Agatha Raisin and the Curious Curate (8 page)

‘I can’t remember. Wait and I’ll get the phone-book.’ Agatha went out and came back with the telephone directory.

As Agatha turned the pages, John said, ‘I remember. Shangri-la. That was the name of her place.’

‘That’s right. Gnomes in the garden. I remember. Here it is. Doesn’t give a street, just the name of the bloody house, as if the snobby cow lived in a manor. Well, Ancombe’s a small place. Should be easy to find.’

They turned over various bits and pieces of what they knew until Agatha noticed it was almost three o’clock. ‘Let’s look at the television news now.’

They went into Agatha’s sitting-room and she switched on the television set and selected the twenty-four-hour news programme.

The announcer said, ‘The Liberal Democrats, the Scottish Nationalists, and the Unionists have combined to table a motion of no confidence in the government following the revelations that the defence minister, Joseph Demerall, had been accepting large sums of money from Colonel Gaddafi.’

‘So that’s it,’ said Agatha. ‘The press won’t be interested in a village murder, or murders. At least we should get some peace.’

‘I think I’ll go and get on with my writing,’ said John, rising to his feet. ‘I’ll call for you in the morning, say around ten.’

‘All right,’ said Agatha, although she suddenly did not want to be left alone.

‘See you.’

Agatha wondered what to do. A pile of shiny new paperbacks she had bought in Evesham lay on the coffee-table. She picked up the first one.
Jerry’s Mistake
, it was called. Agatha sighed as she skimmed the pages. She shouldn’t have wasted her money. It was a Chick Lit book, which meant it would be about thirty-something women in London. There would be one Cinderella character who would have a gay best friend and the best friend would die from AIDS in the penultimate chapter. The hero would have muscled legs and be bad-tempered. She tossed it aside. The next was the first Harry Potter book. Agatha had bought it out of curiosity. She settled down to read and became dimly aware an hour later that the doorbell was ringing. She looked through the spy-hole and saw Bill Wong. With feelings of guilt and reluctance she opened the door. He was alone.

‘I think it’s time you and I had a chat, Agatha.’

‘Come in and bring the thumbscrews with you. We’ll sit in the garden. It doesn’t look too cold.’

‘No, it’s nice and fresh after that storm.’

Agatha collected two mugs of coffee and carried them out into the garden. Hodge and Boswell climbed up on Bill. Hodge settled on his lap and Boswell draped himself around Bill’s neck.

‘Amazing how those cats like you,’ said Agatha.

‘I’d like to concentrate on the matter in hand, however.’ Bill gently removed both cats and put them down on the grass. ‘Now, Agatha, I see you already have the ring. But why do I get the impression that the pair of you were lying to me?’

‘Because you’ve got a nasty, suspicious policeman’s mind. We are very much in love. No, I’ll be honest with you. We get along together very well and neither of us wants to go into old age alone. So we decided to get hitched.’

‘If you say so. No word of James?’

‘I may as well tell you. That lying bastard never returned to that monastery.’

‘He’ll turn up again. With your luck, probably on your wedding day.’

‘Forget about him. Any ideas why Miss Jellop was murdered?’

‘I think she might have found out something. I think that was why she phoned Mrs Bloxby. And yet Mrs Bloxby said Miss Jellop was always summoning her to make some complaint or another.’

‘Was she rich?’

‘Very comfortably off.’

‘Anyone inherit?’

‘She hadn’t left a will. Her nearest relative was a sister who lives in Stoke-on-Trent.’

‘Tell me, Bill – anything funny in Tristan’s bank account?’

‘Large sums of money, not great – five hundred here, six hundred there, all deposited in cash. Total around fifteen thousand. Seems he invented that family trust. He was born Terence Biles. Father was a post-office worker, mother a housewife. Both dead. Tristan changed his name by deed poll when he was seventeen. His parents were dead then. Nothing in his past. Good exam results at school. Studied divinity. Had the curacy of a church in Kensington for a few years. Nothing sinister there. Vicar said Tristan had declared he wanted to work in a rougher area. He seemed genuinely sorry to let him go.

‘So, Agatha, you haven’t been poking your nose in where you shouldn’t?’

‘No. I really have gone off the idea of detecting. I want to live a long and quiet life.’

