Pushing Up Daisies (2 page)

As the meeting started to break up, Gerald asked Charles for directions to Lord Bellington's place. Mrs. Bloxby whispered to Agatha, “Stay behind.”

Oh, dear, thought Agatha. Is she going to talk about Gerald?

But when only Charles and Agatha were left, Mrs. Bloxby said, “I am very worried. Feelings are running high.”

“I suppose that's understandable,” said Charles. “When Bellington goes ahead with the houses, they'll lose their plots of land.”

“It's not that,” said the vicar's wife. “Someone has been thieving vegetables from the plots, and tempers are getting out of hand. Miss Merriweather reported the thefts to the police, and they refused to have anything to do with it, so Miss Merriweather is going around saying if she got her hands on the thief, she would kill him.”

“Could be a she,” said Agatha.

“In Miss Merriweather's opinion, women are beyond reproach,” said Mrs. Bloxby.

The vicar, Alf Bloxby, came in. “Just going over to Winter Parva,” he said. He turned to go and then swung round and surveyed his wife with a puzzled look. “Are we going anywhere special this evening because I've got evensong at Ancombe?”

“No, dear.”

“But you're all dressed up and your hair is different!”

Spare us, thought Agatha. He's just noticed.

“I felt like a change,” said his wife. “Do run along. You'll be late.”

When the vicar had gone, Charles said, “You do look very well these days.”

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Bloxby.

Charles sensed that Agatha was on the point of saying something that she certainly should not. “Come along,” he said. “I'm sure Mrs. Bloxby has a lot of parish duties to attend to.”

Outside Charles rounded on Agatha. “If you say one thing about her crush on Gerald, it's an end to our friendship.”

“But she'll get hurt!”

“She's not a child and it is none of your business. You want him for yourself.”

“Don't be silly.”

“I do wish you would grow up, Aggie. Always chasing after the unattainable like some spotty teenager.”

They stood glaring at each other. Then Charles laughed. “Come on. Let's have a drink and maybe stroll down to these pesky allotments.”

“You shouted at me,” said Agatha in a small voice.

“Trying to get through to you. Let's go to the pub. I hope this Indian summer lasts a bit longer. That is, if one can still call it an Indian summer, or must we now say, ‘Native American summer'?”

“Who knows? Who cares?” muttered Agatha, who had not quite forgiven him.

But by the time they drove along to the allotments, Agatha had been restored to good humour and had decided to leave Gerald alone and not interfere in Mrs. Bloxby's life. She felt quite saintly.

The allotments were situated past the council houses outside the village. “They sell their stuff in the village shop,” said Charles. “I often buy vegetables to take home.”

Agatha wondered if it were possible to cook vegetables in the microwave.

Some people were working their plots, others sat outside small sheds, basking in the sun. “What a lot there is,” marvelled Charles. “Pumpkins, leeks, beetroot, carrots and even still some tomatoes.”

One allotment was being newly worked by an attractive female turning over the earth with a rotavator. She was wearing a gingham blouse and tight blue jeans. Her long blond hair was tied back with a gingham ribbon. She had a high cheekboned face and large grey eyes.

She saw them watching her and switched off the rotavator. “I wish I could get a gardener in to help me with this,” she said. “But the fanatics around here would accuse me of cheating. Hi. I'm Peta Currie, new to the village. You're Agatha Raisin. I've seen your photo in the papers.”

“I'm Charles Fraith.” Charles shook her hand.

This is heavy competition, thought Agatha. “Won't your husband help you?” she asked.

“Don't have one. Free as the air.” She smiled at Charles, who smiled back.

“Which is your cottage?” asked Agatha.

“That one that belonged to that murdered therapist. If you want a reasonably priced cottage in the Cotswolds, go for one that had a murdered body in it.”

Agatha felt a stab of fear. She had solved the murder of therapist Jill Davent, only to be nearly murdered herself.

“Better get back to work,” said Peta.

