Agatha Raisin Love, Lies and Liquor

ELEVEN

AGATHA felt she simply had to get out of the hotel the next morning. Despite the warnings of an approaching storm, the day was sunny and blustery. She asked Patrick to accompany her, not wanting to see either Charles or James. Patrick hardly ever spoke unless spoken to.

Patrick accepted quietly Agatha’s explanation that she needed some exercise and that the hotel was beginning to feel like a prison.

As they walked along and round the streets, she could almost see the quiet fishing village as it must have been in James’s youth. In fact, apart from the widened main street, the centre of Snoth was quite small, with housing estates on the outskirts. The houses in the narrow streets leading up from the waterfront to the main street showed they had once probably been fishermen’s cottages. It was the large chain stores in the main street and the seedy little shops in the side streets which, she guessed, had robbed the town of its charm and innocence. It was almost as if the town had turned to catering for the unemployed with amusement arcades and sex shops. White-faced, seedy-looking youth hung out at the street corners.

“I’m feeling better now,” said Agatha at last. “Let’s have a coffee.”

She checked one café after another, peering in the windows to find out if there were welcoming ashtrays on the tables.

At last she found one. It advertised snacks and light refreshments. It was not very cosy, having Formica tables and very hard chairs, but each table had little tin ashtrays of the type the proprietor didn’t mind having stolen.

Agatha and Patrick ordered coffees and Agatha lit a cigarette and then watched the blue smoke drifting in a sunbeam shining through the plate-glass window.

Sunbeams were the enemy of smokers, thought Agatha, highlighting just how much of the poisonous stuff you were sending out into the surrounding air.

“I can’t help thinking about Deborah,” she said. “I didn’t like the woman, but she was so very brave to have survived that sea. What am I going to do, Patrick? James wants me to go off on holiday with him, but I only want to go home.”

Said Patrick, “The best thing then would be to persuade James to go home for a couple of weeks to see everything is all right.”

“That might be a good idea. I should really get back to the office. Poor Phil must be sadly overworked.”

“I spoke to him last night. He said to send Harry back as soon as possible. He says he can manage all right with Harry, but he finds it tough being on his own. Of course, he’s in his seventies.”

“I hate the idea of getting old,” said Agatha. She shifted in her chair. No nasty twinges this morning. “How do you fancy Cyril Hammond for the murder of Geraldine? He seems to have been devoted to her, but that could all be an act.”

“He’s certainly one person who might have persuaded her to leave the hotel. My contact at the station is trying to find out if he has any sort of criminal record. If you get permission to leave, will you really go and leave the murder of Geraldine unsolved?”

“I don’t know. I would like to go home, but at least here there are a lot of police around. Brian McNally has been seen in Carsely. I would be an easier target there.”

“In that case, perhaps James’s idea is sound—get out of the country and disappear for a bit.”

“The trouble is, I don’t really know what James thinks of me. I thought when he suggested a holiday together that perhaps he might want to marry me again. But when I was married to him before, it wasn’t comfortable. It was like being a house guest rather than a wife. He found fault with everything I did. So why should he want to get back together with me?”

“Perhaps he’s thinking of approaching old age and doesn’t want to be alone. Men always like to think there’ll be some woman there to look after them in their dotage.”

“Hardly a romantic picture,” said Agatha drily. “What do you plan to do today?”

“Hang around the police station and see what I can pick up.”

“I need a break from it all,” said Agatha. “I’ll drive off somewhere and spend the day alone.”

“Is that wise? McNally or one of his villains could still be looking for you.”

“But I’ll feel like a sitting duck if I stay in the hotel. Phone me if you find out anything.”

* * *

Agatha drove out of the underground car park experiencing a feeling of freedom. She drove up over the downs and then cruised through small villages. She stopped for lunch at a pub and then returned to her car, still reluctant to return to the hotel.

She went down into Brighton, parked the car, and walked to the Pavilion, that famous folly of the Prince Regent. She walked around the rooms, wearying at last of so much garishness and so much gold leaf.

Then Agatha found a second-hand bookshop in the Lanes, bought herself a chick-lit book, found a café and settled down to read.

