Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet (10 page)

She had had a nearly sleepless night and so she dozed off in front of the television set with the cats on her lap, waking an hour later at the sound of the doorbell.

She hoped he had come back – if only he would come back! – but it was Mrs Bloxby, the vicar’s wife, who stood there.

‘I was just passing,’ said Mrs Bloxby, ‘and wondered whether you remembered that the Carsely Ladies are having a meeting tonight.’ For a moment, something unlovely darted through Agatha’s eyes. She was thinking, Screw the Carsely Ladies.

‘I do hope you will come,’ said Mrs Bloxby. ‘Our newcomer, Mrs Huntingdon, is going to be there, and Miss Webster, who has the shop. We expect quite a crowd. And Miss Simms is bringing along some of her home-made cider, so I thought we would have cheese and biscuits with that.’

Agatha realized Mrs Bloxby was still standing on the doorstep and said, ‘Do come in.’

‘No, I’d better get home. My husband is wrestling with a tricky sermon.’

So this is what life has come down to, thought Agatha gloomily; another evening with the ladies. Even the knowledge that Mrs Huntingdon was going to be there could not give Agatha enough energy to change out of her old dress.

But on her way to the vicarage, she remembered that Josephine Webster, she of the dried-flower shop, she who had admired the vet, was to be there. There was no James Lacey, but there was still the interest of amateur detection.

The vicarage sitting-room was full of chattering women. Mrs Bloxby handed Agatha a tankard of cider. ‘Where is Miss Webster?’ asked Agatha.

‘Over there, by the piano.’

‘Of course.’ Agatha studied her with interest. She was a neat woman of indeterminate age, neat fair hair crisply permed, neat little features, neat little figure. Talking to her was Freda Huntingdon, who had not bothered to dress up either, Agatha noticed. Agatha did not want to interrupt their conversation. She took another pull at her tankard and blinked. The cider was very strong indeed. She found Miss Simms next to her. ‘How did you get such powerful stuff?’ she asked.

Miss Simms giggled and whispered in Agatha’s ear. ‘Let you into a secret. I thought I would spice it up a bit.’ She waved her own tankard towards a firkin on a table. ‘So I poured a bottle of vodka into it.’

‘You’ll get us all drunk,’ said Agatha.

‘Well, some of us need cheering up. Look at Mrs Josephs. She’s looking better already. I thought she was going to go into mourning for that cat of hers forever.’

Agatha sat down beside Mrs Josephs. ‘Glad to see you looking better,’ said Agatha politely.

‘Oh, much better,’ said the librarian in a tipsy voice. ‘Revenge is mine.’

‘Really?’

‘I am to get what is rightfully mine.’

Agatha looked at her impatiently. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Silence, ladies,’ called Mrs Mason. ‘Our meeting is about to begin.’

‘Call on me at ten tomorrow,’ said Mrs Josephs loudly, ‘and I’ll tell you all about Paul Bladen.’

‘Shhh!’ admonished Mrs Bloxby.

Agatha waited restlessly while the proceedings dragged on. But before they were finished, Mrs Josephs suddenly got up and left. Agatha shrugged and approached Miss Webster. ‘I saw you at Paul Bladen’s funeral,’ she said.

‘I didn’t know you were a friend of his,’ said Miss Webster.

‘Not exactly a friend,’ said Agatha, ‘but I felt I should pay my respects. You must have been very sorry to lose him.’

‘On the contrary,’ said Miss Webster, ‘I went to make sure he was really dead. Now, if you will excuse me, Miss . . .?’

‘Mrs Raisin.’

‘Mrs Raisin. I find all these chattering women give me a headache.’

She got up abruptly and left the room. Curiouser and curiouser, thought Agatha. Damn James. All this was interesting stuff, hints here, hints there. She would call on him before she went to see Mrs Josephs.

James heard his doorbell at quarter to ten the following morning. Feeling like an old spinster, he twitched the front-room curtain and looked out. There was Agatha Raisin. That old feeling of being hunted came back again. He went through to his kitchen and sat there. The bell went on and on and then there was blessed silence.

Agatha stumped grumpily through the village. A car slid to a stop beside her and Bill Wong’s cheerful face looked out. ‘What’s the matter, Agatha? Where’s James?’

‘Nothing’s the matter, and where James Lacey is I neither know nor care.’

‘Which means you’ve scared him off again,’ commented Bill cheerfully.

‘l have done nothing of the kind, and for your information I am on my way to see Mrs Josephs, the librarian. She has something important to tell me about Paul Bladen’s death.’

