Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell (7 page)

‘All right. So what is it you want?’

‘I gather you would have had a reporter or reporters working on the murder of Melissa Sheppard.’

‘Of course.’

‘And pulled them off it when the shooting at the school happened?’

‘Yes.’

‘We wanted to find out a bit about Melissa’s background and wondered if one of your reporters would have something.’

‘Why? Are you playing at detectives?’

‘We’re not playing at anything,’ said Agatha sharply. ‘I am still a suspect, as is my husband. I want to know if there was anyone in Melissa’s past life who would want to harm her.’

Mr Blacklock suddenly bellowed, ‘Josie!’

A skeletal girl appeared. She was wearing a purple spangled top over a long black skirt and huge boots.

‘Where’s Colin Jaeger?’

‘Down the pub,’ said Josie laconically.

‘Right. Will you take Mrs Raisin here and Sir Charles Fraith down to the Ferret and Firkin and tell Colin he’s to fill them in on the background of the Sheppard murder.’

‘Okey-dokey.’

Agatha and Charles followed the thin figure of Josie out and down the stairs. Out in the street, Agatha said to Josie, ‘You should eat more.’

Josie flicked back her lank hair and stared insolently at Agatha’s stocky figure. ‘You should eat less, Granny.’

‘You insolent little pig,’ snarled Agatha. ‘Why, I’d like to stuff your skinny, undernourished form down the nearest drain.’

‘Ladies, ladies,’ pleaded Charles. ‘It’s too hot for a row. Here is the pub. Josie, fetch this Colin and then you can go back to work.’

Josie muttered something under her breath but she thrust open the door of the pub and let it swing back in Agatha’s face.

‘You asked for it, Aggie. Calm down. You should know better than to comment on someone’s personal appearance.’ Charles opened the door for her.

Josie was talking to an untidy young man who was standing at the bar holding a tankard of beer. She jerked a thumb in their direction and then walked away, brushing rudely past them.

‘Colin Jaeger?’ asked Agatha. He nodded. ‘I’m Agatha Raisin and this is Sir Charles Fraith. Did that drippy child tell you we need background on Melissa Sheppard?’

‘Something like that.’

‘So can we sit down at, say, that table over there, or have you got notes back at the office?’

Despite the heat, he was wearing a shabby tweed jacket. He pulled a notebook out of one pocket. ‘Got most of it here.’

Charles bought Agatha a gin and tonic and himself a whisky and they joined Colin at a table. He flicked through his notebook. ‘Look at that,’ he said. ‘Perfect shorthand. “You need shorthand,” says the editor. And what happens? Well, these days, everyone’s got a dinky little tape recorder. Still, must admit it’s a good way of keeping a lot of information.’

‘So what have you got on Melissa?’ asked Agatha eagerly. ‘Is there a Mr Sheppard?’

‘Easy, now. You paying me for this?’

‘Paying your editor,’ lied Charles quickly, seeing that Agatha was preparing to give him a lecture. ‘So you’d better get on with it.’

Colin sighed. ‘Where are we? Pages and pages of school shooting. Ah, here we are. Background. Married Luke Sheppard in 1992. Divorced a year later, amicably.’

‘And did you talk to this Mr Sheppard?’ asked Charles.

‘I was about to when the shooting started.’

‘Address?’

‘Parson’s Terrace, number fourteen, Blockley.’

Charles made a note. ‘Anything else?’

‘When she married Luke Sheppard, she was a Mrs Dewey.’

‘Blimey. Two of them. What of Mr Dewey?’

‘Lives in Worcester. Turnpike Lane, number five.’

‘And how long was she married to him?’

‘Three years. Let me see, 1988 to 1991.’

‘Are there any other husbands?’ asked Agatha.

‘None that I got around to finding.’

‘Got anything else?’

‘All the stuff on you, Mrs Raisin, and your . . . er . . . unhappy marriage.’

‘You mean, on Melissa?’

‘No.’

‘My marriage was not unhappy,’ said Agatha through gritted teeth.

‘Have it your way, but that ain’t what the neighbours say. Raised voices, flying plates, all that stuff.’

‘Can we get back to Melissa?’ said Charles. Agatha looked about to burst with rage.

‘There’s not much to get back to. I say, you two might at least offer me a drink.’

‘First tell us about Melissa,’ said Charles.

‘There isn’t much more to tell. That’s about as far as I’d got. Got as far as previous husbands and addresses and got called off the story.’

