Down the Hatch

by M C Beaton

  “Hello?”

  “Good morning. Am I talking to Mrs. Agatha Raisin?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “Can I check that we have the right address here—Lilac Lane in Carsely?”

  “Why?”

  “According to our records, you have recently been involved in an accident and—”

  “Bugger off.” Agatha hung up. It was the sixth such speculative call she’d had that week. Somehow she had managed to get on someone’s cold-calling list. An accident? She hadn’t had an accident, but what if she had? How could these people go fishing like that, cynically trying to take advantage of someone who might have gone through a huge trauma—promising to win them a huge compensation package and cutting a fat chunk out of it for themselves? What gave them the right to go poking their noses into other people’s business? On the other hand, wasn’t that just what she did herself? Prying into people’s private lives? Was she really any better than the cold caller?

  Yes, she decided with a firm nod, of course you are! You are Agatha Raisin of Raisin Investigations, and what you do matters. You change people’s lives for the better and make sure that rogues, scoundrels, even murderers get what’s coming to them. You’re not a bit like those cold callers. People come to you asking for help, you don’t go chasing them. You don’t play on people’s fears and insecurities, especially after some kind of tragic accident has befallen them, in order to make a quick profit.

  “Heartless swine,” she sighed to the cats.

  “I do hope you don’t mean me.” James appeared at the open kitchen window, having stepped over the fence from his own back garden next door, holding two steaming mugs. “Coffee?”

  “James,” she said, pulling her robe tightly closed in a display of modesty that she assumed was probably wasted on him. “I’m not actually dressed yet.”

  “Don’t bother on my account,” he said, confirming her assumption and passing her coffee through the open window. “I see you made the paper today.”

  He produced a copy of the Mircester Telegraph opened to page four, where the headline read: Private Eye Thrown out of Town Hall.

  “The story’s a little kinder than the headline,” Agatha muttered, scanning the text.

  “Editors love inventing headlines.” James nodded. “Are you off out today?”

  “I’m meeting the Admiral’s widow this morning,” Agatha said, “then I have a meeting this afternoon at Barfield House.”

  “With Charles?”

  “Yes, with Charles.”

  “Oh.”

  “What do you mean, ‘Oh’? I thought you two were friends nowadays.”

  “And I thought you two were not.”

  “It’s purely business. Someone’s trying to stitch up a friend of his with a paternity suit and they want me to look into it.”

  “So Charles calls and you go running?”

  “It’s not like that at all. I can’t just ignore him forever. Look, why don’t we try your place in Evesham this evening—the one we never made it to after the quokka incident? My treat.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” James said, and wandered off towards his own garden.

  That, Agatha thought, was like a return to the old, cold James. His apparent aloofness had immediately made her want to win him over, just as it always had before, but there was something different in this morning’s offhand attitude. He hadn’t been disinterested or insular. He had been … jealous. She smiled. Poor James. Even when he thought he was being cool, all he was really doing was showing he cared.

  “Surprise!” Roy appeared in the kitchen dressed in a white flat cap, white shirt, white windcheater, white flannels and white shoes. He reminded Agatha that she hadn’t yet cleaned her teeth. He looked like a squeeze of toothpaste.

  “You’ve already got all the kit! Well done. I thought we’d have to do some emergency shopping to get you what you needed for the bowls club.”

  “No, I am an accomplished bowler,” Roy boasted. “There are hundreds of bowling clubs all over London, you know—it’s not just a villagey thing for you lot out here in the sticks. A friend of mine got me into it at a fantastic place down at Parsons Green, near the Hurlingham Club.”

  “So you not only look the part, but you have some of the skills as well.” Agatha smiled. She was genuinely impressed.

  “I do,” said Roy, unzipping a small brown leather case to show two shiny black bowls. “And this is my ball bag,” he added, sniggering.

  “Please, Roy.” Agatha’s smile turned to a warning look of reproach. “No off-colour jokes at the club. I need you to fit in there and get people to trust you, to talk to you. I don’t want you putting them off.”

