Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell (22 page)

‘Where’s Agde?’

‘South of France, on the Provence side.’

‘Too long a shot,’ said Agatha. ‘Besides, we’ve got this meeting on Saturday.’

Charles looked at her curiously. ‘Don’t you want to find James?’

‘Of course I do.’ But Agatha did not want to think for a moment that he was in a monastery. ‘Maybe after the meeting,’ she said. ‘But don’t tell Bill about your idea. A bunch of British flat-feet descending on the south of France might alert him.’

‘They’d just send the French police to check the place out.’

‘Leave it for the moment, Charles. I’ll think about it after Saturday.’

Charles went home for a couple of nights, leaving Agatha alone with her thoughts. She made notes about everyone they had interviewed, and found she could not build up a clear picture of the murderer. She found she was pinning her hopes on Saturday’s meeting too much and tried to depress them. What if the end result was pages and pages of things like, ‘Didn’t see anything. Watched telly. Went to bed.’ And always at the back of her mind, Charles’s suggestion that James just might be at that monastery nagged at her relentlessly. James in a monastery would be as lost to her as if he were dead. On the other hand, were he there, he could surely tell them who had attacked him. She decided it was time to take her appearance in hand while she waited, and had her hair cut and styled at the hairdresser’s and had a facial at the beautician’s and a leg wax. Then she took a trip into Oxford and bought some new clothes. It was a sunny day and shopping was enjoyable.

She found herself wishing the case were solved. She was beginning to think that a life without James might be quite pleasant. She could begin to feel good about herself, be her own woman again.

By the time Charles arrived early on Saturday morning, Agatha was beginning to feel she had enjoyed a short holiday.

As she walked to the village hall with Charles, she noticed a crowd of people streaming in the same direction. ‘There’s going to be masses of odd reports,’ warned Charles. ‘A lot of people might start imagining things. Or daft things like, “My mother’s picture fell off the wall, so I knew something bad had happened,” that kind of thing.’

‘Let’s hope there’s some nugget among the lot,’ said Agatha, ‘because if there isn’t, I can’t think where we would try next.’

There was an air of excitement in the hall as Agatha and Charles mounted the stage. Agatha noticed the local press were there.

She checked the microphone and then began to speak. ‘This unsolved murder is affecting the tranquillity of our village,’ she said. ‘Now, you will have found on each chair a sheet of paper. I want you all to think back to the night Melissa Sheppard was murdered and to the day James Lacey was attacked. I want you to write down anything out of the ordinary you might have seen. You may have not told the police because at the time it seemed silly or insignificant. I will now move to that table by the door. When you have finished, give me what you have written. Please, do try very hard. I find it strange that no one saw anything at all.’

Agatha and Charles descended from the platform. ‘Did you supply them with pens?’ asked Charles. ‘Or time will be taken up as everyone tries to borrow a pen from everyone else.’

‘Rats! I forgot,’ said Agatha.

‘I’ll nip along to the village store and get some.’

Charles was soon back with boxes of biros, which he began to pass around. Some people were writing busily, some were chewing the ends of their pens and staring at the ceiling, and some were casting covert glances at their neighbours’ papers, like children at an exam.

At last, one by one, they began to leave, placing their papers in front of Agatha. With a sinking heart, she noticed most of the first ones had simply been scrawled with, ‘Didn’t see anything.’

Agatha stood up and shouted to the remainder, ‘Even if you
heard
anything.’

At last, after an hour, everyone had left. Agatha and Charles and Mrs Bloxby stacked away the chairs. ‘Better get this lot home,’ said Agatha, ‘and pray there’s something.’

When they reached Agatha’s cottage, Charles said, ‘Let’s have a drink and something to eat. It’s going to be a long day.’

Agatha made a fry-up of sausage, eggs, bacon and chips, Charles’s favourite food.

‘Now,’ she said impatiently, ‘let’s get to work.’

They moved through to the sitting-room. Agatha divided the papers into two piles.

They began to read. ‘Here’s an unsigned one,’ said Charles. ‘It says, “You murdering bitch, you did it yourself.”’

‘Put it to one side,’ said Agatha. ‘I wonder who could have written that? There were a few strange faces there.’

‘And children. Might have been a nasty child.’

