Agatha Raisin and the Fairies of Fryfam (8 page)

Charles came into her room later to say good night. He switched out her bedside light and kissed her on the forehead. Agatha stirred and muttered something but did not wake.

She was dreaming of James. They were on a Mediterranean cruise. She could feel the sun on her cheek. They were leaning against the rail. James turned and smiled down at her. ‘Agatha,’ he said.

‘Agatha! Agatha!’ In her dream, Agatha wondered why James was suddenly shouting at her. Then she woke up with a start, realizing it was morning and someone was banging at the door downstairs and shouting her name.

She pulled on a dressing-gown and hurried down the stairs, nearly tripping over the cats, who snaked around her ankles.

She wrenched open the door. Amy Worth stood there, her eyes dilated with excitement.

‘What’s up?’ asked Agatha sleepily.

‘It’s Tolly. You’ll never believe it.’

‘Believe what?’

‘He’s dead . . . murdered . . . and with Framp guarding the house, too!’

Charles came down the stairs in his dressing-gown. ‘What’s all the row about, darling?’ he called.

‘Come in, Amy,’ said Agatha, flushing with embarrassment. She said to Charles, ‘Tolly’s been murdered.’

‘How? When?’

‘Last night,’ said Amy. ‘I don’t know yet how he was killed. Betty Jackson, the cleaner, went up to the manor this morning and let herself in.’

‘So she has a key?’ asked Charles.

‘Yes, and she can operate the burglar alarm. It was still on! She said she went upstairs to see if anyone was at home and she found Tolly dead on the landing.’

‘Maybe he knew who had stolen that painting of his,’ said Agatha.

‘Insurance prices, as a rule,’ said Charles, ‘are often twice or three times the auction estimate. Unless Tolly was so filthy rich he didn’t care, I would have thought he would have been delighted to get the insurance money. How much was it insured for?’

‘Tolly told everyone he had insured it for a million.’

They sat down round the kitchen table.

‘A Stubbs,’ mused Charles. ‘Now what would a man like Tolly be doing having a Stubbs?’

‘I can explain that,’ said Amy, her face pink with excitement and the importance at being the source of so much interesting gossip. ‘It was just after they moved down here. Lord Tarrymundy was visiting friends in Norfolk and came over for a day’s hunting. Of course, he impressed poor Tolly no end, him being a lord and all. The next thing he says a gentleman like Tolly should start collecting and offered to sell him the Stubbs, knock-down price, he said. I believe it was three hundred and thirty thousand pounds, which isn’t really a knock-down price, but Tolly bought it and then insured it high. But this is the thing. At that time, they had a house in Launceston Place in Kensington. Lucy adored it. Evidently when they were first married, they held very chic parties there. Tolly ups and says they can’t afford two residences and he’s happy in the country and sells the house for nearly a million. Poor Lucy was furious.’

‘Can one make a fortune from bathroom showers?’ asked Charles.

‘Evidently,’ said Amy eagerly. ‘He sold all over the world, or so he says, and sold the business to an American company.’

‘So,’ said Agatha slowly, ‘Lucy would hardly steal the painting and then murder her husband. I mean, all she had to do was murder him and then she would get everything, Stubbs and all.’

‘But she was in London when the murder took place,’ exclaimed Amy. ‘So it can’t be anything to do with her at all.’

‘Who’s the handsome fellow at the bottom of your garden, Agatha?’ asked Charles. ‘Not a fairy?’

‘No, that’s Barry Jones, who does the garden.’

‘I wonder if he does any gardening up at the manor,’ said Charles.

‘I’ll ask him.’ Agatha opened the back door and called, ‘Barry?’

The gardener walked up to the back door and entered the kitchen, doffing his cap to reveal a thick head of chestnut hair. He had the same bright blue eyes as Rosie Wilden. He was wearing a shirt with the sleeves cut off and his bronzed and muscled arms were a miracle of human sculpture.

‘We’re talking about the murder of Tolly,’ said Agatha. ‘Do you garden up at the manor?’

‘I did, missus, for a while. No flowers or vegetables, but he likes the lawns kept trim. Then, three weeks ago, he sacks me. I says to him, “Is my work unsatisfactory?” And he says, “I want a real gardener. Going to get the place landscaped.”’

‘Do you know how he was killed?’ asked Charles.

‘No, but Mrs Jackson is telling everyone that Mrs Raisin and her boyfriend were the last to see him alive, so I reckon the police’ll be calling on you soon enough.’

