M Beaton - Agatha Raisin and the Wizard of Evesham

“You’re ever so kind,” said Jessie, her face now radiant with relief.

Agatha walked quickly away. But what, niggled a voice in her brain, just what if Wayne knew about it and took revenge? I should have asked for Wayne’s address, but then I can’t ask now. I’ve done enough damage by pretending to be a detective. I hope to God I never run into her in Evesham. I hope she never learns that I’ve got nothing to do with the police.

She felt a weariness when she walked back to her car. How pleasant it would be to forget about the whole thing and sit in the meadows and watch the placid river flowing past. Evesham people did not seemed to be plagued with ambition. Yes, that’s it, Agatha Raisin! It’s just ambition. You want to prove to the police you can do better.

Then she thought, what about that woman who was complaining about her daughter, Betty, pushing drugs? Her husband was called Jim. How to find out? Not from Josie. Damn Charles, he should have asked her about it. There was Garry, however. If she made an appointment with Garry, she could maybe get something out of him.

She had not tipped him that time he had done her hair, she had been so cross with the result. She could go in and, if he was free, start off my apologizing for her previous lapse and tip him generously. Agatha decided to forget about going to Worcester.

She drove to the Merstow Green car-park and then walked along the High Street to Eve’s. Eve was perming a woman’s hair. Apart from that, there were no other customers in the shop.

Josie looked at Agatha with barely concealed animosity. “Is Garry free?” asked Agatha.

“I’ll get him,” said Josie ungraciously.

She disappeared into the back premises and then came back followed by Garry.

“I just happen to have a cancellation,” said Garry brightly. He swirled a gown around Agatha and led her through to the wash-basins. No juniors, Agatha noticed. Had they been sacked due to lack of business? She fumbled under her gown and drew a fiver out of the pocket of her jacket. “Here, I forgot to tip you last time.”

“Thanks a lot,” said Garry, visibly brightening.

“Very quiet today,” said Agatha. “I just want a blow-dry, please.”

Garry looked around and then bent over her. “Don’t know what’s happening. All Mr. John’s customers came here at first.”

“Are they going somewhere else?”

“I think they’re going to Thomas Oliver down the street.”

“Got a good reputation, have they?”

“Never been in there.”

Agatha waited until her hair was washed and she was led through into the salon. Eve was heading out of the door. “Won’t be long, Garry,” she said curtly. “Mind the store.”

“There she goes,” he said. “You’d think she might wait around a bit. Sometimes customers walk in off the street.”

“You don’t seem to be enjoying yourself much here,” said Agatha sympathetically.

“It’s dead boring. Too quiet.” He raised the blow-drier.

“Mr. John’s always seemed to be full of people and gossip,” Agatha said. “And the things they said! I remember hearing a woman talking about her husband, Jim, and her daughter Betty. She even said that she thought her daughter might be pushing drugs.”

“Oh, that’d be Mavis Burke. You have to take everything she says with a pinch of salt.”

“Local woman?”

“Yes, lives in one of those new houses on the Four Pools Estate.” He switched on the drier and began to work busily.

I can’t ask him if he knows the address, thought Agatha. That would be pushing it. I’ll go to the post office and check the phone book for Burkes.

She suffered dismally under the ministrations of the energetic Garry. He had been bad enough before, but now he was worse. She looked sadly at her bouffant hair-style.

“Very nice,” she said bleakly. She tipped him again, paid Josie and went out into the High Street.

She went into a phone-box at the post office and checked her Call Minder. “No messages,” said the tinny, elocuted voice, with what Agatha felt was smug satisfaction. So face up to it. Charles had laid her and now he was gone and she was on her own.

She asked at the counter for the Worcestershire phone book and ran her finger down the Burkes. There was one Burke on the Four Pools Estate, and J. Burke at that.

I’ll show Charles, I’ll show the police, I’ll show everybody I can do it on my own. Agatha strode along the High Street to the car-park. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in a shop window and shuddered. The things I suffer in the name of detection!

She drove to the Four Pools Estate. How quickly Evesham was spreading out. A new McDonald’s had been built in about two weeks earlier in the year and a large new pub in about two months. Soon the countryside would be swallowed up. Agatha realized that she was in danger of becoming one of those people she had hitherto despised-the I-know-they’ve-got-to-live-somewhere, but-why-can’t-it-be-some-where-else? type of person.

Before she got out of the car, she took a comb out of her handbag and wrenched it down through her lacquered hair until she felt she had flattened it a bit.

As she braced herself to walk up a neat garden path, she was engulfed in a sudden wave of depression. Charles’s cavalier treatment of her brought back all her fierce longing for James and her mind began to credit him with warmth and affections that he did not have.

She rang the doorbell.

The door was opened. She recognised Mavis immediately, but Mavis did not recognise her.

“I would like you to know, we go to mass every Sunday,” said Mavis crossly, “and we don’t want anything to do with the likes of you!”

The door began to close.

“I’m not a Jehovah,” said Agatha quickly. “I was a client of Mr. John’s.”

The door opened again. “The one that died?”

“Was murdered, yes. May we talk?”

“Yes, come in.” Mavis had an ordinary sort of face without any particular distinguishing features, pale blue eyes and a surprisingly smooth and shining stylish head of hair.

Mavis, as she led the way into a cosy living-room, did not evince any signs of fear or nervousness. “Sit down, Mrs…?”

“Raisin. Call me Agatha.”

“Right Agatha. I’ll get us some tea. I’d just put the kettle on and I’m dying for a cuppa.”

When Mavis left the room, Agatha looked about her. She had somehow expected the mother of a drug addict and pusher would live in squalor. But the living-room was furnished with a three-piece suite in shades of gold and brown. An electric fire with mock coals glowed cheerfully. There were framed family photographs on the walls and a crucifix over the fireplace. Women’s magazines and television guides lay on the coffee-table.

After a short time Mavis entered carrying a tray on which was a fat teapot and china mugs decorated with roses and a plate of cakes, bright with pink and white icing.

“Terrible business, that,” said Mavis, pouring tea. “And to think I knew him!”

“As a client?”‘ Agatha accepted a mug of very dark strong tea.

“Oh, no, he even took me out for dinner once. What’s your interest?”

“I suppose I am by way of being an amateur detective,” said Agatha modestly, for she privately thought there was nothing amateur about her efforts at all.

“Oh, I know. You was in the papers once. Your hubby got bumped off. This is exciting. Just like on telly. Wait till I tell my Jim.”

Jim, the monster! Agatha was beginning to feel bewildered.

“Why did he ask you out and you a married woman?”

“Well, look, it all started with a sort of bet I’d had with Selma Figgs next door. She was saying how Mr. John was like a film star. ‘We couldn’t get off with one of those, now could we, Mavis,’ she says to me. So I said, ‘I bet you a tenner I can.’ I knew our Mr. John was a bit of a ladies’ man and he always seemed to be chatting up right frumps, if you ask me.”