Pushing Up Daisies (20 page)

What do the other private detectives do? wondered Agatha. Probably leave murders to the police and stick to divorces, missing people, missing dogs and cats and don't end up in a draughty hall with a feeling of failure.

When she got to the bit in her notes about Mrs. Bull ending up down the well, she suddenly twisted round and looked thoughtfully at that alcove. What if the murderer wasn't a big powerful man but an ordinary-sized person? Something like that Bath chair could be used to transport a body. She got up again, slowly cleared the paintings which were blocking the alcove to the other side of the room and wheeled the chair out, putting on a pair of latex gloves first. No use looking for blood. She was drugged. She should phone Bill, get a forensic team to look at it. But Bill would have to tell Wilkes, and Wilkes would say she was fantasising, because he was a snob and did not want to believe the upper classes capable of murder.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Agatha jumped nervously and straightened up from her examination of the chair. Lady Bellington stood framed in the doorway, one hand resting high up on the jamb as if posing for a Russell Flint painting.

“Just examining this old chair,” said Agatha.

“That chair and everything else in this room is going off to auction next week. What is it to you?”

“I was thinking about Mrs. Bull. It could have been used to transport her body to the well. Damian told me to use this room to…”

“Just get out of my house!”

“What's up?” Damian's voice sounded from behind his mother.

“This creature is poking around.”

“I'm paying the creature to poke around. Leave her alone. Wait a minute. What are you doing with that Bath chair, Agatha? Planning your retirement?”

“It could have been used to cart Mrs. Bull to the well.”

“What an imagination you do have. But my belief in your reputation is beginning to wear thin. I'll give you one more week.”

“Honestly, darling,” jeered his mother, “you sound like a TV drama, except on TV, the detective is only given twenty-four hours. She's bound to solve it now! As if.”

Her tinkling laugh echoed back as she walked off. I hate women with tinkling laughs, thought Agatha.

“I'll leave you to it.” Damian glided out.

“Can I take this chair with me?”

“Got a big enough car?”

“I can put it on the roof rack.”

“It is a valuable antique and it's raining like hell.”

“Okay, I'll rent a small van,” said Agatha. “I'll get it to a private lab and see if Mrs. Bull's DNA is anywhere about.”

“If you must.”

Agatha drove back to Mircester where she rented a small van. She phoned Toni to tell her what she was doing and asked her to find out if Mrs. Bull was still in hospital, try to get a visit and pinch something with her DNA on it. It was only when she had rung off that Agatha realised how much she depended on Toni.

Agatha should have asked about all the electronic devices and how they worked before driving off. She went down a narrow one-way street in Mircester, and, because it was a dull stormy day, tried to switch the sidelights on and found she had switched on the windscreen washer by mistake and people on the pavement on either side were shouting at her.

As she approached Harby, she began to feel like the amateur detective that Wilkes damned her as. If the Bath chair were a valuable clue, and
if
someone in the castle were responsible for the murders, then a murderer might be waiting for her. Fireworks burst in the night sky, reminding Agatha it was the fifth of November, celebrating the time that Guy Fawkes had tried to burn down the Houses of Parliament.

At the gates of Harby Hall, the lodge keeper came out and handed Agatha a slip of paper. “That be me phone number,” he said. “Next time you do be a-coming, phone me and give me a time. I can't be running in and out for the likes o' you.”

“What an old charmer you are,” said Agatha. But she took the slip of paper and drove on. As she approached the house, a firework shot up over the building and sent a scarlet fountain of red stars to light the sky. The car park was full of cars. Agatha cursed. They must be having a party. No one came to answer the door. She guessed they must be all out in the garden. She tried the handle. The door was not locked. Good, thought Agatha. I can get that chair and disappear with it. She had forgotten which room the chair was in and ran along the corridors opening and shutting doors, wondering why on earth there were so many small rooms on the ground floor. At last she found the right room. She switched on the light and hurried to the alcove, pulled aside the curtain and let out an exclamation of dismay. For the alcove was empty.

