Agatha Raisin And The Wellspring Of Death Part 9

Flushed with booze and outrage, Mike strode forward. "Get out of here, you hooligans." He punched Trevor on the arm. Trevor punched him on the nose and Mike fell back, with blood streaming down his face, while guests scattered and the television cameras whirred, for no protesters protested without informing the press of what they were about to do.

Zak crouched down behind a bush and phoned for reinforcements, which he knew were waiting in a van around the corner.

James had joined him. "Get out there and get yourself arrested," hissed Zak. "I'll get you off."

So James added to the fun by sending the barbecue flying. Burning coals rolled across the lawn.

Kylie leaned against the doorway of her house, sipping a drink, a little smile on her face. Mike's birthday was turning out to be quite fun after all.

Five.

Agatha and Roy sloped around the house the next morning, both reluctant to walk even the few miles to Ancombe to tackle Mary Owen and to pick up the car.

"Let's see if there's anything on the news," said Agatha, switching to Sky Television.

"It's not on the hour," complained Roy. "It's eleven-twenty and it's all that dreary sports."

"Only last for ten minutes," said Agatha, sitting down in front of the set clutching a cup of coffee.

"There won't be anything about the murder," said Roy.

"Let's see."

The sports finished, then the ads. Then both sat up straight as the news came on again and a voice said, "The barbecue of a Mr Mike Pratt of Coventry was the subject of attack yesterday by members of Save Our Foxes."

"It's them," said Agatha eagerly.

The voice went on to explain about the barbecuing of the hedgehogs. "Look at that blazing suns.h.i.+ne," complained Roy. "You'd think Coventry was at the other end of the earth instead of being in the Midlands like us. Why did we have to get soaked?"

"Shh!" hissed Agatha.

A blond man with an ugly sneer on his face was pus.h.i.+ng the barbecue over. Agatha stiffened. "Doesn't that chap look like James?"

"You poor thing." Roy shook his head. "You're beginning to see Lacey everywhere. Let's go. At least the Coventry suns.h.i.+ne has reached us."

"Isn't this beautiful?" said Roy as he trotted along by Agatha's side on the road to Ancombe.

Agatha grunted by way of reply, but wondering again why the sheer beauty of the spring countryside did not seem to get inside her. She remembered pa.s.sing some Sat.u.r.days of her underprivileged childhood at the art gallery in Birmingham studying English landscapes, enjoying the painted scenery which had become part of that early dream of living in the countryside one day. And so she saw the present pa.s.sing landscape like a painting. That bright green of the new leaves, she'd had that colour in her art cla.s.s at school. And the curved furrows of a ploughed field, with the trees at the edge raising their branches to the blue sky, looked like one of those paintings. Perhaps one had to be brought up in the country to really appreciate it.

"Do you believe in G.o.d?" asked Roy suddenly.

"Don't know," said Agatha, wondering if the person in the sky with whom she frequently made bargains-get me out of this one and I'll give up smoking-really did exist.

"I believe in Nature," said Roy, spreading his arms wide. "That's what it's all about."

"You're not going to start hugging trees?" said Agatha suspiciously. "I've got to live here."

"I'm trying to explain I'm a pagan," said Roy. "I am as one with all this."

Agatha was about to say something waspish, but Roy's thin, weak face was turned up to the sun and he looked supremely happy. "Glad you're enjoying yourself," she said gruffly.

"Funny," said Roy, taking her arm, "I always thought anyone who moved out of the city was mad, but maybe if I lowered my sights, it would be better. You and me, Aggie, we could team up and start a new agency in Mircester. Do local accounts. Maybe get married."

"And spend my declining years with people mistaking you for my son?"

"Think about it. We get on all right."

Agatha privately thought that a very little of Roy went a long way, but she gently detached her arm and said, "Okay, I'll think about it." Then she said, "Do we really have to go on with this? It's funny how people in villages so close by can be so different. Apart from the dreadful Mrs Dairy and a few others, the people in Ca.r.s.ely are wonderful. But the ones we've met in Ancombe seem to be really nasty, and Mary Owen is surely going to be the nastiest of all."

"You've dealt with nasty people all your life, Aggie."

True, thought Agatha, and it used to be all the same to me, nice or nasty, just a job, but now I've learned to like people.

"Where does Mary Owen live?" she realized Roy was asking.

"I looked her up. She lives in Ancombe Manor, far end of the village. We'll pick up the car and drive."

Soon they were turning in at the entrance to the manor. Thick yew hedges lined either side of the narrow drive, giving Agatha the impression of driving through a maze. Suddenly they were in front of the house. It was old, very old, made of Cotswold stone, rambling and covered in ivy. It looked as if it had been there so long that it had become part of the surrounding countryside.

Agatha's sharp eyes noticed that there were weeds sprouting in the gravel-covered circle outside the manor-house. She began to think the report that Mary Owen had fallen on hard times might be true. Such a house would have housed an army of indoor and outdoor servants in the old days.

"Well, here goes for another barrage of insults," said Agatha, pus.h.i.+ng an anachronistic bell-push by the side of the iron-studded door.

At first they thought there was no one at home, but then they heard footsteps approaching.

The door opened. Mary Owen stood there. She was wearing a shabby sweater and stained riding-breeches and boots. Her head was tied up in a scarf and she held a duster in one hand.

