Agatha Raisin and the Perfect Paragon (3 page)

“If you’ve come to see my wife, she’s busy,” he said.

Mrs. Bloxby appeared behind him. “What are you talking about, Alf? Do come in, Mrs. Raisin. And Mr. Witherspoon, too.”

The vicar muttered something like
pah
under his breath and strode off to his study.

“Let’s go into the garden,” said Mrs. Bloxby. “Such a fine day. It won’t last, of course. As soon as Wimbledon comes around, then the rain comes down again.”

They sat at a table in the garden. “I see you’ve employed Mr. Witherspoon,” said Mrs. Bloxby brightly.

“For the moment,” retorted Agatha. “He’s on trial. The case we’re on involves Mrs. Mabel Smedley. Her husband thinks she’s having an affair.”

“That doesn’t seem very likely. I mean, a small place like Ancombe. Such news would soon get out.”

“What’s she like?”

“Hard to tell. Have you forgotten, Mrs. Raisin? The Ancombe Ladies’ Society is having a sale of work the day after tomorrow and some of us are going over to help. You could come along and see for yourself. Mrs. Smedley works very hard for good causes, but she is quiet and self-effacing. They’ve only been married for two years.”

“Any children?”

“No, and none by Mr. Smedley’s first marriage either.”

“What happened to the first Mrs. Smedley?”

“Poor thing. She was subject to bouts of depression. She committed suicide.”

“I’m not surprised. Married to a creature like that.” Agatha described him in trenchant terms, ending up with that description of his mouth.

“Mrs. Raisin! Really.”

“Sorry,” mumbled Agatha.

Phil stifled a laugh by pretending he had a sneezing fit.

“I think Mr. Smedley is just unnaturally jealous,” said Mrs. Bloxby.

“Oh dear,” sighed Agatha. “It all seems such a waste of time. We’ll leave it for today, Phil, and you can drive me back to the office so I can collect my car. I’ll see you in the office tomorrow. I’ve a few things to work on.”

Just as Agatha was setting down to a dinner of microwaved chips and microwaved lasagne that evening, the telephone rang. “Don’t dare touch my food,” she warned her cats, Hodge and Boswell.

She answered the phone and heard the slightly camp voice of her former assistant, Roy Silver.

“I haven’t heard from you in ages,” he said. “No more killings down there?”

“No, nothing. Just a divorce case and I hate divorce cases.”

“Stands to reason, sweetie. You being such a reluctantly divorced woman yourself.”

“That is not the reason! I just find them distasteful.”

“Divorce cases are surely the bread and butter of any detective agency. Why I’m phoning is to ask you if I can come down for the weekend.”

“Next weekend? All right. Let me know which train you’ll be on and I’ll meet you at Moreton.”

When Agatha rang off, she felt cheerful at the thought of having company. She had endured a brief unhappy marriage to James Lacey. They hadn’t even lived in the same house. But after it was over, she found herself getting lonely when she wasn’t working full out.

Then Agatha realized she hadn’t tackled Mrs. Bloxby over manipulating her into employing Phil. She rang up the vicar’s wife.

“Mrs. Bloxby,” began Agatha, “I feel you forced me into employing Phil.”

“Mr. Witherspoon. I suppose I did push you in that direction.”

“Why? You’re not a pushy woman.”

Mrs. Bloxby sighed. “I happened to learn that he has only a small pension. He made some bad investments with his capital. He is desperately in need of money and was ready to sell off some of his precious cameras. You needed a photographer, he needed work. I couldn’t help myself.”

“Oh, well,” muttered Agatha, somewhat mollified. “We’ll see how he works out.”

“Going to Ancombe?”

“Of course. I forgot to ask you what time it begins.”

“Two in the afternoon.”

“I’ll be there.”

Agatha returned to the kitchen to find her cats up on the table, tucking in to her dinner. “You little bastards,” she howled. She opened the kitchen door and shooed them both out into the garden. She scraped her dinner into the rubbish bin and suddenly burst into tears.

