"A Spoonful of Poison" - читать интересную книгу автора (Beaton M C)

Chapter Seven

THE RESTAURANT was called the Moulmein Pagoda. Agatha wondered whether the owner was a Kipling fan. She remembered how she and her school friends had found an old wind-up gramophone in a skip. It had one record on the turntable, “The Road to Mandalay.” They had wound it up and played the record. Agatha had thought it romantic, but as soon as the record had finished, her companions had gleefully set about stomping on the record and gramophone until nothing was left but little pieces. She remembered the line, “By the old Moulmein Pagoda/Looking lazy at the sea,” because in later years, she had looked up the poem in the library and had memorized it. But the pagoda had been in Burma and the sailor had been looking to China across the bay.

George was late. She ordered herself a mineral water and lit up a cigarette. Soon the smoking ban would be in force. The police were setting up a hotline where you could report anyone smoking on a free phone line. Of course, if you wanted to report a real crime, it would cost you fifty pee a minute. The powers that be were also going to send out undercover agents to restaurants and pubs. Soon it will be the obesity police, thought Agatha, snatching cream cakes from the jaws of ladies in tea shops.

After half an hour, Agatha decided to leave. She was just getting to her feet when George hurried in.

“Sorry I’m a bit late,” he said.

“Half an hour, to be exact,” Agatha pointed out.

“Sorry, sorry. Busy, busy.”

He called the waiter over and said, “We’ll have the number-two menu please. Would you like some wine, Agatha?”

“Do you think I might be allowed to choose it?” asked Agatha sarcastically.

“Of course. They do a very nice house white here.”

“Where is the wine list?”

“On the back of the menu.”

“I always think white wine goes better with Chinese food,” said George.

“I like red,” said Agatha firmly. “I’ll have a half bottle of Merlot. What do you want?”

“I’ll have a small carafe of the house white.”

He shouldn’t have ordered the meal for me, thought Agatha angrily. Why do I always get to know cheapskates? Probably frightened I would start choosing from the a la carte.

Aloud, she said, “I was wondering if the owner was a fan of Kipling.”

“Why?”

“The restaurant’s called the Moulmein Pagoda. That’s from ‘The Road to Mandalay’.”

“Don’t know it.”

“It goes like this…”

To George’s horror, Agatha began to sing in a loud alto soprano. A group at the other end of the restaurant joined in. There was a round of applause when Agatha finished and she stood up and bowed.

“Oh, do sit down and stop making a spectacle of yourself,” snapped George.

But Agatha didn’t care what he thought. He had left her waiting for half an hour and then had chosen her dinner.

“Do not… ever… speak to me like that again,” said Agatha in a level voice. “You are neither my husband nor my father. Would you like me to leave?”

“No. Look-let’s start again. I’m still upset at Arnold’s death. Have the police any idea who broke into your cottage? It must be the same person who killed Arnold and stole the money.”

Agatha sighed. “If it were a television programme, some forensics scientist would hold up one bit of hair and say, ‘Aha! This matches the DNA of Arthur Chance or whoever.’ But the police are probably sitting on their hands because it’s me and it’s only a burglary where nothing was stolen. Have you any idea at all who could have killed Arnold? You said you’d fill me in.”

Suddenly in Agatha’s mind that last sentence seemed to have a sexual connotation. She flushed and studied her glass of Merlot.

“I know that Arthur phoned Arnold on the day he was murdered and said they should both go to the bank that afternoon. Then he got a phone call from a Mrs. Wilmington, who was once a parishioner, pleading for his spiritual help and saying that she was close to death. So Arthur phoned Arnold and put the appointment off until the following day, because Mrs. Wilmington had given him an address in Warwick.

“When he got to the address in Warwick, he found it was a betting shop and no one in the flats above had ever heard of Mrs. Wilmington. He returned to the vicarage and looked up her last address, which was in Ancombe. He phoned. Mrs. Wilmington answered the phone, claimed she was fit and well and had never phoned him.”

“Didn’t he immediately call the police?”

“No, he thought it was someone playing a tiresome joke.”

“So there’s now a woman in the case. Probably a woman working in partnership with some man.” Agatha silently cursed the police. They had held back all this from her.

“Let’s talk about something else. Ah, here’s our food. Tell me how you came to start a detective agency?”

