Agatha Raisin and the Witch of Wyckhadden (9 page)

“Sheep Street,” called the taxi driver.

“Ninety-two,” called back Agatha as the cab slowed to a crawl. Sheep Street was lined with red brick houses. Some were smartened up with window-boxes and with the doors and window-sashes painted bright colours. But the others were distinctly seedy. And ninety-two was one of the seedy ones.

“Shouldn’t we just leave it alone?” pleaded Mary as Agatha paid off the cab.

“May as well go through with it now we’re here.” Agatha marched determinedly up to the front door and knocked on it.

“He probably left here years ago,” said Mary.

The door opened and a very old woman stood there, peering up at them. “We’re looking for Joseph Brady,” said Agatha.

“Come in.” She shuffled off into the interior and they followed her. The living-room into which she led them was dark and furnished with battered old chairs and a sagging sofa.

“This is Mary Dulsey and I am Agatha Raisin,” began Agatha. “Mary knew Joseph when he was much younger. She always wondered what became of him. Do you know him?”

“He’s my son.”

They both looked at the old woman. She eased herself into an armchair. Her hands were knobbly with arthritis and her face was seamed and wrinkled.

Mary seemed to have been struck dumb. “Where is he?” asked Agatha.

Mrs Brady gave a wheezy little sigh. “Doing time.”

“Why, what for?” asked Agatha, ignoring Mary’s yelp of distress.

“Same old business. Stealing cars.” She peered at Mary. “How did you know him?”

Mary found her voice, albeit a trembling voice.

“It was years ago, in 1955. At Wyckhadden. At the Garden Hotel.”

Mrs Brady nodded. “That would be about the first time he got into trouble.”

“With the police?” asked Agatha.

“Yes,” she said wearily. “He was working as a car salesman for a firm in Hadderton. He’d just got his driving licence. He stole a car and he stole the money from the firm’s office. He said afterwards that he had planned to go to a posh hotel and look for a rich girl.” The old eyes looked sympathetically at Mary. “Was that you, dear?”

“I suppose so,” said Mary miserably. “We weren’t rich. My father was only a lawyer.”

“That would be rich to Joseph. We never had much, see. Well, the police got him a couple of days after he came back. How he thought he’d get away with it, I don’t know. He’d left the stolen car in a side street, as if someone else had pinched it. But he’d left his fingerprints all over the office at the car firm and the police found the rest of the money hidden in his room. He swore he’d never do anything like that again. He got a light sentence, but it was hard to get work with a criminal record. He left home one day shortly after that. Said he was going to Australia. Then, four years later, he wrote to me from prison. Cars again and a longer sentence. Then it was burglary. The latest was stealing cars and driving them over to some crooked dealer in Bulgaria.”

“Have you a recent photograph?” asked Agatha.

Mrs Brady rose painfully from her chair and lifted a cardboard box down from a shelf beside the fireplace. She rested it on a small table, and putting on a pair of spectacles, began to look through the photographs. She lifted one out and handed it to Mary. “That you, miss?”

Mary looked down at a picture of herself and Joseph on the prom at Wyckhadden. “Yes,” she said in a choked voice. “One of those beach photographers took that picture. One for me, one for Joseph.”

“Here’s one taken before his last sentence.” Mrs Brady handed Mary a photograph. Agatha joined Mary and looked down at it. The Joseph in this picture was baring a set of false teeth at the camera. He was nearly bald and his weaselly face bore little resemblance to the young man on the prom.

Agatha looked at Mary’s shocked face. “Thank you for your time, Mrs Brady. We are really sorry to have troubled you.”

“I’ll see you to the door,” she said. “Funny, there was always some girl or another over the years that he’d said he was going to marry, but the law always caught up with him first.”

Out in the street, Mary walked a little way with Agatha and then broke down and cried and cried, saying over and over again in between sobs, “How could you have done this to me, Agatha?”

“But you wanted to find him,” protested Agatha, but feeling guilty all the same. It would have been better to have left poor Mary with her dream intact. A cold wind whistled down Sheep Street. Wind chimes hung over a door tinkled their foreign exotic sound.

“Let’s find a pub,” said Agatha.

They turned the corner of Sheep Street and found a small pub. Agatha ordered brandies. Mary drank and sobbed and sobbed and drank. Agatha waited patiently. At last Mary dried her eyes and blew her nose.

