Agatha Raisin and the Day the Floods Came (3 page)

‘Who’s bought the cottage next door?’

‘We don’t know. There’s a newcomer to our ladies’ society, a Mrs Anstruther-Jones. She’s just moved into the village. She wanted the cottage but someone else got it first, so she bought Pear Tree Cottage . . . you know the one, behind the village stores.’

‘What’s she like?’

‘You can judge for yourself. There’s a meeting tonight.’

‘Meaning you don’t like her.’

‘Now, I never said that.’

‘If you don’t have a good word to say for anyone, you don’t say anything. How’s Miss Simms?’

Miss Simms was secretary of the ladies’ society, an unmarried mother.

‘Miss Simms has a new gentleman friend. He’s in sofas.’

‘Married, I suppose.’

‘I think so. Listen to that. The rain is on again. It’s been raining since you left.’

The doorbell rang. ‘I’m off,’ said Mrs Bloxby.

Agatha opened the door and found Detective Sergeant Bill Wong on the doorstep. ‘Hello,’ said Mrs Bloxby. ‘See you tonight, Mrs Raisin.’

‘I thought you women would be on first-name terms by now,’ said Bill, following Agatha through to the kitchen.

‘It’s tradition in the ladies’ society that we use second names, and in this over-familiar touchy-feely world, I rather like it,’ said Agatha. ‘Coffee?’

‘Yes. I see you haven’t given up smoking.’

‘Did I even say I would try?’ demanded Agatha with all the truculence of the heavily addicted.

‘Thought you might.’

‘Never mind that. Here’s your coffee. How’s crime?’

‘Nothing dramatic. Nothing but the usual cutbacks. Village police stations are closing down all round. Did you know they had closed Carsely police station?’

‘Never!’

‘Yes, and the one at Chipping Campden and the one in Blockley. So we spend most of our time on the road. Someone called nine-nine-nine last night and howled it was an emergency. Got there and found it was her cat stuck up a tree.’

‘And how’s your love life?’

‘On hold.’

Agatha looked at him sympathetically. Bill had a Chinese father and an English mother, the combination of which had given him attractive almond-shaped eyes in a round face and a pleasant Gloucestershire accent. ‘How’s yours?’ asked Bill.

‘Non-existent.’

Agatha saw Bill was going to ask about James, so she began to describe her odd feeling about the couple on Robinson Crusoe Island.

‘It sounds to me as if you were bored and looking for a bit of action, Agatha.’

‘On the contrary, I wasn’t bored at all. I met some super people. Still . . . there was something odd there. And I saw a couple in Evesham yesterday who reminded me of them.’

‘You’d better find some work quickly or you’ll be seeing crime everywhere. Thinking of doing any public relations work?’

‘I might.’ Agatha had once run a highly successful public relations company but had sold up to take early retirement and move to the country. Since then, she had often taken on freelance work. ‘Public relations is a different world now,’ she said. ‘It used to be you were neither fish nor fowl. Despised by the journalists and the advertising people as if you weren’t doing a real job. Now the public relations people are often celebrities themselves.’

‘I hear Charles is married.’

‘So what?’

‘Oh, well,’ said Bill hurriedly. ‘I’d better get on. Let me know if you stumble across any dead bodies. I could do with a change.’

After he had left, Agatha switched on her computer to see if she had any e-mails. There was one from Roy Silver, a young man who used to work for her, asking where she was; and one from Dolores, the pretty young Chilean girl. To Agatha’s dismay, it was all in Spanish, but she noticed the names Concita and Pablo Ramon. She printed it off and then drove to the Falconry Restaurant in Evesham, where the owner, Juan, was Spanish, and asked him for a translation.

‘She says,’ said Juan, ‘“Dear Agatha, Such excitement. Do you remember the couple, Pablo and Concita Ramon? Well, Pablo has just been arrested. It is in all the newspapers. Concita was drowned on Robinson Crusoe Island and Pablo said she fell out of the boat. But a hiker up on the hills saw him push her. He knew she could not swim. He had her heavily insured and her family are very wealthy. How are you? Let me know. Love, Dolores.”’

So that’s why he seemed to be waiting, thought Agatha. He was just waiting for the right opportunity. She wished now she had said something, let him know she was on to him. But she hadn’t really noticed anything significant at all.

