Agatha Raisin and The Murderous Marriage

TWO

THEY followed Agatha into her living-room: Detective Chief Inspector Wilkes, Detective Sergeant Bill Wong, Detective Constable Maddie Hurd.

Agatha was glad of Bill's presence. Wilkes she already knew, but Maddie Hurd, a rather hard-faced young woman with cold grey eyes, was new to her.

"We must ask you to accompany us to the police station," said Wilkes after the charge had been read out.

Agatha found her voice. "Jimmy can't be dead. I belted him one across the face and pushed him into the ditch. Oh, my God, did he hit something and break his neck?"

A flicker of surprise crossed Wilkes's dark eyes, but he said, "Down to the station and we'll go through it there."

She suddenly, passionately wanted James Lacey to appear, not because she still loved him, but because he would have taken over with his usual brusque common sense. She had never felt so alone. "Come along, Agatha," said Bill.

"I do not think Detective Sergeant Wong should be on this case as he is obviously a friend of the accused," said Maddie Hurd. Agatha looked at her with hate.

"Later," snapped Wilkes.

A small group of villagers had gathered outside Agatha's cottage. She wondered bleakly if there could possibly be one more thing she could do which would shame her so utterly in the eyes of the village - first attempted bigamy, now murder.

At police headquarters in Mircester, she was led into an interviewing room, the tape was switched on, and Wilkes began the questioning, flanked by another detective sergeant, Bill Wong having disappeared.

Gathering all her resources, Agatha said she had gone out walking early because she could not sleep. She had seen Jimmy approaching her. He was drunk. He had run after her. She had lost her temper and slapped him. She had pushed him into the ditch and she had shouted something at him. Yes, she was afraid she had shouted that she hoped he would die. If he had struck his head on something, she was sorry, she had not meant to kill him.

And that seemed straightforward to Agatha, but they took her backwards and forwards through her story, over and over again. Getting some courage back, she demanded a solicitor and then was put in a cell to await his arrival.

The solicitor was an elderly gentleman whom Agatha had picked out a few months before to help her make her will in which she had left everything to James Lacey. He had been avuncular and kind then, the family solicitor from Central Casting with his thick grey hair, gold-rimmed glasses and charcoal-grey suit. Now he looked as if he wished himself anywhere else in the whole wide world but sitting in an interview room with Agatha Raisin.

The questioning began again. "What more can I tell you?" Agatha suddenly howled in a fury. "You can't trip me up and get me to say anything else because I am telling you the whole truth and nothing but the truth."

"Calmly, dear lady," admonished the solicitor, Mr. Times.

"You," said Agatha, "have done bugger-all since you got here but looked sideways at me as if I am some sort of Lady Macbeth."

There was a knock at the door. Wilkes snapped, "Come in." Bill Wong put his head around the door. "A word, sir. Most urgent."

Wilkes switched off the tape and went outside.

Inside, Agatha's burst of anger had gone, leaving her weak and shaky. Everything was against her. She had attacked Jimmy in front of everyone at the registry office and she had been seen by Harry Symes to attack him that very morning. She was not free to find out who had actually done it should it prove not to have been an accident. Whom else could anyone possibly suspect? Who else would want to kill a drunk who normally lived in a packing-case in Waterloo? Only Agatha Raisin.

Wilkes came back into the room, his face grim. He sat down again, but did not switch on the tape.

"Where is James Lacey?" he asked.

"I do not know," said Agatha. "Why?"

"He did not tell you where he was going?"

"No. Why?"

"I am withdrawing the charge against you, Mrs. Raisin, due to insufficient evidence, but must ask you not to leave the country."

"What's happened?" demanded Agatha, getting to her feet. "And why do you want James?"

He shuffled the papers in front of him. "That will be all, Mrs. Raisin."

"Sod the lot of you," said Agatha, furious again. Her solicitor followed her out.

"Should you need my services again..." began Mr. Times.

"Then I'll find myself a decent lawyer," growled Agatha. She strode out of the police station. They had not even given her a car home. What was she supposed to do? Walk?

"You need a drink," said a voice in her ear. She turned and saw Bill Wong. "Come on, Agatha," he urged. "I haven't got long."