Her contemptuous eyes raked them.

"What do you want?"

"I am Agatha Raisin-"

"I know that. And who's your creature?"

"This is Mr Roy Silver," said Agatha firmly, thinking if one was prepared for insult, it certainly helped one not to lose one's temper.

"Out with it, then. Haven't you done enough damage, whoring for that d.a.m.ned water company?"

Roy timidly tugged at Agatha's arm, but Agatha smiled pleasantly. "I just wanted to talk to you."

"About what?"

"The murder."

Mary stood scowling at the duster in her hand. Then she jerked her head. "Come in."

They followed her into a small dark hall and then along a stone-flagged corridor to a kitchen. "Sit down," barked Mary. They sat down at the kitchen table. Mary jerked out a chair with the toe of one boot and sat down facing them.

"You have a bit of a reputation as a detective," said Mary.

"I have solved some cases," said Agatha.

"So you say. The only reason I'm bothering with you is that you might get the police to see some sense. You see, I know who murdered Robert Struthers,"

"Who?" demanded Agatha and Roy in unison.

"Jane Cutler, that's who!"

"Why?" asked Agatha. "I heard she hoped to marry him."

"Of course she did. That ghoul specializes in marrying men who are due to drop dead, only Robert didn't have terminal cancer or anything like that. He could have lived to a hundred. So she helped him on his way."

"But what good would that do her?" Agatha looked every bit as bewildered as she felt.

"Because I believe she talked poor Robert into making out his will in her favour."

"But you don't know for sure!"

"I know. Do me a favour and get it out of your police friends. Now if you don't mind, I have work to do."

"So what do you think of that?" asked Roy as they drove off.

"I think we should drive to Mircester and see what we can get out of Bill Wong."

"Why do you think she sneered at me like that?" demanded Roy moodily. "Creature, indeed."

"She was furious with me and you just happened to be there."

Roy's thin face lightened. "That's it. It can't be my clothes. I mean, this sweater's Italian and cost a mint, and my jeans are stone-washed."

Agatha privately thought that no matter how much money he spent on clothes, Roy would always look somehow as if he belonged in one of those London street gangs of white-faced undernourished youths.

"Oh, b.u.g.g.e.r," said Agatha as they drove into Mircester. "Market-day. No central parking, and I'm sick of walking."

"Park right there!" said Roy.

"It's a yellow line. No parking."

"Just park," said Roy, fumbling in his back pocket and taking out his wallet. He fished out a 'disabled' sticker and affixed it on Agatha's windscreen.

"Where did you get that?"

"From a friend," said Roy.

"But what if some copper comes along?"

"We can always drool at the mouth and say we're mentally disabled. Come along."

They went into the police headquarters and asked for Bill Wong. "We should have phoned," said Agatha, as they waited. "He's probably out."

But after a few minutes, Bill appeared.

"I hope you've got something for me," he said. "I'm busy." He led the way to an interviewing-room.

Agatha outlined everything she had learned since the last time she had seen him, ending up with Mary Owen's claim that Jane Cutler had murdered Robert Struthers to inherit after his death.

"Not the case," said Bill. "His son gets everything, not even a mention of either Jane Cutler or Mary Owen in the will."

"Oh," said Agatha, disappointed.

"This old boy, I mean Struthers," said Roy, "could have been playing both of them along. Old people sometimes do that to get attention. I mean, he liked playing cagey. He wouldn't tell any of the other councillors which way he meant to vote. Strikes me as being manipulative and liking his little bit of power. Just suppose Jane Cuder thought she was in the will."

"That's a good point," said Bill, "but why not get him to marry her and be absolutely sure? Common sense would tell her that he would leave it all to his son. Then Jane Cutler is rich, and if Mary Owen has fallen on hard times, and she believed he had changed his will in her favour, then she might have b.u.mped him off and then accused Jane to deflect any suspicions from her, although it's all very far-fetched."

"James has disappeared," said Agatha. "Have you heard anything?"

Yes, Bill had through the grapevine learned that James was masquerading as a member of Save Our Foxes, but he didn't want to tell Agatha that. He felt the less Agatha saw of James, the better. Out of sight was out of mind.

"No," he lied. "Probably off on his travels."

Agatha pulled herself together. "You said they had decided that Struthers had been killed elsewhere and dumped at the spring. Any forensic evidence?"

"Nothing much. Forensic believes that someone vacuumed the body before dumping it. There was just one thing. A white cat hair in one of his turn-ups. He wore those oldfas.h.i.+oned trousers."

Agatha's eyes gleamed. "So we are looking for someone with a white cat!"

"Do you know, there isn't one white cat in the village of Ancombe?" said Bill. "We went from house to house. Someone could be lying, of course."

"It needn't be an all-white cat," said Roy. "Could be one of those black-and-white things."

"Sorry. I should have explained that the hair was from a Persian cat."

"Definitely a Persian, and a cat?" asked Agatha. "It couldn't have been a dog?"

Agatha would have loved it to turn out to have been Mrs Darry.

"Definitely a Persian cat."

"Still, it's something to go on," said Agatha eagerly.

"I don't want to dampen your enthusiasm for amateur detection, but a great number of policemen have been searching for that cat and are still searching."