Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet (19 page)

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I haven’t got your cats.’

‘Could you tell me what you know about Peter Rice?’

‘Peter? Oh, he can’t have anything to do with it. I’ve known Peter for ages.’

‘Tell me about him anyway.’

‘I don’t know very much. He lived a couple of doors away from me in Leamington in the old days. We were friends, played tennis together, but never anything romantic. I mean, I never thought any man would look at me that way, and so I was glad of Peter’s company. Then Paul came along.

‘I thought Peter would be delighted that I had found happiness at last, but he threw a very ugly scene. He said he had been going to ask me to marry
him
. I was so much in love with Paul that somehow that made me callous. It was only old Peter behaving in a most odd way. The next time I saw him he apologized for his behaviour and said he was moving to Mircester.’

‘And you never saw him again?’ prompted Agatha.

‘Well, I did, of course. I met him when Paul went into partnership with him and, as I told you, it was Peter who suggested I check out the site of this supposed veterinary hospital. I told him long afterwards how I had been cheated. After my divorce, we went out for dinner a couple of times, but there was nothing there and I really don’t think there ever was anything there.’

‘Then how do you explain the scene when you told him you were going to marry Paul?’

‘Oh, that. I think Peter is the kind who would have been jealous if any close friend, male or female, got married. He was a very solitary man. Come to think of it, I suppose I was the only friend he had in Leamington.’

‘Why did he decide to open the surgery in Carsely?’ asked Agatha. ‘I mean, there are lots of villages closer to Mircester, and larger ones, too.’

‘Let me think. He said something about that when I met him one day in the square. He said, “I’m finding that ex of yours something useful to do. I think it’s better we work apart. I’ve told him to start up a surgery in Carsely. Keep him out of my hair.” I said, “Why Carsely?” and he said that some friend of his who had a shop there said it was a good place for business.’

‘Josephine Webster,’ said Agatha. ‘So that’s the connection. And I think I know where my cats are.’

She got up to leave. She looked wild-eyed and her face was working.

‘If you suspect anyone of anything,’ said Greta, ‘go to the police.’

Agatha merely snorted and went out to her car.

She thought furiously on the road to Mircester. Josephine Webster could have tipped off Peter Rice about Mrs Josephs. She could have been in the pub to hear Freda telling everyone about the discovery of that bottle and warned Rice, or she could have removed the bottle herself.

Agatha flicked a glance at the dashboard of her car. Eight o’clock. Peter Rice would just be sitting down to dinner.

She drove straight to the veterinary surgery and parked outside. She got out and took a tyreiron out of the car. The surgery was a low building set at the back of a small car-park. A light was burning over the door. Agatha moved to the side of the building, which was in darkness but with enough light for her to make out a glass-paned side door. She had no time or expertise to emulate James Lacey’s burglary techniques. She smashed a pane of glass in the door with the tyre-iron. A volley of hysterical barks greeted her ears. Grimly ignoring them, she tugged out the remaining glass with her gloved hands, reached in and unlocked the door.

Eyes glittered at her in the darkness and somewhere among the barks and yelps she heard several plaintive miaows.

‘In for a penny, in for a pound,’ muttered Agatha and switched on the light.

‘Shhh!’ she whispered desperately to the cages of animals. Her eyes ranged along them. And there, together in a cage, were Hodge and Boswell.

With a glad cry, she undid the latch and opened the cage.

The barking and yowling suddenly died abruptly. Agatha, reaching in to get her cats, was aware of a heavy air of menace. She heard a soft footfall and turned around.

Josephine Webster smiled up at the waiter as he pulled out her chair for her in the restaurant. Peter Rice sat down opposite. The maître d’ bowed over them and presented menus and made suggestions.

When their order had been taken by one of his minions, he gathered up the huge leather-bound menus and then suddenly said, ‘Will the other lady be joining you?’

‘What other lady?’ demanded Peter Rice, and Miss Webster giggled and said, ‘One of your harem, Peter?’

‘A lady came in earlier and asked if you had booked a table for this evening.’

‘What did she look like?’ asked the vet.

‘Middle-aged, straight brown hair, expensively cut, quite smart clothes.’

‘No, she won’t be joining us,’ said Peter. ‘Hold my order. I’ve got to do something in the surgery. Give Miss Webster a drink and look after her until I get back.’

