Agatha Raisin and the Witch of Wyckhadden (17 page)

Agatha reluctantly surrendered the wheel and then wondered sulkily how Jimmy managed to urge the little car up that icy street when she had failed. When they reached the main coast road, it was to find a gritter had recently been along, although the road in front was whitening fast despite the mixture of grit and salt.

“I hope we make it to Wyckhadden,” said Jimmy, staring out into the blinding whiteness of the blizzard.

“I could drive now,” said Agatha.

“No, darling, better leave it to me.”

Now wasn’t that just what every woman should like to hear? No, darling, leave it to me? But Agatha felt useless and diminished. Only the thought of that announcement appearing in
The Times
cheered her up.

“We won’t be going far tonight,” said Jimmy, parking outside the hotel at last after a gruelling journey. “I’ve got to go home and make a few calls. I must tell my children about our engagement. I’ll come back for you later.”

“Can’t I run you home?”

“No, it’s safer to walk.” Jimmy got out and locked the car and as she came round, handed her the keys. He bent and kissed her. “See you later,” he said, and hunching his shoulders against the blizzard, he hurried off.

Agatha went into the reception. Daisy came shooting out of the lounge as if she’d been on watch.

“I want a few words with you,” she began.

Agatha pulled off her glove and exhibited the engagement ring. “Congratulate me!”

Daisy went quite white and put a shaking hand on to the reception desk to support herself.

“Yes, Jimmy has just proposed,” said Agatha brightly.

“Oh!” Colour began to appear in Daisy’s cheeks. “You mean your inspector. I am so very happy for you, Agatha. I thought…never mind.”

“What weather,” said Agatha cheerfully. “Has it been like this before?”

“Sometimes. But it never lasts very long. Engaged! I must tell the colonel.”

Daisy tripped off. Agatha went up to her room and showed the ring to Scrabble. Then, taking out her credit card, she phoned
The Times
and arranged for the announcement of her engagement to be placed in the newspaper on the following morning.

After she had replaced the receiver, the phone rang. She picked it up. It was Jimmy. “I’m afraid I’ve been called out, Agatha.”

“Anything to do with the murders?”

“No, something else.”

“How can they expect you to go out in weather like this?”

“They do. I’ll call you when I’m through to say goodnight. You’ve made me a very happy man, Agatha. I love you.”

“Love you too, Jimmy,” lied Agatha. “Hear from you later.”

She sat down suddenly on the bed and automatically stroked Scrabble’s warm fur. “I’ll need to go through with it,” she said. “I want to go through with it,” she added fiercely. “I don’t want to spend my old age alone.”

Then she decided to phone Mrs Bloxby. She told the vicar’s wife the news. There was a little silence and then Mrs Bloxby said, “Do you love him? I mean, are you in love with him?”

“No, but I think that will come.”

“And is he in love with you?”

“Yes, he is.”

“It can be very suffocating and guilt-making to be married to someone who is deeply in love with you and then find yourself faced daily with a love you cannot return.”

“I’m not a young thing any more,” said Agatha crossly. “Love is for the young.”

Again that little silence and then Mrs Bloxby’s voice came down the line. “I am only saying this because I care for you. James will be upset, yes, but then it will pass and you will be married to a man you don’t love. Never try to get even, Agatha. It doesn’t ever work.”

“Jimmy is a good man and I am very fond of him and I will be delighted to spend the rest of my life with him,” said Agatha. “I haven’t thought about James once since I met him.”

“Will it be in the papers?”

“
The Times
tomorrow.”

“I don’t think James is the sort of man to read the social column.”

But someone else in the village will, thought Agatha. And someone else will tell him.

She asked after her cats and about what was going on in the village and then rang off, feeling flat. “I did not get engaged to Jimmy just to get revenge on James Lacey,” she told the cat fiercely. Scrabble gave her a long, studying look from its green eyes.

Agatha went down to dinner that evening to find that although it was freezing and snowing outside, the atmosphere inside had thawed towards her. Daisy had told them the news of her engagement and they all crowded around her table to admire the ring and congratulate her.

After dinner, the colonel suggested the usual game of Scrabble and they all gathered in the lounge just as all the lights went out.

