“Why? Are you playing at detectives?”, “We’re not playing at anything,” said Agatha sharply. “I am still a suspect, as is my husband. I want to know if there was anyone in Melissa’s past life who would want to harm her.”
Mr. Blacklock suddenly bellowed, “Josie!”
A skeletal girl appeared. She was wearing a purple spangled top over a long black skirt and huge boots.
“Where’s Colin Jaeger?”
“Down the pub,” said Josie laconically.
“Right. Will you take Mrs. Raisin here and Sir Charles Fraith down to the Ferret and Firkin and tell Colin he’s to fill them in on the background of the Sheppard murder.”
“Okey-dokey.”
Agatha and Charles followed the thin figure of Josie out and down the stairs. Out in the street, Agatha said to Josie, “You should eat more.”
Josie flicked back her lank hair and stared insolently at Agatha’s stocky figure. “You should eat less, Granny.”
“You insolent little pig,” snarled Agatha. “Why, I’d like to stuff your skinny, undernourished form down the nearest drain.”
“Ladies, ladies,” pleaded Charles. “It’s too hot for a row. Here is the pub. Josie, fetch this Colin and then you can go back to work.”
Josie muttered something under her breath but she thrust open the door of the pub and let it swing back in Agatha’s face.
“You asked for it, Aggie. Calm down. You should know better than to comment on someone’s personal appearance.” Charles opened the door for her.
Josie was talking to an untidy young man who was standing I at the bar holding a tankard of beer. She jerked a thumb in their direction and then walked away, brushing rudely past them.
“Colin Jaeger?” asked Agatha. He nodded. “I’m Agatha Raisin and this is Sir Charles Fraith. Did that drippy child tell you we need background on Melissa Sheppard?”
“Something like that.”
“So can we sit down at, say, that table over there, or have you got notes back at the office?”
Despite the heat, he was wearing a shabby tweed jacket. He pulled a notebook out of one pocket. “Got most of it here.”
Charles bought Agatha a gin and tonic and himself a whisky and they joined Colin at a table. He flicked through his notebook. “Look at that,” he said. “Perfect shorthand. ‘You need shorthand,’ says the editor. And what happens? Well, these days, everyone’s got a dinky little tape recorder. Still, must admit it’s a good way of keeping a lot of information.”
“So what have you got on Melissa?” asked Agatha eagerly. “Is there a Mr. Sheppard?”
“Easy, now. You paying me for this?”
“Paying your editor,” lied Charles quickly, seeing that Agatha was preparing to give him a lecture. “So you’d better get on with it.”
Colin sighed. “Where are we? Pages and pages of school shooting. Ah, here we are. Background. Married Luke Sheppard in 1992. Divorced a year later, amicably.”
“And did you talk to this Mr. Sheppard?” asked Charles.
“I was about to when the shooting started.”
“Address?”
“Parson’s Terrace, number fourteen, Blockley.”
Charles made a note. “Anything else?”
“When she married Luke Sheppard, she was a Mrs. Dewey.”
“Blimey. Two of them. What of Mr. Dewey?”
“Lives in Worcester. Turnpike Lane, number five.”
“And how long was she married to him?”
“Three years. Let me see, 1988 to 1991.”
“Are there any other husbands?” asked Agatha.
“None that I got around to finding.”
“Got anything else?”
“All the stuff on you, Mrs. Raisin, and your…er…unhappy marriage.”
“You mean, on Melissa?”
“No.”
“My marriage was not unhappy,” said Agatha through gritted teeth.
“Have it your way, but that ain’t what the neighbours say. Raised voices, flying plates, all that stuff.”
“Can we get back to Melissa?” said Charles. Agatha looked about to burst with rage.
“There’s not much to get back to. I say, you pair might at least offer me a drink.”
“First tell us about Melissa,” said Charles.
“There isn’t much more to tell. That’s about as far as I’d got. Got as far as previous husbands and addresses and got called off the story.”
“Come along, Agatha,” said Charles, pulling her to her feet. “Better get going.”
“What about my drink?” demanded the reporter.
“No time,” said Charles, urging Agatha out of the pub.
“You are cheap, Charles,” said Agatha. “I didn’t like the little ferret, but you could have at least bought him a drink.”
“Maybe next time,” said Charles vaguely. “Blockley first. That’s very near Carsely. He could have nipped over there and bashed her, after bashing James first in a fit of jealous rage.”
¦
James Lacey lay in a narrow white bed in the Benedictine monastery of Saint Anselm in the French Pyrenees, drifting in and out of sleep. He had arrived the day before, suffering from heat exhaustion. He knew from his previous visit that it was a closed order. Before, he had been allowed a cold drink of water and a rest in the cloisters before continuing on a walking tour. This time, to his request to join the order, he had been told he was obviously a sick man. He should rest and recover and then they would see.
After leaving Tubby and Harriet, he had slowly made his way south, resting in fields, eating little, always stumbling on, driven by worry and guilt, and fear of the monster he felt was growing in his brain.
He thought briefly of Agatha, but closed his eyes again and willed himself to sleep.
? The Love from Hell ?
4
Blockley, though now a village, was once a thriving mill-town. The mills are now residences, and property prices, sky-high. The village is dominated by a square-towered church, and by Georgian terraces of mellow Cotswold stone. The long straggling main street used to be full of little shops, but only the many-paned shop windows, lovingly preserved, remain to show where they once stood.
It is one of the more picturesque of the Cotswold villages, but, because of an absence of craft shops, thatched cottages, and a museum, is mostly free from the tourists and tour buses which crowd other, more popular, places such as Bourton-on-the Water, Stow-on-the-Wold, and Chipping Campden.
Charles and Agatha drove down into the village from the A-44, “Poor Blockley, it must have the worst roads of anywhere around here,” said Charles.
“Why is that?” asked Agatha idly. She was experiencing a rare peace, because at last she was doing something, and did not want her mood shattered by dwelling on thoughts of James’s infidelity.
“The trucks grind through it on their way to Northwick Business Park,” said Charles. “They chew up the two main roads down into the village and leave big pot-holes, and then all that happens is two men fill the holes up with tarry stones, which soon sink back into pot-holes under the weight of the trucks.”
“I think they need a big-wig of some kind, a member of Parliament, Someone like that, to complain. Where’s
