Agatha Raisin and the Day the Floods Came

∨ The Day the Floods Came ∧

9

When Agatha returned home, she sat down at her computer to go through her notes. She managed to catch Boswell in mid-air as he was about to leap on the keyboard. She carried the protesting cat out to the garden, followed by Hodge. “Stay there,” she ordered. They both sat side by side on the lawn, staring at her, as if she had committed some outrage. Agatha shut the door on them and returned to the computer.

She printed out what she had written and retreated to the kitchen with the pile of papers. Agatha made a cup of black coffee and lit a cigarette. She sighed. It still tasted like burning rubber. She left it burning in the ashtray but a smell like smouldering tyres on a used-tyre dump began to fill the kitchen. She sighed again and stubbed it out. She opened the kitchen door to clear the air. “You can come in now,” she said to her cats. They turned their backs on her and strolled off down the garden.

Agatha shrugged and retreated to her notes. Now, was there anything she had missed?

There was something Mary Webster had said. Where was it? At last she had it. Mary Webster had said that she had caught Kylie in the ladies’ room smoking pot. Now, as pot was still an illegal substance, anyone who wanted it had to go to an illegal source and illegal sources often pushed harder drags. Why had she, Agatha, let this one slide by? Then there was one other thing nagging at her brain.

She closed her eyes and remembered looking down from the bridge at the flood, seeing Kylie floating underneath, her hair swirling in the water, the white wedding dress, like a shroud, the bouquet clutched in stiff hands. Her eyes snapped open. The bouquet! Yes, she could have gone to show someone the wedding gown. But the bouquet! She glanced at the clock. Freda would be at home. She had surely taken the day off for the funeral.

Agatha phoned Freda and when she got her on the line, she asked, “Freda, Kylie was clutching a wedding bouquet when she was found. How did she get it? Did you keep it at home?”

“No, the police asked me that. I’d ordered it from that florists next to the market. It was to be of red roses and lilies and some maidenhair fern. It hadn’t been collected. It hadn’t even been made. They were sending it round on the morning of the wedding day.”

“And that was Kylie’s choice?”

“Well, no. She’d left all the wedding arrangements to me and Terry. Terry was paying for the wedding, but I was paying for the wedding gown and the bouquet and the bridesmaids’ dresses.”

“Who were the bridesmaids? Anyone from the office?”

“No, Iris was going to be one bridesmaid, and my brother Frank’s girl, Ruby, the other. And then Iris’s little daughter, Haley, was going to be flower-girl.”

“Did Kylie object to the bouquet as much as she objected to the wedding gown?”

“Well, she did. She said she wanted white roses.”

“Did the police say anything about what the bouquet was like?”

“No, it was never found. It must have come loose from her hands. They said with so much debris and so much of the flood-water pouring into people’s homes and shops and basements, it could be anywhere.”

Agatha thought furiously. The drowned Kylie had been clutching that bouquet. Hard to tell with the swirling of the water what it had been like. Agatha was sure that bouquet had contained white roses.

“Do you know if Kylie told anyone about the fact that she didn’t like the bouquet you had chosen for her?”

“She was angry about it and the dress. I usually gave in to her, but not on this. As I told you, I couldn’t afford a new gown for her, and I didn’t see any reason to. Iris’s gown was beautiful and as good as new. I could have changed the order for the flowers, but to tell the truth, I was so mad because Kylie had taken no interest in the wedding preparations, I dug my heels in and said I’d no intention of changing anything at all.” Freda began to sob. “If only she were alive, she could have anything sh-she w-wanted.”

Agatha tried to comfort her but Freda said she was too upset to talk any longer. Agatha said goodbye and then sat biting her nails, a substitute for nicotine. Those flowers. Now if they had been in the deep freeze with Kylie’s body, they would be frost-blasted and black. So someone must have put the bouquet in the dead girl’s cold frozen hands before putting her in the river. She shuddered. There was something very evil about that macabre touch of the bouquet. It had been done with hate.

She longed to phone Freda again and ask if she told the police about the row over the bouquet. Had the police checked all the florists to see if anyone had ordered a bouquet of white roses?

