Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell

∨ The Love from Hell ∧

5

HAD London always been so dirty and shabby? wondered Agatha. Surely not. The singles’ bar was off Piccadilly Circus, and not, as Agatha had guessed, in some dreary suburb. Certainly it was a hot summer which always gave the city a tired, exhausted air. Charles managed to find a space in an underground car-park a short walk from the bar.

Agatha was wearing a silk trouser-suit which had looked very sophisticated and smart in her bedroom mirror at home. But as they walked through the crowds, she noticed women wearing floaty summer dresses, or very short skirts and brief tops, and began to feel like a frump. She was wearing flat gold leather shoes and wished now she had worn heels. Miss Simms teetered along in very high heels and a skirt that verged on the indecent as she was showing her usual glimpses of stocking tops. Charles was dressed in a soft blue cotton shirt, chinos, and moccasins. Agatha felt she was the only one who didn’t fit in with the cosmopolitan atmosphere.

Miss Simms’ singles’ bar turned out to be a disco called Stompers. “Are you sure this is the place?” asked Agatha. The young people trooping in ahead of them all looked trendily dressed.

“Yeah, this is it,” said Miss Simms, clutching Charles’s arm. “Not my sort of place.”

Agatha paid the entrance fee and they went downstairs to a large room where couples gyrated under darting strobe lights. The music was loud, horrendously so. It beat upon their ear-drums and made conversation impossible.

They made their way to the bar and in a brief moment when the music ceased, Agatha said, “Do you see them?”

“Not yet,” said Miss Simms. She hitched herself up on the bar-stool and the resultant display of lace stocking tops and frilly knickers meant that she was immediately asked to dance.

Agatha put her mouth to Charles’s ear and shouted, “Waste of time.”

As dance number followed dance number – hadn’t they moved on from The Village People? – Agatha began to get angry. Miss Simms hadn’t returned. This was not a singles’ bar. It was a disco for young people. She was feeling hot and tired and deafened.

She was just about to shout to Charles to go and collect Miss Simms and get them out of the noise and into the fresh air when Miss Simms suddenly appeared in front of them accompanied by a burly young man.

“Ere’s one of them,” she roared.

Charles took the young man aside and shouted something. Then he jerked his head at Agatha and they all made their way out of the club.

“Thank God for that,” said Agatha, taking in great gulps of polluted air. “This here is Jake,” said Miss Simms. “He was one of them that was with Melissa.”

Jake did not look like a bit of rough stuff to Agatha. He was wearing a black T-shirt, black trousers and enormous boots, but; he had a pleasant-enough face.

“What’s all this about?” asked Jake when they had managed to get a table at a nearby pub. “I read she’d got topped. Nothing to do with me.”

“The thing is,” said Agatha, “my husband’s missing and he’s suspected of having committed the murder. I don’t know what Melissa was really like. I mean, what did you make of her; what really happened?”

“Well, for a start, you can’t tell with the lights in there and she was heavy made up, you see. When we got back to our flat, and I got a good look at her, I thought; blimey, I thought, I ain’t reduced to screwing someone as old as my mum. Besides, she was as pissed as a newt. Must have been drinking a lot in the club.”

“She was,” interjected Miss Simms.

“So me and the others had a confab in the kitchen and my mates, that’s Jerry and Wayne, they says, get rid of the old bird. So I go back in and tells her, “You’ll need to go, we’ve got a date later with our girl-friends.” She says she could teach us a few tricks, like we didn’t know. Disgusting, it was.” He grinned cheekily at Agatha. “Don’t know what the older generation’s coming to.” Miss Simms giggled and sipped at a blue drink which seemed to be full of fruit and decorated with small paper umbrellas.

“Told her she wasn’t on. No way. ‘Get the hell out,’ I said. She asks for a drink for the road, so I gives her one and goes into the kitchen to tell my mates I’ll soon have her out and I go back and the old bird’s passed out on the sofa. So we all carry her downstairs and sit her on the pavement with her back to the railings and then we all went back to the club. When we got back – oh, ‘bout two in the morning – she’d gone.”

Charles looked at Jake thoughtfully. “Let me get this straight,” he said. “I can understand you mistaking her age and going off with her, but why bring your mates along? Did you all mean to have her?”

“What sort of blokes do you think we are?” demanded Jake truculently.

