Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage (11 page)

‘I hate you!’ screamed Rose, and then she began to cry.

James and Agatha walked through the fog back to Lilac Lane from the Red Lion that evening. They were silent. The villagers had decided that they were not murder suspects and
so, instead of a chilly silence, they had received a warm greeting and then had had to endure a heavy sort of banter, being teased about when they were going to tell everyone the date of their
wedding day.

James had not wanted to say firmly that he would never marry Agatha because that would have been rude, and so it was the blunt Agatha who had suddenly said loudly, ‘We’re not suited;
we’re not marrying, and that’s that!’

And instead of being grateful to her for having sorted the whole business out, James felt obscurely that Agatha had given him a public rejection and was in a mood remarkably like a sulk.

Agatha grabbed his arm. ‘Look!’ she cried.

Under the security light outside James’s door stood Detective Chief Inspector Wilkes, Bill Wong and Maddie.

‘What’s happened now?’ asked James. ‘Oh, God, I hope that Purvey woman hasn’t committed suicide as well.’

Wilkes waited until they approached and then said, ‘We’d better go inside.’

James let them in. They all stood around in the living-room.

‘Sit down,’ said Wilkes, his dark face serious. ‘This might take some time. Did you call on a Miss Janet Purvey today?’

‘Yes,’ said Agatha. ‘What is this about?’

‘And where were you both this afternoon?’

‘Before you go any further,’ said James, ‘I thought it was only in the movies that the police keep asking questions without telling anyone the real reason they are being
questioned. So, out with it! Something awful has obviously happened to Miss Purvey.’

Bill Wong spoke up, his narrow eyes scanning both their faces. ‘Miss Purvey was found strangled in the Imperial Cinema in Mircester this afternoon. So we must ask again, what were you both
doing this afternoon?’

‘You should know, Bill, that neither of us could have anything to do with her murder,’ exclaimed Agatha.

‘Just answer the question.’ Maddie, her voice flat and hard.

‘Yes, we saw Miss Purvey this morning,’ said James. ‘As far as we could gather, she had not been blackmailed, nor had she had much to do with either Mrs Gore-Appleton or Jimmy
Raisin when she was at the health farm. After we left her, we stopped at a pub over in Ancombe for sandwiches, then we came back here. Agatha went into Moreton to do some shopping and I remained
here. Mrs Bloxby called on me when Agatha was out and stayed for coffee.’

Bill turned to Agatha. ‘Did anyone see you in Moreton?’

‘Of course,’ said Agatha. ‘I went into Drury’s, the butcher’s, and then to Budgen’s supermarket . . . oh, and then I went to that bookshop in the arcade. Then
I had a coffee at the Market House Tea Room. People should remember me.’

‘We’ll check all that,’ said Maddie and Agatha threw her a look of pure dislike.

Wilkes leaned forward. ‘So to get back to the beginning. I gather Wong here told you not to do any more amateur detecting. But you had to go ahead, did you not? So begin at the beginning
of your visit to Miss Purvey.’

James described all they had talked about but with one important omission that Agatha noticed although she kept quiet about it. He said nothing about Miss Purvey’s wanting to play
detective as well.

Wilkes then turned to Agatha and she had to tell her version of events.

The questioning went on and on. Finally Wilkes said, ‘We’ll need you both to come to the station and make a statement. Another death is just too much to swallow. Like I said, I
gather that Wong here told you to mind your own business and leave the detecting to the police.’

‘Why did she go to Mircester after we left her?’ asked Agatha.

Wilkes sighed. ‘Presumably to go to the cinema. We can only guess the rest. She may have been holding something back and telephoned someone and arranged to meet them. Or someone saw her in
the cinema, recognized her and judged her to be a threat. Just leave things to us.’

They all asked more questions before taking their leave.

Agatha and James stared at each other in gloomy silence.

At last James said, ‘Look, Agatha, none of this is our fault. We didn’t strangle her. But there is one good thing, if you can call it good, that will come out of all this. Press
interest in the case will be renewed. They’ll run that interview with us. People will know we are looking for Mrs Gore-Appleton, and someone is bound to come forward.’

‘I wish the whole mess were over with,’ said Agatha wearily. ‘Perhaps we should leave the whole thing to the police.’

