Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage (17 page)

‘Well, if you’re ready,’ he said, ‘let’s get to police headquarters.’

Leaves fluttered down in front of them as they drove off, autumn leaves, dancing and whirling, blown down by a great gusty wind from a sky full of tumbling black, ragged clouds.

The whole countryside was in motion. Showers of nuts pattered on the roof of the car. A woman getting out of a car at the Quarry Garage clutched at her skirts to hold them down. An old newspaper
spiralled up and then performed a hectic dance through the furrows of a brown ploughed field. And somewhere, thought Agatha, crawling around out there is a murderer.

‘It must be something to do with that Helen Warwick,’ she said.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ snapped James. ‘Do you mean she travelled down from London to pour petrol through our letterbox? Why?’

‘Because I swear she knows something.’

‘Oh, really. Then I had better go back and see her.’

‘Yes, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

‘Very much. I found her a charming woman.’

‘Men are so blind. She was sly and devious. And mercenary.’

‘In your jealous opinion, Agatha.’

‘I’m not jealous of that plump frump. We could have been killed last night.’

‘Not with a back door to the garden.’

‘What if we had both been asleep?’

There was no answer to that.

They completed the drive to Mircester in silence.

There were many questions to answer at police headquarters. Detective Inspector Wilkes was in charge of the questioning this time, flanked by Bill Wong. Agatha found herself beginning to sweat.
She was terrified either she or James would let something slip and Wilkes would know about their burglaring.

When it was at last all over and they had signed their statements, Wilkes said severely, ‘I should charge both of you with obstructing police business. But I’m warning you for the
last time. We may seem to you very slow, but we are thorough.’

They left feeling chastened. From an upstairs window, Maddie Hurd watched them go. She bit her thumbnail and stared down at them. She had not been invited to join in the interrogation. She had
not been asked to do anything further on the case at all. She had been given a series of burglaries to investigate instead. She blamed Bill Wong for turning her superiors against her.

Although Bill had not opened his mouth, her jilting of him had a lot to do with it. Bill Wong was very popular, Maddie was not. Women, even in the police force, were expected to be womanly.
Women in the police force were not expected to jilt fellow officers. So, although Chief Inspector Wilkes did not sit down and say, ‘We don’t want Maddie Hurd on the case because of the
way she has treated Bill Wong,’ he had, without even thinking about it, decided she was not the right officer for the job.

Agatha completed the business of buying her cottage back, although conscience prompted her finally to offer £120,000. She felt she had misjudged Mrs Hardy, that here was
a fellow spirit.

When they were leaving the lawyers’, Agatha said impulsively, ‘Look, there’s a dance at the village hall on Saturday evening. Why don’t you come with me and James? No,
don’t refuse right away. I thought I would hate things like that, but they’re really rather fun. And it’s in a good cause. We’re raising money for Cancer Relief.’

Mrs Hardy gave a weak smile. All her aggression seemed to have left her. ‘Well, maybe . . .’ she said hesitantly.

‘That’s the thing. Think about it.’ Agatha waved goodbye and headed off to the car, where James was waiting for her.

‘Well, that’s that,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Do you know, she’s not that bad? I’ve asked her to come to the dance with us on Saturday.’

James groaned. ‘I didn’t know we were going.’

‘Of course we are. What would a village dance be without us?’

Agatha put on a chiffon evening blouse and black velvet skirt for the dance on Saturday, wishing the days of proper evening gowns even for a village hop were not gone forever.
Full evening dress was glamorous. She was regretting her decision to ‘mother’ Mrs Hardy at the dance. And yet surely there was no one in the village to catch James’s wandering
eye. And he
did
have a wandering eye, witness his interest in Helen Warwick.

He must have meant something hopeful by that ‘Give me time.’ Perhaps they could go away together to northern Cyprus just for a holiday. It wouldn’t need to be a honeymoon. She
sat at her dressing-table, a lipstick halfway to her mouth, her eyes unfocused by dreams as she imagined them walking along the beach together, talking.