It was the usual mixture—the good girlfriend, the gay friend, the handsome friend whom the heroine had always regarded as a brother and the usual catalogue of Versace dresses and Jimmy Choo shoes.

But it was undemanding reading and she enjoyed it. When she finally left the café, the sky was becoming black overhead and the seagulls, wheeling and screaming, looked startlingly white against the inky backdrop.

A classic cinema was advertising Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday. Agatha remembered someone telling her it was very funny. She bought a ticket and went in, buying herself a tub of popcorn and a Coke at the little shop in the foyer.

There were very few customers in the cinema. Agatha settled down in the dark and prepared to enjoy herself.

She found the film very funny indeed, and laughing at Jacques Tati’s antics enabled her to forget about murder.

When she emerged after the film, the wind was blowing in great violent gusts.

Back in the shelter of her car, she still did not feel like returning to Snoth and decided to have dinner in the pub where she had had lunch earlier. She ate a generous helping of roast duck and followed it up with an equally generous helping of sticky toffee pudding covered in double cream.

The waistband of her skirt was uncomfortably tight when she left, but she felt soothed and relaxed.

Gusts of wind buffeted the car as she drove back towards Snoth-on-Sea. When she parked the car and emerged from the underground car park, she could only be glad it was not yet high tide. Already the roar of the waves was deafening.

A pile of sandbags blocked the hotel entrance and she had to climb over them. As she collected her key, Nick Loncar handed her a note. It was from James, typewritten as usual, thought Agatha, as if he considered the written word too intimate.

It read: “Patrick tells me you went off for a drive. Meet me for breakfast at nine o’clock. There is something we need to discuss. James.”

Agatha crumpled it up in disgust. No “Love, James” or “Affectionately yours, James.”

“Bad news.”

Agatha turned and saw Charles standing there. “Where have you been?” he asked.

“Got fed up with the hotel and went off by myself for the day. Why are you still here? Didn’t get permission to leave?”

“I can go tomorrow. Let’s have a talk, Aggie. I’m worried about you.”

“Can’t I just go to bed? I’m tired.”

“Just one drink in the bar.”

“All right. Just the one.”

Charles ordered a whisky for himself and a gin and tonic for Agatha.

“So what’s all this about?” asked Agatha.

“It’s about you and James.”

“What about it?”

“I was talking to James today. He seems confident that you and he will take this holiday together.”

“I’m not confident we will. I just want to get home.”

“I feel somehow sure that James will persuade you at the last minute. Although I behave like a callous rat sometimes, I am your friend. Have you ever seriously considered that the attraction James holds for you is because he is nearly always unavailable in some way? You go on like a battered wife, always returning for another helping of abuse. Maybe you need some form of therapy.”

“There is nothing up with me,” retorted Agatha. “As a matter of fact, I am going to go home as soon as I can.”

“We’ll see. Just don’t go back and after a few weeks start mourning what you might see as a lost opportunity.”

“Charles, I am sure all this lecturing is well meant, but I am tired. That shrieking storm is getting on my nerves.”

“I hope the hotel lasts the night,” said Charles. “But think about what I said.”

At one in the morning, Nick Loncar looked up from the football magazine he was reading and saw a man standing in front of him. Nick could hear the waves thundering over the sea wall and wondered how this man had managed to keep dry.

“Do you want a room, sir?” he asked.

The man smiled. He had a pleasant, tanned face and he was expensively dressed. “I am from Lewes CID,” he said. “I am afraid I’ll need to have another word with Mrs. Raisin. Something’s just happened.”

“May I see some ID?” asked Nick cautiously.

He flashed a card at him.

“We’ll use the bar,” said the man. “What we have to discuss is top secret, so I want you to put on the lights in the bar and make yourself scarce.”

“Will do.” Nick hesitated. “How did you manage to get in here without getting wet?”

The man’s eyes narrowed. “You are impeding the police in an investigation,” he said in a voice heavy with menace.

“All right, all right,” said Nick. “I’ll call her.”

He rang from the desk and spoke to Agatha. When he put down the phone he said, “Mrs. Raisin says to give her ten minutes to get dressed.”

“Right. Just put on a couple of lights in the bar and get lost.”

