There Goes The Bride (8 page)

‘Is that you, Aggie?’ called a familiar voice from the kitchen.

Charles!

Agatha put away her phone and went into the kitchen, scrubbing at her eyes with a handkerchief as she went.

Charles was sitting at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette from a packet of Bensons Agatha had left on the counter. He had the keys to Agatha’s cottage and dropped in and out as he pleased. Agatha had once tried to stop him, but then realized that often she was lonely and Charles’s company was better than none.

Charles looked at Agatha’s red eyes. ‘Been calling on James?’

‘Yes, pass me one of
my
cigarettes.’

‘So what did he say about Felicity?’

‘She appears to have had the reputation, according to two previous fiancés, not to mention that Frenchman, of being a nymphomaniac. But surprise, surprise. No sex for James till after the wedding.’

‘She may have been a nymphomaniac, but I think she was a narcissist as well. She wanted to star on her wedding day. She probably pictured herself in white and pearls going up the aisle. Do you mean to say she was turned down before because of too much sex? Hard to believe.’

‘Trust you to think so. The first fiancé was gay, and the second, I gather from Toni, a stuffy bank manager who thought it was all not very
naice.’

Charles leaned back in his chair and blew a lazy smoke ring up to the beamed ceiling. ‘I once knew this girl who was really hot stuff,’ he said. ‘Got herself a reputation around the county. After her last affair was ended and no ring on her finger, I met her at a party. She was a little bit drunk and she confided in me that according to any future man, she was going to be the complete virgin. And she did eventually get married. Men can be stuffier than you think, and the old ways still apply – why marry when you can get it all and more without any responsibility whatsoever?’

‘But James is an intelligent man! Why did he leave things until it was too late? He said he’d discovered she was very stupid.’

‘Stupid as a fox, Aggie. She looked gorgeous. Very flattering to a man of James’s age to have an adoring piece of arm candy. Maybe he wanted children. Felicity was well within the child-bearing age. The idea of a son or daughter to carry on the Lacey name maybe blinded him. You never would face up to it, you know, that for a man of James’s age to still be a bachelor meant there was something wrong.’

‘He married me,’ Agatha pointed out.

‘We all know you’re unique. Tell me how he met Felicity?’

Agatha told him what she knew.

‘He could have been set up. Do be careful of Sylvan.’

‘Why? Do you think he’s the murderer?’

‘No, but I think he’s a lightweight philanderer.’

‘It takes one to know one, Charles.’

He smiled. ‘Doesn’t it just.’

They sat in silence for a while. Then Agatha said, ‘I’d better get back there tomorrow, but I’ll call on Mrs Bloxby in the morning before I go.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ said Charles. He stretched and yawned. ‘I’m off to bed. Have they found the gun?’

‘Patrick says they found the bullet but not the gun. They estimate it came from a Smith & Wesson 686SSR. He says it’s got a stainless-steel cylinder, L-shaped, and can shoot from twenty-five yards. I’m off to bed. You do treat my cottage like a hotel,’ said Agatha crossly.

‘Admit it. You’re glad of the company.’

M
RS BLOXBY WAS
eager to hear their news when they called on her the following morning. When they had finished, she said, ‘But surely there must be a lot of forensic evidence. If someone climbed that tree, they must have left traces of fibres or hair on the bark.’

‘It’s hard to know anything when one isn’t a member of the police force,’ grumbled Agatha. ‘I’m going back down there today.’

‘Mr Mulligan seems to be able to extract information,’ said Mrs Bloxby. ‘Wouldn’t it be better to send him back there?’

But Agatha felt that
she
was the one who had been employed to find the murderer and didn’t want an employee to steal any of the glory. ‘He needs to run things in the office,’ she said. ‘I’ll call in on him before I leave for Downboys. Anyway, it’s hardly like one of those CSI programmes. It’ll take them ages to get any forensics results out of the lab.’