“We’re not the police,” said Agatha, “and we’re not interested in your motives. Can I tell you what I think? There’s one thing I do know about Melissa and that is she was a fantasist. So what would get you all to go along? And I don’t think any of you made a mistake about her age. Drugs! The silly cow probably told you she knew where to score.”

“Do I look like a junkie?” demanded Jake.

“Come on, tell us,” pleaded Agatha. “We won’t go to the police. I just have to know how far she would go with lying.”

“It’s worth fifty pounds,” said Charles suddenly.

Jake sat with his head down. Then he said, “How can I trust you?”

“Simply because we’re not the police,” said Charles. “You don’t look like a junkie. So what was it? Pot?”

He shrugged and then said, “Yeah, that was it. Told us her lover was a dealer and she could get us the best Colombian. She said she would phone him from our place. When we gets there, she starts to come on to us, and I mean all of us. It was right disgusting. “Phone your friend,” we says. She keeps saying, “Later, let’s have some fun.” So we leave her with the whisky bottle and have that confab in the kitchen and we decide she’s lying and when we go back in, she’s passed out, like I said, and so we leave her on the pavement, like I said. Silly old trout.” He focused on Agatha. “I saw your picture in the newspapers. She was knocking off your old man, wasn’t she?”

Agatha averted her eyes.

“Forget about that,” said Charles. He turned to Miss Simms. “You didn’t know anything about this?”

“No. You can’t hear a thing in that club.”

“What about my fifty pounds?” demanded Jake.

“Could you pay, Aggie?” said Charles. “I’m a bit short.”

“I paid the entrance fees to that disco.”

“I’ve got me cheque-book with me,” said Miss Simms with all the misplaced generosity of the poor.

“No, that’s all right.” Charles stood up and took out his wallet. He peeled off notes and handed them to Jake. “Give him your card, Aggie. Ring us if you think of anything else, Jake.”

“Right. I’m off then.” Jake stood up and then looked down at Miss Simms. “I’m going back to the disco. You coming?”

“Certainly not,” said Miss Simms primly. “I’m going home with my friends.”

Miss Simms looked disapprovingly after Jake’s retreating back. “Cheek!” she said. “I like my gentlemen to be more mature. In fact, Eddie’s back again.”

“Who’s Eddie?” asked Agatha.

“He’s the one before last,” said Miss Simms. “Ever so nice. In bathroom fittings in Cheltenham. His wife’s left him. Not for me. They never find out about me. I’m not a tart, like some I could mention. No, she left him for a man in surgical goods.”

♦

After they had deposited Miss Simms at her home, Agatha and Charles sat in the kitchen of Agatha’s cottage and mulled over the little information they had. “You know what hurts?” said Agatha. “It’s just that the more we find out about Melissa, the more horrible it seems that James had anything to do with her.”

“I think men under sentence of death will do things they might not otherwise have contemplated. Then James was always a violently jealous man.”

“James!”

“Yes, James.”

“I never really thought of him as being jealous,” said Agatha. “I was always so violently jealous myself.”

“Agatha admits to a fault! Goodness me.”

“Never mind that. What about this business of Melissa saying she had a lover who was a drug dealer?”

“That was sharp of you to guess about drugs. What put you on to that?”

“Just a wild guess. And all this nonsense of Miss Simms about rough trade. I mean, she’s very genteel. I thought it would be a real dive, but it seemed a respectable Piccadilly disco. It wasn’t even a singles’ bar either. What took Melissa there?”

“Sex?”

“I don’t know. I’m beginning to think she was a real murderee. I mean, those lads could have turned out to be dangerous. Anyway, to get back to the drug-dealer lover. If only that would turn out to be true. It would supply a motive.”

“I can’t believe in this drug dealer. If Melissa coerced Miss Simms into going up to London with her, maybe she got friendly with someone else in the village.”

“She probably mistakenly picked on Miss Simms,” said Agatha bitterly, “because she thought her morals were as loose as her own. No one else in the village fills that bill.”

“There might be someone. I mean, on the face of it, Melissa was just the perfect village housewife, apart from her fling with James. You know, Aggie, we can’t keep leaving James out of the equation.”

“He didn’t do it!”

“But he got involved in something that meant he was attacked and probably by the same person who killed Melissa.”

“That might bring us back to the husbands. We never really got to talk to Mr. Dewey properly.”