“All these years,” she said, “I’ve carried this bright dream of Joseph. One day he would come back if only I kept going to Wyckhadden. I put up with Jennifer because I had this dream. Now I have nothing.”

“I wish I had left things alone,” said Agatha. “But how were we to know he’d turn out to be a criminal?”

“It’s not really your fault. I had to know,” said Mary. “I’ll have to tell Jennifer.”

“Why?”

“She’ll know something is up with me.”

“Oh, well, tell her if you must,” said Agatha, suddenly weary of the whole business. There was a cigarette machine in the corner of the pub. She looked at it longingly. But it was years and years since she had gone so long without a cigarette. Stick it out, Agatha!

Back at the hotel, Agatha found Jimmy waiting for her. He looked curiously at red-eyed Mary, who darted past him and up the stairs. “What’s up with her?”

“Let’s go for a walk and I’ll tell you about it.”

Once out on the promenade, he took Agatha’s arm and said, “You smell of brandy. Starting early?”

“Consoling Mary.” As they walked along, Agatha told him about Joseph.

“Poor woman,” he said when Agatha had finished. “I could have found all that out for her.”

“I never thought of asking you. Mary didn’t think for a minute that he was a criminal.”

Agatha then told him about the seance. “We’ve still got our eye on Janine’s husband. You should be careful.”

“I thought he had a cast-iron alibi.”

“I’m always suspicious of people with cast-iron alibis.”

“Why did you call to see me, Jimmy?”

“I wanted to ask you out for dinner tonight. There’s this new Italian restaurant.”

“I would love to.”

“That’s fine. I’ll pick you up at eight. I’d better walk you back now. I’ve a lot of paperwork to do.”

♦

Tired after all the morning’s emotion, Agatha planned to lie down that afternoon and then enjoy a leisurely time getting ready for her date. She was just about to pull her sweater over her head when there came a peremptory knocking at the door. She tugged down her sweater and went to open it. Jennifer stood there, her fists clenched and eyes blazing with anger. “I want a word with you, you interfering bitch!”

“Come in,” said Agatha wearily.

Jennifer strode into the room. “You have destroyed Mary’s happiness. She needed that dream.”

Agatha looked at her in sudden dislike. “You destroyed Mary’s dreams,” she said furiously. “You’ve hung on to her like a leech for years. What chance did she ever have to make other friends with you around?”

“How dare you? Who nursed her back to health after her parents’ death? Who steered her into a profitable occupation?”

“You did. So much easier than doing anything about your own life. You’re not angry, Jennifer. You’re frightened. As long as Mary had the dream of Joseph coming back, you were safe. Without her dream, she’s going to look back on a wasted life.”

Jennifer turned an ugly muddy colour. “Just keep out of her life or it’ll be the worse for you.”

She strode out and slammed the door. Agatha sat down, her legs shaking. Now there was surely someone who could have committed murder. She tried to have a nap that afternoon but could not sleep. She was torn between leaving Wyckhadden and escaping from what looked like an ugly situation with Jennifer and staying and finding out more about the murder. And then there was Jimmy. After Charles’s fickle unfaithfulness and James Lacey’s coldness, it was wonderful to have some man really keen on her. Perhaps they could get married.

Agatha phoned Mrs Bloxby at the vicarage in Carsely. “How nice to hear from you,” cried Mrs Bloxby. “We’re all wondering when you’re coming back. Not getting too much involved in this nasty murder?”

Agatha settled down to tell her all about the murder, the residents at the hotel, her growing friendship with Jimmy, and the row with Jennifer.

“I wouldn’t blame Jennifer too much,” said Mrs Bloxby when Agatha had finished. “I have met many, women like Mary. If it hadn’t been Jennifer, it would have been someone very like her. Or it could have been a bullying man. You will probably find that her parents were rather domineering. And this Jimmy of yours sounds hopeful.”

“How’s James?” asked Agatha abruptly.

“He seems very well.” Mrs Bloxby was not going to tell Agatha that James had been asking about her. Let Agatha progress with Jimmy.

“And my cats?”

“Doris Simpson is looking after them very well. We’re all missing you.”

“Just a few more days and then I’ll probably be home.”