Bill stood up. ‘If you hadn’t said that, I might actually have begun to believe you really were getting married. But you wanting a quiet life? Never! Just make sure if you do find anything that you tell me.’

After he had gone, Agatha sat on in the garden, deep in thought. What had happened to that ten thousand? The police would not have asked the bank about it because they didn’t know about it. Perhaps Tristan had asked for it in bits and pieces so as not to alert the income tax.

Agatha phoned Binser’s office and asked to speak to him. She finally got through to his personal secretary, Miss Partle. ‘I really do wish you would leave him alone,’ said the secretary sharply. ‘He is very busy.’

Agatha drew a deep breath. ‘Look, lady, just get off your bum and tell him that Agatha Raisin wishes to speak to him.’

‘
Well
, really.’

Agatha waited and then Binser’s voice came on the line. ‘What now?’ he said. ‘I’ve told you all I know.’

‘It’s just about that ten thousand pounds. How did you pay it?’

‘Cash.’

‘Cash!’ echoed Agatha. ‘That’s odd.’

‘I know it’s odd, but I think Tristan twisted my mind. He said he was setting up a special account with a bank in New Cross. He could get started right away if he didn’t have to wait to get the cheque to clear.’

‘I know you didn’t want anyone to know you had been conned. Still, I would have thought a man like you would have sued him to get the money back.’

‘He sent it back.’

‘What! You didn’t say anything about that. When?’

‘About a month after I had confronted him. The money was delivered downstairs in a large envelope, addressed to me.’

‘Was there any letter with the money? Perhaps he was hoping to resume the friendship.’

‘No, there was no letter. I heard from him a week after that when he threatened to blackmail me. And as I told you, I said I would report him to the police if he did, and heard no more from him. Now, if you don’t mind, Mrs Raisin, as far as I am concerned the matter is closed. I have heard on the news about the other murder in your village. Obviously the murderer is in your neck of the woods. Goodbye.’

Agatha replaced the receiver and stood thinking hard. What would have made Tristan return that money? Mr Lancing, his vicar? No, it would have been more like Tristan to fake penitence and claim to have returned the money while keeping it.

She reached out to the phone again, meaning to call John and discuss this with him, but changed her mind. Tomorrow morning would be time enough. She didn’t want to fall into the trap of needing John’s company.

But when she lay awake in bed that night, she felt frightened at the thought that there was some unknown murderer out there. And a thatched cottage was the last place you wanted to try to get to sleep in when you were scared. Things rustled in the thatch overhead and the beams creaked. She decided, just before she fell asleep, that she would forget about the whole thing, see the police in the morning and ask permission to go abroad. She would stay in some foreign country, far away from danger.

In the morning, however, after two cups of black coffee and three cigarettes for breakfast, Agatha felt strong again. The fears of the night had gone. At ten o’clock, she heard the beep of John’s car horn outside, locked up the cottage and went to join him.

As they drove to Ancombe, she told him about the visit from Bill and her phone call to Binser and the surprising news of the return of the money.

‘There’s something that man isn’t telling us,’ said John. ‘Tristan wouldn’t return the money like that. He must have threatened him.’

‘I dunno. There’s something very straightforward about him.’

‘If he’s all that straightforward, then why did he give us the impression that Tristan kept the money?’

‘He didn’t lie about it.’

‘Only by omission. Here’s Ancombe. Look for a twee cottage.’

‘Nothing in the main street that I can see. Stop at the post office there and I’ll ask.’

John waited until Agatha returned with the news that Peggy Slither lived at the far end of the village in Sheep Street.

‘There must be hundreds of Sheep Streets in the Cotswolds,’ said John, letting in the clutch and moving off.

At the end of the village, he turned right into Sheep Street. ‘Only a few houses here. Oh, that must be it up ahead on the right.’

Shangri-la was a modern bungalow. The front garden was bright with flowers and plaster gnomes. They parked outside and then made their way up a crazy-paving path to the front door. The doormat bore the legend GO AWAY. No doubt Peggy found it humorous. John pressed the bell and they waited while it rang out the chimes of Big Ben. ‘Is she Mrs or Miss?’ asked John.

‘Don’t know.’

The door was opened by a dark-haired middle-aged woman. She had a sallow skin and the sort of twinkling humorous eyes of people who do not have much of a sense of humour at all.

Agatha introduced herself and John.

