The Love from Hell

“All possible. But we can’t go to Bill with mere speculation. I can see both Sheppard and Dewey doing it, but I really can’t think of a motive. They were both clear of her.”

“Who knows? Maybe Melissa paid a visit to Dewey’s shop and spat on his favourite doll.”

“Which brings us back to where James came into it.”

Charles groaned. “Okay, let’s see if we can find out anything about Melissa and Sheppard when they were married that he hasn’t told us. I mean, it took nearly a year for the divorce to come through, so he didn’t start divorce proceedings immediately after the honeymoon.”

“It’s a pity we didn’t get the number in Pliny Road. I don’t know whereabouts in Jericho it is. I’ll pull into the lay-by and have a look at the map. You’ll find a street map of Oxford in the glove compartment. Jericho’s that residential area between the Woodstock Road, Saint Giles’ and the canal.”

“I know,” said Charles as Agatha drew the car to a stop. They spread out the map. “Let’s see the index,” said Charles. “Ah, here we are: Pliny Road, off Walton Street, just there.”

“Doesn’t look very long,” said Agatha. “We’ll just knock on doors.”

“While we’re in Oxford,” said Charles, “do you think there’s any point in asking questions at the Randolph? Maybe one of the staff saw something.”

Agatha shook her head. “I’ve a feeling the police will have covered that thoroughly.”

“Still…let’s see how we get on in Jericho first.”

“I hope the traffic’s not too bad,” said Agatha. “They’ve made Cornmarket a shopping precinct and for a while it’s been chaos.”

“Seems clear enough,” said Charles as they drove along me Woodstock Road. He studied the map again. “Turn next right, Aggie.”

“I thought for a while you’d given up calling me Aggie. I wish you wouldn’t. Every time you call me Aggie, I feel as if I ought to be standing at the doorway of a terraced house in a mining area in some northern town with my hair in rollers, wearing a chenille dressing-gown and fluffy slippers, and with a cigarette stuck in my mouth.”

“Sounds like you.”

“I’m driving or I’d hit you. Where now?”

“Turn right on Walton Street and next left.”

“It’s residents’ parking only.”

“So risk it.”

Agatha parked in Pliny Road, and they got out. Tall Victorian houses lined either side of the road. “Where should we start?” she asked.

“Let’s try the middle, although sod’s law probably has it that they lived at the end. You take the left side and I’ll take the right.”

After ringing several doorbells, Agatha began to wonder if she was going to have any success. Perhaps Oxford was like London and people didn’t know their neighbours.

Then she heard a shout from across the road and turned round to find Charles waving to her. He came to meet her. “A woman in that house,” he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder, “remembers them, because she sometimes chatted to Melissa at the corner shop. They lived at number fifteen.”

Number 15 had a poster for the Green Party in the window. Agatha rang the bell. A thin woman with an arrogant face answered the door. She was wearing a long red dress of Indian cotton and vinyl sandals. She was very tall. “What is it?” she demanded. A waft of incense floated out of the house.

“I am Agatha Raisin,” said Agatha. “I am anxious to find out what I can about the Sheppards. Did you buy the house from them?”

“I don’t like reporters. If you ask me, the capitalist press is the ruin of this country.”

“I am not a reporter,” said Agatha. “You see…”

Charles moved forward and smiled pleasantly. “I am Sir Charles Fraith. Haven’t we met before?”

The change in her was almost ludicrous. “I d-don’t think…Oh, do come in, Sir Charles.”

“How kind,” murmured Charles. Agatha followed him, muttering, “Snobby cow,” under her breath.

“I’m Felicity Banks-James,” their new hostess trilled over her shoulder as she led them down to the basement and into a kitchen which looked as if it had been taken straight from one of those photos in glossy magazines urging you to try ‘a French provincial kitchen look.’ Bunches of dusty herbs hung from the ceiling. A brace of pheasant hung from a hook near the cooker, which Agatha gleefully recognized as being stuffed, the kind the taxidermist in Ebrington sold to yuppies. Huge copper pans lined one dresser, looking as if they had never been used. An enormous scrubbed table surrounded by plain wooden chairs dominated the centre of the room. On another dresser, blue-and-white plates stood in rows, also looking as if they had never been used, to judge from the film of dust covering them. A pile of Marks & Spencer’s frozen dinners was stacked on a corner of the table. “Just got back from shopping,” she said, opening a giant fridge and hiding the evidence of un-chic microwave cooking. “Coffee?”

“That would be nice,” said Charles, beaming at her.

“It’s decaf. I do think caffeine is so…What are you doing?”

“Sorry,” mumbled Agatha, stuffing her packet of cigarettes back into her handbag.

“Decaf will be all right,” said Charles quickly. “What a charming house you do have. You did buy it from the Sheppards?”

“Yes, he wanted to sell me the furnishings as well. Oh, my dear, ghastly three-piece suites, horrible paintings, the kind Boots used to sell, I don’t know if they still do. You know, that woman with the green face and waves on the shore and little kiddies and puppies. They even had a fuzzy pink toilet tidy in the bathroom. Ugh. “Get it all out before I faint,” that’s what I told him. Then I had to rip up all their nasty fitted carpets. And then I found in a suitcase in the basement…Well, you’ll never believe it.”

“A body?” asked Agatha sourly.

She ignored her and said to Charles. “It was a fox coat!”

“What horror!” said Charles, accepting a green mug of coffee.

“Exactly. To think of all the effort I and my friends have gone to, to sabotage the hunt. I phoned up Sheppard. He’s a shopkeeper, gents’ outfitting, how quaint. She, that woman who was killed, Melissa, it was she who came to collect it.”

“Mrs. Banks-James – ” began Charles.

“Oh, do call me Felicity, Sir Charles.”

“Just Charles will do. Felicity, what did you make of her?”

Agatha and Charles had seated themselves at either side of the table. Felicity sat down beside Charles and went on as if Agatha weren’t there.

“Came as a shock, actually.”

“In what way?”

Agatha stood up abruptly. “Do you mind if I go out into your backyard there and have a smoke?”

“Be my guest,” said Felicity, not taking her eyes off Charles.

Agatha stumped off. Felicity waited until the door had closed and murmured, “What a grumpy woman, if you don’t mind my saying so, Charles. Not exactly one of us.”

Charles bit back the remark he was about to make, which was, “What do you mean, one of us, you pretentious raddled bitch?”

Instead he said mildly, “You were saying you were surprised about Melissa.”

“Well, my dear, after all that ghastly furnishing, she was not what I expected at all. She was very pleasant-looking and very smartly dressed. After introducing herself, she said, ‘I’ve come to rid you of that horrible coat.’ You could have knocked me down with a feather. She said he had bought it for her and she couldn’t bear to wear it without crying when she thought of all those dead little foxes. We had a long chat. She said she was so glad to be free of him. And then she began to cry and she said it had been a nightmare. After she had pulled herself together, I said I was surprised that such a sensitive person – I am very sensitive myself, some people say I am psychic – would have such furnishings, and she said he had chosen it all himself. She said he beat her. I told her to take him to court, but she said now that she was free, she just wanted peace and quiet. She promised to come out with the hunt saboteurs and left me a phone number, but when I tried it, it didn’t exist. She was so upset, she must have made a mistake. So I phoned Sheppard and asked him if