M Beaton - A Spoonful of Poison

“I take you for someone who loves getting his picture in the papers.”

“Agatha! Really!” Roy suddenly felt his mobile phone burning a hole in his pocket. Would the police check it? Would they find out he had phoned two of the nationals? He eased it out of his pocket and let it slide to the floor of the car.

When they got out of the car, Roy looked up at the sky. “There you are. I knew a storm was coming.”

Great black clouds were building up to the west.

They got out of the car. “You first, Mrs. Raisin,” said Wilkes.

The inside of the police unit was like an oven.

Wilkes left the door open and switched on an electric fan. Bill Wong was there. He put a tape in the recorder, stated the time, day, and who was interviewing whom, and the questioning started.

Agatha was beginning to suffer from delayed shock, so she made just a brief statement of how she had come to discover Sybilla.

“Why did you go to see her?” asked Wilkes.

Agatha hesitated. She had really wanted to know if there was any way in which Sybilla could have killed George’s wife, but she didn’t want to think about George and had no proof at all, so she said instead, “I just wondered if she had heard any gossip around the village, any feuds or competition in the jam-making business. Stuff like that. Was it suicide? Did she leave a note?”

“Yes. It’s a straightforward case of suicide.”

“Was the note typewritten?” asked Agatha eagerly.

“This is not Morse. This is real life,” said Wilkes. “The letter was in her own handwriting as far as we can judge at the moment.”

“And what did it say?” asked Agatha.

Wilkes hesitated. He hated giving Agatha any information at all. Then he said reluctantly, “It said, ‘I cannot continue to live with a death on my conscience.’ And it is signed.”

“A death? One death? But there were two deaths. Could she have been ref-Never mind.”

“But we do mind,” put in Bill Wong, his almond-shaped eyes shrewd. “Did you have another death in mind?”

“No, no, I don’t know what I meant,” said Agatha hurriedly.

The questioning went on. At last she was glad to escape and dragged Roy away from a group of reporters and told him the police were waiting for him.

“Don’t say anything about us thinking Sybilla might have murdered George’s wife,” she hissed.

She gave a succinct statement to the press about how she and Roy had found the body and then hurried to her car. They followed her, but she switched on the engine and turned on the air conditioning until they retreated.

There was a gentle rise outside the churchyard where she was parked and she could see the road dipping down into the village. Huge black clouds were towering up in the sky above the end of the village. Seeing that the press had decided to leave her alone, Agatha opened the windows and switched off the engine.

The sunlight was retreating before the menacing black cliff of clouds. There was a blinding white flash of lightning and then a tremendous clap of thunder. With a great whoosh the rain came pouring down. Agatha closed the windows. The rain was so heavy, so monsoon-like, that it was like being parked in the middle of a waterfall.

The passenger door was wrenched open and Roy tumbled in. “I’m soaked,” he wailed. “I asked them to let me stay in the unit for a bit until the rain eased off, but they wouldn’t let me.”

“Let’s go home,” said Agatha. “There’s nothing more we can do here in this storm.”

Toni and Harry had run to the church again for shelter. Toni began to feel awkward in his presence. He obviously came from a well-to-do family while her background of a slummy house, drunken mother, brother who had committed suicide and a father she did not know weighed heavily on her.

Harry, seemingly unaware of her discomfort, chatted on about his life at Cambridge.

At last, Toni interrupted him. “I think the storm’s rolled over.”

They went outside into a yellow, watery sunlight. Everything glittered with raindrops and a golden river ran down the middle of the village street.

They mounted Harry’s bike and set off. When they reached her flat, Toni dismounted and said awkwardly, “Thanks for the ride.”

“What about this evening?” asked Harry cheerfully. “Fancy a bit of dinner?”

“No. I’ve got a date,” lied Toni.

“Oh. Right. See you around.”

Agatha was pacing up and down the living room of her cottage, a gin and tonic in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

“I wonder if Sybilla left everything to George in her will.”

“But it seems a clear case of suicide,” said Roy.

“Suicides can be faked.”

“The note was clear enough. I’m watching Law & Order . We’ll talk later.”

Agatha glanced at the screen. “The rich kid did it.”

“You’ve seen it before!”

“No, I haven’t. American television can be terribly snobby. If there’s a rich college kid, he’s always the murderer.”

“I want to see it,” complained Roy.

Agatha retreated to the kitchen and was just sitting down at the table when the doorbell rang. She opened the door and found Bill Wong looking quizzically at her.

“Come in,” said Agatha. “Where’s your boss?”

“This is unofficial. You were about to say something. Why were you surprised that only one death was referred to in the suicide note?”

“I wasn’t.”

“I know you of old. Out with it. Agatha, you’ve got into trouble before and nearly got yourself killed by not telling me the full story.”

Agatha capitulated. “Oh, sit down. Drink?”

“No, I’m driving. Coffee would be nice.”

“Right. There’s some still hot in the percolator.”

When Bill was seated at the table, with Agatha’s cats climbing over him, Agatha began to outline the idea she had formulated that George Selby’s wife had been pushed down the stairs by Sybilla. “Those two jam-making lesbians, Maggie Tubby and Phyllis Tolling, seem pretty sure of it. Mind you, they are a malicious pair of women. But I had the idea that if I could solve that case-assuming there was a case to be solved-then it might lead to whoever poisoned the jam. And if Sybilla was so dotty about George that he suggested she bump off his wife, he might have driven her to suicide, hoping to inherit her money.”

“We found Sybilla’s will. She had a sister, Cassandra. Cassandra gets the lot. She is a Mrs. Unwin, married well. Husband is head of a building contractors’. Pots of money.”

“But George might have thought she would leave it all to him.”

“I know you’ve had far-fetched ideas before that turned out to be true, but this one is ridiculous. Also, I don’t think the poisoning of the jam was intended to kill anyone. I think it was a senseless prank that went wrong. Think about it. There seems to have been no specific target. That’s what was making it so difficult trying to find out who did it. But now we are sure it was Sybilla. There is no other explanation for her suicide or for that note. As far as Wilkes is concerned, the case is closed. He told the vicar his conclusions, so I’m afraid, if you want to go on pursuing the matter, you won’t be paid for it.”

Agatha was increasingly busy in the following weeks and put the Comfrey Magna case out of her mind. She needed to build up a healthy bank balance to make up for all she had spent on the fête. It was suddenly considered fashionable by all sorts of people to hire a private detective. Women wanted to find out if their partners or husbands were cheating on them and were prepared to pay Agatha fifteen hundred pounds each for her agency’s skills. Agatha could remember a time when only the rich took foreign holidays in winter. Now loads of ordinary odds and sods crammed the airport departure lounges. Once, a visit to the beautician was for people with money. Now it was a growth industry. Hiring a private detective seemed to be the latest thing to do.