Agatha Raisin and the Wizard of Evesham (6 page)

‘That’s a filthy habit, Agatha. Do you mind if I ask you not to smoke?’

‘Yes, I mind very much,’ snapped Agatha.

‘You’re killing yourself.’

‘And so is everyone like you who drives a car that belts carcinogens into the air.’

Agatha then hurriedly closed her handbag, which she had opened wide in her search for cigarettes. She hoped he had not seen the tape recorder. Anyway, he was surely not going to blackmail her
tonight.

He began to talk easily about how successful his business in Evesham had proved to be and that he was thinking of opening up another salon. ‘It’s war, hairdressing,’ he said
with a laugh. ‘It’s like the theatre. You would never believe the rivalries and jealousies. And I’m thinking of starting up a beauty salon.’

Agatha fumbled in her handbag and switched off the tape recorder. She felt heavy and sad. And her feet were killing her.

At last she said, ‘It’s been nice. Do you mind if we go home?’ She signalled to the waiter and asked for the bill. ‘My treat, remember?’

‘You’re looking tired,’ he said, his blue eyes full of concern.

He drove a silent Agatha home. He helped her out of the car and then said, ‘I would really like to see the inside of your cottage.’

Agatha was wearily thinking of polite excuses when a wrathful voice behind her made her jump.

‘And just who the hell is this, Aggie!’

Charles stood there, his hands clenched into fists at his side. At first, Agatha was too taken aback to realize it was an act.

‘I’ve been out for dinner with John,’ she said. ‘Charles, may I introduce you? This is –’

‘I don’t want to meet scum like this.’ Charles seized her arm and jerked her towards him. Her clutch handbag went spinning and the contents spilled out over the road, exposed
in the security lights which had come on in the front of Agatha’s cottage. Her little black tape recorder went flying across the cobbled surface of the road and landed at Mr John’s
feet.

He picked it up. Charles stood frozen, his hand on Agatha’s arm.

‘Yours, I think.’ Mr John held out the tape recorder to Agatha, who numbly took it. His eyes glittered with malice and amusement.

Then he waved his hand and got into his car and roared off.

Agatha rounded on Charles. ‘What the hell were you playing at?’ She stooped and began to gather up the contents of her bag.

‘I was just playing my part,’ said Charles mildly. ‘I went to the Red Lion and learned you were off with Mr John. So I decided to hang about until you came home and play the
jealous lover.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I couldn’t. I didn’t know what you were up to. Why didn’t you phone me? I thought we were in this together.’

‘Oh, come into the house. I’m fed up. He saw the tape recorder, so he’s wise to us.’

He followed her into the house and through to the kitchen. ‘Maybe not.’

‘Why not?’ demanded Agatha, angrily plugging in the kettle. ‘I saw the expression in his eyes when he handed me that tape recorder.’

‘Well, he knows you were in publicity. Lots of people carry those little tape recorders around. I sometimes carry one myself to remind me of appointments and things to do.’

‘A blackmailer is not going to think that,’ jeered Agatha.

‘We don’t know he’s a blackmailer. Make me a coffee while I think. Give me a cigarette.’

‘You don’t smoke.’

‘I only smoke other people’s. It’s a charitable gesture. It reduces their intake.’

‘And stops you spending the money yourself. Cheapskate! Oh, help yourself. There’s a packet in my handbag.’

Agatha made two cups of instant coffee. She had given up making fresh coffee and was back to microwaving most of her meals. Old habits refused to die. She was weary of trying to be ‘a
village person’.

‘What can we possibly do now?’ she asked, sitting down at the table.

‘I’m thinking. Let’s assume he
is
a blackmailer. Why does one become a blackmailer?’

‘Power?’

‘But money must be a strong motive. Money and greed. Think about this one. If you were to give him an expensive present. Drop the James business. Glow at him. Let him think he’s the
one.’

‘What present?’ asked Agatha suspiciously.

‘Little something from Asprey’s. Does he smoke?’

‘No, not even mine.’

‘What about a tasteful pair of solid-gold cuff-links in a dinky little Asprey box?’

‘What about spending a thousand pounds? Are you going to contribute?’