‘Well, we’ve only got one more name,’ pointed out James. ‘There’s a Mrs Gloria Comfort and she lives right in Mircester, near the abbey. And even if
The
Bugle
doesn’t run the story, some other newspaper will want to talk to you. It would take a world catastrophe to knock this out of the papers.’

The next morning James rose early and went out and bought all the newspapers. Black headlines screamed at him. Yeltsin had been overthrown. The generals in Moscow had made a
coup. The Cold War was on again. The papers were full of reports on the front pages, and on the inside were endless articles by pundits. The murder of one elderly spinster in Mircester rated only a
small paragraph in each. The rump of Serbia was supporting the generals. Russia was beginning to be torn apart by civil war.

He took the newspapers back to Agatha, who was playing with her cats on his kitchen floor. She rose to her feet and studied them in silence.

‘At least,’ said Agatha at last, ‘we can go on detecting. If we had been the focus of press attention, it would have been hard to do.’

They talked about the world situation and then decided they might as well go into Mircester and make their statements, go somewhere for lunch, and then call on Mrs Gloria Comfort.

Maddie and Bill Wong were having a cup of tea in the canteen later that day. It was the first time since interviewing Agatha and James that they had been able to have a private
conversation.

‘So what do you think of your precious Agatha Raisin now?’ demanded Maddie. ‘That woman’s like a vulture. Dead bodies wherever she goes.’

‘That’s a bit hard,’ protested Bill. ‘Their visit to Derrington may have touched off his suicide, but they were only a bit ahead of us and if the old boy was going to top
himself, he would have done it sooner or later. And they had nothing to do with the murder of Miss Purvey. Agatha’s alibi checks out. Look, Maddie, I must make one thing clear. Agatha’s
a friend of mine and I wish you’d stop bitching about her. I don’t know if she exactly solved those last crimes, but she made things happen by poking her nose in; otherwise we’d
never have got to the murderers.’

‘I’m entitled to my own opinion,’ said Maddie. ‘Look at her odd relationship with Lacey. Their engagement breaks up because she’s lied to him and yet they’re
living together.’

‘I think they’re very well suited,’ mumbled Bill. He had invited Maggie home to meet his parents for dinner that very evening and he did not want anything to go wrong.
‘Can’t we just agree to disagree?’

‘Have it your way. Haven’t got the hots for old Agatha, have you?’

‘She’s old enough to be my mother!’

‘Just wondered.’

Bill had been looking forward to showing off Maddie to his parents. Now a worm of uneasiness was beginning to wriggle in his brain. Could it be that his darling was, well, just a tiny bit
abrasive?

Agatha and James drove in the direction of Mircester. The fog had lifted and it was a beautiful autumn day. The hedgerows were bright with hawthorn berries, and red-and-gold
trees lined the edges of brown ploughed fields.

‘The country doesn’t seem beautiful at first,’ said Agatha. ‘I used to long for London. Then I got used to it. I started noticing the changing seasons, and then it began
to look beautiful, like watching a series of landscape paintings, one after another. Except for those clouds. Someone ought to do something about those clouds, James. They’re like those neat
and regular watercolour ones painted by the Cotswold amateurs. The light is different, too. It sort of
slants
in the autumn.’ Shafts of golden sunlight cut through the trees on to the
winding road ahead. James braked sharply as a clumsy pheasant dithered about in front of his wheels which crunched on a carpet of beech nuts.

‘I don’t often want to put the clock back,’ said Agatha in a small voice. ‘But on days like this, I wish I had never got into this mess, and I know I won’t be free
until it’s over. I can’t even grieve for Jimmy. I think he’d turned into a right bad lot and if he hadn’t been so bad, he would be alive and kicking. I could deal with a
live Jimmy and get him out of my hair forever, but I can’t fight a dead man. He came between us, James.’

‘You put him there, Agatha. If you had found out his existence, we could have dealt with it.’

Agatha gave a small dry sob.

James took one hand off the steering wheel and gave her a quick hug. ‘You need to give me time,’ he said, and Agatha’s heart suddenly rocketed with hope, like another pheasant
which flew up at their approach and sailed over a hedge.

They received a setback after they had made their statements at police headquarters and gone in search of Mrs Gloria Comfort. They learned from neighbours that she had moved to one of the
outlying villages. No one knew her new address but one of the neighbours remembered the house had been sold by Whitney and Dobster, estate agents.

