Agatha Raisin Kissing Christmas Goodbye

Chapter Two

They eventually found Lower Tapor after having become lost several times. Signposts seemed to ignore the very existence of the place. Neither Roy nor Agatha were much good at reading maps, and so it was by accident that they at last found themselves confronted by a sign announcing Lower Tapor.

They drove slowly between two rows of small red-brick cottages and then found themselves out of the village at the other end.

"Snakes and bastards!" muttered Agatha, executing a clumsy eight-point turn. Back again. "Look for someone," she hissed.

But the street appeared deserted. "Look!" said Roy. "There's that little road on the left. It must lead somewhere."

Agatha whipped the wheel round and plunged down the side road. They came to a triangle of village green with houses set around it and one pub called The Crazy Fox.

Agatha stopped the car outside the pub. They both got out and stood for a moment looking up at the inn sign, which displayed a painting of a fox dressed as a huntsman, gun in hand, standing upright with one rear paw resting on the dead body of a man.

The pub itself was a low building built of mellow Cotswold stone. The village was very quiet. The day was perfect and the sun warm.

Agatha pushed open the door and, followed by Roy, went inside. She stood and blinked in surprise. The pub was full of people. A man with a clipboard stood in front of the bar. He had been addressing the crowd but fell silent and stared at Agatha.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"I want directions to the manor house," retorted Agatha.

There was a sudden uneasy rustling of papers and whispered voices.

"Why?" demanded the man with the clipboard.

He was a big, burly farming type and his small eyes were suddenly full of menace.

"Because that's where I'm trying to get to," howled Agatha.

"Go out. Turn right, and down Badger Lane. Takes you there."

"Any chance of a drink?" asked Roy.

"No," said the man. "This is a private meeting. Get out."

"Well, I never!" said Roy outside. "Oh, forget about the local yokels," said Agatha.

"Let's find this house."

They got back into the car and found Badger Lane leading off from a corner of the green.

Agatha drove slowly. The lane ran between high stone walls and was so narrow she was afraid of scraping her car.

"There it is," she said, spotting a double gate on which hung a small sign, THE MANOR HOUSE. "You'd better get out and open the gates," said Agatha.

"Why me?" complained Roy.

"Because I'm driving."

Grumbling, Roy got out. He was soon back.

"The gates are padlocked. We should have phoned first. Phone now."

"No, I want to surprise her," said Agatha. "I want to find out if she's really bonkers. We'll leave the car here and climb over the gate"

"It might be a farm," said Roy uneasily, looking at the fields of wheat that stretched out on either side of a road on the other side of the gate. "We could walk miles."

"Don't be such a wimp. Come on."

As Agatha climbed over the gate, her hip gave a nasty twinge. She had been told she had arthritis in her right hip and would need a hip replacement. She had gone back to her Pilates classes earlier in the year but had recently stopped going.

Thankful that she had put on a trouser suit and flat shoes, Agatha began to trudge along the road. After two miles of walking, her feet were aching and her bad hip was throbbing. "It must be here somewhere," she said, exasperated. "There are trees up ahead. Might be there."

But when they reached the trees it was to find another sign, on a post this time, with the legend THE MANOR HOUSE picked out in gold paint.

Ahead of them lay a metalled driveway. Glad to be under the shade of the trees, they walked on. The road twisted and turned, thickly wooded on either side.

"We've been walking for hours," groaned Roy. After what seemed an age, they arrived at a lodge house and could see the road stretching on between two fields where sheep cropped the grass, to buildings at the top of a rise.

"Nearly there," said Agatha. Now she was beginning to wish she had phoned instead. Her linen trouser suit was beginning to stick to her back and she knew her face was shiny. "The only thing that's keeping me going," said Roy, "is the thought of all the pounds of weight I must be losing."

They passed some well-ordered stables, turned a corner and found the house at last. It was a square Georgian house with a porticoed entrance and one long Victorian wing to one side. "It's very quiet," said Roy. "What if she was down at that meeting in the pub?"