He looked shifty and his hand instinctively clasped protectively over the breast of his jacket. The foreigner presses his heart, thought Agatha cynically, but your true blue-blooded Englishman
presses his wallet to make sure it’s safe.

‘Why should I waste a lot of money on a provincial hairdresser?’ Agatha demanded.

‘Because,’ said Charles patiently, ‘it would keep the game going, and the reason for keeping the game going is you’re bored.’

‘And so are you,’ said Agatha shrewdly.

‘But not as bored and depressed and lovelorn as you, light of my life.’

‘I’ll think about it.’

‘Do. You’ll find he’ll melt like butter and only think the best of you.’

‘If you’ve finished your coffee, I’ll show you out.’

‘I’m tired. Can’t I stay here?’

‘No. Out.’

‘Okay.’ He got to his feet. ‘Let me know how you get on.’

‘I haven’t said I’ll do it.’

‘Think about it, Aggie. Think about it.’

Charles was right. Agatha could not bear to drop what she was beginning to consider ‘her case’.

She drove to Moreton-in-Marsh station early the next morning and joined the commuters on the platform. Then the woman who manned the ticket office came out and shouted, ‘There will be no
trains due to a shortage of engine drivers.’

Cursing, Agatha walked back over the iron bridge to the car park. She got in her car and drove to Oxford and took a train from there to Paddington. From Paddington, she took a taxi to
Asprey’s in Bond Street. In the almost religious hush of the great jeweller’s, she examined trays of cuff-links, finally selecting a heavy, solid-gold pair and paying a price for them
which left her feeling breathless.

She then travelled to the City to see her stockbroker and be reassured that her stocks and shares were prospering. As she was in the City, she called at Pedmans to see Roy Silver, a public
relations officer who had originally worked for her before she had sold out to Pedmans.

‘I haven’t heard from you for a while,’ said Agatha, reflecting that Roy looked as weedy and unhealthy as ever. But obviously he was doing well. Her practised eye noticed that
his suit was Armani.

‘I’ve been very busy, sweetie. How’s life in Boresville?’

‘I thought you liked the country. You’re always saying how lucky I am.’

‘A passing aberration. Sophisticates like me would wilt in the country.’

‘You’re joking, of course.’

‘Not really. What are you doing anyway? Village fêtes?’

‘No, much more exciting than that,’ said Agatha, but remembered that she had to arrange the teas for Ancombe and had better get back and call a catering company.

‘Murder?’

Agatha wanted to brag. ‘I’m chasing a blackmailer.’

‘Tell me about it.’

So Agatha did.

Roy was intrigued. ‘Tell you what, I’ll come down this weekend and help you.’

He hadn’t bothered phoning her for a long time, so Agatha said huffily, ‘Can’t. I’m busy this weekend.’

When she got home, she phoned the hairdresser’s and made an appointment for the day after the next. The following day was the concert at Ancombe. Then she phoned a top
catering firm in Mircester and ordered sandwiches, cakes and hot savouries to be delivered to her early the following morning. Agatha meant to convey the goodies to the concert herself and produce
them as her own.

On the following morning, she transferred all the catering firm’s supplies into her own boxes and put them in the boot of her car and drove to Ancombe.

With the good excuse that she could not watch the concert because she would be too busy preparing the teas, she escaped into an adjoining hall where three schoolgirls had been drafted to help
her put out the tables and chairs. The hall smelt like all church halls, dusty and redolent of dry rot and sweat. The church hall was not only used by the Scouts but by an aerobics class as
well.

She could hear Miss Simms’s voice raised in shrill song. If it was meant to be Cher, then it was a Cher in the process of getting liposuction.

Agatha heated trays of savouries in the oven and spread cakes and sandwiches on plates. It looked a magnificent feast.

Finally she heard the strains of ‘God Save the Queen’ – the Ancombe ladies were traditionalists – raised in song. Then there was the scraping back of chairs and they all
came filing in, exclaiming in delight at the spread laid out for them.

But Mrs Darry was not amongst them. What a lot of money I do waste on pettiness, thought Agatha with a rare pang of remorse.

There was no Mrs Friendly either, so she could not even continue her investigation.

By the end of the event, she felt tired and sticky. Mrs Bloxby stayed behind to help Agatha load and stack empty foil trays in her car.

