“There’s a pub called The Grapes in Evesham High Street. Know it?”
“Yes, but no one much goes there.”
“I know,” said Agatha. “It’s a good place for a quiet chat. I’ll see you there at, say, six o’clock.”
“Right you are,” said Phyllis, those large eyes alight with a sort of ferocious vanity.
¦
John Armitage was heading up the stairs of his cottage when he heard a car drive up to his neighbour’s cottage. Once more he looked out of the landing window. Yes, it was that Raisin female, all right. Then he stared. For Agatha Raisin jerked the blond wig off her head and threw it on the car seat and then took off her glasses. Had she been in disguise? Or did she really think, perhaps, that she looked younger in that dreadful wig? A pair of good legs emerged from the driving seat as she opened the car door. The sun shone down on her glossy brown hair cut in a fashionable style.
Curiouser and curiouser, thought John. I might just call on her.
¦
Agatha fed her cats. She was sure she had already fed them, but they looked hungry. She had cooked them fresh fish. She herself ate microwaved meals, but she went to a lot of trouble to see her cats had the best. She bent down and stroked their warm furry heads, feeling a wave of loneliness engulf her. Her cats, Hodge and Boswell, never really seemed to need her except as a source of food. She glanced at the kitchen clock. Time to get ready to meet the dreadful Phyllis. She remembered she had left her wig in the car along with her glasses and went out to fetch them.
Returning, she went upstairs to the bathroom and made up her face and put the wig and glasses back on. She wondered briefly why no one had called around to ask her why she was always going out in disguise. There was a ring at the doorbell.
Agatha went down and opened the door. A tall, good-looking man stood there. He had a lightly tanned face, green eyes and a strong chin. But he was carrying a Bible.
“No!” said Agatha, and slammed the door in his face.
Mormons, she thought, as she picked up her handbag. They always send the best-looking ones around.
¦
John Armitage retreated to his cottage. He had found the Bible in a cupboard with James Lacey’s name on it and thought if he took it along next door it would be a good excuse to meet his neighbour.
Well, at least he now knew there was one woman in the village who most definitely did not want to have anything to do with him. He went upstairs to pack. He planned to spend a few days in London visiting an old friend.
¦
Agatha opened the door to the musty interior of The Grapes. It had neither piped music nor one-armed bandits nor pool table and so was shunned by the youth of Evesham. Phyllis was already there, drinkless.
“May I get you something?”
“A dry martini,” said Phyllis, who normally drank vodka and Red Bull, but thought a dry martini sounded sophisticated.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Agatha. “They probably don’t know how to make one. What about a gin and tonic? That’s what I’m having.”
“All right, then,” said Phyllis ungraciously. “Make it a large one.”
Agatha came back to the table carrying two large gin and tonics. “Perhaps instead of asking you questions, you begin by telling me about your life,” said Agatha. “I’m surprised a pretty girl like you isn’t engaged.”
“I’m hard to please,” replied Phyllis. “I think someone like me should move to London. I’m wasted down here. Nothing ever happens here.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” said Agatha. “Floods. Murder.”
“Murder?”
“Kylie Stokes.”
“Oh, her. Load of rubbish, that. Take it from me. It was suicide.”
“How come?”
“Can I have another?” Phyllis had managed to gulp down her gin and tonic.
Agatha went back to the bar and returned with two more drinks.
“You were saying…?”
“Oh, about Kylie? If you ask me, that wedding would never have taken place.”
“Why? I mean, she had the wedding gown and everything.”
“Zak proposed to her on the rebound.”
“From whom?”
“From me.”
“So you had dumped him?”
“We had this row. We were always having rows. We were hot in bed. Let me tell you…”
Phyllis proceeded to give a description of her sexual prowess in anatomical detail.
Amazing, thought Agatha. It was all the fault of those women’s magazines which led young girls to believe that the only way to keep a man was to indulge in the tricks of the brothel. But, then, maybe she was being old- fashioned. The very word modesty, as applied to women, had gone out of fashion a long time ago. She averted her eyes from Phyllis’s thick red lips, trying to fight down a feeling of revulsion at what those lips had done, and said, “The body was frozen. You don’t commit suicide and then freeze yourself.”
“Police have got it wrong,” remarked Phyllis.
“Did you know she was on heroin?”
“Oh, sure.”
“No track marks.”
“She probably sniffed the stuff.”
“And were you very upset when Zak became engaged to Kylie?”
“I s’pose you’ll hear it from the other girls. I was furious. He was only getting married to her to spite me.”
“But there was some sort of hen party for her, was there not? Did you go to that?”
“Naw. Silly business. Then Kylie disappeared the day afterwards. The Stokes family had the police round at the office questioning us all. But the police seemed to think she’d had wedding nerves and had done a runner.”
“And what did you think?”
“I told Zak she’d only wanted a ring to show off to the other girls, but she didn’t care for him.”
“So you saw Zak? When was this?”
“‘Bout a day before she was found. He came round my house that evening.”
“And was he upset?”
Phyllis gave a coarse laugh. “Not after I’d seen to him, he isn’t.”
“You mean you had sex?”
“What d’you think?”
Agatha had a memory of Zak weeping at the club. She thought Phyllis was one horrible out-and-out liar.
“What’s all this about Kylie?” asked Phyllis suspiciously. “I thought we were here to talk about me.”
“And so we are,” said Agatha evenly. “Don’t you realize that to have known someone who was mysteriously murdered makes you newsworthy?”
“It was suicide,” said Phyllis mulishly. “Now let’s talk about me.”
She proceeded to brag. She had always fancied herself on television, she said, because she had a good personality and was a looker.
I hate you, thought Agatha as Phyllis bragged on. I bet you’re capable of murder. I bet you’re a narcissist, and a psychotic one at that. All the while, she pretended to take notes.
“And you live alone?” she asked when Phyllis finally paused for breath. “Let me see, 10A Jones Terrace, is that right? Where is your family?”
“Over in Worcester.”
I wish I were a policeman and I could ask her where she was on the days before the murder, thought Agatha. I must phone Bill and see if they know exactly when she was murdered. I must see Kylie’s mother. When