Then she thought, why not phone the police? She had not found out about the bouquet by any questioning in disguise. She telephoned Worcester police and was put through to Brudge. He listened to her carefully and then said, “There were little marks on her hands as if from thorns. Thank you, Mrs. Raisin; we’ll look into it.”

Agatha put down the phone with a feeling of relief. The police had the resources to cover florists far and wide.

She went back to her notes. Kylie must have been close to one of the girls. Just suppose one of them suggested to her at the hen party that she should slip out after she got home and bring the dress with her? She sat back and frowned. Wedding presents. She had never asked about the wedding presents. Now if one of the girls had given a particularly expensive wedding present, would that not go to show particular friendship?

Agatha was reluctant to phone Freda again, but curiosity compelled her to dial her number.

“I don’t want to upset you further,” said Agatha. “What about the wedding presents?”

“I returned them all,” said Freda in a tired voice.

“Can you by any chance remember what the office girls gave her?”

“It was a joint present, a tea-service.”

“Nothing else?”

“I made a list. I may still have it. Hold on.”

Agatha waited impatiently. Freda came back on the line.

“I’ve found it. Oh, Joanna Field – poor Joanna, the police haven’t found her – gave her a bottle of perfume as well as contributing to the tea-service. And Marilyn Josh gave her one of those indecent thong swimsuits. I remember Kylie saying, “She must think I’m a tart.” Nothing else.”

After she had rung off, Agatha studied the notes of Marilyn Josh. Marilyn lived above Harry McCoy and could have seen Agatha standing outside the house that evening when someone had tried to run her over. But Marilyn would not have the means to inject Kylie with heroin and then dump her body in a freezer. Unless she had help. Or had Joanna been in on it and had disappeared to somewhere she was sure the police would not find her?

The doorbell rang. Agatha opened the door to find Mrs. Bloxby there. “You haven’t forgotten about the old photographs of the Cotswolds thing?” she asked anxiously.

“I had,” said Agatha ruefully.

“It’s tomorrow at three in the afternoon. All you have to do is serve tea, sandwiches and cakes.”

“Oh, all right. I’ll be there. Lantern-slides?”

“No, framed photographs around the walls. Easy, pleasant afternoon.”

“For some,” muttered Agatha. “Come in. I’ll make some coffee.”

“I have to get on. Is John Armitage back? His car isn’t there.”

“I neither know nor care,” said Agatha stiffly.

“Oh, Mrs. Raisin!”

“Mrs. Raisin what?” But the vicar’s wife was walking rapidly away.

Agatha decided to check her e-mail. There was one from Marie Hernandez. “We are going back to Robinson Crusoe Island in August and wondered if you would like to join us? We had such fun and I think it was a healing place for you. Let us know if you’ll be there.”

Agatha thought of the long, long plane flight to Santiago and then the three-hour flight in the small propeller plane out to the island. She typed, “I don’t think I can make it. Maybe next year.” She hesitated. Should she tell Marie about the case she was on? But it was too complicated and would take too long. So she added a few sentences about the weather in true British style and sent it off.

The doorbell rang again. It was Bill Wong. Agatha eagerly drew him in and described how she had phoned Brudge about the flowers.

“Good work,” said Bill. “I heard a while back from my friend at Worcester police that they had been asking about that bouquet, but the people with you on the bridge when Kylie was spotted were too shocked to notice if the bouquet was fresh. Anything else?”

“Did I tell you that Mary Webster once caught Kylie smoking pot?”

“No, I don’t think you did. That’s interesting. If she was experimenting with pot, she might have gone on to experiment with something stronger. Did she tell Mary where she’d got it?”

“No. Well, I forgot to ask that.”

“And I hear from the news that Joanna Field is still missing.”

“I wonder, Bill, if she had anything to do with it. I wonder if she thought the police might soon get on to her and decided to disappear.”

“I almost wish that were the case. But would she go off and not take any of her clothes with her? She has only a little bit of money in her account and none of it has been touched. How’s John Armitage?”

