“I want a quiet night,” said Agatha.
“Fallen out with James?”
“Mind your own business.”
He got his own key and followed her to the lift. “Come for a drink.”
“No,” said Agatha firmly. “I am going to sleep.”
“I can lend you a pair of pyjamas. We’re on the same floor,” he said, squinting at the number on her key tag. “And I’ve got a spare toothbrush, never touched before by the human mouth, still in its pristine wrappings.”
“That’s kind of you,” said Agatha gruffly. “But I’m not sleeping with you.”
“Did I ask you?” he said mildly.
In his room, he took out the pyjamas Agatha had worn before, freshly cleaned and ironed by the hotel laundry, and a toothbrush.
“Drink?” he offered.
“Oh, why not?” said Agatha. “I’ve had so much already but I still feel wide awake. May I smoke?”
“Of course. I smoke occasionally myself. I’ll have one of yours.”
They sat out on the balcony. Charles leaned back in his chair and looked at the stars twinkling over the sea and did not speak.
Agatha watched him covertly, wondering what made him tick. He was a remarkably clean man, tailored and laundered. Even his neat features and well-brushed hair appeared tailored and laundered. Like a cat, she thought suddenly, neat and self-sufficient.
At last she finished her drink and stood up. “Thanks for the silence, Charles. I really mean it.”
“I can be silent any time you like, Aggie. See you around.”
And so she left, half-amused, half-puzzled that he could be so casual, so unembarrassed.
At the reception desk, James asked, “Which room is Mrs. Raisin in?” The receptionist told James. “Can you phone her for me?”
The receptionist phoned and then said, “There is no reply, sir, but Mrs. Raisin went upstairs with Sir Charles Fraith. Would you like me to try his room for you?”
“No,” said James furiously. “Damn her.”
Agatha curled up in her hotel bed and thought about James. She desperately did not want him to be angry with her. He surely must be jealous of Charles. But how could the man be so jealous and be living with her and yet not make any move to make love to her?
She suddenly plunged down into a deep sleep. The night was warm but pleasant and she had not switched on the air-conditioning but had left the windows and shutters open.
At around three in the morning, the lock on her bedroom door clicked softly open. Agatha slept on. A dark figure moved softly towards the bed. With one swift movement, the pillow was snatched from under Agatha’s head and pressed down on her face.
Agatha awoke instantly and began to fight for her life. She thrashed and fought and then suddenly, with a wrench of her head, found her mouth free and screamed and screamed. She heard her door slam.
She switched on the bedside light, phoned reception and babbled for help.
An hour later, feeling sick and shivering despite the warmth of the room, she faced Pamir.
She tried to protest that she had told her story to the hotel manager, to various policemen and detectives, but he took her through it again.
When she had finished, he said, “We have taken Mr. Lacey in for questioning.”
“What?” said Agatha dizzily. “What has James got to do with it?”
“Mr. Lacey was heard earlier this evening threatening your life. He subsequently tried to call your room and when you were not there, the receptionist volunteered the information that you had gone upstairs with Sir Charles Fraith and might be in his room and volunteered to phone that number, but Mr. Lacey went off in a temper. We must not be sidetracked by the unsolved murder of Rose Wilcox. We think that Mr. Lacey, overcome with jealousy, may have tried to murder you.”
“I was able to fight off my attacker,” said Agatha. “If James had tried to murder me, I wouldn’t have been able to fight him off.”
“He may have changed his mind at the last moment.”
“Oh, this is rubbish.”
“We think this is jealousy. Sir Charles is being questioned also. You are, I believe, wearing Sir Charles’s pyjamas.” Agatha blushed. She had been too shaken to change, to do anything more but sit on the edge of the bed and shiver.
“I told you. I had a drink with him. That’s all. He kindly lent mc the pyjamas. How did whoever get the key to my room?”
“Someone may have stolen a passkey. We are questioning the staff.”
Agatha clutched her hair. “I know James was not responsible. The whole idea is mad.”
Pamir questioned her further and then said she was free to leave. Agatha miserably washed and dressed. She bundled up Charles’s pyjamas and put the toothbrush in her handbag and then made her way downstairs and out of the hotel.
She drove back to the villa and let herself in. She felt she should really go to police headquarters and see if she could help James, but she felt too tired and shaken. She went up to her room and lay on the bed. Now every sound seemed sinister. Voices carried up from the beach. People chatting on the road outside sounded as if they were downstairs in the house.
She awoke two hours later with a start. Someone was inside the house. Someone was coming up the stairs.
Agatha was just looking wildly around for a weapon when her bedroom door opened and James came in.
“Oh, James,” said Agatha, flooded with gladness. “They let you go!”
He stood in the doorway. “They had no real excuse to keep me. The neighbours were questioned and two of them, returning from a casino at the time I was supposed to be trying to murder you, said they had seen my rented car parked outside the house and had seen me walking in the garden, which is fortunately what I was doing since I could not sleep.”
“James, who do you think tried to murder me?”
“Right at this moment, I feel too tired to care. It came out during the interviewing that you had sex with Charles.”
Agatha turned dark-red. “That man is no gentleman.”
“On the contrary. He lied gallantly, but unfortunately for you, the proof of your love-making was there on the sheets and the hotel staff bore witness to that. They had hitherto kept this interesting fact from me, because I think they were sorry for me. No, Agatha, don’t say anything more. You lied to me, as you lied to me about the existence of your husband.”
He went out and closed the door.
SIX
AGATHA went for a long walk along the beach. There were fewer tourists, and flocks of migrating birds sailed over the cloudless sky overhead.
She was beginning to become angry over her own fear of James and his recriminations. How had it happened that she, Agatha Raisin, once the terror of the public-relations world, should dread another confrontation? Being in love seemed to have sapped her strength. How strange that few people actually talked about love any more. They were obsessed, taken hostage, or co-dependent-anything rather than admit they were not in control, for the very word “love” now meant weakness.
But he was at fault. He was no saint either. He had had affairs even with a woman in the village.
She would need to have it out with him and though she quailed from the idea, she knew she could not go on living under the same roof with him in a hostile atmosphere. As she walked back, the thought that someone was
