Agatha Raisin The Perfect Paragon ar-16 Read online

  She had stared at him in terror. Then he had said if she did not sign the firm and all the money and the house over to him, he would go to the police. She promised. What else could she do?

  That was when she decided to enlist Joyce’s help, saying that when the fuss died down she would pay her a quarter of a million pounds. She had been alarmed when she had found Robert had hired a detective agency and told him he’d better call them off or she would not sign anything.

  Joyce, beside her in the passenger seat, remembered how she had said she wouldn’t do it. That was until that weekend in Bath, when Robert had calmly told her he had no intention of divorcing his wife.

  At first, after the murder, she couldn’t believe her luck. She was sure the police would search the plant and cursed herself for not having got the milk bottle out of the office somehow. But when she had got back into the office, she somehow couldn’t bear to dig up that milk bottle. The police hadn’t found it. Better to leave it where it was, that’s what she had thought. What a fool she’d been!

  And then, just when things looked as if they were settling down, Burt had called on Mabel and blackmailed her, saying he would tell the police about his affairs with her and with Joyce. He said he was sure one of them had killed Jessica.

  In a panic, they had gone together to his flat and murdered him.

  Joyce turned plans over in her head. Why shouldn’t she have all Mabel’s money herself? Mabel was carrying a great deal in cash just in case the police somehow managed to freeze that account in the Cayman Islands. Maybe it would be better to get rid of Mabel, some sort of accident, or something that looked like food poisoning.

  Agatha and Patrick left on an Iberian Airline flight to Marbella the next morning. Patrick volunteered he had never been abroad before. Agatha wondered, as she had done before, what the flirtatious Miss Simms had ever seen in the retired detective with his lugubrious face and thinning hair. He was wearing a dark suit, striped tie, and highly polished black shoes. Agatha thought that, however retired, Patrick’s whole appearance screamed copper.

  “I hope you brought some light clothes,” said Agatha. “It’s going to be hot down there. I’m going to study this guidebook and try to figure out where they might be. I think Joyce would want a beach, but there are so many—Casa Blanca beach, La Fontanilla beach, El Faro beach—oh, here’s something. Nagueles beach. It says here it’s situated on the Golden Mile of Marbella. There’s the Hotel Puente Romano and the Hotel Marbella Club. Sounds just like the sort of places Joyce would like unless Mabel has persuaded her to hide in a pension in the backstreets.”

  “I’m worrying about this,” said Patrick. “Surely Mabel won’t just go where Joyce wants her to go.”

  “Maybe she has to. Maybe Joyce is threatening to go to the police. I mean, Mabel may be guilty of all the murders, with Joyce just being an accessory.”

  “Let me see that guidebook,” said Patrick.

  He flicked through it. “It’s such a big place,” he mourned.

  “We’ve got to try,” said Agatha.

  “If you say so. But they’ll have Interpol on to it by now.”

  “But they don’t know about Spain, and we do.”

  Joyce stepped out on the balcony of their hotel and took a deep breath of sunny air. A golden beach stretched out in front of a green-blue sea. A young man was strolling along the promenade. He looked up and saw Joyce on the second-floor balcony and blew her a kiss.

  Joyce’s spirits soared. This was the life! She went back into the suite and said excitedly, “It is so beautiful here. We can go out clubbing tonight.”

  Mabel looked up from her unpacking. “No, we can’t,” she said in a flat voice. “You’ve pushed me too far, Joyce. We will stay in our suite and have our meals sent up until I figure out where we should go that’s safer.”

  “They’ll never find us here. Thanks to the European Union, we didn’t even get our passports stamped.”

  “Some border guard might remember us. Marbella is still a thieves’ kitchen. They might think of here.”

  “But that’s only for train robbers and big-time crooks. We’re only …”

  “A couple of murderers. Now shut up and let me think.”

  Joyce studied Mabel for a long moment and then said, “Okay. What about a drink?”

  “All right. See what’s in the minibar.”

  Joyce opened it up. “Pretty much everything.”

  “Fix me something and close those windows and put on the air conditioning. I’m going to splash my face with cold water.”

