remembered Juanita. Forget him. Maybe somewhere out there was an unmarried man, charming and kind and intelligent, who would be prepared to throw in his lot with Agatha Raisin for life.
Agatha had not considered black de rigueur for a funeral but decided it was necessary for housebreaking. The evening was warm and humid but she did not have a black blouse and settled for a thin black sweater worn with black trousers and flat black shoes. Paul was to call for her at two o’clock. Just before he came, she decided that she might as well play the part properly, and putting her hand up the living-room chimney, she collected a handful of soot and blacked her face.
Paul, calling for her at exactly two o’clock, reeled back when he saw her and said faintly, “Trick or treat.”
“It’s no use us wearing black with our faces shining white,” said Agatha defiantly.
“Oh, go and wash it off. If anyone should be up and sees you in the car looking like that, they’ll be gossiping about it in the morning all over Carsely.”
But after Agatha had scrubbed off the soot and put on make-up and they were driving through Carsely, Mrs. Davenport looked down from her bedroom window and saw them. Her lips tightened in disapproval. Mr. Chatterton’s wife should know what he was up to with that harpy. They probably thought they were avoiding gossip by driving off to some hotel for their assignation. But the wife was in Madrid. I wonder if Mrs. Bloxby has Mrs. Chatterton’s home address, mused Mrs. Davenport.
As before, they parked outside the village and then walked towards Bag End and so to Ivy Cottage.
It stood, dark and sinister, in the moonlight. A light breeze sent the ivy rustling and whispering. Agatha looked at the house uneasily. “You don’t think it really is haunted?” she asked.
“Nonsense. Let’s go round the back.”
He unlatched a gate at the side of the house. The hinges sent out a creaking noise which sounded eerily loud in the silence of the night.
Agatha suddenly wished she were home in bed with her cats for company. She felt small and lonely and isolated. She wondered what Paul thought of her.
“Right,” said Paul, switching on a pencil torch. “Here’s the back, and the scullery door should be along here next to the kitchen one.” Agatha followed the dancing beam of the torch until it lighted on the scullery door.
“I don’t like this,” she whispered. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“Shhh!” He took a key out of his pocket and inserted it in the lock. “Very hard to turn,” he muttered. “I should have brought some oil.” He gave a wrench and the key turned with a rasping sound.
Paul moved quietly into the scullery followed by Agatha, who closed the door behind them.
“I think the first thing we do is look for a cellar,” he said. “Good place to start.”
They walked through the kitchen and into a stone-flagged passage which led to the front of the house. “This might be it,” said Paul, stopping before a low door. “Thank goodness the key’s in the lock.”
He opened the door and shone the torch around inside until he located a light switch. The dim light of a forty- watt bulb lit up a flight of steep stone steps.
“Down we go,” said Paul cheerfully.
Agatha followed him slowly, always listening for the wail of an approaching police siren.
Paul found another light switch at the bottom of the steps. Agatha joined him and they stood shoulder to shoulder surveying the cellar. It was crammed with old trunks and boxes. “It’ll take us years to get through this lot,” mourned Agatha.
“We’re looking for a hidden passage, remember?”
Agatha sighed. “I’ll search along two walls and you take the other two.”
“I wonder…”
“What?” demanded Agatha impatiently, anxious for the search to be over.
“If someone got in from outside, it might have been by way of a tunnel from the garden.”
“But there’s a huge acreage out there!”
“I mean, there might be some sort of trapdoor on the floor.”
“If there was, Mrs. Witherspoon would have found it.”
“Not necessarily,” said Paul. “A lot of this junk must have come with the house. Look at the name on this trunk, ‘Joseph Henderson.’” He bent down and rummaged in a box. “There are schoolbooks here dated 1902! I think she just left all this stuff untouched.”
“But you would think Harry and Carol would have come down here when they were children.”
“Might have forbidden them to do so.” Paul moved over to another section of the cellar, searching in boxes. “No, here we have Harry’s schoolbooks and some dolls which must have belonged to Carol.”
“The floor’s dusty,” said Agatha, suddenly interested. “Look around and see if any of the boxes have been moved.” She backed into an old rocking horse and let out a squeak of alarm as the horse dipped backwards and forwards as if it still had a child on its back.
An hour passed as they searched and searched. “Hopeless,” said Agatha, sitting down on a trunk. Her arms ached from moving piles of stuff around. Paul came and sat down next to her. “We’ve moved everything and looked underneath,” he sighed.
“Except that wooden chest over there,” said Agatha. “Too heavy. I couldn’t budge it.”
“What’s in it?”
“I didn’t look.”
“Agatha!”
“Well, I’m tired and I’m frightened we’ll get caught.”
“Wait till I look in the chest. Where is it?”
“Under that pile of old curtains. I put everything back the way it was.”
Agatha fumbled in her pocket and took out a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. Paul, who was heading in the direction of the chest, turned round. “No cigarettes, Agatha. The smell of smoke will linger.”
Agatha sulkily put her cigarettes back in her pocket and stifled a yawn.
Paul heaved aside the curtains, which sent up a cloud of dust, making him sneeze. He opened the lid of the large chest. “More curtains,” he said, lifting them out.
“Anything underneath?” asked Agatha.
“Nothing. Wait a bit. There are scratch marks on the edge of the wood at the bottom.”
“So what?” demanded Agatha, craving a cigarette.
Paul fished in his pocket and drew out a knife. His head disappeared inside the chest. “The bottom comes up. You can prise it up,” he said.
Agatha, suddenly excited, went to join him.
Paul struggled and strained and lifted out the bottom of the chest. “Look at that,” he said, straightening up.
Revealed was a trapdoor in the floor, and on top of the trapdoor was what looked like a new ring fastened to it.
He heaved on the ring. The trapdoor eased up and then fell against the side of the chest with a crash. Paul swore and they both waited in silence. “It’s all right,” said Paul with a shaky laugh. “I doubt if anything can be heard from this cellar. I’m going down. Look at those wooden steps, some of them look new, as if recently repaired.”
He made his way down, shining his torch, and Agatha followed him. They found themselves in a stone passage. The air was dry and musty and the ceiling so low, they had to half-crouch to walk along it.
“What if the air is so bad that we’ll die?” said Agatha, hanging on to the end of his sweater as she followed him.
“I forgot the canary,” he joked. “The air’s okay. In fact, it’s getting a little bit fresher. Maybe we’re near the end.”
They went along in silence. “Dead end,” said Paul. “But more steps. I’ll go up first. There’s bound to be another trapdoor.”
He mounted the steps. Agatha waited anxiously. She heard him grunt as he strained to lift something. Then there was a thud. “Come on up,” whispered Paul. “We’ve come out somewhere.”
Agatha began to climb and then squawked as twigs and leaves fell down on her. “Sorry,” called Paul. “I’m trying to move stuff away. It was covering the trapdoor.”
