'Course. That one got what was coming to her. Unnatural to sneer at the poor aged like us. We never did get that trip to Bristol. We - '
'Good heavens! Is that the time?' Agatha leapt to her feet. 'Come along, James. Thank you for your time, Mrs Boggle.'
Seeing her prey escape her, Mrs Boggle also got to her feet, but by the time she did that, Agatha and James had made their escape.
'Whew,' said Agatha. 'Wouldn't it be fun if it turned out they did it? At the back of my mind, there's always a fear that the murderer might turn out to be someone quite nice who was temporarily deranged by Mary. But who could feel sorry for the Boggles?'
'Mrs Raisin!' Mrs Boggle's voice sounded from Culloden. 'Come back. Boggle's fainted.'
James took a half-step towards the garden patih but Agatha seized his arm. 'Running for the doctor,' she shouted back and set off down the street, with James after her.
'Are we going for the doctor?' asked James when he caught up with her.
'Waste of time. She wanted us back there so she could bully that trip to Bristol out of us. But I'll phone the doctor when I get home, just to be on the safe side. Yes, I know they've got a phone there, but it would be just like one of them to die to spite us. Come and have a coffee with me while I phone and then we'll try Miss Simms.'
Although he accepted her invitation, Agatha, still relishing her new freedom, realized that she would not have been devastated if he had turned it down.
She phoned the doctor, a new one in the village, a woman called Dr Sturret, and reported Mr Boggle's 'faint'. Then she made coffee for herself and James.
'I'm beginning to wonder if there is anyone in this village that Mary hasn't riled up,' said Agatha.
'And it's all making me feel a bit of a fool.' James looked at her uneasily.
'Surely you have nothing to reproach yourself with,' said Agatha. 'Think of Mary as an easy lay.'
'I am not in the habit of thinking of women as easy lays,' said James crossly. 'Can we drop the subject of my affair? I'm heartily sick of hearing about it.'
'Okay,' said Agatha reluctantly, because there was still enough of her old obsession for James left to make her enjoy the trashing of Mary Fortune. 'When you've finished your coffee, we'll call on Miss Simms.'
'Why don't we call on Mrs Bloxby first?'
'Why her?'
'As the vicar's wife, she must hear a lot of gossip. And the women of the village will talk to someone like her more openly than they would talk to anyone else.'
'Maybe, after Miss Simms, if we have time,' Agatha pleaded.
'You know what, Agatha, I get a feeling Mrs Bloxby told you something and you don't want to tell me.'
'She told me something in confidence, James. It bears no relation to the murder. I can't tell you.'
'Fair enough. Miss Simms it is. Isn't she working?'
'Not any more. She stays at home and looks after the kids. The new man in her life is pretty generous.'
'It's amazing,' said James, 'how the ladies of Carsely not only accept having a blatantly unmarried mother in their midst but even make her the secretary of the Ladies' Society.'
'I think it's because villages have always accepted an unmarried mother or two in their midst before it became fashionable,' said Agatha. 'Let's go.'
Miss Simms answered her door. She was wearing the very high stiletto heels which she always wore, winter or summer. 'This is nice,' she said when she saw them. 'Come into the lounge and put your feet up. Gin? Lots of ice and tonic?'
'Lovely,' said Agatha, reflecting it was a treat to call on Miss Simms after such as the Boggles. Miss Simms was a pale, anaemic-looking woman in her late twenties. She had a long pale face and long mousy hair. She wore a short tight jersey skirt and a cheap frilly blouse, transparent enough to show a black brassiere underneath. Mrs Bloxby had told Agatha that Miss Simms was a competent and hard-working secretary and did a great deal of voluntary work in the village. Agatha found Miss Simms a very pleasant sort of girl. She had seen glimpses of her latest gentleman - a thick, beefy, florid man who drove off with her in the evenings.
'Are you investigating this murder?' asked Miss Simms after she had poured them drinks. She was sitting with her skirt hitched up, unselfconsciously exposing a border of frilly French knicker.
'Just asking a few questions,' said Agatha self-importantly.
'So what can you ask me?'
'We thought that if we could find out more about Mary, we could find out why someone killed her, and if we could find out why, we might find out who.'
'I know that line,' said Miss Simms. 'It was in
'It doesn't matter,' he said gloomily. 'I'm beginning to think I didn't know her at all, although I can't get anyone to believe me.'
'I can,' said Miss Simms. 'I had a gentleman over in Pershore once. We had a few good times and then the police came around and said he'd disappeared with the firm's takings. He worked for Padget, the paper people. I was shocked, but could I tell them a blind thing about him? I said he had a loud laugh and he wore his socks in bed, but the police said that was no good at all.'
'So what about Mary?' asked Agatha. 'I mean, I thought you liked everyone.'
'Usually. But that one got up my nose. She wanted to chair the Ladies' Society. I told her roundly we was all happy with Mrs Mason, but if she had any doubts about that, she could call for a vote. She said a few nasty things about Mrs Mason and I told her what I thought of her. No one criticizes any of my friends to me.' Miss Simms paused and took a birdlike sip of her drink. 'So then she got stuck into me.'
'What did she say?'
Miss Simms turned pink. 'Reckon as I don't want to say.'
'You mean what she said hurt.' Agatha looked at her sympathetically. 'You're not the only one.'
Miss Simms looked at her in surprise. 'I'm not? But everyone else said how she was an angel.'
'Because no one wanted to tell about the things she had said to them,' said Agatha. 'Come on, you can tell us.'
'I s'pose. She said that unmarried mothers like me living off the state should be shot. She said that if she got the chair of the Ladies' Society, the first thing she would do would be to find a more respectable secretary. I told her I took nothing off the state. 'You don't have to,' she says. 'You get the men to pay, and that's the same as being a prostitute.' I said to her that we didn't all have money and the fact that she was doing it for nothing...Sorry, Mr Lacey. Anyway, I told her to get out and that was that. Do you know the next time I saw her, she was ever so nice to me that I began to think I'd imagined the whole thing.'
'This is dreadful,' said James. 'I never knew she was as bad as that.'
'That's us women for you,' said Miss Simms cheerfully. 'We always show the fellows our best side. Any idea who dug that big hole in my lawn?'
'No,' said Agatha. 'And the more I think about those attacks on the gardens, the more puzzled I am. It must have taken a great deal of daring, combined with a great deal of malice. It was dug on your front lawn, wasn't it? Anyone passing could have seen what was happening.'
'Fred Griggs asked all the neighbours and the people across the road, and no one saw anything,' said Miss Simms. 'But then, sometimes when I come back with my gentleman friend early in the morning, there's not a soul around.'
'What about your children?' Miss Simms had a boy of four and a girl aged two. 'Mrs Johns, next door, takes care of them,' explained Miss Simms.
'And she didn't see anything?'
'Not a thing. My gentleman friend, he's from the north originally, and he says that the air down here is so heavy that it makes everyone sleep like the dead.'
Agatha had to accept the truth of this statement. Any time she came back to Carsely after some time away, she found it hard to keep awake.
'You weren't at the last meeting of the Ladies' Society,' said Miss Simms.
'I was busy,' mumbled Agatha. The truth was she had known that Mrs Bloxby had been going to ask for a volunteer to take the Boggles on a day's outing and so had not gone, fearing that the gentle vicar's wife would