  “I’ll be on my best behaviour, I promise.” He held up his free hand to protest his innocence. “I need to get down there now. There are always members hanging around these clubs tending the flower beds or painting the window frames or whatever, and I want to seem keen.” With that, he was gone, and the kitchen suddenly seemed a little duller without the whiteness of his presence.

  An hour later, Agatha was ready to leave too, having selected a pale yellow cotton midi dress with a pattern of leaves and flowers rising from the hemline not quite as far as the waist. She was pleased with the way it looked, the sleeves dropping halfway down her upper arms, showing off the tan she had managed to acquire from odd moments reading in the garden. They would also keep her a little warmer if necessary, a few clouds having rolled in overnight, perhaps heralding the end of the recent spell of blue-sky weather.

  In Mircester, Toni was waiting for her at the end of the street where she lived, as arranged, smartly dressed in a blue jacket and white jeans. She directed Agatha to Mircester Park Road and an apartment block that looked out over the park. The building was five or six storeys in height, with rows of balconies along the front, some of which had privacy surrounds made from the kind of murky opaque glass that looked like it had been dipped in sour milk. Others had railings, behind which were plants in pots, a tatty leather armchair, an old rusting washing machine, and right up on the top floor, Agatha could swear there was a motorbike.

  “It’s not as pretty as Miss Featherstone’s place, is it?” said Toni.

  “You mean the Venusian drop-in centre?” Agatha was making her way towards the main entrance down a flight of steps that bridged a grass embankment. “No, it’s not.”

  The entrance hall was clean and serviceable, yet utterly devoid of charm, with a prevalence of grey paint and grey flooring. They made for the elevator, even though the Admiral’s apartment was only on the second floor, and waited just a moment for it to arrive, surprisingly silently and efficiently. Mrs. Nelson was waiting for them in the second-floor corridor. She was in her mid sixties, slim, of average height, and her shoulder-length dark hair was streaked with grey.

  “Saw you coming in,” she said, beckoning them to follow her round a corner. “My place is along here.”

  She led them into a flat that was dingy and ill-lit, and, in Agatha’s opinion, badly needed the attention of a good interior designer. It seemed fairly clean and tidy, but stank of stale cigarette smoke. Agatha shuddered to think that her own cottage might ever have smelled like that, then consoled herself with the reassurance that her cleaner, Doris Simpson, would never have allowed it.

  The sitting room was crowded with furniture that was too big for a small flat, the one area of clear floor space being by the sliding glass doors that led out onto the balcony. There stood a telescope mounted on a tripod. Mrs. Nelson saw Agatha eyeing it and snorted.

  “That were his, weren’t it?” She had a sneer on her face that turned the smoker’s wrinkles around her mouth into a cruel scar pattern. “Said he used it to keep an eye on that bowling club of his in the park. More often than not he had it pointing the other way, towards the nurses’ flats at Mircester Hospital. Dirty old man.”

  She reached forward for her cigarettes, which were on the coffee table between her and her visitors, then saw Agatha
following her movement. She picked up a magazine and placed it on top of some official-looking documents that were sitting on the table before lighting up.

  “Don’t mind, do you?” she said, indicating the lit cigarette. “Don’t matter if you do anyway. Now Harry’s gone, this is my place, ain’t it? He liked his rum and I like my smokes. Normally I go out on the balcony, but there ain’t room out there for the three of us.”

  “I’m very sorry about what happened to your husband, Mrs. Nelson.” Agatha offered her condolences.

  “It were a nasty way to go, right enough,” Mrs. Nelson agreed. “I wouldn’t have wished that on him.”

  “But you’re glad he’s gone,” Agatha said.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “No, but it’s true, isn’t it?”

  “I won’t miss him. Reckon he got what he deserved.”

  “You give the impression,” said Toni, sounding surprised at Mrs. Nelson’s attitude, “that you really didn’t like him very much.”

  “I hated him.” The sneer was back on Cathy Nelson’s face and she took a long drag on her cigarette. “He was an absolute bastard—but I never killed him.”