They walked across the main square under the shadow of the abbey and into The George. Bill bought a gin and tonic for Agatha and a half-pint of bitter for himself. They sat down at a corner table.

"What has happened is this," said Bill quickly. "The preliminary forensic evidence has discovered that Jimmy Raisin was strangled with a man's silk tie. It had been chucked into the field a little down the road. Footprints other than yours were found near the body, the footprints of a man. So the hunt's up for James Lacey."

"What!" Agatha glared at him. "They knew all along that Jimmy had been strangled and yet they let me think I might have caused him to strike his head on a rock or something. I've a damn good mind to sue them. And as for James? James murder my husband? James? Believe me, the whole experience will have been so vulgar, so distasteful to my ex-lover that all he would want to do would be to put as many miles between us as possible. So he can't have been hanging around the village to murder Jimmy. That takes rage and passion, and in order to experience that amount of rage and passion, he would need to have been in love with me!"

"Come on, Agatha. The man had a bad shock."

"If he had loved me, he would have stood by me," said Agatha. "And do you know what I feel for him now? Nothing. Sweet eff all."

"Either you're still in shock or you couldn't have loved him all that much yourself," said Bill.

"What do you know about it? You're too young." Bill was in his twenties.

"More than you think," said Bill ruefully. "I think I've fallen myself."

"Go on," said Agatha, momentarily diverted from her troubles. "Who?"

"Maddie Hurd."

"That hatchet-faced creature."

"Now, you are not to talk about her like that, Agatha. Maddie's bright and clever and...and...I think she cares for me."

"Oh, well, chacun a son gout, as we say back at the buildings. Or everyone to their own bag. But if they think James did it, they're wasting time. Look, Harry Symes saw me. Didn't he see anyone else on the road?"

Bill shook his head. "I've got to be getting back. I'll call on you as soon as I hear anything more."

Agatha thought of asking him for a lift back to Carsely but then decided she had endured enough of the police for one day and went off to get a cab at the rank in the square. Bill went back to police headquarters. Maddie was waiting for him.

"Get anything out of her about Lacey?" asked Maddie eagerly.

Bill told her what Agatha had said, feeling treacherous because Maddie had sent him to find out what he could from Agatha.

"She trusts you," said Maddie. "Keep close to her."

"Are you doing anything tonight?" asked Bill eagerly. "I thought we could take in a movie."

"Not tonight, Bill," said Maddie. "Too much to do. And don't you want to be around when they pull Lacey in?"

"Of course," said Bill, banishing romantic pictures of the back row of the cinema and his arm around Maddie's shoulders.

There was only one good thing, thought Agatha wearily as she paid off the taxi outside her cottage - nothing else could possibly happen that day. That was until she turned around and saw a large, tweedy woman standing by the gate.

"Have you forgotten me, Mrs. Raisin?" demanded the woman. "I am Mrs. Hardy, to whom you sold this cottage, and I am appalled to see your stuff is still here."

"I know we signed the papers and everything, but I told the estate agents it was now not for sale," said Agatha desperately.

"You took my money. This cottage is mine!"

"Mrs. Hardy," pleaded Agatha, "cannot we come to some arrangement? I will buy it back from you and you will make a profit."

"No, this place suits me. I am moving in tomorrow evening. Get all your stuff out or I will take you to court."

Agatha pushed past her, put her key in the door, let herself in and went wearily through to the kitchen. How could she, who prided herself on her business sense, have assumed that because she had told the estate agents the house was no longer on the market, all she would have to do was to transfer the money for the sale back to Mrs. Hardy?

She glanced at the clock. She phoned the removal company and told them to call the following morning and take her stuff into storage. She then went along to the Red Lion, where she knew they often let out rooms to holiday-makers. But the landlord, John Fletcher, mumbled that he did not have anything to spare and would not meet her eyes. No one else in the pub seemed to want to talk to her.

Agatha left her drink untouched in the bar and walked out. There was now nothing left for her in Carsely. The only thing left for her was to move back to the anonymity of London with her cats and wait for death. She was comforting her battered soul with equally gloomy thoughts when she turned into Lilac Lane. Her heart began to thud.

James Lacey was getting out of his car outside his cottage. He went round to the boot, unlocked it and took out two large suitcases. Then, as if aware of beingjwatched, his shoulders stiffened. He put down the suitcases and turned around.