Then she gave a shrug and, leaning forward, applied the lipstick with a careful hand. The dream James always talked so well, always said all those delightful things she longed to hear. The real
James would probably talk about books or the political situation. She stood up. Her skirt was loose at the waist. No thanks to that brief stay at the health farm. It was a result of living with
James and eating James’s carefully prepared meals – no fries, no puddings. There was no incentive either to snack before meals because she still felt obliged to ask him for everything,
and it was easier not to eat anything between meals than to request something and maybe be damned as a glutton. Her face was thinner and her skin clear. I could pass for forty – maybe,
thought Agatha.

When they collected Mrs Hardy and they began to walk towards the village hall, Agatha glanced sideways at her and thought she might at least have made some effort with her dress. Mrs Hardy was
wearing a rather baggy green tweed skirt and a black blouse under a raincoat.

‘I don’t think this is a very good idea,’ said Mrs Hardy. ‘I don’t like dancing.’

‘Stay for a bit and have a drink,’ urged Agatha, ‘and then, if you still don’t like it, you can go home.’

Light was streaming out of the village hall and they could hear the jolly umpty-tumpty sound of the village band. ‘It’ll be old-fashioned dancing tonight, not a disco,’ said
Agatha. ‘No heavy metal.’

‘You mean “Pride of Erin” and the military two-step, things like that?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, I can do those,’ said Mrs Hardy. ‘I didn’t know anyone did those sort of dances these days. I thought they just took ecstasy pills and threw themselves about like
dervishes.’

They left their coats in the temporary cloakroom manned, or ‘womanned’, by old Mrs Boggle. ‘That’ll be fifty pee each,’ said Mrs Boggle, ‘and hang your own
coats up.’

‘It’s the first time I’ve ever been charged for a cloakroom ticket at the village hall,’ said Agatha suspiciously.

‘You don’t think I’m going to do this for nothing,’ grumbled Mrs Boggle.

James paid the money and then led them both into the village hall. ‘The next dance is a Canadian barn dance,’ announced the MC, vicar Alf Bloxby.

James turned to Mrs Hardy. ‘Care to try?’

‘I don’t know . . .’

‘Oh, go on,’ said Agatha, determined to be charitable and reminding herself that she would soon be moving back into her old home.

James and Mrs Hardy took the floor. Agatha moved over to the bar, where the publican, John Fletcher, was working, having left his wife and son to manage the pub. ‘Gin and tonic,
John,’ said Agatha.

‘Right you are. How’s that murder investigation going? They caught anyone?’

Agatha shook her head.

‘It’s odd, isn’t it? And then the murder of that poor woman in the cinema. Mind you, the police don’t think now that the two murders are related.’

‘Since when?’

‘I dunno. Fred Griggs was saying something like that the other day.’

He turned away to serve someone else.

Agatha found Mrs Bloxby next to her. ‘Mrs Hardy appears to have come out of her shell,’ said the vicar’s wife.

Agatha turned round and surveyed the dance floor. Mrs Hardy was dancing with unexpected grace. She was laughing at something James was saying.

‘And if I am not mistaken, that’s quite a flirtatious look in her eyes. Not,’ added Mrs Bloxby hurriedly, ‘that she is any competition. You are looking remarkably trim
and well these days.’

‘Must be James’s cooking,’ said Agatha. ‘We brought along Mrs Hardy to cheer her up. I only hope now she doesn’t cheer up too much or she will decide to
stay.’

‘But you have your cottage back?’

‘Yes, everything’s signed and agreed on.’

‘In that case, she can do nothing about it.’

‘I hope James is not going to get carried away by my good Samaritan act,’ said Agatha. ‘If he asks her for the next dance, I’ll murder her . . . oh, dear, how easily one
says things like that. I don’t think we’re ever going to find out who murdered Jimmy.’

‘Let’s sit over there in the corner, away from the noise of the band, and you can tell me about it,’ said Mrs Bloxby.

Agatha hesitated. The dance had finished. But James was asking Miss Simms for the next dance.

‘Okay,’ she said. They carried their drinks over to a couple of chairs in a corner of the hall.

‘I think a lot of it you already know,’ began Agatha. ‘Jimmy and possibly this Mrs Gore-Appleton, who ran a dicey charity, stayed at a health farm, found out what they could,
and blackmailed some of the other guests. I believe one of them murdered him.’ She went on to describe all their investigations.

Mrs Bloxby listened carefully and then she said, ‘I would think the most likely suspect would be Mrs Gore-Appleton herself.’

‘But they were in it together!’