"We're here anyway. May as well ring the bell." They rang the bell and waited. At last the door was opened by a small, stout, motherly-looking woman wearing an old-fashioned flowery pina fore over a black dress.

"We have come to see your mistress," said Agatha grandly.

"That being?"

"Mrs Tamworthy, of course."

"You've found her. I'm Mrs Tamworthy." Agatha flushed with embarrassment. A drop of sweat ran down her cheek. "I am so sorry. I am Agatha Raisin. You wrote to me."

"So I did. Come in."

They followed her across a hall and into a large airy sitting room overlooking a vista of lawns and ornamental lake.

"Sit down," ordered Mrs Tamworthy. "Drink?"

"Please," said Agatha. "Gin and tonic, if you have it."

"Beer for me," said Roy and Agatha looked at him in surprise. She had never known Roy to drink beer.

Mrs Tamworthy went to a drinks cupboard in the corner. "You live a long way from the village," said Agatha. "We had quite a walk. The gates are padlocked."

"You never came that long way! You should have come through Upper Tapor. The gates on that side are always open and only a few yards off the road."

There was a little refrigerator under the drinks cupboard. Agatha soon heard the welcome tinkle of ice being dropped in a glass.

"Drinks are ready," called Mrs Tamworthy. They both rose to their feet, Agatha wincing as she did so.

When they were all seated again, Agatha asked, "Who is trying to kill you?"

"One of the family will try, I think. They are all coming here next Saturday for my eightieth birthday."

"Eighty! You don't look it."

"It's one of the benefits of being fat, my dear. It stretches the wrinkles."

Agatha noticed for the first time that Mrs Tamworthy's hair, worn in a French pleat, was dyed brown. There were deep wrinkles around her eyes but her cheeks were smooth. Her eyes were small and black, the kind of eyes which are good at concealing the owner's feelings. She was very small, very round, with only the vestige of a waist. Her feet, encased in flat slippers, did not meet the floor.

Agatha took a strong swallow of gin and tonic, opened her handbag and took out a pen and notebook.

"Why should one of your family want to kill you?"

"Because I'm selling this place, lock, stock and barrel, and that includes the village."

"Why should they object?"

"Because they all want to go on like lords of the manor. You see the portraits of my ancestors on the wall?"

Agatha looked round. "Yes."

"All fake. That was my daughter Sadie's idea. Ashamed of the family background because she's married to Sir Henry Field. Now, my late husband, he made his money in building bricks. He started work as a brickie, but he won the football pools, and the brickyard was going bust so he bought it. Then the housing boom came along and he made a fortune. Our children, there are four of them--two sons, Bert and Jimmy, and two girls, Sadie and Fran. They all got good educations. Sadie and Fran were sent to a finishing school in Switzerland and that's where they got their grand ideas. My husband, Hugh, would have done anything for them, and just after they had nagged him into buying this estate, he died of cancer. I took over the business and doubled his fortune, got a good manager for this estate who actually ran the farms at a profit.

"They even made me take elocution lessons. But I want my own life now. I never liked it here. I want a small flat of my own."

"Why not just leave the estate to your children?"

"They'd run it into the ground. My Hugh didn't work hard just for me to see it all frittered away."

"But one of them wanting to kill you!" exclaimed Agatha. "Are you sure?"

"You'd better come along to my birthday party and see them for yourself."

"I don't come as a detective, do I?"

"No, you say you're a friend of mine. You can bring your son as well."

"He is not my son," said Agatha angrily. "He used to work for me."

"Bring a bag. You'd better stay the weekend"

"I'll get my secretary to send you a contract outlining fees and expenses," said Agatha. "Now, is your other daughter, Fran, married?"

"Was. Didn't work out. Divorced."

"Why didn't it work out?"

"Husband, Larry, was a stockbroker. Pompous prat. Fran says he thought she was common and it was all my fault. She blames me for the divorce."

"Sadie?"

"Married to a stuffed shirt, Sir Henry Field"

"And your sons?"