A weary Agatha came towards him. The rash had gone from her face, leaving it unnaturally white, and there were purple bruises under her eyes.

"Where did they find you?" asked Agatha.

"I hadn't gone far," he said. "I stayed the night at the Wold Hotel in Mircester and had nearly reached Oxford when a police car flagged me down. They couldn't hold me. Too many witnesses to the fact that I was far from Carsely at the time of the murder. How's Mrs. Bloxby?"

"All right, I suppose." Agatha looked surprised. "Why?"

"Well, she found the body."

"What?"

"They didn't tell you?"

"They didn't tell me a damn thing. They charged me with the murder and then asked me the same questions over and over again, but they didn't tell me how he was killed or who had found him. The bastards let me go on thinking that it was all my fault, that I had pushed him and he had broken his neck or something. Then they said they were dropping the charges because Jimmy had been strangled with a man's silk tie and that there were masculine footprints found near the body."

There was a silence and then James asked, "Have the press been bothering you?"

"By some miracle, no."

"I suppose they'll be all over the village by tomorrow."

"It won't bother me," sighed Agatha. "I've got to leave. I sold my cottage to a Mrs. Hardy and, like a fool, I thought I could cancel the sale. But she's moving in tomorrow and I'm out. I went to the Red Lion to see if I could take a room there, but it seems I am still number-one suspect in the village. John Fletcher said he hadn't a room, he wouldn't even look me in the eye, and neither would anyone else."

"But, Agatha, you told me all about the Hardy woman and that you didn't like her much but she had offered a good price. How on earth could you expect her to change her mind?"

"I don't find myself disgraced in a registry office every day and then accused of murder. I wasn't thinking straight. I just want to get away, from you, from everyone."

He picked up his suitcases and then put them down again. "I really don't think that's the answer, Agatha."

"And what is?"

"I assume we both still want to stay here?"

Agatha shook her head.

"You do what you like," said James, "but until I find out who killed your husband, despite every proof to the contrary, we are both going to be suspected of his murder."

"I don't know," said Agatha wretchedly. "I've got to get all that stuff of mine moved out and into storage again and then I have to think where I will live."

"You can move into my spare room if you. like."

"What? I thought you never wanted to see me again."

"The situation has somewhat changed. I think I will always be too sore at you, Agatha, to ever want to marry you. But the hard fact is that we have worked well together in the past and together we might clear this up."

Agatha looked at him in wonder. "I don't think I ever really knew you." She thought that if he had entertained any feelings for her at all, he would not ask her now to move in on such a businesslike basis. It would have been more human to have been totally spurned and totally rejected.

But she felt she no longer loved him and what he was offering was a very practical solution.

"Okay. Thanks," she said. "I think I'll call on Mrs. Bloxby. She must be feeling awful."

"Good idea. Wait a minute until I put these bags inside and I'll come with you."

When they walked along together in the twilight, Agatha thought that the women's magazines who wrote all that crap about low self-esteem might have something after all. She was walking along beside a man with whom she had shared passion and listening to him complain about the pot-holes in the road and suggesting that they both attend the next parish council meeting to protest about them. Women of low self-esteem, she had read recently, often loved men who were incapable of returning love and affection.

"Do you think I suffer from low self-esteem?" she asked James abruptly, interrupting his discourse on pot-holes.

"What's that?"

"Feeling lower than whale shit."

"I think you're miserable because you tried to commit bigamy and got found out and then found yourself accused of your husband's murder. There's too much psychobabble these days. It leads to self-dramatization."

"Any woman ever struck you, James?"

"Don't even think about it, Agatha."

Mrs. Bloxby blinked at them in surprise when she opened the vicarage door. "Both of you? That's nice. Come in. What a terrible thing."

They followed her into the vicarage living-room, which as usual enfolded them in its atmosphere of peace. The vicar, on seeing Agatha, hurriedly put down the newspaper he had been reading, mumbled something about a sermon to write, and fled to his study.

"Sit down," said Mrs. Bloxby. "I'll get some tea."

She always looks like a lady, thought Agatha wistfully. Even in that old Liberty dress and with not a scrap of make-up on, she looks like a lady.