She finally mopped her eyes on a dishcloth and lit a cigarette with a trembling hand. Agatha was in her early fifties, but recently had been assailed with a fear of getting old and living alone. On damp days, she had a stabbing pain in her hip but stoically ignored it. She couldn’t possibly have arthritis. She was too young!

“Pull yourself together,” she said aloud. Was this the menopause at last? She had been secretly proud of the fact that she had not yet reached that borderline.

The phone rang again. Agatha wearily went to answer it.

“Charles, here.”

Agatha’s friend, Sir Charles Fraith.

“Oh, hullo, Charles. Where have you been lately?” Agatha gave a gulping sob.

“Have you been crying, Aggie?”

“Don’t call me Aggie. Bit of an allergy, that’s all.”

“Have you eaten?”

“I was about to but the cats got to it.”

“I’ll be right over. I was to entertain some luscious girl to a picnic and she never showed. I’ll bring it right over and we’ll have a picnic in your garden.”

“Oh, thanks, Charles.”

“So dry your eyes.”

“I haven’t been crying!” But Charles had rung off.

He turned up half an hour later, which had given Agatha time to bathe her face in cold water and put on fresh make-up.

She was glad to see Charles, even though she occasionally found him irritating. He had fair hair and neat features and was as self-contained and independent as a cat.

He carried a large hamper into the garden and began to set things out on the garden table.

“Duck breasts in aspic, asparagus, champagne ... you really must have thought a lot of this girl.”

“She is very ornamental,” said Charles. “Unfortunately for me, she knows it.”

They ate companionably while Agatha told him about the Smedley case.

“Might go with you,” said Charles. “Mind if I stay the night?”

“No, you know where the spare room is.”

“I’ve got my bag in the car. I’ll get it later.”

The sun slowly set behind the trees at the bottom of the garden. Agatha thought uneasily about her burst of tears. It all seemed like madness now.

TWO

CHARLES was still in bed the following morning when Agatha set out for the office fortified with a breakfast of two cigarettes and a cup of black coffee.

“What have we got today?” she asked Mrs. Freedman.

“Still got that missing-teenager case, one missing dog and one missing cat.”

“Peanuts,” said Agatha gloomily. “I’ve got the morning free, so I may as well get back out there looking for them. We’ll leave Mabel Smedley for now.”

“I’ll come with you,” volunteered Phil.

“Oh, all right,” said Agatha. “We’ll start with the teenager, Jessica Bradley.”

“That’s been in all the papers,” said Phil. “Left the Happy Night Club at one in the morning and just disappeared. The police haven’t been able to find a trace of her.”

“I’ve interviewed the people who run the club,” said Agatha, “and her friends. She left alone. Doesn’t seem to have a boyfriend. I don’t know what we can find out that the police can’t.”

“Perhaps,” suggested Phil, “we could walk from the club to her home, just to get a feel of the area.”

“I’ve done that,” snapped Agatha. “The police have even had a look-alike on television doing that.”

“Sometimes people try so hard, they’re not really looking,” said Phil. “Wouldn’t hurt just to take the walk again.”

“Oh, well,” sighed Agatha. “It’s better than sitting here. Give me her photo and those cat and dog photos, Mrs. Freedman. Who knows? We might get lucky and find one of them in the street.”

They made their way to the Happy Night Club. It was in a dingy backstreet.

“It’s quite a walk,” said Agatha.

“As far as I remember,” said Phil, “she lives in Old Brewery Road out by the bypass.”

“Right. I don’t know what you hope to achieve by this walk, but I’m prepared to try anything.”

The day was becoming quite hot. Agatha had put on a pair of high-heeled sandals that morning and her feet were beginning to ache. The houses began to thin out as they approached the bypass. “We take the bridge over the bypass,” said Agatha.

As they reached the centre of the bridge, Phil said, “Stop!”

“What?”

“Just want to look. How long’s she been missing?”

“Three days.”

“How old is she?”

“Sixteen.”

Phil was carrying his camera bag. He knelt down and opened it and took out a camera and a telescopic lens.

