(15/30) The Deadly Dance (10 page)

Agatha longed to say that if it hadn’t been for her agency’s investigation, the case might never have been solved.

She phoned Charles, but his aunt said he had gone abroad.

Agatha sat and drummed her fingers on the desk. Then her eyes lit up. If by any chance it should turn out that there weren’t any fingerprints on the vodka bottle or on the glass, then that would mean someone had faked the suicide.

She phoned Patrick on his mobile. “I’ll check it out, Agatha,” he said. “But I’m afraid you’re going to have to get back to dogs, cats, divorces and missing teenagers.”

Miss Simms entered, flushed with success, having not only found the missing teenager she had been looking for but having delivered the girl back to her parents.

“Oh, well done,” said Agatha. “Let me build up a little more profit and I’ll get another girl to do the secretarial work and put you on the road.”

“You look lovely, Emma,” said Miss Simms brightly. “What have you been doing to yourself? Got yourself a fella?”

Emma blushed. “Just felt like smartening up,” she mumbled.

On Friday evening, Agatha picked up Roy from the station at Moreton-in-Marsh.

The young man was all in white—white raw-silk suit, white panama hat and white high-heeled boots.

“Now what are you supposed to be?” asked Agatha. “You look like the man from Del Monte.”

“It’s the cool look, sweetie,” said Roy. “It’s the ice cream look. This weather’s been so hot. I assure you, I’m the new black.”

“Do you want to eat out or in?”

“Out,” said Roy, who had sampled Agatha’s microwave cooking several times.

“What do you feel like eating?” “Chinese.”

“There a great one in Evesham. That’s if you don’t mind driving. I’m tired. It’s been a gruelling week.”

Between mouthfuls, as they picked their way with chopsticks through a large Chinese meal, Agatha told him all about the Laggat-Brown case and the suicide of Harrison Peterson.

Her story took her right through the meal until the pot of green tea was being served.

“Well,” said Roy, leaning back and patting fussily at his mouth with his napkin, “it all seems odd. I mean, he makes an appointment with this detective of yours and then kills himself.”

“That’s what I thought. But Patrick has contacts in the police and if there had been anything fishy, he’d let me know. I mean, Peterson typed the suicide note on his computer and printed it off. If anyone else had typed it for him, they’d have wiped the keys clean.”

“I watch all these forensic detectives stories on television,” said Roy. “The things they can find out.”

“I don’t think it actually works like that here,” said Agatha.

“I mean, the labs are backed up with cases. They aren’t going to look too hard when they’ve got a suicide note, an empty vodka bottle and an empty bottle of sleeping pills.”

“Who supplied the sleeping pills? The doctor’s name would be on the bottle.”

“Why should I bother?”

“It would be interesting to know a bit about Harrison.” “I didn’t think to look. I was so shocked. Maybe Patrick noticed.”

Agatha rang Patrick’s mobile and asked him. “You didn’t notice either,” Roy heard her say. “Any way of finding out? I know it seems odd but I’d just like to know. All right, thanks. I’ll see you in the office on Monday.”

“Don’t you work weekends?” asked Roy when she had rung off.

“Usually. But I told everyone to have a rest. We’ve all been working long hours.”

Emma watched from the side window of her cottage as Agatha and Roy drove up. She saw Roy lift a travel bag out of the boot and then follow Agatha indoors. To Emma’s old-fashioned mind, a man stayed overnight with a woman for only one reason. It was disgusting. He was obviously years younger than Agatha. She wondered if dear Charles knew of this liaison.

She went back downstairs and looked at the details she had copied out of the
Peerage and Baronetage.
Charles owned Barfield House in Warwickshire. Her heart began to thump as she envisaged a plan. He had taken her for lunch twice. They were friends. She had heard Agatha trying to contact him but did not know Agatha had been told he was abroad. In the morning, she could drive out to his home and say she was working on a case in the neighbourhood. No harm in that. No harm at all.

The nights had turned blessedly cool, but the morning mists dispersed rapidly. Saturday promised to be yet another scorching day as Emma motored along the Fosseway into Warwickshire, her hands damp on the steering wheel with nerves, an ordnance survey map on the passenger seat beside her.