In between eating and drinking, Agatha gave him a highly embroidered version of the cases she had solved and how she had at last decided to turn professional.

Then she realized that George had ordered another bottle of wine for her. “I’ll need to take a taxi,” said Agatha. “Oh, well, tell me about yourself. I’ve done all the talking.”

George began. He was an architect and had settled in the Cotswolds because there were so many demands for house extensions and garage conversions. He was kept very busy. Of course, in a couple of cases, his clients had declared bankruptcy and he had not received any money for months of work. “I hadn’t realized until I moved to the Cotswolds that bankruptcy had become a sort of growth industry. I mean, I knew there were a lot around, but I thought it was from people who had used too many shop credit cards charging high interest.”

“You must miss your wife very much,” said Agatha, mellowed with wine.

He heaved a sigh. “Sarah was such a homebody. She made all the curtains herself when we moved in, and loose covers for the chairs. Her cooking was plain but delicious. She never had any ambition. When we were in financial difficulties, I suggested she might like to get a job to help out. But she cried and said our home was her job.”

“What about Fred Corrie?” asked Agatha, thinking that perhaps George was attracted to the useless clinging type.

“What about her?”

“Does she work?”

“She paints. Watercolours. Don’t sell very well, but she’s got an income from a family trust. Did anyone ever tell you that you are a very sexy woman”?

Agatha blinked. Then she said, “Maybe.”

He laughed and called for the bill. “I’ll take you home in a taxi. We can pick up our cars tomorrow.”

In the darkness of the taxi, he reached out and took her hand. He said softly, “I think our evening is not over yet.”

Agatha took rapid inventory of her body. Legs-yes, shaved. Armpits, ditto. Was she ready for this? Yes, screamed her hormones.

As the cab drew up outside her cottage, she saw all the lights were on inside. “That’s odd,” said Agatha. “I think someone’s in there.”

George curtly told the taxi to wait. Agatha unlocked the door and marched straight into the sitting room. Charles was lying on the sofa, one leg in plaster propped up on a cushion.

“What happened to you?” raged Agatha.

“I fell down your stairs and broke my leg,” said Charles plaintively. “I called the ambulance and got fixed up.”

“Why didn’t you go home?”

“Aunt’s away and Gustav is on a break, so I decided you’d be the best person to look after me, light of my life.”

“I’d better go,” said George.

Agatha saw him to the door. “Charles is just a friend,” she said.

“Oh, really? ’Night.”

After he had gone, Agatha marched back inside. Charles was sitting upright on the sofa. Beside him on the floor was the discarded plaster cast, looking like a white umbrella stand.

“What in hell’s name were you playing at?” raged Agatha.

“Calm down. No, don’t shout. Listen. George Selby is a suspect, or had you forgotten? Ever since you’ve got over James, you’ve been desperate for a replacement. Think about it. Were you really going to fall into bed with a man who might have organized the death of his wife? A man who may even have killed poor Arnold?”

Agatha sat down beside him on the sofa. “How did you know I might come back with him?” she asked sulkily.

“Because it’s just the sort of dangerous thing you’ve done in the past.”

“Where did you get the cast?”

“I got it from Mrs. Bloxby’s theatrical costume basket.”

“You told Mrs. Bloxby.”

“No, I said I needed something to make me look as if I had been injured because I wanted to get out of doing something. That excellent lady did not ask any questions. The amateur dramatic society put on a show of Carry On Doctor about five years ago. Want a drink?”

“I’ve had enough. Do you really think George is involved in any of this?”

“Not sure. Does he spend a lot of time at the vicarage?”

“He does seem to be there a lot.”

“Why? Does he strike you as having the character of a do-gooder?”

“He could be. He organized all those marquees for the fête.”

“I can’t see a successful architect having much time for anything else other than work. Where’s his office?”

“I don’t know.”

“It might be worthwhile finding out and sending someone from your office he doesn’t know to suss out the place.”

“I’ll think about it. I’m going to bed.”

Agatha hesitated in the doorway. “Thanks,” she said gruffly. “I could have made an awful fool of myself.”

“Oh, dear Agatha,” said Charles, “don’t start growing up. It alarms me. You should be throwing things at my head.”