James leaned back in a comfortable leather armchair and closed his eyes. Agatha realized as she looked at him that she had not stopped to think for a minute how he had felt over the aborted marriage and the wretched murder. He looked tired and older, the lines running down either side of his mouth more prominent.

Mrs. Bloxby came back in carrying the tea-tray. "I have some excellent fruit-cake, a present from the Mircester Ladies' Society. And some ham sandwiches. I suppose neither of you has had much time to eat."

James opened his eyes and said wearily, "We have both been suspected of this murder, it's been a long day, and yes, I would love some sandwiches. According to Agatha, we are regarded by the village as murder suspects."

"Are you sure, Agatha?" asked Mrs. Bloxby.

Agatha told her story of trying to find a room at the Red Lion.

"Oh, how sad. We could put you up here. We could..."

There was a warning cough from the doorway. The vicar stood there with a distinctly un-Christian light in his eyes.

"That won't be necessary," said James quickly. "Agatha's moving in with me."

"What did you want to say, Alf?" Mrs. Bloxby asked her husband.

"Er...nothing," he said and disappeared again.

"You found the body, didn't you?" said James. "Tell us about it, if it isn't too painful."

"It was a shock at the time. I did not recognize him," said Mrs. Bloxby, pouring tea into thin china cups. "Dead people look quite different when the spirit has left. Then he had been strangled, so his face was not pretty. I had gone out for a walk. I was worried about you, Agatha, and I could not sleep."

Agatha's eyes suddenly filled with weak tears. The idea that anyone could actually lose sleep over her was a novelty.

"At first I thought it was a bundle of old clothes in the ditch, but then, when I took a good look, I saw him. I felt for his pulse and finding none, I ran to the nearest cottage and phoned the police."

"Was there anyone else about?" asked Agatha.

"No, and it must have happened after you reached home, Agatha, or I would have met you on the road or seen whoever killed him. Of course the murderer could have cut across the fields."

"We'll just need to find out who did it ourselves," said Agatha.

"Oh, you're been through so much. Why not leave it to the police?"

"Because we want to know who did it," said James. "I've been thinking - what is the etiquette about wedding presents? I suppose we return them."

"I would just keep them," said the vicar's wife, "and then when you do get married, no one needs to bother giving you anything else."

"We will not be getting married," said James in a flat voice.

There was a heavy silence. Then Mrs. Bloxby said brightly, "More tea?"

Roy Silver had had a sleepless night. Not usually plagued with an uneasy conscience, he found he was actually suffering. The story of the wedding-that-never-was, spiced up by the murder of Agatha's husband, was all over the newspapers, and some enterprising reporter had found out that he, Roy Silver, had been the one who had alerted Jimmy Raisin to his wife's attempt to marry someone else. As soon as he got to bis office, he phoned Iris Harris, the detective, and asked her to call on him as soon as possible.

He fretted and fidgeted until she arrived. Ms. Harris had read the newspapers and listened calmly as Roy said she must find out more about Jimmy Raisin. If Agatha did not kill him, someone did, and that someone might have some connection with his London background. He could not have spent all those years drinking methylated spirits and stayed alive.

Only when Iris Harris had agreed to work for him again and had left did Roy feel more comfortable with himself.

Agatha and James stayed indoors most of the day during the following week, only venturing out at night for dinner. The press besieged James's cottage at all hours of the day. It would have been normal, Agatha thought, for them to have discussed their relationship, discussed what had happened, but James discussed only the murder, politics, and the weather. He worked away steadily at his military history while Agatha played with her cats in the garden and read books.

At night, she slept in the spare room, strangely undisturbed by any longing for the body asleep along the narrow corridor. The shocks of the wedding and the murder had driven passion from Agatha's mind. She was itching to get started on the murder investigation. Bill Wong had not called and she felt desperate for news. But soon the press would give up and go away to fresh woods and murders new and leave them in peace.

On the morning the doorbell finally stopped ringing and the telephone at last was silent, Agatha decided to go to Mircester to try to see Bill Wong. James said he would stay and work at his writing.