“I’ll be in the manager’s office if you want me.”

Agatha walked down into the reception area and was immediately deafened by the roar of the storm. The wind howled and great waves crashed against the door of the hotel.

She went into the bar. Only two lamps were lit. She saw a man sitting over by the long windows, his back to her.

She approached. “You asked to see me?”

Nick sat at the manager’s desk, biting his thumb nervously and eyeing the phone. He had received a rocket from the police after the murder of Geraldine because he had said he had not noticed anyone leaving the hotel around the time she was murdered. The fact was, he had gone into the bar and stretched out in one of the armchairs for a sleep. Nick also worked during the day at a pub in Snoth as barman.

He made up his mind. He phoned Lewes police headquarters and asked them if they had sent a detective to interview Mrs. Raisin.

The man in the bar rose as he heard Agatha approach. He turned and smiled. “Sit down, Mrs. Raisin.”

Agatha let out a gasp of fear. “Brian McNally,” she said.

He was holding a gun on her. How odd the workings of the frightened mind, thought Agatha. I don’t know if that’s a pistol or a revolver. I’m the pre-gun generation. I can’t tell one from the other.

“Sit down,” he ordered again.

Agatha sat down, her heart as tumultuous as the raging storm outside.

He raised his voice against the storm. “You are one nosy interfering bitch and it’s going to be a pleasure to get rid of you. This casino deal was going to be sweet as a nut. You’ve ruined my business.”

Goodbye, everybody, thought Agatha. She suddenly felt calm. She didn’t know if there was a God, but Mrs. Bloxby believed in one, so she asked Mrs. Bloxby’s God either to let her die with dignity or save her.

He levelled the gun and pointed it at her heart.

“Not going to beg for your life? I’d like that.”

“Fry in hell, you bastard,” said Agatha.

At that moment a huge wave crashed against the long windows of the bar, shattering them. As the sea poured in, Brian half turned his head in alarm. A flying shard of glass embedded itself in his neck. Agatha threw herself on the floor and then felt herself being swept up in a tide of seawater towards the bar. As the undertow began to drag her back, she clutched on to the foot rail of the bar.

Then, as the water receded, she stumbled to her feet and ran screaming and splashing through the now flooded reception. Still screaming, she ran up the stairs and pounded on James’s door.

James answered it. Agatha shot past him, babbling, “Brian McNally was in the bar. He tried to shoot me.”

“Sit down,” ordered James. “I’ll call the police.”

The police arrived very quickly, alerted by Nick’s call. Not being able to approach the front of the hotel, they had climbed over the garden wall at the side and had come in through an open fire door.

Agatha had had time to change into dry clothes, which James had fetched from her room.

Sergeant Wilkins was the first to appear. “Tell us what happened, Mrs. Raisin.”

In a shaky voice Agatha told him all she knew.

“Brian McNally’s dead,” said Wilkins. “A piece of glass from the shattered windows sliced an artery in his neck. He bled to death. He was nearly swept out to sea. We found his body jammed under a sofa next to the windows. Evidently he got Nick Loncar to get you down to the bar by saying he was a detective and flashing a fake ID. Loncar phoned the police. The police found a fire door open and we assume he got in that way. We got here as soon as we could. It’s a mess out there. The fire brigade and ambulance men will be searching the houses on the waterfront in the hope that the residents have survived the storm. You’ll need to come along to the police station and make an official statement.”

“Can’t you see she’s still in shock?” demanded James angrily. “I’ll bring her along in the morning.”

“Very well. We’ll send someone for her at seven o’clock.”

“Make it nine,” said James. “Let her get some sleep.”

Agatha, who in her fantasies about James had imagined being rescued by him and spending the night in his arms, now only wanted to get to the privacy of her own room and have a good cry.

She assured James she would be all right and locked her door. She found she was shivering and stripped off and had a hot shower. She changed into her nightdress and crawled into bed and fell into a sleep tortured with dreams of being lost at sea and fighting up one wave and down the next and never having land in sight.

She awoke early. Sun was streaming in the window. She got out of bed and looked out to see if the sea had receded, forgetting that her room overlooked a weedy garden at the back of the hotel.