“Power cut,” said the colonel. “They’ll be in with candles in a minute.”

They sat in front of the fire. Agatha thought the light from the flames flickering on their faces made them look sinister.

Two elderly waiters came in carrying not candles but oil-lamps. Soon the room was bathed in a warm golden glow.

“Very flattering light. You look quite radiant tonight, Agatha,” said the colonel. Daisy glared, little red points of light from the fire dancing in her eyes. “In fact,” went on the colonel, “I have always found that one wedding leads to another. Who’s next? You, Harry?”

“Who knows?” said Harry. “I may be lucky.”

Daisy smiled at the colonel coquettishly. He quickly averted his eyes from hers and said, “Let’s get started.”

♦

The newspapers were delivered in Carsely the following morning as usual, for the blizzard which was blanketing England on the south coast had not yet reached the Midlands.

James read his
Times
as usual but without reading the social column and then turned to the crossword. For some reason, Monday’s crossword was usually easier than the rest of the week and to his disappointment he finished it in twenty minutes. Nothing left to do but get on with writing his military history. Then, like all writers, as he sat down at the computer, his mind began to tell him he ought to do something else first. He was nearly out of coffee. Of course he had enough to last the day but with the blizzard coming, it wouldn’t do any harm to get in supplies.

He drove to Tesco’s at Stow-on-the-Wold and found the car park almost full. A wartime mentality had hit everyone because of the approaching storm. People were trundling laden trolleys past him to their cars.

Infected by the shopping mania, he bought not only coffee, but a lot of other stuff he had persuaded himself he needed. He was just pushing his shopping trolley out to the parking area when he was stopped by Doris Simpson, Agatha’s cleaner.

“Well, our Agatha’s full of surprises,” said Doris.

James smiled down at her tolerantly. “What’s she got herself into now?”

“John Fletcher phoned me from the Red Lion just before I went out. It’s in
The Times
.”

“What is?”

“Why, our Agatha’s engagement. Someone called Jessop she’s going to marry. Mrs Bloxby says he’s a police inspector. Did you ever?”

“I knew that was on the cards,” lied James.

“There you are. I hope she gets married in Carsely. I like a wedding. Not that she can wear white. Miss Perry over at Chipping Campden got married the other week. Now she’s about our Agatha’s age. She wore rose-pink silk. Very pretty. And the bridesmaids were all in gold.”

“I must go,” said James. “Snow’s arrived.”

“So it has,” said Doris as a flake swirled down past her nose. “Must get on.”

She can’t do this, thought James. She’s only doing it to get at me. I’ll go down there and reason with her.

But by the time he got home, the flakes were falling thick and fast. He phoned the Automobile Association and found all the roads to the south were blocked.

♦

Sir Charles Fraith was having a late breakfast with his elderly aunt. She put down the newspaper and said, “Don’t you know someone called Raisin? Didn’t she come here?”

“Agatha Raisin?”

“Yes, that’s her. It’s in the paper.”

“What is?” asked Charles patiently.

“She’s engaged to be married to some fellow called Jessop,” said his aunt.

“Fast worker, Aggie. I’ll phone Bill Wong and see if he knows about it.”

Charles got through to Detective Sergeant Bill Wong at Mircester police. “She’s getting married!” exclaimed Bill. “Who to?”

“Fellow called Jessop.”

“That’ll be Inspector Jessop of the Wyckhadden police.”

“I thought Aggie was eating her heart out for James Lacey.”

“She must have got over it.”

“She’s probably doing it to annoy him. I know Aggie. I’ll go down there and put a stop to it.”

“You shouldn’t, and anyway, you can’t,” said Bill. “The roads are blocked.”

“I should stop the silly woman. I bet she doesn’t give a rap for this inspector.”

“She’s over twenty-one.”

“She’s twice over twenty-one,” said Charles nastily.

“Why don’t you phone her? It said in the papers when they were writing about the murder that she was staying in the Garden Hotel.”

“Right. I’ll do that.”

But the lines in Wyckhadden were down.

♦

Agatha was never to forget the suffocating claustrophobic days that followed, immured in the hotel. No electricity. No phones. No television.