Agatha ploughed through some quite long descriptions of what people had been doing on the night of Melissa’s death. They seemed to think they had to furnish an alibi. ‘Listen to this one,’ said Agatha. ‘It’s from Mrs Perry, who lives out on the Ancombe Road. “I made ham and chips for me and Dad at six o’clock and then we went to the Red Lion for a drink. Dad had half a pint and I had a shandy. Then we walked home. I let the cat out. We switched on the telly. Rotten film where people took their clothes off and did you-know-what. Me and Dad could hardly bear to watch. Then we went to bed after I had got our hot-water bottles ready. Hoping this finds you as it leaves me. Amy Perry.” What good’s all that supposed to do?’

‘Plough on,’ murmured Charles. ‘So far all I’ve got apart from the bitch letter are alibis and superstitious warnings. “The house grew suddenly cold,” that sort of thing. “The fur on my cat’s back rose.”’

‘Here’s another irritating one,’ remarked Agatha. ‘It’s from Mrs Pamela Green. Widow. Tall, rangy, acidulous. Look at the italic handwriting! Pure eighteenth-century. “I could not sleep on the Night of Mrs Sheppard’s Unfortunate death. It is one of the great Disadvantages of age. As is my wont, I put the leash on Queenie” – that’s her dog, nasty, vicious little bunch of hair – “and went out. The roads were deserted, except for a Child. I said to her, Why aren’t you home in bed? And she said cheekily I ought to mind my own Business. I had let Queenie off the leash and she had disappeared into one of the gardens. I went to Fetch her, and when I returned, the Child had gone. I would like to say to you, Mrs Raisin, that at your age, it would become You better to confine yourself to Charitable Pursuits and leave Police Matters to the police.” Horrible cow.’

‘I wonder who the child was,’ said Charles. ‘Are there any children in this village of the geriatric and retired?’

‘A lot down at the council houses. Press on.’

After some hours, Agatha groaned, ‘Well, what a waste of time.’

‘Let’s swap,’ said Charles. ‘You take my bundle. I’ll take yours. We may see something the other has missed.’

They both began to read again.

At last Agatha said wearily, ‘What a waste of space!’

‘We’ve got that child to look for. Maybe we should call on Mrs Green tomorrow and get a description.’

‘Did I tell you she wears glasses like the end of milk bottles?’ said Agatha. ‘No? Well, she does. We’ll never get anywhere.’

‘Let’s go over them all again in the morning,’ said Charles, stifling a yawn.

After a late meal, Agatha went up to bed and Charles went off to the spare bedroom.

Agatha found sleep would not come. Jumbled thoughts about the murder and all the people they had questioned drifted in and out of her brain. At last she fell asleep and plunged down into a dream where she was dressed in white, on her wedding day, and standing at the altar of Carsely Church. She could not make out the features of the man she was marrying. Beside her stood Mrs Bloxby as maid of honour. ‘You shouldn’t be doing this,’ she whispered in Agatha’s dream. ‘You were unhappy with James and now you’ll be unhappy with him. Remember what happened to poor Mrs Allan. People who have escaped from one unhappy marriage go out and do the same thing again, choose the same type.’

‘Shut up,’ mumbled Agatha in her sleep. ‘No one’s going to stop me getting married. I don’t want to be alone.’ She was conscious of her husband-to-be turning and walking away from her down the aisle. She tried to turn and call to him, to stop him, but she could not form the words. She must try to call to him. She must call him back. She must get married.

She awoke to find Charles shaking her. ‘What’s up?’ she cried.

‘You were having one hell of a nightmare, groaning and crying.’

‘Oh, that,’ said Agatha, blinking in the light. ‘Such a silly dream. I dreamt I was getting married and Mrs Bloxby was warning me it would all turn out like my marriage to James. She said, like Mrs Allan, people always went and married the same type of person when they married again.’

Charles sat down on the bed. ‘Wait a minute. Let’s think about this.’

‘It was only a stupid dream.’

‘But Mrs Bloxby said that in the case of Mrs Allan, she had married the same type of person, and that people do.’

Agatha stared at him. ‘Do you mean that in some way Megan Sheppard might be like Melissa?’

‘Could be. Remember James was trying to find out about
another
psychopath.’

‘Pass me my dressing-gown,’ said Agatha, swinging her legs out of bed. ‘Those papers downstairs.’

‘What about them?’

‘Mrs Green said she met a child. A child! With Megan’s girlish appearance and Mrs Green’s bad eyesight, she could have met Megan!’

‘Bit far-fetched, but I’m game to try anything.’