‘Must have been someone who knew the family well,’ said Charles. ‘I mean, the murderer knew about the bedroom and about that tree. You said she hadn’t been having any sex with James and she was a bit of a nympho, so she might have been getting it somewhere else, say, from a lover who was in the habit of nipping up that tree and into her bedroom window. What kind of tree is it?’

‘It’s an old cedar,’ said Agatha. ‘You could practically walk up it, and there’s great concealment with all those heavy branches.’

‘If she was that good in bed,’ Charles pointed out, ‘someone could have become obsessed with her, someone her father wouldn’t dream of letting her marry. She may have been the bicycle of the village.’

‘Sir Charles!’ admonished Mrs Bloxby.

‘It’s a good point.’ Agatha sighed. ‘I’d better get going. Coming with me, Charles?’

‘Maybe I’ll follow you down.’

Patrick gloomily said that he didn’t have much further news, although he had already phoned his contact in Hewes that morning. All he could say was that Jerry did not seem to have a criminal record and the police were combing the grounds and dredging the river.

‘What river?’ asked Agatha.

‘The river Frim. It’s at the boundary of the property. Bross keeps a boat there.’

Agatha checked and found that Patrick and Phil seemed to be coping well and set off on the long journey to Downboys. She stopped on the way for a greasy breakfast, having not bothered to eat anything earlier. She phoned Toni and asked her to meet her at the pub at one o’clock.

Toni was in the pub lounge bar. She jumped up as Agatha came in and said, ‘I’ve lots of news. Did you find out anything?’

‘Only the make of gun and that the cedar tree was ideal for concealment and also that forensics will take ages to find anything.’

Toni’s eyes gleamed. ‘But the scene of crimes operatives found lots and I’m not surprised. They found hairs and traces of fibres from different sets of clothing, beer cans and chewing gum.’

‘What! Have we got an amateur murderer?’

‘No, we’ve got the village boys. I chatted up some of the local youth in the pub last night. It seems that dear Felicity was in the habit of doing a slow striptease with the lights on and the window open before she went to bed.’

‘But the dogs! All that security!’

‘They laughed and said the dogs were pussycats and Jerry is such a drunk he often passes out and forgets to feed them. They take along dog biscuits and meat and things and they’ve made pets of the beasts. They said you can sneak in and up to the house from the river side. They stopped laughing when I told them that the police were collecting every bit of evidence from in and around that tree.’

‘Did they ever see anyone actually getting into her bedroom by the window?’

‘One of them, Bert Trymp, a bit older than the others, said one night he was going to try because, to put it in his charming words, she must be gagging for it. It’s too difficult to leap from the tree to the window, so he carried along a ladder one night and up he went while his mates watched from the tree. Felicity sees his head and shoulders rising above the window and screams the place down.

‘Bert is arrested but when Felicity’s nightly striptease starts to come out, Bross-Tilkington drops the charges fast, makes a donation to the police widows-and-orphans fund, and the striptease stops.’

‘When was this?’

‘Two weeks before the wedding.’

‘Are the police questioning Bert?’

‘I don’t know. Gosh, if this comes out in the press, poor James is really going to look like a sucker. No wonder her father was desperate to get her married off’

‘And what about Jerry? Why wasn’t he fired?’

‘I thought maybe you could find out something from Olivia Bross. I’m going to drop the Tilkington. Such a mouthful. Was James able to be any help?’

‘Not in the slightest,’ said Agatha bitterly. ‘She played the virgin with him. No sex until after we’re married. I just don’t understand James at all.’

‘Beautiful people get away with a lot,’ said Toni, ‘and Felicity was so very beautiful.’

Agatha fought back an irrational impulse to cry.

‘Let’s go and see Olivia,’ she said. Are the press still around? Do we need to go the back way?’

‘No, we can use the front. Only a couple of local fellows.’

Agatha phoned Olivia as they were almost at the villa and told her to open the electronic gates. The rain was falling steadily as they arrived. Toni got out to phone on the intercom, ignoring the questions of two sodden reporters. The gates opened and they drove in. The reporters tried to follow but were shooed back by a policeman on duty outside.