Before Agatha left for the office the next morning, Patrick phoned her. “I thought I’d better tell you this before you come in,” he said. “You asked me to find out about Jimmy Wilson. Yes, he did have bowel cancer, but that wasn’t the reason he retired. He was cured and back at work. He was sent out to cover a case. A woman had been raped in her home. Jimmy was accompanied by another detective, Miriam Wells. Miriam escorted the woman down to the rape unit while the forensic team went over her flat. Jimmy stayed behind. The rapist was caught through his DNA, which was on file, but before his arrest, the woman claimed that five thousand pounds she kept in a drawer in her bedroom had been taken. She was told the rapist must have taken it. She said no. While she was waiting for the police, she had looked into the drawer and had seen the money was still there.

“After a long investigation, it was suggested to Jimmy that he should take early retirement.”

“Why did they think it was him? It could have been one of the forensic team or that Miriam detective.”

“The fact is that there had been a couple of cases Jimmy had been on before in which money had gone missing. In each case, Jimmy was suspected, but nothing was proved.”

“Tell Jimmy to follow up on that factory case, the one with the missing goods, and the rest of you come over here.”

Agatha knew Charles was asleep upstairs in the spare bedroom. She decided to let him sleep. She still felt ashamed of the fact that she had been so ready to leap into bed with George and didn’t want to be reminded of the fact first thing in the morning.

She hurried along to the village shop and bought a large bag of croissants. Back home, she put on a pot of coffee and then set the kitchen table with strawberry jam, butter and sugar, plates and knives, cream and milk.

Agatha opened the garden door and let her cats out and then lit a cigarette. Her mind seemed to be leaping all over the place.

When her staff, minus Jimmy, arrived, she waited until they were all seated around the table with plates of croissant and mugs of coffee before she began.

“I have learned something upsetting about Jimmy. Tell them, Patrick.”

They all listened carefully. When Patrick had finished, Toni exclaimed, “I knew there was something awful about him.”

“The fact is this,” said Agatha. “I’m worried now that Jimmy might have been the one who stole the church money and murdered poor old Arnold. If that turns out to be the case, it’s going to look bad for the agency. Who’s going to trust us in the future?”

“I can’t see Jimmy going as far as murder,” said Patrick.

“I’d like a watch kept on his house,” said Agatha. “The trouble is, he knows all of us.”

Charles ambled in wearing his dressing gown.

“What sort of place does he live in?” asked Toni. “Is it a house or a flat? Is it on a busy road?”

“Wait a minute,” said Agatha. “His address is on my computer. I’ll check.”

She came back after a few minutes. “He lives in Evesham. Port Street.”

“Wasn’t that flooded out?” said Phil.

“He didn’t mention it or take time off, so it must be the top end. He probably lives over a shop.”

“I could do it,” said Toni.

“He knows you.”

“He only knows me like this. Believe me, he won’t recognize me.”

“I don’t want you running into any danger,” said Agatha.

“I could park my car outside,” said Phil. “With glasses and a tweed cap pulled down, he wouldn’t know me. He’s always sneering at me and calling me ‘grandad.’ Patrick can scrunch down in the back seat. Then, when Jimmy goes out, Patrick can break into his flat. It’s no use protesting, Patrick. I know you’ve got a set of skeleton keys.”

“Going to be right difficult,” said Patrick. “The long-light nights are here. Say he lives up at the top end of Port Street, well, it’s pretty deserted at night. Then, if it’s just the one flat above a shop, I’ll look conspicuous standing there fiddling with the lock.”

“Can’t you send him away somewhere?” suggested Charles.

“You might have something there. He’s also got the Tropper case. Mrs. Tropper suggests her husband might be taking his totty to a hotel in Brighton. That’s it. I’ll send him off tomorrow.”

“What if I take Mrs. Freedman with me for the break-in?” said Patrick. “Jimmy’s some relative of hers.”

“She’d be too shocked and she might say something to him.”

“Right. We’ll just send him on his way tomorrow and then decide what to do about it.”

Agatha could not believe her luck the next morning when she found Jimmy, stretched out on the sofa, fast asleep. The office was full of stale beer fumes. His jacket was hanging over the back of a chair. She felt in the pockets and extracted his keys. Quietly she let herself out and rushed to the nearest key cutters. She looked at her watch. Ten to nine. The shop door was closed. She impatiently rattled the handle. The blind on the door was raised and the shopkeeper mouthed, “Closed,” and pointed to his watch.