They went downstairs and began to look through the papers again. ‘Here’s Mrs Green’s paper. Is there anything else about a child?’

They settled down to go through the papers again. ‘Nothing,’ said Charles at last.

‘Let’s see Mrs Green in the morning.’

But in the morning, both Agatha and Charles were beginning to think that they had leapt at the idea of the child’s being Megan, of somehow Melissa and Megan having the same personalities.

‘Might as well have a go anyway,’ said Charles. ‘We’re at a dead end otherwise and all that church-hall business will have been a waste of time.’

Agatha and Charles walked out to Mrs Green’s cottage, which lay up the hill on the road leading out of the village. It was a mellow day with misty golden sunlight flooding the countryside. ‘If we don’t get anything out of this,’ said Agatha suddenly, ‘I’m going to forget about the whole thing.’ She waved an arm to encompass the sunny village. ‘Ever since James left, I’ve been wandering around in darkness. I want to start living again.’

‘Without James?’

‘Yes, without James. Even if by some miracle I found him, even if he wanted to come back to me, it wouldn’t work. I kept expecting him to change and he kept expecting me to change, and neither of us could.’

‘You haven’t been smoking. That’s a start.’

‘But how long does it take for the craving to go away?’

‘You could stop carrying cigarettes in your handbag.’

‘Works for me. As long as I’ve got them with me, I feel the strength to keep on resisting them.’

‘If you say so,’ said Charles. ‘This the cottage?’

‘Yes. Here goes.’

Mrs Green answered the door and looked on Agatha Raisin with disfavour. ‘Oh, it’s you.’

‘I found what you wrote in your report very interesting,’ said Agatha, giving her that crocodile smile one gives people one doesn’t like. ‘May we come in?’

‘No.’

‘You said on the night Melissa was murdered you saw a child,’ said Charles. ‘Can you describe this child?’

Mrs Green was a snob and her face softened at the sound of Charles’s upper-class voice. ‘It was dark, Sir Charles, and . . . Won’t you come in?’

‘Thank you.’ Charles stepped past her into the cottage and she promptly shut the door in Agatha’s face.

Cheeks flaming, Agatha opened the door and followed them into the cottage parlour, which was a dark room in which framed photographs covered every surface. The darkness of the room was caused by the leaves of a large wisteria growing outside the window and by the leaves of a large cheese plant just inside the window. Mrs Green’s autocratic face swam in the gloom.

‘I would say she was in her early teens,’ she said. ‘She was chewing gum, a disgusting habit, and had one of those little rucksacks on her back that young people affect these days instead of carrying a handbag.’

‘Colour of hair?’ asked Charles.

‘I couldn’t really tell.’

‘What was she wearing?’ asked Agatha.

‘Shorts with a bib top and these ugly boots they all wear these days.’

‘Did you tell the police?’ asked Charles.

‘Of course not. They are looking for a murderer, not a child. And if I may say so, you would be better off leaving the whole thing to the police. What do we pay taxes for? I suppose such nosiness is understandable in the case of a person like Mrs Raisin, but you, Sir Charles, should know better.’

‘You forget,’ said Agatha icily, ‘that my husband is missing.’

‘Poor Mr Lacey. I am not surprised. According to the people of this village, you led him a dog’s life.’

Agatha, who had taken a seat on a sofa, rose to her feet. ‘You are a nasty, acidulous old bat and I hope you rot in hell.’ She stormed out.

Charles rose as well. ‘Just one thing,’ he said to Mrs Green, who was gasping and goggling. ‘What was this child’s hair like? I mean, long, short, pigtails?’

She looked up at him through her thick glasses. ‘It was in little clumps at either side and tied with ribbons. Now, I must say, Sir Charles, I do not know what you see in that woman. I don’t –’

Charles simply walked out. Agatha was standing outside, lighting a cigarette. He plucked it out of her hand and threw it into Mrs Green’s garden and then waltzed her down the road. ‘What’s up with you?’ cried Agatha, disengaging herself when she could.

‘The child wore its hair in bunches, or clumps, as she called them, and tied with ribbons. Now, who do we know wears her hair like that?’

‘Megan,’ breathed Agatha.

‘What do we do now? Go to the police?’

‘No, I want to go and see her and confront her.’

‘Might not be safe.’

‘You’ll be with me.’

‘I’m not much protection against a psychopath wielding a hammer. But she won’t be on her own. Sheppard’ll be there. And how did she get from Oxford to Carsely and back without her husband knowing about it?’