Agatha got dressed and went down to the dining room to find it full of shattered glass and upturned tables and chairs. Charles appeared behind her.

“What a night,” he said.

“Haven’t you heard what happened?”

“No.”

Agatha told him. “Let’s go up to my room,” said Charles. “My feet are getting wet. The carpets are sodden.”

Wearing a pair of bright pink Wellington boots, Betty came into the hotel.

“Oh, Mrs. Raisin, the police stopped me outside and told me what had happened. The hotel’s finished. I’ll need to look for another job. There was something odd I should have told you about. I got talking to a young man and he took me for a drink. He asked me all sorts of questions about you and Mr. Lacey and when I went to the loo and came back, he’d disappeared.”

“You’d better tell the police,” said Agatha.

Upstairs in Charles’s room, Agatha said, “I wonder why that young man was asking questions about me.”

“Probably one of McNally’s boys trying to find out for him what they could,” said Charles. “Before he thought up the detective idea, he maybe planned to try something like sending up a note pretending it came from James. You haven’t any make-up on.”

“So what?”

“So you’d feel better if you put a bit of paint on. You’re awfully white. The press will be there and you don’t want to look like a ghost. Cheer up. You know what I think? I think with McNally dead, that will be the end of attempts on your life. The head of the serpent has been chopped off. You’ve the devil’s own luck, Agatha.”

“Or maybe it was Mrs. Bloxby’s God.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Never mind.”

The police came and took Agatha to the police station along with Nick and Betty. They had to walk because the waterfront was a shattered mess of fallen slates, bricks, broken glass and flotsam and jetsam.

Agatha was glad she had made up her face because it seemed as if all the world’s press were outside the police station.

Agatha, Nick and Betty were taken off to separate interviewing rooms.

Faced by Barret and Wilkins, Agatha wearily told her story all over again. And again and again.

At last Barret said, “Well, that wraps it up. I must say we’re pretty happy. One highly dangerous villain dead. And a money-laundering operation broken for the moment. McNally was the kingpin, and with him out of the way I don’t think you should have anything to fear any longer, Mrs. Raisin. I think you should go home.”

“What about the death of Geraldine Jankers?”

“We’ve come to the conclusion it had something to do with that jewel theft. If McNally could hire killers to attack you, then he would not have blinked at getting rid of Geraldine to do Charlie Black a favour.”

“But what if it had nothing to do with McNally?”

“Case closed. Go home, Mrs. Raisin.”

Agatha emerged from the interviewing room to find Charles waiting for her. “I thought you could do with some breakfast before we all start filling in insurance forms.”

“What for?”

“All the cars in the car park are a wreck, including your rented car.” He turned to the desk sergeant. “Is there a back way out of this station?”

“I’ll show you the way.”

“Unless, Aggie, you want to face the press.”

“Not now,” said Agatha.

Agatha was comforted and sustained by a large breakfast of sausage, eggs, bacon, beans and fried bread, washed down with mugs of black coffee.

What was even more surprising was that Charles paid for it.

“I’d better phone the car rental company as soon as I get back,” said Agatha. “I want to get home today.”

“Why bother? I phoned my insurance company early mis morning and I’ve got a courtesy car waiting for me at a garage outside the town. I’ll run you back to Carsely. I’ll order a taxi to wait for us round the corner from the hotel and we’ll need to lug our bags round to it. It’ll be a while before anything can drive up to the front.”

Agatha had hoped to escape the press, but the storm damage was also news and television crews were filling the waterfront. For once in her life all she said was a gruff “No comment.”

She arranged to meet Charles downstairs in an hour’s time. Duckboards had been placed across the wet carpet in the hall.

In her room, Agatha phoned Patrick and told him she was leaving and that she would settle his bill as well as her own. Then she phoned the car rental company and told them what had happened, saying that she would fill in the accident forms and send them off.

The phone rang almost as soon as she replaced the receiver. It was Mrs. Bloxby. “I’ve just heard the news on the radio,” said the vicar’s wife. “Would you like me to drive down there?”

“It’s all right, Mrs. Bloxby. I’m coming home.”