"Bert is a darling but weak. He manages the brickworks. He married a farmer's daughter, or rather she married him."

"Name?"

"Alison."

"What's she like?"

"All four-wheel drives, tweeds, sounds like the Queen. A bully."

"And Jimmy?"

Phyllis Tamworthy's face softened. "Ah, my Jimmy. He's a dear. Quiet and decent."

"What are the ages of your children?"

"Sadie is fifty-eight, Fran, fifty-six, Bert, fifty-two and my Jimmy is forty. I thought I was past it when he came along."

"And grandchildren?"

"Only two. There's Fran's daughter, Annabelle, she's thirty-seven, and Sadie's daughter, Lucy, is thirty-two."

"And do they have children?"

"Just Lucy. Her child, Jennifer, is eight." Agatha scribbled busily in her notebook. Roy piped up. "Which one of them do you think is going to kill you?"

"I don't know. It's just a feeling I have." Agatha raised her eyes from her notebook.

"You're not telling us everything. You've a pretty good idea of who it might be. You seem a sensible woman. You don't just have feelings about things."

"You're the detective. I'm hiring you to find out." Roy, again. "We went into the village pub to ask for directions and there seemed to be some sort of meeting going on there."

"Oh, they're always complaining about something. I own the village as well. There was a Sir Mark Riptor owned this place before my husband bought it. When I took over, they asked me to donate thirty thousand pounds to the upkeep of the cricket club because Sir Mark had always looked after them. I refused. Then they wanted the village fete here. Sir Mark always had it. I refused. They said there had always been a fete at the manor since time immemorial. I said, 'Tough.' So they have meetings and grumble. 'Come into the twenty-first century,' I told them.

"'I don't expect you to pull your forelocks and act like peasants, so don't expect me to act like the lady of the manor. Shove off.'"

Agatha stared at her. "Don't you think one of them might have it in for you?"

She laughed. "No. They like grumbling"

"How long do you want me to work on this case?"

"The weekend should be enough. I said I was putting the place up for sale right after my eightieth birthday."

"But apart from wanting to keep it as a family home," said Agatha, "won't they inherit a great deal of money from you? I mean, this estate must be worth a mint."

"They won't inherit much. I had to stand on my own two feet and run the business. They should learn to do the same. I'm going to have a technical college built and dedicate it to the memory of my Hugh."

"And do they know this?"

"Yes, I told them a few months ago."

"Did you ever make a will leaving them anything?"

"Yes, I left everything to be divided equally amongst the four of them."

"And have you changed that will?"

"I'm going to change it next week to make sure that the college is built. As soon as this place is sold, I shall start the building of the technical college. I am in good health and want to see the work completed before I die. If there's anything left over, they can have it."

"But they can inherit the technical college!"

"No, I'm leaving that to the state."

Agatha took a deep breath. "Are you tired of living?"

"Not a bit."

"Look, under these circumstances, if you were my mother, I might be tempted to kill you myself. Do your children love you?"

"I suppose so. Jimmy does."

"What does Jimmy do?"

"He owns a newsagent's and general stores in Upper Tapor. I bought it for him so he'll be all right."

"Did he want a shop?"

"The poor lamb is very shy. He didn't know what he wanted to do. I said a shop was the idea. Meet the public. Get out of himself. I hope I've given you enough information because I'm tired and would like to lie down."

"Have you got anyone who could run us back to our car?"

"You'll find Jill, the groom, in the stables. Ask her. Now if you don't mind..."

Jill was a cheerful young woman. She said, sure, she'd run them back, and soon they were jolting down the drive in an old Land Rover. "Does Mrs Tamworthy keep many horses?" shouted Agatha over the roar of the engine.

"No, not her. She rents the stables out to people in the local hunt. Makes a lot."

Agatha fell silent. She kept wondering why Mrs Tamworthy had put herself in so much danger.

When she was driving Roy back to Carsely, she asked, "What are you going to do with yourself next week while I'm at work?"

"Lead a healthy lifestyle. Go for walks."