On arriving at police headquarters, Agatha found out it was Bill's day off. She wondered whether to call at his home, but decided against it. He lived with his parents and Agatha found them rather intimidating. So she shopped for a new dress, although she did not need one, and for a new lipstick to add to the twenty or so already cluttering up the shelf in James's bathroom. The lipstick promised to make 'lips full and luscious as never before'. Agatha, who never believed a word of most advertisements, was a sucker for any cosmetic promotion. Hope sprang eternal and she believed every word until she tried it out. She decided to treat herself to a bar lunch in The George, but she would put on that lipstick first.

She went into the pub toilet, read all the claims of the lipstick as if reading her horoscope, unscrewed it and decided to apply it.

She had it half-way to her mouth when a familiar voice said, "But Agatha's my friend. It makes it difficult."

Agatha turned round, startled. Then she remembered the odd acoustics of The George. There was a fanlight window above the door, usually open, as it was that day, so that any diners sitting at a table on the other side of the door almost sounded as if they were in the toilet itself.

That's Bill Wong, thought Agatha with a smile. She tucked the lipstick away in her handbag, unapplied, and made for the door.

Then she heard a female voice saying, "As far as I am concerned, Bill, Agatha Raisin is still a murder suspect. She could easily have put on a pair of men's shoes to baffle forensic, and she's strong enough to strangle a man. Beefy sort of woman."

Agatha, stood stock-still, her mouth a little open, her hand stretched out to the handle of the door.

"Look, Maddie' - Bill's voice again - 'I know Agatha, and she would not murder anyone. She's a lady."

"Oh, come on, Bill, the way you go on about the old trout, one would think you were her toy-boy. And ladies don't go around belting chaps over the face."

"What you are asking me to do is spy on Agatha," said Bill, "and I don't like it."

Maddie Hurd's voice came sharp and clear. "All I'm asking you to do is police work, Bill, If she didn't do it, and Lacey didn't do it, then the clues as to who did he in Jimmy Raisin's background. I mean, I'm surprised you haven't called on her before this."

"I would have done," said Bill, "if you hadn't made me feel like a traitor."

Maddie's voice softened. "You know I wouldn't ask you to do anything bad, Bill. Did you enjoy last night?"

Bill's voice, husky with tenderness, "You know I did."

"Let's go or we'll miss the start of the movie. But you will find out what you can?"

"I'll take a run over there tonight."

There was a scraping-back of chairs, then Agatha heard their retreating footsteps.

She felt desperately alone now. Bill's friendship had always been rock-solid. He had been her first friend in a hitherto friendless life. Now she felt she had no one to trust, certainly not James, who seemed to be handling the current situation by treating her as impersonally as he would another man.

And yet Bill Wong was obviously very much in love. What could he see in such a hard-faced bitch?

James looked at Agatha's gloomy face on her return and demanded to know what had upset her.

Wearily, Agatha told him of the overheard conversation.

James listened, his blue eyes intent. Then he said, "You cannct blame Bill for falling in love with an ambitious woman detective. I don't think it'll last long. You can't choose his girl-friends for him."

"When he calls this evening," said Agatha huffily, "I'm not speaking to him."

"And what good will that do? He's our only contact with the police. Instead of going into a huff, Agatha, you should simply tell him what you overheard. Maddie said some nasty things about you, but Bill said none."

"I don't want to speak to him again!"

"Agatha, be sensible'. 'I'm sick and tired of being sensible," shouted Agatha and burst into tears.

He gave her a clean handkerchief, he fetched her a stiff brandy, he suggested she lie down.

And Agatha, who had suddenly and desperately wanted a shoulder to cry on, a shoulder to lean on, pulled herself together and said on a sob that, yes, she would see Bill.

She would have been comforted could she have known that James felt as if he could cheerfully strangle both Bill Wong and Maddie, but James showed none of this as he returned to his word processor. Agatha went up to bed for a nap, James tried to work, but his doorbell sounded shrilly. He thought it must be some persistent member of the press. Normally he would not have answered the door, but he had a desire to relieve his feelings on somebody, even if that somebody was Bill Wong.

So he opened the door and found Roy Silver on the step.

James took the hapless Roy by the throat and shook him hard. "Get the hell away from here, you little worm," he roared. James gave him a final shake and then a push and Roy staggered backwards and fell into the hedge.

"I only came to help," said Roy shrilly. "Honest. I've got information about Jimmy Raisin. I've found out things which might explain why someone murdered him! I did it to help Aggie."