‘Come along, Agatha,’ said Charles, pulling her to her feet. ‘Better get going.’

‘What about my drink?’ demanded the reporter.

‘No time,’ said Charles, urging Agatha out of the pub.

‘You are cheap, Charles,’ said Agatha. ‘I didn’t like the little ferret, but you could have at least bought him a drink.’

‘Maybe next time,’ said Charles vaguely. ‘Blockley first. That’s very near Carsely. He could have nipped over there and bashed her, after bashing James first in a fit of jealous rage.’

James Lacey lay in a narrow white bed in the Benedictine monastery of Saint Anselm in the French Pyrenees, drifting in and out of sleep. He had arrived the day before, suffering from heat exhaustion. He knew from his previous visit that it was a closed order. Before, he had been allowed a cold drink of water and a rest in the cloisters before continuing on a walking tour. This time, to his request to join the order, he had been told he was obviously a sick man. He should rest and recover and then they would see.

After leaving Tubby and Harriet, he had slowly made his way south, resting in fields, eating little, always stumbling on, driven by worry and guilt, and fear of the monster he felt was growing in his brain.

He thought briefly of Agatha, but closed his eyes again and willed himself to sleep.

Blockley, though now a village, was once a thriving mill-town. The mills are now residences, and property prices, sky-high. The village is dominated by a square-towered church, and by Georgian terraces of mellow Cotswold stone. The long straggling main street used to be full of little shops, but only the many-paned shop windows, lovingly preserved, remain to show where they once stood.

It is one of the more picturesque of the Cotswold villages, but, because of an absence of craft shops, thatched cottages and a museum, is mostly free from the tourists and tour buses which crowd other, more popular, places such as Bourton-on-the-Water, Stow-on-the-Wold, and Chipping Campden.

Charles and Agatha drove down into the village from the A44. ‘Poor Blockley, it must have the worst roads of anywhere around here,’ said Charles.

‘Why is that?’ asked Agatha idly. She was experiencing a rare peace, because at last she was doing something, and did not want her mood shattered by dwelling on thoughts of James’s infidelity.

‘The trucks grind through it on their way to Northwick Business Park,’ said Charles. ‘They chew up the two main roads down into the village and leave big pot-holes, and then all that happens is two men fill the holes up with tarry stones, which soon sink back into pot-holes under the weight of the trucks.’

‘I think they need a big-wig of some kind, a Member of Parliament, someone like that, to complain. Where’s Parson’s Terrace?’

‘Don’t know. There’s a post office. We’ll ask there.’

As in Carsely, the post office was also the general store. The woman behind the counter told them to turn left as they went out of the shop, left and left again. They would find Parson’s Terrace at the top of the hill.

‘We may not find him at home,’ said Charles. ‘May be out at work.’

‘We can try. A lot of people work at home in these villages, computer stuff,’ said Agatha vaguely.

Parson’s Terrace was a row of very small cottages. ‘This is it,’ said Charles, parking outside.

‘I wish we had some sort of official badge we could flash,’ mourned Agatha.

‘Well, we haven’t. Here goes.’

Charles knocked at the door. ‘Someone at home anyway,’ he said, hearing someone approach.

When the door opened, at first they thought they were facing a teenager. She had black hair pulled back in two bunches and tied with red ribbons and was wearing a short print frock, ankle socks and sandals. Her eyes were large, seeming to fill the whole of her small face.

‘We’re hoping to talk to Mr Sheppard,’ said Agatha in that slightly cooing voice in which those who don’t have children and don’t much like them either address the species.

‘Luke’s out at work. Can I help you? I’m Megan Sheppard.’

‘Ah, what time will your father be home, dear?’

Those eyes widened in amusement. ‘I am Mrs Sheppard and you are that Agatha Raisin I read about in the newspapers.’

‘May we talk to you for a little?’ asked Charles.

‘Come in. I was just about to have some coffee. We can have it in the garden. It’s a lovely day.’

They followed her through the dark little cottage – narrow kitchen, poky living-room and out into a pretty garden, where a table and chairs had been set out on a patio. ‘Have a seat,’ said Megan. ‘I’ll get the coffee.’

When she had gone, Agatha hissed, ‘How old do you think she is?’

‘Late thirties?’

‘Can’t be!’

‘It’s the bobby socks, Agatha. She’s a lot older than she dresses.’