Grimly, Agatha marched along the corridor and out into the garden to the sound of whooshing rockets and cheers. All she could see at first on the terrace was a line of backs silhouetted against some light coming from the garden. Then she smelt smoke. A dreadful idea shot into her mind. Ignoring protests, she elbowed her way to the front. A great bonfire was blazing away. On top of it was perched the ‘guy,' a stuffed dummy sitting in that very Bath chair that Agatha so desperately wanted. “No,” she cried. “Damian, put the fire out. I need that chair.”

She ran forward and was halted by the immense heat from the bonfire. She gazed upwards. The dummy was alight, and the basket work of the chair was covered in flickering flames.

Damian pulled her back. “Who put the chair up there?” panted Agatha.

“Blessed if I know,” he said. “I never even noticed it was the old chair you wanted until I heard you shouting.”

“Find out for me,” said Agatha wearily.

“I'll get you some mulled wine, you old party-pooper,” said Damian. “Find yourself somewhere to sit.”

Guests were beginning to find seats on bales of straw placed in a circle around the fire. Agatha retreated dismally to a seat at the back of the terrace. Damian handed her a mug of mulled wine. “I'll find out from Giles Bennet, the factor. He organises the thing every year.”

After he had gone, Agatha cautiously sniffed the wine. Then she saw, on a white-clothed table on the terrace, a coffee machine. She poured her mulled wine into the flower pot and decided to have a cup of coffee instead.

She took an e-cigarette out of her pocket and puffed away, swore, put it back in her pocket, pulled out a packet of Bensons, and lit up. Bliss! Unreformed, unholy bliss, thought Agatha.

Damian appeared with Giles. Said Damian, “Giles says he had left the dummy on an old kitchen chair at the back of the bonfire and told the gardener to get a ladder and put it on the top. The gardener says when he went round to the back, there was no chair. The wheelchair was in the hall and Dinky said, they could take it. He said it was awkward getting it up there, and they had to ask the under gardener to bring another ladder so they could carry it up between them. That was a valuable antique.”

“Only you and your mother knew I was coming for it and why,” said Agatha.

“Here's Mother. Let's ask her. Did you give that Bath chair to be used on the bonfire?”

“No, I didn't. Oh, dear, that tiresome little woman is back again.”

“Did you tell anyone else?” asked Agatha.

“Only the housekeeper. I told her to leave it out by the front door so you could collect it.”

“I would like to talk to the housekeeper,” said Agatha.

Damian went off. Agatha had a sudden paroxysm of coughing. She stubbed out her cigarette. It couldn't be the cigarette. Must be the smoke from the bonfire.

Damian came back, leading a small, aggressive-looking middle-aged woman. “I ain't done nothing wrong, me lord,” she said in a high complaining voice. Of course, thought Agatha. Damian inherited the title.

“Just tell the nice lady what happened, Dinky,” said Damian, “and do get on with it. We're missing the party.”

“Well, me lady says as how I was to leave the chair outside on the step because a lady would be coming for it. Fred, the gardener, he came in looking for an old chair. ‘Wot about yon on the step?' says he. ‘Some lady's coming for that,' says I. ‘Better leave it,' says he.”

Agatha said, “Damian. I really do need to speak to your gardener.”

“Well, make it quick.”

Agatha lit another cigarette and was immediately assailed by another bout of coughing. The spectre of lung cancer rose up to haunt her. Bollocks, thought Agatha fiercely, old Mr. Dent smoked twenty a day for years and years and he died aged ninety. But she stubbed the cigarette out.

Damian arrived with the gardener, a surly Scotsman wearing a shiny blue suit. “I telt his lordship, missus,” said Fred. “There was a note on that wheelchair saying, ‘For charity.' So I chapped at the door and Dinky answered it. I asked if we could take that dirty old chair because a note says it was for charity and like I said, charity begins at home.” Agatha waited impatiently until his fit of cackling at his own wit had subsided. “So the housekeeper, she said that it was probably meant for Oxfam or one of those, but it was getting late so just take the damn thing. So I did.”

“Do you still have that note?” asked Agatha.

“I did hae it but I chucked it on the fire.”

“Someone in this house didn't want me to have that chair,” said Agatha.

“Either stay for the party or go home,” said Damian. “I do have guests, you know.”

“I'll leave,” said Agatha. She turned one more time and looked back. A man in a chef's hat was handing out plates of barbecued meat to the guests as they sat round the bonfire.