Agatha stared at him. “There’s a thing. I wonder.”

“What?”

“He was keen on her. He found out she’d been sleeping with Barrington – what a euphemism, sleeping. Anyway, he took off after that. But he was keen on her. What if she gave him some sob story about wanting to get away from it all?”

“I think you’ll probably find that John Armitage left news of his whereabouts with Worcester police before he left. But I’ll phone them and check him out. You know, it’s a pity it wasn’t Zak. It’s usually the nearest and dearest.”

“But he’s so cut up. And what could his motive be?”

“If there were drugs at that club and Kylie had somehow found out and threatened to tell the police, that would be a motive. But the club’s been searched. And there’s never been a whisper of anything there. It could be jealousy on the part of one of the girls. But would any of them go to such lengths? Trying to kill you and then succeeding in running down Mrs. Anstruther-Jones?”

Agatha lit a cigarette, took a puff, winced and put it out. “I don’t know, Bill. I just don’t know.”

He smiled. “Relax, Agatha. You’ve done your best. The police will be combing the florists far and wide. That was a good tip. Leave everything to them.”

♦

Agatha retreated to the garden to start weeding again. The weather had turned very warm and heavy. She noticed that the grass on the lawn had grown several inches. Again she thought of calling the gardener, but stopped herself from doing so with the reminder that she might as well occupy her time, and why pay someone to do what she could do herself?

She got the lawn-mower out of the shed at the foot of the garden, carried the lead into the kitchen and plugged it in.

Back in the garden, she switched on the machine and began to trundle it happily up and down the grass in the sunshine, dreaming of becoming a completely new Agatha Raisin, in that way that people who do not like themselves very much are apt to do when they set about inventing a new character for themselves. She would take lessons in cookery and baking from Mrs. Bloxby. She would become a model villager. She would fond-raise for the church. Her thoughts began to take a gloomy turn. Yes, she would be the perfect country lady, and at her funeral the church would be filled with sobbing villagers. Alf, the vicar, would be in tears as he explained to the packed congregation that he really did not know how he or the village would get along without her. Perhaps James Lacey would be there, head bowed by her graveside. He would say, “I loved her all my life and came back to tell her so, but it was too late.” A tear rolled down Agatha’s cheek and she brushed it angrily away.

The grass done and the cut grass bagged up in refuse sacks, Agatha went back indoors and decided to do a particularly tough Pilates exercise called the dead bug, which involved lying on her back and stretching alternative legs and arms until she ached.

What next? A shopping trip? But where? Stow-on-the-Wold and Chipping Campden were wall-to-wall tourists. Much as she liked Evesham, it didn’t have much in the way of smart clothes shops.

The doorbell shrilled. Glad of a diversion, Agatha hurried to open it and then glared at Sir Charles Fraith. Certainly, he had somehow restored himself to his old slimness and impeccable tailoring, although his hair was still thin. “Get lost,” snarled Agatha.

He put his foot in the door. “I need a shoulder to cry on,” he said.

Agatha hesitated and then opened the door wide. “Come in, but make it quick. I was just about to go out.”

He followed her into the kitchen. “Any chance of a coffee?”

“I’ll make some and we’ll take our cups into the garden. It’s a glorious day. Don’t spoil it by staying too long.”

“If you say so,” said Charles gloomily. Agatha made two mugs of instant coffee and they carried them out into the garden and sat at a table in the sunshine.

“So,” began Agatha, “what’s up?”

“She’s left me.”

“What! Your wife? The French bird? Why?”

“Would you believe it, Aggie, she says it’s because I’m mean. She’s gone to Paris and says she doesn’t want to see me again.”

♦

“Well, you always were tight with money, Charles. When it comes to paying a bill in a restaurant, you’ve always managed to forget your wallet.”

“I’m thrifty,” he said defensively. “And she’s got oodles of cash, but she says she sees no reason why she should have to spend her own.”

“You sound like soul mates,” commented Agatha drily. Her stomach gave a rumble. “I’ve got to eat something,” she said.

“Then I’ll prove to you I’m a reformed character. I’ll take you for dinner. What do you feel like?”

