“Oh, Charles. Such male vanity.”
“No, really. I was up on the platform at the fete and I looked across and I’d swear it was her. I asked Gustav and he said he’d told her fortune.”
“What was Gustav doing telling her fortune?”
“The woman who was supposed to tell them fell ill and I made Gustav dress up and do it. He turned out to be a wow. People like being frightened and he told them such dire things.”
“What did he tell Emma?”
“He said he felt sorry for her, so he’d given her the usual rubbish about meeting a tall, dark stranger.”
“I’ll have a word with Emma. Do you know I’ve put a codicil in my will, giving her the detective agency?”
“Oh, Aggie. Did you tell her?”
“Yes.”
“Cancel it.”
“I’ll have a talk to her about trailing around after you. But what did you expect? You took her to lunch a couple of times. Maybe she’s lonely.”
“You obviously don’t think much of my charms.”
Agatha looked at him. Even in an open-necked blue shirt and blue chinos, he looked neat and impeccably barbered.
“Eat your food,” she said.
Emma clutched her hair. What if Charles drank the coffee? And Doris would tell the police that she had given her the keys, so she would be first suspect. How stupid and crazy she had been. There was a ring at the doorbell. When she opened the door, Doris Simpson was standing there.
“I’d better take the keys back,” she said. “My Bert, he points out that Agatha is paying me for looking after them cats and it’s cheating on her to have you do it.”
“I don’t mind,” pleaded Emma.
“I must have the keys,” insisted Doris. “Where are they?” Really, thought the cleaner, Mrs. Comfrey looks as if she’s about to faint.
“Oh, there they are,” said Doris, seeing the keys on a small table inside the door. She pushed past the trembling Emma and picked up the keys.
“I think it would be best,” said Doris, who was about the only woman in the village who called Agatha by her first name, “if you didn’t tell Agatha about me giving you the keys. I need all the money I can get these days and I wouldn’t want her to go thinking I had cheated her.”
“I won’t breathe a word,” said Emma passionately. “Not a word.”
When Doris had gone, Emma sat down and hugged her thin figure. Then she rose and went down to the shed in the garden and collected the rat poison and buried it under the compost heap.
She decided she would wait and wait until she saw them return and follow them in. She would knock over that jar of coffee, sweep it up and take the contents away. Miss Simms would know when they were due back because Agatha kept in touch with her.
“Aren’t you coming to bed with me?” asked Charles.
“No,” said Agatha. “And I wish you wouldn’t parade around the room naked. It’s disconcerting.”
Charles climbed into his bed with a sigh. “You’re getting old, Aggie.”
“No, I’m not,” said Agatha furiously. “You’re amoral, that’s what you are.”
“I’m the same as I’ve always been. Good night.”
Agatha lay awake for some time. She had slept with Charles before—and enjoyed it. But their intimacy never seemed to affect Charles, and Agatha, in the past, had been left feeling that she had been used, that sex with her was like a drink or a cigarette to Charles.
But soon the amount of wine she had drunk lulled her off to sleep and down into uneasy dreams.
The man could not believe his luck. He had climbed over the fence into Agatha’s garden and crept up to the kitchen door. The kitchen door was slightly open. Emma had forgotten to close it when she let the cats back in.
He eased in and began to search the house. No one here, he thought. Well, a job’s a job. I’ll wait here until she gets back. Two pairs of eyes gleamed at him in the darkness. “Damn cats,” he muttered. But he was fond of cats, so he shooed them out into the garden and closed the door.
Where on earth was the woman? His informant had told him she would be back this evening. Still, it was only midnight. Better to wait.
In the moonlight streaming in through the window, he saw a jar of instant coffee beside the kettle. May as well have some of that, he thought, and keep myself awake.
Emma awoke at dawn, sitting fully dressed in an armchair. She could not remember having fallen asleep. She suddenly wondered if she had shut the back door of Agatha’s cottage after she had let the cats in. She went out of her cottage and looked nervously around, but no one was about. She went up the side path of Agatha’s cottage and round to the garden door and slumped in disappointment. Then she saw the cats in the garden.
But I’m sure I let them in, thought Emma. Putting on her gloves, she tried the door and to her relief it opened. She switched on the light. Then she let out a stifled scream. The kitchen smelt of vomit and a man was lying on the kitchen floor. There was a revolver on the table. She grabbed the jar of coffee and retreated to the door. She sped to her own cottage. She had an identical jar of instant coffee in her kitchen. She wiped it down with a cloth to get rid of fingerprints and hurried back to Agatha’s with it and placed it on the counter. Then she took out a cloth and wiped away her footprints as she backed out of the door. Wait, Emma! screamed a voice in her brain. How did he get in? Doris will say she gave you the keys, surely, and you will be accused of letting some man into the cottage. He couldn’t be anyone Agatha knew. Not wearing a black mask and with a revolver on the table. She picked up a rock from the rockery and smashed a pane of glass on the door. Why hadn’t the burglar alarm gone off? I can’t have set it, thought Emma. I’ll reset it. That means I’ll have to let myself out through the front of the house.
A cold determination had set in. She opened a cupboard under the stairs and found a hand vacuum cleaner that Agatha used for her car. She carefully vacuumed after herself to the front door and set the alarm, praying it wouldn’t go off. It shouldn’t go off because the glass was already broken. Then she remembered he must have drunk out of a cup. Should she leave it? Yes, she must. She couldn’t bear to go back. The path round the side of the house was gravel, so she was sure she hadn’t left any incriminating footprints when she arrived. She didn’t have the keys but the locks clicked shut automatically. She took the vacuum with her.
Emma went home, got undressed and went to bed. Her last waking thought was that dear Charles would never know how she had saved his life.
Agatha was shaken awake at nine the following morning by Charles. “Get up,” said Charles urgently. “The French police are downstairs and want to speak to you.”
“What’s the time?”
“Eleven o’clock. All that wine. We slept in. You didn’t even hear the phone. Get dressed and I’ll go down first and see what they want.”
Agatha scrambled into her clothes, wondering what on earth had happened. When she went down to the reception area, it was to find two policemen and what she judged to be two French detectives.
“Ed better explain,” said Charles, “because their English isn’t very good. A man has been found dead in your kitchen in. Carsely. He looks as if he’s been poisoned.”
“Who is it?”
“Blessed if I know. All they want at the moment is a timetable of when we arrived in Paris and where we were. I’ve told them everything and they can check it.”
Charles turned away from her and launched into rapid French. One of the detectives replied. Agatha waited impatiently.
“Seems to have been an intruder. The pane of glass in the kitchen door was smashed. There was a black Balaclava on the table and a revolver. Someone was out to get you, Aggie. We’re to wait at the commissariat.”
He turned again and spoke to the detectives.
“He says we’d better pack our bags and check out. It looks as if it’s going to be a long day.”
One of the detectives spoke again. Charles translated, “We’re to have breakfast if we want while they search
