Beating About the Bush Read online

  Toni’s chest heaved as she fought back a sob. What’s got into her? wondered Agatha. I hardly said a thing.

  “It’s just that…” Toni passed her phone from one hand to the other.

  “Man trouble,” said Agatha. She had delivered her lecture standing by the fireplace but now sat down on the sofa beside Toni, perching near the edge of the cushion so as not to crease her trousers. Agatha was not known for her forgiving nature, mainly because she didn’t have one. Neither was she prone to spontaneous outbursts of sympathy, but if they were to find out what was going on at Morrison’s, she needed her assistant to be on top form, not blubbing like a lovesick teenager. Then it struck her that, actually, Toni really was little more than a teenager. “You … um … want to talk about it?”

  She felt she should put her arm around the girl, then saw a huge tear leave a trail of mascara down Toni’s cheek and decided against it. Having one jacket ruined in a day was quite enough. She reached for a box of tissues and handed her those instead.

  “It’s just that…” Toni said in a near whisper, “he really wants to get married … and I do too, but—”

  “But not to him,” Agatha cut in helpfully. “You’re not actually in love with him, are you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Toni.

  “Then you’re not,” Agatha proclaimed. “You would know if you were, and any marriage that does not start out with the newlyweds totally in love is doomed.”

  “I kind of knew you would say that.”

  “Then you know that I am right,” said Agatha. “I am always right.”

  “But I think he’s in love with me.”

  “Of course he is,” Agatha assured her. “Why wouldn’t he be? You are gorgeous. You are every young man’s dream. Pretty much every old man’s too. Not right now, though. Right now, you look frightful.” Then she smiled and added, “But even your frightful looks pretty damn good.”

  “I’d better sort myself out,” said Toni, blowing her nose with a honk so loud that it would have made even Wizz-Wazz proud.

  “You know where the bathroom is,” said Agatha. “Hurry up. We have a party to go to, and I could do with a drink.”

  “Ah…” said Toni, pausing at the living room door. “I spoke to Mrs Dinwiddy while you were getting ready, to find out what would be happening this afternoon. The only drink served at Mrs. Morrison’s homecoming party will be tea.”

  “What?” said Agatha. “What kind of a welcome home is that? Doesn’t she like a drink?”

  “A bit too much,” Toni replied, climbing the stairs. “Mrs. Morrison is coming home from a spell in a rather exclusive and expensive rehab clinic.”

  Agatha crossed the room, opened the doors of her cabinet and poured herself a gin and tonic.

  * * *

  As Toni drove her to Albert Morrison’s house, Agatha ran through the events of the morning in her head, up to the part where they had encountered Wizz-Wazz. That incident, she decided, needed to be parked way at the back of her mind. One day in the dim and distant future, she might be able to laugh about it. On the other hand, maybe not.

  “Something is bothering me about John Sayer,” she said. “He seemed very sure of himself. Quite cocky.”

  “I’ve read through his personnel file,” said Toni. “There was nothing much in it. It mentioned some public school that I’d never heard of, his degree from a minor university, then nothing until he started at Morrison’s about a year ago. He doesn’t earn a huge salary.”

  “That’s it,” said Agatha. “That’s the strange thing. He’s not paid a great deal, yet he clearly spends a fortune on his clothes. Where does he get the money?”

  The only other man she knew who had such expensive taste in clothes was Charles. Granted, his estate generated very little income, certainly not enough to maintain the house and his extravagant lifestyle, but Agatha had helped him to straighten out his finances by putting him in touch with the best broker in the City, the man who looked after her own investments. That had worked well enough to keep him in the black ever since, although he was never going to be rolling in cash. “Land rich and cash poor” was the phrase that popped into Agatha’s head. That would not, she pondered, ever be the case with young Mr. Sayer. He was not one of the elite, a member of the English upper class, and without the right family background he never would be, no matter how many years he spent trying to dress the part.

  How many years? That, she suddenly realised, was the other problem with Sayer.

  “So he went to university,” she recapped, “and started with Morrison’s a year ago.”

  “That’s right,” said Toni. “No other jobs on file.”

  “But he would have left university when he was around twenty-one,” said Agatha, “and started at Morrison’s when he was twenty-seven. Where the hell was he for those six years?”