“I’ll see Doris Simpson and give her a casserole to put in your kitchen. I won’t talk any more because you must be feeling shaken. Ring me when you get home.”

Agatha packed quickly, looking sadly at all the filmy holiday garments that she had hoped to wear. She had just finished when Charles knocked at the door.

“Taxi’s waiting.”

Charles took hold of Agatha’s case, and they had just reached the top of the stairs when James came to join them.

“Where on earth have you been, Agatha?” he demanded.

“At the police station. I’ve got to go, James.”

“Agatha, I thought we were going on holiday together.”

“I’m going home,” said Agatha. “Besides, your car’s a wreck.”

“What?”

“Didn’t you know? The car park was flooded and all the cars are wrecked.”

“Look, wait at the hotel until I get a replacement. It should only take a few days. You can stay at the hotel with me until then.”

“Taxi’s waiting,” muttered Charles.

“I can’t wait a minute longer in this arsehole of the world,” said Agatha. “I’m off.”

“Agatha, I’m warning you. This is your last chance.”

“Just who the hell do you think you are? Come on, Charles.”

The taxi dropped them off at the garage and Charles signed the papers for a courtesy car—a new Peugeot.

As they drove out of Snoth, Agatha heaved a sigh of relief as she watched the housing estates on the outskirts of the town pass by and recede into the distance.

“Feeling all right about James?” asked Charles.

“I don’t feel anything other than relief at getting away from that place.”

Agatha’s mobile phone rang. “Aren’t you going to answer that?” asked Charles.

“No, I’m going to switch the damned thing off!”

Agatha felt her spirits rise as the miles between her and Snoth-on-Sea increased. Going home! She had never felt so passionately about it before. And when Charles finally turned down the road leading to Carsely, where the trees arched on either side to form a green tunnel, she felt like a hunted animal returning to its burrow.

“I won’t wait,” said Charles, carrying her suitcase up to the door. “I’ll call you.”

Agatha entered her cottage and cried a welcome to her cats. They looked up at her with indifference, a sort of cat’s way of punishing her for her absence. Dumping her suitcase in the hall, she went through to the kitchen. The promised casserole from Mrs. Bloxby was on the kitchen table. “Lamb stew,” said a neat little label on the top.

The doorbell rang, making her jump nervously. She went through to the front door and peered through the spyhole. Bill Wong stood outside. She flung open the door with a cry of welcome.

“Come in, Bill.”

“Mrs. Bloxby phoned me to say you were coming back.”

Agatha’s cats, Hodge and Boswell, ran to Bill, mewing and purring a welcome.

“You’ve been having adventures,” said Bill, following her through to the kitchen.

“I’m glad it’s all over. Coffee? Oh dear, I haven’t any milk.” Agatha opened the fridge. “Yes, I have. God bless Mrs. Bloxby.”

“I’ll have a cup. So it’s all over, is it?”

“The police down there have come to the conclusion that one of Brian McNally’s hit men killed Mrs. Jankers.”

“Why?”

Agatha plugged in the kettle. “Well, because of the jewels from that robbery. He must have demanded them, she said she hadn’t got them, and got killed.”

Bill said, “Somehow, the timing’s out. Charlie Black at that time was out of prison, even if he had an alibi, so it stands to reason that McNally wouldn’t step in until after Charlie got arrested.”

“The police down there are happy,” said Agatha mulishly. “What a long time this kettle’s taking to boil.”

“You’ve only just plugged it in. You must have had several bad frights.”

“Yes, I did. But I find it’s not healthy to brood on them.”

“Not healthy to block everything out of your mind either.”

The kettle boiled. Agatha put instant coffee in two mugs, filled them with hot water, carried them to the table and then lifted the milk out of the fridge.

“What are you trying to say?” asked Agatha. “Do sit down and help yourself to milk.”

Bill pulled a chair up to the table and sat down. Hodge climbed up on him and hung round his shoulders like a fur stole and Boswell lay on his lap.

“I’m saying that I think Geraldine Jankers might have been murdered by someone in that hotel. Just a feeling I’ve got.”

“You weren’t there. I think the police have got it right this time.”

“Where’s James?”

“Still there, as far as I know.”