‘Oh, the snoops of Carsely,’ she said in a husky voice. ‘I was just about to make a cup of tea. Come in.’

The living-room was full of knick-knacks and plants. Beside the window, a palm tree grew out of an old toilet. One wall was covered in those tin advertising signs that antique dealers love to fake. On the other side of the window from the palm tree was a copy of the boy of Bruges, peeing into a stone basin. The three-piece suite was upholstered in slippery green silk and decorated with gold fringe.

‘I’ll get the tea,’ said Peggy.

John looked at the stone boy of Bruges. ‘I wonder how the water circulates?’ he said.

‘Awful thing to have in your living-room,’ said Agatha. ‘Makes me want to pee myself.’

‘Do you think she is really trying to be funny with all this kitsch?’ whispered John.

‘No, I have a feeling she really likes it. Shhh! Here she comes.’

Peggy entered carrying a tray. The teapot was in the shape of a squat fat man. The spout was his penis. Agatha suddenly decided she did not want tea. When Peggy handed her a cup, she placed it on a side-table.

‘All this murder is quite exciting,’ said Peggy.

‘Exciting?’ Agatha looked at her in surprise. ‘I thought you were very fond of Tristan.’

‘Oh, we all were, dear. Such a gorgeous young man.’

‘When’s the funeral?’ asked John. ‘I forgot to ask.’

‘Some cousin’s having the body taken to London for cremation.’

‘I would like to attend that funeral,’ said Agatha. ‘Do you know when it’s going to be?’

‘I don’t think anyone will know until the body is released by the police. Of course, you had a thing with him, didn’t you?’

‘If you mean an affair,’ said Agatha stiffly, ‘I most certainly did not.’

‘But Mrs Feathers is telling everyone she peered round the kitchen door and saw him kissing you goodnight.’

‘It was a social peck, that’s all,’ said Agatha, becoming angry. ‘I thought you were close to him.’

‘Not close. He amused me. And women of our decaying ages, Agatha, do like to be seen around with beautiful young men.’

‘I do not need beautiful young men. I am engaged to John, here.’

‘Really?’ Peggy surveyed John from top to bottom before turning back to Agatha. ‘How did you manage that?’

John said quickly, ‘Did you give Tristan any money?’

‘Not a penny. Not that the poor lamb didn’t try. Cost him a good few dinners before he gave up on me.’

I hate you, thought Agatha.

‘Where were you on the night he died?’ asked John.

‘Silly man. You’re not the police, so I’m not even bothering to answer you. I thought it would be funny to see how you two snoops went about your business, but I’m beginning to find the whole thing rather boring.’

Agatha stood up. Rage was making her intuitive faculties work overtime. ‘It’s a good act you’re putting on, Peggy,
dear
. But you were in love with him and somehow he suckered you and I’m going to find out how. Oh, by the way, did you know he was gay? Come along, John.’

Peggy sat staring after them as they made their exit.

‘That last remark of yours hit the old bag hard,’ said John when they were back in the car. ‘How did you guess all that casual jeering was a front?’

‘Tristan, it turns out, was a complete rat and a blackmailer,’ said Agatha. ‘But he was glorious and charming. He made me feel fascinating and desirable. That was why he was so dangerous. People who have been conned by him – and to be honest, I could have been – will pretend he had no effect on them. But I can’t imagine any woman being unaffected by Tristan.’

‘Except Mrs Bloxby,’ said John. ‘Let’s go and see Mrs Tremp.’

Mrs Tremp lived in a converted barn outside the village. Agatha remembered seeing her at various village events. She was a small, mousy woman, and when the colonel was alive, the locals reported that he bullied her.

They bumped down the pot-holed drive leading to her home. As they got out of the car, Agatha slammed the door, and rooks, roosting in a nearby lightning-blasted tree, swirled up to the heavens, cawing in alarm. The harvest was in, and the large field beside the house was full of pheasant pecking among the golden stubble.

The converted barn looked large and solid. Agatha rang the bell and they waited. The rooks came swirling back to their tree and stared down at Agatha and John with beady eyes. Agatha shivered. ‘I don’t like rooks. Birds of ill omen.’

‘You mean ravens,’ said John.

The door opened and Mrs Tremp stood there, blinking myopically up at them in the sunlight.

‘It’s Mrs Raisin and Mr Armitage, is it not?’