Agatha Raisin and the Witch of Wyckhadden (3 page)

Francie rose and went out of the room. Agatha rose as well and went to the small window and looked out. Sunlight was beginning to gild the cobbles outside. The wind had risen again. She was beginning to feel silly. What if she gave James Lacey the love potion and it made him sick?

Francie came back with two bottles, one small and one large. “The small one is the love potion and the large one is for your hair,” she said. “Apply the hair restorer every night before you go to bed. Put five drops of the love potion in his drink. Are you a widow?”

“Yes.”

“I give seances. I can get you in touch with the dear departed.”

“He’s departed but not dear.”

“That’ll be one hundred pounds.”

“I don’t have that amount of cash on me.”

“A cheque will do.”

Agatha took out her cheque-book and rested it on a small table. “Do I make it out to Frances Juddle?”

“Please.”

Agatha wrote out the cheque and handed it to her. Then she put on her coat, picked up the two bottles and put them in her handbag and made for the door.

“Get rid of that coat,” said Francie. “It’s a disgrace.”

Agatha glared at her, and left without replying. How could anyone know what that coat meant to her? It had been her first expensive purchase ever, after she had clawed her way out of the Birmingham slum in which she had been born and climbed the ladder of success. To her, the coat had been like gleaming armour, signalling the arrival of a new rich Agatha Raisin. And that had been in the days before wearing fur was considered a sin.

Outside, the sun was shining down and people were walking about, quite a number of them young. It was as if Wyckhadden had suddenly come to life. Agatha decided to go back to that pub where she had met Jimmy. She could not bear the fact that he had suddenly and inexplicably gone off her.

She pushed open the door of the pub. It was the lunch-hour and it was busy with office workers. But she found an empty table and sat down after collecting a gin and tonic from the bar.

Unless she hurried, she would miss lunch at the hotel and she did not feel like trying any of the pub food, which smelled horrible. She finished her gin and tonic just as the pub door opened and Jimmy came in. He shot her a brief look and then turned around and walked out.

Agatha felt quite weepy. But then, she consoled herself, she had thought him weird the way he had picked her up. So why should she be surprised by his odd behaviour?

She walked back out into the sunshine, but glad of the warmth of her coat, for the wind was cold.

She was making her way towards the hotel when she passed a group of young people who were sitting on a wall drinking beer and eating hamburgers. One of them, a young girl with noserings and earrings, suddenly flew at Agatha, clawing at her coat and screaming, “Murderer.”

Alarmed, Agatha gave her an almighty push and sent her flying and then set off at a run.

Once in the hotel, she hurried up to her room and lovingly hung the precious coat away in the wardrobe.

Enough was enough. One more day and she would check out.

♦

After dinner, she reluctantly joined the other guests in the lounge, where the colonel was opening the Scrabble board.

The tall masculine woman turned out to be Miss Jennifer Stobbs and the small weedy one, Miss Mary Dulsey. The old crabby man, Harry Berry, smelt of mothballs and peppermints. Daisy Jones was flirting coyly with Colonel Lyche.

“So few guests,” said Agatha.

“We’re all residents, apart from you,” said Jennifer. She had a heavy, sallow face with a bristle of hairs above her upper lip. Her hair, streaked with grey, was close-cropped. “Get a lot of guests in the season and at weekends.”

“Are you any good at Scrabble, Agatha?” asked the colonel. Agatha was momentarily startled by the use of her first name. The members of the old-fashioned ladies’ society in her home village of Carsely addressed one another as Mrs this and Miss that.

“Average,” said Agatha, and then remembered dismally the cosy evenings spent with James playing Scrabble when they had been engaged.

She played as well as she could, but the others were not only dedicated Scrabble players but also crossword addicts, and so Agatha did badly compared to them.

“Did you go to Francie?” asked Daisy.

But Agatha was already ashamed of having spent one hundred pounds on what she believed was probably two bottles of coloured water and so she lied and said, “No.”

“Oh, you should, she’s very good.”

Another game started. Agatha tried harder this time but still had the lowest score. “That’s it for this evening,” said Colonel Lyche. Agatha was surprised to find out it was just after midnight.

