Dishing the Dirt (23 page)

The nurse fled. Anthony eased himself up. There was a trolley of drugs over by the wall. With a superhuman effort, he made it out of bed. On the trolley, he found a syringe and bottles of morphine. He injected himself with an overdose and slowly collapsed onto the floor and died as the cheers from the crowds outside, watching George Clooney’s launch, sounded in his ears.

*   *   *

Agatha was interviewed over the next few days by Wilkes and Bill Wong, who had flown out, and several hard-faced men from Interpol, along with Italian detectives, going over everything again and again until she felt she could scream. The paralysing drug that had been injected into her had such a long and complicated name, she could never remember it. She welcomed the news of Tweedy’s death with relief. Agatha felt that, if he had lived, she would never have been free of the fear of him because she was sure he would have found some way to escape.

At last she was able to leave the hospital. She emerged into a strangely empty Venice compared to the last time she had seen the Grand Canal. George Clooney had left, taking with him all the world’s press and all the tourists who had come to watch the show.

Charles had suggested one more night at the hotel, having cheerfully moved into Agatha’s room because it had twin beds and he felt he had spent enough money on her. Using her insurance, he had cancelled her journey on the train back and booked flights home for them instead.

While Agatha and Charles sat in the bar on the last evening, Charles looked at her serene face and for once did not regret a penny he had spent on her. The old Agatha was back. Later, he thought of joining her in her bed, but resisted, feeling that a grateful Agatha might let him, and he didn’t want that, although he wondered why he was suddenly developing a conscience. Agatha had asked him why he had not called the police before leaving for the airport. Charles had told her that he had asked Gustav to phone. “Better sack him,” said Agatha. “He obviously didn’t phone and could have got me murdered.”

*   *   *

Back home in Carsely, Agatha felt rejuvenated and that nothing could ever upset her again. That was until Mrs. Bloxby called on her after the Sunday service to see how she was getting on and hear all about her adventures. Agatha dutifully recounted everything that had happened, but felt she had told her tale to the police so many times that her own voice sounded in her ears as if it were coming from an echo chamber.

“I still would have liked to get Gwen Simple for something,” she said.

“Oh,” said Mrs. Bloxby reluctantly, “you did miss the wedding.”

“What wedding?”

“Mrs. Simple and Mark Dretter were married in Carsely church. They are honeymooning in Dubai.”

“So all he was doing was cosying up to me to report back to that conniving bitch!”

“Mrs. Raisin!”

“Well,” said Agatha huffily, “he was.”

*   *   *

After the vicar’s wife had left, Agatha sat and fretted. Gwen had not only got off scot-free, she had nailed the prize of a husband. There must be something on her. What about Jenny Harcourt’s desk at Sunnydale? Could there be something else in there?

Motivated by jealousy, Agatha set out for Sunnydale. Once more, she introduced herself as Jenny’s cousin. “Mrs. Harcourt is at lunch,” said a nurse. “If you would care to wait?”

“If I could please wait in her room?”

“Very well.”

“It’s all right,” said Agatha. “I know where it is.”

She ran lightly up the stairs in a new pair of flat shoes. She had not promised God not to wear high heels again although she had promised to give up smoking and so far had superstitiously kept to that promise.

Agatha opened the secret drawer in the desk. There was a magpie assortment of things from lipsticks to cheap jewellery. She was about to give up when she saw a square envelope stuck against the front flap of the drawer. She pulled it out and opened it. It was a CD. She thrust it into her handbag, just as a nurse ushered Jenny into the room.

“There you are again, dear!” cried Jenny.

“I brought you something,” said Agatha, handing over a box of chocolates.

“How kind. Jenny adores chocolates. And Belgian, too!”

Her eyes fastened greedily on Agatha’s handbag. Agatha immediately zipped it up. She was anxious to escape. “I’m sorry I’ve got to rush, Jenny, but I didn’t know you would be at lunch and I’ve got another appointment.”

“No matter, dear.
Bargain Hunt
is about to come on the telly. Run along.”

*   *   *

Once back in her car, Agatha was overwhelmed by a craving for a cigarette. “Sorry God,” she muttered. Before driving off, she searched in the pocket of her linen skirt for her cigarette packet, which she carried around just in case she weakened. She looked back up at the building. Where she guessed Jenny’s room was, the window was open and a thin trail of blue smoke was wafting out into the air.