‘Thanks, Barry. You can go back to work. I’d better get dressed. You, too, Charles.’

Agatha had only just finished dressing when the doorbell went again. She ran downstairs and opened the door to the man she remembered as Detective Inspector Percy Hand. He was accompanied by another detective.

‘You are Mrs Raisin?’ he asked.

‘Yes, come in. It’s about this murder?’

She led both men into the sitting-room. The sun was shining again, streaming through the windows to light up the debris of Charles’s night-time television viewing – coffee-cup, biscuit packet and TV guide.

‘Sit down,’ said Agatha. ‘Coffee?’

‘Thank you.’

Agatha called up the stairs on her way to the kitchen, ‘Hurry up, Charles. The police are here.’

As she plugged in the percolator, she suddenly remembered the manuscript of
Death at the Manor
lying on the desk in the sitting-room. The desk was in a dark corner. Surely he wouldn’t prowl around looking at things.

The coffee seemed to take ages to percolate. Where was Charles? He should be doing this and giving her the opportunity to get that manuscript. At last she poured two mugs of coffee and put them on a tray along with milk and sugar and a plate of biscuits.

She walked into the sitting-room, carrying the tray – and nearly dropped it. Hand was standing at the desk flicking through her manuscript.

‘Aren’t you supposed to have a search warrant before you go poking through my things?’ asked Agatha harshly.

‘We can get one,’ said Hand, looking at her mildly. ‘I find it interesting that your book is called
Death at the Manor
, and here we have a death at the manor.’

‘Coincidence,’ snapped Agatha, setting the tray down on the coffee-table.

‘A lot of coincidence,’ he murmured. ‘This is Detective Sergeant Carey.’ And to Agatha’s rage, he handed Carey the manuscript, saying, ‘Have a look at this.’

Charles came in at that moment and Agatha hailed him with a furious cry of ‘Charles, they’re reading my book and they don’t have a search warrant.’

‘I didn’t know you were writing a book,’ said Charles. ‘Still, you lot are being a bit cheeky.’

‘Mrs Raisin’s book is called
Death at the Manor
,’ said Hand.

Charles laughed. ‘Oh, Aggie, your first attempt at writing?’

Agatha nodded.

Charles turned to Hand. ‘How was Tolly murdered?’

‘His throat was cut with a razor.’

‘You mean, one of those old-fashioned cutthroat razors?’

‘Exactly. And in Mrs Raisin’s manuscript, the owner of the manor, Peregrine Pickle, is murdered when someone slits his throat.’

‘You can’t call him Peregrine Pickle,’ said Charles, momentarily diverted.

‘Why not?’

‘It’s the title of a book by Tobias Smollett. A classic, Aggie.’

‘I can change the name.’ Agatha turned red. She hated the gaps in her education being pointed out. ‘But what on earth are we doing discussing literary points? They’ve got no right to look at anything of mine without my permission.’

‘She is right, you know,’ said Charles.

There was a ring at the doorbell. ‘That’ll be for us,’ said Hand. He went to the door and came back waving a piece of paper. ‘Now, this is a search warrant, Mrs Raisin. Before I get my men in, I would like to ask you some questions.’

Agatha sat down on the sofa next to Charles, defeated. Her outrage at the detectives looking at her manuscript was not because she was furious at the intrusion, but because she was ashamed of her work.

She and Charles answered the preliminary questions: who they were, where they came from, what they were doing in Fryfam.

‘So we get to what you were both doing at the manor yesterday,’ said Hand. ‘Mr Trumpington-James said something about the pair of you being amateur detectives.’

Before Charles could stop her, Agatha, nervous, had launched into a full brag of all the cases she had solved. Charles saw the cynical glances the detectives exchanged and knew they were putting Agatha down as a slightly unbalanced eccentric.

‘I think at the moment,’ said Hand sarcastically, when Agatha’s voice had finally trailed off under his stony stare, ‘that we’ll just settle for good old-fashioned police work. But should we find ourselves baffled, we will appeal to you for help. Can we go on? Right. Why did you visit Mr Trumpington-James? Had either of you known him before you came here? You first, Mrs Raisin.’

Agatha described how she had first been invited for tea. Then she hesitated a moment, wondering whether to tell Hand about Lucy’s suspicions of her husband’s infidelity. Then she thought angrily, why should I? Let him find out for himself if he’s so damned clever.

