Agatha Raisin and the Curious Curate (3 page)

‘I felt I could help people.’

‘And are you happy here?’

‘I don’t think Mr Bloxby likes me. I think he’s a bit jealous.’

‘He’s a difficult man. I’m afraid he doesn’t like me either.’ They laughed, drawn together by the vicar’s dislike of both of them.

‘You were saying you had been involved in some detection. Tell me about that?’

So Agatha bragged away happily over dessert, over coffee, until, noticing it was nearly midnight, she reluctantly said she should leave.

‘Before you go,’ he said, ‘I have a talent for playing the stock exchange. I make fortunes for others. Want me to help you?’

‘I’ve got a very good stockbroker,’ said Agatha. ‘But I’ll let you know.’

Somehow, she expected him to offer to walk her home, but he led the way downstairs and then stood facing her at the bottom. ‘My turn next time,’ said Agatha.

‘I’ll keep you to that.’ He bent and kissed her gently on the mouth. She stared up at him, dazed. He opened the door. ‘Goodnight, Agatha.’

‘Goodnight, Tristan,’ she said faintly.

The door shut behind her. Over at the vicarage, Mrs Bloxby’s face appeared briefly at an upstairs window and then disappeared.

Agatha walked home sedately although she felt like running and jumping and cheering.

It was only when she reached her cottage that she realized she had not set a date for another dinner. She did not even know his phone number. She searched the phone book until she found a listing for Mrs Feathers. He would not be asleep already. She dialled. Mrs Feathers answered the phone. Agatha asked to speak to Tristan and waited anxiously.

Then she heard his voice. ‘Yes?’

‘This is Agatha. We forgot to set a date for dinner.’

There was a silence. Then he gave a mocking little laugh and said, ‘Keen, aren’t you? I’ll let you know.’

‘Goodnight,’ said Agatha quickly and dropped the receiver like a hot potato.

She walked slowly into her kitchen and sat down at the table, her face flaming with mortification.

‘You silly old fool,’ said the voice in her head, and for once Agatha sadly agreed.

Her first feeling when she awoke the next day was that she never wanted to see the curate again. She felt he had led her on to make a fool of herself. A wind had got up and rattled through the dry thatch on the roof overhead and sent small dust devils dancing down Lilac Lane outside. She forced herself to get out of bed and face the day ahead. What if Tristan was joking with Mrs Bloxby about her? She made herself her customary breakfast of black coffee and decided to fill up the watering can and water the garden as the radio had announced a hose-pipe ban. She was half-way down the garden when she heard sirens rending the quiet of the village. She slowly put down the watering can and stood listening. The sirens swept past the end of Lilac Lane and up in the direction of the church and stopped.

Agatha abandoned the watering can and fled through the house and out into the lane. Her flat sandals sending up spirals of dust, she ran on in the direction of the vicarage. Please God, she prayed, let it not be Mrs Bloxby.

There were three police cars and an ambulance. A crowd was gathering. Agatha saw John Fletcher, the landlord from the Red Lion, and asked him, ‘Is someone hurt? What’s happened?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

They waited a long time. Hazy clouds covered the hot sun overhead. The wind had died and all was still. Rumour buzzed through the crowd. It was the vicar, it was Mrs Bloxby, it was the curate.

A stone-faced policeman was on duty outside the vicarage. He refused to answer questions, simply saying, ‘Move along there. Nothing to see.’

A white-coated forensic unit arrived. People began to drift off. ‘I’d better open up,’ said the publican. ‘We’ll find out sooner or later.’

Agatha was joined by John Armitage. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ said Agatha. ‘I’m terrified something’s happened to Mrs Bloxby.’

Then Agatha’s friend, Detective Sergeant Bill Wong, came out of the vicarage accompanied by a policewoman.

‘Bill!’ called Agatha.

‘Later,’ he said. He and the policewoman went to Mrs Feathers’s small cottage and knocked at the door. The old lady opened the door to them. They said something. She put a trembling hand up to her mouth and they disappeared inside and shut the door.

‘There’s your answer,’ said John Armitage.

‘It’s the curate and he’s dead because that ambulance hasn’t moved!’

John and Agatha decided to go back to Agatha’s cottage and then return to the vicarage later.

‘Who would want to kill the curate – if it was the curate,’ asked John.

Me, thought Agatha. I could have killed him last night.