Agatha sat at the ladies’ society meeting that night as Miss Simms, the secretary, in her usual unsuitable dress of tiny skirt, bare midriff, pierced navel and stiletto heels went through the minutes of the last meeting. The teacups clattered, plates of cake were passed round, and outside the rain drummed down on the vicarage garden. Mrs Anstruther-Jones turned out to be one of those well-upholstered pushy women with a loud braying voice. Agatha detested her on sight. She could feel some of her old misery creeping back again and tried the breathing exercises she had been taught and, to her amazement, felt herself beginning to relax. She would phone Roy and see if he had any work for her. James was gone and Charles was gone and Agatha Raisin was grimly determined to move on.

Agatha found it hard, as winter moved into spring, to keep up her spirits. It was the rain – steady, remorseless rain. Water dripped from cherry blossom trees in the village gardens and yellow daffodils drooped under the onslaught.

And then in April, following a day of heavy cloudbursts, a watery sunshine gilded the puddles in Lilac Lane. Agatha set off for her Pilates class, to which she was now thoroughly addicted, the only healthy addiction she had ever had in her life. Just before the bridge on the Cheltenham Road in Evesham, she let out an exclamation of disgust. The police were diverting the traffic. She swung right. She was the leading car. Other cars followed her. If I make a left along here, she thought, it’ll take me down to Waterside. She cruised down the hill and then jammed on the brakes with an exclamation of dismay. Waterside had gone. The river Avon was rising up the hill before her. She signalled to the other cars that she was going to reverse, made a three-point turn and decided to head out on the ring road over the Simon de Montfort Bridge and approach Evesham from the top road.

Cars were slowing over the bridge to look at the drowned fields on either side. She turned into Evesham and parked in the car park at Merstow Green. She decided to walk down to the Workman Bridge and view the extent of the flooding. She walked down Bridge Street, which is a steep hill leading down to the arch of the Workman Bridge. As she approached, she could see that Pont Street on the other side of the bridge was under water. Water surged past the houses on the waterfront. Two people outside Magpie Antiques were desperately hanging on to a doorway and waiting for help. Overhead, an Air Sea Rescue helicopter whirred across the sky. Agatha marvelled that the day had arrived when she could see Air Sea Rescue turning out to save the people of middle England.

She walked to the centre of the bridge and joined the spectators. Debris and tree branches raced past on the swollen river. There was a crunching sound as a caravan which had floated loose from a nearby caravan park got jammed under the bridge.

And then, as Agatha leaned over the bridge and stared down at the water, gilded by sunshine for the first time in weeks, she let out a gasp.

Like Ophelia, the girl from the beauticians, who she remembered was called Kylie, floated underneath her on the flowing river. Her blond hair was spread about her. She clutched a wedding bouquet. As Agatha and the other spectators watched in horror, the body twisted and turned and sank from sight.

Agatha pointed and tried to scream, but as in a nightmare, no scream came out. But the other spectators were shouting and yelling. A policeman spoke into a two-way radio on his lapel and then, as they all waited, a police patrol boat came speeding along underneath. More policemen appeared on the bridge, saying, ‘Move along. The bridge isn’t safe. Move along.’

They were hustled back up Bridge Street by the police.

Agatha felt shaken. Zak did it, she thought. Just like that chap on Robinson Crusoe Island. All thoughts of going to her Pilates class were driven from her mind.

‘You can’t just barge in here every time you feel like it,’ said Mrs Wong, barring the doorway to her home. ‘I’ve read about women like you. Chasing young men.’

‘I’m here on a police matter,’ said Agatha, who had driven to the Wongs’ home directly from Evesham.

‘Then go to the police station. It’s Bill’s day off.’

Bill came round the side of the house at that moment, holding a trowel in one earthy hand. ‘Agatha!’ he said. ‘I thought I heard someone. Come round to the back garden. What about some tea, Mother?’

His mother muttered something sour under her breath and shuffled off. Agatha followed Bill. The garden was Bill’s pride and joy. ‘Just clearing up after that dreadful rain.’ Bill indicated two garden chairs. ‘Sit down and tell me what brings you.’

Agatha blurted out about the floods in Evesham and seeing the body of Kylie. ‘She could just have been frightened by the prospect of her wedding and committed suicide,’ said Bill. ‘It’ll come under Worcester police, not us.’

‘He must have done it. Zak,’ said Agatha. ‘And remember I told you about that couple on Robinson Crusoe Island? Well, I had an e-mail from someone I met there and he did murder her. Said she fell off the boat but he was seen pushing her.’