“Let’s leave him alone for a bit,” pleaded Charles. “Gosh, I’m tired. Mind if I stay the night?”

“You know where the spare room is.”

“I’ll get my bag out of the car.”

Agatha watched him go, half amused, half exasperated. In the past, Charles had sometimes moved in with her. It was always because he was bored, or because the elderly aunt who lived with him had decided to hold a charity party and he wanted to stay out of the way until it was over. She knew that if Charles was courting some girl – for he was ever hopeful of getting married – he would disappear from her life for months. The fact that he never managed to secure any sort of lasting relationship Agatha put down to his being tight with money. Then, people who were tight with money were also inclined to be tight with emotions. Not much giving, emotionally or physically.

“What are you brooding about?” Agatha started. She had been so immersed in her thoughts, she had not heard Charles coming back into the kitchen.

“You,” said Agatha.

He sat down and looked at her, amused. “What about me?”

“I was wondering why you never had a permanent girlfriend.”

“And what do you think is the reason?”

“I think it’s because you’re mean about money. What woman is going to put up with someone who takes her out for dinner and forgets his wallet, or, in your case, pretends to forget it?”

“What a funny woman you are. That reminds me. You owe me half of that fifty quid.”

The next morning Agatha arose late and to the smell of frying bacon. She was half-way down the stairs in her night-gown when she remembered that Charles was staying. She retreated up the stairs and quickly showered and dressed. When she went back down again, it was to find Charles eating breakfast and chatting to her cleaner, Doris Simpson.

Agatha and her cleaner were two of the few women of Carsely who called each other by their first names. “Hullo, Agatha,” said Doris. “Just about to get started. If you’re finished upstairs, I’ll begin with the bedrooms. Late night?” Her eyes slid from Charles to Agatha.

“A celibate late night,” said Agatha firmly. “We’ve been up to London, trying to find out more about what a sort of person Melissa was.”

“I cleaned for her, you know,” said Doris, her voice muffled as she bent down to take out more cleaning material from a kitchen cupboard.

Agatha and Charles stared at each other. “Sit down, Doris,” said Agatha. “I didn’t know you cleaned for her. You didn’t say anything.”

Doris sat down reluctantly. “Didn’t like to, given the circumstances. Didn’t think you’d want to hear her name mentioned. And you’ve been looking so ill. I was right worried about you.”

“We’re trying to establish what sort of person Melissa was,” said Charles. “You see, that way we might figure out why she was murdered.”

“I don’t know if I’m supposed to talk about this,” said Doris. “It was all hush-hush. But, then, she’s dead.”

Agatha and Charles looked at her eagerly. “What do you; mean, hush-hush?”

“She told me,” said Doris, looking over her apron shoulder and dropping her voice to a whisper, “not to touch anything on her desk. She said she was working on a secret project for the government. I should’ve told the police.”

Agatha sighed. “The one thing we have found out about Melissa was that she was a fantasist and a liar. But how long did you work for her?”

“Just a day a week.”

“Until she died?”

“No, I quit before then.”

“Why?”

Doris turned an uncomfortable red. “Do I have to tell you?”

“I think you’d better.”

“I went along one morning. She wasn’t around. She had given me a key, so I got started. I thought I would do the bedrooms first.”

She stared at Agatha.

Agatha sighed wearily. “You found her in bed with James.”

“Yes.”

“I gave her a piece of my mind and handed the key back and got out of there.”

James, James, how could you, and with such a woman? mourned Agatha.

Aloud, she said, “Forget about that part, Doris, and the hush-hush business. What else did you think about her?”

“She was very fussy. She would check up on my work. I said if she wasn’t satisfied, I’d quit, and she laughed and said that one time she used to have a lot of servants, butler and footmen and all that, and she was used to supervising and checking. Funny, I didn’t believe her. I mean, no one outside a few and the Queen has servants like that these days. But I didn’t think much about her one way or the other.”

“Even though you believed she was working for the government?” asked Charles.

“I didn’t think much about that. I mean, the Cotswolds are full of retired military people who like to hint they were in intelligence during the war. “I worked for the little grey men of Whitehall, for my sins.” And then you find they had some sort of minor desk job. I thought maybe she was doing some typing for a local MP, something like that. But the reason I didn’t tell the police was because she had made me promise not to tell anyone and there could have been some truth in it. I sometimes reckon I’m too cynical. You get that way cleaning houses. I’d better get on, Agatha.”

