M Beaton: Agatha Raisin and the Wizard of Evesham

“You’re looking tired,” he said, his blue eyes full of concern.

He drove a silent Agatha home. He helped her out of the car and then said, “I would really like to see the inside of your cottage.”

Agatha was wearily thinking of polite excuses when a wrathful voice behind her made her jump.

“And just who the hell is this, Aggie!”

CHARLES stood there, his hands clenched into fists at his side. At first, Agatha was too taken aback to realize it was an act.

“I’ve been out for dinner with John,” she said. “Charles, may I introduce you? This is-”

“I don’t want to meet scum like this.” Charles seized her arm and jerked her towards him. Her clutch handbag went spinning and the contents spilled out over the road, exposed in the security lights which had come on in the front of Agatha’s cottage. Her little black tape recorder went flying across the cobbled surface of the road and landed at Mr. John’s feet.

He picked it up. Charles stood frozen, his hand on Agatha’s arm.

“Yours, I think.” Mr. John held out the tape recorder to Agatha, who numbly took it. His eyes glittered with malice and amusement.

Then he waved his hand and got into his car and roared off.

Agatha rounded on Charles. “What the hell were you playing at?” She stooped and began to gather up the contents of her bag.

“I was just playing my part,” said Charles mildly. “I went to the Red Lion and learned you were off with Mr. John. So I decided to hang about until you came home and play the jealous lover.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I couldn’t. I didn’t know what you were up to. Why didn’t you phone me? I thought we were in this together.”

“Oh, come into the house. I’m fed up. He saw the tape recorder, so he’s wise to us.”

He followed her into the house and through to the kitchen. “Maybe not.”

“Why not?” demanded Agatha, angrily plugging in the kettle. “I saw the expression in his eyes when he handed me that tape recorder.”

“Well, he knows you were in publicity. Lots of people carry those little tape recorders around. I sometimes carry one myself to remind me of appointments and things to do.”

“A blackmailer is not going to think that,” jeered Agatha.

“We don’t know he’s a blackmailer. Make me a coffee while I think. Give me a cigarette.”

“You don’t smoke.”

“I only smoke other people’s. It’s a charitable gesture. It reduces their intake.”

“And stops you spending the money yourself. Cheapskate! Oh, help yourself. There’s a packet in my handbag.”

Agatha made two cups of instant coffee. She had given up making fresh coffee and was back to microwaving most of her meals. Old habits refused to die. She was weary of trying to be “a village person.”

“What can we possibly do now?” she asked, sitting down at the table.

“I’m thinking. Let’s assume he is a blackmailer. Why does one become a blackmailer?”

“Power?”

“But money must be a strong motive. Money and greed. Think about this one. If you were to give him an expensive present. Drop the James business. Glow at him. Let him think he’s the one.”

“What present?” asked Agatha suspiciously.

“Little something from Asprey’s. Does he smoke?”

“No, not even mine.”

“What about a tasteful pair of solid-gold cuff-links in a dinky little Asprey box?”

“What about spending a thousand pounds? Are you going to contribute?”

He looked shifty and his hand instinctively clasped protectively over the breast of his jacket. The foreigner presses his heart, thought Agatha cynically, but your true blue-blooded Englishman presses his wallet to make sure it’s safe.

“Why should I waste a lot of money on a provincial hairdresser?” Agatha demanded.

“Because,” said Charles patiently, “it would keep the game going, and the reason for keeping the game going is you’re bored.”

“And so are you,” said Agatha shrewdly.

“But not as bored and depressed and lovelorn as you, light of my life.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Do. You’ll find he’ll melt like butter and only think the best of you.”

“If you’ve finished your coffee, I’ll show you out.” “I’m tired. Can’t I stay here?” “No. Out.”

“Okay.” He got to his feet. “Let me know how you get on.”

“I haven’t said I’ll do it.”

“Think about it, Aggie. Think about it.”

Charles was right. Agatha could not bear to drop what she was beginning to consider ‘her case.’

She drove to Moreton-in-Marsh station early the next morning and joined the commuters on the platform. Then the woman who manned the ticket office came out and shouted, “There will be no trains due to a shortage of engine drivers.”

Cursing, Agatha walked back over the iron bridge to the car-park. She got in her car and drove to Oxford and took a train from there to Paddington. From Paddington, she took a taxi to Asprey’s in Bond Street. In the almost religious hush of the great jeweller’s, she examined trays of cuff-links, finally selecting a heavy, solid-gold pair and paying a price for them which left her feeling breathless.

She then travelled to the City to see her stockbroker and be reassured that her stocks and shares were prospering. As she was in the City, she called at Pedmans to see Roy Silver, a public relations officer who had originally worked for her before she had sold out to Pedmans.

“I haven’t heard from you for a while,” said Agatha, reflecting that Roy looked as weedy and unhealthy as ever. But obviously he was doing well. Her practised eye noticed that his suit was Armani.

“I’ve been very busy, sweetie. How’s life in Boresville?”

“I thought you liked the country. You’re always saying how lucky I am.”

“A passing aberration. Sophisticates like me would wilt in the country.”

“You’re joking, of course.”

“Not really. What are you doing anyway? Village fetes?”

“No, much more exciting than that,” said Agatha, but remembered that she had to arrange the teas for Ancombe and had better get back and call a catering company.

“Murder?”

Agatha wanted to brag. “I’m chasing a blackmailer.”

“Tell me about it.”

So Agatha did.

Roy was intrigued. “Tell you what, I’ll come down this weekend and help you.”

He hadn’t bothered phoning her for a long time, so Agatha said huffily, “Can’t. I’m busy this weekend.”

When she got home, she phoned the hairdresser’s and made an appointment for the day after the next. The following day was the concert at Ancombe. Then she phoned a top catering firm in Mircester and ordered sandwiches, cakes and hot savouries to be delivered to her early the following morning. Agatha meant to convey the goodies to the concert herself and produce them as her own.

On the following morning, she transferred all the catering firm’s supplies into her own boxes and put them in the boot of her car and drove to Ancombe.

With the good excuse that she could not watch the concert because she would be too busy preparing the teas, she escaped into an adjoining hall where three schoolgirls had been drafted to help her put out the tables and chairs. The hall smelt like all church halls, dusty and redolent of dry rot and sweat. The church hall was not only used by the Scouts but by an aerobics class as well.

She could hear Miss Simms’s voice raised in shrill song. If it was meant to be Cher, then it was a Cher in the process of getting liposuction.

Agatha heated trays of savouries in the oven and spread cakes and sandwiches on plates. It looked a magnificent feast.