James, who had been about to slam the door, hesitated. "What are you talking about?"

Roy extricated himself from the hedge and tittuped forward cautiously. "I hired a detective to find out about Jimmy Raisin. I've got her report." He held up the brief-case he had managed to hang on to during James's assault on him.

"Oh, very well," said James. "Come in and I'll see if Agatha's prepared to listen to you."

When Agatha came down the stairs, Roy backed nervously behind a chair. He had blonded his hair, which somehow made his face look weaker and whiter.

But Agatha had had time to think. If Roy had any information worthwhile, then she and James might solve the case and that would leave Bill and his precious Maddie with egg all over their faces.

"Sit down, Roy," she said. "If you've got anything of importance, I'd like to hear it, but don't think I'm ever going to forgive you for what you did to me."

"He stopped you from committing bigamy," said James.

Agatha glared at both of them.

"Let's hear what he has to say," said James mildly.

Agatha nodded. Roy edged round the chair and sat down nervously, his brief-case on his lap. "I assume," said Agatha, "that you initially hired this detective out of spite to find out if I was still married, and hired the detective again because you couldn't live with yourself, you creep!"

Roy cleared his throat. "Always looking for the worst motives, aren't we, Aggie? I thought your husband was dead and I thought you would thank me if I gave you conclusive proof of that death as a wedding present. And you can huff and puff but that's the truth, or may God strike me dead!" Agatha looked at the beamed ceiling. "I'm waiting for the thunderbolt to fall on you, Roy."

"This is getting us nowhere," said James sharply. "Let's hear your report."

Roy opened the brief-case and took out a sheaf of papers. "I wondered how it was that Jimmy had managed to live so long," he said. "But it seems that at one time a philanthropist, a Mrs. Serena Gore-Appleton, had taken Jimmy up as a worthwhile cause and borne him off to an expensive health farm. Although the place was hardly the Betty Ford Clinic and more a place where rich boozers went to dry out to recover and drink another day, it seemed to have worked for Jimmy, who became clean and sober and subsequently worked as a counsellor for Mrs. Gore-Appleton's charity, Help Our Homeless. Now here's the interesting bit.

"Jimmy always seemed to have a lot of money to flash around. How my detective, a Ms. Iris Harris, found that out was because Jimmy liked to queen it in front of his old down-and-out cronies. Then, after a year of sobriety, he suddenly went downhill amazingly quickly and soon reappeared among the beggars, junkies, and general down-and-outs of the London streets.

"One down-and-out who has recently sobered up offered the information that Jimmy delighted in finding out things about people, and even in his lowest stage was not above blackmailing someone for a bottle of meths with some threat such as reporting them to the social security if he found out they had work and were still drawing the dole, that kind of thing."

Roy beamed about him triumphantly. "So you see, sweeties, this agile brain of mine came to the conclusion that if Jimmy could blackmail the poor, why not the rich while working with this Gore-Appleton female? Maybe he saw one of his pigeons in Mircester and the pigeon saw a likely opportunity of killing Jimmy and took it."

"It all seems too much of a coincidence," said James slowly. "Agatha here decides to get married in Mircester. Had it not been for that, Jimmy would never have come down to the Cotswolds. Why on earth should one of his victims suddenly appear as well?"

Roy looked downcast. Then his face brightened. "Ah, but do you know where the health farm he went to is situated? At Ashton-le-Walls, ten miles outside Mircester."

"Yes, but people who go to health farms don't usually come from the immediate neighbourhood, do they?" asked Agatha. "I mean, they come from all over the country."

"Oh, you are such a pair of downers?" said Roy petulantly. "And coincidences do happen in real life. Do you remember that Australian friend of mine, Aggie? The tourist from hell?"

"Yes, I thought he was rather nice. Steve, that was his name."

"Anyway, him. I thought he was back in Australia, never to return. The other week I was in a pub and I got talking about Steve to this friend, about his dreary camcorder and his dreary guidebooks, and I was just saying I hoped I would never see him again when I felt these eyes drilling into the back of my head and I turned round and there was Steve! He flounced off but I can tell you, it gave me a turn, and it was in a pub in Fulham I've never been to before."