Agatha felt for a moment that she should rebuff him. He had behaved disgracefully. But then, when had Charles ever behaved well?

“Oh, all right. I feel like Chinese. There’s a good restaurant in Evesham. I’ll go and change.”

♦

“So what have you been up to?” asked Charles as they tackled pancakes and crispy duck.

“It’s an odd business,” said Agatha. “Did you read about that girl found in the river in Evesham?”

“Saw something about it. Tell me. This is like old times.”

Yes, it was, thought Agatha. She almost expected James to walk in the door. He’d had a habit of turning up when she was with Charles.

Agatha started with first meeting Kylie at the beauticians. Charles listened carefully until she had finished.

“What a complicated case!” he exclaimed when she finally fell silent. “I think you should concentrate more on this Marilyn Josh. She lives at the same address as Harry McCoy. Someone saw you and decided to kill you, or that someone decided to phone the murderer and say where you were. Kylie was blackmailing Barrington. Who knows? She may have been blackmailing someone else.”

“But who? Someone we don’t know?”

“And this Joanna Field. Wouldn’t her neighbours have seen anything?”

“I don’t know that she has any neighbours. She lives above a shop in Port Street. A lot of property there is still flood-damaged, you know, no one doing anything until the insurance comes through, and with so many claims, that could take ages. Anyway, the police will already have interviewed everyone possible. I feel something awful has happened to her.”

“Maybe not. Maybe she just wanted to clear off knowing the police would want to question her about Barrington.”

“Without clothes or money?”

“She could have been very frightened.”

“She didn’t strike me as being frightened the last time I saw her. Angry, cheeky, insolent. But not frightened.”

“Let’s look at the drug business. That suggests viciousness plus organization.”

“That brings us back to the club again and there’s no record of any drugs being dealt there.”

“Needn’t be the club. What about Barrington’s? Barrington himself sounds a nasty bit of work, and what about that goon you described, George, the one who mans the front desk?”

“Really, Charles. A plumbing business?”

“All things are possible. Would they have a deep freeze at Barrington’s?”

“I shouldn’t think so. Anyway, after the blackmailing business came out, the police would have turned the place inside out. I wish it would turn out to be Phyllis.”

“Why that one?”

“She’s a narcissistic bully. She’s violently jealous. She hated Kylie. I think she’s a low life.”

“Any sign that she takes drugs?”

“Not that I noticed, but unless someone has bare arms and tracks marks up them, I wouldn’t know.”

“Tell you what. Why don’t I stay the night and I’ll go round all these people with you tomorrow?”

“No, Charles. I’ve got to serve teas in the village tomorrow for some photographic exhibition.” Agatha hesitated. It was difficult to continue to be angry with the lightweight Charles. And somehow, just talking over a case with him like old times connected her in some way to James Lacey. “But I tell you what. Why don’t you call over on Saturday and we’ll take it from there?”

“Great. I’ll come in the morning and we’ll get started.”

“What are you going to do about your marriage?”

“What about it?”

“I mean, aren’t you going to try to fix things? Fly to Paris?”

“No point. I mean, it’s not just her I have to deal with. It’s her father, mother, two brothers, uncles, aunts, all jabbering at me in French.”

“But Charles. She’s expecting twins!”

A faint red flush crept up Charles’s face. Agatha stared at him in amazement. “You’re actually blushing! I didn’t think you could.”

“The fact is,” he said, twisting the stem on his wineglass, “I got well and truly caught.”

“How?”

