M Beaton - There Goes The Bride

‘Did you get any hint of a rejected lover anywhere?’

‘Not even a whiff. I didn’t even know about her previous engagements.’

‘Why don’t you come back to Hewes with me,’ urged Agatha. ‘We could go detecting like we did before.’

‘I’m sorry, Agatha, I have a heavy writing schedule and I just want to forget about the whole thing.’

Agatha got to her feet, her small eyes boring into him. ‘Well, I think you’re a wimp,’ she yelled and stormed out.

Angry tears ran down her face as she let herself into her cottage. It had been humiliating to hear her ex-husband burbling on about how beautiful Felicity had been and romantic Paris.

Then she sniffed the air. Cigarette smoke! And she hadn’t lit up a cigarette since she got back.

She took out her mobile phone to call the police and backed towards the front door.

‘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.’

MRS 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.’