sure that the Mircester Chronicle got a full story first of her detective abilities. Then she remembered the horror of the dress rehearsal and her face darkened. That new producer was a drunken beast. Why on earth had their usual producer, Guy Wilson, taken it upon himself to go off with shingles? And why did they have to end up with a failed Stratford producer who had decided to set the whole of Macbeth in Bosnia, with the clansmen wearing gas masks? He had told her in front of the whole cast that she had made Lady Macbeth sound like some lady of the manor opening a church fete.
The door of her dressing-room opened and a face covered with a gas mask peered round it. Robin turned round and scowled. She did not associate much with the foot soldiers of the cast.
But he eased in, carrying a splendid bunch of red roses. “To match your beauty,” he said, his voice muffled behind the mask.
Robin suddenly beamed. “You are a love. What beautiful flowers!”
“I see you’ve a vase over there. I’ll just pop them in for you.”
“You haven’t told me your name,” said Robin.
“I prefer to remain a secret admirer.” He filled the vase with water from a sink in the corner and arranged the roses in it.
“Goodbye, my sweet.” He made an elaborate bow and turned and left.
Her spirits miraculously restored, Robin stood up and went to the flowers to inhale their scent. She reeled back gasping, feeling her arms and legs heavy. She tried to cry out, but the sense of suffocation increased. Robin collapsed on the floor and vomited. She began to crawl towards the door and then a great blackness descended on her.
Eight
AGATHA whistled happily the following morning as she prepared a breakfast of toast and marmalade and black coffee. The sun streamed in through the open kitchen door and all was right with her world. She and Paul had enjoyed a pleasant dinner. Once more they were at ease in each other’s company. They had even begun to joke about their amateur mistakes. She had told him about her visit to Robin Barley and had even done an imitation of her that had made Paul laugh.
He was to call for her that afternoon and then they were going to go to Towdey to see if they could find out more about Peter Frampton.
Once more her head was beginning to fill with rosy dreams. She had not yet had time to visit the hairdressers, so after breakfast she went up to the bathroom and used a brunette rinse on her hair to soften the effect of red roots.
Wrapping a towel round her hair, she went downstairs again and sat in the garden to enjoy the sun.
A frantic ringing on the doorbell, followed by a hammering on the front door, made her spring to her feet.
She ran through the house and opened the door. Paul stood there. “Agatha, Agatha, did you say you had been to see someone called Robin Barley?”
“Yes, come in. What’s up?”
“I just heard it on the radio. I was driving back from Moreton when I heard she’d been found dead in her dressing-room.”
They walked through to the kitchen as Agatha said, “Maybe she had a heart attack.”
“The news report said the police are treating the death as suspicious.”
Agatha sank down on a kitchen chair and looked at him bleakly.
“Sooner or later the police are going to question the neighbours around her studio and they’ll give a description of me. But if she was killed in her dressing-room, that points again to Harry. Oh, dear. It’s all my fault. She was so keen to play detective.”
“Did you encourage her to play detective?”
“Not really. In fact, she was so bitchy I was just glad to get out of there.”
“So it’s not your fault. No point in trying to see Harry or Carol today, and it would be better to leave Peter Frampton until we find out more. It must have something to do with Harry.”
“If it isn’t Harry,” said Agatha, “and if he has an alibi, then her murder may not have anything to do with the Witherspoon one.”
“Perhaps we should try to see Bill Wong.”
“I should think every detective they’ve got will be out on this one and they’ll be under pressure from the media. This one’s more exotic than an old lady being murdered.”
“I feel there’s something we should be doing.”
The doorbell rang again. They looked at each other in dismay. “Must be the police,” said Agatha dismally.
But when she answered the door it was to find a distressed Mrs. Bloxby. “Come in,” said Agatha. “We’ve just heard.”
“I cannot believe it,” said Mrs. Bloxby. “I’ve known Mrs. Barley quite a long time. Did you see her?”
“Yes, I told her we were trying to find out if Harry could have had a chance to slip away and get over to Hebberdon. I know she was a friend of yours, but she was…difficult.”
“Poor Robin could be rather grandiose,” said the vicar’s wife, “but a heart of gold underneath it all. She did a lot of good work for the church. I phoned the rector of Saint Ethelburgh’s in Wormstone, the village where she lived. He had an arrangement to meet her in her dressing-room after the dress rehearsal. She was going to produce a play for the village church. It was he who found her.
“He said she was lying near the door. Her face was an awful colour and she had vomited. He called the ambulance and the police and the fire brigade, all three he was in such a state. The police arrived first. He was told to wait outside. Then he was driven to police headquarters and told to wait there. When two detectives finally arrived to interview him, he said it was a terrible ordeal. They kept asking him over and over again if he had brought her flowers. And he had to repeat over and over again that he had not brought her any flowers. He had an arrangement to meet her and when he knocked on the dressing-room door and did not get a reply, he had opened the door and found her. It came out at the end of the interview that poor Mrs. Barley had died of cyanide poisoning and the police think that hydrogen cyanide pellets were dropped into a vase of roses. The resultant cyanide gas released by the pellets killed her.”
“How on earth in this day and age in the quiet Cotswolds would someone get hold of cyanide?” asked Agatha.
“Farmers used to use hydrogen cyanide,” said Paul. “But it’s now banned, along with DDT. I suppose there must be some of the stuff still lying around.”
“So what do we do now?” asked Agatha.
“I think we wait,” said Paul.
“I wish we had the resources of the police,” mourned Agatha. “We can’t check phone bills and see who she’d been phoning.”
“There are detective agencies who can get you a three-month record of anyone’s phone bill,” said Mrs. Bloxby, surprising them. “It cost about four hundred pounds plus VAT.”
“Wow, how do you know this?” asked Agatha.
Mrs. Bloxby coloured slightly. “I’m afraid it’s confidential. A parishioner was very obsessed with some woman and he wanted to check on her phone calls to see if she had been phoning an old lover, although she swore she hadn’t.”
“And had she?” asked Agatha, fascinated.
“Oh, yes.”
“And that cured his obsession?”
“No, it got worse. He finally moved to Australia. Such a waste of money.”
Agatha racked her brains to think of any parishioner who had moved to Australia. Mrs. Bloxby smiled slightly. “Before your time, Mrs. Raisin.”
“You know,” said Agatha, “I think I should phone Bill and tell him about my visit to Robin. I’ve a feeling they’re going to find out anyway.”
