M Beaton: Agatha Raisin and the Wizard of Evesham

“I thought the sex very comfortable.”

“You’re not only immoral, Charles, you’re amoral.”

“Perhaps. How’s the case?”

Agatha sighed. “Dead in the water. I went to Portsmouth.”

“And?”

Agatha told him about Harriet.

“It’s a wonder you didn’t stay on in Portsmouth. It’s probably crawling with blackmailers of the wicked hairdresser.”

“John’s ex-wife probably knows all about it, but she could be anywhere in the country now. The police have the resources to trace her. I don’t. Oh, and I found out something else.” She told him about Jessie and Mavis.

Charles listened intently. Then he said, “Run that bit about Mavis past me again.”

Agatha looked at him in surprise but repeated what had happened during her interview with Mavis.

“And you believed her?” Charles reached across the table and fished a cigarette out of Agatha’s packet.

“Why not? She seemed a straightforward, honest woman. Her home was clean and tidy. It had the atmosphere of a happy family home.”

“I’d like to meet her.”

“Why?”

“She just sounds too good to be true.”

“Oh, well, I suppose you won’t be satisfied until you’ve met her. I never checked to see if you’d packed and taken your clothes away.”

“No, I rushed off and left them. I’ll go and dress and we’ll be off.”

“I wonder if she’ll be at home,” said Agatha as she turned off the by-pass and into the Four Pools Estate. “Perhaps we should have phoned first.”

“Better to surprise her,” said Charles. “Got another cigarette?”

“We’re nearly there and if you’re going to take up smoking in earnest, then I suggest you buy your own.”

“Filthy habit. There’s this hypnotist in Gloucester, said to work wonders.”

“I might try that,” said Agatha. “I heard about him. But if I do give up smoking, I hope to God I don’t turn into one of those morons who goes around making smokers’ lives hell. Here we are. You see, you didn’t have time for another cigarette.”

As they walked up the path, a curtain twitched. The door opened before they could even ring the bell and Mavis stood there, smiling a welcome.

“How nice to see you again!” she cried. “Come in. This your husband?”

I like this woman, thought Agatha. It was flattering to be considered Charles’s wife, as Charles was much younger than she.

Agatha introduced Charles and they both followed Mavis inside. Mavis bustled off to make tea while Charles walked around the room, peering at photographs. “Now here’s a thing, Aggie,” he whispered. “Our Mavis was on the stage in her youth.”

“So?”

“So her acting abilities might have fooled you.”

“I’m a good judge of character,” said Agatha huffily.

“Except when it comes to men.”

Agatha was glaring at him as Mavis tripped in bearing the tea-tray.

After she had served tea, Mavis asked brightly, “So what brings you back?”

Agatha looked helplessly at Charles, who smiled at Mavis and said, “Aggie here told me what you had said and I wondered why you had lied to her.”

Mavis goggled at him and Agatha stared at Charles in surprise.

Then Mavis’s face cleared and she laughed. “Oh, all that stuff about my Betty being a drug addict.”

“No,” said Charles. “I believe that was a lie. But I happen to know that Shawpart was blackmailing you.”

There was a shocked silence. “Mam!” called a child shrilly out on the street. A car drove past, a gust of wind rattled the leaves of the wisteria outside the window and then the room was quiet again.

At last Mavis said in a thin voice, “So that letter wasn’t burnt in the fire.”

Agatha looked to Charles for help, but he was studying Mavis, waiting for her to go on.

“If my husband finds out,” said Mavis, “it’ll be the end of our marriage.”

“He won’t,” said Agatha fiercely. “Tell her, Charles!”

But Charles waited patiently.

“It was like this,” said Mavis. “He flattered me. He said I should never have left the stage. Oh, he worked on me. He got me when I was feeling down and bored and he supplied a bit of excitement. At first it was just sneaky little coffee meetings and then he said we couldn’t talk freely when we were frightened that someone would see us. He invited me to his house. We drank a lot of champagne and he told me… he told me he loved me. He was so passionate, he seemed so sincere. And I thought I was the actor! So I went to bed with him. I was so infatuated, I was prepared to run away with him.”

She began to cry. They waited until she had blown her nose and composed herself.

“Then he did not get in touch with you,” prompted Agatha.

“Yes, and I was desperate. I thought I had done or said something. I wrote to him. When he phoned and said he wanted to meet me, I was over the moon. Then he told me unless I paid him he would send the letter to my husband.”

“I thought you didn’t have any money of your own,” said Agatha.

“I lied. I had a bit put by. But then what seemed like a miracle happened. He was murdered. No, it wasn’t me, although I dreamed of it. Don’t go to the police.”

“We won’t go to the police,” said Agatha. “And there’s no evidence. All the evidence was burnt in the fire.”

Mavis’s yes narrowed. “So where the hell do you pair get off, tormenting me?” She stood up. “Get out of here!”

“We’re only trying to find out who did it,” said Agatha patiently.

“That’s a job for the police. I’ve a good mind to report you.”

“If you do that,” said Charles, “we’ll be obliged to tell the police what we know about you.”

Mavis crumpled. “I’m sorry. But it has all been so horrible. I’m sorry I got angry.”

“That’s all right. We’ll be off,” said Charles. “Think no more about it.” He stood aside to let Agatha past, and then whipped round.

“You weren’t ever married to John Shawpart, were you?”

“No!”

“Know anything about his wife?”

“He said something about her being jealous of him. She was a hairdresser as well.”

They thanked her and left.

“How did you know about her, Charles?” asked Agatha as they drove off.

“I didn’t. I just guessed.”

“Why? How?”

“Well, Shawpart seems to have been a cunning bastard. If there was no money in it, he dropped them.”

“So what made you think he hadn’t dropped Mavis? She told me she had told him that she hadn’t any money and I believed her.”

“It was a lucky guess. I thought it was worth a try. I mean, she did tell him all those lies about herself to get his interest. She must have told him the one about her drug-dealing daughter was a lie or he wouldn’t even have bothered bedding her. He’d just have used that.”

“Let’s go back and make some notes,” said Agatha.

“Interested again?”

“Sort of. There might be something I’ve missed.”

“Now,” said Charles, sitting over a sheet of paper at Agatha’s kitchen table half an hour later, “let’s see what we’ve got. We’ve got Mavis Burke. She could have put ricin in his vitamin pills. Then there’s the receptionist, Josie. She was in love with him. Mr. and Mrs. Friendly. Maggie Henderson or her brutal husband. Harriet of Portsmouth or her husband.”

“But Harriet’s husband left her for the secretary.”

“So she said. Could be another liar. She could have looked shocked when Luke turned up on her doorstep, not at seeing him again but in case you guessed she’d been telling a pack of lies. Anyone else?”

“Jessie Lang, but that’s a non-starter.”

Charles leaned back in his chair. “Yes, let’s think about Jessie Lang. Why would our philandering blackmailer waste his time on a bit of crumpet with no money? Not his scene.”