Agatha Raisin and the Wizard of Evesham (19 page)

‘You’re not only immoral, Charles, you’re amoral.’

‘Perhaps. How’s the case?’

Agatha sighed. ‘Dead in the water. I went to Portsmouth.’

‘And?’

Agatha told him about Harriet.

‘It’s a wonder you didn’t stay on in Portsmouth. It’s probably crawling with blackmail victims of the wicked hairdresser.’

‘John’s ex-wife probably knows all about it, but she could be anywhere in the country now. The police have the resources to trace her. I don’t. Oh, and I found out something
else.’ She told him about Jessie and Mavis.

Charles listened intently. Then he said, ‘Run that bit about Mavis past me again.’

Agatha looked at him in surprise but repeated what had happened during her interview with Mavis.

‘And you believed her?’ Charles reached across the table and fished a cigarette out of Agatha’s packet.

‘Why not? She seemed a straightforward, honest woman. Her home was clean and tidy. It had the atmosphere of a happy family home.’

‘I’d like to meet her.’

‘Why?’

‘She just sounds too good to be true.’

‘Oh, well, I suppose you won’t be satisfied until you’ve met her. I never checked to see if you’d packed and taken your clothes away.’

‘No, I rushed off and left them. I’ll go and dress and we’ll be off.’

‘I wonder if she’ll be at home,’ said Agatha as she turned off the by-pass and into the Four Pools Estate. ‘Perhaps we should have phoned
first.’

‘Better to surprise her,’ said Charles. ‘Got another cigarette?’

‘We’re nearly there and if you’re going to take up smoking in earnest, then I suggest you buy your own.’

‘Filthy habit. There’s this hypnotist in Gloucester, said to work wonders.’

‘I might try that,’ said Agatha. ‘I heard about him. But if I do give up smoking, I hope to God I don’t turn into one of those morons who goes around making
smokers’ lives hell. Here we are. You see, you didn’t have time for another cigarette.’

As they walked up the path, a curtain twitched. The door opened before they could even ring the bell and Mavis stood there, smiling a welcome.

‘How nice to see you again!’ she cried. ‘Come in. This your husband?’

I like this woman, thought Agatha. It was flattering to be considered Charles’s wife, as Charles was much younger than she.

Agatha introduced Charles and they both followed Mavis inside. Mavis bustled off to make tea while Charles walked around the room, peering at photographs. ‘Now here’s a thing,
Aggie,’ he whispered. ‘Our Mavis was on the stage in her youth.’

‘So?’

‘So her acting abilities might have fooled you.’

‘I’m a good judge of character,’ said Agatha huffily.

‘Except when it comes to men.’

Agatha was glaring at him as Mavis tripped in bearing the tea-tray.

After she had served tea, Mavis asked brightly, ‘So what brings you back?’

Agatha looked helplessly at Charles, who smiled at Mavis and said, ‘Aggie here told me what you had said and I wondered why you had lied to her.’

Mavis goggled at him and Agatha stared at Charles in surprise.

Then Mavis’s face cleared and she laughed. ‘Oh, all that stuff about my Betty being a drug addict.’

‘No,’ said Charles. ‘I believe that was a lie. But I happen to know that Shawpart was blackmailing you.’

There was a shocked silence. ‘Mam!’ called a child shrilly out on the street. A car drove past, a gust of wind rattled the leaves of the wisteria outside the window and then the room
was quiet again.

At last Mavis said in a thin voice, ‘So that letter wasn’t burnt in the fire.’

Agatha looked to Charles for help, but he was studying Mavis, waiting for her to go on.

‘If my husband finds out,’ said Mavis, ‘it’ll be the end of our marriage.’

‘He won’t,’ said Agatha fiercely. ‘Tell her, Charles!’

But Charles waited patiently.

‘It was like this,’ said Mavis. ‘He flattered me. He said I should never have left the stage. Oh, he worked on me. He got me when I was feeling down and bored and he supplied a
bit of excitement. At first it was just sneaky little coffee meetings and then he said we couldn’t talk freely when we were frightened that someone would see us. He invited me to his house.
We drank a lot of champagne and he told me . . . he told me he loved me. He was so passionate, he seemed so sincere. And I thought I was the actor! So I went to bed with him. I was so infatuated, I
was prepared to run away with him.’

She began to cry. They waited until she had blown her nose and composed herself.

‘Then he did not get in touch with you,’ prompted Agatha.