Agatha opened her handbag and took a twenty-pound note out of her wallet and waved it. The door opened. “I need an extra set of house keys,” said Agatha. “Twenty pounds over the price if you do it now.”

Soon she had the keys copied and hurried back to the office. Jimmy was sitting up, staring blearily around.

Agatha walked towards her desk and knocked his jacket to the floor as she did so. She slipped Jimmy’s keys on top of the jacket and then rounded on him.

“What where you doing sleeping in the office?”

“I had a bit of a bevvy last night,” said Jimmy. “Too many coppers around, so I decided to sleep it off here.”

“You’d better go home and get a bath and then take yourself off to Brighton. It’s the Tropper case. Mrs. Tropper thinks he’s taking his bit of stuff to Brighton. He told her he was there on a sales conference. Check and see.”

Jimmy stood up. “I’ll get off. I’ll need an advance for expenses.”

Agatha unlocked the office safe and took out a wad of notes. “I want you to account for every penny of that.”

“Sure. See you. Bye.”

The rest of Agatha’s staff were all out on jobs. She telephoned each of them to say she had the keys and they all said they would come back in for a council of war. She suggested they meet at the Sorrento Cafe in Mircester so that Mrs. Freedman wouldn’t know what they were up to. She phoned Charles as well, but he said he had to go home to deal with things.

Agatha could only hope and pray that Jimmy would not turn out to be the culprit. Such a scandal would hit the agency hard.

When they were all seated in the cafe, Agatha said, “Toni and I had better go. We’d be less conspicuous.”

“Are you sure?” asked Phil. “I could come along as bodyguard.”

Agatha looked affectionately at Phil’s elderly face and white hair and said, “We’ll be all right. Jimmy’s not going to hurry back from an expenses-paid trip to Brighton.”

Jimmy’s flat turned out to be at the top end of Port Street near the garage above a small grocery store.

They were not wearing any disguises. Agatha had said that she had a good excuse. She could say she had forgotten she had sent Jimmy to Brighton and was checking up on him.

There were two keys on the ring. Agatha correctly guessed that the bigger of the two opened the street door.

Inside, worn stone steps led up to the floor above. “Good,” Agatha whispered. “Only one door. No neighbours.”

She unlocked the door and they both went in. “What a tip!” exclaimed Agatha. Empty beer cans lay about the floor. Empty pizza boxes were piled up on the coffee table. “Oh, well, hold your nose and let’s get started. Try to put everything back the way it was. Here’s a pair of gloves.”

It was only a tiny flat, consisting of one living room, one bedroom and a minuscule kitchen. The bathroom contained a shower so small, Agatha wondered how Jimmy managed to get his bulk into it. They worked steadily, searching cupboards and under the bed, in the bathroom cistern and even making a slit in the side of the mattress in case Jimmy had stuffed the money in there.

Agatha began to feel quite cheerful. She really didn’t want Jimmy to be the culprit. “Give up!” she called to Toni, who was still searching the bedroom. “I’m beat.”

She carefully removed two newspapers from a plump armchair and collapsed into it with a sigh of relief. Then she stiffened and slowly stood up. “Toni, come here!”

“Found anything?” asked Toni, coming through from the bedroom.

“The big seat cushion on that armchair feels as if it’s stuffed with something.”

“Let’s have a look.” Toni picked up the huge seat cushion. “It’s been clumsily stitched up at the back,” she said. “I’ve got a pair of nail scissors in my handbag.”

“If there’s nothing sinister in there, we’re going to have to try to stitch it up again so that it looks the same,” said Agatha.

Toni took the scissors out of her handbag and cut the threads. “There’s something here,” she said. She grabbed hold of the end of something and pulled. Agatha stared. She found herself looking at a familiar bank bag.

“We can just take it,” said Toni eagerly, “and give it back to the church. Fire Jimmy and there’ll be no scandal.”

“Can’t,” said Agatha. “You forget Arnold was murdered. I’ll call the police. I’ll say I had more instructions for Jimmy. He didn’t answer his phone. We came up here and found the door open. No Jimmy. I sat in that armchair and I thought, there’s something in this cushion, and blah, blah, blah.”

“Sounds thin.”

“Got any better ideas?” Agatha took out her phone and called police headquarters in Mircester.

She managed to get hold of Bill Wong and spoke rapidly. When she had finished, Toni said nervously, “Do you think they’ll search us?”