When Doris had gone off upstairs, Agatha said, “Typing. I wonder what she was typing? Who inherits? We didn’t ask Bill.”

“Let’s ask Mrs. Bloxby. Did Melissa have any children?”

“Don’t know that either.”

“So let’s get along to the vicarage.”

“After I’ve had something to eat. You might have made me some breakfast as well, Charles.”

“You were asleep.”

“Oh, I’ll fix something.”

Charles watched, amused, as Agatha took a packet of frozen curry out of the fridge and put it in the microwave. “You’re surely not going to eat curry for breakfast?”

“Why not?”

Charles waited while Agatha took the curry out of the microwave when it was ready and ate the unappetizing-looking mess, accompanied by strong black coffee, with every appearance of enjoyment.

Then she lit up a cigarette. “Can I have one of those?” asked Charles.

Agatha gave him a steely look.

“Have you heard of enabling, Charles?”

“Sounds like therapy-speak.”

“I mean you can buy your own. I may smoke but I do not encourage other people to do so, particularly when they show every sign of being able to do without it.”

“You’ll be a saint yet, Aggie. And talking of saints, let’s go and see Mrs. Bloxby.”

♦

Mrs. Bloxby was watering the vicarage garden. “So many greenfly and aphids,” she mourned. “It’s these warm summers. Said on the radio it would be cooler today, that it would go down to about seventy degrees Fahrenheit. I never thought I’d live to see the day when seventy degrees in England was considered getting cooler.”

“There’s rain forecast,” said Charles. “We’re still on the hunt for Melissa’s character.”

Mrs. Bloxby turned off the hose and joined them at the garden table. “What have you found out?”

They told her all they knew. She listened carefully and then she said, “I’ve been thinking a lot about Mrs. Sheppard since I saw you last. My first impression of her, I remember, was that she was a psychopath.”

“What!” exclaimed Agatha. “You mean like a serial killer!”

“No, no. There are different degrees of psychopathy. It was something about the eyes. She often had a blank fixed stare which reminded me of someone I once knew. I thought at the time I was being over-dramatic, but what you have told me seems to add up to the character of a certain sort of psychopath – the compulsive lying, the total lack of conscience. Also, looking back, I don’t really think Mrs. Sheppard liked anyone at all.”

“That’s interesting,” said Charles. “Why we came to see you was we wondered if anyone had inherited her cottage?”

“I heard through village gossip that she had not left a will and that there are no children.”

“I would like to have a look inside,” said Agatha. “I’d like to see what she was typing.”

“It’s probably at Mircester police headquarters in an evidence box.”

“I’d still like to get inside that cottage.”

“Mrs. Simpson cleaned for her. She may still have a key.”

“She says she gave it back.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this,” said Mrs. Bloxby, “but I Mrs. Simpson was always worried about losing clients’ keys and she once let slip that she always makes a copy.”

“Bingo!” cried Agatha. “Come on, Charles. Let’s go back and see Doris.”

♦

Doris Simpson insisted mulishly that she never would dream of copying her customers’ keys, until Agatha shouted at her that they damn well knew she did. Doris said huffily that, well, perhaps she might still have a key to Melissa’s cottage, and was promptly bundled into Agatha’s car and driven to her home and asked to find it.

“I feel we’re doing the wrong thing,” said Charles, as they walked to Melissa’s cottage.

“Why?”

“Because if Fred Griggs comes strolling past, we’ll be in bad trouble if we’re caught.” Fred Griggs was the local policeman.

“Look,” said Agatha as they parked outside. “No police tape. It’s been removed. We can just say she borrowed something of mine and I wanted it back.”

“And Fred will say, ‘What’s all this? Why didn’t you ask the police?’”

“And I’ll say that we know the police are too busy. Stop worrying, Charles.”

They walked up to the cottage door. “See. It’s just a simple Yale key,” said Agatha, inserting it in the lock. “Anyone could break in.”

“That awful dead smell is still hanging about,” said Charles. “There’s still fingerprint dust over everything. If we touch anything, Aggie, they’ll have clear marks of our fingerprints. We haven’t got gloves.”

“We just look. If she was typing something, she’d need to have a desk. Not in the living-room. Maybe she used one of the bedrooms as an office.”

They went up the stairs. “I don’t like this,” muttered Charles.

