Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell (14 page)

Number 15 had a poster for the Green Party in the window. Agatha rang the bell. A thin woman with an arrogant face answered the door. She was wearing a long red dress of Indian cotton and vinyl sandals. She was very tall. ‘What is it?’ she demanded. A waft of incense floated out of the house.

‘I am Agatha Raisin,’ said Agatha. ‘I am anxious to find out what I can about the Sheppards. Did you buy the house from them?’

‘I don’t like reporters. If you ask me, the capitalist press is the ruin of this country.’

‘I am not a reporter,’ said Agatha. ‘You see . . .’

Charles moved forward and smiled pleasantly. ‘I am Sir Charles Fraith. Haven’t we met before?’

The change in her was almost ludicrous. ‘I d-don’t think . . . Oh,
do
come in, Sir Charles.’

‘How kind,’ murmured Charles. Agatha followed him, muttering, ‘Snobby cow,’ under her breath.

‘I’m Felicity Banks-James,’ their new hostess trilled over her shoulder as she led them down to the basement and into a kitchen which looked as if it had been taken straight from one of those photos in glossy magazines urging you to try ‘a French provincial kitchen look’. Bunches of dusty herbs hung from the ceiling. A brace of pheasant hung from a hook near the cooker, which Agatha gleefully recognized as being stuffed, the kind the taxidermist in Ebrington sold to yuppies. Huge copper pans lined one dresser, looking as if they had never been used. An enormous scrubbed table surrounded by plain wooden chairs dominated the centre of the room. On another dresser, blue-and-white plates stood in rows, also looking as if they had never been used, to judge from the film of dust covering them. A pile of Marks & Spencer’s frozen dinners was stacked on a corner of the table. ‘Just got back from shopping,’ she said, opening a giant fridge and hiding the evidence of un-chic microwave cooking. ‘Coffee?’

‘That would be nice,’ said Charles, beaming at her.

‘It’s decaf. I do think caffeine is so . . .
What are you doing?
’

‘Sorry,’ mumbled Agatha, stuffing her packet of cigarettes back into her handbag.

‘Decaf will be all right,’ said Charles quickly. ‘What a charming house you do have. You did buy it from the Sheppards?’

‘Yes, he wanted to sell me the furnishings as well. Oh, my dear, ghastly three-piece suites, horrible paintings, the kind Boots used to sell, I don’t know if they still do. You know, that woman with the green face and waves on the shore and little kiddies and puppies. They even had a fuzzy pink toilet tidy in the bathroom. Ugh. “Get it all out before I faint,” that’s what I told him. Then I had to rip up all their nasty fitted carpets. And then I found in a suitcase in the basement . . . Well, you’ll never believe it.’

‘A body?’ asked Agatha sourly.

She ignored her and said to Charles. ‘It was a
fox
coat!’

‘What horror!’ said Charles, accepting a green mug of coffee.

‘Exactly. To think of all the effort I and my friends have gone to, to sabotage the hunt. I phoned up Sheppard. He’s a
shopkeeper
, gents’ outfitting, how quaint. She, that woman who was killed, Melissa, it was she who came to collect it.’

‘Mrs Banks-James –’ began Charles.

‘Oh, do call me Felicity, Sir Charles.’

‘Just Charles will do. Felicity, what did you make of her?’

Agatha and Charles had seated themselves at either side of the table. Felicity sat down beside Charles and went on as if Agatha weren’t there.

‘Came as a shock, actually.’

‘In what way?’

Agatha stood up abruptly. ‘Do you mind if I go out into your backyard there and have a smoke?’

‘Be my guest,’ said Felicity, not taking her eyes off Charles.

Agatha stumped off. Felicity waited until the door had closed and murmured, ‘What a grumpy woman, if you don’t mind my saying so, Charles. Not exactly one of us.’

Charles bit back the remark he was about to make, which was, ‘What do you mean, one of us, you pretentious raddled bitch?’

Instead he said mildly, ‘You were saying you were surprised about Melissa.’

‘Well, my dear, after all that
ghastly
furnishing, she was not what I expected at all. She was very pleasant-looking and very smartly dressed. After introducing herself, she said, “I’ve come to rid you of that horrible coat.” You could have knocked me down with a feather. She said he had bought it for her and she couldn’t bear to wear it without crying when she thought of all those dead little foxes. We had a long chat. She said she was so glad to be free of him. And then she began to cry and she said it had been a nightmare. After she had pulled herself together, I said I was surprised that such a sensitive person – I am very sensitive myself, some people say I am psychic – would have such furnishings, and she said he had chosen it all himself. She said he
beat
her. I told her to take him to court, but she said now that she was free, she just wanted peace and quiet. She promised to come out with the hunt saboteurs and left me a phone number, but when I tried it, it didn’t exist. She was so upset, she must have made a mistake. So I phoned Sheppard and asked him if he knew his ex-wife’s phone number and he snarled, “Get lost,” and slammed the phone down. He did it, mark my words.