Bill gave a little sigh. ‘Agatha, when there actually has been a murder, a lot of distasteful scandal usually comes to light which has nothing to do with the case. A lot of people get hurt. Now if you’re going to dig around an English village trying to make an accident look like murder it will have the same effect, and without any justification. Drop it. Do good works. Go abroad again. Let Paul Bladen rest in peace.’

He drove off. Well, I may as well go, thought Agatha stubbornly. She’ll be expecting me.

Mrs Josephs lived at the end of a terrace of what were once workers’ cottages. Hers was neat and trim, with a pocket-sized garden where forsythia spilled over the hedge into the road in a burst of golden glory. A blackbird sang on the roof. From a field above the village came the sound of a hunting horn, and as Agatha turned and looked up the hill, she saw the hunt streaming across a meadow, looking oddly out of perspective from her angle of vision.

If Lord Pendlebury was part of the hunt, she hoped he broke his neck. And with that pious thought, she pushed open the small wrought-iron gate and walked up to the door and rang the bell. There was no reply. The sound of the hunt disappeared into the distance. A jet screamed above, tearing the pale spring sky apart with sound.

Agatha tried again, feeling almost weepy, wondering dismally if all the inhabitants of Carsely were going to hide behind their sofas when they saw her on the doorstep.

But Mrs Josephs had asked her to call. Mrs Josephs had no right to snub her. Agatha turned the handle of the front door. It opened easily. A small hall with a narrow stair leading straight up from it.

‘Mrs Josephs!’ called Agatha.

The little house had thick walls, and silence pressed in on Agatha. She looked in the downstairs rooms, small parlour, small dining-room, and tiny cubicle of a kitchen at the back.

Agatha stood at the bottom of the stairs and shifted from foot to foot.

How sinister that dim staircase looked. Perhaps Mrs Josephs was ill. Emboldened by that thought, Agatha climbed the stairs. Bedroom on the right at the top, bed made, everything tidy. Box-room full of pathetic pieces of broken china and old furniture and dusty suitcases. No drama here.

May as well use the bathroom while I’m here, thought Agatha. Oh, I know! She probably meant me to go to the library. What a fool I am! But how crazy to go out and leave the house unlocked. This must be the bathroom. She pushed open a door which had a pane of frosted glass.

Mrs Josephs was lying on the bathroom floor, her eyes staring sightlessly up at the ceiling. Agatha let out a whimper. She forced herself to bend down, pick up an arm and feel the pulse. Nothing.

She turned and ran down the stairs, looking for the phone. She found one in the parlour and dialled police and ambulance.

The first to arrive was PC Fred Griggs, the village policeman. He looked like a village policeman in a children’s story, large and red-faced.

‘She’s dead,’ said Agatha. ‘Upstairs. Bathroom.’

She followed the bulk of the policeman up the stairs. Fred looked sadly down at the body. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Can tell by just looking at her. Mrs Josephs was a diabetic.’

‘So it wasn’t murder,’ said Agatha.

‘Now what put such an idea into your head?’ His small eyes were shrewd.

‘She said last night in front of everyone at the Carsely Ladies’ Society that she had something to tell me about Paul Bladen.’

‘The vet what died! What’s that got to do with the poor woman’s death?’

‘Nothing,’ muttered Agatha. ‘I think I’ll wait outside.’

As she went out into the garden again, she could hear the wail of sirens; and then an ambulance, followed by two police cars, came racing up. She recognized Detective Chief Inspector Wilkes and Bill Wong. There were two other detectives she did not know and a policewoman.

Bill said, ‘Did you find her?’ Agatha nodded dumbly. ‘What time?’

‘Ten o’clock,’ said Agatha. ‘I told you I was going to see her.’

‘Go home,’ said Bill. ‘We’ll be around to take a statement.’

James Lacey stood on his doorstep, peering down the lane. He had heard the sirens. Ever since he had failed to answer the door to Agatha’s ring, he had been staring at that heading ‘Chapter Two’ on his computer screen. Then he saw Agatha trailing along the lane. Her face was very white.

‘What’s happened?’ he called, but she flapped a hand at him and said, ‘Later.’

He felt frustrated. He felt that Agatha held the key to some excuse to take him away from writing for the day. He should not have run away from her lunch like a schoolboy.

He returned to his machine and glared at it. Then he heard the sound of a car turning into the lane and dashed outside again. It was a police car. He watched eagerly as it drove up to Agatha’s cottage and stopped. He recognized Bill Wong with another detective and a policewoman. They went inside.

