Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage (19 page)

They took to their heels and ran again, thumping their way over the bridge until they had left the crowd behind.

‘All this running, birdbrain,’ snarled Agatha. ‘We should have run back to the office and got some money.’

‘Not far now,’ said Roy. ‘Let’s get it over with.’

Dusk was falling. The roar of the going-home traffic drummed in their ears. Agatha thought of James and wondered what he was doing.

James was feeling guilty. He had taken Helen Warwick out for lunch and then gone back to her flat at her suggestion for coffee. She had a day off, she had explained. Life was
quiet when the House wasn’t sitting.

Perhaps because she had really nothing more to tell him than she had already told to James and Agatha, perhaps because she did not seem nearly as charming as she had when he had first met her,
James was able to realize that this visit had been prompted more by a desire not to let Agatha dominate his life than by any real interest in Helen. She was very clever at extracting information,
and the information she seemed most interested in was the size of his bank balance. No question was direct or vulgar. Talk of stocks and shares, whether he had suffered over the Lloyd’s or
Barings disasters, things like that. And the friends they were supposed to have in common began to seem to James like people she had met at parties and in the course of her work but did not really
know very well.

‘Do you mind if I make a telephone call?’ he said at last. ‘And then I really must go.’

‘Help yourself.’

He dialled home and let it ring for a long time.

‘No reply,’ he said with a rueful smile.

‘Were you trying to get Mrs Raisin?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, she’s in town.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I saw her driving past when we walked out for lunch.’

‘Why didn’t you say anything?’

‘I was just about to, but you were talking about something and then the whole matter slipped my mind.’

Now James felt like a guilty husband who had been caught out in an adulterous act. He then became angry because he was sure Agatha had come to town for no other purpose but to spy on him.

‘I’d better go. Thanks for the coffee.’

‘Oh, do stay,’ said Helen. ‘I’ve nothing planned for this evening.’

‘I’m afraid I have.’

She stood up and moved close to him. He moved back and found his legs pressed against the sofa. She raised her arms to put them around his neck, a slow seductive smile on her face. James ducked,
stepped up on the sofa and walked over the back, his long legs taking him straight to the door.

‘Goodbye,’ he said, opened the door, and ran down the stairs.

‘Silly old fool,’ he said aloud, but he meant himself and not Agatha Raisin.

Agatha had had the foresight to buy two bottles of cheap sweet wine called Irish Blossom. They were the kind of wine bottles with screw-tops rather than corks. She and Roy
found a group of down-and-outs near where Jimmy Raisin used to hang out. They were a mixed bunch, but more solid alcoholics than drug addicts, the drug addicts being younger and favouring better
sites. The Celtic races predominated, Scottish and Irish, making Agatha wonder if there was any truth in the statement that alcoholism got worse the farther north in the world one went.

No one seemed to want to know them, until Agatha fished in one of her plastic bags and produced a bottle of wine.

The others gathered around. Roy passed the bottle round. The contents were soon gone. An old man came up. He had two bottles of cider, which he proceeded to share. He had an educated voice and
told everyone he used to be a professor. Soon they all began to talk, and Agatha and Roy found they were surrounded by jet pilots, famous footballers, brain surgeons and tycoons. ‘It’s
a bit like those people who believe they had a previous life,’ muttered Agatha. ‘They were always Napoleon or Cleopatra or someone like that.’

‘They believe what they’re saying,’ whispered Roy. ‘They’ve told the same lies so many times, they actually believe them now.’

Agatha raised her voice. ‘We had a mate used to hang around about here,’ she said. ‘Jimmy Raisin.’

The man with the educated voice, who was called Charles, said, ‘Someone said he got killed. Good riddance, sleazy little toe-rag.’

They must have heard about the murder by word of mouth, thought Agatha. Few of them would ever look at a newspaper.

‘What happened to his stuff?’ asked Roy.

‘Perlice took it away,’ said a thin woman with the avid face and glittering eyes of a Hogarth drawing. ‘Took ’is box and all. But Lizzie got ’is bag
o’stuff.’

‘What stuff?’ Roy’s voice was sharp.

‘Just who the hell are you?’ asked Charles.