  “I’ll mix us a couple of Cuba libres,” shouted Joyce.

  She took out the bottle of rum and two small bottles of Coke and then extracted two tumblers. She went to the bed and rummaged in her bag until she found a bottle of sleeping pills. She split them open with her long lacquered nails and shook the contents into one of the tumblers. Then she poured generous measures of rum into each tumbler and filled both glasses up with Coke.

  Just in time. Mabel appeared. “I’ve been thinking about Brazil. If that train robber, Ronnie Biggs, could hide out there forever, then so can we. I’ll have a drink and start making arrangements. You haven’t closed the windows.”

  “Sorry.” Joyce handed Mabel her drink and went over and closed them, reluctantly shutting out the splendid view of sun and sea.

  Mabel looked down at her drink. There was a small fleck of white powder floating on the top. She quickly switched her drink for Joyce’s.

  “Here’s to us,” Mabel said, raising her glass.

  “Good luck,” said Joyce. “How do we get to Brazil?”

  “Dangerous now to fly,” said Mabel. “Maybe we’ll drive over to Lisbon and see if there’s a ship.”

  Joyce drank eagerly, watching Mabel the whole time for signs of sleepiness. When she felt herself beginning to feel groggy, she could hardly believe it. She stood up and swayed.

  “You look tired, dear,” said Mabel, steering her through to her bedroom. “Lie down.”

  Joyce began to struggle. “You switched the glasses.”

  “You’re becoming delirious.” Mabel forced Joyce down on the bed. Joyce fought to keep awake, but she was sucked down into blackness.

  “That’s solved one problem,” said Mabel. She lifted a pillow and was about to press it down on Joyce’s face but felt squeamish. She was no longer fuelled by the insane, jealous rage which had turned her into a murderer. She put the pillow down and went back and searched Joyce’s handbag. She took out the empty bottle of sleeping pills and threw it in the waste basket. Then she opened Joyce’s wallet and took out all the money she had given her. Lying in the bottom of the handbag was an engagement ring. Mabel scowled. She had given it to Joyce to get rid of. She flushed the ring down the toilet and then put the money she had taken out of Joyce’s bag into her own. Putting a few belongings into a beach bag, Mabel left the room and hung the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door. She would have to leave her clothes behind.

  She took the lift to the ground floor, found the Land Rover in the car park and drove off, a little smile on her face as she imagined Joyce stranded, without money.

  Joyce woke in the evening, feeling groggy and sick. Then memory came flooding back. She struggled out of bed. No sign of Mabel. Joyce saw her own handbag was lying open. She opened her wallet. All her money was gone. Panic set in. What was she going to do?

  She decided to go down to the dining room, have a meal and a drink, sign for it and see if food would clear her head.

  Joyce was ushered to a table overlooking the sea. A voice said. “What is a pretty lady like you doing dining alone?”

  She looked up. A squat little man stood beaming down at her. “Just admiring the sea,” said Joyce.

  “Mind if I join you?”

  “Please do,” said Joyce, beginning to see a way out of her predicament. This man was ugly but he looked rich. His suit was well tailored and he wore a heavy gold wristwatch.

  If I flirt with him, thought J
oyce, then maybe he’ll ask me up to his room, and when he’s asleep I can take his wallet and maybe his car keys and make a run for it.

  “May I introduce myself? I’m Peter Sinclair.”

  “Do you live here?” asked Joyce.

  “No, I own a chain of shoe shops in Britain. I’m over here to check up on my buyers.”

  Joyce held out her hand. “Ellie Finch,” she said. She experienced a sudden cold shock. Mabel had checked them in. Maybe by now their photographs would be in the British papers and British newspapers were sold in Spain. She’d need to move quickly.

  So she began to chat and flirt, but being careful not to drink too much. She would need all her wits about her.

  They had started dinner late, at ten o’clock, although that was not very late by Spanish standards. At midnight, Joyce said she would like to retire, giving Peter what she considered her best bedroom look.

  “Perhaps you would like to join me in my suite for a nightcap?” said Peter.