“Going to photograph the bypass?”

“Sometimes I can see things with this that other people miss.”

Normally Agatha would have protested, but it was a relief to stop walking and ease her feet.

“It’s a high climb up to the bridge,” said Phil after what seemed like an age, “and there wouldn’t be much traffic on the bypass at that time of night. Now, if I were Jessica, I wouldn’t bother climbing the bridge, I’d nip across the dual carriageway. So say she’s standing over there waiting to cross and a car pulls up.”

“I don’t think any teenager is going to get into a strange car in the middle of the night.”

“True. But what if it were someone she knew?”

“So, Sherlock, we’re worse off than ever. She gets in the car, is driven off and could be anywhere in England.”

“Tell me about her parents.”

“Then let’s get back off this bridge. I’m frying up here. There’s a nice bit of shade in the grass on the other side.”

They walked over and climbed up a grassy bank. “Father, Frank Bradley, works in an ice cream factory. Forties. Cut up about his daughter. Wife about the same age. Tired-looking, cries the whole time.”

“What were they about, letting Jessica stay out so late? I mean, she’s only sixteen.”

“They had told her to be home by eleven. When she didn’t show, the father went out looking for her.”

“What if the father
did
find her? What if she got in the car and he lost his temper and she cheeked him and he thumped her too hard? Have the police looked closely at the family?”

“Yes. First thing they thought of.”

“Okay.” Phil’s eyes looked oddly young in his wrinkled face. “But they wouldn’t make any particular push. Grieving parents and all that.”

“I thought of the father right off as well as the police,” said Agatha. “But I’d swear to God the man is genuine.”

“What about uncles? Neighbours?”

“I don’t know,” said Agatha crossly.

“You know, we could go back and get the car and pretend that she was picked up and drive along the dual carriageway and see if there’s anywhere to dump a body. The police can’t search everywhere.”

“I’m the detective, not you,” snapped Agatha. Phil looked at her mournfully.

“It’s the heat,” said Agatha by way of apology. “Look, my feet hurt. Be an angel and get the car and I’ll wait here.”

“Righto,” said Phil cheerfully. “Watch my cameras and I’ll be back in a tick.”

He strode off. I think he’s fitter than me, thought Agatha. Her hip gave a nasty little twinge and she rubbed it fiercely.

Phil was soon back. Agatha crossed back over the bridge and got into his car. “No air conditioning,” she moaned.

“If you open the window you’ll get a nice breeze,” said Phil.

Agatha opened the window and a hot dry wind sent her hair whipping about her face. She shut it partly. “How far are we going?” Phil was cruising along slowly, looking carefully to left and right.

“I’m thinking. You think, too, Mrs. Raisin. I am an uncle, say, or neighbour. Jessica starts to complain, ‘This isn’t the road home.’ He can’t go on much further without making some sort of attack. Ten miles, I’d say.”

Agatha closed her eyes and tried to imagine the scene. If it were someone Jessica knew well, she’d be chattering happily. They would be on the wrong side of the dual carriageway for home, so at first she wouldn’t notice anything until they came to the first roundabout and realized he hadn’t turned round to go back.

She opened her eyes. “Try three miles after the first roundabout.”

Phil went across the first roundabout and slowed down to a crawl as other cars passed him at speed. At last he pulled over into a layby and said, “About here?”

He switched off the engine and they sat looking about them. “There’s a deep ditch down there,” said Agatha, looking to her left. “He wouldn’t want to drag a body into the woods over there because he might be seen from the road. My guess is that he’d simply have rolled her down the bank.”

“Let’s search.”

“In these heels?”

“I got Mrs. Freedman to give me the flat pair you keep in the office. They’re in the bag I brought back with me. I brought a flask of coffee and some sandwiches.”

For the first time, Agatha really warmed to him as she slipped off her high heels and put on her comfortable shoes. They left the car and slid down the bank and began searching among the bushes at the bottom. They’d gone at least a mile away from the car when Agatha panted, “It’s no good. This is mad.”

“Let’s sit down. I’ve got the coffee.”