He had brought it on himself, he thought gloomily. The wretched Raisin woman was on to something and he was excluded.

Inside her home, Agatha answered all questions put to her. How long had she been in Mrs Josephs’s cottage? Just a few minutes? Had anyone seen her just before she arrived? Detective Wong. The Chief Inspector nodded, as though Bill had already confirmed that.

‘What did she die of?’ asked Agatha.

‘We’ll need to wait for the pathologist’s report,’ said Wilkes. ‘Now, I gather this arrangement to see her was made at the vicarage last night. What exactly did she say?’

Agatha replied promptly, ‘She said, “Call on me at ten tomorrow and I’ll tell you all about Paul Bladen.” ’

‘Anything else?’

‘Let me see. I think I remarked she was looking better and she said an odd thing, she said, “Revenge is mine.” ’

‘You’re sure of that?’

‘Absolutely. She added . . .’ Agatha screwed up her eyes in an effort of memory. ‘She added, “I am to get what is rightfully mine.” ’

‘Indeed,’ commented Wilkes. ‘Very cryptic. Quite like a novel.’

‘I am not making it up,’ snapped Agatha. ‘I have a very good memory.’

‘Now, Mrs Josephs said, “Call me at ten,” yet you went to her house. Wouldn’t you think she meant you to phone her?’

‘No,’ said Agatha, ‘we don’t use the phone much in this village to talk to each other. We call in person.’

‘Mrs Josephs was due on duty at the library. Why didn’t you go there?’

‘Because I didn’t
think
!’ howled Agatha, exasperated. ‘What the f –, what the devil is all this about? She just died of natural causes, didn’t she?’

‘Odd you should think that, when I gather from Detective Sergeant Wong here that you are very ready to believe the death of Paul Bladen was murder.’

Agatha threw Bill Wong a reproachful look. ‘I was interested in Paul Bladen’s death and I was just asking a few questions,’ she said defensively.

‘Who all was at the vicarage tea-party last night?’

‘It wasn’t a tea-party. Cider and cheese. I can give you most of the names, but if you ask Miss Simms, the secretary, she makes a note of everyone who attends each meeting.’

Wilkes stood up. ‘I think that will do for now, Mrs Raisin. We’ll probably be talking to you again. Not thinking of travelling anywhere, are you?’

‘What?’ Agatha stared at him. ‘Me? Not travel – You think it’s murder.’

‘Now, now, Mrs Raisin, at the moment we are simply investigating the death of a diabetic. Good day to you.’

Bill gave Agatha a wink behind his superior’s back and mouthed silently, ‘This evening.’

After they had left, Agatha decided to try James again. Forget about romance. This was too exciting to keep to herself. But he did not answer his door and she took small comfort in the fact that this time his car was gone.

James had driven into Mircester. To heal the breach with Agatha, he had considered an offer of flowers or chocolates and then had hit upon a better idea. If he found out Miss Mabbs’s address, that would be a better excuse than anything to call on her.

Agatha went along to the Red Lion and eagerly discussed the death of Mrs Josephs with the locals but without really learning anything

that she did not know already. She returned home rather tipsy and fell asleep, and did not wake up until five o’clock to hear her doorbell ringing.

Feeling bleary-eyed and hung-over, she went to answer it. Bill Wong stood there.

‘Come in! Come in!’ cried Agatha. ‘Tell me all about it, but let me get a cup of strong coffee first. I had too much to drink in the pub.’

‘How did you scare Lacey off?’ asked Bill, ambling into the kitchen after her.

‘I didn’t . . . Oh, well, I did invite him for lunch yesterday, light the candles on the dining-table and flash the old cleavage. You couldn’t see him for dust.’

The doorbell rang. ‘I’ll get it,’ said Bill.

He came back a few moments later followed by James.

‘Don’t raise your voice,’ said Bill. ‘Our Agatha’s got a hangover. She’s been drowning her sorrows in the pub. She got all dolled up like a dog’s dinner expecting an old flame from London for lunch yesterday and he didn’t show and she’d forgotten about you calling but you scuttled off anyway.’

‘Oh,’ said James. ‘It’s a good thing I’m not a vain man or I might have thought it was all for me.’

Bill smiled happily. ‘Our Agatha’s usually got bigger fish to fry, haven’t you, Agatha? Why didn’t your flame turn up, anyway?’

I can lie as easily as you, thought Agatha. ‘Threatened with a merger,’ she said. ‘But he’s going to take me to the Savoy for dinner to make up for his absence.’