M.C. Beaton - The Day the Floods Came

The garden bordered the churchyard where ancient stones leaned this way and that among the tussocky grass.

Mrs. Bloxby emerged bearing a tray with a glass of chilled wine and a plate of ham salad, saying, “There you are. You’ll feel better when you’ve had something.”

As Agatha ate, Mrs. Bloxby said, “Yes, she didn’t have to wear the wig and glasses. You say she was going to meet an old school friend? So why the secrecy? She envied you, you know. I think she wanted to be like you.”

“That makes me feel worse,” groaned Agatha. “Now the police have told me very firmly to back off and John doesn’t want to have anything to do with me and I think it’s because I kissed him.”

“Oh, Mrs. Raisin!”

“No, it’s not what you think. I was trying to warn him not to tell the police something. But you see, I’d got this hair growing above my upper lip and maybe he felt it against his skin and got disgusted.”

The vicar’s wife emitted an odd sound. Agatha glared at her. Were Mrs. Bloxby not such a lady, Agatha could have sworn she actually sniggered.

“Mrs. Raisin, here is a man who has just learned that a woman who used to visit him as much as she could has been brutally killed. Then you kiss him. I really don’t think he would have noticed if you’d had a full beard.”

“May I stay here for a bit?” asked Agatha. “I don’t feel like going back to my place. I let the cats out into the garden before I went to Worcester and they’ve been fed.”

“Stay as long as you like,” said Mrs. Bloxby, and then started guiltily as she heard her husband arriving home.

She rose hurriedly to her feet. “Back in a minute.”

Agatha heard the murmur of voices. Then she heard the vicar exclaim, “That wretched woman is nothing but trouble.”

Mrs, Bloxby returned to the garden just as Agatha heard the vicar’s study door slam.

“On second thoughts, I’d better be going.”

“Oh, do stay.”

“No, I planned to phone Roy Silver and see if there was any free-lance work going. I never got round to it. I’ll do it now. Keep myself occupied.”

A sad Agatha walked along to her cottage. Nobody liked her and nobody wanted her.

She was just turning into Lilac Lane when she saw Joanna Field going into John’s cottage.

She hesitated. Should she join them? What had Joanna found out?

Probably nothing, she thought sourly. Just finding some excuse to call on him.

Agatha decided to check her face for any other hairs and then put on a face-pack. The green goo was just beginning to harden when the doorbell rang.

She splashed water on her face and scrubbed it with a clean towel, and then ran downstairs.

Agatha opened the door to find John and Joanna there. “Why aren’t you at work?” she asked Joanna.

“We were all sent home early.”

“Joanna has some interesting news.” John smiled. “You’ve got little patches of some green stuff on your face.”

“Go into the kitchen,” said Agatha. “Back in a minute.”

She rushed upstairs again and this time looked in her magnifying mirror. Sure enough, there were little bits of green stuck to various parts of her face.

I need glasses, came the thought, but she quickly dismissed it. She washed and creamed her face and washed it again. Carefully she applied make-up before going back down to join them.

Joanna was wearing figure-hugging trousers in a biscuit colour and she had a crisp white blouse tied at her slim waist. John was wearing a blue shirt and blue cords in a soft material. Despite the difference in their ages, they looked to Agatha’s jaundiced eyes very much a couple.

“Coffee?” she asked.

“Wait till you hear Joanna’s news first,” said John.

Agatha joined them at the kitchen table and smiled at Joanna. I will not be jealous, she told herself firmly.

“It’s like this,” said Joanna. “Barrington was taken away on Sunday evening by the police.”

“How do you know this?”

“Wait. We didn’t know about it until yesterday, when Mrs. Barrington burst into our room at the office. She was raging. She said, “Have any other of you sluts been having an affair with my husband and trying to blackmail him?” Then she began to cry and it all came out. The police had taken him away for questioning. He’d spun her some story that they wanted to know more about Kylie’s friends. Then this morning they were back again and took him away again and this time she learned about Kylie blackmailing her husband. Well, we gave her tea and soothed her down. Phyllis added fuel to the fire by saying that she knew something had been going on when she didn’t know a thing. Mrs. Barrington ended up saying she’d had enough of him and would divorce him.”

“Did she think he might have killed her?”

“That’s just it,” said Joanna, her eyes glowing. “She said he could be very violent and she’s sure he did it and she’s going to tell the police that!”

“There’s only one problem with that,” said Agatha. “Why kill Kylie and in such an elaborate way after he had paid out the money?”

“Perhaps,” said John, “because she’d asked for even more.”

“And what about Mrs. Anstruther-Jones?”

“I think our murderer happened to be driving along and just saw her, the way he saw you. He recognized the fair hair and glasses and gunned the engine.”

“What do you mean, ‘the way he saw you’?” asked Joanna.

Agatha shot John a repressive look and said quickly, “Just what he said. He means the murderer thought Mrs. Anstruther-Jones was me.”

“How exciting!”

How exciting to be young and not have anyone out to kill you, thought Agatha. Then she had an awful idea. “What if the police release the fact that the killer thought she was me? What if they bring out all that stuff about me masquerading as representing a television company? Then everyone will know my true identity and whoever it is could come here looking for me.”

“I don’t think they’ll do that,” said John slowly. “Brudge won’t want to let his superiors know that he didn’t do much to stop you investigating. No, I don’t think they’ll do that.”

They discussed the case this way and that without getting any further. Then Joanna said, “I’d best go home now. I’m a bit hungry and haven’t had anything to eat yet.”

“I’ll take you for something,” said John.

“Would you?” Joanna beamed. “That’s very kind.”

Surely, thought Agatha, they are not going to leave me. Surely they are not going to just go off together without including me in the invitation.

But John said, “See you later.” They walked out. That was that.

Agatha began to feel very angry indeed. They both knew that a woman had been killed because she had been mistaken for her. It was her case, too, dammit.

She would phone Roy, see if there was any work, and leave for London. She looked down at the kitchen floor to find her two cats staring up at her. She felt a pang. It would mean leaving them, the only friends she had got.

She heard the doorbell ring. Ah, come to their senses, had they?

But it was Bill Wong.

“What’s all this I’ve been hearing?” he demanded. “My friend at Worcester police tells me that the woman who was killed last night was wearing your wig and glasses.”

“Want to go out for dinner and I’ll tell you about it?”

“All right. I’ve got a free evening.”

“We’ll go to the Marsh Goose and I’ll sit down and tell you everything.”

♦

When they were seated at a table by the window in the Marsh Goose in Moreton-in-Marsh, Agatha saw John and Joan at another table across the room. They waved to her. She ignored them. “Let’s order first,” said Agatha, “then I’ll begin at the beginning and go on to the end. Damn, I feel like getting drunk tonight, but I’ve got to drive you back after dinner and then you’ve got to drive to Cirencester.”