She turned off the Fosseway and down long narrow country lanes, searching for Barfield House. She nearly missed the entrance because there was not the name of the house on the gateposts but a sign saying “Private.” Emma drove a long way up a wooded, twisting drive. Perhaps she would have turned back if the road had not been too narrow to make a turn. Then she was out of the woods and the road ran through fields. She drew onto a grassy verge as a tractor approached. The tractor stopped alongside her and the driver asked, “What are you doing here? This is private property.”

“I am a friend of Sir Charles Fraith,” said Emma crossly. He nodded and touched his cap and drove on.

Emma headed onwards, round a stable block, and there, suddenly, was the house.

In her dreams and fantasies about Charles—and they were many—Emma had imagined a Georgian mansion with a pillared portico. Barfield House was one of those Victorian mistakes. It was not even Victorian Gothic but built in the fake medieval style beloved by the Pre-Raphaelites. It was a large building with mul-lioned windows which sparkled in the sunlight.

“Here goes,” muttered Emma.

She rang the bell set into the stone wall beside an enormous studded door.

A faded elderly lady answered the door, “Yes?” she asked, her pale grey eyes raking up and down Emma’s long figure. “I am here to see Charles.” “What’s your name?” “Emma Comfrey.”

“And he was expecting you? He’s gone abroad.” “No, but we’re friends and I happened to be working in the neighbourhood and—”

“Not collecting for something, are you?”

“NO!”

“Who is it?” she heard Charles calling. “Wait!” commanded the woman.

Emma waited. The woman retreated into the house and left the door open. Emma heard her calling, “Charles! Where are you? Eve got some creature on the doorstep asking for you.”

Emma, all newly blonded hair and new sky-blue linen suit, felt herself shrinking.

It was no use. She couldn’t go through with it. She turned away towards her car.

“Do you want to see me?” called Charles’s voice from the doorway.

Emma reluctantly turned.

“Good heavens! It’s Emma, isn’t it? And looking glamorous,” said Charles gallantly.

He was wearing a striped dressing-gown over a pair of blue silk pyjamas. His feet were bare. Emma stared at his feet as if mesmerized.

“Now you’re here, come in,” said Charles. “Have some coffee.”

“That woman called me a creature,” said Emma, still looking at his feet.

“That woman is my aunt and she calls everyone a creature.”

Mollified, Emma followed him in through a dark stone-flagged hall decorated with a few oil paintings badly in need of cleaning and a moth-eaten moose head.

“Gustav!” shouted Charles. “Coffee! In the study.”

“Can’t you get it?” came the reply. “Em cleaning the silver.”

“Coffee for two. Now!”

The study was as dark as the hall and lined from floor to ceiling with books. There were two comfortable armchairs with side tables by the fire. Charles lit a lamp and opened a window.

“Sit down, Emma,” said Charles. “Does Agatha know you’re here?”

“It’s silly of me but I was working nearby looking for a missing teenager and I suddenly decided to call on impulse. Do forgive me. I should have phoned first.”

“That would have been a good idea. Still, you’re here. How’s the shooting case going?”

“Oh, haven’t you seen the paper yet?”

“No, what’s been going on? Ah, Gustav. How do you take your coffee, Emma?”

“Two sugars and no milk, please.”

Gustav had grizzled hair, small black eyes and a long mobile mouth. He was dressed in black trousers and a white shirt open at the neck.

He deftly poured coffee for both of them.

His black eyes studied Emma for a long moment. Then he turned to Charles. “You really ought to be locked up,” he said. “Bugger off, Gustav,” said Charles amiably. “Who was that?” asked Emma.

“My butler. Of course no one, least of all me, can afford a full-time butler these days, so Gustav is a maid of all work.” “He should show more respect.”

“Did you come to criticize the staff?” Charles’s normally pleasant voice had an edge to it.

Emma’s hand holding the cup shook. “I’m so sorry,” she babbled.

“Oh, Emma, stop apologizing and tell me about this shooting case.”

So Emma rallied and told him the little she had heard and all she had read in the morning’s papers.

“Now, that is odd,” said Charles. “It’s all so neat and tidy. Is Agatha at the office?”

“No, we all have the weekend off.”

“But you said you were working.”

“I’m conscientious.”

“I’d better drop in on Aggie.”

Emma simpered. “Today might not be a good time. She has a young man staying with her.”