When Megan came back with a tray of coffee jug and cups, which she set down on the table, Agatha studied her face. In full sunlight, Megan’s face now revealed thin lines around the eyes, but she still seemed remarkably young.

‘I did not know Mr Sheppard had married again,’ said Agatha. ‘There was nothing about it in the papers.’

‘There wouldn’t be, would there?’ said Megan, pouring coffee. ‘They only print the name of suspects.’

‘I am Charles Fraith,’ began Charles, accepting a cup of coffee from her. It was a china cup, decorated with roses. ‘Why wouldn’t your husband be a suspect? I mean, she was married to him.’

‘But he had nothing to do with her. Everyone knows that.’ Somehow Megan’s voice implied that they should have known it, too.

‘Why did he divorce her?’ asked Agatha. ‘Did he discover she was being unfaithful to him?’

‘With your husband, you mean?’

‘No,’ said Agatha sharply. ‘With someone else.’

‘Oh, no. He fell in love with me, you see.’ She smiled blindingly at Charles, who smiled back.

‘And what does your husband do?’ asked Charles.

‘He owns The Well-Dressed Gent. It’s a shop in Mircester. You are rather cheeky, you know, to ask all these questions. You’re not the police.’

‘Mrs Raisin is desperate to find the whereabouts of her husband. We’re asking everyone connected with Melissa. Did you know her?’

‘Of course not. Why should I?’

Agatha was becoming increasingly irritated. Among other things, the childlike Megan with her doll’s house, and doll’s china, was beginning to make her feel old and huge and lumbering.

‘Well, for a start, I thought Melissa, knowing he was leaving her for you, might have called on you.’

‘Oh, no. More coffee, Charles?’

‘Thank you. It’s excellent.’

She refilled his cup.

Agatha was suddenly anxious to leave. Megan could not help them. They should be on their way to Mircester to interview the husband. She realized they would really need to know what kind of person Melissa had been. They would need to find out if there had been anything in her behaviour or character to promote murder. In her heart of hearts, Agatha could not believe James had had anything to do with it. Whoever had attacked him had surely gone on to kill Melissa. She looked impatiently at Charles, but he was smiling and relaxed in the sunshine.

‘How did you meet your husband?’ Charles asked.

‘I was working in the shop, as an assistant. We started going out for a drink together after work, and one thing led to another. He wasn’t happy with her.’

‘Why?’ demanded Agatha.

‘Oh, you’ll need to ask him and see if he wants to tell you anything.’

‘We’ll do that,’ said Agatha. ‘Come along, Charles.’

‘Come back any time,’ said Megan, but she addressed the invitation to Charles. ‘Can you see your way out?’

‘Little bitch,’ said Agatha as they drove off.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Charles. ‘Seemed very charming to me.’

‘For heaven’s sake! There’s something wrong with a woman who wears ankle socks and her hair tied up like a child.’

‘It suited her.’

‘Anyway, we’d better go to Mircester. You know, Charles, I was thinking in there that we don’t really know what Melissa was like. I mean, what sort of person was she?’

‘Then we should call on Mrs Bloxby first. Melissa went to that ladies’ society thing, didn’t she?’

‘Yes.’

‘So let’s ask Mrs Bloxby’s opinion of her. She must have formed some sort of opinion.’

Agatha felt an irrational stab of jealousy. She prided herself on being a great judge of character. What could Mrs Bloxby tell them? If she, Agatha, had not sussed out anything strange or odd about Melissa, how could the vicar’s wife manage to do so?

More coffee in the vicarage garden. With scones, this time, light as feathers. Being a city mouse down to her bones, Agatha often envied the skill of the country mice. Not for them the quick-fix dinner in the microwave. Not for them the instant garden with plants bought fully grown from the nursery.

‘You were asking me about Mrs Sheppard,’ said Mrs Bloxby. ‘Do have some of my cherry jam on your scone, Sir Charles.’

I wish I could produce homemade jam, thought Agatha. Of course, I could buy the good stuff, steam off the labels, and put my own on, and who would know the difference? Yes, I might do that.

‘I thought, you see,’ said Charles, spooning jam on to a scone, ‘that with Melissa being such a regular member of the ladies’ society, not like Aggie here, you might have formed some sort of opinion.’

‘I don’t like to speak ill of the dead,’ said Mrs Bloxby. ‘I suppose that’s silly, now I come to think of it. Surely much worse to speak ill of them when they are alive. I suppose it comes from some old superstition that one might spoil their chances of getting to heaven.’