Agatha fretted that the only real bits of investigation had come from Toni and Patrick. She was determined to take over the questioning of Olivia.

‘I wonder who cleans this place,’ whispered Toni. ‘I mean, I’m sure Olivia can’t clean it all herself’

I should have thought of that, Agatha’s mind grumbled. But she saw a way of getting rid of Toni. ‘Why don’t you leave Olivia to me,’ she said, ‘and go back into the village and ask around.’

‘Wouldn’t it just be easier to ask Olivia who cleans for her?’ said Toni reasonably. ‘Then I’ll take off and question her.’

‘Oh, all right.’ Agatha rang the bell. Olivia answered the door herself.

‘Oh, do come in,’ she said eagerly. ‘Have you any news?’

‘A few leads,’ said Agatha. ‘I would like to ask a few more questions.’

‘Let’s go into the lounge.’

‘Before we do that, would you please give us the name of anyone who cleans for you?’

‘I don’t see how that can be of any help, but there are two women, Mrs Fellows and Mrs Dimity. They live together in a cottage called Strangeways behind the church.’

‘I’ll be off then,’ said Toni. ‘Back later.’

Olivia and Agatha went into the drawing room. ‘Would you like tea or something?’ offered Olivia.

‘No, thank you. I wanted to ask you about that business about the local boys climbing up that tree and watching Felicity as she got ready for bed.’

‘That was disgusting!’ cried Olivia. ‘My poor innocent daughter.’

‘What I really want to know is why your man, Jerry, wasn’t sacked after that. He’s supposed to be protecting the house.’

Olivia looked uncomfortable. ‘He’s so loyal to my husband and he swore it would never happen again.’

‘Now, in the case of both of Felicity’s previous engagements, it appears the first was broken off because the man found he was homosexual and the second, because the bank manager found Felicity’s desire for lots of sex rather off-putting.’

‘That’s disgusting and none of it is true. It was George, my husband, who declared they weren’t suitable. Like me, he wanted only the best for Felicity. I can only assume that both men are so furious at being rejected that they are now making up stories.’

Could Olivia really be so naive? wondered Agatha.

‘Is your husband at home?’ she asked.

‘He has gone out in his boat with Sylvan. He said he needed to get away for a bit.’

‘Without you?’

‘I’m hopeless. I get so dreadfully seasick.’

Agatha experienced a rare feeling of claustrophobia. The room was overheated, the long windows were steamed up, and Olivia seemed to exude sentimental stickiness from every pore. Agatha reminded herself severely that the woman facing her had just lost her daughter.

‘I think I’d like to have a word with this Bert Trymp. Is he in the village?’

‘He works at the garage, but he’s a coarse fellow and will say anything.’

Agatha was glad to be outside again. The rain was slackening off. It wasn’t all that cold and yet Olivia had the central heating blasting away. The more she thought about Olivia’s lack of knowledge of her daughter’s sex life, the more puzzled she became. George Bross seemed a very domineering sort of man. Perhaps Olivia was simply a doting mother who gladly accepted her husband’s interpretation of things.

She drove the short distance to the garage. There was a small showroom to one side, displaying secondhand cars for sale. Behind the pumps was an office where customers paid for their petrol. There was no shop in the garage selling groceries. Possibly the grocery store directly opposite had protested at any such idea. She asked an elderly man who was cleaning up discarded rubbish where she could find Bert Trymp. ‘In the workshop,’ he replied. ‘Round the back.’

Holding her umbrella over her head and sidestepping oily puddles, Agatha made her way round to the shed at the back.

She asked a man in dirty blue overalls if she could speak to Bert Trymp. ‘Bert!’ roared the man, making Agatha jump. A young man emerged from the shadows at the back of the shed. He had a face like a younger John Bull: wide mouth, stocky figure, beer gut. ‘You that detective?’ he asked.