Authors: M. C. Beaton
“Did she tell you anything about herself?” asked Agatha.
“Oh, yes. She was married when she was living in Evesham. But she said he was a brute and threatened to kill her.”
“Have you told the police this?”
“They didn’t ask Jenny.”
Agatha leaned forward. “Have you any idea where in Evesham she used to live and was her married name Davent?”
“She said the cinema was at the end of the street. Wait a bit. A tree. She was married to a tree. No, the house was called after a tree.”
“Something like The Firs?” said Agatha, beginning to feel she had wandered into Looking-Glass country.
“What was it?” Jenny stared at the ceiling for inspiration. “Sycamore? Oak? Douglas, that’s it. Like the Douglas fir.”
A nurse appeared in the doorway. “Time for your exercises,” she said. The nurse smiled at Agatha. “We like to keep our clients mobile.”
“Will you come again?” asked Jenny.
“Certainly,” said Agatha.
As they moved together out of the room, the nurse whispered to Agatha, “Check your belongings and make sure she hasn’t taken anything.” Agatha looked in her handbag.
“My wallet’s missing!”
“Wait there. I know where she hides things.”
The nurse returned with Agatha’s wallet. Jenny was walking ahead down the corridor.
“I’ve got to catch her,” said the nurse. “If I don’t, she’ll be back to the shops in Mircester, pinching things. See yourself out.”
* * *
Agatha stopped at the reception desk. “I gather that Mrs. Harcourt is a kleptomaniac,” she said to the male nurse.
“Fortunately, not all the time,” he said. “She can go months until something excites her and then she raids the shops. But you’re her relative. You must have known that.”
“It’s been kept very quiet,” said Agatha. She was heading for the door when she stopped still. What if Jenny had stolen something from Jill and it was still in her room?
She turned around. The nurse had left the reception desk and was hurrying into the back regions. Agatha ran lightly up the stairs and located Jenny’s room. When that nurse had gone back to get her wallet, she had gone to the desk. In the drawers of the desk were old photographs, scarves, and cheap jewellery. Grateful for all the programmes on antiques on television which showed where secret drawers were located in old desks, Agatha found one. Inside was a small black book. She snatched it up as she heard footsteps in the corridor outside. The footsteps went on past the door. Agatha ran down the stairs and out to her car and drove away as quickly as possible.
She stopped a little way from Sunnydale, parking in a space by a farm gate.
Agatha opened the book. Jill’s name was on the inside front page. It was a sort of small ledger with lists of payments. The entries ranged from twenty to five hundred pounds. Beside each sum of money was only one initial and the dates of the payments. Agatha sighed. If, by a very long shot, this book belonged to Jill and was evidence of blackmail, then it followed that she should turn it over to the police so that they could match it with any files they had taken from Jill’s office or with anything on her computer.
But she could imagine the questions. “You
stole
this book, Mrs. Raisin. Did you inform Sunnydale you had taken it without a patient’s knowledge?” And on and on it would go.
It must be Jill’s, surely. It had her name on it. The payments stopped one day before her murder.
Were these single initials from first or last names? The twenty-pound payment was marked with the initial
V
. Could that be Victoria Bannister?
Agatha thirsted for revenge on Victoria. She decided to go to Carsely and confront the woman. Then she would decide what to do about the book.
* * *
Victoria was weeding in her front garden when Agatha opened the gate.
“What do you want?” Victoria demanded harshly.
“I wondered why you were paying Jill Davent blackmail to the sum of twenty pounds a month,” said Agatha.
Victoria’s face turned a muddy colour. “Nonsense!”
Agatha shrugged and held up the little book. “Just thought I’d give you a chance to explain before I turn this record over to the police.”
Victoria slumped down onto the grass and buried her face in her hands.
“If you tell me and it’s nothing really awful, I won’t tell the police,” said Agatha.
Victoria slowly got to her feet. “Do you mean that?”
“Depends what you did.”
“Come inside. Someone might hear us.”
The kitchen into which Victoria led Agatha was surprisingly welcoming and cheerful to belong to such an acidulous woman. There was a handsome Welsh dresser with Crown Derby plates and geraniums in tubs at the open window.