James turned to Agatha. "He's at least given us something to go on. We should start off tomorrow by going up to London to try to find this Mrs. Gore-Appleton."

Agatha brightened visibly at the thought of taking some action.

The doorbell rang. "That'll be Bill Wong," said James, getting to his feet.

Agatha grabbed his sleeve. "Let's not tell him anything about this, James. Let's keep it to ourselves for a bit."

He looked about to protest and then slowly nodded. "All right, but no getting yourself into danger again, Agatha. You've been involved in some scary murders in the past."

Bill Wong came in and stopped short, surprised to see Roy.

"I thought they would have killed you."

"Aggie and I are old friends," said Roy defensively. "I only wanted to give her Jimmy's death certificate as a wedding present."

Bill gave a him a slanting cynical look. "If you say so."

Roy picked up the papers, which James had left on the table, and thrust them into his brief-case.

"What's that?" asked Bill.

"PR stuff," said Roy. "I came down here to get Agatha's help."

Bill looked around at the three faces. There was a wary, almost hostile atmosphere in the room. He decided ruefully that James and Agatha must be under a great strain. He should have called before this.

"I wish I had some good news for you," he said, "but we still cannot find out any reason why your late husband was murdered, Agatha. If it had been among the down-and-outs in London, then it might have been decided he had been killed for no greater reason that the bottle in his pocket. But here, in the Cotswolds?"

"Haven't the police in London been questioning his old cronies?" asked James.

"Of course. But that lot have only to see a police uniform to clam up, and they can smell a detective at a hundred paces. I wish I could go there myself and see what I could dig up. How's the village taking it?" said Bill, who lived in Mircester.

"I gather Agatha and I are being regarded as first and second murderer," said James. "Tell us about the forensic evidence, Bill."

"Pretty much still what I told Agatha. He had been strangled with a man's silk tie. Now that sounds like a good clue, but it is a Harvey Nicholl's tie and can be bought at just about any good outfitter's in the country. It's also quite old and frayed at the edges."

"That was Jimmy's own tie," said Agatha suddenly. "He wasn't wearing it when I last saw him but he had it on at the wedding. Wait a bit. Maybe he had it in his pocket. He wouldn't surely stand there and let someone fish in his pockets for a murder weapon?"

"What did the tie look like?" asked Bill. "I can't remember."

But Agatha did. She thought every horrible fact and item of that day would be burned into her brain forever. "It was one of those ones which looks like an old school tie but isn't - discreet stripes. Dark blue, gold and green."

Bill whipped out a notebook and scribbled busily. Then he said, "We've found out he got cleaned up in a Salvation Army hostel before he came down here and they gave him clothes. Of course, they probably gave him the tie as well."

"Was he hit with anything first?" asked Agatha.

"Only the back of your hand."

"He can't just have stood there and let it happen."

"I think I know," said Roy triumphantly. "He's lying there in the ditch after Aggie here swiped him. Now, if you're a drunk and someone swipes you and you fall in the ditch, the first thing you'd do would be to take that bottle out of your pocket to make sure it hadn't got broken. Then you'd take a good swig out of it. Maybe when he pulled the bottle out of his pocket, the tie came out as well. Enter murderer. Jimmy in ditch, Jimmy with bottle to his mouth, tie sticking out of pocket, seizes tie, strangle, choke, one dead body."

"Thank you, Mr. Jingle," said James. "Mind you, it's possible. What do you think, Bill?"

"I think you all know something you aren't telling me," said Bill, looking at them.

"How's dear Maddie?" asked Agatha sweetly.

His round face flushed. "Detective Constable Hurd is well, thank you."

"Do, please, please, give her my regards."

Bill wondered in that moment whether Agatha had guessed that Maddie had sent him to find out what he could and then decided that love was making him paranoiac.

"I'd best be going." Bill got to his feet.

"See you around," said Agatha. James showed him out.

Bill stood outside the cottage for a moment, irresolute. He had not received his usual welcome. It was unlike both Agatha and James not to offer him a drink or a cup of coffee. He wondered for a moment whether he should go back and tell Agatha the truth, that he had not come near her before this because Maddie had urged him to do so. He took half a step back towards the door and then gave his round head an angry little shake and went towards his car instead.

So the three amateur detectives inside were free to start their investigations, unhampered by any help from the police.