‘I would think it very odd if it turns out to be her fiancé,’ said Bill. ‘So obvious.’

‘But isn’t it usually the obvious?’ asked Agatha. ‘The nearest and dearest?’

‘I’ve got a friend in Worcester police,’ said Bill. ‘I’ll give him a ring tomorrow. Aren’t these floods dreadful? And all those poor people with the contents of their houses wrecked by flood-water.’

‘Terrible,’ said Agatha vaguely, her mind still on that image of Kylie floating underneath her.

‘I can’t do much to help you until the police find out more,’ said Bill. ‘Meanwhile, let’s go inside and have some tea.’

‘I think I’d better get on my way,’ said Agatha hurriedly. Bill’s mother terrified her. ‘If you’ve got a free moment in the next few days, drop over and let me know what you’ve found out.’

‘If I can’t manage, I’ll phone you.’

When Agatha got home, she switched on the news. It was full of pictures of the flooded Midlands, tales of people being swept to their deaths, and then the announcer said, ‘The body of a young woman was recovered from the river Avon at Evesham by divers. She had been spotted by onlookers on the bridge as she floated underneath. She was wearing a wedding gown. Police are not releasing her name until the family has been informed. So far, foul play is not suspected.’

‘Pah,’ said Agatha angrily. ‘What do they know?’

Hearing her doorbell ring, she went to answer it. Miss Simms stood there, swaying slightly on her usual, very high heels. ‘Can I come in?’ she asked. ‘I’ve got some news.’

‘Of course you can come in,’ said Agatha, leading the way to the kitchen. ‘Is it about that girl in the river in Evesham?’

‘What girl? No, it’s about your new neighbour. He’s John Armitage.’

‘And who’s he?’

‘He writes detective stories. Ever so clever he is. Mrs Bloxby says his last one,
A Cruel Innocence
, was on the bestseller lists.’

‘Married?’

‘Don’t think so. Mrs Anstruther-Jones said she once read an article about him in the
Sunday Times
. She’s sure he’s a widower.’

‘How old?’

‘About fifty-something.’ Miss Simms giggled. ‘Just the sort of age I like. I like mature men. They can be ever so generous, where the young fellows expect you to pay for everything.’

‘When’s he arriving?’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘Oh.’ Agatha felt a flutter of excitement followed by a feeling of competitiveness. She must get to know him first.

‘Anyway, what’s this about a girl in the river?’

Agatha told her about the drowned Kylie. ‘Are you going to find out who done it?’ asked Miss Simms eagerly. ‘I mean to say, maybe you and that new neighbour could join forces.’

‘I don’t suppose detective writers know anything about detecting,’ said Agatha loftily.

But when Miss Simms had left, Agatha drifted off on a rosy dream. She and this John Armitage would solve the case together. ‘Murder has brought us very close together,’ he would murmur. ‘I think we should get married.’ And James would read about the wedding in the newspapers and feel terrible about what he had lost. She jerked herself out of her reverie to plan. First, she’d better get down to the bookshop in Moreton-in-Marsh and buy a copy of one of his books.

In the bookshop, all the talk was of the floods and how the main street at Moreton had been flooded. Agatha burst through the little knot of customers and interrupted their never-seen-anything-like-it exclamations to demand harshly, ‘Any books by John Armitage?’

‘Just his latest,’ said the bookseller. ‘
A Cruel Innocence
.’

‘That’ll do,’ said Agatha. ‘Get me a copy.’ And ignoring the glares of the interrupted customers, she paid for the book and headed back home. Once there, she unplugged the phone and settled down to read.

Her heart sank by the time she had read the first two chapters. The story was set in a tower block in Birmingham, much like the one in which Agatha had been brought up. It started with the ferocious gang rape of a young girl. It was compulsive reading, but Agatha read for escape, not to be reminded of scenes of her youth, the past which she tried so hard to forget about, to bury.

She began to picture this John Armitage in her mind, for there was no photo of him on the cover of the book. He would be short with a beer belly. He would be middle-aged with a beard and a false hearty laugh. But she continued to read, because the story was gripping, and by the end of it she knew she was free from indulging in any romantic thoughts about her new neighbour. Let the other village women call on him with scones and cakes. She, Agatha Raisin, would get on with studying one real-life murder for Agatha
was
convinced it was murder.