‘Oh, Agatha Raisin! That’s the woman whose husband is missing. Poor her. No wonder she looks so fierce.’

‘We really must be going,’ said Charles. He felt he had suffered enough of Felicity’s company.

‘Oh, must you . . .?’ she began but Charles was walking to the kitchen door, which he jerked open and said, ‘Come on, Aggie.’

Felicity led the way up the stairs. ‘Charles, dear,’ she cooed, ‘do give me your phone number and we can have a further chat about poor Melissa.’

‘I’m living with Agatha at the moment,’ said Charles smoothly.

‘And my phone’s been disconnected,’ said Agatha. ‘Come along, Charles.’

‘Right with you, dear heart. ’Bye, Felicity.’ Charles trotted after Agatha and muttered to her, ‘Back to the car.’

He repeated everything Felicity had said, doing a very good impression of Felicity’s voice until Agatha was helpless with laughter. After she had recovered, she said, ‘I bet you Melissa did furnish that house. She was doing her chameleon bit, changing to suit whoever she was with. I bet she wore that fur coat as soon as she could. She probably hid it in the basement so that Luke Sheppard wouldn’t give it to his new wife.’

‘We’ll wait here for a bit and then, when we’re sure Felicity isn’t looking, we’ll try the neighbours. I feel we’re getting somewhere at last.’

‘I wonder what it would be like to live in a street like this,’ mused Agatha. ‘So peaceful.’

‘Lot of car crime in Oxford. You’d probably lose that expensive radio that you’ve got in yours and never play. Why don’t you play it?’

‘I like popular music when I’m driving, but the BBC’s going in for disc jockeys, particularly in the afternoon, who shout at you in estuary English, talk too much and sometimes sing along with the records.’

‘Get your head down! Felicity’s coming out.’

They both crouched down in the front seat.

After a few moments, Agatha whispered, ‘I’m getting cramp. Has she gone?’

‘Wait a bit longer.’

Agatha counted to ten, then twenty. She had nearly reached thirty when Charles said, ‘All clear.’

Agatha straightened up with a groan.

‘Let’s go. I think I saw someone behind the curtains in that house to the right of Felicity’s.’

They walked down the street, keeping a careful look-out in case Felicity should come hurrying back. They mounted the steps to the neighbour’s door and rang the bell. A thin, stooped man opened the door.

Agatha went through the introductions and the reason for their visit. ‘Come in,’ he said. ‘I am William Dalrymple. I’ll tell you what I know, but it isn’t much. Can I offer you something?’

‘No, we’re all right,’ said Agatha. He ushered them into a pleasant sitting-room on the first floor. It was lined with bookshelves. There was a desk by the window overlooking the garden, piled high with books and papers.

‘Do you teach at the university?’ asked Agatha.

‘Yes, history.’

How James would have loved to meet him, thought Agatha. James, where are you?

They sat down. ‘What precisely do you want to know?’ asked William.

‘We want to know,’ said Agatha, ‘if you met Melissa Sheppard. What impression did you get of her, and were there any rows?’

‘I can’t help you about the rows, because the walls of these houses are very thick. But Melissa called round several times until I told her not to.’

‘Tell us about it,’ said Charles.

‘Shortly after they had moved in, Melissa came round and asked if she could borrow a screwdriver. I invited her in and went to look for one. When I came back, she had taken one of my books off the shelf, Arthur Bryant’s
Age of Elegance
, and was reading it. She asked if she could borrow it. I warned her that I thought it was in places a rather glamorized version of early-nineteenth-century history. She said she liked glamorous things and flirted a bit. I am an old bachelor and I must confess I was flattered. But I sent her on her way with book and screwdriver.