“Probably not. Why?”

“You’ve got the keys and we’ve both got latex gloves.”

“I’ll attach the keys to my own key ring and we’re supposed to carry latex gloves. We’re detectives.”

“This is Evesham. Won’t it be Worcester police?”

“It’s Gloucester’s case. I think they’ll come straight here and let Worcester know afterwards. I feel a bit shaky now. Poor Mrs. Freedman. She’s going to be shattered by this bit of news.”

“I’ve thought of something!” exclaimed Toni.

“What?”

“They’ll automatically search the flat for fingerprints.”

“We were wearing gloves.”

“Don’t you see? That’s it. Why were you wearing gloves?”

“Let me think. I know. We found the money right off because I sat down for a rest. We thought we may as well look round while we were waiting.”

“Won’t work. They’ll know that we’ll know a crime scene shouldn’t be touched.”

“We’ll tell them we wanted to find out where Jimmy was staying in Brighton, if he had left a note somewhere.”

“And they’ll say, ‘Why didn’t you phone him?’”

“Couldn’t get an answer.”

“What if they check your phone records?”

“Snakes and bastards,” howled Agatha. “I’m not the villain here.”

“Mrs. Raisin?” Agatha swung round. Wilkes and Collins were standing in the doorway. Just behind them stood Bill Wong.

“Where is the money?” asked Wilkes.

Agatha pointed to the armchair cushion. “It’s in there.”

“How did you find it? This is Jimmy Wilson’s flat, isn’t it? And he works for you.”

Agatha told her tale of wanting to get in touch with Jimmy, who was in Brighton. She had sat down in the armchair and had felt all the paper inside it and decided to have a look. “So you don’t know where he’s staying?”

“I couldn’t get him on the phone,” said Agatha. “Knowing Jimmy, if he thinks he’s richer than he was, he’ll probably be staying somewhere grand.”

Wilkes spoke rapidly into his phone, ordering someone at headquarters to contact the Brighton police and arrest Jimmy Wilson.

“Why did you employ such a person?”

“He’s an ex-detective. He was one of your lot.”

“I want you and Miss Gilmour to go directly to police headquarters to be interviewed. Detective Sergeant Wong will go with you.”

At police headquarters, Agatha and Toni were split up. Agatha was interviewed by the terrible Collins and another detective called Finch.

The questioning was rapid-fire and bullying. Collins stopped just short of implying that Agatha had been in on the theft of the money and the murder of Arnold.

Grimly, Agatha stuck to her story, reminding Collins time after time that because Jimmy was a retired detective, she had no reason to suspect him.

At last, she was free to go but was warned that she had to be ready for further questioning. She found Toni waiting for her.

“Let’s go for a drink,” said Agatha. “I wonder if they’ve caught Jimmy.”

Jimmy strolled into the foyer of the Grand Hotel in Brighton. “One of your best rooms,” he said to the clerk.

“Name, please, sir?”

“Wilson. James Wilson.”

The clerk looked across the foyer and gave a little nod. Sweat began to run down Jimmy’s fat face. He was suddenly frightened to turn around.

“Got that room?” he asked in a quavering voice.

A heavy hand landed on his shoulder. A deep voice said, “James Wilson, we are arresting you for the murder of Arnold Birntweather and the theft of funds belonging to the church of-”

He broke off because Jimmy, who had slowly turned round, was scrabbling at his shirt collar. “Air. Need air,” he gabbled. Then one side of his face slipped and he fell to the ground, unconscious.

Jimmy died of a massive stroke on the road to hospital. In the following two weeks, Agatha coped with the guilt of Mrs. Freedman and all her fears that her business would slump. The murder of Arnold had been solved as far as the police were concerned, although they had been unable to track down Jimmy’s female accomplice. Comfrey Magna was almost forgotten as Agatha’s staff rushed to wrap up as many of their other outstanding cases as they could to prove their worth. They had even been working through the weekends.

Agatha at last called a halt. She announced they would all take the next weekend off. Toni received an excited phone call from Harry. He wanted to take her to a production of Prokofiev’s Lady Macbeth of Minsk. A touring Russian company would be performing at the weekend in Mircester. Toni said she would like to go.

In anticipation of Harry’s visit, she cleared all the women’s magazines she liked to read out of her flat. She felt sure he would not approve.