On the Wednesday morning, Agatha found Harry sitting alone in the lounge. “Not even a newspaper,” he mourned. “I’ve never known it as bad as this. And no central heating. You would think a hotel as expensive as this would have a generator. I’m bored.”

Agatha walked to the window. “It’s stopped snowing,” she said over her shoulder.

“Sky’s still dark and more has been forecast,” said Harry, rising and joining her.

“We could build a snowman,” joked Agatha.

“Splendid idea.” To Agatha’s surprise, Harry was all enthusiasm. “Let’s put on our coats and build one right outside the dining-room window where they can see it at lunch-time.”

Soon, well wrapped up, they both ventured out. The snow lay in great drifts. “I’ll go first,” said Harry. “Clear a path.”

He headed to a spot in front of the dining-room window. Agatha, like Wenceslas’s page, followed in his footsteps.

“I used to be good at this,” said Harry. “I’ll shape the base if you roll a snowball for a torso.”

“Where are the others?” asked Agatha.

“In their rooms, I think.” Harry worked busily.

“You never talk about the murders,” said Agatha.

“No, I don’t. Nothing to do with me. Why should I?”

“You knew Francie. Had a seance with her.”

“Oh, that. Maybe that’s one reason I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Why?”

“Because she tricked me. I missed my wife dreadfully and I must have been crazy to go to her. Mind you, her potions and ointments seemed to work.”

“So what happened?” asked Agatha.

“I really thought it was my wife. That was until the voice that was supposed to be my wife told me that the bit about the eye of the needle in the Bible was true. Said I should give my money to Francie.”

“‘But if a rich man can’t enter the kingdom of heaven, how can a rich woman?” I asked.

“Ah, the voice said, Francie would send it on to a good cause. That’s when I got suspicious. My wife was very thrifty. “Must save for our old age,” that’s what she always said. I reported Francie to the police. But I’d gone along with it for a little, been conned, and felt like a fool. Don’t want to talk about the woman. She’s dead anyway.”

Agatha rolled a large snowball, and with surprising strength in one so old, Harry lifted it on to the base he had formed while he was talking. “Another one for the head,” he ordered.

He began to shape the torso into a woman’s bust. Agatha watched, amazed, as a snow-woman began to take shape. “Could you go to the games cupboard,” asked Harry, “and get me two marbles for eyes? And some make-up for the face?”

“Right. What about hair?”

“Could you find something? Black hair? And do you have an old dress or coat or something?”

Perfectionist, thought Agatha. What happened to the old-fashioned snowman made of three balls of snow and with a carrot for a nose?

She went up to her room and found an Indian blouse which she had decided she did not much like. What to use for hair? He would need to make do with one of her scarves. She picked out a black one and then found a lipstick and blusher. She then went to the games cupboard in the lounge and took two blood-red marbles out of a jar.

Afterwards, as she surveyed Harry’s handiwork, she wished she had taken out two blue or grey marbles, for the red effect was sinister. Harry had created a woman with staring red eyes in a snow face like a death mask. With the black scarf draped round her head and the Indian blouse fluttering in the wind, the snow-woman looked remarkably lifelike and ghoulish.

A gong sounded from the hotel. “Lunch!” said Harry. “Let’s get to the dining-room before the rest of them. I want to see their reactions.”

They left their coats in the lounge and hurried into the dining-room.

Daisy, Mary, Jennifer and the colonel came in together.

The colonel stopped dead. “By George,” he said. “Would you look at that!”

Outside the window the red marble eyes glared in at them from the white face and the black scarf moved in the wind and the blouse fluttered. In that moment, Agatha realized the snow-sculpted features bore a remarkable resemblance to the dead Francie.

“Is it something out of a carnival?” asked Daisy.

But Mary uttered a moan, put a shaking hand to her lips and fainted dead away.

∨
The Witch of Wyckhadden
∧

8

“T
he phones are still down,” said the colonel after lunch. Mary was lying down in her room being ministered to by Jennifer.

“I know,” said Agatha. “I tried to phone Jimmy.”

Agatha was beginning to wonder why Harry had gone out of his way to make his snow figure so much like Francie. And why had he such ability?