‘You hesitated there,’ said Hand. ‘Is there something you’re holding back?’

‘No,’ said Agatha. ‘Why should I hold anything back?’

Hand turned to Charles. ‘You say you did not know Mr Trumpington-James before and yet you called on him with Mrs Raisin. Why? You only arrived yesterday.’

‘Aggie told me about the theft of the Stubbs.’

‘Aggie being Mrs Raisin.’

‘It’s Agatha, actually,’ said Agatha crossly.

‘So, Sir Charles, you called. Why?’

Charles felt ashamed of saying they thought they might be able to find out who had stolen the Stubbs after all Agatha’s bragging, but he shrugged and said, ‘We thought we might get an idea of who had taken it.’

‘How?’ demanded Hand sharply. He should cut his fingernails, thought Agatha. They’re like claws, all chalky and ridged.

‘How, what?’

‘How on earth did you think, Sir Charles, that you could find out something the police could not? You do not have forensic equipment or even a knowledge of the area.’

‘I know you didn’t believe Agatha when she was going on about the mysteries she solved,’ said Charles patiently, ‘but you can always check with the Mircester police. You see, people talk to us the way they wouldn’t talk to a policeman, and I’ll tell you why. Take you, for instance. By sneering at Aggie, you put her back up, so if by any chance she does hear a useful piece of gossip, she won’t go running to you.’

‘If I find either of you have been withholding useful evidence, then I shall charge you.’

‘Just listen to yourself,’ said Charles, unflustered. ‘Now you’ve put my back up.’

‘We will start our search now,’ said Hand grimly. ‘And we will be keeping this manuscript for the moment. You will get a receipt for it.’

After two hours, the police left. ‘I’m starving,’ said Charles. ‘We haven’t had breakfast. Got any eggs?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll make us an omelette and then we’ll go and see that copper, the local bod, what’s his name?’

‘Framp.’

‘That’s the one.’

‘But why him, Charles?’

‘Because he’s only a copper and I’ll bet he got the wrong side of Hand’s mouth. We’ll go and be oh, so sympathetic.’

‘Won’t he be up at the manor?’

‘Not him. He’ll have been sent back to his beat with a flea between both ears. I’ll make that omelette.’

Agatha sat hunched over a mug of coffee in the kitchen, watching Charles as he whisked eggs in a bowl. Why do I always land up with men who never tell me what they really think of me? she wondered. Charles had made love to her in the past but he had never said anything particularly affectionate. He came and went in her life, leaving very little trace of his real thoughts or personality.

After they had eaten, they headed out to see PC Framp. Agatha said testily – cross because Charles had insisted they walk and she was wearing high heels – that it was a useless effort. PC Framp would at least have been roped in to comb the bushes around the manor for clues.

There was a high wind which sent the tops of the pine trees tossing and making a sound like the sea, but on the ground it was strangely calm, apart from sudden whispering puffs of wind. Little snakes of sandy soil blew from the roots of the trees and writhed across the road at their feet. Not only were Agatha’s shoes high-heeled but they had thin straps at the front of each and gritty bits of sand were working their way inside her tights and along the soles of her feet.

‘There’s his car!’ said Charles triumphantly as they approached the police station.

They rang the bell and waited. No reply. ‘Let’s try round the back,’ said Charles.

They walked along the side of the building and through a low wooden gate that led into the back garden. Framp could be seen standing over a smoking oil drum burning leaves he had raked up from the grass.

‘Off duty,’ he called when they saw him.

Undeterred, Charles went up to him. ‘You know Mrs Raisin here. I’m Charles Fraith.’

‘I heard of you. You were at the manor yesterday,’ said Framp. An erratic gust of wind sent smoke swirling into his eyes and he rubbed them with the back of one grimy hand.

‘I’m surprised a bright copper like you isn’t on the job,’ pursued Charles, ‘what with all this murder and robbery.’

‘Told to go about my regular duties,’ said Framp sulkily. ‘You would think it was my fault he was murdered. I was on duty all night outside that house and I never heard a sound. No one came or went.’

‘So who do you think did it?’

‘Let’s have a cup of tea.’ Framp gave the smouldering leaves a vicious poke with a rusty metal rod. Little tongues of flame licked round the leaves and more aromatic smoke filled the air.

They followed him into his messy kitchen. A kettle was already simmering on an old iron stove. He put five tea-bags into a small teapot, stirred it up, and poured each of them mugs of black tea.