‘Yes, and I was desperate. I thought I had done or said something. I wrote to him. When he phoned and said he wanted to meet me, I was over the moon. Then he told me unless I paid him he
would send the letter to my husband.’

‘I thought you didn’t have any money of your own,’ said Agatha.

‘I lied. I had a bit put by. But then what seemed like a miracle happened. He was murdered. No, it wasn’t me, although I dreamed of it. Don’t go to the police.’

‘We won’t go to the police,’ said Agatha. ‘And there’s no evidence. All the evidence was burnt in the fire.’

Mavis’s eyes narrowed. ‘So where the hell do you two get off, tormenting me?’ She stood up. ‘Get out of here!’

‘We’re only trying to find out who did it,’ said Agatha patiently.

‘That’s a job for the police. I’ve a good mind to report you.’

‘If you do that,’ said Charles, ‘we’ll be obliged to tell the police what we know about you.’

Mavis crumpled. ‘I’m sorry. But it has all been so horrible. I’m sorry I got angry.’

‘That’s all right. We’ll be off,’ said Charles. ‘Think no more about it.’ He stood aside to let Agatha past, and then whipped round.

‘You weren’t ever married to John Shawpart, were you?’

‘No!’

‘Know anything about his wife?’

‘He said something about her being jealous of him. She was a hairdresser as well.’

They thanked her and left.

‘How did you know about her, Charles?’ asked Agatha as they drove off.

‘I didn’t. I just guessed.’

‘Why? How?’

‘Well, Shawpart seems to have been a cunning bastard. If there was no money in it, he dropped them.’

‘So what made you think he hadn’t dropped Mavis? She told me she had told him that she hadn’t any money and I believed her.’

‘It was a lucky guess. I thought it was worth a try. I mean, she did tell him all those lies about herself to get his interest. She must have told him the one about her drug-dealing
daughter was a lie or he wouldn’t even have bothered bedding her. He’d just have used that.’

‘Let’s go back and make some notes,’ said Agatha. ‘Interested again?’

‘Sort of. There might be something I’ve missed.’

‘Now,’ said Charles, sitting over a sheet of paper at Agatha’s kitchen table half an hour later, ‘let’s see what we’ve got. We’ve got
Mavis Burke. She could have put ricin in his vitamin pills. Then there’s the receptionist, Josie. She was in love with him. Mr and Mrs Friendly. Maggie Henderson or
her
brutal husband.
Harriet of Portsmouth or her husband.’

‘But Harriet’s husband left her for the secretary.’

‘So
she
said. Could be another liar. She could have looked shocked when Luke turned up on her doorstep, not at seeing him again but in case you guessed she’d been telling a
pack of lies. Anyone else?’

‘Jessie Lang, but that’s a non-starter.’

Charles leaned back in his chair. ‘Yes, let’s think about Jessie Lang. Why would our philandering blackmailer waste his time on a bit of crumpet with no money? Not his
scene.’

‘I’m sure she was telling me the truth,’ said Agatha hotly. ‘You think she’s lying because I got a lot more out of her than you did!’

‘It’s a thought all the same. Then there’s Mrs Shawpart.’

‘But we don’t know where she is!’

‘Don’t we? We don’t know how long any of the married women suspects have been married. Could be Mavis.’

‘Who miraculously produces a teen-aged daughter and son after about a year?’

‘Did you see any photos of her children? I didn’t. I don’t trust Mavis one bit.’

‘We’re forgetting Mrs Darry,’ said Agatha. ‘Poor Mrs Darry. What on earth could she have possibly found out that we didn’t?’

‘That’s a point. Why don’t we trot along to the vicarage and ask Mrs Bloxby for some gossip?’

As they approached the vicarage door, Agatha found herself hoping the vicar was not at home to start shouting in front of Charles about ‘that dreadful woman’.

But Mrs Bloxby answered the door with her usual glad smile of welcome. Agatha knew her to be a busy woman and yet she never appeared to be flustered by the unheralded arrival of visitors.

‘This is nice,’ said Mrs Bloxby. ‘Come into the kitchen. I’ve got some fresh coffee ready.’

Agatha sat down at the kitchen table and half-closed her eyes, letting the peace of the vicarage wash over her. Why did she always create such an insane world for herself, she wondered, where
the totally unacceptable became the acceptable? What was she doing sitting here companionably with Charles? She should have told him to get lost, she should have said she would never see him again.
And, what was even more important, she should stop this silly business of pretending to be a detective and let the police get on with it.

Mrs Bloxby put down thin china mugs of coffee in front of them and a plate of chocolate biscuits before sitting down herself. ‘You were away yesterday, Agatha?’