  Got him, thought Joyce.

  Agatha and Patrick were hot and weary. It was their second day of searching. Patrick suggested they return to their own hotel in Marbella for the night and start again in the morning, but Agatha pleaded, “Just a few more hotels. There are two more five stars we haven’t tried. Here’s one. The Splendide.”

  Driving carefully in their rented car, and with Patrick navigating, she drove to La Venus beach and parked in front of the Splendide. “Come on, Patrick,” said Agatha.

  “Agatha, they may not even be here. This is just another of your wild ideas. I want to go home.”

  “Just this once.”

  “It’s one in the morning.”

  “Okay. Wait in the car. I’ve got the photos.”

  Agatha trudged into the glittering lounge. The night porter looked superciliously at the middleaged woman in the crumpled linen trouser suit and said, “Yes?”

  Agatha explained who she was and took out the photographs of Mabel and Joyce. ‘This one,” he said, selecting the photograph of Joyce. “I think I saw her leaving the dining room with a Mr. Sinclair.”

  “Listen!” said Agatha. “These are two murderers wanted by the British police. Call the local police and get them here fast.”

  The night porter hesitated only for a moment, thinking Agatha might be deranged. Then he gave a mental shrug. The police could deal with it.

  Peter Sinclair was struggling with his bonds on the bed and shouting, “You little bitch,” as Joyce put his wallet in her handbag.

  Being tied up had seemed like an exciting sex game. “Help!” he began to shout.

  Joyce glared at him and took a silk scarf out of his wardrobe and stuffed it into his mouth.

  She made for the door, but it burst open and she found herself confronted by Spanish police and detectives. Behind them, as in a nightmare, she saw Agatha Raisin.

  Patrick woke from a heavy sleep as Agatha got into the car. “Can we go home now?” he asked.

  “Soon,” said Agatha with a grin. “Joyce has been arrested and she says Mabel is on the road to Lisbon. The Spanish police have alerted the Portuguese authorities.”

  “And you let me sleep through the whole thing!”

  “There wasn’t time to wake you. Get the bags out. We’re staying here for the night and we’ve to report to the police station here in the morning.”

  “How did that bat Raisin do it?” raged Wilkes the following day. “How did she know where to look? She’s been withholding information, that’s what.”

  “Without her, I don’t think we might have found them,” said Bill. “You say Mabel Smedley’s been picked up?”

  “Before she even reached the Portuguese border. Joyce Wilson was determined not to suffer alone.”

  “So what is she saying? Who killed who and why?”

  “Burt Haviland had been laying both of them. They were both insane with jealousy of Jessica. Robert Smedley found his wife trying to bury the dagger with which she had killed Jessica in their garden. He told her unless she signed all her money and the business over to him, he would turn her in. So she gave Joyce the weedkiller and told her to get on with it. They killed Burt because he knew something and was threatening to go to the police. They both did that one.”

  “But that neighbour only heard one set of footsteps leaving Burt’s flat.”

  “That would be Joyce. Mabel’s flat shoes probably didn’t make a sound.”

  “Agatha Raisin,” said Bill, “often gets results we can’t because she doesn’t go by the book.”

  “Then it’s time she did,” said Wilkes. “It’s going to be all over the newspapers tomorrow about how she tracked them down. She’ll see to that.”

  Agatha put down the phone. “Well, that’s that, Patrick. Every last British national newspaper. We’re to wait here. Their local stringers and photographers are coming here to interview us and take our pictures. We’d better get dressed up.”

  “I am suitably dressed,” said Patrick.

  He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt in a pattern of red and yellow, droopy khaki shorts, black ankle socks and open-toed leather sandals.

  “It’s just that you look so much more the detective in your suit, Patrick, and I’ve got the air conditioning on. The rest should be here any moment.”

  “What rest?”

  “I told Phil, Harry and Mrs. Freedman to fly out and join us. Don’t you see what a good photograph it’ll make? The whole of the detective agency.”

  Patrick sighed and went to change. He wondered where Agatha got all her energy from.