“I thought you would come back with him.”

“Well, I didn’t,” snapped Agatha. “How’s your coffee?”

“Okay.”

“And how’s your love life?”

“Dormant. Tell you what, run through the Jankers case again for me.”

“Bill, I’m tired. I don’t want to think about it any more.”

“Then I’ll be on my way.” Bill gently lifted down her cats and stood up. “There’s just one interesting thing you might not know.”

“What’s that?” Agatha followed him as he walked to the door.

“Cyril Hammond has a record.”

“Of what?”

“As a young man he assaulted a woman in a pub. Mind you, both of mem were drunk, but he half strangled her before the customers could pull him off. Charged with actual bodily harm and sent to the cooler for eighteen months. Goodbye, Agatha.”

Bill walked out of the front door and closed it gently behind him.

“I didn’t even hear that,” Agatha told her cats. “I don’t even want to have heard that.”

She carried her suitcase up to the bedroom and unpacked her clothes. She looked sadly down at all the ridiculous filmy underwear and then stuffed it all into a bag to leave in the clothes bin at Budgen’s supermarket in Moreton.

After she had had a bath and changed her clothes and put on fresh make-up, she decided to visit Mrs. Bloxby.

Before she left she remembered guiltily that she had sent Harry to find out about Fred’s businesses in Lewisham. She phoned him up and told him to forget it.

“Why?” demanded Harry.

“Because the police say she was murdered by some associate of McNally’s.”

“You believe that?”

“Yes. I’ll see you in the office tomorrow.”

“Are you all right? I read about the last attempt on your life in the papers.”

“I’m fine. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

The vicar seemed to delight in telling Agatha that his wife was not at home, so Agatha retreated to her cottage, heated up a portion of the casserole in the microwave and ate it at the kitchen table.

She had just finished when the doorbell rang. Again Agatha peered through the spyhole and saw Mrs. Bloxby.

She flung open the door in welcome. “My husband told me you were looking for me,” said Mrs. Bloxby, “but I was out on parish duties.” Actually, what her husband had said was, “That bloody Raisin woman’s been round here asking for you.”

“Come in. I’ve just eaten some of that casserole you gave me. Delicious. Thank you so much. We’ll go into the sitting room. Doris has left the fire ready to be lit. What a summer! At least it’s stopped people complaining about global warming.”

Agatha lit the fire. As she straightened up, that stabbing pain in her hip struck her again.

“Drink?”

“I’d like a sherry,” said Mrs. Bloxby. “I am really quite tired.”

Agatha poured her a glass and then one for herself. Mrs. Bloxby sat down on the sofa and Agatha in an armchair beside the fire. “I should use this room more,” said Agatha, looking around. “I always seem to live in the kitchen.”

“Are you feeling all right after your adventures?”

Agatha sighed. “I feel safe now that I’m home. It’s all made me grateful for what I thought were the piffling little cases at the agency—you know, lost dogs and cats.”

“They are very important,” said Mrs. Bloxby. “Think how you would feel if your cats went missing. And how are things with James?”

“Definitely finished. Do you know he even gave me an ultimatum? He offered me this holiday trip again and said it was my last chance.”

“Oh dear.”

“It’s a good thing in a way. It’s brought me to my senses at last.”

“I hope you have not only finished with James but with everything to do with that dreadful place.”

“Snoth? What a name! Yes, definitely. Everything solved.”

“Including the murder of Geraldine Jankers?”

“Yes, the police have decided it was one of McNalry’s hit men.”

“How convenient,” murmured the vicar’s wife.

“What do you mean by that?”

“It’s just that it seems too neat. Perhaps it was because I was part of it for a little while.”

“For once in my life,” said Agatha, “I’m going to accept the police decision. In fact, now that Harry and Patrick will be back at the agency, I can relax. I might even take time off and do something with the garden.”

Mrs. Bloxby sipped her drink and looked at the flames in the hearth. She knew Agatha had two obsessions. One was James Lacey and the other was danger. She wondered how long Agatha would last before she started to stir things up again.

