Agatha Raisin and the Day the Floods Came (13 page)

‘I gathered that. Nonetheless, I do have to work and we have been told not to interfere any more. That poor woman. What a mess!’

Agatha realized that the only connection she had with John was Kylie’s murder. Now he would no longer have time for her.

It must have been that hair, she thought. He must have felt it and got a disgust of me. The world is full of young, pretty, smooth-skinned women; why should he even look at me?

She gave a strangled sob.

‘There, now,’ said John. ‘Don’t cry. I know you must be feeling dreadfully guilty about poor Mrs Anstruther-Jones’s death. But you lent her the disguise in good faith.’

And Agatha now did feel guilty about the fact that she was sobbing over middle-aged vanity and not Mrs Anstruther-Jones’s death.

She blew her nose defiantly and then said, ‘I wonder how the police got on with Barrington.’

‘We may never know now,’ said John, underlining the fact that as far as he was concerned, the case was closed.

Later that day Agatha decided to go and see Mrs Bloxby. The vicar’s wife greeted her, exclaiming, ‘I heard it on the news. Poor Mrs Anstruther-Jones.’

‘It’s worse than you know,’ said Agatha, following her in. She told her about the wig and glasses.

‘If she hadn’t been so very silly, it wouldn’t have happened,’ said Mrs Bloxby. ‘Have you eaten?’

‘Not yet.’

‘It’s a lovely day. Go into the garden and have a cigarette and I’ll bring you something.’

Agatha went out to a table in the garden and sat on a rustic seat under the shade of a magnificent wisteria which hung down over a pergola. Mrs Bloxby had a magic touch with flowers and the garden was a riot of daffodils, tulips, impatiens and a late-flowering cherry tree whose blossoms were rising and drifting on the lightest of breezes.

The garden bordered the churchyard where ancient stones leaned this way and that among the tussocky grass.

Mrs Bloxby emerged bearing a tray with a glass of chilled wine and a plate of ham salad, saying, ‘There you are. You’ll feel better when you’ve had something.’

As Agatha ate, Mrs Bloxby said, ‘Yes, she didn’t have to wear the wig and glasses. You say she was going to meet an old school friend? So why the secrecy? She envied you, you know. I think she wanted to be like you.’

‘That makes me feel worse,’ groaned Agatha. ‘Now the police have told me very firmly to back off and John doesn’t want to have anything to do with me and I think it’s because I kissed him.’

‘Oh, Mrs Raisin!’

‘No, it’s not what you think. I was trying to warn him not to tell the police something. But you see, I’d got this hair growing above my upper lip and maybe he felt it against his skin and got disgusted.’

The vicar’s wife emitted an odd sound. Agatha glared at her. Were Mrs Bloxby not such a lady, Agatha could have sworn she actually sniggered.

‘Mrs Raisin, here is a man who has just learned that a woman who used to visit him as much as she could has been brutally killed. Then you kiss him. I really don’t think he would have noticed if you’d had a full beard.’

‘May I stay here for a bit?’ asked Agatha. ‘I don’t feel like going back to my place. I let the cats out into the garden before I went to Worcester and they’ve been fed.’

‘Stay as long as you like,’ said Mrs Bloxby, and then started guiltily as she heard her husband arriving home.

She rose hurriedly to her feet. ‘Back in a minute.’

Agatha heard the murmur of voices. Then she heard the vicar exclaim, ‘That wretched woman is nothing but trouble.’

Mrs Bloxby returned to the garden just as Agatha heard the vicar’s study door slam.

‘On second thoughts, I’d better be going.’

‘Oh, do stay.’

‘No, I planned to phone Roy Silver and see if there was any freelance work going. I never got round to it. I’ll go home and do it now. Keep myself occupied.’

A sad Agatha walked along to her cottage. Nobody liked her and nobody wanted her.

She was just turning into Lilac Lane when she saw Joanna Field going into John’s cottage.

She hesitated. Should she join them? What had Joanna found out?

Probably nothing, she thought sourly. Just finding some excuse to call on him.

Agatha decided to check her face for any other hairs and then put on a face-pack. The green goo was just beginning to harden when the doorbell rang.

She splashed water on her face and scrubbed it with a clean towel, and then ran downstairs.

Agatha opened the door to find John and Joanna there. ‘Why aren’t you at work?’ she asked Joanna.

‘We were all sent home early.’

‘Joanna has some interesting news.’ John smiled. ‘You’ve got little patches of some green stuff on your face.’