“Oh, do shut up. You’re making me nervous. What could possibly happen?”

They gingerly pushed open doors: bathroom, a double bedroom, a box-room, linen cupboard; and then, finally, a small room containing a desk and a computer was revealed.

“This is it!” said Agatha excitedly. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

Too eager to find clues to worry about fingerprints, she jerked open the desk drawers. “Nothing,” she said. “Must all be still at Mircester.”

“I hate to suggest this, but there might be something in the computer.”

“Right!” Agatha sat down in front of the screen and switched it on. “Let’s see what we have on file. Would you believe it? Just one file headed ‘Chick-fic’”

“Bring it up,” said Charles. “She might have been writing a book. Chick-fic are those women’s books, all shopping and bonking. You know, where everyone gets laid in Gucci and Armani.”

Agatha moved the mouse. “Here we are. Plot.”

They both read. “Bitch!” said Agatha. The plot concerned a beautiful and sophisticated woman who comes to live in a Cotswold village and falls in love with a handsome man who is married to a cold and domineering wife. The description of the man, although badly written, was definitely that of James.

“Is that supposed to be me?” demanded Agatha, stabbing a finger at the screen. Charles peered over her shoulder.

“‘Mrs. Darcy’,” she read, “‘was a squat bullying woman with no dress sense and beady little eyes.’”

Charles stifled a laugh. “Surely not.”

Agatha stiffened. “What’s that? I heard something drawing up outside.”

Charles looked out of the window. “It’s a removal van and a woman getting out of a car who looks a bit like Melissa and around the same age. She must have had a sister. We’ve got to get out of here without her finding us.” He jerked up the window and said over his shoulder to the stricken Agatha, “Shut that bloody computer off!”

He hung out the window. “There’s a creeper. I’ll go first and catch you if you fall.”

Agatha switched off the machine and hitched a leg over the sill just as she heard the door opening downstairs. She edged down, clutching handfuls of creeper. She felt her tights rip.

“A bit more,” she heard Charles whisper. The creeper gave way and she tumbled into his arms and flattened him into a soft flower-bed.

“Come on,” urged Charles as she rolled off him, panting. They scrambled up and ran to the bottom of the back garden, which was surrounded by a high wall. Charles pushed her up and she grabbed wildly at the top of the wall and, with a groan, heaved herself up until she was straddling the top of it. Underneath was a bed of nettles. She shut her eyes and jumped and then stifled her screams as she landed among the nettles.

Soon Charles joined her and they stood in the lane which ran along the back of the cottage.

“I’m stung all over,” said Agatha. “What a mess I am. I’d better get home and put some ointment on.”

“You do that,” said Charles, “and I’ll stroll round to the front of the cottage and chat her up.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“She’ll wonder what you’ve been up to,” said Charles. “You’ve got nettle stings all over your arms and legs. Your tights are torn and your blouse has green streaks on it from the creeper. I’m a bit dusty, but my clothes are dark. Go on, Aggie. I’ll be along soon.”

Agatha reluctantly started to walk home, but was less reluctant as she neared her cottage and felt the pain from the stings increasing.

Once inside her cottage, she went upstairs and stripped off her clothes, showered and covered her stings in anti-histamine cream. She donned clean underwear and a loose cotton dress, applied fresh make-up and went downstairs to wait for Charles.

She waited and waited and then, growing impatient, decided to walk up to Melissa’s cottage and find out what was going on.

When she got there, removal men were carrying out furniture. “Where’s the lady of the house?” asked Agatha.

“Gone off with some fellow to the pub for lunch,” said the foreman.

Agatha swung round and headed for the Red Lion. She was very angry. Charles should have phoned her and asked her to join them.

Charles was sitting with a woman who bore a family resemblance to Melissa. Her hair was dark, probably the real colour of Melissa’s hair, thought Agatha.

“I was waiting for you, Charles,” said Agatha truculently.

“About to phone you,” said Charles. “Just getting to know Julia here. Julia Fraser is Melissa’s sister.”

“Sorry to hear about your loss,” said Agatha.

“Are you?” she said coolly. “I wasn’t.”

Agatha sat down. “Do you want something to eat?” asked Charles. “We’re having egg and chips.”

“That’ll do,” said Agatha. When Charles went to the bar to give her order, Agatha looked curiously at Julia. “So you didn’t like your sister?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“She was a lying bitch. She made a dead set for my husband and I told her I never wanted to see her again.”