*   *   *

Back in her cottage, Agatha put the CD in the player and then crouched forward in excitement. It was a recording of Jill’s therapy sessions. There was Victoria confessing to drowning the dog, Doris complaining about her shoulders, Anthony Tweedy, not exactly confessing, but giving a long diatribe about how he had hated his “brother” and his fears that the fire might prove not to be accidental. Agatha only half listened to the next few sessions and then stiffened as Gwen Simple’s voice began to sound. In increasing disappointment, she heard Gwen complaining about her son and wondering how on earth he could have done something so horrible without her knowledge. Nothing incriminating at all.

“I can’t even give it to the police,” Agatha said to her cats. “I can’t have some of these poor people’s sad little secrets exposed.”

Although the Indian summer still seemed to stretch on forever, Doris Simpson had set a fire in the living room. Agatha lit it, waiting until there was a blaze and threw the disk onto it.

*   *   *

That evening, she put a cottage pie in the microwave, and then, when it was ready, picked at it, before giving up and throwing the remains on the smouldering fire.

Again, she was assailed by a terrible craving for nicotine. She hurried up to the pub. A damp breeze had sprung up. The evening sky was covered in thick black clouds. Far away came rumbles of thunder as if giants in the heavens were moving furniture.

She hurried up to the pub where she bought a packet of cigarettes, a glass of wine and a ham sandwich and walked through the pub towards the garden, getting rather sour nods by way of greeting. The villagers were beginning to think that Agatha Raisin’s dangerous presence in the village was affecting house prices.

Agatha ate her sandwich and then opened the packet of cigarettes, extracted one, lit it and gratefully inhaled. There was a great flash of forked lightning, which stabbed down, missing her by inches.

She threw her cigarette away and fled back through the pub and down to her cottage through a burst of torrential rain.

“Coincidence,” she muttered savagely, as she changed into dry clothes.

*   *   *

At the same time, Mrs. Bloxby heard the doorbell ring. “If it’s that Raisin woman again, tell her to get knotted,” shouted the vicar.

Mrs. Bloxby opened the door. A tall man stood on the doorstep, his face shaded by a large umbrella. “I’m new to the village,” he said. “My name is Gerald Devere.”

“Come in out of the rain,” urged the vicar’s wife. “Welcome to Carsely. Leave your coat on the stand there and let me have your umbrella. Come near the fire. Such a nasty evening. Sherry?”

“Yes, please.”

Mrs. Bloxby returned, carrying a tray with the sherry decanter and two glasses. She paused for a moment in the doorway and studied her visitor. He had an interesting mobile face with a thin nose, fine grey eyes, and odd black brows that slanted upwards under a thick head of black hair with only a few threads of grey. He looked athletic, his slim body clothed in a well-tailored charcoal grey suit.

When the drinks were poured, Gerald leaned back in his chair with a sigh of satisfaction. “This is nice.”

“Which cottage have you taken?” asked Mrs. Bloxby.

“Poor Mr. Dell’s.”

“Are you a relative?”

“No, I bought it from his niece. I’ve lived in London all my life and thought I would like to bury myself in the country. I’m retired.”

“You look too young to retire,” commented Mrs. Bloxby, guessing he must be in his middle fifties.

“I was a detective with the Metropolitan Police Force at Scotland Yard. I came into a good inheritance. I’d become weary of crime. I may have chosen the wrong village.”

“Oh, we’re all quiet and peaceful now.” Here’s someone for Mrs. Raisin, she thought. Gerald had an attractive, husky voice.

“Tell me about yourself,” he said. “I should think you must have such a hardworking life.”

Mrs. Bloxby blinked in amazement. Apart from Agatha, no one else ever seemed interested in her days.

“It’s all the usual stuff,” she said.

He grinned. “I know, therapist, mother’s help, fetes, disputes, and all exhausting and no thanks. Should I say hullo to your husband?”

“He’s writing a sermon. I’ll ask him.”

She went along to her husband’s study and told him about their visitor. “Can you cope, dear?” he asked. “I’m awfully busy.”