‘Go into the kitchen,’ said Agatha. ‘Back in a minute.’

She rushed upstairs again and this time looked in her magnifying mirror. Sure enough, there were little bits of green stuck to various parts of her face.

I need glasses, came the thought, but she quickly dismissed it. She washed and creamed her face and washed it again. Carefully she applied make-up before going back down to join them.

Joanna was wearing figure-hugging trousers in a biscuit colour and she had a crisp white blouse tied at her slim waist. John was wearing a blue shirt and blue cords in a soft material. Despite the difference in their ages, they looked to Agatha’s jaundiced eyes very much a couple.

‘Coffee?’ she asked.

‘Wait till you hear Joanna’s news first,’ said John.

Agatha joined them at the kitchen table and smiled at Joanna. I will not be jealous, she told herself firmly.

‘It’s like this,’ said Joanna. ‘Barrington was taken away on Sunday evening by the police.’

‘How do you know this?’

‘Wait. We didn’t know about it until yesterday, when Mrs Barrington burst into our room at the office. She was raging. She said, “Have any other of you sluts been having an affair with my husband and trying to blackmail him?” Then she began to cry and it all came out. The police had taken him away for questioning. He’d spun her some story that they wanted to know more about Kylie’s friends. Then this morning they were back again and took him away again and this time she learned about Kylie blackmailing her husband. Well, we gave her tea and soothed her down. Phyllis added fuel to the fire by saying that she knew something had been going on when she didn’t know a thing. Mrs Barrington ended up saying she’d had enough of him and would divorce him.’

‘Did she think he might have killed her?’

‘That’s just it,’ said Joanna, her eyes glowing. ‘She said he could be very violent and she’s sure he did it and she’s going to tell the police that!’

‘There’s only one problem with that,’ said Agatha. ‘Why kill Kylie and in such an elaborate way
after
he had paid out the money?’

‘Perhaps,’ said John, ‘because she’d asked for even more.’

‘And what about Mrs Anstruther-Jones?’

‘I think our murderer happened to be driving along and just saw her, the way he saw you. He recognized the fair hair and glasses and gunned the engine.’

‘What do you mean, “the way he saw you”?’ asked Joanna.

Agatha shot John a repressive look and said quickly, ‘Just what he said. He means the murderer thought Mrs Anstruther-Jones was me.’

‘How exciting!’

How exciting to be young and not have anyone out to kill you, thought Agatha. Then she had an awful idea. ‘What if the police release the fact that the killer thought she was me? What if they bring out all that stuff about me masquerading as representing a television company? Then everyone will know my true identity and whoever it is could come here looking for me.’

‘I don’t think they’ll do that,’ said John slowly. ‘Brudge won’t want to let his superiors know that he didn’t do much to stop you investigating. No, I don’t think they’ll do that.’

They discussed the case this way and that without getting any further. Then Joanna said, ‘I’d best go home now. I’m a bit hungry and haven’t had anything to eat yet.’

‘I’ll take you for something,’ said John.

‘Would you?’ Joanna beamed. ‘That’s very kind.’

Surely, thought Agatha, they are not going to leave me. Surely they are not going to just go off together without including me in the invitation.

But John said, ‘See you later.’ They walked out. That was that.

Agatha began to feel very angry indeed. They both knew that a woman had been killed because she had been mistaken for her. It was
her
case, too, dammit.

She would phone Roy, see if there was any work, and leave for London. She looked down at the kitchen floor to find her two cats staring up at her. She felt a pang. It would mean leaving them, the only friends she had got.

She heard the doorbell ring. Ah, come to their senses, had they?

But it was Bill Wong.

‘What’s all this I’ve been hearing?’ he demanded. ‘My friend at Worcester police tells me that the woman who was killed last night was wearing your wig and glasses.’

‘Want to go out for dinner and I’ll tell you about it?’

‘All right. I’ve a free evening.’

‘We’ll go to the Marsh Goose and I’ll sit down and tell you everything.’

When they were seated at a table by the window in the Marsh Goose in Moreton-in-Marsh, Agatha saw John and Joan at another table across the room. They waved to her. She ignored them. ‘Let’s order first,’ said Agatha, ‘then I’ll begin at the beginning and go on to the end. Damn, I feel like getting drunk tonight, but I’ve got to drive you back after dinner and then you’ve got to drive to Cirencester.’

‘Them’s the laws.’ Bill’s almond eyes crinkled with amusement in his smooth young face. The next time I get interested in some man, thought Agatha, I’ll make sure he is more wrinkled than I am.

