lit up a cigarette in the rectory before.
“To turn to parish matters,” said Mrs. Bloxby. “We have a gentleman who is mounting an exhibition of old photographs of the Cotswolds in the school hall a week on Friday. Admission to the exhibition is only twenty pee. But to raise some extra money, we are having teas and cakes. May I rely on your support, Mrs. Raisin?”
“No use asking her,” crowed Roy. “She can’t bake.”
Agatha scowled horribly.
“I meant, could you help with serving the teas? Mrs. Anstruther-Jones was one of our helpers, and the poor woman can’t do it now.”
Guilt over Mrs. Anstruther-Jones’s death prompted Agatha to say gruffly, “Yes, put me down.”
“Splendid.”
I wonder how John’s getting on, thought Agatha.
¦
John entered Joanna’s hospital room quietly. She was lying asleep and looked very young and fragile. He put the box of chocolates he had brought her on the table beside the bed. Joanna’s eyes opened and she looked up at him.
“John!” she exclaimed, a delicate pink colouring her cheeks. “Two visits in one day. I’ve got good news, too. I’m to go home tomorrow.”
“They’re sure?”
“Yes, I’m completely recovered.” She eased herself up against the pillows and gave him a radiant smile.
“Joanna, there’s one little thing that made me curious. It’s about the Kylie Stokes business.”
Her eyes flirted with him. “And I thought you came rushing back to see me.”
“It’s just that you were seen one evening in Barrington’s car going along Evesham High Street.”
“He gave me a lift home one evening.” She looked down and plucked at the bedcovers. He noticed she had painted her nails red, and Joanna wasn’t what he would have considered a red-nails sort of person. Oh, really? jeered Agatha Raisin’s voice in his head. And just what is a red-nails sort of person?
“Joanna,” he persisted, “if he had been driving you home, he wouldn’t have gone by way of the High Street.”
There was a long silence. Then she asked in a small voice, “Will you be telling the police?”
“Neither I nor Agatha is particularly popular with the police at the moment. But I think you’d better tell me about it.”
“He’s not a very nice person,” mumbled Joanna.
“I know that. I gathered that.” He took a deep breath. “Did you have an affair with him?”
She blushed as red as her nails.
“Yes,” she whispered.
John had a sudden mental picture of Barrington with his florid face, thinning hair, and hairy hands. “Why, in God’s name?”
“It started when he did give me a run home one night and he did go home first to pick up some files. He said there was a new restaurant just opened up in Cirencester, very expensive, and perhaps I would like to go? I’d never been to an expensive restaurant before and I thought it would be a bit of fun. I enjoyed myself. He told me he was planning to get a divorce. He’d made a mistake in his marriage. He said the business was doing well and he could soon afford to take a holiday – maybe the Caribbean – and he wished he could take someone like me. I’ve never been abroad. I’m ambitious. I want to see the world. I thought, why not? He said if I’d go with him, he’d get a divorce and marry me, so it wasn’t as if I would be committing adultery or anything.
“We started to have an affair. I suppose it wasn’t what you’d call an affair. Three evenings at my place, that was all. I didn’t enjoy it a bit, but I thought what marriage to him would entail. Being able to go to posh places and glamorous holidays. Then he just stopped seeing me. After a week, I went into his office. He blustered and said he’d been busy. The business wasn’t doing as well as he’d thought and his wife had invested in it. I felt such a fool. But I hadn’t been in love with him so it wasn’t that bad until I found he’d been going out with Kylie. So I took it upon myself to warn her off. She just laughed at me and told me to go and take a good look in the mirror. Barrington may not have been serious about someone like me, she said, but he was dead serious about her. I hated her. Silly little bitch.”
John felt sad. Joanna thought she was a cut above the rest of them and he had believed that, too. She had read and admired his books, so, with his writer’s vanity, he had assumed she must be intelligent.
“Did you kill Kylie?” he asked.
“Of course not. What do you take me for? She wasn’t worth the effort.”
Joanna lay back on the pillows and closed her eyes.
“I’d better be going,” said John.
Joanna’s eyes flew open. “But I’ll see you soon. We’ll go to that restaurant again and have a chat.”
“I’m going to be very busy,” said John. “New book to write. I won’t be socializing for a while.”
She studied him, her eyes suddenly hard. “The police don’t know it was you who put me up to searching Kylie’s e-mail. Maybe I’ll tell them.”
“Then you’ll only look very silly for not having told them in the first place. They will call on me and I will be obliged to tell them what you’ve just told me about Barrington.”
John turned on his heel and walked out.
¦
As he drove back, he could feel a great loathing about telling Agatha Joanna’s story welling up in him. It is a sad fact that there are no new wounds, only old wounds reopened, and the distasteful incident with Joanna had only served to remind him of the failure of his marriage. His wife had been so very beautiful and he so proud of her. Speaking at writers’ conferences, he had enjoyed a thrill every time at looking down from the podium and seeing her blond beauty staring rapturously up at him. When he had found out about her first affair, he had been devastated. She had wept and promised that it would never happen again. But it had, several times, until the humiliation he had felt had killed love. Not that he had loved Joanna or had planned to take a friendship any further. But he had been flattered by the way she had hung on his every word. In fact, he remembered now that, over dinner, it had been he who had talked of books and plays and films while Joanna had breathlessly agreed with everything he had said.
He decided to drive straight on to London and spend some time with friends. But if he didn’t return home to the village, Agatha would phone the police. And he needed to pack.
He didn’t need to tell Agatha about Barrington and Joanna. Surely that had nothing to do with the case. Anyway, he should have left the whole thing to the police.
¦
“There was something odd there,” said Agatha to Roy, after John had explained that Joanna had claimed that Barrington had been giving her a lift home but calling at his home first to pick up some files.
“Yes,” agreed Roy. “He looked more wooden-faced than ever. Doesn’t ever give much away, does he? And he’s shooting off to London.”
“There was something at the back of his eyes,” said Agatha. “He looked hurt. I bet the silly fool made a pass at her and got rejected. Clown!”
“Too right,” cackled Roy. “Why couldn’t he have made a pass at you, eh?”
“I’m weary,” said Agatha, ignoring the gibe. “I don’t want to ask any more questions.”
“Not even to find out what he really said to Joanna? Come on, Aggie. Curiosity’s killing me and he said she was being released tomorrow. Wouldn’t do any harm to drop in on her. I mean, do you really believe that stuff about Barrington going home first to pick up some files? Why not drop Joanna off first?”
“All right,” said Agatha. “May as well try her.” And if, she thought privately, John Armitage did make a pass at someone as young as she is, then I needn’t bother with him again.
¦
Joanna answered the door to them next day looking bright and fresh and pretty, as if she had not recently gone through such an ordeal. But her face fell when she saw Agatha and she peered round her. Looking for John, thought Agatha. “This is a friend of mine, Roy Silver,” said Agatha, introducing him. “May we come in?”
“Yes, of course. Where’s John?”
“Gone to London.”