They both sat down at an oak table. “It’s like this,” said Victoria. “Do you remember Mrs. Cooper’s dog?”
“The nasty little thing that yapped all the time?”
“She lives next door. I couldn’t bear the noise anymore. I crushed up a lot of my sleeping pills and put them in a bowl of chopped steak. When the beast fell unconscious, I put it in a sack and drowned it in the rain barrel. Then I buried it.”
“And how did Jill find out?”
“She seemed ever such a good listener, and no one ever listens to me. So I paid for a consultation. The death of that dog was on my conscience. So I told her. The next thing I know she was demanding regular payments for my silence. I had to pay up.”
“You’ve confirmed for me that this was Jill’s,” said Agatha. “I won’t tell the police. But why did Jill tell you about my background?”
“That was before I actually consulted her. We were having a drink and she told me.”
“So why spread it around?”
She hung her head. “I don’t know. I told the police about you threatening to kill her because I didn’t want them to start looking at me.”
“Just keep clear of me in the future,” said Agatha. “You are a sickening woman.”
* * *
As Agatha was about to enter her cottage, she was hailed by James Lacey, who hurried to join her. “Toni’s just called me,” he said. “She told me to look out for you as someone just tried to kill you.”
“Come in and I’ll tell you all about it. I haven’t had lunch and I must eat something.”
Agatha told him, between bites of a cheese sandwich, everything that had happened, ending up with, “So I think I’ll have to throw myself on Bill’s mercy, but first, I’d like to track down the husband.”
“I’d better come with you.”
Agatha looked at him. There he was, as handsome as ever from his lightly tanned face and bright blue eyes to his tall muscular figure. Why did she no longer feel a thing?
“Right,” said Agatha. “Let’s go. I’ll drive.”
* * *
As they turned into the road that led up the side of the Regal Cinema, Agatha said, “I’m glad they restored that old cinema. Must go one day. Now, I’ll put the car in the parking place and we can start knocking on doors.”
When Agatha parked the car and got a parking ticket, she returned to find James searching his iPad. “I’m just checking if there are any Davents in this street. Did she keep her married name?”
“Oh, Lord, I don’t know,” said Agatha crossly, cross because she had been caught out at missing a basic piece of detection.
“Oh, here we are,” said James. “There’s a T. Davent at number 905A. That must be right along at the end. The
A
probably means it’s a basement flat, or what the estate agents call a garden flat.”
“So it’s not called Douglas. I wonder what she was talking about?”
“Who?
“Tell you later.”
They started to walk. The day had turned hot and humid. Agatha felt uneasily that her make-up was melting and running down her neck.
“Don’t take such long strides,” she complained.
“You shouldn’t wear such high heels the whole time,” commented James. But he slowed his pace. He looked down at the top of Agatha’s glossy hair and felt an odd pang of loss. But surely it was Agatha’s fault that their marriage had not worked out. She would go on smoking and insisted on carrying on working. But what he missed was her old, unquestioning adoration of him.
“Here we are at last,” said Agatha. “Of course, with my bloody luck, he’ll be out working. Let’s try the basement. Yes, the name on the door is Davent.” She rang the bell.
The door was opened by a small, blond woman with a discontented face. Agatha guessed she was in her late thirties.
“I don’t want encyclopaedias, I’ve got double glazing and I don’t believe in God,” she said harshly.
Agatha rapidly introduced herself. “I was hoping to talk to Mr. Davent.”
“I’m his sister, Freda. If you want to ask him about the bitch from hell, you’ll find him at his shop, Computing Plus, on the Four Pools estate.”
“Did you know Jill Davent?” asked James.
“I don’t want to talk about that cow. The day I heard about her murder was like Christmas. Now shove off.”
The door slammed.
“Back to the car,” said James, “and let’s see exactly where we can find Computing Plus.”
* * *
After circling around the Four Pools business estate, they found the shop, parked the car and walked in. The shop was full of expensive-looking equipment. One young man was serving a couple, while another leaned on the desk, reading a newspaper. Agatha approached the newspaper reader. “Is Mr. Davent available?”