Harry then texted her and said he had good seats for the matinee on Saturday afternoon. Toni felt relieved. She had been wondering what to wear. A Saturday-afternoon performance didn’t seem to call for anything too grand. Besides, Harry had said he would have to leave for Cambridge after the show.

The weather was unusually chilly for summer, so she bought herself a smart dark-blue trouser suit at an up-market thrift shop. She wore a low top under it and three strings of fake pearls bought at the market. She tried out the outfit for her friend, Sharon.

“You look like a businesswoman,” commented Sharon. “You don’t look like someone going out on a hot date.”

“I don’t think opera is a hot date,” said Toni. “He’s trying to widen my experience.”

“What about sex?”

“Haven’t got round to that yet.”

“Why?” demanded Sharon. “My latest squeeze can’t keep his paws off me.”

Toni frowned. “Maybe they do things differently in Cambridge.”

Earlier that day, Harry had given his Cambridge girlfriend, Olivia, a hearty kiss before getting on his motorbike. Olivia was plump and pretty. Harry considered their current affair to be warm and uncomplicated. Before he drove off, Olivia said, “Remember Pygmalion.”

“I’m just helping the girl,” said Harry. “I’d make a good teacher.”

When he reached Mircester, he parked his bike near the theatre and stripped off his protective leathers and helmet. He was wearing jeans and an open-necked checked shirt. He pulled a suede jacket out of his satchel and put it on. As he strolled towards the theatre, he ran into a group of his old school friends, who were just coming out of the pub. “We’re going for a curry,” said a tall gangly youth called Bertie Bryt-Anderson. “Coming?”

“No, I’m going to the opera. I’m waiting for a friend.”

“Female friend?”

“Just a friend. Oh, that’s her. Just about to cross the road.”

Toni was waiting for the traffic light to change. Sunlight glinted on her fair hair.

“If that’s just a friend, what about an introduction?” said Bertie. “What a looker!”

“I’d better go,” said Harry.

Followed by cheers and wolf whistles, he hurried to meet Toni.

“What’s that about?” asked Toni, looking towards the group of young men.

“Idiots! Never mind them.”

Toni felt a flutter of anticipation as they took their seats in the stalls. This would be her first opera. The conductor arrived, the audience applauded and he raised his baton. After a few minutes, Toni whispered, “Is this it? Has it started?”

“It’s the overture,” hissed Harry.

Toni blushed miserably. The curtain rose on a large cage which dominated the stage. Toni tried to enjoy it, but it all seemed brutal and violent. The female worker the other workers tried to rape on the stage was actually stripped naked. She gave a sigh of relief when the interval arrived. “Do you know Stalin walked out when he first saw this opera?” said Harry eagerly as he ushered her to the bar.

“Really?” Toni miserably felt she might have done the same thing if she had been on her own.

Harry got himself a beer and Toni a glass of orange juice. He was just about to explain more about the opera to her when he found himself accosted by his former English teacher, Mark Sutherland.

“How’s Cambridge?” asked Mark, his eyes fastened on Toni.

Mark was a tall, rangy man in his forties with a prominent nose and bright blue eyes.

“Going all right. Oh, Toni, this is my former English teacher, Mr. Sutherland. Mr. Sutherland, Miss Toni Gilmour.”

“Call me Mark. We’re not in school now.” Mark had taken Toni’s hand and was holding on to it. “Where did you find this beautiful lady?”

“Toni works for the detective agency that I used to work for.”

“Indeed! How fascinating. I’ve always wanted to write a detective story. Perhaps, Toni, we could meet for a drink one evening and you can tell me about your work.”

“Mark?”

He swung round impatiently and then his face fell. “May I introduce my wife, Pamela? I thought you didn’t want to come to the bar, dear.” Pamela was small and thin and dressed in a floaty Indian gown which sparkled with little bits of mirror. She had a thin, avid face and glittering black eyes, which she fastened on Toni.

“Well, here I am, dear. You introduced me but not them.”

“Oh, sorry.” As Mark had finished the introductions, the bell went, calling them back to their seats.

Toni sat down again. She felt terribly out of place. She did not understand the music and put it down to her lack of proper education in the arts.

Because of the time factor, there was only to be one interval, so she decided to sit back and think of other things until it was all over.