“I met her when I was on holiday in Saint Tropez. She was well-guarded by relatives, friends and family, and although she was – is – awfully pretty, I wouldn’t have made a move if she hadn’t moved on me. She kept gazing over at me in this restaurant, sending out signals. You know. One day, she was on her own. I stopped at her table and asked if she was enjoying her stay. She asked me to sit down. We laughed and talked. Then she saw her parents coming into the restaurant and asked me quickly where I was staying. I gave her the name of my hotel. She said she’d meet me in the foyer at midnight. And she did. And we spent the night together, although she had to sneak off at six in the morning. She told me she was on the pill. No, I didn’t have any protection. To tell the truth, I didn’t know I was going to need it. I didn’t see her again and put it all down to a rather intriguing one-night stand. I’d given her my address and phone number. A month later I got this hysterical phone call from Paris saying her period was late and that she’d lied to me about being on the pill. I told her to check out whether she was pregnant or not and phone me back. She phoned back a day later and confirmed that she was. Well, I decided to do the decent thing. Family’s rich, she’s pretty, chance to be a dad, all that. Went over, met the family, popped the question. Got a bit frightened with marriage settlements and lawyers before the wedding and asked her if she was really sure she was pregnant and she smiled at me mistily and said she had been told she was expecting twins.

“Well, that clinched it. I could see myself teaching them to fish and ride and Daddy stuff like that. Went ahead with the wedding. Only realize now in retrospect that I’d told her a lot about me but she hadn’t told me that much about her past. Anyway, by the time we got married, she should have been about four months preggers but she didn’t really look pregnant, but she was on this salad diet because she said she didn’t want to get too fat. So we got married and I took her back to Warwickshire, where she was bored out of her tiny mind. It was my aunt – remember her? – who began nagging me about her not showing any signs at all of pregnancy. I began to get suspicious and made an appointment for her with a gynaecologist in London and then told her that she should get checked up and see if everything was okay. She began to rant and rave that I was mean, that she hadn’t expected to stay buried in the country. That was when I accused her of cheating me, of not being pregnant at all.

“She insisted sulkily that she’d thought she was. I said, so what about these twins? She said the doctor must have made a mistake. She was going back to Paris and wanted a divorce. I said she could get one if she took all the blame. God, I never realized what she was really like. She pointed out, quite rightly, that there was nothing on record that she was pregnant. And there wasn’t! She had made me swear not to tell her parents. After the wedding I said, ‘Let’s tell them now,’ and she said, ‘Oh, no, Maman and Papa would be so shocked.’ And to think I went along with it!

“I mean, she certainly was no virgin when I’d first had her. I felt stuck, and I would have been stuck if it hadn’t been for my man, Gustav.”

“He’s back with you, is he?” Agatha remembered Charles’s terrifying butler.

“Yes, and terribly keen on gadgets is old Gustav. I kept forgetting appointments, dinners and things that people had phoned up to invite me to. So Gustav bought this thingy that plugs into your phone and records things. He went over the tapes and glory be, there were the two calls from her saying she thought she was pregnant and then the one saying she had been to the doctor and it had been confirmed.

“Anyway, my lawyers are dealing with it and I don’t want to see her or anyone from France again.”

“Why pick on you?”

“That’s where it gets interesting.”

“I thought it was all already interesting enough,” commented Agatha.

“Boofy Pratt-Rogers, an old school friend of mine who works at the British Embassy in Paris, got the low-down. Anne-Marie Duchenne, that’s the wife, had one flaming affair with some French comte. Can’t remember his name. They were supposed to get married and were engaged and all and then this comte ups and offs at the last minute and marries someone else. Anne-Marie devastated and furious and with a bad case of the ‘I’ll show him.’ Family take her to Saint Trap to recover and she’s tipped off that I’m a rich English milord. Of course I’m only a baronet, but what does a frog know?” said Charles with a burst of xenophobic bitterness.

“Mrs. Bloxby would say,” said Agatha, “that the good Lord was punishing you for years of philandering.”

“Mrs. Bloxby would not say anything so unkind. Shall we go?”

“After you’ve paid the bill,” said Agatha.

Charles had parked a little way down the High Street from the restaurant. Agatha was walking along to the car with him when she suddenly came face to face with Marilyn Josh. She quickly ducked her head and scurried along to the car. Open the door, Charles, quickly, her mind pleaded as he fumbled for his keys. Just before Agatha slid into the passenger seat, she glanced back. Marilyn was standing looking along the street at her.

“Lost something?” asked Charles as Agatha crouched down. “No, that was Marilyn Josh on the High Street, just before we reached the car. She was looking straight at me, and when I got into the car I looked back, and she was standing in the High Street staring at me.”