James Lacey was worried. He had called at Agatha’s cottage several times without getting a reply. He had not been able to get much more out of Freda. Her friend with the silver hair stayed with her all the time, and James could not manage to get a word with her in private.

He decided to pass the time until Agatha’s return trying to write his book, but instead he found himself writing about the case. He wrote on and then gave an exclamation, took out one character and tried to fit the evidence he had to it.

He was roused from his efforts by the doorbell. Bill Wong stood there with Inspector Wilkes. ‘Where’s Agatha?’ asked Bill.

‘Isn’t she back? We were supposed to meet at six. Isn’t her car there?’

‘No, I’m getting worried. We’ll need to ask around and see if anyone saw her leaving the village.’

‘I’ll go out and try to find her myself,’ said James. ‘Here, take a look at my notes, Bill, and see if you come to the same conclusion.’

James went straight to Josephine Webster’s shop. It was in darkness, as was the flat above, and he got no reply to his banging and knocking. A head popped out of a window next to the flat above the shop and a man’s voice said, ‘Ain’t no use you ringing and banging, fit to wake the dead. Her goes to Mircester on half-day.’

James went back and got his car and told Bill he thought Agatha might be in Mircester. He suddenly knew where Agatha had gone and prayed he would not be too late.

Agatha slowly straightened up.

Peter Rice stood in the doorway, looking at her. She was aware again of the strength of that body which supported the disproportionately small head. She had left the tyre-iron lying beside the shattered door. Her eyes flew this way and that, seeking a weapon.

‘Don’t even think of it,’ he said. He produced a small automatic pistol from his pocket. ‘Through to the examining room, Mrs Raisin,’ he said. ‘We won’t be disturbed there.’

Even though she felt weak with fear, even though she felt her bladder was about to give, Agatha gave the door of the cage with her cats in it a kick as she passed and tried to send them telepathic messages to escape. Rice switched off the lights in the room with Agatha’s cats and the other animals and switched on the lights in the small examining room.

Keeping the pistol trained on Agatha, he asked, ‘How did you know it was me?’

‘I didn’t really,’ said Agatha. ‘But I guessed Josephine Webster had been the one to take the cats and leave that note. I followed her and saw her with you. You can’t shoot me. The police will find my body and they’ll know it was you.’

‘Mrs Raisin, you broke into my surgery. I saw the light and a figure inside who rose, I thought, as if to attack me. I shot you. I was defending my life and property.’

‘I left a note, saying where I would be,’ said Agatha.

He studied her for a few moments and then smiled. ‘No, you didn’t, or that Lacey fellow would be here. Anyway . . .’ He raised the pistol an inch.

‘It was because of Greta, wasn’t it?’ said Agatha.

‘In a way. But I didn’t think of killing him then. I didn’t even think of it when she told me how he had been cheating her. No, it was when he started cheating me, ah, then I began to get really angry. That famous veterinary hospital of his. So good for conning gullible women. We had a receptionist here, a nice girl. Paul got his claws into her. She was to persuade the customers to pay cash as much as possible and pass the money to him. Did she get a cut of it? Of course not. All was to go to that hospital which, of course, was to be named after the receptionist. I had taken a long fishing holiday. This is a wealthy practice. I had hired a young vet to stand in for me when I was away and to work with Paul because Paul mostly handled all the cases of horses and farm animals. When I came back, I remarked that trade had dropped by a considerable amount. I suspected the temporary vet, but then one day I was talking to one of the customers in the square and we were complaining about taxes and business taxes in general. “I suppose,” says she, “that’s why you want so much money in cash. To avoid tax. The girl always asks for it.” Of course I got hold of the girl and she broke down and said she had only been stealing for the greater good, namely the founding of that fictitious hospital. I sacked the girl but not Paul. Oh, no. He was going to have to pay me back. But I wanted him out of my hair. Josephine said Carsely was a good place, and so I told him to set up a business there and trick the ladies with his stories if he liked, but every penny was to come to me, and just in case anything happened to him, I got him to make out his will in my favour. I said unless he paid me back in full, I would go to the police.’

Agatha stayed rigid, seeing out of the corner of her eye that her cats had slid into the room beside her.