But the weeks moved past and as the weather turned fine, Agatha showed no signs of either approaching James Lacey or worrying about Geraldine Jankers. She had told everyone in her office not to talk about the case to her. An Indian summer bathed Carsely in golden misty mornings and hot bright days.

She did pedestrian detecting during the day and sat in her garden in the warm evenings, watching her cats playing on the grass. She had hired a gardener, having decided she really did not want to do the work herself, and admired the smooth green of the lawn and the gaudy splash the dahlias made in the flower beds.

And then her friend Roy Silver arrived to stay one weekend. He had once worked for Agatha when she had run her own public relations firm. Agatha told him to meet her in her office on the Friday evening.

Roy appeared wearing a white Indian-style suit and leather sandals. His hair was dyed black. His face was brown with fake tan.

“What’s with the Indian look?” asked Agatha.

“I’m dressing fashionably for the hot weather,” said Roy. “Are you ready?”

“Just a few things to wrap up.” Agatha stared at her computer. “Won’t be a moment.”

“You could really do with some good magazines,” complained Roy, flicking through a pile on the coffee table in front of him. “Dear me. Old colour supplements are not the thing.” He shifted them to one side and found a file marked “Jankers.”

He opened it up. Harry Beam had written up everything to do with the murder of Geraldine Jankers. Roy had taken a course in speed reading and soon finished it.

“Ready,” said Agatha.

“Ready. Just been reading up on the Jankers case. Fascinating.”

“Where did you get that?”

“It was under these tatty magazines. Harry Beam’s done a good job.”

“I haven’t read it.”

“Why?”

“Because that case is closed.”

“Okay. Let’s have dinner. I’m starving. I want to go to an Indian restaurant.”

“In that outfit? The waiters will think you’re taking the piss. I feel like comfort food—roast beef, steak-and-kidney pud, that sort of thing.”

“Well, it’s your waistline, duckie.”

* * *

They went to a pub called the Foxy Ferret. Roy chattered on about his latest PR ventures with a pop group called Hellish People. “I tried to tell them the gothic look was out,” he said. “But they insist retro-punk will soon be all the rage. Very hard to sell a line about them to the newspapers.”

“What’s their music like?”

“Hellish.”

“Lost cause.”

“I hate lost causes,” said Roy petulantly. “It’s not my fault I can’t publicize them, but the boss seems to think it is. Talking about lost causes—what about the Jankers case? I didn’t read in the newspapers of any arrest. Who do you think did it? Cyril Hammond, who inherited close to a million? But then, how would Cyril know that Wayne would get shot so he could inherit? Fred Jankers, whose businesses were on their last legs and who got the insurance money? Or that old boy, Archie Swale, who for some reason your Harry thinks is a possible candidate?”

Agatha said in an even, measured tone, “I won’t say this again, Roy. It’s over. Case solved. One of the drug baron’s men did for her.”

“There was nothing about that in Harry’s file.”

“Shut up about it.”

But that night, while Roy slept in the spare room, Agatha’s memories of all the violence she had endured came flooding back. She remembered her fear when Brian McNally had abducted her and then when Deborah had been found shot. Once again memory dragged her back to the bar of the Palace Hotel and Brian McNally pointing a gun at her as the waves came crashing through the window.

She fell into an uneasy sleep and dreamed of being in James’s arms once more, awakening at last to another sunny day and filled with longing for him.

As she went downstairs to prepare breakfast for Roy, she found all her old obsession for James was back and along with it a nagging restlessness. James, for Agatha, was as strong an addiction as cigarettes.

Roy padded into the kitchen wrapped in a gaudy Chinese dressing gown. His face was covered in black streaks.

“Your hair dye’s run during the night,” said Agatha. “Take a look. There’s a mirror over the sink.”

Roy peered at his face and let out a squawk of horror. “What am I to do?”

“Go upstairs and take a shower and shampoo all the colour out.”

While she waited for him, Agatha’s mind turned over what Roy had told her about Harry’s report. There had been things she had not known.

Roy appeared again half an hour later, his hair now a mousy brown and wearing a denim shirt and blue jeans.

“Really,” said Agatha, “you look almost human.”

“I look like a nerd,” said Roy. “What’s the programme for today?”

“I might just go back to the office and look at that file.”