  “Why did you marry him in the first place?” Toni asked.

  “Because I was stupid—and because he offered me something I’ve never had. A proper home.” She waved an arm around the room. “This place. Oh, and he could be a real charmer when he wanted to. Told me he would look after me, that he would take care of me. Said he were a retired admiral. He said that to a lot of people—what a liar. Do you know what a retired admiral’s pension is? I do—I looked it up. It’s about four times what most working folks earn. Why would a retired admiral be living in this dump? Still, it’s better than I’ve ever had before.”

  “Where did you meet him?” Agatha asked.

  “At that bowls club,” said Mrs. Nelson. “I’d been drifting around the country, picking up a bit of work here and there, staying in rented rooms, and I ended up in Mircester Park one day. I was standing at the gate in the sunshine watching them playing when he spotted me. He asked me to come in, we got to talking and it all went from there.

  “That gave all them at the club something to talk about—and it put that Palmer woman’s nose right out of joint. She had her eye on him. She’d known him for years, from way before he were first wed, and he’d been giving her some chat. She’s the churchy sort, you know? I’ll bet she thought she could save him from the demon drink and all that.”

  “You were aware that he had a drinking problem, then?” Agatha asked.

  “Aware?” Mrs. Nelson laughed. “You couldn’t bloody well miss it. He knocked back his Smuggler’s Breath morning, noon and night. ‘Down the hatch!’ That’s what he’d yell when he were in a drinking mood—and that were most of the time. Once he’d had a couple, he wouldn’t even bother with a glass. He’d swig it straight from the bottle, even at the bowling club, where most of the old biddies only have a small sherry or a half-pint of lager shandy.”

  “The coroner mentioned painkillers,” said Agatha. “What was he taking those for?”

  “No idea.” Mrs. Nelson shrugged. “I spotted a bottle of pills in the bathroom cabinet the other day. Never noticed them before. He didn’t say what he were taking them for, but why would he? He only ever told me what he wanted to. I bet there’s plenty a man like him don’t tell his wife.”

  “Why did he want to get married?” Toni was taking notes on a pad.

  “He only wanted a wife for one thing—and no, it’s not what you’re thinking. There were none of that. We had separate bedrooms. We never actually lived as man and wife in that sense. All he wanted were for me to cook for him, wash his clothes and act like a servant.”

  “Was it like that right from the start?” asked Agatha.

  “Of course!” Mrs. Nelson seemed amazed that she should ask such a question. “That were the arrangement. He’d put a roof over my head and take care of me as long as I kept house for him. It sounded like a good deal to me at first, but after a few years it all turned bad. If I hadn’t ironed his shirt properly or got his bowling whites as white as he liked, I could expect a slap.”

  “I don’t think anyone could really blame you for wanting rid of him,” said Toni.

  “Well, they’d be wrong to think that!” Mrs. Nelson startled Toni with the note of anger in her voice. “We rubbed along just fine and I could handle him when he turned rough. I’ve known far worse. Every week he’d put money on the table for food and bills. I hated him, sure, but I could put up with him. I didn’t want him dead.”

  “So who would have? Did he have any enemies?” Agatha was fairly sure she already knew the answer to her question.

  “Plenty,” laughed Mrs. Nelson, stubbing out her cigarette. “He were banned from the local shop for wrecking their booze counter when they wouldn’t stock his Smuggler’s Breath. Most of the neighbours here hated the sight of him. He came to blows with the old bloke upstairs.”

  “What was the fight about?” Toni asked.

  “Harry had been bragging about being an admiral and related to Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson through the Norfolk side of his family. Bloke upstairs said that if Harry was an admiral then he was Winston Churchill, and the two of them went at it. Pathetic, really. Two old geezers wrestling on the grass outside.”

  “Which of the other neighbours did he quarrel with?” asked Agatha.

  “There was a whole bunch of them in the residents’ association.” Mrs. Nelson lit another cigarette. “He wanted them all to have canvas screens on their balconies, like they do around the rails on a ship, but no one liked the idea. He could be real charming when he wanted something. He was nice as ninepence at the first of the residents’ meetings, but when they wouldn’t do what he wanted, he turned nasty and the meetings ended in shouting matches. He didn’t have any friends around here.”