On the road back, she popped into the bathroom and stared at her face in the mirror. Her brown hair with its streaks of grey was screwed up on top of her head. She loosened it and brushed it down before going back to join him.

They sat and talked for an hour while outside the storm rolled away. Mrs. Bloxby felt like a girl again.

After he had left, the phone rang. It was Agatha. “I hear there is some newcomer to the village,” she said.

If I tell her, thought the vicar’s wife, she’ll be right round there, made up to the nines.

To her horror, she heard herself impulsively lying. “I wonder who that can be?” she said, blushing as she said it.

*   *   *

Agatha heard all about the newcomer from Phil Marshall in the office the next morning, but was not pleased to hear that a detective, however retired, had landed in her village. As far as Agatha was concerned, she was the only detective that mattered.

“There’s one thing that bothers me still,” she said. “I would like to know who inherits the Tweedy estate. I mean, there’s madness in that family and I would like to be assured that there is not some relative of theirs going to call on me with an ax. Patrick, can you find out?”

She almost forgot about it until later in the day when Patrick said, “You’re out of touch with what is going on in that village of yours. An elderly fourth cousin inherits and has been round to look at the Tweedy house. She’s called Miss Delphinium Farrington.”

“If the weird Tweedys went so far as to leave everything to her, then it stands to reason she must be as weird as they were. I thought people couldn’t benefit from a crime.”

“They can if they didn’t commit it, or so I believe,” said Patrick. “Although I think the insurance company will want their money back.”

“You know,” said Agatha, “when I had a dream of moving to a Cotswold village, I envisaged placid rosy-cheeked villagers whose families had been around for generations, not a series of murderous incomers.”

“The old village families have all been priced out of their villages,” said Phil.

“Well, they shouldn’t have sold their properties,” said Agatha ruthlessly.

*   *   *

At the end of another week, Agatha had decided to take the whole week-end off. She also wondered where Charles was, but put off trying to phone him. She wondered if he had fired Gustav.

Gustav was the main reason that Charles had not contacted Agatha. The trouble was, he thought, that no one had a staff of servants anymore and Gustav did so much. Gustav swore blind that he had called the police and had even written down the name of the policeman he had spoken to. When he finally questioned Bill Wong, Charles found to his relief that Gustav
had
phoned, but to Mircester headquarters instead of dialling 999, and the new copper who had taken the call had mistaken Gustav’s Swiss accent for that of an East European babbling about tape recorders and so had not bothered to report it.

He called at Agatha’s cottage, and finding her not at home, decided to visit Mrs. Bloxby instead.

He found Agatha, Mrs. Bloxby and a tall man who was introduced as Gerald Devere sitting in the vicarage garden. Agatha, he noticed, was wearing full war paint and was surrounded by a cloud of heavy French perfume. Oh, dear, thought Charles. Here comes obsession number 102.

Then his curious eyes fastened on the vicar’s wife. He had never seen her wear her hair down before and she also had pink lipstick on. Surely not!

“Agatha!” said Charles sharply. “I hate to break up the party but I must talk to you in private.”

“We’re all friends here,” said Agatha, flashing a coquettish look from under heavily mascaraed eyelashes at Gerald.

“It’s private and very urgent,” said Charles.

Agatha sulkily agreed to leave with him.

“We’ll go to the pub,” said Charles. “I need a stiff drink.”

“Let’s just hope you’ve got your wallet,” said Agatha sourly.

Once they were seated in the pub, Charles said, “Back off from Gerald, Aggie.”

“Why on earth…?”

“Mrs. Bloxby’s got a crush on him.”

“Never! She wouldn’t. She’s a saint!”

“She’s human and leads a dreary life. She won’t do anything about it, Aggie, but let her have one little dream and stop jumping all over it with your stilettos.”

Agatha opened her mouth to make a sharp retort and then closed it again. She remembered that pink lipstick and the hair brushed down on the shoulders. Also, the vicar’s wife had been wearing a smart green wool dress Agatha had not seen before.

But Gerald was so, well
, marriageable
. And Mrs. Bloxby
was
married. Therefore, surely if Agatha lured Gerald away she would be saving her friend from disaster, pain and a possible broken marriage.

Charles studied the emotions flitting across Agatha’s face. “You like me as a friend, don’t you, Agatha?”