“I see he lives in Badsey,” said Agatha.
“Yes, you’ll find his house is near the schoolhouse. Know where that is?”
Agatha said she did and rang off.
She had a quick shower and changed. Before she left for Badsey, she phoned Charles’s number to put him off. Agatha wanted all the glory for herself. Gustav answered the phone and said Sir Charles was out and so she left a message. Now for Mr. Gringe.
¦
His home in Badsey was a trim, end-terraced house. Agatha saw there was a path at the side leading to the garden at the back, and decided to try the garden first.
She walked along the path. The garden was a plantless miracle. A wooden deck stretched out from behind the back door covered in a canvas canopy, and the area in front of it, where an old man was stooped, pulling at a weed, was covered in small shiny pebbles.
“Mr. Gringe?”
He straightened up, his eyes roaming over the pebbles as if threatening any other bit of green to show its face. “Yes?”
“I’m Agatha Raisin. I want to ask you about your butchers shop, the one that’s now a disco.”
He turned slowly and looked at her. His face was seamed and lined and his shoulders were stooped. He wiped his hands on an old pair of flannels, held one out and solemnly shook Agatha’s hand.
“What do you want to know?”
“I wondered if you could draw me a plan of your shop as it once was, showing me where the freezer, the cold room, was situated.”
“Why?”
“I’m writing a book,” lied Agatha, “and I have this butchers shop in it. I needed a layout.”
“So why don’t you just go to the butchers in, say, Moreton, and ask them to show you around?”
“Because I’m setting it in the past,” said Agatha desperately. “I need an old-fashioned butchers shop.”
He indicated a gleaming white plastic table surrounded by hard plastic chairs on the deck. “Let’s sit down and I’ll get a piece of paper.”
Agatha sat down and he shuffled off into the house. He seemed to be gone a very long time. She waited impatiently.
At last he reappeared, holding a sheet of white A-4 paper and a ball-point pen. He sat down beside her with painstaking slowness and then said, “Let me see, the counter was here as you came in the door. Had to be a cold counter, you know, glassed in. Bloody European regulations!” He began to draw with neat, draughtsmanlike precision.
“Through this door behind the counter was a short corridor and then a big area at the back. Deliveries came in by the back door. We cut up the meat in this room. There was a toilet here, and then a kitchen.”
“The freezer?” prompted Agatha.
“The cold room was just here, at the end of the large room the back. Inconvenient place, but it would have cost too much to move it.” His pen moved on, neatly sketching everything in Agatha waited patiently while he drew a plan of the upstairs as well.
“Those disco people got it cheap,” he grumbled, “because of all the conversion they’d have to do. I wanted to sell it to a butcher, but what butchers are there nowadays? The supermarkets have killed most of us off. The last straw was the E. coli scare. And the beef-on-the-bone scare. Couldn’t sell a joint of meat on the bone anywhere, and that took extra butchering time. Damn government. You put that in your book. The government helped to kill us off, us and the farmers. I’d shoot the lot of them. Want a drink?”
Agatha decided, as she had not planned to go to the disco until the next evening, the least she could do would be to give him some more of her time. “That would be nice.” She was just about to say she would have a gin and tonic, when he added, “I make the best dandelion wine in the Cotswolds.” Agatha resigned herself.
He shuffled indoors again. Birds chirped sleepily in the neighbouring gardens but no bird sang in Mr. Gringe’s stark garden. The evening sky stretched overhead, a pale green deepening to dark blue at the horizon. Somewhere deep inside her, a voice was telling her she was being dangerously silly, that she should turn over everything she had to the police.
Mr. Gringe came shuffling back carrying a tray with a bottle and two glasses. He poured out two large glasses of dandelion wine. “Here’s to you,” he said. Agatha raised her glass. “Good health.”
“So what name do you write under?” he asked.
“Agatha Raisin.”
“Never heard of you.”
“Do you read much?”
“No, I’ve got the telly.”
“Then that’s why you haven’t heard of me.” Agatha looked out over the garden. “Don’t you like plants?”
“Waste of time. They get aphids and slugs and then they’re always dropping leaves and making a mess.”
“Some people think it worth the effort to look out at pretty flowers.”
“Some people need their heads examined. Are you married?”
“Divorced.”
“Have you any money?”
“I’m comfortably off.”
He suddenly leered at her. “Don’t do to be on your own. Tell you what. You can marry me. I’m tired of all the cleaning and scrubbing, and that’s women’s work.”
“Then you should employ a cleaner.”
“Pay someone to do it? No, that’s where you come in.”
“And this is where I go out,” said Agatha firmly, putting her glass on the table. The wine was sweet and heavy and she did not think she could bear to swallow another sip.
“You’re missing out,” he called after her as she snatched up the plan of the butchers shop and made for the side of the house and escape. “You’re lucky to get an offer at your age.”
? The Day the Floods Came ?
10
Mrs. Bloxby called on Agatha the following evening, just as Agatha was ready to go out. The vicar’s wife gloomily surveyed Agatha in full disguise. “You’re actually going to do it?”
“Of course,” said Agatha calmly, just as if she had not been wrestling with doubts and fears all day.
“Is it any use me trying to point out to you that you are putting your life in danger?”
“None whatsoever. Anyway, I’m only going to locate the place – if they still have the freezer room. Then I’ll leave and phone the police.”
They walked outside together. “I’ll be all right,” said Agatha, getting into her car. “I tell you what. If I’m not back by midnight, then you can phone the police.”
Agatha parked in the car-park at Merstow Green and studied Mr. Gringe’s map. It was going to be difficult. Terry Jensen had obviously had the wall that had existed between the front and back premises knocked down to make room for the disco. Did the disco dance-room extend right through to the back door? Or was there still a space left at the back with a hidden door somewhere? There might be. Goods might be delivered at the back door.
Agatha got out of the car, wishing now she had let Charles come with her. She felt very alone.
Wayne, the bouncer, was standing outside the club. “Television again,” said Agatha briskly. “Just going to soak up the atmosphere.”
Wayne stood aside to let her pass. The disco was quieter than the last time Agatha had been there. There were fewer couples gyrating on the floor, although the music was still as loud as ever. She hoped it would soon fill up to disguise the fact that she would be be searching around the walls. She went to the bar where Terry was on duty. She shouted at him that she was just getting a feel of the place and ordered a bottle of beer. As she sipped