Charles and Agatha continued their walk amongst the plots of land. “I remember Mrs. Bloxby telling me they only pay three pounds a year for each half acre. The price was set in World War One. I don't know that I can be bothered finding out who is stealing vegetables,” said Agatha. “I've got a lot of work at the moment. And it seems there is nothing more anyone can do about Lord Bellington, may his socks rot.”

But as Agatha looked around the peaceful scene, she felt that somehow her dream of peaceful retirement in the Cotswolds had gone wrong. Perhaps she should give up the detective agency and take up gardening instead.

Charles announced he was heading home and dropped Agatha back at her cottage. She wondered how Gerald had fared with Lord Bellington. Probably wouldn't get past the lodge if he were honest about his business, she thought. Perhaps she should call on him and ask him. But she put that idea firmly out of her mind. Charles had made her feel silly.

By evening, she began to feel lonely. Her two cats, Hodge and Boswell, were playing in the garden, seemingly oblivious to her presence. What stupid names for cats. It had all been her ex-husband, James Lacey's, idea.

She scrabbled in her deep freeze, looking for something to microwave. It all looked so unappetising. She decided to go to the pub for dinner.

Agatha regretted her decision as soon as she walked in the doors of the pub. For sitting at a corner table and deep in conversation were Gerald and Peta Currie. Agatha ordered fish and chips and said she would eat her meal in the garden.

Where had Peta come from, wondered Agatha? What was her background? She looked like a model. If Gerald had fallen for Peta, at least Mrs. Bloxby would be safe.

“Wasn't that our village sleuth?” asked Peta.

“Agatha Raisin. Yes,” said Gerald.

“Looks quite ferocious.”

“I don't like private detectives,” said Gerald. “Let's talk about something else.”

He was still furious after his interview with Lord Bellington. He had been curtly told to mind his own business and not poke his nose into other people's affairs. A long career of having been treated with respect had made this new brush with the real world infuriating.

He half listened to Peta prattling on about some film she had seen and suddenly wished he could discuss Lord Bellington with Agatha.

Lord Bellington had endured what he considered one awful day. Apart from those interfering people from Carsely, his son Damian had called. Looking more wimpish than ever, and so his father had told him. His daughter, Andrea, looked like frump, and he had told her to go on a diet because she looked sickening. He damned his ex-wife for having divorced him and left him with such awful children. The day before, his mistress, Jenny Coulter, had walked out on him, calling him a bully and a boor.

He ate a large dinner that evening, washed down with a bottle of Sauternes. He had a weakness for sweet wine and always drank a bottle when not in company. He finished his meal with a glass of crème de menthe and decided to have an early night. He suddenly felt drunk. As he climbed into bed, his body was racked with spasms, and he vomited over the place. He bellowed for help, but his son had taken himself back off to London and his daughter had gone to a disco. His housekeeper lived on a cottage on the estate and his chauffeur in a flat above the garage. Nobody heard him, and he doubled up in agony before losing consciousness.

Agatha only heard the news a few days later when his obituary was in the
Times
newspaper. Two weeks later, on a Sunday, she attended a meeting of the allotment users at the vicarage. They were all celebrating. Lord Bellington's heir, his son, Damian, had said he had no intention of building houses on the allotments.

When the cheers had died down, Agatha asked, “How did he die?”

“Vomiting and seizure followed by heart and kidney failure,” said Gerald, who had heard the news from police contacts.

“Really? Sounds like classic antifreeze poisoning,” said Agatha.

They all stared at her. Then Peta began to laugh. “Haven't you enough to do at that agency of yours without inventing murders?”

“I watch a lot of real-life crime on television,” said Agatha huffily. “It would amaze you the number of people bumped off with antifreeze, and it is always diagnosed at first as heart failure.”

But the cheerful conversation resumed. Only Gerald suddenly felt uneasy. He had made friends at Mircester police headquarters. Inspector Wilkes had been acidulous on the subject of Agatha, but Detective Sergeant Bill Wong had said that at times Agatha's intuition had been uncanny.

He quietly left the room and went home to make phone calls. As a result of his calls, Damian was asked if his father could possibly have been poisoned. Damian had shrugged and then had said airily, “He's in the family vault. Have a look if you want.”