Aloud, she said, ‘I hate this waiting.’ Then she thought, they’ll have questioned Mrs Feathers and she’ll tell them about that dinner last night. I don’t want John to know about it. I’ve got to get rid of him.

‘I’m restless,’ she said, getting to her feet. ‘I think I’ll go for a walk.’

‘Good idea.’

‘Alone.’

‘Oh, all right.’

They walked together to the door. Agatha opened it. Detective Inspector Wilkes of the Mircester CID stood there, accompanied by Bill Wong and a policewoman.

‘May we come in?’ asked Wilkes.

‘Yes,’ said Agatha, flustered. ‘See you later, John.’

He was urged on his way by a push in the back from Agatha.

Agatha led the police into her living-room and sat down feeling, irrationally, like a guilty schoolgirl.

‘What’s happened?’ she asked.

‘Mr Delon, the curate, was found this morning in the vicar’s study. He had been stabbed.’

Agatha felt hysterical. ‘Was he stabbed with a rare oriental dagger?’ She stifled a giggle.

Wilkes glared at her. ‘He was stabbed with a paper-knife on the vicar’s desk.’

Agatha fought down the hysteria. ‘You can’t kill someone with a paper-knife.’

‘You can with this one. It’s very sharp. Mr Bloxby said he kept it sharp. The church box, the one people put donations in for the upkeep of the church, was lying open. The money had gone.’

‘I know the vicar took it from the church from time to time to record what had been donated,’ said Agatha. ‘But Mr Delon couldn’t have surprised a burglar. I don’t think there were ever any donations in there worth bothering about.’

‘Evidently, according to the vicar, there were this time. The curate had delivered a sermon the Sunday before last about the importance of donating to the upkeep of the church. There were several hundred pounds in there. The vicar hadn’t got around to counting it. He says he just checked inside and planned to get down to counting the takings today.’

‘But what was Mr Delon doing in the vicar’s study?’ asked Agatha.

‘If we can stop the speculation and get to your movements, Mrs Raisin. You had dinner with Mr Delon in his flat last night. You left around midnight.’

‘Yes.’

‘Were you intimate with him?’

Agatha’s face flamed. ‘Of course not! I barely knew the man.’

‘And yet he asked you for dinner.’

‘Oh, I thought it was a parish thing. I assume it was his way of getting to know everybody.’

‘So what did you talk about?’

‘He was a good listener,’ said Agatha. ‘I’m afraid I talked mostly about myself. I asked him about himself and he said he had been at a church in New Cross in London and that he had formed a boys’ club and that one of the gang leaders had become angry, thinking he was taking the youth of the area away and had had him beaten up. He said he’d had a nervous breakdown.’

‘And you left at midnight and that was that?’

‘Of course.’

‘Do you know of any other women in the village he was particularly friendly with?’

‘No. I mean, I’d been away and then I was up in London, working. The first time I met him was on Sunday, outside the church. Then he turned up on my doorstep yesterday and invited me to dinner.’

‘Let’s go over it again,’ said Wilkes.

Agatha went through the whole business again and then felt her face going red. They would check phone calls to Mrs Feathers’s phone and would know she had phoned him when she got home.

‘What is it?’ demanded Wilkes, studying her red face.

‘When I got home, I realized I had asked him for dinner but hadn’t fixed a date, so I phoned him and he said he would let me know.’

‘Those were his only words?’

‘Exactly,’ said Agatha with all the firmness of one used to lying.

‘That will be all for the moment. We would like you to come down to headquarters and sign a statement, say, tomorrow morning, and to hold yourself in readiness for further questioning.’

As they rose to leave, Agatha’s friend, Detective Sergeant Bill Wong, gave her the ghost of a wink.

‘Call me later,’ mouthed Agatha silently.

As Wilkes was leaving, Agatha called, ‘When was Mr Delon killed?’

He turned. ‘We don’t know. Mrs Bloxby rose at six-thirty this morning. She went out into the garden and noticed the French windows to the study were wide open. She could see papers were blowing about. She went in to close the window and found the curate dead.’

Agatha felt a great wave of relief. She realized she had been afraid the vicar might have lost his temper and struck out at Tristan.

‘So someone came in from outside?’

‘Or someone made it look that way.’

Agatha sat down shakily when they had left. Then she rose and phoned the vicarage. A policeman answered and said curtly that neither the vicar nor his wife were free to come to the phone.

