hard chair near the door.
“Now, what’s all this about us being on telly?” asked Terry.
Agatha, clutching a clipboard, made a speech about covering entertainment in the provinces. Television had become too London-oriented. They needed to find out first some details about the club, the hours it was open, what kind of young people attended, and had they ever had any trouble with the police?
“We had no trouble with the police,” said Terry. “No drugs here and no under-age drinking, either.” He began to brag about his disco, how he had set it up two years before, after he had moved down from Birmingham when he realized there wasn’t much for young people to do in the evenings. Agatha scribbled notes, not caring much what she wrote, as she had no intention of ever using any of it.
At last she said, looking at Zak, “I was very sad to read about your loss.”
Zak’s eyes suddenly filled with tears and he buried his face in his hands. “We don’t want to talk about it,” said Terry gruffly. “It’s a bad business. Now, if you pair would like to go down to the club? I’m sure you’ll want to talk to some of the young folks.”
Agatha rose, feeling chastened. She had been so sure Zak would turn out to be a villain. She longed to ask him if Kylie had any enemies, but he seemed too genuinely distressed to cope with any questions. Now all she wanted to do was to get out of the club, but she had to pretend to be working for television for a bit longer.
As the noise once more beat upon her ears, she wondered how on earth anyone was supposed to even hear a question. Roy grabbed her and shouted in her ear. “You go and stand outside and I’ll get some of them out there.”
Agatha gratefully made her way outside. She lit a cigarette and waited. Even out on the street, she could feel the beat from the disco reverberating under her feet. She glanced round at the surrounding houses. How could the neighbours stand the noise? Roy then came out, followed by ten excited teenagers, their eyes shining with the prospect of being on television. He and Agatha patiently answered questions of the have-you-met and what-was- he-like questions about pop stars. Roy, because of his high-powered public relations job, knew some of the pop stars they were being questioned about and cheerfully gossiped away. Agatha’s head was beginning to itch under the heavy blond wig. She raised her clipboard and asked them for their names and addresses and occupations. Five were unemployed, but one of the girls said she was ‘in computers.’
“That wouldn’t be the firm where Kylie Stokes worked?” asked Agatha.
“Yes, she worked alongside me at Barrington’s,” said the girl.
“And you are?” Agatha squinted down at her clipboard.
“Sharon Heath.”
Sharon was tall and thin. She was wearing a tube top which exposed a bare midriff. A stud winked in her belly button. She had a stud in her nose and four gold rings in each of her ears. Her make-up was a white mask with eyes ringed with kohl. Although young, her shoulders were already rounded and everything about her drooped, including her eyes and her thin mouth. Her hair, dyed aubergine, was long and lank.
“It was ever so sad about Kylie,” said Sharon. “She had the desk next to mine.”
Barrington’s, it transpired, was not a computer company, but a firm which supplied bathroom fittings. Sharon worked in what would have been, in the days before computers, the typing pool. Like herself, Kylie had dealt with accounts and orders.
“I gather it’s a suspicious death,” said Agatha. “Did anyone dislike her enough to kill her?”
Sharon put her hand up to her mouth and giggled nervously. “There’s Phyllis.”
Terry Jensen appeared in the doorway. Sharon muttered, “Got ter go,” and scurried off inside as the rest returned to their questioning of Roy about pop stars.
¦
“We might have got something after all,” said Agatha as they drove out of Evesham. “I’d like another word with Sharon. I’ve got her address. I think we should call on her tomorrow.”
“Right,” said Roy. “You haven’t mentioned James.”
“There’s nothing
“My new neighbour’s been trapped by the village bore,” commented Agatha.
She parked the car and she and Roy walked indoors.
“You don’t seem to have formed a favourable opinion of him,” said Roy.
“I didn’t meet him. I saw him, digging the garden.”
“Sure that was him?”
“Why do you ask?”
“It’s only when you were describing him, there was a look of amusement in Mrs. Bloxby’s eyes, as if she were laughing at you.”
Agatha stared at Roy in surprise. “Mrs. Bloxby? You must be joking. Mrs. Bloxby would never laugh at me!”
? The Day the Floods Came ?
3
Sharon Heath lived in a modest terrace house off Port Street, near the income-tax office. The day had turned warm and Agatha’s head was once more itching under the blond wig. “Wait a minute,” said Roy, seizing Agatha’s hand as she was just about to ring the bell. “We haven’t decided what we’re going to say. We’re supposed to be doing research into youth in the provinces in general. Not ask about Kylie in particular.”
“We’ll ask the usual boring questions and then just slip it into the conversation,” said Agatha impatiently. Roy gave a resigned shrug. Sometimes, he knew from bitter experience, Agatha had all the tact of a charging rhino.
Agatha rang the bell. They waited quite a few minutes and Agatha was raising her hand to ring the bell again when the door was opened by a blowsy-looking woman wrapped in a dressing-gown. “Whatever it is, we don’t want any.” She made to shut the door.
“We’re from television.”
Oh, the magic of television. The woman’s hand fluttered up to the rollers in her hair.
“Oh, my! I’m Mrs. Heath. Whatever must you think of me? Give me a moment.”
The door slammed.
“What’s that all about?” demanded Agatha crossly.
“We’re from the telly, so she’s gone to pull the rollers out of her hair and cram her nasty, floppy carcass into a body stocking,” said Roy waspishly.
Agatha lit a cigarette. Above, the sky was pale blue, looking as if it had been scrubbed and washed by all the recent rain. The faintest of breezes blew along the street. Church bells clanged out over Evesham. From one of the neighbouring houses a baby set up a crotchety wail.
Finally the door opened and a transformed Mrs. Heath stood there, hair lacquered, floury make-up, and figure encased in a tight, imitation-silk dress of imperial purple.
“Come in,” she cooed. “Sharon was just telling us how you’d been at the club last night. Will my little girl be on the telly?”
“Possibly,” said Agatha briskly. “She did strike us as being an interesting subject.”
She craned her neck round Agatha. “Where’s the cameraman?”
“That comes later,” said Agatha briskly. “We have to do the research first.”
“Come in.” Mrs. Heath stepped aside. “The lounge is on your left.”
The lounge was a small room that showed all the signs of having been hurriedly tidied. Agatha sat down on an armchair which crackled because newspapers and magazines had been hurriedly thrust under the seat cushion.
“Now,” said Mrs. Heath, “can I get you some refreshment?” Her mouth was a thin lipsticked line turned down at the corners, and her eyes were hard. Agatha judged that when she was not smarming to visitors, Mrs. Heath could very well have a bad temper.
