The Day the Floods Came

She splashed water on her face and scrubbed it with a clean towel, and then ran downstairs.

Agatha opened the door to find John and Joanna there. “Why aren’t you at work?” she asked Joanna.

“We were all sent home early.”

“Joanna has some interesting news.” John smiled. “You’ve got little patches of some green stuff on your face.”

“Go into the kitchen,” said Agatha. “Back in a minute.”

She rushed upstairs again and this time looked in her magnifying mirror. Sure enough, there were little bits of green stuck to various parts of her face.

I need glasses, came the thought, but she quickly dismissed it. She washed and creamed her face and washed it again. Carefully she applied make-up before going back down to join them.

Joanna was wearing figure-hugging trousers in a biscuit colour and she had a crisp white blouse tied at her slim waist. John was wearing a blue shirt and blue cords in a soft material. Despite the difference in their ages, they looked to Agatha’s jaundiced eyes very much a couple.

“Coffee?” she asked.

“Wait till you hear Joanna’s news first,” said John.

Agatha joined them at the kitchen table and smiled at Joanna. I will not be jealous, she told herself firmly.

“It’s like this,” said Joanna. “Barrington was taken away on Sunday evening by the police.”

“How do you know this?”

“Wait. We didn’t know about it until yesterday, when Mrs. Barrington burst into our room at the office. She was raging. She said, “Have any other of you sluts been having an affair with my husband and trying to blackmail him?” Then she began to cry and it all came out. The police had taken him away for questioning. He’d spun her some story that they wanted to know more about Kylie’s friends. Then this morning they were back again and took him away again and this time she learned about Kylie blackmailing her husband. Well, we gave her tea and soothed her down. Phyllis added fuel to the fire by saying that she knew something had been going on when she didn’t know a thing. Mrs. Barrington ended up saying she’d had enough of him and would divorce him.”

“Did she think he might have killed her?”

“That’s just it,” said Joanna, her eyes glowing. “She said he could be very violent and she’s sure he did it and she’s going to tell the police that!”

“There’s only one problem with that,” said Agatha. “Why kill Kylie and in such an elaborate way after he had paid out the money?”

“Perhaps,” said John, “because she’d asked for even more.”

“And what about Mrs. Anstruther-Jones?”

“I think our murderer happened to be driving along and just saw her, the way he saw you. He recognized the fair hair and glasses and gunned the engine.”

“What do you mean, ‘the way he saw you’?” asked Joanna.

Agatha shot John a repressive look and said quickly, “Just what he said. He means the murderer thought Mrs. Anstruther-Jones was me.”

“How exciting!”

How exciting to be young and not have anyone out to kill you, thought Agatha. Then she had an awful idea. “What if the police release the fact that the killer thought she was me? What if they bring out all that stuff about me masquerading as representing a television company? Then everyone will know my true identity and whoever it is could come here looking for me.”

“I don’t think they’ll do that,” said John slowly. “Brudge won’t want to let his superiors know that he didn’t do much to stop you investigating. No, I don’t think they’ll do that.”

They discussed the case this way and that without getting any further. Then Joanna said, “I’d best go home now. I’m a bit hungry and haven’t had anything to eat yet.”

“I’ll take you for something,” said John.

“Would you?” Joanna beamed. “That’s very kind.”

Surely, thought Agatha, they are not going to leave me. Surely they are not going to just go off together without including me in the invitation.

But John said, “See you later.” They walked out. That was that.

Agatha began to feel very angry indeed. They both knew that a woman had been killed because she had been mistaken for her. It was her case, too, dammit.

She would phone Roy, see if there was any work, and leave for London. She looked down at the kitchen floor to find her two cats staring up at her. She felt a pang. It would mean leaving them, the only friends she had got.

She heard the doorbell ring. Ah, come to their senses, had they?

But it was Bill Wong.

“What’s all this I’ve been hearing?” he demanded. “My friend at Worcester police tells me that the woman who was killed last night was wearing your wig and glasses.”

“Want to go out for dinner and I’ll tell you about it?”

“All right. I’ve got a free evening.”

“We’ll go to the Marsh Goose and I’ll sit down and tell you everything.”

¦

When they were seated at a table by the window in the Marsh Goose in Moreton-in-Marsh, Agatha saw John and Joan at another table across the room. They waved to her. She ignored them. “Let’s order first,” said Agatha, “then I’ll begin at the beginning and go on to the end. Damn, I feel like getting drunk tonight, but I’ve got to drive you back after dinner and then you’ve got to drive to Cirencester.”

“Them’s the laws.” Bill’s almond eyes crinkled with amusement in his smooth young face. The next time I get interested in some man, thought Agatha, I’ll make sure he is more wrinkled than I am.

They ordered their food and then Agatha began to tell him everything that she knew and everything that had happened – with one exception. She did not tell him about the attempt on her life. He listened carefully. Then he said, “Barrington’s got a cast-iron alibi. After he was released by the police the first time he was taken in, he phoned his wife and said he was dashing off to Birmingham to see a client. He did dash off to Birmingham, but to a hotel, where he spent the night with a Miss Betty Dicks.”

“Who’s she?”

“Some Birmingham secretary who he has been seducing with promises that he’s ready to leave his wife any day now. He left Birmingham early in the morning to get to his work in Evesham but he went home first, where he found the police waiting for him. So he could not have killed Mrs. Anstruther-Jones.”

“But he could have killed Kylie.”

“Doubtful. Whoever killed Kylie is now scared enough to want you out of the way. Have they offered you police protection?”

Agatha shook her head. “I think they’re so mad at me for interfering in police business that they don’t care if someone does bump me off.”

“Either that or they’re convinced that whoever killed Mrs. Anstruther-Jones still thinks you are researching for television. If they, or he, or she, or whoever knew your real identity, they would have made an attempt on your life in Carsely. No, our murder saw what he thought was you, walking along Waterside.”

“Cars!” said Agatha. “Do any of those girls have a car?”

“Phyllis has an old Volkswagen, Ann Trump a Ford Metro, and Marilyn Josh uses Harry McCoy’s old Rover. Zak and his father both have cars. You said you upset Mrs. Stokes. She drives a station wagon. They’re all being checked out. The police will be appealing for witnesses on television tonight. You know what ties Kylie’s death and Mrs. Anstruther-Jones’s death together?”

“No, what?”

“Panic. There’s panic in both cases. Take the case of Kylie. She’s injected with an overdose of heroin. The body’s dumped in some sort of freezer. It could have stayed there for weeks, months – years, even. But no, whoever did it panicked, took the body out and threw it in the river. And someone saw what they thought was you and without worrying about possible witnesses, they stamp their foot down on the accelerator.”

Agatha looked at him thoughtfully. She longed to tell him of the attempt on her life.