As Agatha looked, an especially large flame shot up, lighting up the faces of the guests, and there, almost on the other side of the bonfire and nearly out of sight, was Jenny Coulter and her latest beau. Agatha almost went in search of Damian, but decided to phone him the next day and ask him why he had invited his father's ex-mistress.

She drove the van back to Mircester and paid for it, keeping the receipt to put on her expenses for Damian.

Agatha got into her own car and drove home. The lights were on in the living room, and Charles's car was parked outside. She fought down a feeling of gladness.

Charles, as ever, was asleep on the sofa with the cats asleep beside him. He was awakened by Agatha pouring herself a large gin. “Getting to be an addict?” he asked.

Agatha swung round. “I am sick to death of moralisers. I think about giving up smoking, and some scientist tells me that I can't eat bacon, fizzy drinks, cake, have a wood fire because of carbon monoxide and on it goes so I think, What the hell? Put it on my tombstone: ‘Here lies Agatha Raisin, late of this parish, nagged to death.'”

“Sorry. Pour me a whisky.”

“Your girlfriend has walked out on me.”

“I gather she has gone to London with Jake. Didn't manipulate that one, did you?”

“If she'd really wanted to marry you, she'd still be around. Do you know, if you still want her, you can have her, because she'll be back. Okay, she's rich, and Jake only has money that his father allows. But I think he's a butterfly. I think boredom sets in very quickly with that one after the first tide of enthusiasm has drawn back.”

“Talk about something else. My drink? Ta. Any breakthroughs?”

Agatha sat down and told him about the burnt wheelchair.

“Let's see,” said Charles. “Let's concentrate on the family and the ex-mistress. Maybe old Ma Bull was right, and Lady Bellington was down in the cellars with a syringe. Damian hires you to cover his tracks. Andrea thinks she'll get money when her dad kicks the bucket, and finds out that Damian has the lot.”

Agatha sat slowly down beside him on the sofa. “She accused her brother of being the murderer. There's something else.”

She pulled her iPad out of her capacious handbag, switched it on, and began to scroll through her notes. “Here's something. She's wildlife and animal mad. She wanted to open a sanctuary for donkeys, and Damian refused to give her the money. She looks like a changeling. Damian is languid and beautiful, the mother is elegant in a wasted way, and the unfortunate Andrea looks like a hairy troll.”

“Probably takes after father.”

“Forgot about that.” She stared at Charles, who reflected that when Agatha had one of her flashes of intuition, a gold light shone in her eyes. “Some of these animal libbers can be savage. I can't see her loving the donkeys on her own. Say she teams up with one of the more feral animal libbers. I've always had a feeling there are two people in this.”

“So Damian could be next,” said Charles. “How did Farraday die?”

“Wait a moment.” Agatha phoned Patrick and asked him for news of Farraday's death. When she rang off, she told Charles, “He says he's just heard that Farraday was injected with Oblivon. I remember that drug. It turned up in my second murder case. It's used by vets to tranquillise horses before an operation, but it's instantly lethal to humans. So silly Nigel Farraday got himself killed because he wanted revenge on me.”

“Are you going to follow Andrea?”

“I've a feeling she would spot me whatever the disguise. I know, I'll get Simon to check out some hunt saboteurs' meetings. It's that time of year.”

“Tell him to go into Mircester University and look at the notice boards. They used to offer students forty pounds plus a packed lunch and transport. Probably still do.”

“She might not be at one of those,” said Agatha. “But here are some photos of her that we got from glossy magazines. If she's not there, we'll try something else.”

Simon accepted the assignment eagerly. He had been feeling silly. He felt Toni despised him for chasing Alice. The fact that Alice was devoted to Bill Wong had finally cracked the shell of his obsession.

The next day, he went to the university, mingled with the students and studied the noticeboard. And right in the middle of one of them was a poster for Hunt the Hunt. His eyes flicked through all the bit about killing foxes being cruel and got to the bit where fifty pounds, a packed lunch and transport were offered to anyone caring to fight the good fight on on Saturday at Mirton Wold Manor where the hunt was to meet. Coach to leave the abbey car park at eight in the morning. To register phone 0333400691.