‘Yes.’

‘The press were suddenly all over the place. You know, there were only a few directly after the murder. The police must have released that there was some connection between Mrs Darry and
the murder of the hairdresser, although they appear to have released nothing about John Shawpart’s blackmailing activities. You see, there wasn’t much of a fuss before because the press
thought it was just another murder of a pensioner in the Midlands. How awful that sounds! Just another murder. But there are so many. The longer people live, the more pensioners there are, and the
more that get murdered. They’re such an easy, vulnerable target.’

‘Someone will be after Aggie next,’ said Charles.

‘I’m not a pensioner,’ snapped Agatha.

‘So were you investigating yesterday?’ asked Mrs Bloxby.

‘Went to Portsmouth.’

‘With her toy boy,’ murmured Charles.

‘Now why does that ring a bell? Portsmouth,’ mused Mrs Bloxby, ignoring Charles.

‘That’s where John Shawpart came from,’ said Agatha.

‘So it is. But there’s something else. . . . Never mind, it’ll come to me. So how did you get on?’

Agatha told her about Harriet. ‘That poor woman!’ exclaimed Mrs Bloxby.

‘If she was telling the truth,’ Charles put in. ‘Aggie here is very gullible.’

‘I think that remark was uncalled for,’ said Mrs Bloxby.

‘Tell him about Mavis,’ said Agatha.

Mrs Bloxby listened intently and then said, ‘But it does not follow that Harriet was lying. Why should she lie? She paid, didn’t she, and it’s thanks to Agatha that she got
that five thousand pounds back.’

‘There’re too many suspects,’ said Agatha gloomily. ‘Because of Mavis, I think everyone has been lying to me. When I overheard that woman telling John she would kill him,
he said it was the woman in the shop next door talking to her husband, but she said she wasn’t married. So she wasn’t married, but what if John had got his clutches into
her
?’

‘So where do you go from here?’ asked Mrs Bloxby.

‘I don’t know,’ said Agatha wearily.

Charles nibbled on a chocolate biscuit. Then he said, ‘What about us visiting Bill Wong? He surely knows something about that wife of John’s. In fact, he probably knows a hell of a
lot more than we do.’

Agatha brightened. ‘That’s an idea. Let’s go and see Bill. In fact, I think we’ll do that now. Thanks for the coffee.’

She and Charles got up.

Agatha turned in the doorway. ‘I quite forgot to ask you. Do you know where Mrs Darry came from? Where did she live before she came to Carsely?’

‘How stupid of me,’ exclaimed Mrs Bloxby. ‘How could I have forgotten?’

‘Forgotten what?’

‘Why, Portsmouth, of course. Mrs Darry came from Portsmouth!’

‘Phew!’ said Agatha. ‘I’m feeling as if I’ve just been struck by a blinding flash of the obvious.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Charles as they walked back to the cottage.

‘Why, Mrs Darry, of course. She wouldn’t have been clever enough to ferret out anything dangerous about the murderer in such a short time. She must have known Mr John in Portsmouth!
So it follows she probably knew who murdered him.’

‘How could she know that?’ asked Charles. ‘She’d just have been in the same fix as we are. All those people being blackmailed. Who to choose from?’

‘Stands to reason it must have been someone from Portsmouth.’

‘Harriet?’

‘I’m sure it’s not Harriet. Damn. Let’s go in and have some coffee and think before we see Bill Wong.’

When they were seated over the coffee-cups, Agatha said, ‘If only we could find the wife.’

‘Maybe the police have already found her. They’re bound to have found her.’

‘You see, perhaps we’ve become all messed up by this blackmail business. Perhaps it was just marital hate.’

‘Trust me,’ said Charles. ‘When you’ve got a blackmailer in the picture, then someone is going to murder him.’

‘Anyway, I think I’ll call on Bill Wong.’

‘Shouldn’t you phone him first?’

Agatha hesitated. Then she said, ‘No, let’s just go. Unless you have anything else planned?’

‘No,’ said Charles gloomily. ‘I’m off women.’

Meaning I don’t count as a woman, thought Agatha.

As they drove to Mircester, Agatha admired the autumn colours of the trees. ‘How quickly the seasons change now,’ she remarked. ‘It seems as if someone drew a
line between summer and autumn. Not so long ago we were sweltering and then suddenly, autumn fell. Do you think it’s the ozone layer?’

‘Probably it’s disintegrating under all the cigarette smoke from people like you.’