needs done,” she called. “I can put you in touch with a thatcher. You might want to wait and see if he comes back. It’s an expensive job.”
She followed Agatha in. “I’ll draw the curtains back and open the windows.”
Soon sunlight was flooding the cottage. Mrs. Bloxby looked round. There was a thin layer of dust on the furniture and the carpet was still marked with blood-stains. “Perhaps if you start with his papers,” she said, “I’ll begin with the cleaning.”
Agatha went to the old roll-top desk in the corner where James kept his accounts and letters. The police had taken everything away to examine and the plastic bag holding all the papers they had returned lay on top of the desk. The fact that Agatha had taken some sort of action was beginning to send a little surge of energy through her.
Behind her, she heard the reassuring clatter of cleaning implements as Mrs. Bloxby fetched what she needed from the kitchen and got to work.
Agatha began going through piles of bills to make sure they had all been paid. Then she began on the little pile of mail which had been lying on the doormat when she walked in. New bills. Electricity, gas, water. Junk mail. One letter addressed in large looped handwriting addressed to James. She took up James’s silver letter opener and slit open the envelope.
It was dated the Friday of the previous week. “Dear James,” she read. “We really must sit down and talk. I hope you’re back by now. I’m sorry I told Agatha about your illness, but how could I possibly guess you had not told her yourself? You must come and see me. We have been intimate together, you’ve made love to me, you can’t just walk away and not see me again. Do please ring me, darling, or come round. Your Melissa.”
Agatha’s hands shook as she read the letter. A great wave of fury swept through her. She had almost been sanctifying James since his disappearance, crediting him with affections and little tendernesses that he had never demonstrated, blaming herself bitterly for everything. Despite what she had previously said, she had come to the conclusion that James had never been unfaithful to her. Such a straight, upright man would not. But now here it was. Proof. She forgot about his cancer. She only thought that he had cheated her. By God, she had to find him and tell James Lacey exactly what she thought of him. He could even be lying about having cancer! The police had checked every hospital in Britain without finding a sign of him.
“Everything all right?” called Mrs. Bloxby. “Yes, sure,” muttered Agatha. “Just some bills to pay.”
“You do those and I’ll get on with this.” Mrs. Bloxby thought it would be better if she scrubbed out the blood-stains herself.
Agatha took out James’s cheque-book. No reason to pay the damn bills herself. But of course she could not sign one of his cheques. They didn’t have a joint account. Bastard. She should let his gas, water, and electricity get cut off.
She went to her cottage and collected her own cheque-book and returned. “Don’t you think James would need money?” she called over her shoulder. “I mean, the police must have been watching to see if he cashed any cheques or used one of his credit cards.”
“Mmm,” was the only reply she got. Mrs. Bloxby scrubbed busily, thinking sadly that if James did not need money, then James was dead.
Agatha finished signing cheques and joined Mrs. Bloxby in cleaning and dusting.
Then they went back to Agatha’s cottage for a coffee. “Have you seen anything of Melissa lately?” asked Mrs. Bloxby.
Agatha flushed, well aware of that crumpled letter in her handbag. “No, and I don’t want to.”
“Perhaps she is feeling very guilty. She did not attend the ladies’ society meeting last night. And she’s usually always there. No one has seen her for over a week. Her car is still outside.”
“Why don’t you phone her?”
“I tried, but there was no reply.”
I’ll go and see her the minute I’ve got rid of you, thought Agatha, engulfed by a wave of anger.
The phone rang. Agatha looked startled and then remembered she had plugged it back in before they had left to clean James’s cottage as a sort of gesture to belonging to the world again.
“You answer it. I’ll be off,” said the vicar’s wife.
As Mrs. Bloxby waved good-bye, Agatha picked up the phone. “Hello, Aggie,” said Charles’s voice. “How are things? I’ve been trying to get you.”
“I’m all right,” said Agatha. “Still miserable and shocked, as a matter of fact.”
“No news?”
“None.” Agatha thought about that letter and the desire to tell someone overcame her. Sometimes she found Mrs. Bloxby almost
“Well, just one thing,” she said. “I went along to James’s cottage to clean up and found a letter from Melissa on the doormat. It was delivered last week. They had been having an affair.”
“I thought you’d accepted that.”
“No, I had not!” howled Agatha.
“Careful. You’ll break my ear-drum. You said – ”
“I know what I said. But James assured me they had not been sleeping together and I believed him. More fool me. I’m going to find him.”
“That’s more like the Agatha I know. I’m bored. I’ll be over in half an hour or so.”
“But – ” Agatha had been about to put him off because she was dying to confront Melissa, but he had rung off. May as well wait for him.
¦
When Charles arrived, he found the cottage door open and walked in. Agatha was in the back garden, playing with her cats.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said, getting to her feet and brushing grass from her skirt.
“You don’t look too bad,” said Charles, surveying her critically. “I was afraid you might have gone to pieces. So where do we start? With James’s family?”
Agatha shuddered. “I’ve had enough of James’s family, what with his aunts and sister implying that if he hadn’t married me he would be all right.”
“So what about Melissa?”
“So what about her?” demanded Agatha truculently.
“I think you should swallow your pride and we’ll go and see her. I mean, he did tell her he had cancer and didn’t tell you. He may have told her other things.”
“I was going to wait until your visit was over and then go round there and give her a piece of my mind.”
“Won’t do. You’d never get anything out of her that way. I mean, do you want to find James or not?”
“I want to find him and ask for a divorce.”
“All right, then. Let’s go.”
“I hate this.”
“Better than not knowing. Come on, Aggie. Let’s get it over with.”
Agatha walked with him through the village, aware of twitching curtains at windows and curious stares. I am the victim, not James, she told the watchers silently. I have been betrayed and abandoned. Then she thought of the cancerous tumour in James’s brain and groaned inwardly.
Melissa’s cottage, like Agatha’s, was thatched. But where Agatha did not bother much about the little garden at the front of her house, Melissa’s was a riot of roses, pink and yellow and red, tumbling over a white-painted fence. The white-painted door had a brass knocker. Agatha noticed the knocker was dull. That’s odd, she thought. Melissa liked to pride herself of being a first-class housewife.
She seized the knocker and rapped loudly. As they waited, it seemed as if the whole village waited. It was very quiet. No cars drove along the road, no dogs barked, no tractors buzzed around the fields above.
Charles leaned round her and twisted the doorknob and gave the door a tentative push. It swung open.
“Agatha,” whispered Charles. “I don’t like that smell.”
“Drains?” suggested Agatha, although her face had turned white as she sniffed a sweet, rotting smell.
“I really think we should stop where we are and phone the police,” said Charles.
But a new burst of rage against Melissa engulfed Agatha. “Let’s see. She probably went away and left some