She refused the colonel’s offer of a drink and went up to her room, thinking that they had all been good company, and once you got to know the elderly, it was amazing how much younger they became.

She took off her blouse and put it in her laundry bag. Then she removed her skirt and went to the massive wardrobe to hang it up.

She swung open the door.

Then she screamed.

∨
The Witch of Wyckhadden
∧

2

H
er beloved mink coat was hanging in shreds and it had been daubed with red paint.

She backed away from the wreck of it. Agatha found she was trembling. She clenched her shaking hands and then was overtaken with an outburst of anger. There would only be the night porter on duty. She would call the police. She looked up the local phone book, pressed ‘9’ for an outside line and dialled Wyckhadden police station.

“Evening, Wyckhadden police,” said a bored voice.

Agatha curtly snapped out the details of the desecration of her fur coat. “Anything else damaged?” asked the voice, still as bored.

Agatha looked wildly around the room. “Not that I can see.”

“Don’t touch anything. We’ll have someone along directly.”

Agatha began to look around the room. Nothing else seemed to have been touched. Even her jewel case, open on the dressing-table, still had all her pieces of jewellery in it.

She called the night porter and explained tersely what had happened and that she had called the police. “I’ll be up right away,” he said.

After a few moments, there was a knock at her door. The night porter was young for an establishment such as the Garden Hotel, being somewhere in his forties. He had an unhealthy open-pored grey face, a droopy moustache and dyed black hair. He stared in awe at the wreckage of Agatha’s coat. “Did you forget to lock your room?” he asked.

“I did not forget. I was playing Scrabble with the others. I locked my door and kept the key in my handbag.”

“Some of our residents are very forgetful,” he said.

“I am not senile!” howled Agatha. “If I say I locked my door, then that is what I did!”

Elderly people do not sleep very well and somehow the other residents must have sensed something was going on. The door to Agatha’s room was open. Mrs Daisy Jones, wrapped in a pink silk quilted dressing-gown, appeared, peering in, shortly followed by the colonel, still dressed. They both exclaimed in horror over the vandalism.

“I blame the welfare system,” said the colonel. “They’ve got young people down here who’ve never done a day’s work in their lives.” The rest of the residents soon crowded in, chattering and exclaiming.

“I think you should all go away,” said Agatha desperately. “The police will want to dust the room for fingerprints.”

“Which of you is Mrs Raisin?” called a voice from the doorway. The residents parted to reveal a squat burly man in a tight suit and anorak and a policewoman who looked as if she was half asleep.

The residents shuffled out into the corridor. “Detective Constable Ian Tarret,” said the man, shutting the door on the elderly residents. “This the coat?”

“That
was
the coat,” said Agatha bitterly.

“Let’s begin at the beginning, Mrs Raisin. You are a visitor?”

“Yes. I’ve only been here a few days.”

“Why Wyckhadden? Know people here?”

“No, I wanted somewhere for a holiday, that was all.”

“Have you worn the coat since your arrival?”

“Yes, I wore it to a dance on the pier last night. I went with Inspector Jimmy Jessop.”

“I thought you didn’t know anyone in Wyckhadden.”

“He picked me up in a pub,” said Agatha, and despite her distress she maliciously hoped that bit of gossip would get round the police station.

“Now, there are people around who attack women wearing fur. Anyone have a go at you?”

“Yes, this morning, on the prom, just before I got to the hotel. There were some young people sitting on a wall. A girl with spiky hair, noserings and earrings attacked me.”

“Didn’t you report it?”

“Would you have done anything about it?”

“Certainly. You should have reported it. Anyone else make adverse comments?”

Agatha thought guiltily of the witch of Wyckhadden, Francie Juddle. She did not like to confess she had been consulting a witch. And what if it came out that she had asked for a love potion?

“No,” she lied.

“We’ll have the fingerprint men along in the morning.”

“Why the morning? Why not now?”

“We’re a bit pushed. Lots of work.”

“A crime wave in Wyckhadden?”