Harry glanced from time to time at her serene face. Her eyelids were lowered and he noticed how very long her eyelashes were.

When they at last emerged from the theatre and stood blinking in the sunlight, Toni turned round and, to Harry’s surprise, shook him firmly by the hand. “Thank you very much for a most interesting experience. Gotta run.”

And run she did, her slim figure weaving in and out of the pedestrians. Well, thought Harry, I did tell her I had to go straight back to Cambridge after the show. He had known she was pretty, but he had been so busy playing Pygmalion, “moulding her mind,” as he described it to himself, that he had never rightly taken in that Toni could be someone that men of all ages might desire.

He also knew he should never have tried to show off by taking her to a Russian opera that quite a number of people might find difficult to listen to when they heard it for the first time.

And she had so firmly shaken his hand! Just as if he were some elderly uncle! Nobody shook hands much these days.

He drove off and Mircester receded behind him. By the time he reached the flat fields of Cambridgeshire, he felt himself somehow growing smaller in stature.

Toni wondered whether to go round to one of the discos that evening to dance the memory of that opera out of her head. But instead, she got into her car and headed for Carsely.

Agatha was rummaging in her deep freeze to see if she could unearth something for dinner. Most of the packets were frosted over and she scraped busily at some of them, trying to make out what they were. The doorbell rang. Agatha brightened. She belonged to that generation of women who still considered it a sign of failure to be alone on a Saturday night.

“Oh, it’s you, Toni,” she said on opening the door. “Come in. What’s up?”

“Something’s bothering me.”

“Well, come in. Have you eaten?”

“Not yet.”

“Maybe we’ll go to the pub. I keep throwing stuff into the freezer and then I can never figure out what the stuff is. Yes, let’s go to the pub and get a plateful of comforting cholesterol and you can tell me about it.”

“Oh, they’ve got salads now,” said Agatha, when they were seated in the pub. “Maybe… maybe not. Comfort food is what we need. What about steak and kidney pie and new potatoes?”

“Sounds good,” said Toni.

“That’s a very smart suit,” commented Agatha, “but not like the things you usually wear. Sort of thing one wears for a job interview.” Agatha’s small eyes bored into Toni’s face. “Not looking for another job, are you?”

“It’s not that. Harry took me to the opera.”

“This I must hear. Wait until I order the food at the bar.” When Agatha came back after placing the order, she said, “So what happened? I didn’t know you were seeing Harry.”

“I wasn’t, really. Not until today, that is. He had been texting me, telling me what music to listen to and what books to read.”

“Why?”

“He was trying to improve my mind.”

“Cheeky thing to do.”

Toni sighed. “I thought my mind needed improving. I’m tired of this limbo feeling. You know, not really belonging anywhere.”

“So what was the opera? I saw Carmen once. Great fun.”

“It was by Prokofiev-Lady Macbeth of Minsk. I made an awful fool of myself. I didn’t know what was happening at the beginning, the music sounded so weird, so I said, ‘Is this it?’ and it turned out to be the overture.”

“Maybe we should ask Mrs. Bloxby,” said Agatha. “I’m hardly the person to ask. Most of my life has been work, work, work. I can’t understand Harry. Did he try to make love to you?”

“Never.”

“I thought I knew that young man inside out, but when it comes to romance, I’m the world’s greatest loser,” said Agatha. “We’ll have our food and then take a walk along to the vicarage. I’ve been thinking and thinking about that Comfrey Magna business. The police have more or less given up because they’ve come to the conclusion that it was a prank that went wrong. Somehow, I don’t like to leave it.”

“We could go there tomorrow,” suggested Toni. “Now things have quieted down, people might be readier to talk. How’s Charles?”

“Okay, I think. He is infuriating. I would have expected him to turn up when he heard all that scandal about Jimmy Wilson. Maybe he’s on holiday. No, come to think of it, he’s just behaving like his usual selfish self.”

After they had eaten steak and kidney pie, followed by apple pie and custard, Agatha ordered two coffees, took out a packet of cigarettes and lit one up. John Fletcher, the barman, came hurrying over. “Put that damn thing out, Agatha. The smoking ban’s started and you’ll get me fined.”

“Stalinist bureaucrats,” grumbled Agatha. She saw for the first time that there was no ashtray on the table and handed the cigarette to John, who hurried off with it, holding it at arm’s length as if it were a small stick of dynamite.

