M.C. Beaton - The Day the Floods Came

What next? A shopping trip? But where? Stow-on-the-Wold and Chipping Campden were wall-to-wall tourists. Much as she liked Evesham, it didn’t have much in the way of smart clothes shops.

The doorbell shrilled. Glad of a diversion, Agatha hurried to open it and then glared at Sir Charles Fraith. Certainly, he had somehow restored himself to his old slimness and impeccable tailoring, although his hair was still thin. “Get lost,” snarled Agatha.

He put his foot in the door. “I need a shoulder to cry on,” he said.

Agatha hesitated and then opened the door wide. “Come in, but make it quick. I was just about to go out.”

He followed her into the kitchen. “Any chance of a coffee?”

“I’ll make some and we’ll take our cups into the garden. It’s a glorious day. Don’t spoil it by staying too long.”

“If you say so,” said Charles gloomily. Agatha made two mugs of instant coffee and they carried them out into the garden and sat at a table in the sunshine.

“So,” began Agatha, “what’s up?”

“She’s left me.”

“What! Your wife? The French bird? Why?”

“Would you believe it, Aggie, she says it’s because I’m mean. She’s gone to Paris and says she doesn’t want to see me again.”

♦

“Well, you always were tight with money, Charles. When it comes to paying a bill in a restaurant, you’ve always managed to forget your wallet.”

“I’m thrifty,” he said defensively. “And she’s got oodles of cash, but she says she sees no reason why she should have to spend her own.”

“You sound like soul mates,” commented Agatha drily. Her stomach gave a rumble. “I’ve got to eat something,” she said.

“Then I’ll prove to you I’m a reformed character. I’ll take you for dinner. What do you feel like?”

Agatha felt for a moment that she should rebuff him. He had behaved disgracefully. But then, when had Charles ever behaved well?

“Oh, all right. I feel like Chinese. There’s a good restaurant in Evesham. I’ll go and change.”

♦

“So what have you been up to?” asked Charles as they tackled pancakes and crispy duck.

“It’s an odd business,” said Agatha. “Did you read about that girl found in the river in Evesham?”

“Saw something about it. Tell me. This is like old times.”

Yes, it was, thought Agatha. She almost expected James to walk in the door. He’d had a habit of turning up when she was with Charles.

Agatha started with first meeting Kylie at the beauticians. Charles listened carefully until she had finished.

“What a complicated case!” he exclaimed when she finally fell silent. “I think you should concentrate more on this Marilyn Josh. She lives at the same address as Harry McCoy. Someone saw you and decided to kill you, or that someone decided to phone the murderer and say where you were. Kylie was blackmailing Barrington. Who knows? She may have been blackmailing someone else.”

“But who? Someone we don’t know?”

“And this Joanna Field. Wouldn’t her neighbours have seen anything?”

“I don’t know that she has any neighbours. She lives above a shop in Port Street. A lot of property there is still flood-damaged, you know, no one doing anything until the insurance comes through, and with so many claims, that could take ages. Anyway, the police will already have interviewed everyone possible. I feel something awful has happened to her.”

“Maybe not. Maybe she just wanted to clear off knowing the police would want to question her about Barrington.”

“Without clothes or money?”

“She could have been very frightened.”

“She didn’t strike me as being frightened the last time I saw her. Angry, cheeky, insolent. But not frightened.”

“Let’s look at the drug business. That suggests viciousness plus organization.”

“That brings us back to the club again and there’s no record of any drugs being dealt there.”

“Needn’t be the club. What about Barrington’s? Barrington himself sounds a nasty bit of work, and what about that goon you described, George, the one who mans the front desk?”

“Really, Charles. A plumbing business?”

“All things are possible. Would they have a deep freeze at Barrington’s?”

“I shouldn’t think so. Anyway, after the blackmailing business came out, the police would have turned the place inside out. I wish it would turn out to be Phyllis.”

“Why that one?”

“She’s a narcissistic bully. She’s violently jealous. She hated Kylie. I think she’s a low life.”

“Any sign that she takes drugs?”

“Not that I noticed, but unless someone has bare arms and tracks marks up them, I wouldn’t know.”

“Tell you what. Why don’t I stay the night and I’ll go round all these people with you tomorrow?”

“No, Charles. I’ve got to serve teas in the village tomorrow for some photographic exhibition.” Agatha hesitated. It was difficult to continue to be angry with the lightweight Charles. And somehow, just talking over a case with him like old times connected her in some way to James Lacey. “But I tell you what. Why don’t you call over on Saturday and we’ll take it from there?”

“Great. I’ll come in the morning and we’ll get started.”

“What are you going to do about your marriage?”

“What about it?”

“I mean, aren’t you going to try to fix things? Fly to Paris?”

“No point. I mean, it’s not just her I have to deal with. It’s her father, mother, two brothers, uncles, aunts, all jabbering at me in French.”

“But Charles. She’s expecting twins!”

A faint red flush crept up Charles’s face. Agatha stared at him in amazement. “You’re actually blushing! I didn’t think you could.”

“The fact is,” he said, twisting the stem on his wineglass, “I got well and truly caught.”

“How?”

“I met her when I was on holiday in Saint Tropez. She was well-guarded by relatives, friends and family, and although she was – is – awfully pretty, I wouldn’t have made a move if she hadn’t moved on me. She kept gazing over at me in this restaurant, sending out signals. You know. One day, she was on her own. I stopped at her table and asked if she was enjoying her stay. She asked me to sit down. We laughed and talked. Then she saw her parents coming into the restaurant and asked me quickly where I was staying. I gave her the name of my hotel. She said she’d meet me in the foyer at midnight. And she did. And we spent the night together, although she had to sneak off at six in the morning. She told me she was on the pill. No, I didn’t have any protection. To tell the truth, I didn’t know I was going to need it. I didn’t see her again and put it all down to a rather intriguing one-night stand. I’d given her my address and phone number. A month later I got this hysterical phone call from Paris saying her period was late and that she’d lied to me about being on the pill. I told her to check out whether she was pregnant or not and phone me back. She phoned back a day later and confirmed that she was. Well, I decided to do the decent thing. Family’s rich, she’s pretty, chance to be a dad, all that. Went over, met the family, popped the question. Got a bit frightened with marriage settlements and lawyers before the wedding and asked her if she was really sure she was pregnant and she smiled at me mistily and said she had been told she was expecting twins.

“Well, that clinched it. I could see myself teaching them to fish and ride and Daddy stuff like that. Went ahead with the wedding. Only realize now in retrospect that I’d told her a lot about me but she hadn’t told me that much about her past. Anyway, by the time we got married, she should have been about four months preggers but she didn’t really look pregnant, but she was on this salad diet because she said she didn’t want to get too fat. So we got married and I took her back to Warwickshire, where she was bored out of her tiny mind. It was my aunt – remember her? – who began nagging me about her not showing any signs at all of pregnancy. I began to get suspicious and made an appointment for her with a gynaecologist in London and then told her that she should get checked up and see if everything was okay. She began to rant and rave that I was mean, that she hadn’t expected to stay buried in the country. That was when I accused her of cheating me, of not being pregnant at all.