“Oh. But she left you everything in her will?”

“Yes, that was a surprise. I’m cleaning that cottage out and then I’m going to sell it.”

So there had been a will! Mrs. Bloxby didn’t know everything after all, thought Agatha with a certain degree of satisfac-tion.

“So who are you?” asked Julia.

“Sorry. I forgot to introduce myself,” said Agatha as Charles came back to join them. “I’m Agatha Raisin.”

“Poor you. I heard Melissa got her claws into your husband. Read a bit about it in the papers. Any word of…who is it?”

“James Lacey. No.”

“Have you reverted to your maiden name?”

“No, I’ve always done business under the name of Raisin and so I kept using it. Have you any idea who would have wanted to murder your sister?”

“Lots of people. Your husband, for one.”

“He can’t have done it. He was attacked and we think it was the same person who killed your sister.”

“I can’t think of anyone in particular. She was always trouble. Do you know, my father had her sectioned once?”

“No, what for?”

“She was in her late teens and she was on drugs.”

Drugs again, thought Agatha.

“She was diagnosed as a psychopath. She was a compulsive liar and just didn’t know right from wrong. She liked to get control of men and manipulate them. She was a bit of a chameleon. She would try to be everything she thought some man wanted her to be and they always fell for it and then soon found out their mistake, but she could never sustain an act for long. And it was never her fault. I was amazed that she’d actually gone to the trouble of making a will. She was the sort that thought she would live forever. I know I must sound hard. But she drove out any affection. When I heard she was dead, my first thought was one of relief. I hate to think there’s some murderer out there, but on the other hand, she could drive people batty and she had a vicious tongue.”

“Did you know her husbands, Sheppard and Dewey?”

Julia shook her head. She pushed away her barely touched plate of egg and chips. “I’d broken off relations with her ages ago. Look, thanks for the food and drink. But I’d better get back. No, don’t move. I feel like a walk.”

When she had gone, Agatha turned accusing eyes on Charles. “Why didn’t you let me know you were both going to the pub?”

“I was getting on so well with her and I thought it would take you ages to clean yourself up.”

“Well, don’t try to cut me out again. That’s what you were doing. Oh, Lord!”

“What?”

“That open window in the office. What if she reports it to the police?”

“I shut it. When I got there and we’d been chatting for a bit, I asked her if I could use the loo, and when I was upstairs I shut it.”

“Clever you,” said Agatha, mollified.

“So am I forgiven?”

“I suppose. Don’t do it again. You know, all that stuff about Melissa being a psychopath makes it worse. There must be so many suspects and we haven’t got a clue who did it.”

“I don’t know much about psychopaths. I thought they were people like Hannibal Lecter.”

“When you’ve finished eating, we’ll go home and look it up in the encyclopaedia.”

♦

After looking it up in the encyclopaedia and running reams of information off the Internet, Agatha groaned, “Why can’t they use simple language?”

“It seems to me,” said Charles, “as if psychopath was a sort of blanket diagnosis until fairly recently. It seems as if our Melissa, sectioned at a later date, would have been diagnosed as having ASPD, antisocial personality disorder. Here are some of the features, apart from not having a conscience: lack of empathy, inflated and arrogant self-appraisal, and glib, superficial charm. Tendency to be hooked on drink or drugs or both and…um…”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“What are you keeping from me?”

“Deviant sexual practices.”

“I don’t love James any more,” said Agatha in a shaky voice.

“Not one bit. How could he even spend a minute with such a creature?”

“Never mind. Here we are knowing lots and lots about ASPD and not a bit nearer finding out who did it or where James is.”

♦

James Lacey was feeling strong and well. His headaches had gone. He now attended prayers and worked in the extensive vegetable gardens of the monastery. He felt a miracle had happened and that somehow his brain tumour had gone. But his counsellor, Brother Michael, knew nothing of this. He only heard of James’s desire for a quiet religious life. He knew James had spent most of his years in the army. But James mentioned nothing of his marriage or what had made him flee. If any thoughts of Agatha entered his mind, he banished them quickly. He blamed the brain tumour on the mess of his old life. In the monastery, with its rigid discipline, it was rather like being in the army again. He intended to serve a period of probation and then join the order. Somehow, sometime in the future, he would tell Brother Michael the truth about his life. But not yet.