“I thought you were wearing some disguise when you interviewed her.”

“Yes, a blond wig and glasses. It really did alter my appearance.”

“Were you by any chance wearing the clothes you’re wearing now?”

Agatha glanced down at her biscuit-coloured trouser-suit. “Lord, I was wearing this last time I saw her.”

“Can’t be helped. She probably thought there was something familiar about you, but couldn’t quite think what.”

“Let’s hope so,” said Agatha. Charles had left and she was preparing for bed when the phone rang. It was Bill Wong. “The most peculiar thing has happened, Agatha,” he said. “We’ve just arrested two young fellows high on drugs, who frightened the life out of a woman in Mircester by driving straight at her. She said she jumped clear and was able to give us a description of the car and the licence number. Tough old bird with nerves of steel. So we picked them up. The car was stolen. They’re being charged with that, plus possession of drugs. Now Worcester police are going to have to be brought into this because they’ll want to know if they were the ones who killed Mrs. Anstruther-Jones. They could be the ones that went for you.”

“Don’t tell Brudge about me,” pleaded Agatha.

“I can’t very well tell him now,” said Bill, “and more’s the pity. They’re trying to say they only did it to give her a fright, just a joke, they would have slammed on the brakes at the last minute. There’s been a few more instances of this kind of thing. We’ll need to sweat it out of them, find the other cars they’ve stolen and try to get forensics to come up with something. It could be that the attack on you was just these silly buggers playing games.”

“What about Mrs. Anstruther-Jones?”

“Could be them as well and it was a joke that went wrong. I’ll let you know.”

Agatha, after she had rung off, found herself hoping that it had been they. But before she fell asleep, Marilyn Josh’s face rose before her eyes. She could only hope she hadn’t recognized her.

♦

The following day was sultry and warm. The sun was veiled in thin cloud. The leaves on the trees hung motionless. What a day for standing behind a counter with a hot tea urn and a hot coffee urn, Agatha thought crossly.

She put on a loose summer gown and made her way along to the hall. At the back of the hall, tables and chairs had been laid out to make a temporary tea-room. There was a long trestle-table filled with home-made cakes and sandwiches and the urns of tea and coffee.

Three o’clock arrived. Agatha shifted restlessly in the heat. Very few people were coming in. The school hall smelled of dust and chalk. Dust motes drifted in shafts of sunlight.

Mrs. Bloxby, who had been selling tickets at the school hall door, surrendered her post to Miss Simms and joined Agatha. “It’s quite sad,” she said. “Poor Mr. Parry. That’s him over there.”

Agatha looked to where a stooped, elderly gentleman was standing in front of one of his photographs.

“Who’s he?”

“Mr. Parry is the man whose collection of old photographs it is. So sad. I would have thought more people would have been interested.”

“Take over from me,” said Agatha. “I’ll have this place full in an hour.”

She went to a cupboard where she knew materials were kept for finger-painting, having once been drafted by Mrs. Bloxby to supervise a kindergarten class while the teacher went to the doctor. She pulled out a large square of cardboard and painted FREE TEAS, HOME-BAKING, CHURCH HALL, ALL WELCOME on the card. She went to her car and drove up to the main road and tacked the card onto a tree. Then she went back to the hall.

“We’re giving away the teas and stuff,” she told Mrs. Bloxby. “Don’t panic. I’ll pay you for them.”

“That’s awfully generous of you. Are you sure?”

“Real little Lady Bountiful, me,” said Agatha with a shrug. “Anything to liven this dump up.”

Cars started to arrive and then a whole coach-load of people. Mrs. Bloxby was once more at the door, saying sweetly, “It’s two pounds for admission, but that covers your afternoon teas.” Agatha grinned. The vicar’s wife had jacked up the price from twenty pee. Then she was kept so busy serving that the rest of the afternoon flew past until every cake and sandwich had gone. Old Mr. Parry had spent a happy time taking people round his exhibition of pictures.