Agatha glared at Roy. ‘I’ll tell you who I am,’ he said, his voice slightly slurred. ‘I’m a big executive in the City. I only come down here evenings because I like
the company.’

There was a general easing of tension as the brain surgeons, jet pilots and tycoons in general regarded what they thought was one of their own kind. ‘And I’ll tell you something
more.’ Roy fished in the capacious inside pocket of his Oxfam jacket. ‘I took this bottle of Scotch out of the desk before I came here.’

This was nothing but the truth, but deep in the dim recesses of their brains they accepted him as a fellow liar. The Scotch was passed round. Since they were all, with the exception of Agatha
and Roy, topping up from the last binge, it had the effect of knocking them into almost immediate drunkenness.

Agatha found the avid-faced woman was called Clara and sidled over to her. ‘Tell you a secret,’ she whispered.

Clara looked at her, her glittering eyes slightly unfocused. ‘I was married to Jimmy,’ said Agatha.

‘Go on!’

‘Fact. So that bag this Lizzie took belongs to me. Where is she?’

‘She’ll be along.’

So Agatha and Roy settled themselves to wait. More joined them. More cheap drink. A man built a bonfire in an old oil drum. Clara began to sing drunkenly.

It was an almost seductive way of life, thought Agatha, provided the weather wasn’t too cold. Just chuck up reality, goodbye to work, to family, to responsibility, beg during the day and
get stoned out of your mind at night. No conventions to bind you, no getting or spending, no hassle.

‘I wash not allush like thish,’ slurred Charles at one point. ‘I wash a profeshor at Oxford.’

Perhaps he was, thought Agatha with a sudden stab of pity. But whatever Charles had been at one time in his life, it had obviously been something better than sitting under the arches at Waterloo
scrambling what was left of his brains.

The night wore on. Fights broke out. Women cried, long maudlin wails for lost men and lost children. It’s not a seductive way of life, thought Agatha. It’s a foretaste of hell. There
was a brief scramble of activity when the Silver Lady came round, a van with sandwiches and hot coffee, some of them trying to trade their sandwiches and coffee for another swig of drink.

Gradually, like animals, they crept off into their packing-cases. Still this Lizzie had not come.

Dawn was rising over grimy London. A blackbird perched up on a rooftop sent down a chorus of glorious sound, highlighting the degradation and misery and wasted lives of those in the
packing-cases beneath.

Agatha got stiffly to her feet. ‘I’ve had it, Roy. Give your detective lady the job of finding Lizzie and double her pay to do it. I’m going home.’

‘Haven’t we even got enough between us for the tube?’ asked Roy.

Agatha scraped in her pockets and finally found a pound. ‘That’s for me to take the tube,’ she said firmly.

‘You’ll have to stick with me, sweetie, if you want to get into the office to get your bag and car keys. I have the keys to the office.’

‘Let me have them.’

‘No.’

‘Do you mean you’re going to make me walk back all that way?’

‘Yes.’

Not speaking to each other, each stiff and sore and exhausted from their long night and with queasy stomachs from the awful mixture they had drunk, they headed in the direction of Waterloo
station.

A well-dressed man in evening dress approached them. He stood in front of them, stopping their progress, his face a mixture of pity and disgust. He fished in his pocket, took out his wallet and
extracted a ten-pound note. ‘For God’s sake,’ he said to Roy, ‘get your mother a decent breakfast and don’t spend this on booze.’

‘Oh, thank you, thank you.’ Roy seized the note.

‘Taxi!’ he yelled, and, miracle of miracles, a taxi came to a stop. Roy shoved Agatha inside, shouted ‘Cheapside,’ and the cab drove off.

The man in evening dress gazed after them in a fury. That’s the last time I waste money on people like that, he thought.

James had suffered a sleepless night as well. At first he had thought Agatha was staying away to get revenge, but then he began to think something might have happened to her.
At last he settled down in an armchair in front of the cottage window, jumping to his feet every time he heard the sound of a car, but there was only, first, the milkman, and then Mrs Hardy going
off early somewhere.

His eyes grew heavier and heavier. Why hadn’t she even phoned?

