Then he had taken a walking tour of France. Agatha stifled a yawn as her eyes skittered over descriptions of chateaux and vineyards. She was about to turn the page, when Charles put a restraining hand on hers. “Back to that page,” he said. “At the bottom.”
She turned the page and then looked at Charles impatiently. “What?”
“James was interested in this business of mind over matter. Miracles do happen to cancer victims. He might have gone back there,” said Charles. “He was in the valley of the shadow of death. A closed order. That might explain why nobody can find him.”
But Agatha did not want to believe it. Somehow a James closer to God seemed to her to mean a James farther away from one Agatha Raisin. “Read on,” she said. “There must be something else.” But the diary finally finished with a description of a tour of Turkey which ended in mid-sentence.
“Nothing there,” said Agatha, closing the book with a sigh.
“I can’t help thinking about that monastery,” said Charles. “Want to check it out?”
“He doesn’t say where it is.”
“Here. Give me that diary again.”
Charles flipped back through the pages. “Here we are. I had just left Agde and had decided to head south towards the Spanish frontier.”
“Where’s Agde?”
“South of France, on the Provence side.”
“Too long a shot,” said Agatha. “Besides, we’ve got this meeting on Saturday.”
Charles looked at her curiously. “Don’t you want to find James?”
“Of course I do.” But Agatha did not want to think for a moment that he was in a monastery. “Maybe after the meeting,” she said. “But don’t tell Bill about your idea. A bunch of British flatfeet descending on the south of France might alert him.”
“They’d just send the French police to check the place out.”
“Leave it at the moment, Charles. I’ll think about it after Saturday.”
¦
Charles went home for a couple of nights, leaving Agatha alone with her thoughts. She made notes about everyone they had interviewed, and found she could not build up a clear picture of the murderer. She found she was pinning her hopes on Saturday’s meeting too much and tried to depress them. What if the end result was pages and pages of things like, “Didn’t see anything. Watched telly. Went to bed.” And always at the back of her mind, Charles’s suggestion that James just might be at that monastery nagged at the back of her mind. James in a monastery would be as lost to her as if he were dead. On the other hand, were he there, he could surely tell them who had attacked him. She decided it was time to take her appearance in hand while she waited and had her hair cut and styled at the hairdresser’s and had a facial at the beautician’s and a leg wax. Then she took a trip into Oxford and bought some new clothes. It was a sunny day and shopping was enjoyable.
She found herself wishing the case were solved. She was beginning to think that a life without James might be quite pleasant. She could begin to feel good about herself, be her own woman again.
By the time Charles arrived early on Saturday morning, Agatha was beginning to feel she had enjoyed a short holiday.
As she walked to the village hall with Charles, she noticed a crowd of people streaming in the same direction. “There’s going to be masses of odd reports,” warned Charles. “A lot of people might start imagining things. Or daft things like, “My mother’s picture fell off the wall, so I knew something bad had happened,” that kind of thing.”
“Let’s hope there’s some nugget among the lot,” said Agatha, “because if there isn’t, I can’t think where we would try next.”
There was an air of excitement in the hall as Agatha and Charles mounted to the stage. Agatha noticed the local press were there.
She checked the microphone and then began to speak. “This unsolved murder is affecting the tranquillity of our village,” she said. “Now, you will have found on each chair a sheet of paper. I want you all to think back to the night Melissa Sheppard was murdered and to the day James Lacey was attacked. I want you to write down anything out of the way you might have seen. You may have not told the police because at the time it seemed silly or insignificant. I will now move to that table by the door. When you have finished, give me what you have written. Please, do try very hard. I find it strange that no one saw anything at all.”
Agatha and Charles descended from the platform. “Did you supply them with pens?” asked Charles. “Or time will be taken up as everyone tries to borrow a pen from everyone else.”
“Rats! I forgot,” said Agatha.
“I’ll nip along to the village store and get some.”
Charles was soon back with boxes of biros, which he began to pass around. Some people were writing busily, some were chewing the ends of their pens and staring at the ceiling, and some were casting covert glances at their neighbours’ papers, like children at an exam.
At last, one by one, they began to leave, placing their papers in front of Agatha. With a sinking heart, she noticed most of the first ones had simply been scrawled with, “Didn’t see anything.”
Agatha stood up and shouted to the remainder, “Even if you
At last, after an hour, everyone had left. Agatha and Charles; and Mrs. Bloxby stacked away the chairs. “Better get this lot home,” said Agatha, “and pray there’s something.”
¦
When they reached Agatha’s cottage, Charles said, “Let’s have a drink and something to eat. It’s going to be a long day.”
Agatha made a fry-up of sausage, eggs, bacon and chips, Charles’s favourite food.
“Now,” she said impatiently, “let’s get to work.”
They moved through to the sitting-room. Agatha divided the papers into two piles.
They began to read. “Here’s an unsigned one,” said Charles. “It says, ‘You murdering bitch, you did it yourself.’”
“Put it to one side,” said Agatha. “I wonder who could have written that? There were a few strange faces there.”
“And children. Might have been a nasty child.”
Agatha ploughed through some quite long descriptions of what people had been doing on the night of Melissa’s death. They seemed to think they had to furnish an alibi. “Listen to this one,” said Agatha. “It’s from Mrs. Perry, who lives out on the Ancombe Road. “I made ham and chips for me and Dad at six o’clock and then we went to the Red Lion for a drink. Dad had half a pint and I had a shandy. Then we walked home. I let the cat out. We switched on the telly. Rotten film where people took their clothes off and did you-know-what. Me and Dad could hardly bear to watch. Then we went to bed after I had got our hot-water bottles ready. Hoping this finds you as it leaves me. Amy Perry.” What good’s all that supposed to do?”
“Plough on,” murmured Charles. “So far all I’ve got apart from the bitch letter are alibis and superstitious warnings. “The house grew suddenly cold,” that sort of thing. “The fur on my cat’s back rose.””
“Here’s another irritating one,” remarked Agatha. “It’s from Mrs. Pamela Green. Widow. Tall, rangy, acidulous. Look at the italic handwriting! Pure eighteenth-century. “I could not sleep on the Night of Mrs. Sheppard’s Unfortunate death. It is one of the great Disadvantages of age. As is my wont, I put the leash on Queenie” – that’s her dog, nasty, vicious little bunch of hair – “and went out. The roads were deserted, except for a Child. I said to her, Why aren’t you home in bed? And she said cheekily I ought to mind my own Business. I had let Queenie off the leash and she had disappeared into one of the gardens. I went to Fetch her, and when I returned, the Child had gone. I would like to say to you, Mrs. Raisin, that at your age, it would become You better to confine yourself to Charitable Pursuits and leave Police Matters to the police.” Horrible cow.”
“I wonder who the child was,” said Charles. “Are there any children in this village of the geriatric and