  “He seems to have had a lot of friends at Mircester Crown Green Bowling Club,” Toni commented.

  “Some of them loved him.” Mrs. Nelson smirked, taking a long drag on her cigarette. “They were the ones that fell for his chatty charm and his lies. Then there were the ones that despised him and wanted him kicked out of the club.”

  “Was Stanley Partridge one of those?” Agatha enquired.

  “The little bloke with the glasses?” Mrs. Nelson paused for a second, then nodded. “He seems harmless, but Harry could get him all riled up. Something about wanting to dig up old Stan’s rose garden. Funny the things that can wind people up, ain’t it?”

  “The people who first found him on the bowling green—the Swinburns—they didn’t seem to be his biggest fans either,” added Agatha.

  “Sweet old couple,” said Mrs. Nelson. “They came to see me here, asked if there was anything they could do for me. They’re nice, but he hated them. She were president, you see? Harry didn’t like that. Didn’t think a woman should do the job. But he’d already been president and got his little badge. Rules say you can only do it once.”

  “Will you manage here on your own?” asked Toni.

  “I’ll be just fine.” Mrs. Nelson blew a stream of smoke towards the open balcony doors. “This place is bought and paid for. His pensions ain’t much like an admiral’s, but they’ll come to me now, so I’ll be sorted. He’d even set aside money for a fancy funeral—wanted a big party at the bowls club and a flashy headstone in the cemetery. Well, he ain’t getting that. Funeral’s on Wednesday at the crematorium.”

  “That’s remarkably quick.” Agatha knew how far in advance these things had to be booked, and given that the coroner would only have released the body after the inquest on Friday, Wednesday was surprisingly swift.

  “They had a cancellation,” Mrs. Nelson explained.

  “Who cancels a cremation?” Toni looked up from her pad. “I mean, surely whoever cancelled still has a deceased friend or relative to lay to rest?”

  “They do,” Mrs. Nelson agreed. “They got in touch with me because they’d been pesterin
g the people that run the cemetery. They asked if I was going to use the plot Harry bought years ago. They were desperate to have a grave to visit. I’m not, so I sold it to them. Those plots are worth a fair bit, you know? Part of the deal was that I got their slot at the crematorium.”

  “So following Mr. Nelson’s death, you now have a home and no real money worries,” said Agatha.

  “Yeah, but that don’t mean I killed him!” Mrs. Nelson stubbed out her cigarette with a series of violent jabs. “That’s why I agreed to talk to you. You think he were murdered? Well, I suppose I’m what you’d call your prime suspect, but I didn’t do it, see? I was here when he died. Didn’t leave the flat all morning.”

  “Can anyone verify that?” Toni asked. “Was anyone here with you?”

  “You mean have I got a proper alibi?” Mrs. Nelson snorted. “Course not. I don’t need one. According to the coroner, Harry’s death were an accident. But you go shouting your mouth off about murder, Mrs. Raisin, and I’m the one they’ll point the finger at. If you get people thinking I killed him, I’ll lose the pensions. I’ll lose everything and end up in jail—but I didn’t do it!”

  “If you’re innocent, Mrs. Nelson,” Agatha assured her, “then you have nothing to worry about.”

  “Well, I am worried!” A tear appeared on Mrs. Nelson’s cheek. Not a widow’s tear shed over the loss of her husband, Agatha noted, but a frightened woman’s tear shed over the thought of a stable, secure future being snatched away. “I didn’t kill him, I swear!”

  “Then the best thing we can do,” Agatha said, standing ready to leave, “is to work out who did. Rest assured, Mrs. Nelson, we will find your husband’s murderer.”

  Chapter Seven

  “She was hiding something,” Agatha said as she and Toni walked back to her car. “Don’t get me wrong—she is seriously worried about being accused of murder and she didn’t appear to be lying, but there’s something she’s not telling us. She has something to hide.”