As they approached the vicarage, Agatha felt guiltily that they should have phoned first. Quite a number of people in the village took their troubles to Mrs. Bloxby, just as if the vicar’s wife should be always there as a sort of personal therapist.

“We should have phoned,” said Agatha. “I always make the mistake of just dropping in.”

“Phone now,” said Toni.

“We’re practically on the doorstep.”

“Phone anyway.”

Agatha fished her mobile out of her bag. She had never learned how to store important numbers and so, instead of pressing a convenient button, she dialled the whole number.

“It’s Mrs. Raisin here,” said Agatha. “I’m with Miss Gilmour. We would like your advice.”

Toni waited. Then she heard Agatha say, “We’re actually practically on your doorstep… You’re sure? Great.”

The door opened as they approached. This must be what the fortunate feel like, coming home, thought Toni suddenly, looking at the slim figure of the vicar’s wife with her gentle smile.

“It’s quite a nice evening,” said Mrs. Bloxby. “I’m sure you would rather sit in the garden and have a cigarette, Mrs. Raisin.”

“Great. Just so long as one of the army of British snoops doesn’t leap out from behind a gravestone in the churchyard.”

“You’re all right outside.” Mrs. Bloxby led the way. “Would you like something to drink? Coffee?”

Toni shook her heard and Agatha said, “No, we’re fine.”

When they were seated under a pale green evening sky, Mrs. Bloxby asked, “Do you want my advice about anything to do with Comfrey Magna?”

“No, it’s not that. But what about Comfrey Magna?”

“I just wondered how that case was going.”

“Not anywhere at the moment,” sighed Agatha. “The fact is, with all the scandal about Jimmy, we’ve all been working like beavers to clear up as many of the cases on our books as possible. I thought the shame of having someone like Jimmy as a detective would have ruined the agency, but it doesn’t seem to have.”

“So what do you want advice on?”

“It’s Toni’s problem. Tell her, Toni.”

Toni gave her a full account, ending up with describing her experiences at the opera, meeting Harry’s friends before it and his English teacher during the interval. “His English teacher even asked me out,” she said, ‘but then his wife joined us and she didn’t look very happy. Harry had told me he had to go straight back to Cambridge after the show, so I shook hands with him and ran off.”

“So I gather there was nothing romantic in your friendship,” said Mrs. Bloxby.

“Nothing at all. He didn’t seem interested in that side of things. Mind you, this was the first date I ever had with him apart from that trip to Comfrey Magna. But I guess it wasn’t a real date.”

“I am no music expert,” said Mrs. Bloxby, “but I should think that particular work would be quite difficult for someone to enjoy who had not heard a great deal of Prokofiev’s other music. I think Harry got carried away with the idea of being a sort of tutor. I am sure his friends found you very attractive, not to mention that English teacher. He will now see you in a new light. If he falls in love with you, would that trouble you?”

Toni bent her fair head. I wonder if I once had that bloom, that innocence, thought Agatha sadly.

Toni at last gave a reluctant laugh. “My friend, Sharon, said he was trying to make me over. She warned me against him. He made me feel silly and stupid and I don’t think I’ll ever forget that.”

“Someone will come along for you when you least expect it,” said Mrs. Bloxby. “But remember-you are now eighteen, are you not? Yes. Remember that the person you love at eighteen will probably not be the person you would love when you are, say, twenty-five. Mrs. Raisin knows you are a very clever girl. Reading good books and listening to classical music is a grand thing, but in your own time and at your own pace. There is one odd thing. The university term at Cambridge finished for the summer on June fifteenth. What is Harry still doing there?”

“I don’t know.”

“He has parents in Mircester, does he not?”

“Yes,” said Agatha. “Since he doesn’t want sex with Toni and he’s still in Cambridge, he’s probably shacked up with some bit of tottie.”

Mrs. Bloxby looked quickly at Toni’s downcast face. “You weren’t in love with him, were you?” she asked.

Toni shook her head. ““I was flattered, that’s all.”

“University students are ten a penny,” said Agatha bracingly, “but good detectives like you are very rare. I know. Work might take your mind off it. Let’s go to Comfrey Magna tomorrow and see if we can dig anything up.”

I wonder what it is that Mrs. Raisin wants to take her own mind off, thought Mrs. Bloxby, but she did not say anything.