“I think you’ve done enough, Mrs. Raisin,” beamed Mrs. Bloxby. “The ladies and I will clean up.”

“Thanks,” said Agatha with relief. “I’m so hot and sticky, I need a bath.”

“Oh, before you go, Mr. Parry would really like to show you his photographs. He says you’ve been working so hard you haven’t had enough time to see them.”

“Must I?”

“I said you would.”

“Rats!”

Agatha slouched off to join Mr. Parry. “Ah, Mrs. Raisin,” he cried. “Shall we start with this one? This is a view of Blockley High Street circa 1910, and this…”

Agatha’s mind drifted off in the heat. At last the tour was over. “Thank you very much,” said Agatha.

“I didn’t display them all,” he said. “Some I have in a folder were watermarked or cracked, but very interesting for all that.”

To Agatha’s horror he picked up a folder from a chair, opened it and spread the contents on a table. “I have an appointment,” she gabbled. “Must go.”

He looked at her in disappointment. “I’m sure they’re all as fascinating as the ones in the exhibition,” she said, “but…”

On the top of the open folder was a sepia photograph of a street which seemed familiar to her. In the next second, she realized it was the back lane where the disco was situated. But where the disco was now stood a butchers shop, with the butcher grinning outside and game hanging from hooks.

“A butchers,” said Agatha.

He gave her a peculiar look. “Yes, obviously. So few of the old butchers left now that people go to the supermarket. That was Gringe’s. Bless me, that’s an old photograph, but they were there until five years ago. They sold up. The man that bought it meant to turn it into two flats but he went bankrupt and it was sold to those disco people. Such a shame.”

Agatha walked off slowly, deaf to his cry of “But you haven’t seen the others!”

A butcher, thought Agatha. How far would the chap who bought it for the flats have got with the conversion? Say he hadn’t got anywhere, then it would be as it had been when it was a butchers shop. That would mean the walk-in deep freeze would still be there.

“Mrs. Raisin!”

Agatha turned round reluctantly. It was Mrs. Bloxby. “Mr. Parry thought you’d taken a funny turn.”

“I’m all right. It was one of those photographs, Mrs. Bloxby. A butchers used to be in Evesham where the disco is now and that means there still might be a deep freeze there.”

“But the police searched the disco!”

“They were looking for a freezer chest,” said Agatha excitedly. “What if the freezer room is still there, behind a curtain or a fake wall?”

“You must tell the police.”

“Gringe was the name of the butcher. I’m going to see if I can find the man who sold the shop and get him to draw me a plan of where that freezer room was. Then I’ll go to the disco tomorrow night and see if it’s still there.”

“Mrs. Raisin, it’s too dangerous.”

“You mustn’t tell the police. This is my case,” said Agatha fiercely. “Promise?”

“I promise,” said Mrs. Bloxby reluctantly.

♦

As soon as she got home, Agatha checked the phone-book. There were two Gringes, A. Gringe and M. Gringe.

She dialled the A. Gringe. No reply. She tried the M.

Gringe. A woman answered. Agatha said she wanted to speak to whoever had owned the butchers-shop which was now a disco. “Oh, that’s my husband’s father,” she said.

“Do you know when he’ll be at home?” asked Agatha. “I phoned him but there was no reply.”

“He doesn’t go out much. He’s probably out in his garden.”

“I see he lives in Badsey,” said Agatha.

“Yes, you’ll find his house is near the schoolhouse. Know where that is?”

Agatha said she did and rang off.

She had a quick shower and changed. Before she left for Badsey, she phoned Charles’s number to put him off. Agatha wanted all the glory for herself. Gustav answered the phone and said Sir Charles was out and so she left a message. Now for Mr. Gringe.

♦

His home in Badsey was a trim, end-terraced house. Agatha saw there was a path at the side leading to the garden at the back, and decided to try the garden first.

She walked along the path. The garden was a plantless miracle. A wooden deck stretched out from behind the back door covered in a canvas canopy, and the area in front of it, where an old man was stooped, pulling at a weed, was covered in small shiny pebbles.

“Mr. Gringe?”

