“And this Joanna Field. Wouldn’t her neighbours have seen anything?”
“I don’t know that she has any neighbours. She lives above a shop in Port Street. A lot of property there is still flood-damaged, you know, no one doing anything until the insurance comes through, and with so many claims, that could take ages. Anyway, the police will already have interviewed everyone possible. I feel something awful has happened to her.”
“Maybe not. Maybe she just wanted to clear off knowing the police would want to question her about Barrington.”
“Without clothes or money?”
“She could have been very frightened.”
“She didn’t strike me as being frightened the last time I saw her. Angry, cheeky, insolent. But not frightened.”
“Let’s look at the drug business. That suggests viciousness plus organization.”
“That brings us back to the club again and there’s no record of any drugs being dealt there.”
“Needn’t be the club. What about Barrington’s? Barrington himself sounds a nasty bit of work, and what about that goon you described, George, the one who mans the front desk?”
“Really, Charles. A plumbing business?”
“All things are possible. Would they have a deep freeze at Barrington’s?”
“I shouldn’t think so. Anyway, after the blackmailing business came out, the police would have turned the place inside out. I wish it would turn out to be Phyllis.”
“Why that one?”
“She’s a narcissistic bully. She’s violently jealous. She hated Kylie. I think she’s a low life.”
“Any sign that she takes drugs?”
“Not that I noticed, but unless someone has bare arms and tracks marks up them, I wouldn’t know.”
“Tell you what. Why don’t I stay the night and I’ll go round all these people with you tomorrow?”
“No, Charles. I’ve got to serve teas in the village tomorrow for some photographic exhibition.” Agatha hesitated. It was difficult to continue to be angry with the lightweight Charles. And somehow, just talking over a case with him like old times connected her in some way to James Lacey. “But I tell you what. Why don’t you call over on Saturday and we’ll take it from there?”
“Great. I’ll come in the morning and we’ll get started.”
“What are you going to do about your marriage?”
“What about it?”
“I mean, aren’t you going to try to fix things? Fly to Paris?”
“No point. I mean, it’s not just her I have to deal with. It’s her father, mother, two brothers, uncles, aunts, all jabbering at me in French.”
“But Charles. She’s expecting twins!”
A faint red flush crept up Charles’s face. Agatha stared at him in amazement. “You’re actually blushing! I didn’t think you could.”
“The fact is,” he said, twisting the stem on his wineglass, “I got well and truly caught.”
“How?”
“I met her when I was on holiday in Saint Tropez. She was well-guarded by relatives, friends and family, and although she was – is – awfully pretty, I wouldn’t have made a move if she hadn’t moved on me. She kept gazing over at me in this restaurant, sending out signals. You know. One day, she was on her own. I stopped at her table and asked if she was enjoying her stay. She asked me to sit down. We laughed and talked. Then she saw her parents coming into the restaurant and asked me quickly where I was staying. I gave her the name of my hotel. She said she’d meet me in the foyer at midnight. And she did. And we spent the night together, although she had to sneak off at six in the morning. She told me she was on the pill. No, I didn’t have any protection. To tell the truth, I didn’t know I was going to need it. I didn’t see her again and put it all down to a rather intriguing one-night stand. I’d given her my address and phone number. A month later I got this hysterical phone call from Paris saying her period was late and that she’d lied to me about being on the pill. I told her to check out whether she was pregnant or not and phone me back. She phoned back a day later and confirmed that she was. Well, I decided to do the decent thing. Family’s rich, she’s pretty, chance to be a dad, all that. Went over, met the family, popped the question. Got a bit frightened with marriage settlements and lawyers before the wedding and asked her if she was really sure she was pregnant and she smiled at me mistily and said she had been told she was expecting twins.
“Well, that clinched it. I could see myself teaching them to fish and ride and Daddy stuff like that. Went ahead with the wedding. Only realize now in retrospect that I’d told her a lot about me but she hadn’t told me that much about her past. Anyway, by the time we got married, she should have been about four months preggers but she didn’t really look pregnant, but she was on this salad diet because she said she didn’t want to get too fat. So we got married and I took her back to Warwickshire, where she was bored out of her tiny mind. It was my aunt – remember her? – who began nagging me about her not showing any signs at all of pregnancy. I began to get suspicious and made an appointment for her with a gynaecologist in London and then told her that she should get checked up and see if everything was okay. She began to rant and rave that I was mean, that she hadn’t expected to stay buried in the country. That was when I accused her of cheating me, of not being pregnant at all.
“She insisted sulkily that she’d thought she was. I said, so what about these twins? She said the doctor must have made a mistake. She was going back to Paris and wanted a divorce. I said she could get one if she took all the blame. God, I never realized what she was really like. She pointed out, quite rightly, that there was nothing on record that she was pregnant. And there wasn’t! She had made me swear not to tell her parents. After the wedding I said, ‘Let’s tell them now,’ and she said, ‘Oh, no, Maman and Papa would be so shocked.’ And to think I went along with it!
“I mean, she certainly was no virgin when I’d first had her. I felt stuck, and I would have been stuck if it hadn’t been for my man, Gustav.”
“He’s back with you, is he?” Agatha remembered Charles’s terrifying butler.
“Yes, and terribly keen on gadgets is old Gustav. I kept forgetting appointments, dinners and things that people had phoned up to invite me to. So Gustav bought this thingy that plugs into your phone and records things. He went over the tapes and glory be, there were the two calls from her saying she thought she was pregnant and then the one saying she had been to the doctor and it had been confirmed.
“Anyway, my lawyers are dealing with it and I don’t want to see her or anyone from France again.”
“Why pick on you?”
“That’s where it gets interesting.”
“I thought it was all already interesting enough,” commented Agatha.
“Boofy Pratt-Rogers, an old school friend of mine who works at the British Embassy in Paris, got the low- down. Anne-Marie Duchenne, that’s the wife, had one flaming affair with some French comte. Can’t remember his name. They were supposed to get married and were engaged and all and then this comte ups and offs at the last minute and marries someone else. Anne-Marie devastated and furious and with a bad case of the ‘I’ll show him.’ Family take her to Saint Trap to recover and she’s tipped off that I’m a rich English milord. Of course I’m only a baronet, but what does a frog know?” said Charles with a burst of xenophobic bitterness.
“Mrs. Bloxby would say,” said Agatha, “that the good Lord was punishing you for years of philandering.”
“Mrs. Bloxby would not say anything so unkind. Shall we go?”
“After you’ve paid the bill,” said Agatha.
Charles had parked a little way down the High Street from the restaurant. Agatha was walking along to the car with him when she suddenly came face to face with Marilyn Josh. She quickly ducked her head and scurried along to the car. Open the door, Charles, quickly, her mind pleaded as he fumbled for his keys. Just before Agatha slid into the passenger seat, she glanced back. Marilyn was standing looking along the street at her.
“Lost something?” asked Charles as Agatha crouched down. “No, that was Marilyn Josh on the High Street, just before we reached the car. She was looking straight at me, and when I got into the car I looked back, and she was standing in the High Street staring at me.”
“I thought you were wearing some disguise when you interviewed her.”
“Yes, a blond wig and glasses. It really did alter my appearance.”
“Were you by any chance wearing the clothes you’re wearing now?”