When Agatha rang off, she suddenly remembered Janine’s grim remark that she would never have sex again. “We’ll see about that,” thought Agatha as she shaved her legs, and then rubbed Lancôme’s Poème body lotion into her skin.

♦

The evening began as a success. Jimmy told stories about his job in Wyckhadden and Agatha replied with tales of Carsely and the residents, although she did not mention James.

He drove her back to the hotel and then turned and gathered her in his arms. “Oh, Agatha,” he said huskily and kissed her. Agatha replied with a passion that surprised her. Damn that witch. She would prove her wrong. “Can’t we go to your place for a nightcap?” she whispered.

“Right,” he said in a choked voice. He drove up to the back part of the town and parked outside a trim bungalow. Like two people squaring up for a fight, they walked up the path side by side, the tension rising between them. It shouldn’t be like this, thought Agatha. We should still be laughing and giggling.

He led her into the bungalow, neat, sparse and brightly lit. “The bathroom’s there,” he said. “I’ll use the other one.”

“Two bathrooms,” said Agatha, striving for a light note. “How posh.”

“I took in lodgers at one time. Now I can’t be bothered.”

Agatha went into the sparkling-clean bathroom with its Nile-green bath and loo. She undressed and ran a bath. She wished she had a night-gown or dressing-gown. She finally emerged from the bathroom wearing nothing more than a black lacy slip.

“Where are you?” she called.

“Here!”

She followed the sound of his voice and found herself in a bedroom. Jimmy was lying in a double bed, the duvet up to his chin, his face grim. Oh, well, here goes, thought Agatha. At least I’m about to prove Janine wrong.

She climbed into the bed beside him. The sheets were slippery and cold and his body was cold. She began to kiss him.

At last he turned away from her. “I’m sorry, Agatha. I can’t. Not yet. I thought I could but I can’t.”

“I’ll go, then,” said Agatha in a small voice. He did not reply. She climbed out of bed and looked back from the doorway. He was scrunched up on his side, his eyes tight closed.

Agatha found her way back to the bathroom. She put on her clothes and went into the hall, where she had seen a phone and phone books. She looked up taxis in the Yellow Pages and phoned for a cab. They asked for the address. Fortunately for Agatha, it was stamped on one of the phone books because she did not have the slightest idea where she was.

As she waited for the cab, she wondered whether she should go in and console Jimmy. But she felt rejected, felt a failure. What a rotten day.

She heaved a sigh of relief when she heard the cab pulling up. As it cruised through the silent night-time streets of Wyckhadden, she felt small and grubby and unwanted. Stay for the seance and then go home, home to Carsely.

♦

Agatha went down for breakfast the following morning. They all, with the exception of Jennifer and Mary, greeted her amiably enough. Mary’s eyes looked puffy with weeping.

I’m too upset about myself to worry about her, thought Agatha, angry with herself for still feeling guilty about Mary. I’m the dream murderer, she said to herself. First Mary then Jimmy, and all in one day. Damn that Janine. That’s what made me rush Jimmy.

She ate a light breakfast of poached eggs on toast. Again, as she sipped her coffee, she thought longingly of how good a cigarette would taste. There was no cigarette machine in the hotel – nothing so vulgar. But there was one on the pier which had, remarkably enough in these wicked days, not been vandalized.

♦

A good walk would take her mind off things. She walked miles that day along the beach by the restless sea. Then she returned to the hotel to tell the manager that she would be checking out on Saturday, in two days’ time, and to get her bill ready. The sudden relief that she had made a definite decision to go home brightened her up. As she was getting ready to go out for the seance that evening, there was a knock at the door. Agatha looked round the room for something to use as a weapon, decided she was paranoid, and opened the door and backed away from it quickly when she saw Jennifer standing there.

“I came to apologize,” said Jennifer gruffly. “You only did it to help Mary. She had to know.”

“That’s all right, then,” said Agatha, relieved. “Looking forward to the seance this evening?”

“Not particularly. Though I wouldn’t mind exposing her as a fraud.”

“But I thought you believed in her mother’s medicines!”

“There’s a lot to be said for old country remedies. But when it comes to fortune-telling and seances, I’ve never believed in that tommy-rot.”

“Neither do I,” said Agatha, who had no intention of telling Jennifer she’d had her palm read. “But that’s why I think it will be quite fun – mean, to see what tricks she gets up to. Daisy believes in seances, I gather.”