“That’ll be the dreadful Roy. I’d better get over there. If she had let me in on it, I’d never have let her leave it until the morning. Now look what’s happened. Nice to see you, Emma, but I’ll let you get on with your work. Gustav!”

The door opened. “What?”

“Show Mrs. Comfrey out.”

Emma followed Gustav out and through the shadowy hall. “Phone next time,” said Gustav and slammed the great door behind her.

She got into her car feeling very flat and diminished. She had better get home and look up the case files she was working on, select a missing cat or dog and say it had been reported in Warwickshire. Emma switched on the engine and let in the clutch and drove slowly off, her dreams crumbling about her ears. But when she reached the bottom of the drive, she remembered with a sudden glow that he had called her glamorous. And he had felt so at ease with her that he had not bothered to dress.

By the time she had turned into Lilac Lane, her fantasies were back in full force. She must call on Agatha when Charles arrived. But first she must come up with a case as an excuse for visiting him.

Having found what she considered a good enough excuse, she sat on a chair on the landing by the side window overlooking the entrance to Agatha’s cottage. Agatha’s car was not there. Emma prayed that Charles would arrive before Agatha returned. That way she could nip out and invite him into her cottage to wait. She was just wrapped in a rosy fantasy where Charles was saying, “I feel so comfortable here with you, Emma. Makes me realize what a lonely life I’ve had,” when she heard the sound of a car.

Charles drove up and took a bag out of the boot and headed for the door. But instead of ringing, he took out a set of keys, selected one, opened the door and went in.

Emma bit her thumb. Well, she had been going to call on Agatha, hadn’t she? No harm in ringing the bell. She went to the bathroom and repaired her make-up, patted her hair and went next door. She rang the bell.

Charles was sprawled on the sofa watching a rerun of
Frasier.
He heard the bell but decided not to answer it. Probably some boring woman from the village.

Emma retreated, baffled.

Frasier
being finished, Charles decided to visit Mrs. Bloxby to pass the time until Agatha returned.

Emma, now downstairs, saw him pass the window. She rushed towards her front door, but tripped over a footstool and went sprawling. When she had picked herself up and opened her door, there was no sign of him. She set off in pursuit, out of Lilac Lane and past the general stores. There, ahead of her, turning off from the main street down the cobbled lane which led to the church, was Charles.

There’s no service today, thought Emma, so he must be going to call on Mrs. Bloxby.

She drew back a little. Let him get inside the vicarage and then she could stroll casually up and ring the bell. Mrs. Bloxby would not think it strange. Everyone in the village called on Mrs. Bloxby. She would wait for five minutes.

“It’s good of you to let me in,” Charles was saying. “Why should I not let you in?”

“It was just when I rang your doorbell,” said Charles, “that I suddenly realized how irritating people can be when they just land up on your doorstep without telephoning and expect a welcome.”

“Were you thinking about anyone specific?’’’

“That Emma Comfrey who works for Agatha. Rolled up this

morning at my home.”

“Oh dear. You haven’t
encouraged
her in any way, have

you?”

“I took her out for lunch a couple of times. But she’s old enough, just, to be my mother.”

“Come into the garden. We’ll have coffee there.”

Charles relaxed in the pleasant vicarage garden under the shade of an old cedar. The sun blazed down. As Mrs. Bloxby prepared the coffee, there was a comforting tinkle of china from the kitchen and a smell of warm scones. Up on the hill a tractor crossed a field, looking like a toy.

The doorbell rang.

Charles stiffened as he heard the door open and Mrs. Bloxby say loudly, “Why, Mrs. Comfrey.”

Charles shot to his feet, feeling suddenly hunted. He vaulted nimbly over the garden wall into the churchyard and hid behind a sloping gravestone.

“He was here a minute ago,” he heard Mrs. Bloxby say. “He must have remembered something and just left. I’m sure you can catch him if you hurry.”

Charles stayed where he was until he heard Mrs. Bloxby calling, “You can come out now.”

Charles climbed back over the garden wall and brushed down his trousers.

“Coffee’s ready,” said Mrs. Bloxby placidly.

Charles grinned as he sat down at the garden table. “I didn’t know you were capable of lying.”

“I didn’t lie. I said you had left and so you had. Mrs. Comfrey has blonded her hair and is wearing full make-up. What have you done?”