‘I still wouldn’t have killed him. But one of the women he tricked was Miss Josephine Webster, whom I had come to love. She came to me, crying and sobbing, and told me the whole story. I knew he was up at Pendlebury’s. I was going to curse him, sack him, punch him on the nose, that was all. The stables were empty apart from Paul. I saw him with the syringe, I knew what was in it, what the operation was and something took over and the next thing I knew he was dead. I slipped off without anyone seeing me. I thought I was safe. I was furious when I realized he had taken a double mortgage out on that house, so instead of gaining by his death, I lost. Josephine and I were going to announce our engagement after the fuss had died down. She knew what I had done. Then that Josephs woman came here. She said Paul had tricked her and she was going to tell the police the truth. She said Paul had told her that I had encouraged him to dupe the women out of money. I promised to pay her back. Then I panicked when Josephine phoned me and told me that you, you Nosy-Parking bitch, were about to hear all from Mrs Josephs. Josephine told me she suffered from diabetes. But still I didn’t mean to do it if she saw sense. I tried to give her the money back, but the silly old bat wouldn’t take it. She said she was going to the police after talking to you. I jabbed the Adrenalin into her. The minute she was dead, I went into a blind panic. I dragged her upstairs in the hope that when she was found dead in the bathroom, they would think it suicide or accident. I chucked the empty bottle out of the car window, as if by getting rid of it, I had got rid of the stain of murder. But you had to interfere again, you and that Lacey. “Take her cats,” said Josephine. “That’ll shut her up.” What a mess. What a bloody mess. But I’m going to marry Josephine, and nothing’s going to stop me.’

Hodge jumped up on the examining table and sat looking from one to the other.

Agatha could suddenly smell her own fear, rank and bitter, and so could the cat. Its tail puffed up like a squirrel’s.

‘So, Mrs Raisin, I need to get this over with. I advise you to stand still and take what’s coming to you.’

His finger began to squeeze the trigger. Agatha dived under the table as a shot rang harmlessly above her head.

One beefy hand dragged her out from under the table. Panting, he threw her against the wall. Hodge flew straight into his face, clawing and spitting. In his panic, the vet tried to shoot the cat off his face but the shot went wild, smashing into a cabinet of bottles.

Agatha tried to drive the examining table into his stomach as he tore the cat from his face and flung it across the room. She had seen people in films doing that, but it was bolted to the floor. She dived to the side as he fired again, wrenched her ankle and fell on the floor.

She shut her eyes. This was it. Death at last. And suddenly Bill Wong’s voice like a voice from heaven said, ‘Give me the gun, Mr Rice.’

There was another shot and a cry from Bill. Agatha screamed, ‘Oh, no!’ and then felt strong hands tugging at her and James Lacey’s voice in her ear, saying, ‘It’s all right, Agatha. Don’t look. Rice has shot himself. Don’t look. Come with me. Keep your head turned away.’

Agatha rose, clinging to him, and buried her face in the rough tweed of his jacket.

Three hours later Agatha, bathed and wrapped in her dressing-gown, sat in her sitting-room with the cats on her lap, being fussed over by James.

‘Bill Wong will be calling on us,’ he said. ‘Is he grateful to us for having solved two murders for him? Not a bit of it.’

‘Us?’ demanded Agatha. ‘I was the one who found out about Rice.’

‘I had more or less come to the same conclusion,’ said James, ‘although it took me some time to guess Josephine Webster was involved. What put you on to her?’

Agatha told him about finding that shred of dried petal on the doormat.

‘But you should have come to me,’ exclaimed James, ‘or told Bill Wong.’

‘I only thought of the cats,’ said Agatha. ‘Funny, isn’t it? I thought my heart would break when they were taken, but here they are, purring away, two animals to be cared for and fed, and now they just seem like an everyday nuisance.’

‘Though from what you say, Hodge saved your life,’ James pointed out. ‘I wonder if they got Josephine Webster. I wonder if she was still sitting there in the hotel restaurant waiting. Bill and his boss went right there while we had to go to the police station and make endless statements.’

‘So you had worked it all out yourself?’ said Agatha.

He threw another log on the fire and sat down. ‘Once I had written down what everyone had done and said, Peter Rice seemed the obvious suspect. He was strong enough to have dragged Mrs Josephs up the stairs, he knew where Bladen would be on the day he was murdered, he knew about the operation on that horse. One always thinks of murderers as planning everything scientifically, but in Rice’s case it was all panic and then luck. All he had to do was sit tight and let Mrs Josephs make her accusations to the police. The police wouldn’t have thought the philandering and conning tactics of Paul Bladen had anything to do with Peter Rice. I think it was our nosing around that rattled him so badly.’