Jessie took a deep breath. “Mum doesn’t like me, see. She’s always been picking on me. My sister Rachel’s the favourite. If Mum knew, she’d tell my boyfriend, Wayne. She’s like that, Mum is.”
“So what happened?”
“He come on to me, John did.”
“When? Where? In the salon?”
“No, at the disco off Bridge Street.”
“A disco? I thought he would have been a bit old for a disco.”
She hiccuped and gave a pathetic little sniff. “That’s what my pals thought. Wayne was away. He’s a long- distance driver, so I was there with the girls and they was giggling about him. But I thought he looked like a film star. He saw me clocking him and he come over and offered to buy me a drink. We got talking. He was flash, y’know. He asked me if I’d like to meet him for dinner the following night and Wayne was still away and I thought then it was a bit of a giggle, so I said yes.”
She fell silent. Children played, mothers gossiped, the river Avon chuckled past between its grassy banks. A pleasure boat like the one Agatha and Charles had sailed on cruised past. Charles, why didn’t you phone?
“So then what happened?”
“It was ever such a posh restaurant and we drank a lot and one thing led to another.”
“You slept with him?” What a euphemism, thought Agatha bleakly, remembering the previous night.
“Yes,” she whispered. “And I was a virgin. I was saving meself for Wayne.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty.”
Oh, God, I could kill him myself were the bastard still alive, thought Agatha fiercely.
Aloud she asked, “How long did the affair go on?”
Her thin hands twisted together. “That was it. He never took me out again. I called at his house. He said it was a one-night stand. I should have known that. I told him he had taken my virginity and he said, ‘So what? You’re old enough to lose it.’ I could’ve killed him.” Her eyes dilated. “But I didn’t!”
“Are you sure Wayne doesn’t know about this?”
She shook her head. “My pals teased him about some fellow at the disco buying me a drink, but they said he was old.”
“Did you know we believe John Shawpart to have been a blackmailer?”
She shook her head.
Agatha patted her hand. “Don’t worry. I’m amazed that a girl of your age these days should still be a virgin.”
Jessie gave a wry smile. “You oldies all think we’re at it like rabbits, but I was saving myself for Wayne, just like in those Barbara Cartland books. I’ll need to tell Wayne.”
“Is he very experienced?”
“He’s a virgin like I was before that sodding hairdresser got me.”
Well, well, God bless Evesham, the last home of innocence, thought Agatha.
She said aloud, “Look, I don’t think you’ve given us anything we can use. We’re only interested in the people he was blackmailing. As one woman to another, I’ll do this for you; I won’t tell my bosses I’ve met you.”
“Oh, thank you. What was your name again?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Agatha, a small feeling of panic beginning to enter her brain. What if the police did catch up with this girl and learned she had been impersonating a police officer!
“You’re ever so kind,” said Jessie, her face now radiant with relief.
Agatha walked quickly away. But what, niggled a voice in her brain, just what if Wayne knew about it and took revenge? I should have asked for Wayne’s address, but then I can’t ask now. I’ve done enough damage by pretending to be a detective. I hope to God I never run into her in Evesham. I hope she never learns that I’ve got nothing to do with the police.
She felt a weariness when she walked back to her car. How pleasant it would be to forget about the whole thing and sit in the meadows and watch the placid river flowing past. Evesham people did not seemed to be plagued with ambition. Yes, that’s it, Agatha Raisin! It’s just ambition. You want to prove to the police you can do better.
Then she thought, what about that woman who was complaining about her daughter, Betty, pushing drugs? Her husband was called Jim. How to find out? Not from Josie. Damn Charles, he should have asked her about it. There was Garry, however. If she made an appointment with Garry, she could maybe get something out of him.
She had not tipped him that time he had done her hair, she had been so cross with the result. She could go in and, if he was free, start off my apologizing for her previous lapse and tip him generously. Agatha decided to forget about going to Worcester.
She drove to the Merstow Green car-park and then walked along the High Street to Eve’s. Eve was perming a woman’s hair. Apart from that, there were no other customers in the shop.
Josie looked at Agatha with barely concealed animosity. “Is Garry free?” asked Agatha.
“I’ll get him,” said Josie ungraciously.
She disappeared into the back premises and then came back followed by Garry.
“I just happen to have a cancellation,” said Garry brightly. He swirled a gown around Agatha and led her through to the wash-basins. No juniors, Agatha noticed. Had they been sacked due to lack of business? She fumbled under her gown and drew a fiver out of the pocket of her jacket. “Here, I forgot to tip you last time.”
“Thanks a lot,” said Garry, visibly brightening.
“Very quiet today,” said Agatha. “I just want a blow-dry, please.”
Garry looked around and then bent over her. “Don’t know what’s happening. All Mr. John’s customers came here at first.”
“Are they going somewhere else?”
“I think they’re going to Thomas Oliver down the street.”
“Got a good reputation, have they?”
“Never been in there.”
Agatha waited until her hair was washed and she was led through into the salon. Eve was heading out of the door. “Won’t be long, Garry,” she said curtly. “Mind the store.”
“There she goes,” he said. “You’d think she might wait around a bit. Sometimes customers walk in off the street.”
“You don’t seem to be enjoying yourself much here,” said Agatha sympathetically.
“It’s dead boring. Too quiet.” He raised the blow-drier.
“Mr. John’s always seemed to be full of people and gossip,” Agatha said. “And the things they said! I remember hearing a woman talking about her husband, Jim, and her daughter Betty. She even said that she thought her daughter might be pushing drugs.”
“Oh, that’d be Mavis Burke. You have to take everything she says with a pinch of salt.”
“Local woman?”
“Yes, lives in one of those new houses on the Four Pools Estate.” He switched on the drier and began to work busily.
I can’t ask him if he knows the address, thought Agatha. That would be pushing it. I’ll go to the post office and check the phone book for Burkes.
She suffered dismally under the ministrations of the energetic Garry. He had been bad enough before, but now he was worse. She looked sadly at her bouffant hair-style.
“Very nice,” she said bleakly. She tipped him again, paid Josie and went out into the High Street.
She went into a phone-box at the post office and checked her Call Minder. “No messages,” said the tinny, elocuted voice, with what Agatha felt was smug satisfaction. So face up to it. Charles had laid her and now he was gone and she was on her own.
She asked at the counter for the Worcestershire phone book and ran her finger down the Burkes. There was one Burke on the Four Pools Estate, and J. Burke at that.
I’ll show Charles, I’ll show the police, I’ll show everybody I can do it on my own. Agatha strode along the High Street to the car-park. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in a shop window and shuddered. The things I suffer in