  “Good point,” Toni agreed. “Something else that I found odd. Remember how flustered Mrs. Dinwiddy was yesterday evening? She desperately wanted us out before the security guard came round. It was almost as if she were frightened of him.”

  “Good point from you,” said Agatha. “Let’s try to get her on her own again. If we put her on the spot, maybe she’ll let something slip.”

  Toni turned left through two tall stone gateposts topped with giant stone pineapples.

  “Pineapples?” she said. “What’s that all about?”

  “A sign of wealth,” explained Agatha, recalling something Charles had once told her when they were tucking into a dessert of pineapple upside-down cake to round off a lavish dinner at the Savoy. (She had paid.) “When this house was built in the eighteenth century, only the super-rich could afford the expense of growing pineapples in hothouses or importing them from abroad. They would use one as a dinner table centrepiece. It wasn’t for eating, just a decoration—for showing off. They used it again and again until it started to rot.”

  They cruised past the stable block, home to the fearsome Wizz-Wazz, the driveway taking a far shorter route to the house than the winding path from the factory. Beyond a pair of majestic oak trees, the front of the house came into view, the yellow stone topped with a slate roof. There were three white-framed windows either side of the ornate front doorway. A matching set of windows identified the upper floor, and in the roof were a couple of triangular dormers. The old servants’ quarters, no doubt, thought Agatha, admiring the building. It was nowhere near as big as Charles’s rambling pile; large enough to impress, yet small enough for comfortable living.

  Toni parked alongside several other cars to the left of the house. As she and Agatha walked towards the heavy oak front door, it was opened by Angus Bream, who had clearly seen them arrive. He nodded a curt greeting and they stepped into a large reception hall. At one end was an ornate fireplace, although no fire was burning in the grate. A series of polished wooden doors led off the hall, and at the other end was a wide staircase, sweeping up to the left. Morrison’s staff, most of whom Agatha had never seen before, were standing around in groups of three or four, balancing a teacup on a saucer in one hand, the other plucking dainty morsels from serving trays that were being passed around by black-clad waitresses.

  They had arrived just in time. John Sayer, standing by the fireplace and now wearing a jacket that Agatha deemed a little too tight across the biceps, but still no tie, held aloft a small silver bell and gave it a tinkle. Conversation in the room subsided to a murmur and then died completely as Mr. Albert Morrison stepped forward. In the few days since they had last met, thought Agatha, Mr. Albert had managed to grow even more insipid. What hair he still had was a mousy brown colour and combed back in thinning strands over his gleaming white scalp. His stocky build was made to look positively rotund in the presence of Sayer, hovering at his shoulder, and the wiry Farley Dunster, who had stationed himself a little further back.

  Morrison removed his horn-rimmed spectacles, folded them carefully and tucked them into the breast pocket of his dark blue blazer.

  “Goo
d afternoon, everyone,” he said, “and welcome to our home. As you know, we have always regarded Morrison’s as a family business, and all of you are part of that family.”

  “I haven’t heard anyone sound so insincere,” Agatha whispered in Toni’s ear, “since that salesman sold you your crappy little car.”

  “Shh!!” A small man in front of them turned and hissed. Agatha curled her top lip at him and he quickly looked away.

  “That is why,” Morrison continued, “we have invited you all here once again to welcome home my lovely wife, Mrs. Aphrodite Morrison.” He waved an arm towards the staircase, and Agatha just had time to register that “once again” surely meant that this was not the first time Aphrodite had checked in to dry out before she turned to behold a vision on the stairs.

  Aphrodite was truly beautiful. She was tall and slim and posed with one hand on the banister and the other hanging elegantly by her side. Her slender arm was, thought Agatha, almost certainly weighed down by the size of the diamond on her finger, which was shooting light beams across the room. Less of a ring, more of a glitter ball. Agatha reached out her hand, put a finger on Toni’s chin and closed her mouth.

