M.C. Beaton - The Love from Hell

She mumbled that thought to Charles when he came into her bedroom, demanding to know why she wasn’t getting up.

“Because we are out to clear your name as well, sweetie. Or had you forgotten? Your alibi is only for the evening James disappeared. You’ve got nothing to prove your innocence when it comes to Melissa’s murder.”

“Can you bring me up a cup of coffee?”

“No, you’ll drink it and lie in bed and smoke and gloom. Come downstairs.”

Agatha climbed out of bed. Her knees were stiff and she stared down at them. Here was another bit of body betraying her. She did some exercises and took a hot shower. By the time she had dressed, the stiffness had gone. But, she wondered, was this the beginning of the end? Good-bye healthy life and hullo rubber knickers and support hose? What would it be like to creak about on a Zimmer frame? She had a sudden craving for life, for excitement. She had an impulse to ask Charles to go upstairs to bed with her that minute. Then she thought, was this how James felt? If I can feel like this over a brief ache in the knees, what did he feel like when he learned he might die? He should have been making his peace with God, she answered herself. Would you? sneered a little voice in her head. Agatha slowly shook her head. The God she only half believed in had shaggy grey locks and wore open-toed sandals and disapproved of one Agatha Raisin.

“Agatha! Why are you standing there shaking your head and moving your lips?” asked Charles.

Agatha gave herself a mental shake. “I just wondered what thoughts were going through James’s head when he learned of his cancer.”

“Doesn’t bear thinking of. I’ve made toast and coffee. Eat. Drink. Then let’s get off to Oxford.”

As they drove to Oxford, Agatha driving this time, she switched on the air-conditioning in the car. “The sun’s so hot,” she said. “Going to be one very hot day.”

“Watch out for the speed camera just after Blenheim Palace,” said Charles as Agatha drove through Woodstock. “You just get used to the camera facing one way, and then they come and turn it the other way and catch all the drivers who increase speed when they think they are safely past it.”

“I never speed through towns or villages,” said Agatha virtuously. A car ahead of her, unaware that the camera had turned, went slowly past it and then speeded up. There was a bright flash as he was photographed. “See what I mean?” said Charles with all the satisfaction of one motorist seeing another getting caught by a speed camera.

“I was thinking, Charles, that we have all these suspects whirling around our brains. Well, maybe two suspects, Sheppard and Dewey.”

“Three.”

“Who’s the third?”

“Her sister. She inherits. Maybe she knew she was going to inherit. Melissa, it seems, had money of her own.”

“Yes, but where does James come into it?”

“I’d forgotten about him.”

“Why would the sister attack James?”

“We don’t know what James was up to. Remember, he was like you when it came to trying to find out things.”

“So three suspects…”

“Maybe more. What about Jake and his pals? No one’s going to bother much about a bit of pot these days. But remember, Melissa had once been sectioned for drugs. Maybe she wanted some hard stuff and they were pushing.”

“All possible. But we can’t go to Bill with mere speculation. I can see both Sheppard and Dewey doing it, but I really can’t think of a motive. They were both clear of her.”

“Who knows? Maybe Melissa paid a visit to Dewey’s shop and spat on his favourite doll.”

“Which brings us back to where James came into it.”

Charles groaned. “Okay, let’s see if we can find out anything about Melissa and Sheppard when they were married that he hasn’t told us. I mean, it took nearly a year for the divorce to come through, so he didn’t start divorce proceedings immediately after the honeymoon.”

“It’s a pity we didn’t get the number in Pliny Road. I don’t know whereabouts in Jericho it is. I’ll pull into the lay-by and have a look at the map. You’ll find a street map of Oxford in the glove compartment. Jericho’s that residential area between the Woodstock Road, Saint Giles’ and the canal.”

“I know,” said Charles as Agatha drew the car to a stop. They spread out the map. “Let’s see the index,” said Charles. “Ah, here we are: Pliny Road, off Walton Street, just there.”

“Doesn’t look very long,” said Agatha. “We’ll just knock on doors.”

“While we’re in Oxford,” said Charles, “do you think there’s any point in asking questions at the Randolph? Maybe one of the staff saw something.”

Agatha shook her head. “I’ve a feeling the police will have covered that thoroughly.”

“Still…let’s see how we get on in Jericho first.”

“I hope the traffic’s not too bad,” said Agatha. “They’ve made Cornmarket a shopping precinct and for a while it’s been chaos.”

“Seems clear enough,” said Charles as they drove along me Woodstock Road. He studied the map again. “Turn next right, Aggie.”

“I thought for a while you’d given up calling me Aggie. I wish you wouldn’t. Every time you call me Aggie, I feel as if I ought to be standing at the doorway of a terraced house in a mining area in some northern town with my hair in rollers, wearing a chenille dressing-gown and fluffy slippers, and with a cigarette stuck in my mouth.”

“Sounds like you.”

“I’m driving or I’d hit you. Where now?”

“Turn right on Walton Street and next left.”

“It’s residents’ parking only.”

“So risk it.”

Agatha parked in Pliny Road, and they got out. Tall Victorian houses lined either side of the road. “Where should we start?” she asked.

“Let’s try the middle, although sod’s law probably has it that they lived at the end. You take the left side and I’ll take the right.”

After ringing several doorbells, Agatha began to wonder if she was going to have any success. Perhaps Oxford was like London and people didn’t know their neighbours.

Then she heard a shout from across the road and turned round to find Charles waving to her. He came to meet her. “A woman in that house,” he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder, “remembers them, because she sometimes chatted to Melissa at the corner shop. They lived at number fifteen.”

Number 15 had a poster for the Green Party in the window. Agatha rang the bell. A thin woman with an arrogant face answered the door. She was wearing a long red dress of Indian cotton and vinyl sandals. She was very tall. “What is it?” she demanded. A waft of incense floated out of the house.

“I am Agatha Raisin,” said Agatha. “I am anxious to find out what I can about the Sheppards. Did you buy the house from them?”

“I don’t like reporters. If you ask me, the capitalist press is the ruin of this country.”

“I am not a reporter,” said Agatha. “You see…”

Charles moved forward and smiled pleasantly. “I am Sir Charles Fraith. Haven’t we met before?”

The change in her was almost ludicrous. “I d-don’t think…Oh, do come in, Sir Charles.”

“How kind,” murmured Charles. Agatha followed him, muttering, “Snobby cow,” under her breath.

“I’m Felicity Banks-James,” their new hostess trilled over her shoulder as she led them down to the basement and into a kitchen which looked as if it had been taken straight from one of those photos in glossy magazines urging you to try ‘a French provincial kitchen look.’ Bunches of dusty herbs hung from the ceiling. A brace of pheasant hung from a hook near the cooker, which Agatha gleefully recognized as being stuffed, the kind the taxidermist in Ebrington sold to yuppies. Huge copper pans lined one dresser, looking as if they had never been used. An enormous scrubbed table surrounded by plain wooden chairs dominated the centre of the room. On another dresser, blue-and-white plates stood in rows, also looking as if they had never been used, to judge from the film of dust covering them. A pile of Marks & Spencer’s frozen dinners was stacked on a corner of the table. “Just got back from shopping,” she said, opening a giant fridge and hiding the evidence of un-chic microwave cooking. “Coffee?”