"You'll get bored."

"I doubt it. I'll be so busy wondering about this birthday party. It's all very weird. Like an oldfashioned detective story."

"Don't worry," said Agatha. "Nothing will happen. I've come to the conclusion that she really is a bit unbalanced."

Sunday was a wearisome day for Agatha and several times she considered going into the office just to get away from an ecstatic Roy, who had bought ten copies of The Bugle and who kept reading out bits of the damning story on Green Desire.

Toni turned up promptly for work on Monday morning. She was looking forward to her new job. She had no illusions about the detective work she would be doing, but she could make her own hours and be her own boss, and that appealed to her.

"Now," said Agatha, "we've got an odd case here." She told them about Mrs Tamworthy. Then she said, "Patrick, I'd like you to go to that pub in Lower Tapor and find out just how angry the locals are and who the ringleader is. Phil, I'd like you to go to a newsagent's in Upper Tapor and see what Jimmy Tamworthy is like. Running a shop was his mother's idea. If my mother was rich and possessed a large estate, I might think running a village shop was beneath me. See if you can get some idea. After that, I'd like you to check out applications for planning permission. I can't see the villagers getting so hot under the collar if she was just going to sell the village. They might hope for a more generous benefactor. But Mrs Tamworthy likes making money. What if she hoped to get planning permission for more houses? Or planning permission for something the villagers would hate?"

"Also, Patrick, while you're in the pub, get an idea of what the locals really think about Mrs Tamworthy. Any scandal. Do they think she's mad? That sort of thing."

"There's that divorce case," said Patrick. "We really should wrap it up. Mrs Horrington is paying a lot. Then there's the one Phil is on. Mr Constable."

"I'll take Horrington. I can't be seen near that village before next weekend. I'm going as a friend of the family." Agatha turned round and looked at Toni, who was sitting quietly on the visitors' sofa. She was wearing clean jeans, a white T-shirt and sandals.

"Toni, I'm going to throw you in at the deep end. Can you take photographs?"

"Yes, I was in my camera club at school."

"Phil will give you the Constable file and a camera. Have you a car?"

"I can't drive. I've got a bike."

"That'll do. No one will suspect a teenager on a bike of spying on them."

Phil handed Toni a file. Goodness, he was old, thought Toni. Must be in his seventies, though he seemed fit enough. "It's the usual thing," said Phil, sitting down on the sofa beside her. "The husband, Mr Constable, thinks his wife, Hetty, is having an affair. I'd only just started following her at the end of last week. There's the address. It's out in the northern end of Mircester, where all the large villas are. But just at the end of the street is a supermarket with a big car park. If you go to the end of the car park, you can get a good view of the house because it's the one nearest the supermarket."

"She drives a BMW, so I hope you can chase her on a pushbike."

"The traffic's so bad in Mircester, I should be able to keep her in view," said Toni.

"Right. I'll give you a camera and a telescopic lens and a camera bag. The equipment is expensive, so take care of it. I'll also give you a small powerful tape recorder in case you get close enough to her to record anything."

Toni's heart began to thump against her ribs. Mrs Freedman, who felt sympathetic in a motherly way to the young girl, had told her that morning just before Agatha arrived that her predecessor, Harry, had found a lot of cats and dogs at the animal shelter and had never told Agatha the reason for his successes. So Toni had been looking forward to an easy first day.

As Toni pedalled in the direction of the supermarket, she wondered nervously how she was supposed to remain unnoticed standing at the edge of a car park with a telescopic lens fitted to a camera.

She had an idea. When she got to the supermarket, she went in and bought a packet of chocolate chip cookies and a packet of sandwich bags. Outside, she tipped the cookies into a sandwich bag and sealed it. Then she got straight back on her bike and pedalled up to Mrs Constable's house.

She rang the bell. She would say she was selling cookies for the Girl Guides. That way she would find out what her quarry looked like.

When the door opened, Toni stared at the woman looking at her. "Mrs Mackenzie! What are you doing here?" Mrs Mackenzie was her next door neighbour.