  With her long white sleeveless gown shimmering as only the finest silk can, Aphrodite made her way down the stairs, her family of employees applauding every step. The gown was gathered at the waist by a garland of myrtle leaves and rosebuds—the flowers of the Greek goddess Aphrodite, Agatha recalled from a Greek-themed fashion shoot when she was in PR what seemed like a lifetime ago. She marvelled at Aphrodite’s hair. It was golden blonde, held in high waves by a jewelled Alice band that stopped only a little short of tiara status, yet it still managed to cascade in ringlets down to her shoulders. Not all of that could be real, she decided. Extensions, surely. No one had that much hair.

  The crowd parted as Aphrodite crossed the floor to take her husband’s outstretched hand. She was at least twenty years younger than Albert, whom Agatha reckoned was probably around fifty. She smiled and nodded to people as she glided past. Smiling without a trace of a wrinkle on that perfect skin, Agatha noted. Then suddenly the smile vanished, Aphrodite’s eyes narrowed and her expression turned from gracious delight to absolute fury in the blink of an eye.

  “Where in hell’s name has yous put my Wizz-Wazz?” shrieked the goddess.

  “Darling, this is hardly the place for a donkey,” her husband calmly explained. “We can’t have her in the house.”

  “It’s my goddamned party and I wanna see my Wizz-Wazz!” Aphrodite howled in a voice that was somewhere between a police siren and a ruptured bagpipe.

  “Don’t worry, darling,” Morrison consoled his wife. “We will have Wizz-Wazz here in just a tick.”

  Agatha, who had sidled closer for a better view of proceedings, now observed another transformation as Albert Morrison turned to John Sayer and went from mild-mannered factory owner to sinister bully.

  “Dinwiddy is still at the factory,” he snapped. “Tell her to go to the stables and get Peter to bring the donkey up here.”

  He looked round, saw Agatha listening and fixed her with a venomous stare. Agatha backed away and grabbed Toni by the arm. Mrs. Morrison had fallen silent, eerily restored to beauty.

  “What sort of accent would you say she had?” Toni asked.

  “Sounded like rural Gloucester overlaid with Brooklyn slum and screech owl,” Agatha replied. “Come on. Drive me down to the stables. This could be our chance to catch Dinwiddy off guard.”

  Taking the short route to the stables down the main drive, Agatha and Toni were there in moments. A chill wind was beginning to blow as they left the car, and Agatha pulled the fun fur tighter as she walked round to the stable block entrance.

  “Morrison said Mrs. Dinwiddy was still at the factory,” she told Toni. “I’ll check here and you check the factory. Let’s see if we can find her.”

  But as she turned into the stable courtyard, she stopped short.

  “Toni!” she yelled. “Come back! I’ve found her…”

  Mrs. Dinwiddy lay on the cobbles. Blood was oozing from a vicious wound at the back of her head. Her mouth gaped open and her eyes stared sightlessly. Beside her stood Wizz-Wazz, silent and motionless.

  Toni appeared at Agatha’s side and took in the scene. Rushing past, she knelt beside Mrs. Dinwiddy and felt for a pulse.

  “We … we should call an ambulance,” said Agatha, fumbling for her phone, although she knew in her heart what her assistant was about to tell her.

  “Too late for that,” said Toni, “Mrs. Dinwiddy is dead.”

  Agatha walked over to where Wizz-Wazz stood gazing at the body, her huge dark eyes focused solely on the patch of cobbles where Mrs. Dinwiddy lay. Toni was already on her phone, talking to the police. Agatha laid her hand on the donkey’s back. The hair felt coarse and spiky, and the animal’s hide shivered under her touch. Wizz-Wazz was trembling, and now that Agatha was closer, she could hear a quiet low moaning emanating from deep within the donkey.

  “You poor girl,” she whispered gently. “You’re terrified, aren’t you? I think you know how this happened.”

  She slipped off the fun fur and draped it over Wizz-Wazz’s back to comfort her, tying the arms loosely around the donkey’s neck. What on earth am I doing? she thought. I love that coat. It’s far too good for a smelly old … But the sight of Wizz-Wazz staring at the corpse made her heart miss a beat. She stroked the creature’s nose, then suddenly wondered if Wizz-Wazz might also be injured. She looked down. To her horror, she saw that the donkey’s rear hooves were coated with blood, and a neat pattern of dark red splash marks covered her hind legs. It was glaringly obvious that this was not the donkey’s own blood.