‘You did us proud, Mrs Raisin,’ said Mrs Bloxby. ‘If you ever feel like going into business again, you could be a professional caterer.’

Agatha looked at her sharply and the vicar’s wife gave her an innocent look. But Agatha knew she had been rumbled and felt silly.

For the first time in her life, she began to feel that living alone was an effort. Not that she had ever lived with anyone else, apart from a brief sojourn with James. If she lived with someone,
then that someone would be there to chatter to her as she contemplated washing out the foil trays. After the catering company had called to pick up theirs, she reminded herself that the main
purpose of foil trays was that they were disposable and put the whole lot in a rubbish bag.

The heat was suffocating. She wandered out into her garden. She had lost interest in gardening and hired a local man to do that. Mrs Simpson did her cleaning for her. Pity she couldn’t
hire someone to do the living for her. The gardener was not due to call for another two days, and despite the recent rain the flowers were beginning to wilt in the heat.

She got out the hose and went to fix it to the tap in the garden but sat down in a garden chair instead. The depression she had been fighting off all day engulfed her and immobilized her.

She sat there while the sun slowly sank in the sky and the trees at the end of the garden cast long shadows over the grass. The pursuit of money and success had been everything in her life.
Money meant the best restaurants, security, the best medical attention if she fell ill, and, at the end of her days, a good old folks’ home where they actually looked after the patients. She
felt as if the tide of life had receded, leaving her stranded on a sandbank of money.

‘I will not sink down under this,’ she muttered to herself. Feeling like an old woman, she rose from her chair and went to the garden shed and wheeled out her bicycle. Minutes later,
she was cycling off down the country lanes, pedalling fast like one possessed, racing to leave that tired failure of an Agatha behind her.

She pedalled while darkness fell over the countryside and light came on in cottage windows. When she at last turned homewards and free-wheeled down the hill into Carsely under the arched tunnels
made by the trees on either side of the road, she felt calm and exhausted.

She let the cats in from the garden, locked up for the night, made herself a ham sandwich, then showered and went to bed and fell into a deep sleep.

When Agatha awoke in the morning, she felt stiff and sore from the exercise, but prepared for the day ahead. She put the little Asprey’s box in her handbag and drove to the
hairdresser’s. On the other side of Broadway she looked up at the sky. Mares’ tails streamed across the blue of the sky. The weather must be about to change.

By the time she drove into Evesham, the sky was changing to grey. To her delight, there was actually a legal parking space right outside the hairdresser’s.

With a twinge of apprehension, she opened the door and went in. With something like triumph, the receptionist informed her that Mr Garry would do her hair.

‘Who the hell’s Mr Garry?’ snarled Agatha. ‘And stop grinning when you speak to me.’

‘Mr Garry is Mr John’s assistant,’ said the receptionist, Josie. Agatha was about to cancel her appointment, but she got a glimpse of herself in one of the many mirrors. Her
hair looked limp and sweaty.

Yvette washed her hair and then she was led through to the ministrations of Mr Garry, who proved to be a youth who chattered endlessly about shows he had seen on television. Agatha interrupted
the flow by asking, ‘What’s Mr John got?’

‘He phoned in to say he was under the weather. He didn’t say exactly what it was.’

‘Does he live in Evesham?’

‘Yes, one of those villas on the Cheltenham Road.’

Agatha’s hair emerged as shiny and healthy as it had recently become, but she was unhappy with the style, which looked slightly rigid. Normally she would have complained and made him do it
again, but she was tired of sitting in the hairdresser’s. As she was paying for her hair-style, she saw a framed certificate behind the desk. So Mr John’s second name was Shawpart.

She went along to the post office and asked for a phone book and found only one Shawpart. She took a note of the number in Cheltenham Road and, swinging round into the traffic, headed in that
direction. As she crossed the bridge over the river Avon, she noticed the water was greenish black and very still under a lowering sky.

Up the hill, past the garage, past the hospital and along in the direction of the by-pass she went, until she found Mr John’s house, a fairly large modern villa. She parked outside and
walked up the short path and rang the doorbell.

There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of the traffic humming past her on the road behind her. The sky above was growing even darker. Then she faintly heard the sound of shuffling
footsteps, like those of a very old man.