The Day the Floods Came

her beer, she looked carefully round about. Then she thought, there must be a toilet somewhere. It might be situated in the back premises. “Got a ladies’ room?” she shouted at Terry.

He opened a door at the side of the bar which Agatha had not noticed before because it was part of a painted mural of a dancing couple. He jerked his head. Agatha walked through. “On the left,” he shouted.

There were two toilets, one marked ‘Gals’ and the other, “Guys.” As he was still watching her, Agatha went into the ‘Gals’ and into one of the cubicles. She sat down on the lavatory seat and took her map out and studied it again. Outside had been dark except for dim lights above the toilet doors. Surely Terry would have gone by now. He couldn’t watch every woman who decided to go to the toilet.

Agatha made her way out and looked quickly around. Beer crates and cases of soft drinks were stacked against the opposite wall. She looked at her map again. If the freezer room was still there, it would be behind those crates and cases. Quickly, she began to move them away from the wall, panting with the effort. The wall behind was covered with a dirty curtain. She paused in her efforts and tried the back door. It wasn’t locked. Good, thought Agatha. If I find something, I can escape that way. It was when she started on the cases in the central section that she realized they were empty. She began to throw them behind her, confident that the music from the disco would cover the noise. What if someone came in to use one of the toilets? But she would have to risk it. She would think of some excuse. She would scream and say she had seen a rat. When she had cleared a big-enough space, she lifted the curtain and peered underneath. It was too dark to see anything. She fumbled in her handbag until she located a pencil torch. She shone it up and down the wall.

And then her heart began to thump. There was a wooden door with a metal handle. The freezer room. She ducked under the curtain and seized the handle and pulled the heavy door open, to be met by a blast of icy air. Agatha went inside. She fumbled inside the door for a light switch until she found it and pressed it down. Fluorescent strip lighting snapped on overhead.

Agatha let out a cry of pure terror.

Sitting on the floor with her head at an awkward angle was Joanna Field. Agatha put a hand up to her lips. Move! screamed her brain. Get out! Get the police. The air was full of the thud of the disco music pounding in her ears. And then there was a louder thud. She swung round. The door had been slammed shut behind her.

¦

“Something’s worrying me, Alf,” said Mrs. Bloxby. “What is it, dear?” asked the vicar.

“It’s about Agatha Raisin.”

“Oh, that silly woman. What’s she been up to now?”

Mrs. Bloxby explained about Agatha’s visit to the disco and why she had gone.

“Then you must tell the police immediately,” said the vicar.

“She made me promise I wouldn’t.”

The doorbell rang. “Maybe that’s her,” said Mrs. Bloxby. She hurried to open the door. John Armitage stood there. “I’ve just got back from London,” he said. “Where’s Agatha?”

“Come in,” urged Mrs. Bloxby. “I’d better tell you.”

She repeated what she had just told her husband. “You said you wouldn’t tell the police,” said John when she had finished. “I didn’t.”

“The phone’s over there,” said Mrs. Bloxby eagerly.

John phoned Worcester police, was put through to Brudge and began to talk rapidly, ending up with “You must get men there now. Her life could be in danger.”

He finally put down the phone. “They’ll get there as quickly as possible. I’m going there myself.”

“We’ll go with you,” said Mrs. Bloxby, ignoring the vicar’s pleas that any rescue should be left to the police. They piled into the vicar’s ancient Morris Minor and headed for Evesham.

“Can’t this car of yours go any faster?” asked John at one point.

“I am not ruining my engine for one silly woman,” remarked the vicar.

¦

Agatha walked up and down, desperately beating her arms at her sides. What a way to end! Frozen to death. And poor Joanna. She must have found something incriminating in Kylie’s e-mail and tried to blackmail them. Agatha felt sick with cold and despair. She was about to die and all because of vanity. She had wanted to solve the case herself, have all the glory. She would never see James again. There were shelves inside the room stacked with boxes. She pulled open one with frozen fingers and found plastic packets of white powder. So this was where they kept the drugs. Kylie must have known. Kylie must have found out. Poor Kylie. Poor Joanna. And poor Agatha.

The shivering finally stopped and she began to feel sleepy and almost warm. She had a paradoxical desire to take all her clothes off and fought against it.

¦

The vicar parked up on the pavement outside the disco and the three got out. Wayne blocked their way as they tried to walk into the disco. “It’s for young people only,” he said truculently. “Then I shall report you immediately to the police for ageism,” said the vicar loftily.

Wayne gave him a hunted look but the word ‘police’ acted as an open sesame. They walked into the disco. Music assailed their ears. Couples were dancing. It all looked very normal, except that they could not see Agatha. John shouldered his way towards the bar, with the Bloxbys close behind. “Where’s the television researcher?” he demanded. Terry gave a final polish to a glass. “You’ve just missed her,” he shouted. “Left ten minutes ago.”

John gave him a baffled look. Agatha could be up in the office.

He swung round and shouted to Alf, “What can we do now?”

“I have prayed,” said the vicar calmly. “The police will be here.”

“Praying’s a fat lot of good,” shouted John and the words were no sooner out of his mouth than the music suddenly died and the disco was full of police, headed by Brudge.

Terry had turned a muddy colour. John thought quickly. If there was a cold room left over from the days when there had been a butchers shop, it would be on ground level.

“Through the back,” he said to Brudge. “There must be some way through the back.”

“There’s a door here, sir,” said a policeman with sharper eyes than Agatha Raisin.

“That’s the toilets, and the stores, nothing else,” said Terry.

“Watch him and see he doesn’t get away,” said Brudge. He walked through the door beside the bar. He took out a torch and shone it round about, shone it up and down the stack of soft-drink cases and beer crates and then on the floor. He saw faint scrape marks on the floor, as if someone had pulled the cases back. Then he remembered in a report when the disco had been searched that said behind the crates there was an old freezer room, but it had been full of stores and junk and the refrigerator unit had been disconnected.

“Move those crates and cases as fast as you can,” he barked at his men. “And pull down that curtain behind them.”

Inside, shivering Agatha had realized that there was no longer the dim thud of the music. She heard the crates being moved from behind the door. She heard voices. She did not scream because she was sure they had come to make sure she wasn’t going to live any longer. From the looks of Joanna, someone had broken her neck.

Agatha looked around for a weapon. But there was nothing.

She would never forget the moment when the door swung open and she found herself staring at Detective Inspector Brudge. “Oh, you lovely man,” cried Agatha and flung herself sobbing into his arms.

Brudge pried himself loose. “Get her to an ambulance,” he barked, “and search this place. My God, that’s the missing girl!”

Agatha then was embraced by Mrs. Bloxby, who wrapped her in the vicar’s jacket. “I’m a fool,” sobbed Agatha.

“There, now,” soothed Mrs. Bloxby. “It’s all over.”

An ambulance arrived and Agatha was wrapped up and stretchered in. A policewoman got in beside her.

Mrs. Bloxby caught hold of the ambulance driver as he was about to climb into the ambulance. “Will she be all right?” she asked.

“I think so,” he said. “She seems to be suffering from moderate hypothermia.”

The ambulance roared off.

¦