'Help yourself.'
He dialed home and let it ring for a long time.
'No reply,' he said with a rueful smile.
'Were you trying to get Mrs. Raisin?'
'Yes.'
'Oh, she's in town.'
'How do you know that?'
'I saw her driving past when we walked out for lunch.'
'Why didn't you say anything?'
'I was just about to, but you were talking about something and then the whole matter slipped my mind.'
Now James felt like a guilty husband who had been caught out in an adulterous act. He then became angry because he was sure Agatha had come to town for no other purpose but to spy on him.
'I'd better go. Thanks for the coffee.'
'Oh, do stay,' said Helen. 'I've nothing planned for this evening.'
'I'm afraid I have.'
She stood up and moved close to him. He moved back and found his legs pressed against the sofa. She raised her arms to put them around his neck, a slow seductive smile on her face. James ducked, stepped up on the sofa and walked over the back, his long legs taking him straight to the door.
'Goodbye,' he said, opened the door, and ran down the stairs.
'Silly old fool,' he said aloud, but he meant himself and not Agatha Raisin.
Agatha had had the foresight to buy two bottles of cheap sweet wine called Irish Blossom. They were the kind of wine bottles with screw-tops rather than corks. She and Roy found a group of down-and-outs near where Jimmy Raisin used to hang out. They were a mixed bunch, but more solid alcoholics than drug addicts, the drug addicts being younger and favouring better sites. The Celtic races predominated, Scottish and Irish, making Agatha wonder if there was any truth in the statement that alcohohsm got worse the farther north in the world one went.
No one seemed to want to know them, until Agatha fished in one of her plastic bags and produced one of the bottles of wine.
The others gathered around. Roy passed the bottle round. The contents were soon gone. An old man came up. He had two bottles of cider, which he proceeded to share. He had an educated voice and told everyone he used to be a professor. Soon they all began to talk, and Agatha and Roy found they were surrounded by jet pilots, famous footballers, brain surgeons, and tycoons. 'It's a bit like those people who believe they had a previous life,' muttered Agatha. 'They were always Napoleon or Cleopatra or someone like that.'
'They believe what they're saying,' whispered Roy. 'They've told the same lies so many times, they actually believe them now.'
Agatha raised her voice. 'We had a mate used to hang around about here,' she said. 'Jimmy Raisin.'
The man with the educated voice, who was called Charles, said, 'Someone said he got killed. Good riddance, sleazy little toe-rag.'
They must have heard about the murder by word of mouth, thought Agatha. Few of them would ever look at a newspaper.
'What happened to his stuff?' asked Roy.
'Perlice took it away,' said a thin woman with the sort of avid face and glittering eyes of a Hogarth drawing. 'Took 'is box and all. But Lizzie got 'is bag o'stuff.'
'What stuff?' Roy's voice was sharp.
'Just who the hell are you?' asked Charles.
Agatha glared at Roy. 'I'll tell you who I am,' he said, his voice slightly slurred. 'I'm a big executive in the City. I only come down here evenings because I like the company.'
There was a general easing of tension as the brain surgeons, jet pilots, and tycoons in general regarded what they thought was one of their own kind. 'And I'll tell you something more.' Roy fished in the capacious inside pocket of his Oxfam jacket. 'I took this bottle of Scotch out of the desk before I came here.'
This was nothing but the truth, but deep in the dim recesses of their brains they accepted him as a fellow liar. The Scotch was passed round. Since they were all, with the exception of Agatha and Roy, topping up from the last binge, it had the effect of knocking them into almost immediate drunkenness.
Agatha found the avid-faced woman was called Clara and sidled over to her. 'Tell you a secret,' she whispered.
Clara looked at her, her glittering eyes slightly unfocused. 'I was married to Jimmy,' said Agatha.
'Go on!'
'Fact. So that bag this Lizzie took belongs to me. Where is she?'
'She'll be along.'
So Agatha and Roy settled themselves to wait. More joined them. More cheap drink. A man built a bonfire in an old oil drum. Clara began to sing drunkenly.
It was an almost seductive way of life, thought Agatha, provided the weather wasn't too cold. Just chuck up reality, goodbye to work, to family, to responsibility, beg during the day and get stoned out of your mind at night. No conventions to bind you, no getting or spending, no hassle.
'I wash not allush like thish,' slurred Charles at one point. 'I wash a profeshor at Oxford.'
Perhaps he was, thought Agatha with a sudden stab of pity. But whatever Charles had been at one time in his life, it had obviously been something better than sitting under the arches in Waterloo scrambling what was left of his brains.
The night wore on. Fights broke out. Women cried, long maudlin wails for lost men and lost children. It's not a seductive way of life, thought Agatha. It's a foretaste of hell. There was a brief scramble of activity when the Silver Lady came round, a van with sandwiches and hot coffee, some of them trying to trade their sandwiches and coffee for another swig of drink.
Gradually, like animals, they crept off into their packing-cases. Still this Lizzie had not come.
Dawn was rising over grimy London. A blackbird perched up on a roof-top sent down a chorus of glorious sound, highlighting the degradation and misery and wasted live of those in the packing-cases beneath.
Agatha got stiffly to her feet. 'I've had it, Roy. Give your detective lady the job of finding Lizzie and double her pay to do it. I'm going home.'
'Haven't we even got enough between us for the tube?' asked Roy.
Agatha scraped in her pockets and finally found a pound. 'That's for me to take the tube,' she said firmly.
'You'll have to stick with me, sweetie, if you want to get into the office to get your bag and car keys. I have the keys to the office.'
'Let me have them.'
'No.'
'Do you mean you're going to make me walk back all that way?'
'Yes.'
Not speaking to each other, each stiff and sore and exhausted from their long night and with queasy stomachs from the awful mixture they had drunk, they headed in the direction of Waterloo Station.
A well-dressed man in evening dress approached them. He stood in front of them, stopping their progress, his face a mixture of pity and disgust. He fished in his pocket, took out his wallet and extracted a ten-pound note. 'For God's sake,' he said to Roy, 'get your mother a decent breakfast and don't spend this on booze.'
'Oh, thank you, thank you.' Roy seized the note.
'Taxi!' he yelled, and, miracle of miracles, a taxi came to a stop. Roy shoved Agatha inside, shouted 'Cheapside,' and the cab drove off.
The man in evening dress gazed after them in a fury. That's the last time I waste money on people like that, he thought.
James had suffered a sleepless night as well. At first he had thought Agatha was staying away to get