The following Sunday, just as Agatha was gloomily feeding a frozen curry into the microwave, her doorbell rang. She wondered if it could possibly be James Lacey or Charles but to her surprise, it was Gerald, saying, “May I come in?”

“Yes,” said Agatha, wishing she weren't wearing a cotton skirt, t-shirt and flat sandals.

She led the way into her sitting room and offered him a drink. He asked for a whisky and soda. Agatha poured him one, got herself a gin and tonic and asked, “What's the reason for the visit?”

“You were right,” said Gerald. “I've just heard. Lord Bellington was poisoned with antifreeze. I'm to take you in to headquarters to make a statement.”

“How did you find out?”

“I was worried about what you said. I made phone calls. The son said that as his father was in a stone coffin in the family vault, we could take a look if we wanted and signed the necessary papers. As both of us saw him on the last day of his life, the police want to interview us.”

“I hate this,” said Agatha. “Wilkes will treat me as if I am the murderer and keep me half the night.”

Wilkes was furious with Agatha. He found it hard to believe that she could suspect antifreeze poisoning when she had not even seen the dead body. Therefore, she must have had something to do with the death. After all, she had been in his home. Agatha pointed out that Gerald Devere had been there as well and also she had been accompanied by Charles. She explained that she watched a lot of real-life crime on television and was always amazed at the amount of deaths from antifreeze that went undiagnosed until some wife or husband bumped off the next spouse. At last, the long interview was over and to her fury, she heard herself being told not to leave the country.

Gerald was waiting for her when she left. “Rotten time?” he asked.

“Wilkes is a fool!” raged Agatha.

“He feels you made him look stupid,” said Gerald. He ran her to her cottage but refused her offer of a drink.

Which was just as well, thought Agatha sourly, when she walked into her sitting room to find Charles asleep on the sofa with the cats on his lap. She shook him awake.

“Bellington was poisoned,” said Agatha, “and as I was the one who suggested it, Wilkes is determined to make me prime suspect. Why weren't you interviewed as well?”

“Have been,” said Charles lazily. “That nice detective, Alice Peterson, was sent over to my home.”

“It's enough to make anyone a Communist,” said Agatha. “Such as you gets the kid-glove treatment while proles like me are dragged in and told not to leave the country.”

“Sit down. Calm down. Let's talk about it. It can't have been the son, surely, or he would not have agreed so easily to his father's body being taken out of the vault for another autopsy. Could be the daughter. Or do you think one of the people from the allotments went there and spiked his booze?”

“Can't be. They'll have checked with that lodge keeper who visited him. Wait a bit,” said Agatha, shoving Charles's legs onto the floor and sitting down next to him, oblivious of her cats' complaints at being disturbed. “The antifreeze must have been in something he drank. Someone could have doctored a bottle of wine and just waited. Does he have any staff?”

“He has a housekeeper, gamekeeper or maybe two, the lodge keeper, a shepherd, a gardener, and a cleaning company from Mircester comes in once a week. If he has a dinner party, he uses a catering firm. He owns the small village of Harby, more of a hamlet, and recently jacked up the rents, causing no end of ill will.”

“How did you find out all this?”

“I phoned around,” said Charles. “Let it go, Agatha. The suspects are legion.”

 

Chapter Two

During the following week, Agatha found that she was too busy to even think about the death of Bellington. But on the Friday, she received a visit from Bellington's son, Damian.

He had a weak, almost feminine face and carefully waved fair hair. He was dressed in a light blue silk suit with three-quarter-length sleeves over a white silk shirt open at the neck to display a gold medallion. His deep masculine voice came as a surprise.

“The police don't seem to be doing anything, and I want to know who murdered my father,” he said.

“I'm sorry for your loss,” said Agatha.

“Don't be. I hated the old bastard. That's the point. Everyone's heard me complaining about the old sod and wishing he were dead. I feel if I'm called in for questioning one more time, I'll have the screaming ab-dabs. So I want you to find out who did it.”

“I'll do my best,” said Agatha. “My secretary, Mrs. Freedman, will get you to sign the necessary contracts. Now, do you suspect anyone yourself?”