M Beaton: Agatha Raisin and the Haunted House

They enjoyed a pleasant dinner. I’m glad Charles is back in my life, thought Agatha. I was silly about Paul. But Charles would not stay for long. He never did. She often wondered what he really thought of her.

When they returned to her cottage, she phoned Paul but there was no reply. She locked up for the night and they both went to their respective beds. The night was humid and warm. Agatha tossed and turned, suddenly uneasy about Paul. Where had he gone?

She groaned and got up. She would just look out of her front door and see if his car was outside. The old banger he had bought had been there earlier but the MG had been missing.

Agatha unbolted and unlocked the front door after switching off the burglar alarm. She glanced at her watch. One in the morning. Paul’s MG was outside his cottage. Good. He was safe and sound.

She was about to close the door when she stiffened. Something was not quite right. She opened the door wide and walked out onto the step and looked along. Suddenly she saw a flickering light at one of the downstairs windows. It was like the light from a pencil torch. Paul would hardly be looking around his own cottage with a torch.

Agatha closed the door quietly and ran upstairs and woke Charles. “What is it?” he grumbled. “I’ve only just dropped off. Too hot in this cottage. Why don’t you get air-conditioning?”

“Listen. Paul’s MG is parked outside his cottage but someone’s in there with a torch. It can’t be Paul.”

Charles got up and dressed hurriedly. “You wait here and I’ll creep along and have a look.”

Agatha went to her own room and got dressed. Maybe Paul had had some sort of power cut. She went downstairs to meet Charles, who was coming back. “There’s a full moon,” he said. “I knelt down and peered in the front window. It’s Frampton!”

“Oh, my God. What has he done with Paul?”

“Phone Bill,” said Charles. “If he’s killed three people, he won’t hesitate to kill us.”

Agatha phoned Bill’s home. He answered the phone himself and she was grateful she did not have to explain anything to his mother.

She told him about Frampton being in Paul’s cottage.

“Sit tight,” ordered Bill. “We’ll be along as fast as possible.”

After she had rung off, Charles said, “Let’s have a drink. All we have to do is wait. Even if he’s gone by the time the police arrive, he’ll need to explain why he was driving Paul’s car and what he was doing in the cottage.”

Agatha shuddered. “He may not have been driving Paul’s car. He may have forced Paul to drive it.”

Charles poured drinks and they sat uneasily, waiting. Half an hour passed.

“Did you lock the front door?” asked Charles.

“I was so upset I forgot,” said Agatha. “I’ll do it now.”

She was just getting to her feet when the sitting-room door opened and Peter Frampton walked in, a small pistol in his hand. “The diary,” he snarled. “Where is it?”

“What diary?” asked Charles.

“Don’t waste my time.” Frampton’s pupils were like pinpoints. Agatha was sure he was on some sort of drug.

“You can’t shoot us,” said Agatha. “You’ve already murdered three people. I mean, why go to such elaborate lengths when you could just have shot them?” She thought she heard a movement outside. Bill?

“The first,” said Frampton calmly, “was supposed to look like an accident. I knew about that secret passage. I thought I could frighten the old bitch out of there, but she wouldn’t move. Then dear Robin came on the phone. I’d had an affair with her. She knew nothing, but she was hinting that she would tell the police about what she called my obsession with finding that diary. So she had to go. And just when I thought I was in the clear, that idiot, Briar, started to blackmail me. He’d been out in the fields with his dog during the night I was at Ivy Cottage and he said he had seen me leaving. Diary, and quick about it.”

“I don’t know what diary you’re talking about,” said Agatha loudly.

“Sir Geoffrey Lamont’s diary. I read in an old manuscript that he had told one of his fellow prisoners before his death that it was hidden in Ivy Cottage. If I had that, I’d publish my findings and make my mark on the historical scene. I need it. Get it. I’ll show that dried-up old stick of a professor. No one humiliates me! I’ll start off by shooting you in the kneecaps and I’ll keep on shooting until one of you cracks.”

The door crashed open. Bill stood there, flanked by two armed policemen. “Drop your weapon and lie on the floor,” he ordered.

Frampton looked down at the gun in his hand. Then, quick as a flash, he raised it and shot himself through the head.

Agatha stood white and shaking as his body slumped to the floor.

Charles put an arm around Agatha and led her from the room and Bill took out his mobile phone and dialled and began to rap out instructions.

They waited in the kitchen. The forensic team arrived, Run-corn and Evans arrived and the police pathologist arrived.

At last Runcorn, flanked by Evans, joined them in the kitchen. They made statements about how they had seen someone shining a torch in Paul’s cottage, how Charles had gone along and recognized Frampton and how they had phoned Bill.

Runcorn eyed them narrowly. “DC Wong heard Frampton confess to the three murders. It seemed he wanted to get his hands on some old diary. He thought you’d got it. Have you got it?”

“No,” lied Agatha. If she admitted they had it, she could be charged with obstructing the police in an investigation and then she would have to tell them where she’d found it.

“Sir Charles?”

“Haven’t a clue what he was babbling on about,” said Charles.

“Then you don’t mind if we search this cottage? I can always get a warrant.”

Charles felt a stab of alarm. He didn’t know where Agatha had hidden it.

“Go ahead,” said Agatha. “But we’ve got to find Paul.”

“You’ll stay right where you are until we search the place.”

Charles and Agatha sat huddled together at the kitchen table. “Where did you hide it?” whispered Charles.

“Where he’ll never find it.”

“Aggie, they’ll even look in the flowerpots.”

“Shh. Here’s Bill.”

Bill sat down next to them. “We’ve got our murderer, thanks to you, Agatha. But what’s all this about a diary? And what put you on to Frampton?”

“Woman’s intuition. I never liked him,” said Agatha. “It was when we searched Robin’s studio and found that portrait we knew he had lied about never having met her.”

“They’ll be in here shortly to search the kitchen for that diary he was talking about.”

“The man was mad,” said Agatha. “Obsessed over some old diary. We went to see a history don in Oxford.” She told him how Frampton had been humiliated by the professor.

“And you’re sure you don’t have that diary?”

“Absolutely not.”

“If you say so. Of course, it wouldn’t surprise me if you and Paul had found that secret passage and somehow found this diary.”

The police entered the kitchen to start their search.

Agatha felt a wave of delayed shock. She said, “I’m going up to bed. You know where I am.”

Charles followed her upstairs. On the landing, he said, “Where did-” but was silenced by Agatha putting a hand over his lips.

“Go to bed, Charles,” she said.

Fully dressed, Agatha huddled under the duvet, shivering despite the warmth of the night. She fell asleep and was wakened two hours later by Bill shaking her shoulder.

“They haven’t found anything,” he said. “You must have hidden it well.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Agatha, struggling up.