The doorbell rang and she rushed to answer it. For once John Armitage got a warm welcome. ‘Oh, John,’ cried Agatha, grabbing his arm and dragging him indoors. ‘Isn’t this too awful? Do you think Alf did it and made it look like a burglary?’

‘I cannot believe our vicar would harm a fly,’ said John, shutting the door behind them. ‘Let’s sit down calmly and think about it. Why did the police want to see you?’

‘As far as they know, I was the last one to see Tristan alive. I went to his place for dinner and left around midnight.’

‘Oho. He’s a fast worker. How did that come about?’

‘He just turned up on the doorstep and asked me, just like that.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘I’ve already gone over and over it with the police.’ She started to describe her evening again.

‘Wait a minute,’ he interrupted. ‘Mrs Feathers supplied a dinner of pâté de foie gras, tournedos Rossini, and baked Alaska. She can’t be rich and she’s a widow. Didn’t you think it was a bit much of him?’

‘I did rather,’ said Agatha ruefully.

‘Sounds a bit of a taker to me. Did he try to get money out of you?’

‘You do underrate my charms, don’t you? Oh, Lord. I’ve just remembered something. He said something about being a whiz at playing the stock exchange and that he could invest money for me. I said I’d a very good stockbroker but that I’d let him know.’

‘So
that
was why he asked you for dinner.’

‘What do you mean?’ demanded Agatha huffily.

‘Look at it this way. He’d conned old Mrs Feathers into supplying an expensive meal. Who knows? He may have got his hands on her savings. You know what the gossip in this village is like. He’d have heard you’re rich. You’ve got a bit of a reputation when it comes to men.’

‘Undeserved,’ snapped Agatha.

‘And you’re a divorcée. You should tell the police.’

‘Must I?’ asked Agatha bleakly.

‘Yes, of course. And just think. They’re probably still up at the vicarage and it’ll be an excuse for us to get in there.’

The policeman on guard at the door of the vicarage listened to Agatha’s request to see Wilkes because she had something to tell him relevant to the murder. He disappeared indoors and reappeared a few minutes later. ‘Follow me,’ he said. ‘They’re in the garden.’ The vicar’s study door was standing open. Men in white overalls were swarming all over the place.

They followed the policeman out through the French windows and into the garden where Wilkes, a policewoman, the vicar and Mrs Bloxby sat round a garden table. There was no sign of Bill Wong.

Mrs Bloxby was holding her husband’s hand. Both looked strained.

‘What is it?’ asked Wilkes.

Agatha drew up a chair and sat down. She told him about the expensive dinner and about the offer to invest money for her.

‘This might give us an angle,’ said Wilkes slowly. ‘He may have been successful with some of the other women. We’ll be checking his bank account. Now Mrs Feathers says you were the only one he invited home for dinner and he told her to make a special effort and you were very rich and probably used to the best.’

Agatha felt herself grow red yet again with mortification.

Wilkes turned to Mrs Bloxby. ‘Was he particularly friendly with any other women in the village?’

‘It’s hard to say,’ she said wearily. ‘I think they mostly invited him for meals. Miss Jellop was one. Then there was Peggy Slither over in Ancombe. Oh dear, let me think. Old Colonel Tremp’s widow, Mrs Tremp, she lives up the hill out of the village in that converted barn. So many were smitten with him. He was very handsome.’

‘And what about the two of you? Did he offer to invest any money?’

‘No, he said he had a little money from a family trust. He didn’t ask us for any.’

‘How come you got him as a curate?’ asked Agatha.

‘I was told he’d had a nervous breakdown,’ said the vicar. ‘I was glad of help in the parish work.’

‘And did you find him helpful?’ asked Wilkes.

‘The first week was fine. But then he became – selective.’

‘What do you mean – selective?’

‘I found he had not been calling on any of the elderly or sick, unless – I now realize – they were wealthy. I took him to task for neglect of duty and he simply smiled and said of course he would attend to it. Then I fell ill and he took over the services in the church. I felt it churlish of me to dislike him – for I was beginning to dislike him – and I feared I was envious of the way he could pack the church.’

‘It looks as if he might have surprised a burglar,’ said Wilkes.

‘Or,’ interrupted Agatha suddenly, ‘been robbing the cash box himself.’