M.C. Beaton - The Day the Floods Came

Agatha’s hand strayed nervously to her upper lip. She remembered she had the phone number of a hypnotist in Gloucester. She had always been meaning to go, but had kept putting it off. She phoned the hypnotist, who said he could see her if she could be at his consulting rooms in an hour and a half’s time, as he had just received a cancellation. Agatha agreed to be there and then rushed to get ready. The day was dry but misty. Agatha drove steadily through a grey world. Water dripped from the trees beside the road.

She managed to find a parking place near the hypnotist’s consulting rooms. She was five minutes early, so she celebrated with what she swore would be her last cigarette.

Half an hour later, it was all over. He had told her that from now on every cigarette she smoked would taste terrible, like burning rubber.

With a feeling of having actually done something for her health and well-being, she drove back home.

As she parked outside her cottage, she saw a familiar figure standing on her doorstep. Freda Stokes. What now? thought Agatha as she got out of the car. Another row? She pinned a smile of welcome on her face.

Freda greeted her with a cry of “Oh, Agatha. I’m so sorry.”

“Come inside,” said Agatha, opening the door. “Come through to the kitchen. Sit down. I’ll make some coffee.”

Agatha plugged in the percolator and sat down at the kitchen table opposite Freda.

“I didn’t want to believe what you told me. I couldn ‘t believe what you told me,” said Freda. “The police called on me. Mr. Barrington has admitted paying Kylie – my Kylie! – to keep her quiet. I’m beginning to wonder if I knew my daughter at all. She was always like a child to me. Innocent. ‘I’m not like those other girls, Mum,’ she’d say. ‘I don’t sleep around. I’m saving myself for my wedding day’.”

“Did she need a lot of money?” asked Agatha, wondering if Kylie had indeed had a drug habit.

“She was always asking me for money. It was a bit hard for me, for I don’t make that much. But she was my only child. I couldn’t refuse her. Now I remember things about her, like she would wear clothes for a few months and then take them back to the shop and try to get her money back. She had this raincoat, oh, for about eight months, and she took it back to the shop and tried to say she had just bought it. But they wouldn’t take it back. So she asked me to take it to the dry-cleaners. I did that and gave her the coat. She took it into her bedroom and then she came out with it and it was covered in grease spots. She said the cleaners had ruined it and I had to take it to them and demand the price of the coat. They paid up in the end but they accused me of having put the grease stains on myself. They said there was no way it could have happened otherwise.” Freda looked tearfully at Agatha. “Do you think Kylie was greedy? ”

“Perhaps,” said Agatha cautiously.

“And then there were times when there was money missing from my purse. I had a young girl working at the stall with me during the school holidays. I thought it must be her and fired her. Now I mink it might have been Kylie. Where did I go wrong?”

By pretending nothing was happening, thought Agatha.

Aloud she said, “I have to ask you this. Do you think she’d been taking drugs?”

“No! But then, I didn’t know about the blackmail or anything,” wailed Freda. “Maybe she took that overdose herself and the people that gave her the stuff panicked.”

“That’s possible except for the fact that she was wearing that wedding dress and slipped out late at night. Someone asked her to let them see it.”

Agatha stood up and poured two mugs of coffee and put one, along with milk and sugar, in front of Freda. “Was she very proud of the wedding dress?”

“No, that’s the thing. It was my sister, Josie’s, girl’s gown. Josie’s daughter, Iris, had only worn it once and it cost Josie a mint. Lovely gown, it was. Kylie said she wanted a new one, but I dug my heels in on that. What’s the point, I said to her, of paying out all that money on a gown you’ll only be wearing once? And then Iris and Kylie were the same size.”

Agatha’s interest quickened. “If she was worried about it, she might have said to someone that she didn’t want to wear it and they said, “Well, bring it round and let me have a look.” That suggests another woman. When she got home, did she make a phone call or have any phone calls?”

“She went straight to her room and then I heard her playing a CD. She had a mobile phone. But the police took that away and checked all phone calls to and from the house. She didn’t make a phone call that evening.”

“Does this mean you want me to go on investigating?” asked Agatha.

“Yes, please. I feel I know the worst about my daughter now and nothing else can shock me.”

“Did she keep a diary?”

“No. I bought her one once, but she never bothered to write anything in it.”

“Letters from anyone?”

“None of those. Young people seem to use the phone these days.”

“I’ll keep in touch with you,” said Agatha. “I’ll do my best, but the police have warned me off.”

♦

After Freda had left, Agatha phoned John Armitage. “You’d better drop round,” she said. “There’s been a new development.” When John arrived, Agatha told him about the visit from Freda and what she had said.

“We need to find out more about that hen party,” said John. “We need to find out if one of them volunteered to look at the: dress, and there’s another thing.”

“What?”

“No phone calls. But what about e-mail? Someone could have sent her an e-mail to her station at the firm. Joanna could check that for us.”

“Oh, her,” said Agatha.

“Yes, her. She’s bright and she’s clever and she knows your real identity, which the other girls don’t. I don’t chase young girls, Agatha.”

“I’m not interested if you do,” said Agatha crossly. She automatically lit up a cigarette and then scowled in distaste and stubbed it out. “What’s up?”

“I went to a hypnotist,” said Agatha. “He said every cigarette I would now smoke would taste like burning rubber and he was right.”

John burst out laughing. “There’s one thing about you, Agatha – no one could ever call you boring.”

“That’s me. A laugh a minute,” said Agatha gloomily.

“And I’ll take you for lunch to make up for last night.”

Agatha brightened. “I’ll go and change while you phone Joanna.”

She went upstairs and changed into a trouser suit and a tailored blouse, noticing with delight that the trouser waistline was quite loose. She carefully made up her face and sprayed herself liberally with Champagne perfume before going downstairs to join him.

“Joanna said she would check Kylie’s machine after all the others have gone for the night. If we wait round the corner in the Little Chef, she’ll join us there about seven o’clock this evening.”

♦

“Aren’t you coming, Joanna?” demanded Marilyn Josh as the other girls put on their coats.

“I’ve just got a couple of bills to send out,” said Joanna. “I’d better get them done now.”

“Please yourself,” said Phyllis nastily. “But it’s no use sucking up to the boss. He’s not in.”

Joanna shrugged and pretended to concentrate on her computer. It was, she thought uneasily, as if the others suspected she was up to something. They seemed to take a long time to leave. She stayed at her desk until she heard them all disappear at last into the night. Then, just as she was about to rise from her desk, Sharon Heath came back in. “Still here?” she said. “Won’t be a mo. I left something in me desk.”