“It’s not that. It’s lack of funds. We’re only a small station. The forensic boys have to come from Hadderton, the main town. Perhaps you’d like to drop into the station in the morning and make a full statement.”

“Yes,” said Agatha wearily.

“Is the coat insured?”

“No. I mean if I’d been at home it might have come under the house-contents insurance, but I never thought of taking out travel insurance to go to a place like this.”

“You’ll know better next time,” he said in a heavy, sententious way that made Agatha want to hit him.

Agatha looked at the policewoman. She was sitting on the bed, her chin drooped on her chest, her eyes closed. “Your policewoman’s asleep,” she said.

“Constable Trul!” barked Tarret.

“I wasn’t asleep,” she said. “I was thinking.”

Tarret turned to the night porter. “We’ll go downstairs. You’d better tell us who could have had access to a key to this room.”

Agatha saw them out. She felt like a drink but this hotel was too old-fashioned to have anything modern like a minibar. She slumped down in a chair. She shouldn’t have lied about her visit to Francie. Her eyes narrowed. It was Francie who had criticized her coat. Such as that horrible girl on the prom who had attacked her would hardly stroll into an expensive hotel. Her mind made feverish by the wreck of her coat, Agatha suddenly decided it could not have been anyone else but Francie. The residents of the hotel had all been playing Scrabble with her. Daisy Jones had left at one point to ‘powder her nose’, as she delicately put it, but she had gone in the direction of the Ladies on the ground floor. Then the colonel and Mr Berry had left the game on two occasions to buy drinks. But by no stretch of the imagination could she imagine either elderly gentleman nipping up the stairs to slash her coat.

It must be that dreadful Francie, Francie who was probably lying in smug sleep at that very moment.

Agatha decided to go and wake her up. If she was the culprit, then she might still have some evidence of red paint on her hands or under her fingernails.

She put on a warm anorak and headed downstairs. Tarret and Trul were still questioning the night porter. “Got to get a breath of air,” gabbled Agatha.

As she walked along the deserted promenade under a small chilly moon, she felt that if she could solve The Case Of The Vandalized Mink Coat, that would show Jimmy Jessop she was a brain to be reckoned with.

The night was very still and the silence of the town, eerie. Her own footsteps sounded unnaturally loud.

Her courage was beginning to fail. What if Francie didn’t answer the door? What if the neighbours reported her to the police? But the thought of impressing the hitherto unimpressed Jimmy spurred her on.

As she turned into Partons Lane, she noticed that the street light at the corner was out, making the entrance to the lane pitch-black. She stumbled slightly on the cobbles. Getting to the pink cottage, she raised her hand and knocked loudly on the door. The door gave and swung slowly open.

Agatha felt superstitious dread flooding her. It was as if the witch had known she was coming and had magically caused the door to open. She went inside. “Francie!” she called.

The witch was no doubt upstairs asleep. Agatha fumbled around the hall looking for a light switch and at last found one at the foot of the stairs. Feeling more confident and thinking it might be an idea to surprise Francie asleep and study her fingernails and hands before waking her, Agatha started to creep up the stairs, which were as thickly carpeted as those at the hotel.

She gingerly pushed open one door. The bathroom. She tried another. A box-room. Another door. In the light from the stairs, Agatha could see it was a bedroom. She felt around inside the door for a light switch, found it, and clicked it on.

Lying half in, half out of the bed was Francie Juddle. Blood from a great wound on her head had dripped on to the white carpet, leaving a dark stain. The white cat was crouched on the edge of the bed. When it saw Agatha, with one spring it flew straight at her face. Agatha screamed and tore it off.

Her first instinct was to flee. But Francie might still be alive. Agatha could not bring herself to touch the body. There was a phone extension by the bed. Fingerprints, she thought. My fingerprints will be everywhere. Why didn’t I wear gloves? How do I explain my call?

She had forgotten the number of the police station. She dialled 999 and in a trembling voice asked for police and ambulance and then went down to the small hall to wait.

Agatha wished from the bottom of her heart that she had never left Carsely. She crouched in a small chair in the hall. It would come out that she had visited Francie. And how was she to explain what she was doing at Francie’s cottage at this time of night?