He straightened up, his eyes roaming over the pebbles as if threatening any other bit of green to show its face. “Yes?”

“I’m Agatha Raisin. I want to ask you about your butchers shop, the one that’s now a disco.”

He turned slowly and looked at her. His face was seamed and lined and his shoulders were stooped. He wiped his hands on an old pair of flannels, held one out and solemnly shook Agatha’s hand.

“What do you want to know?”

“I wondered if you could draw me a plan of your shop as it once was, showing me where the freezer, the cold room, was situated.”

“Why?”

“I’m writing a book,” lied Agatha, “and I have this butchers shop in it. I needed a layout.”

“So why don’t you just go to the butchers in, say, Moreton, and ask them to show you around?”

“Because I’m setting it in the past,” said Agatha desperately. “I need an old-fashioned butchers shop.”

He indicated a gleaming white plastic table surrounded by hard plastic chairs on the deck. “Let’s sit down and I’ll get a piece of paper.”

Agatha sat down and he shuffled off into the house. He seemed to be gone a very long time. She waited impatiently.

At last he reappeared, holding a sheet of white A-4 paper and a ball-point pen. He sat down beside her with painstaking slowness and then said, “Let me see, the counter was here as you came in the door. Had to be a cold counter, you know, glassed in. Bloody European regulations!” He began to draw with neat, draughtsmanlike precision.

“Through this door behind the counter was a short corridor and then a big area at the back. Deliveries came in by the back door. We cut up the meat in this room. There was a toilet here, and then a kitchen.”

“The freezer?” prompted Agatha.

“The cold room was just here, at the end of the large room the back. Inconvenient place, but it would have cost too much to move it.” His pen moved on, neatly sketching everything in Agatha waited patiently while he drew a plan of the upstairs as well.

“Those disco people got it cheap,” he grumbled, “because of all the conversion they’d have to do. I wanted to sell it to a butcher, but what butchers are there nowadays? The supermarkets have killed most of us off. The last straw was the E. coli scare. And the beef-on-the-bone scare. Couldn’t sell a joint of meat on the bone anywhere, and that took extra butchering time. Damn government. You put that in your book. The government helped to kill us off, us and the farmers. I’d shoot the lot of them. Want a drink?”

Agatha decided, as she had not planned to go to the disco until the next evening, the least she could do would be to give him some more of her time. “That would be nice.” She was just about to say she would have a gin and tonic, when he added, “I make the best dandelion wine in the Cotswolds.” Agatha resigned herself.

He shuffled indoors again. Birds chirped sleepily in the neighbouring gardens but no bird sang in Mr. Gringe’s stark garden. The evening sky stretched overhead, a pale green deepening to dark blue at the horizon. Somewhere deep inside her, a voice was telling her she was being dangerously silly, that she should turn over everything she had to the police.

Mr. Gringe came shuffling back carrying a tray with a bottle and two glasses. He poured out two large glasses of dandelion wine. “Here’s to you,” he said. Agatha raised her glass. “Good health.”

“So what name do you write under?” he asked.

“Agatha Raisin.”

“Never heard of you.”

“Do you read much?”

“No, I’ve got the telly.”

“Then that’s why you haven’t heard of me.” Agatha looked out over the garden. “Don’t you like plants?”

“Waste of time. They get aphids and slugs and then they’re always dropping leaves and making a mess.”

“Some people think it worth the effort to look out at pretty flowers.”

“Some people need their heads examined. Are you married?”

“Divorced.”

“Have you any money?”

“I’m comfortably off.”

He suddenly leered at her. “Don’t do to be on your own. Tell you what. You can marry me. I’m tired of all the cleaning and scrubbing, and that’s women’s work.”

“Then you should employ a cleaner.”

“Pay someone to do it? No, that’s where you come in.”

“And this is where I go out,” said Agatha firmly, putting her glass on the table. The wine was sweet and heavy and she did not think she could bear to swallow another sip.

“You’re missing out,” he called after her as she snatched up the plan of the butchers shop and made for the side of the house and escape. “You’re lucky to get an offer at your age.”