retired?”
“A lot down at the council houses. Press on.”
After some hours, Agatha groaned, “Well, what a waste of time.”
“Let’s swap,” said Charles. “You take my bundle. I’ll take yours. We may see something the other has missed.”
They both began to read again.
At last Agatha said wearily, “What a waste of space!”
“We’ve got that child to look for. Maybe we should call on Mrs. Green tomorrow and get a description.”
“Did I tell you she wears glasses like the end of milk bottles?” said Agatha. “No? Well, she does. We’ll never get anywhere.”
“Let’s go over them all again in the morning,” said Charles, stifling a yawn.
¦
After a late meal, Agatha went up to bed and Charles went off to the spare bedroom.
Agatha found sleep would not come. Jumbled thoughts about the murder and all the people they had questioned drifted in and out of her brain. At last she fell asleep and plunged down into a dream where she was dressed in white, on her wedding day, and standing at the altar of Carsely Church. She could not make out the features of the man she was marrying. Beside her stood Mrs. Bloxby as maid of honour. “You shouldn’t be doing this,” she whispered in Agatha’s dream. “You were unhappy with James and now you’ll be unhappy with him. Remember what happened to poor Mrs. Allan. People who have escaped from one unhappy marriage go out and do the same thing again, choose the same type.”
“Shut up,” mumbled Agatha in her sleep. “No one’s going to stop me getting married. I don’t want to be alone.” She was conscious of her husband-to-be turning and walking away from her down the aisle. She tried to turn and call to him, to stop him, but she could not form the words. She must try to call to him. She must call him back. She must get married.
She awoke to find Charles shaking her. “What’s up?” she cried.
“You were having one hell of a nightmare, groaning and crying.”
“Oh, that,” said Agatha, blinking in the light. “Such a silly dream. I dreamt I was getting married and Mrs. Bloxby was warning me it would all turn out like my marriage to James. She said, like Mrs. Allan, people always went and married the same type of person when they married again.”
Charles sat down on the bed. “Wait a minute. Let’s think about this.”
“It was only a stupid dream.”
“But Mrs. Bloxby said that in the case of Mrs. Allan, she had married the same type of person, and that people do.”
Agatha stared at him. “Do you mean that in some way Megan Sheppard might be like Melissa?”
“Could be. Remember James was trying to find out about
“Pass me my dressing-gown,” said Agatha, swinging her legs out of bed. “Those papers downstairs.”
“What about them?”
“Mrs. Green said she met a child. A child! With Megan’s girlish appearance and Mrs. Green’s bad eyesight, she could have met Megan!”
“Bit far-fetched, but I’m game to try anything.”
They went downstairs and began to look through the papers again. “Here’s Mrs. Green’s paper. Is there anything else about a child?”
They settled down to go through the papers again. “Nothing,” said Charles at last.
“Let’s see Mrs. Green in the morning.”
? The Love from Hell ?
10
BUT in the morning, both Agatha and Charles were beginning to think that they had leaped at the idea of the child’s being Megan, of somehow Melissa and Megan having the same personalities.
“Might as well have a go anyway,” said Charles. “We’re at a dead end otherwise and all that church-hall business will have been a waste of time.”
Agatha and Charles walked out to Mrs. Green’s cottage, which lay up the hill on the road leading out of the village. It was a mellow day with misty golden sunlight flooding the countryside. “If we don’t get anything out of this,” said Agatha suddenly, “I’m going to forget about the whole thing.” She waved an arm to encompass the sunny village. “Ever since James left, I’ve been wandering around in darkness. I want to start living again.”
“Without James?”
“Yes, without James. Even if by some miracle I found him, even if he wanted to come back to me, it wouldn’t work. I kept expecting him to change and he kept expecting me to change, and neither of us could.”
“You haven’t been smoking. That’s a start.”
“But how long does it take for the craving to go away?”
“You could stop carrying cigarettes in your handbag.”
“Works for me. As long as I’ve got them with me, I feel the strength to keep on resisting them.”
“If you say so,” said Charles. “This the cottage?”
“Yes. Here goes.”
Mrs. Green answered the door and looked on Agatha Raisin with disfavour. “Oh, it’s you.”
“I found what you wrote in your report very interesting,” said Agatha, giving her that crocodile smile one gives people one doesn’t like. “May we come in?”
“No.”
“You said on the night Melissa was murdered you saw a child,” said Charles. “Can you describe this child?”
Mrs. Green was a snob and her face softened at the sound of Charles’s upper-class voice. “It was dark, Sir Charles, and…Won’t you come in?”
“Thank you.” Charles stepped past her into the cottage and she promptly shut the door in Agatha’s face.
Face flaming, Agatha opened the door and followed them into the cottage parlour, which was a dark room in which framed photographs covered every surface. The darkness of the room was caused by the leaves of a large wisteria growing outside the win –: dow and by the leaves of a large cheese plant just inside the window. Mrs. Green’s autocratic face swam in the gloom.
“I would say she was in her early teens,” she said. “She was chewing gum, a disgusting habit, and had one of those little rucksacks on her back that young people affect these days instead of carrying a handbag.”
“Colour of hair?” asked Charles.
“I couldn’t really tell.”
“What was she wearing?” asked Agatha.
“Shorts with a bib top and these ugly boots they all wear these days.”
“Did you tell the police?” asked Charles.
“Of course not. They are looking for a murderer, not a child. And if I may say so, you would be better off leaving the whole thing to the police. What do we pay taxes for? I suppose such nosiness is understandable in the case of a person like Mrs. Raisin, but you, Sir Charles, should know better.”
“You forget,” said Agatha icily, “that my husband is missing.”
“Poor Mr. Lacey. I am not surprised. According to the people of this village, you led him a dog’s life.”
Agatha, who had taken a seat on a sofa, rose to her feet. “You are a nasty, acidulous old bat and I hope you rot in hell.” She stormed out.
Charles rose as well. “Just one thing,” he said to Mrs. Green, who was gasping and goggling. “What was this child’s hair like? I mean, long, short, pigtails?”
She looked up at him through her thick glasses. “It was in little clumps at either side and tied with ribbons. Now, I must say, Sir Charles, I do not know what you see in that woman. I don’t – ”
Charles simply walked out. Agatha was standing outside, lighting a cigarette. He plucked it out of her hand