  Sir Charles Fraith picked up his copy of the Daily Telegraph the following day. He found himself looking at a photograph of Agatha. “Full story pages six and seven,” he read. He opened to the relevant pages.

  There they all were—Agatha, Patrick, Harry, Phil and even Mrs. Freedman. There were long quotes from Agatha praising the detective abilities of her staff in solving three murders.

  Charles felt left out. After all, he had done a lot of unpaid work. But he had to admit that he had left Agatha in the lurch when he went chasing after Laura. And where was Laura? Gone back to her fiance, that’s where. “You didn’t even tell me you had a fiance,” he had raged.

  “He was abroad,” Laura had said. “Don’t make a fuss, Charles. We had a nice little fling.”

  The night before their departure for England, Agatha and her staff celebrated with a lavish dinner in the hotel restaurant. Agatha did not mind the money she was spending. All that publicity would pay dividends. She had carefully told the British press which flight they would all be on when their plane landed at Heathrow. With luck, there would be even more publicity. Of course, now that there was a trial in the offing once the pair were extradited, she hadn’t been able to go into all the details.

  “Here’s to us,” said Agatha, raising her glass. “Many more cases, I hope.”

  “But no more murders,” said Mrs. Freedman with a shudder.

  “Amen to that,” said Phil.

  But at first it looked as if there was to be no triumphal homecoming. They were taken from the plane before the other passengers got off and herded into a side room where an angry Wilkes was waiting.

  “How did you know they were in Marbella?” he asked Agatha.

  “I interviewed a friend of Joyce’s who said Joyce had once been in Marbella. It was a long shot.”

  “You should have phoned me! I could have alerted the police in Marbella and both of them might have been picked up earlier.”

  “I don’t think you would have listened to me,” said Agatha. “You would have said something like, ‘Run along. We’ve alerted Interpol.’” Agatha was suddenly very tired. A tear ran down her cheek.

  Wilkes was alarmed. If Agatha collapsed on him, the police would be accused of bullying a heroine.

  “That’s not the case. Run along. We’ll contact you later.”

  He regretted his burst of sympathy when Agatha Raisin produced a large hand mirror from her capacious handb
ag and began to repair her make-up, ready for any photographers who might be waiting.

  EPILOGUE

  BACK in Carsely two weeks later on a rainy weekend. Agatha felt very flat. Business was pouring into the agency, but it seemed to be nothing more than the usual lost cats, dogs and teenagers and divorce cases. No kidnapped heiresses and aristocrats wanting their jewels found. Nothing, she thought bitterly, but plod, plod, plod.

  Her hip was aching more and more. She phoned up her masseur, Richard Rasdall, and made an appointment for that Saturday afternoon. She felt lonely and deflated after all the excitement. The newspaper interviews and television interviews had dried up.

  She looked at the clock and realized she’d forgotten she was supposed to pick Roy Silver up from the train. He had phoned the evening before, asking if he could come on a visit.

  She drove down to Moreton-in-Marsh station to find him waiting impatiently in the car park.

  “I was just about to phone you,” he said.

  “Sorry, Roy. I’ll leave the car and we’ll walk round the corner for a pub lunch. The boss treating you well?”

  “With kid gloves, especially considering I am a friend of the famous Agatha Raisin.”

  “I’m yesterday’s news now. I want comfort food. Steak and kidney pie would go down a treat.”

  Over lunch, she told Roy in detail about solving the murder cases, but she seemed to have told the story so many times that she felt she was beginning to bore herself.

  “Did this Mabel Smedley ever say why she employed you to find out who murdered her husband?”

  Agatha scowled. “Evidently she told the police I was such an amateur I wouldn’t have a hope in hell of finding out anything and employing me would make her look innocent.”

  “I was surprised not to see Charles in any of the photos.”

  “Oh, he cleared off well before the end to chase after some floozy. I’ve got to go to the masseur in Stow. I’ll leave you at the cottage. Won’t be long.”

  “I told you before, it does seem to me like a bit of arthritis,” said Richard. “I’m not a doctor. Take my advice and get that hip x-rayed.”