At the estate agents’, they found to their relief that the man who had organized the sale of Mrs Comfort’s house in Mircester was still working there and cheerfully accepted their
story that they were old friends trying to get in touch with her. He produced an address in Ancombe.

‘Well!’ exclaimed Agatha outside the estate agents’ office. ‘That’s
very
close to Carsely, and to the scene of Jimmy’s murder, too. Do you think the
police will have been there before us?’

‘Don’t know. They always have such a lot of red tape to get through and we don’t.’

Agatha suddenly hesitated. ‘They’ll be furious if they arrive and find us there.’

‘It’s getting late. They’ve either been there or they’re getting there tomorrow.’

Ancombe was one of those Cotswold villages about the size of Broad Campden that seemed too perfect to be true. Very small but with an old church in the centre, thatched
cottages, beautiful gardens, and everything with a manicured air.

Mrs Gloria Comfort lived in one of the prettiest of the thatched cottages under the shadow of the church. There was no answer to the door. ‘Let’s try round the back,’ said
James. ‘I can hear some noises coming from there.’

‘Probably writhing in her death agonies,’ said Agatha gloomily.

They walked up the narrow path which led to the back garden. A plump blonde woman was weeding a flowerbed. ‘Excuse me,’ began James, and she rose and turned around.

Her hair was gloriously bleached blonde, not a dark root showing, but her middle-aged face was puffy and her eyes held that glittering look caused by a film of moisture, the sign of a heavy
drinker. She was dressed unsuitably for gardening in a sort of Lady Tart outfit of tightly tailored tweed jacket and skirt, frilly white blouse, pearls and high heels.

‘Mrs Comfort?’ said James.

‘Are you collecting for something?’

‘No, I am James Lacey and this is Agatha Raisin.’

‘Oh, dear, you’re the wife of that man who was murdered. You’d better come indoors.’ She teetered across the lawn, her spiked heels making holes in the green turf.
‘Good for the lawn,’ she remarked. ‘It aerates it.’

Indoors was in keeping with her dress. Everything was amazingly vulgar. Awful ruched curtains at the windows, fake horse brasses, fake old masters on the walls, and a padded white leather bar in
one corner of the living-room. Mrs Comfort headed straight for the bar. ‘Drink?’

Agatha said she would have a gin and tonic, and James, a whisky.

‘Now,’ Mrs Comfort said, perching on the very edge of an overstuffed sofa, ‘what’s this all about?’

‘You were at the health farm at the same time as Jimmy,’ began Agatha. ‘We’re interested in who he talked to. We’re also very interested in the woman who
accompanied him, a Mrs Gore-Appleton.’

Mrs Comfort took a strong pull of the very dark liquid in her glass. Then she said, ‘It’s hard to remember. It all seems so long ago. Jimmy Raisin was hailed as one of the successes.
He arrived looking like a wreck, and by the end of the first week he looked like a different man. I can’t tell you anything about Mrs Gore-Appleton. I didn’t talk to her much except for
the odd remark about the weather and how awful it was to feel so hungry – that sort of thing. I can’t really be of much help to you, I’m afraid.’

James said, ‘Have the police been to see you yet?’

‘No. Why should they want to see me? Oh, because of Mr Raisin being murdered.’

‘It’s not as simple as that. You may not have noticed in the newspapers today because of all the world news, but a certain Miss Purvey was murdered in Mircester.’

‘Purvey? Purvey! She was there at the health farm. Thin spinster. But surely that has nothing to do with anything.’

‘Jimmy Raisin was a blackmailer,’ said Agatha.

Mrs Comfort choked on her drink and then appeared to rally. ‘Really?’ she said brightly. ‘How sickening.’

Agatha took a gamble. ‘The real reason we are here is because we think he may have been blackmailing you.’

‘How dare you! There is nothing about me that anyone could blackmail me about. I think you should both go.’

Mrs Comfort got to her feet. They rose as well. ‘You would not like to try the real story out on us first?’ asked James gently.

‘What do you mean, on you first?’

‘The police will be here soon and they will ask you the same questions. Then they will check your bank statements to see if you have been drawing out regular sums of money to pay
blackmail, or if you ever issued a cheque to Jimmy Raisin.’