Agatha Raisin and The Potted Gardener Part 13

People began to shuffle out of the garden until there was only Agatha, Roy, Mrs Bloxby, and Bill Wong left. "Lock the side gate," Agatha ordered Roy. "What a disaster!"

"What happened?" asked Mrs Bloxby.

"I'll tell you what happened," said Bill. "Our Agatha has been cheating again. You did get all those plants from a nursery, didn't you? Just like you said you would."

Agatha nodded miserably.

"That's no crime," said Mrs Bloxby. "A lot of the villagers buy extra plants and flowers and things to put in before Open Day. The nurseries around here do a roaring trade. It is only a pity that the nursery you went to proved to be so incompetent."

"They're the best there is," said Roy defensively. "They'd never have got the wrong labels."

Bill leaned forward and peered into a flowerbed. "Come here, Agatha," he said. He pointed downwards. "I don't think any of your dedicated gardeners would tramp over your flowerbeds."

In the soft earth was a clear imprint of a large booted foot.

"I brought men with me to put them in," said Roy. "Probably one of them."

Bill turned to the vicar's wife. "Could someone possibly have switched the labels?"

Mrs Bloxby put on her spectacles and went from plant to flower to tree, reading the labels. Then she straightened up. "Why, how clever of you! That's exactly what is wrong."

"Are you sure?" demanded Agatha. From inside the house came the sound of the doorbell.

"I'll get that," said Roy, disappearing inside.

"I think that's what happened," said Bill. "Someone's played a trick on you, Agatha. When could they have done it?"

"It must have been sometime between, say, five in the morning and nine."

"Daylight. Someone might have seen something."

Roy came back into the garden with James Lacey. Agatha groaned.

"You've done magnificently, Agatha," said James.

"You may as well know the truth." Agatha looked thoroughly wretched. James listened to the tale of her deception, his eyes crinkling up with laughter.

When she had finished, he said, "You don't do things by halves. All these months of hiding behind that high fence I'm glad to see you've got it lowered at last and all the lies and secrecy, and all for one Open Day in an English village!" He stood and laughed while Agatha stared at her shoes.

Mrs Bloxby's gentle voice cut across James's laughter. "You know, I think it might be a nice idea to have tea out here among these lovely flowers and things. I see you have a little garden table and chairs there. I'll help you get the tea-things."

Agatha, glad to escape from James's amus.e.m.e.nt, went inside with her.

Bill turned to James. "Look, you're her nearest neighbour. Did you see anyone around this cottage this morning?"

"I saw a few people. Let me think. I was up very early. Mrs Mason has just got herself a dog. She came walking past and called out a good morning. I was tidying up my front garden. Then there was Mrs Bloxby."

"What would she be doing along Lilac Lane?" asked Bill. "It doesn't lead anywhere."

"She often goes for a walk about the village in the early morning. Then along Lilac Lane, away from the village end, I heard a couple, a man and a girl, I think. I heard the girl laugh." He stood for a moment, looking bewildered. "That's odd!"

"What's odd?"

"I just remembered. The night Agatha and I discovered Mary had been murdered, as we were waiting outside her house to see if she would answer the bell, a man and a girl pa.s.sed behind us on the road. I heard the girl laugh."

"Why didn't you tell me this?" demanded Bill sharply.

"It slipped my mind. It didn't seem important. Just a village sound. I mean, they weren't coming away from the house or anything like that."

Agatha and Mrs Bloxby came into the garden carrying tea-things.

James swung round. "Agatha, do you remember that couple on the road the night we discovered Mary dead?"

"Yes," said Agatha. "I do now. I'd clean forgotten about them."

"And now James here says he heard a couple at the end of this road this morning, early."

"They could have been walkers," said Mrs Bloxby. "There's a lot of them about the Cotswolds. Although Lilac Lane doesn't lead anywhere. I mean, you can't drive anywhere, there is that footpath across the field at the end of it."

"You were out early, Mrs Bloxby," said Bill. "Did you see anyone?"

