M.C. Beaton - The Love from Hell

“Told her she wasn’t on. No way. ‘Get the hell out,’ I said. She asks for a drink for the road, so I gives her one and goes into the kitchen to tell my mates I’ll soon have her out and I go back and the old bird’s passed out on the sofa. So we all carry her downstairs and sit her on the pavement with her back to the railings and then we all went back to the club. When we got back – oh, ‘bout two in the morning – she’d gone.”

Charles looked at Jake thoughtfully. “Let me get this straight,” he said. “I can understand you mistaking her age and going off with her, but why bring your mates along? Did you all mean to have her?”

“What sort of blokes do you think we are?” demanded Jake truculently.

“We’re not the police,” said Agatha, “and we’re not interested in your motives. Can I tell you what I think? There’s one thing I do know about Melissa and that is she was a fantasist. So what would get you all to go along? And I don’t think any of you made a mistake about her age. Drugs! The silly cow probably told you she knew where to score.”

“Do I look like a junkie?” demanded Jake.

“Come on, tell us,” pleaded Agatha. “We won’t go to the police. I just have to know how far she would go with lying.”

“It’s worth fifty pounds,” said Charles suddenly.

Jake sat with his head down. Then he said, “How can I trust you?”

“Simply because we’re not the police,” said Charles. “You don’t look like a junkie. So what was it? Pot?”

He shrugged and then said, “Yeah, that was it. Told us her lover was a dealer and she could get us the best Colombian. She said she would phone him from our place. When we gets there, she starts to come on to us, and I mean all of us. It was right disgusting. “Phone your friend,” we says. She keeps saying, “Later, let’s have some fun.” So we leave her with the whisky bottle and have that confab in the kitchen and we decide she’s lying and when we go back in, she’s passed out, like I said, and so we leave her on the pavement, like I said. Silly old trout.” He focused on Agatha. “I saw your picture in the newspapers. She was knocking off your old man, wasn’t she?”

Agatha averted her eyes.

“Forget about that,” said Charles. He turned to Miss Simms. “You didn’t know anything about this?”

“No. You can’t hear a thing in that club.”

“What about my fifty pounds?” demanded Jake.

“Could you pay, Aggie?” said Charles. “I’m a bit short.”

“I paid the entrance fees to that disco.”

“I’ve got me cheque-book with me,” said Miss Simms with all the misplaced generosity of the poor.

“No, that’s all right.” Charles stood up and took out his wallet. He peeled off notes and handed them to Jake. “Give him your card, Aggie. Ring us if you think of anything else, Jake.”

“Right. I’m off then.” Jake stood up and then looked down at Miss Simms. “I’m going back to the disco. You coming?”

“Certainly not,” said Miss Simms primly. “I’m going home with my friends.”

Miss Simms looked disapprovingly after Jake’s retreating back. “Cheek!” she said. “I like my gentlemen to be more mature. In fact, Eddie’s back again.”

“Who’s Eddie?” asked Agatha.

“He’s the one before last,” said Miss Simms. “Ever so nice. In bathroom fittings in Cheltenham. His wife’s left him. Not for me. They never find out about me. I’m not a tart, like some I could mention. No, she left him for a man in surgical goods.”

♦

After they had deposited Miss Simms at her home, Agatha and Charles sat in the kitchen of Agatha’s cottage and mulled over the little information they had. “You know what hurts?” said Agatha. “It’s just that the more we find out about Melissa, the more horrible it seems that James had anything to do with her.”

“I think men under sentence of death will do things they might not otherwise have contemplated. Then James was always a violently jealous man.”

“James!”

“Yes, James.”

“I never really thought of him as being jealous,” said Agatha. “I was always so violently jealous myself.”

“Agatha admits to a fault! Goodness me.”

“Never mind that. What about this business of Melissa saying she had a lover who was a drug dealer?”

“That was sharp of you to guess about drugs. What put you on to that?”

“Just a wild guess. And all this nonsense of Miss Simms about rough trade. I mean, she’s very genteel. I thought it would be a real dive, but it seemed a respectable Piccadilly disco. It wasn’t even a singles’ bar either. What took Melissa there?”

“Sex?”

“I don’t know. I’m beginning to think she was a real murderee. I mean, those lads could have turned out to be dangerous. Anyway, to get back to the drug-dealer lover. If only that would turn out to be true. It would supply a motive.”

“I can’t believe in this drug dealer. If Melissa coerced Miss Simms into going up to London with her, maybe she got friendly with someone else in the village.”

“She probably mistakenly picked on Miss Simms,” said Agatha bitterly, “because she thought her morals were as loose as her own. No one else in the village fills that bill.”

“There might be someone. I mean, on the face of it, Melissa was just the perfect village housewife, apart from her fling with James. You know, Aggie, we can’t keep leaving James out of the equation.”

“He didn’t do it!”

“But he got involved in something that meant he was attacked and probably by the same person who killed Melissa.”

“That might bring us back to the husbands. We never really got to talk to Mr. Dewey properly.”

“Let’s leave him alone for a bit,” pleaded Charles. “Gosh, I’m tired. Mind if I stay the night?”

“You know where the spare room is.”

“I’ll get my bag out of the car.”

Agatha watched him go, half amused, half exasperated. In the past, Charles had sometimes moved in with her. It was always because he was bored, or because the elderly aunt who lived with him had decided to hold a charity party and he wanted to stay out of the way until it was over. She knew that if Charles was courting some girl – for he was ever hopeful of getting married – he would disappear from her life for months. The fact that he never managed to secure any sort of lasting relationship Agatha put down to his being tight with money. Then, people who were tight with money were also inclined to be tight with emotions. Not much giving, emotionally or physically.

“What are you brooding about?” Agatha started. She had been so immersed in her thoughts, she had not heard Charles coming back into the kitchen.

“You,” said Agatha.

He sat down and looked at her, amused. “What about me?”

“I was wondering why you never had a permanent girlfriend.”

“And what do you think is the reason?”

“I think it’s because you’re mean about money. What woman is going to put up with someone who takes her out for dinner and forgets his wallet, or, in your case, pretends to forget it?”

“What a funny woman you are. That reminds me. You owe me half of that fifty quid.”

The next morning Agatha arose late and to the smell of frying bacon. She was half-way down the stairs in her night-gown when she remembered that Charles was staying. She retreated up the stairs and quickly showered and dressed. When she went back down again, it was to find Charles eating breakfast and chatting to her cleaner, Doris Simpson.

Agatha and her cleaner were two of the few women of Carsely who called each other by their first names. “Hullo, Agatha,” said Doris. “Just about to get started. If you’re finished upstairs, I’ll begin with the bedrooms. Late night?” Her eyes slid from Charles to Agatha.