“You seem to be enjoying this.”

“Oh, it keeps me away from the computer and it’s much more interesting than fiction.”

When they got to the car, Agatha studied her notes. “Ann Trump lives out on the Cheltenham Road. We could try her.”

“What other stones are we going to lift up?” he asked, letting in the clutch.

“We’ve got to see Barrington himself.”

“Better see him at the office. Even if we find out where he lives, he won’t talk easily with his wife there.”

Agatha cast a covert glance at John as he negotiated the traffic. Here she was with a very good-looking man and, instead of feeling thrilled, feeling puzzled. He was easy in her company, rather, she judged, in the way he would be relaxed with an author he met at a book convention. That was it! His behaviour towards her was like that of a business colleague. His attitude was definitely sexless. Not a frisson.

Still, Mrs. Bloxby had advised her not to scare him off, to play it cool. But what did the vicar’s wife know about men? thought Agatha sulkily.

They had expected to find another flat, but Ann Trump’s home was a prosperous-looking villa. “Must live with her parents,” commented John as they walked up the garden path. “I never asked you. How are you feeling now after your fright?”

“I’m all right now. Thanks,” said Agatha. She was about to add that she felt all right during the day, but was still sleeping with the light on and waking up in a sweat at the slightest sound during the night, but he was already ringing the doorbell.

A man in golfing clothes answered the door. Agatha went into her usual television speech and desire to interview Ann Trump. He said he was Mr. Trump, Ann’s father, and turned away and shouted, “Ann! That telly woman you were talking about is here!”

“I’ll leave you in the lounge,” he said. “My lady wife is out shopping and I’m off to play golf. Make yourselves comfortable.”

Agatha and John sat side by side on a green velvet-covered sofa. Looking round, Agatha decided that much of the family life must go on in the kitchen because everything in the lounge looked new and barely used. The room was cold.

A few moments after her father had left, Ann came into the room. She was fairly pretty, with a round face, wide brown eyes and dark curls.

“Like a drink?” asked Ann, going to a cocktail cabinet against the wall and opening it. The strains of ‘Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms’ filled the room. Inside, the cabinet was lit with pink neon. Agatha noticed that the bottles were all full and glasses of different sizes neatly ranged. Obviously not a family of drinkers.

Agatha glanced at John, who shook his head. The thought flashed into her mind that if John did not drink much, there was little hope of softening him up for the kill.

“Not for us,” she said. “Come and sit down, Ann. I decided it would be better to interview each one of you individually.” She went on to ask Ann about her job and her hobbies and the entertainments of Evesham before getting on to the subject of Kylie’s death.

“I can’t think how anyone could murder her,” said Ann. “I mean, there was nothing to murder.”

“What do you mean?” asked John.

“Well, she was pretty friendly towards everyone, easy to get on with.”

“Apart from Zak, did she have any boyfriends?” asked Agatha.

“She was engaged to a boy called Harry McCoy, but she dumped him for Zak.”

“Anyone else? What about any of the bosses?”

She laughed. “Mr. Barrington? No, not possible.” So Harry hadn’t gossiped to the girls.

“So tell me about her engagement to Zak. Was she happy?” Agatha looked in irritation at John, who had risen and crossed to the cocktail cabinet and was opening and shutting the lid, letting out bursts of tinkling music.

“Help yourself,” said Ann.

John regained his seat. “I was fascinated by the mechanism.”

“You were asking about her engagement,” said Ann. “She was ever so happy. She had a lovely diamond ring. Phyllis was mad at her, of course.” Ann blushed. “Don’t tell Phyllis I said anything. She’s got a temper.”

“Yes, I gather Phyllis was dating Zak before he got engaged to Kylie.”

“Ever so cut up about it, Phyllis was,” said Ann. “And Kylie did rather flash that ring under Phyllis’s nose.”

“And yet you say there was nothing about her that would drive anyone to murder her!”

“Oh, well, girls are always quarrelling,” said Ann sententiously.

“So you don’t think Phyllis could have murdered her?”

Ann giggled. “Are you doing Crime Watch for the TV? Sounds like it.”

“No, no,” said Agatha quickly. “Kylie’s death intrigues me. And John Armitage here is a detective-story writer, a famous one.”

Ann surveyed John without much interest. “Didn’t think anyone read books these days, with so many channels on the telly to watch.”

“John sells millions of books,” said Agatha.

“Must be to old people,” said Ann. “Awful lot of them around these days.”

To be on the safe side, Agatha turned her questioning back to the pleasures of the youth of Evesham and then they took their leave.

“Not much there,” said John, stifling a yawn.

He’s getting bored, thought Agatha. Not surprising. Men of his age who look like him usually go after younger women. I’m getting old. Soon no one will want me.

As she got into his car, she said in a small voice, “Maybe you’ve had enough.”

“Not yet. Who’s left?”

“Mary Webster and Joanna Field.”

“Okay, let’s get rid of one of them and have lunch.”

Agatha consulted her notes. “Mary Webster lives in that new housing development on the Four Pools Estate. Make a left here.”

But when they got to the address Mary Webster had given them it was to find no one was at home. “That leaves Joanna Field,” said Agatha.

? The Day the Floods Came ?

5

Joanna Field lived in a flat above a flood-damaged shop in Port Street. They rang the downstairs bell. “I don’t think they’ll have any electricity yet,” said John. He tried the door. “It’s open. Let’s go up.”

On the stairs up they could see the watermark from the flooding. John knocked at a door at the top.

It was opened by Joanna Field. So domineering had Phyllis been when Agatha had first met the girls that she had not registered then that Joanna was pretty. She had curly auburn hair and intelligent grey eyes in her smooth young face.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said. “Come in.”

“I hope we’re not disturbing you,” said John. The room into which she led them was sunny and filled with a cosy clutter of books, flowers, chintz-covered furniture and the strains of Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto in G Minor. Joanna switched off the music and urged them to sit down.

Agatha asked her now-usual opening questions and Joanna replied that she spent a lot of her evenings at Evesham College studying computer programming. “I want to get on,” she said. “My father died shortly after I was born and then my mother got ill with cancer while I was at school. I gave up a chance of getting to university to nurse her. She’s dead now.”

“Sorry,” said Agatha gruffly, feeling rather shabby at involving this girl in lies about television. Determinedly

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