressed as a man. We found the size-nine shoes in her wardrobe. She strangled him and thought her worries were over. Then she strangled poor Miss Purvey. She says that Helen Warwick spotted her when she was trying to call on James Lacey. Mrs. Gore-Appleton…”