“If it’s a complaint, I can maybe deal with it,” he said in a strong Eastern European accent. Probably Polish, thought Agatha. Evesham was rapidly becoming Little Poland.
Agatha handed him her card. “Tell him I would like to ask him a few questions.”
The young man disappeared into a back office with a frosted-glass door. “Stop eyeing his bottom, Agatha,” admonished James.
“It’s those skintight black jeans,” said Agatha ruefully. “They just scream, ‘look at my bum.’”
“Be your age.”
“No wonder our marriage didn’t work out,” snarled Agatha. “Always nitpicking and complaining. Furthermore…”
The office door opened. “You’re to go in,” said the assistant.
They walked in. Davent stood up to meet them. Agatha introduced herself and James.
“I don’t know how I can help you,” he said. “I have had so many grillings from the police.”
“Just a few questions, Mr. Davent.”
“Call me Tris. It’s short for Tristram.”
He was a good-looking man in possibly his early forties. He was of moderate height with a thick head of hair with auburn highlights. He was wearing a charcoal grey suit with a striped shirt and blue silk tie. He had neat regular features and a square chin with a dimple in it.
“Please sit down,” he said. Tris sat behind his desk and Agatha and James took chairs in front of it.
“It’s like this,” said Agatha. “In order to find out who murdered your late wife, we have to know more about her background. Was she a therapist when you met her?”
“No, she was a tart.”
“Why did you marry her?” asked James curiously.
He sighed. “I’ll begin at the beginning. I went to a computer conference in Chicago, ten years ago. Jill was blond then. She just seemed to be one of the computer crowd. My wife had died of cancer the year before. Jill was a good listener. She was English and I was lonely. We ended up in bed together. In the morning, she said she had an important appointment and had to rush. We arranged to meet in the hotel bar that evening. That’s when I found my wallet was missing.”
“Did you tell the police?”
“I felt I had been conned. I was too ashamed. I still turned up in the bar that evening at the appointed time and wasn’t much surprised when she didn’t turn up. I put it down to experience. Two months later, she turned up at my address in Evesham in tears, saying she was pregnant. I accused her of stealing my wallet and she looked horrified. She denied the whole thing and said someone must have picked my pocket when we were in the bar. She said she was a qualified therapist. My late wife could not have children and I wanted to believe her. So we got married.
Then after four months, she said she’d had a miscarriage. I had begun to get suspicious of her. She was somehow so … how can I describe it?… glib.
One day when she was out, I searched her things. I found my wallet. No money, but the cards were there. I taxed her with it and she said that she had been unable to keep her appointment in the bar but had been so worried about the missing wallet that she had got hold of the hotel detective. The wallet had been found in the hotel trash. When I was in my shop, I phoned the hotel and asked to speak to the detective. He said no one had asked him to look for any wallet. He asked for Jill’s name. I told him her maiden name was Jill Sommerville. He told me to phone him the following day, which I did. He said Jill had been working for a high-class escort agency and I had been well and truly conned. I confronted Jill again and said unless she agreed to an immediate and uncontested divorce, I would take her to court. She agreed. She moved out immediately. She was as cold as ice. She jeered at me and called me a boring fool. She said she had been tired of the life.”
Agatha supressed a groan. Prostitution, however classy, often came with a package of drugs, crime and pimps. Someone could have followed her from America. It could even be some other man she had cheated. Agatha felt deflated and at a complete loss. She could not bring herself to believe that this ex-husband might be a murderer.
“Are you two an item?” asked Tris.
“We were married but it didn’t work out,” said Agatha.
Tris grinned. “Join the club.”
Outraged, James got to his feet. “I will wait for you outside,” he said coldly to Agatha, and stalked out.
“I shouldn’t have said that. Should I go after him?” asked Tris.
“It’s all right. He’s miffed because it was a bit rude to compare your awful marriage to ours.”
“Let me make it up to you?” said Tris. “What about dinner one night?”
“All right,” said Agatha. Inside, a little Agatha was jumping around, yelling, “Yipee! I’ve still got pulling power.”
“What about tomorrow night?” asked Tris.
“Where and when?” asked Agatha.
“Would you like to try Polish food? There’s a good restaurant round the corner from where I live called Warsaw Home.”