M Beaton: Agatha Raisin and the Wizard of Evesham

“Well, we all make mistakes. Come over to the washbasin. What on earth gave you such a mad idea?”

Agatha allowed her to put the gown on and then sat down meekly at the wash-basin.

“I’d been investigating because I was the one who found him when he was dying,” she said. “He was a blackmailer.”

“Never!”

“Yes. So at first I thought that it might be one of the people he had been blackmailing and then I suddenly thought it might be his wife, and since you suddenly appeared and took over his staff, I leaped to the wrong conclusion that you might be his wife. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. Lean your head back. Comfy?”

Agatha nodded.

Across the road, Brian and Charles, with their headphones, on looked at each other. Brian removed his. “May as well take these things off.”

“Keep listening,” said Charles. “Poor Aggie. Let’s hear just how much of a fool she’s making of herself.”

“But I tell you one thing,” said Agatha. “I plan to go on and on until I track down the missing Mrs. Shawpart.”

Eve shampooed Agatha’s head with strong fingers. Suddenly those fingers buried themselves in her hair and held her head in a strong grip.

“Did you tell anyone you were coming here?” asked Eve.

“No,” lied Agatha.

“Just as well.”

“Why?”

“Because, you interfering bitch, you’re not going to get out of here alive.”

Across the road, Charles whipped out a mobile phone and called the police.

Agatha tried to get up and then yelped in pain as Eve held tightly on to her hair.

“He had it coming to him,” said Eve viciously. “He always said the success of the salon in Portsmouth was due to his talents. I thought, I’ll show the bastard. After the divorce, I set up a rival salon, but he poisoned people’s minds against me.”

Agatha forced herself to remain still, hoping against hope that the microphone was working. “And did you blackmail women as well?”

“I didn’t even know about that, not until just before I left Portsmouth, when some stupid woman came whining to me.”

“You set his house on fire? How come you had the keys?”

“I came back and cosied up to him. John was so vain, he thought he was irresistible. We spent a few nights together for old time’s sake and I got him to give me a set of keys.”

“But why set his house on fire?” Keep her talking and pray to God Charles has phoned the police, thought Agatha. Her knees were trembling and sweat from her forehead trickled down her face.

“Because I didn’t want the police finding our marriage certificate or any papers.”

“But he might have told someone that you were around!”

“He laughed and swore he hadn’t. Liked to keep his ladies thinking there was no one else but them in his life.”

Agatha strained her ears for the wail of a police siren but heard only the drivelling Muzak that was playing in the salon.

“But why didn’t the police find you? If you’ve changed your name by deed poll, they’d have got on to it.”

“Got forged papers in Glasgow. You can always get forged papers if you’re prepared to pay the price. Set up a bank account in my new name. Easy.”

“And where did you get the ricin?”

“When I was married to John, one of our customers gave me some castor-oil beans he’d got in India. He told me about the poison. I put them away in a drawer and forgot about them, until I realized how I could use them. I got another of my crooked friends in Glasgow to extract the poison and put it in a syringe. I simply injected it into the bastard’s vitamin pills and sat back and waited for results.”

“But why?” asked Agatha. “So he was cheating on you. Why kill him?”

“He did worse than cheat on me,” hissed Eve. “He said I was no good as a hairdresser. He took away my customers. No one insults my hairdressing skills.

“You were jealous of him,” said Agatha. “You bloody hairdressers are a lot of prima donnas. You killed him out of jealousy. But you were lucky. You could have been seen in Evesham. You could-”

Eve banged Agatha’s head painfully against the basin. “Shut up. I’m bored with you, you dreary old frump. He got into your knickers, didn’t he?” She banged Agatha’s head painfully again and Agatha yelled.

Keep her talking, thought Agatha although her head hurt and she was terrified.

“So you were never in Worcester?”

“No, I got some business cards printed in a machine, just in case.”

“And what about Mrs. Dairy?”

“The old cow recognised me and-”

Suddenly Eve stiffened. The salon was suddenly filled with the wail of police sirens.

Eve released Agatha’s hair.

Screaming like a banshee, Agatha hurtled out of the chair just as police poured into the shop. She did not wait for all the joy of hearing Eve being cautioned, she went straight out of the shop into Charles’s arms.

“What kept them so long?” she kept sobbing over and over again.

At the end of a long day of police questions and statements, Agatha and Charles finally found themselves alone in Agatha’s cottage.

“And the only praise I got from Bill,” said Agatha sourly, “was that he supposed it took one rank amateur to find another.”

“John’s wife certainly had the luck of the devil,” said Charles, nursing a brandy. “Your head’s still stiff with shampoo. Aren’t you going to wash it off?”

Agatha gave a squawk of alarm. “You should have said something before this. I wonder how she planned to kill me?”

“Well, she was banging your head. Probably meant to keep on banging it until you looked like Mrs. Dairy.”

“And then what would she have done?”

“Well, she had one false identity. Probably planned to flee back to Glasgow and get another. I’m starving. Go and wash your hair and I’ll take you out for dinner.”

“Right. Don’t drink all that brandy.”

Agatha went up to the bathroom and took of her clothes and threw everything she had worn into the laundry basket. Then she switched on the shower and took a bottle of shampoo and stood under the jet and shampooed her hair vigorously.

Then she stepped out and towelled her hair. She threw that towel on the floor and then dried her face. Her head felt strangely cold. She looked in the mirror and then began to scream.

She had not locked the bathroom door. Charles came bounding up the stairs, crashed open the door and then burst out laughing.

Too distressed to bother about her nakedness, Agatha bent down and picked up the towel with which she had dried her hair. Clumps of wet hair fell out of it onto the bathroom floor.

“The bitch must have used a depilatory,” said Charles when he could.

Aware at last that she was stark-naked, Agatha wrapped a bath-towel about herself. “What on earth am I to do?” she wailed.

“Buy a wig. You’re not completely bald. You’ve got little bit of hair sticking up from your head. Gosh, you do look funny.”

“I’m not going out for dinner looking like this.”

“Nonsense. Just wrap a scarf around your head.”

“Go away, Charles, until I recover.”

Charles went off laughing. Agatha gloomily dried herself and dressed and wrapped a pink chiffon scarf around her head, turban-fashion.

As she went down the stairs, the doorbell rang. “ Masses of press out there,” said Charles cheerfully. “Want to go out and address them? Your moment of glory has come.”

“No,” said Agatha, shrinking back. “Not like this. Charles, I don’t want anyone to know what she did to me!”

“Why?”

“It’ll make me a laughing-stock. You talk to them. Leave me out of it.”

Charles shrugged and then went outside. Agatha could hear the sound of his light upper-class voice chatting away happily.