M.C. Beaton - The Love from Hell

If Charles comes around again, she told herself, I’ll tell him to get lost.

But when she turned the corner into Lilac Lane, and saw Charles’s car parked outside her cottage, she experienced a feeling of relief. Not yet, she told herself. I’ll tell him to get lost when all this is over.

∨ The Love from Hell ∧

9

Charles had let himself in, having kept the spare key, and was watching television and drinking whisky.

“Back again,” he said lazily. “Where have you been?”

“Just around. Oh, you may as well know – I went to Wyckhadden.”

Agatha sat down with a weary sigh. Charles studied her. “I’d better not ask you why you went there. Whisky or gin?”

“Whisky with water.” Charles rose and poured her a drink and handed it to her.

“I went to tell Jimmy – remember Jimmy?”

“Could I forget? Found us in bed together and broke off your engagement.”

“I thought if I told him all about the case, he might come up with something.”

“And did he?”

“He had an idea. He said usually in cases, people would say they had seen or heard nothing, but if we asked again, someone might come up with something they thought was too ordinary or insignificant to mention.”

“He’s got a point there,” said Charles. “We never really questioned the villagers. That’s all been left to the police. Oh, God, that means going from door to door.”

“Maybe not. I’ve an idea. We could see Mrs. Bloxby and suggest a meeting in the church hall. Give them all sheets of paper and ask them to write down anything at all they might have seen or heard on the day James was attacked and on the night Melissa was murdered.”

“That’d be a start. I can’t help myself, Aggie. Did you actually go to Wyckhadden to kindle the old flame?”

“Of course not,” said Agatha quickly. “What about Tara?”

“What about her?”

“What about this gorgeous creature you were straining at the bit to see.”

“Didn’t work out.”

“What went wrong?”

“Well, I took her out for dinner. She said she was a feminist – she works for some magazine – and believed in women paying their own way, so we decided to split the bill. We went to Pere Rouge, a new place in Stratford. When the bill came round, she gave me exactly half. I said, ‘Wait a minute, you had the oysters to start, a whole dozen; I only had one glass of wine and you had the rest of the bottle; I had pasta and you had fillet steak; I didn’t have pudding and you had crepes Suzette;’ so I took out my pocket calculator and worked out her share of the bill, which seemed fair enough to me. Then I worked out the tip; she hadn’t even offered to cover that, and told her the total. She looked at me in a cold way and asked me if I was joking. I said I couldn’t see anything funny. She got to her feet, said, ‘Be back in a minute,’ and then she didn’t come back. So I had to pay the whole bill. Then when I got home, it was to find she had arrived before me in a taxi, kept the taxi waiting, packed her things and headed off.”

“Oh, Charles, couldn’t you just have left it? I mean, taking out a pocket calculator.”

“What’s up with that? She said she would pay her share and I wasn’t going to let her get away with just paying a measly half when the greedy cow had gorged her way through the most expensive things on the menu.”

“Charles, that meanness of yours will keep you a bachelor until the end of your days.”

“I am not mean. I take people at their word. If someone says they’ll pay their share, I expect them to do so.”

“Never mind. Let me tell you what happened this weekend.” Agatha told him about the fête and Roy’s encounter with Dewey.

“Everything does seem to point to him. Did Jessop suggest anything else?”

“He did seem to think it was Julia. He said there were two good motives, money and hate. Also I still think it odd that Melissa left everything to Julia. And did Julia know about the will?”

Charles groaned. “I’ve a feeling we might have to make another trip to Cambridge.”

“Let’s try this village meeting first. We’ll see Mrs. Bloxby in the morning.”

♦

The next day, Mrs. Bloxby listened carefully to their suggestion. “I do not see what harm it will do,” she said. “Wait until I get the book and see when the hall is free. It had better be an evening, so that everyone will be back from work.”

She returned with a ledger and ran her finger down the pages. “Let me see, next Saturday evening is free. I’m afraid Alf might expect you to pay for the rental of the hall.”

“What! After all the money Aggie raised at the fête!” exclaimed Charles.

“That money went straight to charity,” said Mrs. Bloxby.

“I don’t mind,” said Agatha. “I’ll pay half and Charles will pay the other half.”

Charles opened his mouth to protest but saw the gleeful look in Agatha’s eyes and closed it again.

Mrs. Bloxby carefully entered the hall booking and said, “You are both going to have a busy day.”

“Why?” asked Agatha.

“Because everyone will have to know there is a meeting. You’ll need to run off fliers from your computer and post them through all the doors.”

Agatha groaned. “Can’t I just put up a notice in the village shop?”

“A lot of people shop at the supermarkets and might not see it.”

“I know,” said Charles. “The schoolchildren are still on holiday. We could get some of them to distribute fliers.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” said Mrs. Bloxby. “It’s been tried. They even get paid for it, but children are so lazy nowadays. One cottage usually ends up with several hundred fliers pushed through the one letter-box and then the little angels come round to the vicarage demanding their money.”

“Oh, well,” sighed Agatha. “I need the exercise.”

She and Charles returned to her cottage. Agatha typed off a flier on her computer and ran off several hundred copies and then she and Charles split up, agreeing to meet at the Red Lion later.

As Agatha trudged from door to door, she felt a sudden sympathy with the lazy schoolchildren. It would be so easy just to hide a bunch of fliers or shove a hundred through the one letterbox and then be finished with the wretched things. She just hoped the same idea wasn’t occurring to Charles.

She took a break for lunch and noticed from an egg-smeared plate lying in the sink that Charles had taken a break as well. Back out she went, ending up by posting the last flier in the village store’s window. People she spoke to grumbled that they had told the police all they knew, and yet all seemed intrigued by the idea of the meeting.

Agatha wearily made her way along to the pub, where Charles was already sitting. She eyed him suspiciously. “You didn’t cheat?”

“No, sweetie, as my aching feet will bear testimony. I ran like the wind from door to door. You would leave me to do the council estate. Loads of houses there. Oh, and I had to call the police.”

“Why?”

“I was bending down – all the letter-boxes in those council houses are practically at ground level – when I heard a woman screaming. “Leave me alone,” she was shouting, and then there was the sound of a thump and then another scream. So I called Fred Griggs.”

“Was it a Mrs. Allan?”

“That’s the one. Fred tried to get her to lay charges. The man is called Derry Patterson, a big rough fellow.”

“But she wouldn’t lay charges?”

“Nope.”

“Why does she do it? She’s just got rid of one brutal man.”

“Seems they go for the same kind. Anyway, what next?”

“I think we should try to get Bill to tell us the name of Melissa’s solicitor and also tell us how much she left in her will.”