M.C. Beaton - The Love from Hell

He turned round and yelled, “Julia!” at the top of his voice. A door in the dark hall opened and Julia Fraser appeared.

“Good heavens, what are you two doing in Cambridge?” she asked. “Come in.” She ushered them into a pleasantly cluttered sitting-room.

“Was that your son?” asked Agatha.

“No, I rent rooms to students. Now, I suppose you’ve come to ask more questions, and I think it’s a bit thick. I know you” – she looked at Agatha – “must be anxious to find out about your husband, but I cannot help you any further. I told you it was years since I had anything to do with Melissa.”

“It’s not that,” said Charles. “James Lacey seems to have been doing a bit of investigating before he left; we don’t know why. You said your sister had been diagnosed as a psychopath. James asked a psychiatrist at Mircester Hospital if it was usual for two such personalities to get together.”

“And you’ve come all this way to ask me if she had a mad friend? How would I know?”

Agatha looked around the pleasant but shabby sitting-room and heard the noise made by the resident students filtering down through the ceiling. “What interests us as well is how much money Melissa had. I mean, she seemed to have lived comfortably. She didn’t need to take in students.”

“I’ll tell you what I can,” said Julia, “if the pair of you will promise to go away and not trouble me again. You bring up things I would rather forget.”

Charles looked at Agatha, who nodded.

“It’s a deal,” he said.

Julia leaned back in her chair and half-closed her eyes. “Our father…do you know about him?”

They shook their heads.

“He was a Colonel Peterson, a rich landowner with a big estate in Worcestershire. He was the law at home. My mother was dominated by him and had little say in our upbringing. From an early age, Melissa contrived to make me look like the bad child. Father adored her. He could see no fault in her. It was a blow to him when Melissa was found to be taking drugs. She was living in a flat in Chelsea that he had bought for her. My mother died when we were still in our early teens. Melissa was found to have taken an overdose. Father had her transferred from a London hospital to a pyschiatric unit at Mircester Hospital so that he could keep an eye on her. His disappointment in Melissa affected his health. Shortly after she came out, he had a massive stroke. He left everything to Melissa. He left a letter for me with his will, which he had recently changed. He said I had always been wicked and the fact that I had introduced his dear child, Melissa, to drugs had proved that I was evil. I challenged Melissa. I was incandescent with rage. I’ll never forget that scene. She laughed and laughed until the tears streamed down her face. Of course she put the family home and the land up for sale.”

“But surely her father was told that she was a psychopath?”

“Probably, but he probably thought it was the effect of the drugs that the wicked Julia had pushed on her. I was married by then. My husband wasn’t very good with money. When he died, I really only had this house. That’s why I started letting out rooms to make a living.”

“But surely now you have inherited the money, you don’t need to do that any more?”

“True. I’m still recovering from it all, so I haven’t made any changes. Melissa had gone through very little money indeed. To be honest, I thought she would have squandered most of it.”

“So how much did she leave?” asked Agatha eagerly.

“Mind your own business. I’ve told you enough.”

“It’s very good of you to give us this time,” said Charles, bestowing a charming smile on her. “But you, too, must be anxious to find out who killed your sister?”

“Not really. Except to shake him by the hand. I hated Melissa from the bottom of my heart. I adored my father and she took his love away and she made my childhood a misery. But, no, I didn’t kill her, and in case you are getting any ideas about that, I was here with my students the night she was killed. Please go, now.”

“Is there anyone way back then, I mean around the time she was being sectioned, that she might have harmed? I mean, perhaps someone from her past murdered her.”

“I did not know any of her friends. Come to think of it, she never seemed to have any. People would take to her, but as she could never sustain her act for very long except with Father, they soon drifted off. Now, I really do want you to leave.”

As they walked down the path, Agatha said, “It’s a pity she’s got an alibi. What a motive!”

“I know,” agreed Charles. “I say, look at the fog! Let’s find somewhere to eat and see if it thins out.”

He drove to the multi-storey car-park off Pembroke Street and then they walked round into the main shopping area and found an Italian restaurant.

“So,” said Agatha, after they had ordered pizza, “where are we? Not much further.”

“If only this were a detective story,” mourned Charles, “and we were ace detectives, dropping literary quotations right, left, and centre, we would prove that Julia placed a dummy of herself in the window of her sitting-room to fool her students while she drove to Carsely and murdered her sister. I mean, think of the money she must have got.”

“We haven’t even stirred anything up,” said Agatha. “I mean, if one of the people we’ve been questioning were guilty, you would think they’d have shown their hand by now.”

“You mean, like trying to kill you?”

“Maybe not that. Just warning us off.”

“Julia more or less did that.”

“No, by warning us off, I mean someone saying something like, “Stop now, or it will be the worse for you.” We haven’t rattled anyone. Gosh, why did we order pizza, Charles? This tastes like a wet book.”

“Get it down you.” Charles peered out of the window at wraithlike figures moving through the mist. “I think we’re going to have to stay here the night, Aggie. We can’t drive home in this.”

But Agatha did not want to spend a night in a hotel with Charles. “We can try,” she said. “I mean, you said Cambridge was a foggy place. I bet when we get to the outskirts, it’ll start to clear.”

Charles opted to take the road which went back through Milton Keynes and Buckingham, saying that he did not want to drive on the motorways in fog.

By the time they had crawled as far as the Bedford bypass, the fog was getting worse. “There’s one of those road-house places,” said Charles, swinging off the road. “We’d better check in for the night.”

“I’ll pay,” said Agatha quickly. “You’ve done all the driving.”

Once inside, she firmly booked two rooms. “Honestly,” complained Charles, oblivious of the stare of the desk clerk, “a double room would have been cheaper. And more fun.”

Agatha ignored him. She took the keys from the clerk and handed one to Charles.

“If you think of anything, let me know. I’ll be in my room.”

“I’m thinking of food for this evening. Have you a restaurant here?” he asked the clerk.

“Certainly, sir. You’ll find it through those doors on the left.”

“We’ll go there at seven,” said Charles. “That pizza didn’t go very far.”

Agatha, when she let herself into her room, was glad for the first time to be on her own. She undressed and had a leisurely bath and then washed out her underwear and dried it as best she could with the hair dryer.

Before she could get dressed again, there was a knock at her door. She whipped the coverlet off the bed and wrapped it around herself and opened the door. Charles handed her a sweater. “I just remembered I had a spare one in the car.”

Agatha took it gratefully. “Any sign of the fog lifting?”