‘She came back a few days later to return them. She said she had found the book fascinating, and asked if I had anything on Marie Antoinette. I realized then that she probably was only interested in history in the Hollywood sense – you know, Joan of Arc, Mary Queen of Scots, that sort of thing. I said I didn’t have what she wanted but I was sure Blackwell’s could find her something. She began to talk about herself. She said she believed in reincarnation and was sure she had been Josephine – you know, Napoleon’s missus, in a previous life. I said it was amazing how people who believed in reincarnation always believed they had been someone important in a previous life, like Cleopatra or someone; I mean, never a scullery maid. We were both sitting on the sofa and she put a hand on my knee and said, “Oh, William, can you see me as a scullery maid?” I removed her hand and said rather testily that I had a paper to prepare. I thought that would be the end of it. But she came back one more time.

‘It was late at night. I heard the bell ringing and ringing. I opened the door and she flung herself into my arms and said her husband did not love her and could she stay with me.

‘I thrust her away and told her never to call on me again. I slammed the door in her face. I thought she was mad. I mean, look at me! I’ve never been the sort of man that women go for.’

Agatha, looking at his gentle face, his droopy cardigan, and his other-worldly air, thought that before Melissa threw herself at him, there had probably been many approaches made to him which he had not even noticed.

‘It’s all I can tell you,’ said William. ‘Except I was not surprised to read of her murder. She was intensely narcissistic.’

‘Do you happen to know if she was friendly with anyone else in the street?’ asked Charles.

‘She did say during her mad reasoning on incarnation that a Mrs Ellersby at number twenty-five shared her views.’

‘Right, we’ll try her.’

Agatha felt suddenly weary of the whole thing. She would have liked to stay longer in William’s pleasant sitting-room. ‘I was sorry to hear about your missing husband,’ said William as he walked them to the door. He gave Agatha an awkward pat on the back. ‘Don’t worry. I always feel that no news is good news. Live people can hide, dead people usually get found.’

When Agatha and Charles had said goodbye to William and were walking down the street, Agatha suddenly said, ‘But why would James want to hide from me?’

‘Guilt,’ said Charles. ‘Guilt about his fling with Melissa. Let’s go and talk to the dotty Mrs Ellersby.’

Mrs Ellersby looked perfectly sane when she answered the door to them. She had grey hair worn curled and shoulder-length, thick glasses, and a face where all the wrinkles seemed to run downwards to a turtle-neck. Agatha surreptitiously felt her own neck and mentally planned to visit her beautician soon.

After introductions and explanations, she led them down to her kitchen. These tall Victorian houses, thought Charles, would once have had maids and a cook. Now the residents, if they were lucky, made do with a cleaning woman. The kitchen was neither pretentious nor weird. Fittings, thought Agatha, casting an expert eye around, by Smallbone of Devizes. Must have money.

‘So you want to know about Melissa?’ said Mrs Ellersby. ‘Before we start, can I get you anything? Tea? Coffee?’

Both shook their heads. ‘I met Melissa at a class on Buddhism. I was very taken with her. So full of energy. So anxious to learn all she could. I lent her my books on the subject and we had interesting discussions.’

‘Where is this class?’ asked Charles.

‘It’s been disbanded. So sad. It was in a church hall in Saint Giles.’

‘So you found Melissa a perfectly nice person?’ asked Agatha.

‘At first. Then I was disappointed.’

‘Why?’

‘She turned out to be rather silly. She was interested in reincarnation. But only because she was sure she had been someone famous in a previous life. You see, at the beginning, she would listen to me as if she was fascinated by everything I had to tell her, and I must admit I was flattered. When I really got to know her, I was startled that I had not previously for a moment guessed at the sheer shallowness of her brain. She appeared to have a fixation that she had been the Empress Josephine in a previous life.’

‘Did she ever talk about her husband?’

‘Not to me. She talked about herself as Josephine, saying that Napoleon had given her a hard time and on occasions beat her up. I must say, I wondered if she might be referring obliquely to her own husband. I did not like him one bit.’

‘Did you know him?’ asked Agatha.

‘Oh, yes. I had a party and I felt obliged to invite both of them. I had gone off Melissa, but she was still so friendly, I felt trapped. How can you say to someone, “I wish I had never befriended you”? I had invited some friends. The Sheppards behaved very badly. She kept making pointed little jokes at his expense. You know, that awful type of married woman who humiliates her husband in public. He drank too much, and then he suddenly shouted at her in front of everyone, “I must have been mad to marry you.” I decided after that to have nothing more to do with her. The next time she called, I hid downstairs in the kitchen, waiting for her to go away. But she must have walked down the steps at the front of the house. I was sitting at the kitchen table, holding a cup of coffee. I looked up and saw her face pressed to the glass. We stared at each other for a long time. Then she went away and I never saw her again.’