He fell asleep at last and in his dream he was marrying Helen Warwick. He only knew he did not want to marry Helen but that somehow she had blackmailed him into it. He was standing at the altar,
hoping that Agatha Raisin would come and rescue him, when the sound of a key in the lock made his eyes jerk open.

He jumped to his feet, shouting, ‘Agatha! Where the hell have you been?’

Agatha had not bothered to change out of her down-and-out outfit. James stared at the wreck that was Agatha, the black circles under her eyes and the terrible smell of stale booze mixing with
the meths with which she had sprinkled her clothes at the beginning of the masquerade.

‘Oh, Agatha,’ he said, looking at her, pity in his eyes replacing the anger. ‘I really thought Helen Warwick might have had something else to say, something useful. But if I
had known it would upset you so much . . .’

Agatha sat down wearily. ‘The vanity of men never ceases to amaze me. I did not go out and get sozzled because my heart was broken, James dear. Roy and I dressed up and went down to the
packing-cases of Waterloo, where we spent the night. We found out something useful. Jimmy had a bag of stuff which a woman called Lizzie took away. We’re going to get Roy’s detective to
try to track her down. Now all I want is to sleep. I nearly drove off the road on the way down here. Enjoy your visit to Helen?’

‘No,’ said James curtly. ‘Big mistake. Gold-digger.’

Agatha gave a little smile and headed for the stairs.

‘And burn those clothes,’ yelled James after her.

Suddenly it seemed to Agatha that, after that adventure, everything went quiet. Mrs Hardy begged an extra week. She had found a place in London but needed the extra time until
the flat became available.
The Bugle
finally learned about the attempted shooting and ran some of the original interview with Agatha. At first there was hope that someone who knew something
about Mrs Gore-Appleton would come forward, but no one appeared to know anything of any importance. In fact, several people had contacted the police, people who had worked for her charity on a
voluntary basis. But their descriptions did not add very much to what the police already knew. Bill Wong privately thought that Mrs Gore-Appleton was probably settled comfortably in some foreign
country where they could not reach her.

He called round one evening, saying dismally to James and Agatha that he was beginning to fear they would never get her now.

‘What’s this Fred Griggs was saying about the murder of Miss Purvey not being connected with the case?’

‘There have been a couple of random stabbings in that cinema and we got some nutter for them. He says he strangled the Purvey woman.’

‘And you believe him?’

‘I don’t, but everyone else seems determined to have one of the murders solved. Have you two found out anything?’

James looked at Agatha and Agatha looked at James. Agatha was still smarting over the Maddie episode. She did not know Maddie was off the case. If she told Bill about Roy’s detective
looking for the mysterious Lizzie, then the police would take over, Maddie might get some of the credit, and Agatha felt she could not bear that.

‘No, nothing,’ she said. ‘I’m moving back next door.’

‘When?’

‘Just over two weeks now. It would have been sooner, but Mrs Hardy begged the extra time. She’s found a place in London.’

‘Did that article in the newspaper not prompt anyone to come forward with information about Mrs Gore-Appleton?’ asked James.

‘Yes, it did. Mostly rich, retired ladies who did voluntary work for her. Some had contributed quite a lot of money to the charity, but others hung on to their wallets when they realized
that Mrs Gore-Appleton only made a few token visits down among London’s homeless, dispensing clothes and food. The description is pretty much what we had before – hard, middle-aged,
muscular, blonde.’

‘Didn’t she have any friends among them?’

‘No, they only saw her during office hours. They all remember Jimmy Raisin. Mrs Gore-Appleton was very proud of him, they said. She said it all showed what a little kindness and care could
do. Two of the ladies got the impression that Mrs Gore-Appleton and Jimmy were lovers.’

‘Well, we can’t blame Jimmy for corrupting her, as she was running a bent charity when they met. How did she get away with it? She would need to be registered with the Charities
Commission.’

‘She never did that. Just hung out her shingle, didn’t advertise for volunteers, simply canvassed a few churches. Quite a scam, in a way. One woman gave her fifteen thousand pounds,
and she was the only one who would admit to the amount she paid, so goodness knows what she got from the others.’

Agatha thought of the waste of humanity she had spent the night with under the arches, all God’s lost children, and felt a surge of fury. Mrs Gore-Appleton had, in her own sweet way, been
robbing the poor.