  “No!” she gasped, taking a step back. “You couldn’t have…”

  * * *

  By the time the police arrived, a small crowd of Morrison’s employees had gathered. There was no sign of either Albert or Aphrodite, but the security guards, Bream and Dunster, had sensibly held everyone back from the stable yard, which, apart from Mrs. Dinwiddy’s body and the traumatised Wizz-Wazz, was completely empty. The donkey had not moved an inch. Agatha stood near the entrance to the cobbled yard, smoking a cigarette. John Sayer directed the first police officers and an ambulance crew to the body.

  Agatha could see Toni sitting in her car, talking on her phone. The boyfriend again, no doubt. She wondered what he looked like. He must be handsome. Toni would surely never land herself with anyone who wasn’t at least good-looking. Agatha herself never had. Some of her past lovers had been wealthy, some not so wealthy—Charles certainly fell into that category—but none had been ugly. She would never want to be seen on the arm of a man whom other women did not find attractive. That was the whole point of men. You could show them off like new shoes or a suntan in January when everyone else was looking pale and dreary.

  Men could, she conceded, also be good company from time to time. Charles was definitely good company. She wondered where he was, what he was doing. Not standing about in a draughty stable yard catching a chill, that was for sure. Oh, what am I doing here? she thought. How did I get myself into this mess? What am I doing blundering about in a boring battery plant with a manic donkey and now a dead secretary?

  Just then another couple of police cars rolled up. Bill Wong emerged from the first one and walked over to Agatha.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “That tie is shocking,” said Agatha, pointing at the offending item around Bill’s neck. “Doesn’t go with your suit. Doesn’t go with your colouring. Not in your swatch at all.”

  “But … but Alice bought it for me.”

  “Don’t let her dress you, Bill. You need a girl who wants to undress you, not the other way round.”

  “Let’s not go there, Agatha,” sighed Bill. “Now, can you fill me in on what’s happened here?”

  Agatha explained about the party, Aphrodite, Wizz-Wazz and the run-in she and Toni had previously had with the donkey. As she spoke, the la
nky figure of Chief Inspector Wilkes appeared, along with a shorter man she recognised as the pathologist, Dr Charles Bunbury. While Bunbury proceeded to examine the body, Wilkes rounded on Agatha.

  “A real body this time,” he grunted. “Not just a leg. Not just a fake leg. A real body. You must be very pleased with yourself, Mrs. Raisin.”

  “Pleased?” said Agatha. “How could you possibly think anyone could be pleased to find … that?”

  “I understand you were first on the scene of the accident,” said Wilkes. “I hope you didn’t—”

  “It’s a bit premature to write this off as an accident, isn’t it?” Agatha interrupted him.

  “Preliminary reports from my officers indicate precisely that,” said Wilkes, “and I expect the coroner will confirm it. What I don’t need is a bumbling amateur like yourself sticking her nose in where it’s not wanted.”

  “Bumbling?” cried Agatha. “I think, Inspector, that my record from previous investigations shows—”

  “You will leave any investigating that is required to my officers!” barked Wilkes. “And it’s Chief Inspector!”

  “Really?” said Agatha. “And what do you have to do to become a chief inspector nowadays? Send off half a dozen bottle tops and supply a snappy slogan about crime prevention?”

  “Make sure you get a complete statement from this witness, Sergeant,” Wilkes ordered, turning on his heel to join Dr. Bunbury by the body of Mrs. Dinwiddy.

  “Agatha,” said Bill once Wilkes was far enough away. “You can’t speak to him like that. He is my boss.”

  “Poor you,” said Agatha, taking a couple of steps closer to where Dr. Bunbury was kneeling beside the body. “Quiet now. I want to hear what the pathologist has to say.”

  “There doesn’t appear to be much doubt about the cause of death,” Bunbury pronounced, rising to his feet and stripping off a pair of bloodied latex gloves. “Blunt-force trauma to the back of the head, although I will be able to confirm that after the post-mortem. And it looks like you already have the culprit in custody. The shape of the wound is consistent with the victim having been kicked by a hoof. This is the likely killer,” he added, nodding towards Wizz-Wazz. “Caught red-handed, or rather, red-hoofed.”