‘Exactly. Jimmy went back on the booze and down to the gutter. But he surfaced for long enough to get cleaned up for your wedding. So, say, before that he had some stage where he was
relatively sober and needed money. Why should he not seek out his old protector? And think of this. Let’s say she wants nothing more to do with him – her miraculous cured alcoholic
isn’t cured. So she tries to send him packing. But Jimmy has a taste for blackmail, and as he was close to her at one time, he must have known about the fraudulent charity. He knows the
police are looking for her. So he says something like, “Pay up or I’ll tell them where you are”? Wait a bit. It could be just before he came down here. He says he’s going to
be in Carsely. She follows him and waits for the right moment, and what better moment is there than when he is hopelessly drunk and has just had a row with his wife?’

Agatha looked at her open-mouthed and then said, ‘That’s all so very simple, it could well be what happened. But surely the police can find this woman, with all their
resources.’

‘She could have changed her name.’

‘That might be an idea. I wonder if they’ve checked the Records Office to see if a Mrs Gore-Appleton changed her name to anything else. Damn, they’re bound to have done
that.’

‘She was and still is a criminal, Agatha. She could easily get false papers. Apart from her, have you come across anyone during your investigations who might be a murderer or
murderess?’

‘It could be any of them. Those men’s footprints near the body could be a blind. I have a gut feeling it’s some woman. That secretary, Helen Warwick, I don’t trust her at
all.’

‘It would take some strength to strangle a man.’

‘Mrs Comfort said something odd about Mrs Gore-Appleton. She said she looked like a man.’

‘So she could be a he, pretending to be a woman?’

‘I suppose anything’s possible.’

‘There you are,’ said James. ‘Dance, Agatha?’

‘Sit down a moment,’ said Agatha. ‘Mrs Bloxby’s got some ideas.’ By the time Mrs Bloxby had finished outlining them, her husband was announcing a ladies’
choice, and to Agatha’s dismay, Mrs Hardy came up and tapped James on the shoulder and marched him off rather like a military policeman arresting a deserter.

‘I wish that woman would go back in her shell,’ muttered Agatha. She was beginning to have that old feeling of being a wallflower. Then she remembered it was a ladies’ choice
and asked one of the farmers for a dance.

Mrs Bloxby watched her and reflected that Agatha was looking almost pretty. Her eyes were too small and her figure, however slimmed down, always appeared a bit stocky, but she had excellent legs
and her brown hair shone with health.

Agatha began to forget about murder and enjoyed the evening. James asked her for the next dance and then they moved to the bar for some companionable drinks. Mrs Hardy was on her feet for every
dance, her face flushed, her eyes shining.

‘Who would have thought that nasty old bat would turn out to be so nice, if you know what I mean,’ said Agatha.

The village dance ended as usual at midnight. They said their goodnights, Agatha noticing that old Mrs Boggle, having collected the money, had cleared off, leaving all the coats unguarded.

They walked home, Mrs Hardy hanging on to James’s arm, much to Agatha’s irritation, and saying what a good evening it had been. They were just rounding the corner of Lilac Lane when
a dark figure detached itself from the thicker blackness of the bushes.

In the dim light from the moon above, they saw with horror that a man was confronting them, a masked man who was holding a pistol.

‘This is a warning,’ he grated. ‘Bugger off. And just to make sure you know I mean business . . .’

The pistol was lowered to point at Agatha’s legs.

For one split second they stood paralysed, then Mrs Hardy’s foot shot out like that of a karate expert and she kicked the gun out of the man’s hand. He turned and fled. Mrs Hardy
went plunging after him, but tripped and fell headlong, blocking James’s pursuit. He tripped over her and sprawled in the lane.

Agatha found her voice and began to scream for help.

More police interviews. Agatha, white and shaking, was somehow more upset to learn that the gun was a replica. Mrs Hardy was told she had been very brave but very foolish. It
could have been a real gun.

‘Where did you learn to kick like that?’ asked Bill Wong.

Mrs Hardy laughed. ‘From those Kung Fu films on television. I suppose it was a silly thing to do – it was just an accident that I managed to kick the gun out of his hand.’

‘Remember,’ cautioned Bill, ‘that if that gun had been real and had been loaded, it could have gone off.’

‘Well, I think she was very brave,’ said Agatha, clutching a cup of hot sweet tea.