"I only saw Mr Lacey's bottom. He was leaning over a flowerbed in his front garden, weeding, I think."

"Do you think it could have been that Beth Fortune and her boyfriend?" asked Roy eagerly, who had been told all the details of the murder during the night by Agatha.

"I think I'll pay a call on them," said Bill.

"Where exactly were Beth and John on the night of the murder?" asked Agatha.

"They were in Beth's rooms in college, studying."

"Any witnesses to that?"

"No, but usually only guilty people arrange cast-iron alibis."

"Come back when you've seen them and let us know what they say," urged Agatha.

When he had gone and James, Agatha, Roy and Mrs Bloxby were seated around the table, James said, "Even if it turns out that John Deny and Beth played a trick on you, Agatha, it's a far cry from murder."

"Perhaps not," said Agatha. "I mean, surely the destruction of the gardens ties up somewhere and somehow with Mary's death. I wish I had never thought of this silly scheme. Now I have to go and work for Pedmans, the PR firm, in the autumn, and for six months, too."

"I don't understand," said Mrs Bloxby. "How did that come about?"

Roy kicked Agatha under the table. She yelped, rubbed her ankle, and glared at him. "I'm going to tell them," she said. She explained about the deal.

"You must be very good at your job," said Mrs Bloxby. She tried to surrept.i.tiously feed Hodge, the cat, with a piece of m.u.f.fin. Agatha had bought a packet of a product new on the market which promised 'real American blueberry m.u.f.fins from your own microwave'. They tasted like wet cardboard. Hodge took it from her fingers and then spat it out on the gra.s.s. James crumbled his, so that his plate was covered in m.u.f.fin crumbs. He hoped Agatha might think he had eaten some of it.

"She is," said Roy. Somehow Mrs Bloxby, without saying anything, was making him feel guilty about getting Agatha to sign that contract. Away from the world of PR, away from London, things which pa.s.sed as normal business in the city had a way of appearing, well, shabby in this rural tranquillity.

He gave himself an angry little shake, like a wet dog. People didn't go about planting people in London; mugging, raping, knifing and shooting, but not planting.

"I think," said Mrs Bloxby in her quiet voice, "that the full enormity of Mary Fortune's death is striking me at last. Someone in this village is mad enough and deranged enough to have killed her and left her body in such a dreadful way. What on earth could she have done to engender such hate?"

"So you believe she was a murderee?" asked James. "I mean someone who is going to get murdered because of some flaw in their character?"

How can you talk about Mary with such academic interest when you once made pa.s.sionate love to her? thought Agatha. Aloud, she said, "If only it would turn out to be an outsider!"

"You sound more like a villager every day, Agatha," said Mrs Bloxby. "I must go and look at some of the other gardens. Why, James, what about yours?"

"It's open," he said easily. "I do what the others do and just leave a box at the gate for the money."

"Then I'll have a look. Agatha?" Mrs Bloxby turned to her. "Care for a walk?"

Agatha shook her head. "I couldn't bear the looks and whispers."

"I wouldn't worry about it. Yes, they will most of them be laughing over it, but I think with affection. You are regarded as something of a character."

"That's me," said Agatha. "The village idiot complete with cats. So where do we go from here?"

Bill came back into the garden. "Until this murder is solved, Agatha," he said, "you should keep your front door locked at all times. Come to think of it, with that expensive security system in your garden, the lights must have been blazing while the men were working. Or did you switch it off?"

"It switched itself off ages ago," said Agatha. "I'll phone the security people and get them to fix it. What did Beth and John have to say for themselves?"

"John did it," said Bill, sitting down. "And he's quite unrepentant about it."

"What!" screeched Agatha. "Have you charged him?"

"It's up to you. But for a schoolboy trick? And have your deception come out in court?"

"But if he did that to me, maybe he did it to the other gardens. What was his reason for switching those labels?"

