M Beaton: Agatha Raisin and the Haunted House

“Maybe he’ll be at work.”

“With his mother so recently dead? Oh, if you’ve got better things to do…”

“Don’t sulk. Let’s go.”

“He’s a lot better off than his sister to live here,” commented Paul when Agatha parked in Paxton Lane. “These little gems of houses are all seventeenth-century.”

“I wish we’d asked her what he worked at, just in case he isn’t at home,” said Agatha.

“Too late now. Come on.”

There were no gardens in front of the houses, only small paved areas, but all were decorated with bright tubs of flowers.

Paul rang the bell. A curtain twitched at the side of the door and then after a few moments, it was opened.

“Mr. Harry Witherspoon?” asked Paul.

“Yes, who are you?”

“We are friends of your mother’s. We would like to pay our respects at the funeral.”

He was surprisingly short in stature, compared to his tall mother and sister. He had thick grey hair and a round face crisscrossed with red veins. A small toothbrush moustache decorated his upper lip. His grey eyes were wary.

“The funeral’s on Friday,” he said. “Saint Edmund’s in Towdey. At eleven o’clock. No flowers.”

Agatha remembered that Towdey was a village near Hebberdon. The door began to close.

“Might we have a word with you?” asked Paul.

The door reluctantly opened. “Come in, but just for a minute. Have to get round to the shop.”

“And what shop’s that?” asked Agatha as they followed him in.

“Mircester Antiques in the Abbey Square.”

The parlour into which he led them was furnished with various pieces of antique furniture. Paul recognized a pretty George III table and a Sheraton cabinet.

Harry did not ask them to sit down. He took a position in front of a marble mantelpiece. “Who exactly are you?”

“I am Paul Chatterton,” said Paul, “and this is Agatha Raisin. We visited your mother to see if we could catch the ghost for her.”

“Oh, that nonsense. She was old, you know, and I think her mind was going. Her death was a mercy in a way.”

“When did you last see her?”

“I dunno. Might have been Christmas.”

“That long,” exclaimed Agatha.

His eyes narrowed.

“I don’t see what I do or when I last saw my mother is any business of yours. Now, if you don’t mind…”

“Not much there,” remarked Paul as they got into the car.

“You know, we’re both assuming it was murder,” said Agatha. “Maybe it was just an accident after all. Let’s go round to police headquarters and see if Bill is in.”

At police headquarters, they were put into an interview room and told to wait. To their surprise, after a long wait two detectives entered, neither of which was Bill.

“Isn’t Bill here?” asked Agatha.

“This is our investigation,” said one. “I am Detective Inspector Runcorn and this is Detective Sergeant Evans. We gather from DS Wong that the pair of you spent a night at Mrs. Witherspoon’s house at Hebberdon to see if you could lay the ghost for her. Is that true?”

“Yes,” said Paul.

Runcorn consulted notes in front of him. “You are Paul Chatterton and you are Mrs. Agatha Raisin?”

They both nodded.

“Okay,” said Runcorn. “I gather you didn’t find any ghosts.”

“That’s right,” said Agatha. “But there was this weird white mist, you know, like dry ice.”

“We’ll start with Mr. Chatterton,” said Runcorn. “Did you think the old woman was gaga?”

“On the contrary,” said Paul. “I thought she was very clear-minded and remarkably fit for her age.”

“Not infirm or tottering in any way?”

Agatha butted in. “Those stairs she’s supposed to have fallen down,” she said eagerly, “they were shallow and well-carpeted.”

“In a minute, Mrs. Raisin. Now, Mr. Chatterton. Were you both there all night?”

Agatha relapsed into a sulky silence.

“I was there longer than Mrs. Raisin,” said Paul.

“Why was that?”

Paul grinned. “Mrs. Raisin had a fright and ran away.”

“What frightened her?”

“I…” began Agatha.

Runcorn held up his hand. “Mr. Chatterton?”

“When the mist began to seep in from under the door, I told Mrs. Raisin to run up the stairs to see if Mrs. Witherspoon was all right. Mrs. Witherspoon appeared in a long night-gown and green face pack. Mrs. Raisin screamed, ran out of the house and into her car and drove home. I had to phone her later and ask her to come back and pick me up.”

The three men laughed heartily, bonding together in that moment in their shared amusement at the idiocy of women.

“And after Mrs. Raisin had left, did anything else happen?”

“No, Mrs. Witherspoon told me to let myself out, that she never wanted to see either of us again. I waited for a bit and then, as I said, I phoned Mrs. Raisin.”

“Interesting, that.”

“What I think…” began Agatha desperately.

Both detectives rose. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Chatterton. We’ll be in touch if we can think of anything else to ask you.”

“Just wait one sodding minute!” howled Agatha Raisin. “I am not the invisible woman. I have solved cases for you before. This is the twenty-first century. How dare you all go on as if I don’t exist and have nothing to contribute? Where is Bill Wong?”

“Lunch break,” said Runcorn. He held the door open for them and as Paul passed him, gave him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder.

“You weren’t much help,” raged Agatha outside.

“Calm down. You couldn’t really have added anything, could you?”

“I could have asked a lot of useful questions.”

“Such as?”

“Such as, who apart from daughter Carol had a key? Is there any other way into the house? It’s very old. There could be a secret passage.”

“You’re romancing, Agatha.”

“No, I am not!” she howled, causing several passers-by to turn and stare.

“Remember the Roundheads and Cavaliers?” asked Agatha, lowering her voice. “All around us are old places with secret rooms and passages. I remember hearing there was one old place over near Stratford and they discovered when they were lining the chimney that there was a secret room half-way up the inside of the chimney. Also, how much is the house worth? It’s a thatched two-storied cottage, and very roomy inside. It’s got beams and an ingle-nook fireplace in the living-room, all those little features that so delight estate agents.”

“I went through to the kitchen when you went upstairs,” said Paul. “There’s a very large extension been built on to the back of the house.”

“Furthermore,” pursued Agatha, “it really gets my back up when I am ignored because I am a woman.”

“Never mind. Let’s try that awful pub. Bill might be there and you can fire all your questions at him.”

Bill was there, tucking into a plate of greasy egg and chips. Agatha sat down while Paul went to the bar to get them drinks and launched into a bitter tirade about her treatment.

Bill heard her out and then said mildly, “There’s nothing I can do about it, Agatha. It isn’t my case.”

“But you know something about it?”

“Maybe.”

“Who has keys to the house?”

“The daughter. No one else.”

“What about son Harry, who gets everything?”

“He says he doesn’t have a key. When the hauntings started, Mrs. Witherspoon got all the locks changed. She gave a key to Carol, not to Harry.”

“Why?”

“I gather Harry only called round infrequently and phoned before he did so.”

“What’s his financial situation like?”

“They’re looking into that.”

“Oh, are they?” Agatha’s bearlike eyes gleamed. “So they’re not sure about it being an accident?”