"I'm cleaning, that's what."

"Is Mrs Constable in?"

"No, she's out."

Toni took a deep breath. "Can I talk to you?"

"I was just about to take a break. Come in. We'll have a cuppa."

Toni followed her through to the kitchen. "I've never seen a kitchen like this outside of advertisements," she marvelled. "It's huge."

"Fortunately for me, madam doesn't do any cooking, or hardly ever. She eats carrot sticks at home or dines out. So what is it, Toni, love? How do you know her?"

"I don't," said Toni, and then she plunged in, telling Mrs Mackenzie all about the detective job and how she had to find proof that Mrs Constable was having an affair.

"Oh, she's having an affair all right, and with a right bit of rough."

"How do you know?"

"I've got the keys, see. I'd left some shopping by mistake one day and came back. I opened the door quiet-like, and went to the kitchen. They were hard at it on the kitchen floor."

"Do you know the chap's name?"

"No; I didn't see his face, neither, only his great hairy bum."

"It would mean a lot if I could get a photograph," said Toni.

"I don't like her and that's a fact," said Mrs Mackenzie. "Get her out of the way and I'd have peace and quiet just cleaning for Mr Constable. He's ever so nice."

"Maybe I could hide in the back garden and hope she and her pal choose the kitchen again," said Toni.

"Here, have your tea and get out of here in case she comes back sudden-like. I don't want to know any more about what you're going to do and you never heard a word from me, mind."

"Sure."

Toni drank her tea rapidly, thanked Mrs Mackenzie and left. But she wheeled her bike round to the back garden and hid it in some bushes. Then she crouched down below the kitchen window and waited.

Fortunately, the garden was surrounded by a high fence and bordering trees and could not be overlooked from any of the neighbouring houses.

Toni waited. And waited. The garden grew hot. After an hour she heard the front door slam. She hoped it was Mrs Constable returning home but then she realized it was probably only Mrs Mackenzie leaving. She opened the sandwich bag and took out a cookie. The chocolate had melted and stuck to her fingers. How odd that chocolate chip biscuits were the only ones in England called 'cookies'.

Then, at two in the afternoon, when she was feeling so cramped and thirsty she was about to give up, she heard voices coming from the kitchen. The kitchen window was thrust open. "Christ, it's hot in here," came a female voice.

A deep man's voice said, "Then take 'em off, darlin'."

Toni extracted the camera and slowly rose until she could peer in the window. A burly man was unbuttoning a tall blonde woman's blouse while she fumbled at the belt of his jeans. "Come on. Hurry up," he said. They fell to the floor.

He began soon to emit loud grunts, covering the noise of the busy click of the camera shutter. Toni took out the recorder and recorded every obscenity that was pouring out of their mouths.

Feeling slightly sick, Toni quietly lifted her bike from the bushes and made her way silently round the side of the house. Her friends at school had watched pornography on their computers and she had seen some of it herself. But, she reflected, it was pretty disgusting being a witness to the real thing.

She pedalled away as fast as she could, stopping at last at a cafe where she ordered a sustaining meal of egg and chips and two Cokes.

Then she went back to the office.

Agatha was reading some correspondence. She looked up when Toni came in. "Too hot?" she asked. "I gave up myself."

"No, I've got the photographs."

"Good heavens! Print them off and let's have a look. There's a machine over there. I don't know how to work it. Do you?"

"Yes." Toni printed off the photographs and handed them to Agatha. "I have a tape recording as well." She switched it on. Mrs Freedman put her hands over her ears.

"That's enough," said Agatha sharply. "Well done. But I didn't expect a young girl like you to be exposed to such filth. I'm sorry. How did you manage to get these?"

Toni told her.

When she had finished, Agatha said, "I can't in all honestly pay you trainee wages for work like this. We'll negotiate a contract for you tomorrow. You may take the rest of the day off. Mrs Freedman, call Mr Constable."

"What about Phil's camera?"

"Take it home and bring it back tomorrow."