"He said he went out for a long walk because he couldn't sleep. He turned along Lilac Lane. As he pa.s.sed your house, he saw the truck outside leaving. Wondering if it might be a burglary, because it was dawn and no one was about, he started to go up to the front door. He heard voices from the back garden and went to the side path and listened. He heard someone say, "So now we can go and get a bit of sleep. When do the people start coming?""

"Roy," breathed Agatha.

"And then your voice saying, "Not till ten. How do I tell them what flowers are what? I don't want to be exposed as a cheat." And then Roy here replying, "Labels tied on all of them, nicely faded and weathered, but legible. You just bend down and read." So he thought he would pay you back for 'meddling in his life', as he put it, by switching the labels. He went down the lane a little and sat by the hedge and waited until the house became quiet. Then he went into the garden and moved all the labels around. I still can't think him guilty of anything else. He seems to me typical of a certain type of Oxford University student, boorish and somewhat sulky."

"d.a.m.n him," muttered Agatha. "I would look a fool if this ever came to court."

"Thought I'd let you know," said Bill.

"How did the funeral go?" asked James. "You did go to it, didn't you?"

"Yes, I was there at the crematorium. Very sad. Only me and two other detectives and Beth and John."

"Some of us from the village should have gone," said Agatha, suddenly conscience-stricken because all at once it was hard to think of the Mary who had been exposed since her death. She could only remember Mary's warmth and charm. Agatha suddenly became more determined than ever to see what she could do about solving Mary's murder. Whatever Mary had been, she had not deserved such a death.

Nine.

Agatha remembered Bill Wong's warning when she was putting on make-up in her bedroom and heard her front door open the next day and someone walk into the hall. She was looking wildly at her dressing-table for some sort of weapon and seeing only the nail scissors when James's voice called up, "Agatha, are you there?"

"Coming," she yelled, and put some Blush Pink lipstick over her chin, swore dreadfully, wiped it off, and applied it properly.

She ran down the stairs. "What's the matter?"

"I wondered whether you would fancy a trip into Oxford," said James. "I remembered this professor friend and phoned him up. He's at one of the other colleges but he's got us an introduction to a don at St Crispin's. I phoned him and asked him to lunch. That way we can find out more about John Deny."

"And Beth," said Agatha eagerly. "Wait a minute. I'd better change."

He looked appraisingly at her flowered blouse and plain skirt. "You'll do. We're lunching at Brown's and no one dresses for that. I'll drive."

And Agatha was happy as they drove off. She tried to persuade herself that she was happy because the day was sunny, because she was getting out of the village and ahead with the investigation. She did not want to admit that James's company was beginning to exert its old magic.

He took the road through Chipping Norton and Woodstock. "Do you think anything will come out of this lunch?" asked Agatha.

"It might. I don't think either Beth or John Deny had anything to do with the murder, but we may as well try everything."

"I wonder what he'll be like, this don. What's his name?"

"Timothy Barnstaple."

Perhaps he'll be attractive, thought Agatha.

James parked in the underground car-park at Gloucester Green and they walked back along St Giles and so to Brown's Restaurant on the Woodstock Road.

"This is silly," said James. "I forgot to ask what he looked like."

"Did you book a table?"

"No. We're meeting him now, at twelve, so it won't be too crowded, and it is the university holidays."

They entered the restaurant and looked about. A thin middle-aged man got up as they walked in. He was leaning on a stick. He was dressed in a black jacket and black trousers. His black hair was greased back from a tired lined face. Porter from one of the hotels, thought Agatha and turned her eyes elsewhere.

But the man called out, "Are you Mr Lacey?"

This, then, was Timothy Barnstaple.

"I took the liberty of ordering a drink while I waited for you," he said. His voice was beautiful. In these days of the cult of the common accent, it was a pleasure to hear a well-spoken, well-modulated voice.

"I didn't know you were bringing Mrs Lacey," said Timothy, leering at Agatha, "but the pleasure is all mine."

"Mrs Raisin is my neighbour and friend," said James.