They ordered their food and then Agatha began to tell him everything that she knew and everything that had happened – with one exception. She did not tell him about the attempt on her life. He listened carefully. Then he said, ‘Barrington’s got a cast-iron alibi. After he was released by the police the first time he was taken in, he phoned his wife and said he was dashing off to Birmingham to see a client. He did dash off to Birmingham, but to a hotel, where he spent the night with a Miss Betty Dicks.’

‘Who’s she?’

‘Some Birmingham secretary who he has been seducing with promises that he’s ready to leave his wife any day now. He left Birmingham early in the morning to get to his work in Evesham but he went home first, where he found the police waiting for him. So he could not have killed Mrs Anstruther-Jones.’

‘But he could have killed Kylie.’

‘Doubtful. Whoever killed Kylie is now scared enough to want you out of the way. Have they offered you police protection?’

Agatha shook her head. ‘I think they’re so mad at me for interfering in police business that they don’t care if someone does bump me off.’

‘Either that or they’re convinced that whoever killed Mrs Anstruther-Jones still thinks you are researching for television. If they, or he, or she, or whoever knew your real identity, they would have made an attempt on your life in Carsely. No, our murderer saw what he thought was you, walking along Waterside.’

‘Cars!’ said Agatha. ‘Do any of those girls have a car?’

‘Phyllis has an old Volkswagen, Ann Trump a Ford Metro, and Marilyn Josh uses Harry McCoy’s old Rover. Zak and his father both have cars. You said you upset Mrs Stokes. She drives a station wagon. They’re all being checked out. The police will be appealing for witnesses on television tonight. You know what ties Kylie’s death and Mrs Anstruther-Jones’s death together?’

‘No, what?’

‘Panic. There’s panic in both cases. Take the case of Kylie. She’s injected with an overdose of heroin. The body’s dumped in some sort of freezer. It could have stayed there for weeks, months – years, even. But no, whoever did it panicked, took the body out and threw it in the river. And someone saw what they thought was you and without worrying about possible witnesses, they stamp their foot down on the accelerator.’

Agatha looked at him thoughtfully. She longed to tell him of the attempt on her life.

‘What?’ said Bill, looking at her quizzically. ‘You haven’t told me all. You’re holding back something.’

‘If I tell you, you’ll tell the police.’

‘That bad?’

‘Yes, that bad.’

He looked around the restaurant. The tables were spaced well apart.

‘I think you’d better tell me. Okay, I won’t tell the police. Something’s happened, and knowing you, it’s something dangerous.’

‘It’s like this. I went to try to see Harry McCoy. He wasn’t at home. I turned to walk back to Merstow Green car park, along Horres Street. The street was deserted. I heard the sound of a car and I don’t know why I knew it was coming for me, but I threw myself over a garden hedge just as it roared past.’

‘Agatha, why didn’t you tell the police?’

‘Because I was in my disguise of television researcher and I thought they’d make a fuss and stop me investigating. It seems silly now, but I’ve left it too long.’ She looked up impatiently. John and Joanna were standing next to their table, smiling down at her.

‘We wondered if you would like to join us in the lounge for coffee?’ said John.

Agatha gave them both a basilisk look. ‘No, go away.’

‘That was very rude of you, Agatha,’ said Bill severely.

‘That was my neighbour, John Armitage, and one of the girls from Barrington’s, Joanna Field.’

‘So what gives? I thought you and this John were investigating together.’

‘Joanna and John came round. Joanna was full of the news that Mrs Barrington had turned up and made a scene in the office, I told you that. But then she said she was hungry, John invites her out for dinner, and they both swan off without even offering to take me along.’

‘Maybe he thought she would talk more freely without you around. Anyway, this attempt on your life. I think the murder of Mrs Anstruther-Jones was chance. She just happened to have been spotted. But I can’t think that the attempt on Horres Street was chance. Cars don’t normally drive through it going anywhere at night, but they do drive along Waterside. Are you sure there was no one at home? You say that Marilyn Josh lives there in the upstairs flat and that Phyllis is having an affair with Harry McCoy. One of them could have been at home, looked out of the window and seen you, and phoned someone. Or there’s a lane at the back of Horres Street. One of them could have nipped out the back way, run round, got into a car and headed for you. That’s what’s so baffling. I keep getting a feeling of panic combined with amateurism. I could swear that whoever’s doing this hasn’t got a record, has never killed before.’