just what she needed. She suddenly wondered about Patrick. Did he have a wife? A family?
He was in his sixties, tall with stooped shoulders, oily brown hair and a faintly unkempt appearance. “Are you married?” asked Agatha. “I was. But my hours of work broke up the marriage.” “Children?”
“A son and a daughter, both married with children of their own. Let me fill you in on the business we've been doing while you were away.” He crisply outlined new cases, what Miss Simms was following up and what Sammy Allen and Douglas Ballantine were doing.
Agatha began to feel superfluous. “I'd better start doing some work,” she said.
“Why don't you take a couple of days off?” suggested Patrick. “But it would be better to leave the Laggat- Brown case alone until things cool down.”
Agatha was about to protest. She took a mirror out of her handbag to repair her lipstick and noticed with dismay that she had an incipient moustache.
“Maybe just one day,” she said.
She drove to Evesham and to the Beaumonde Beauty Salon where she secured the services of her favourite beautician, a pretty woman called Dawn. After her moustache had been removed and her eyebrows plucked, she indulged in a non-surgical facelift and emerged an hour and a half later feeling like a new woman.
She drove home and played with the cats and then remembered she hadn't checked her phone for messages.
There was one from Roy Silver, asking excitedly about the poisoning and then one from Jeremy Laggat- Brown, saying that he was worried about her and suggesting that they meet.
Roy could wait. She phoned the mobile phone number that Jeremy had given her.
His pleasant voice said, “Agatha! What about dinner?” “What about your wife?”
“She's gone off with Jason to the funeral parlour. The body's being released. What if I pick you up in half an hour?”
“Can you make it an hour? I need a shower.”
When she had rung off, Agatha leaped up the stairs, noticing there was that twinge in her hip again. Probably strained it, she thought. She had a quick shower and chose a simple black wool dress and black court shoes. That, with a light coat, would not make her look so overdressed as she had been last time.
Emma was sitting at the moment in a pub in Scarborough working her way through an enormous steak pie and chips. She was deliberately putting on weight and noticed with satisfaction that her face was already fatter and that, combined with her cropped hair, made her look very different from the Emma Comfrey the police were looking for.
There was little to do with her days but eat large meals, change her boarding-house, and walk along the promenade watching the surging waves and plotting revenge.
Her hate focused on Charles Fraith, who had deliberately led her on, only to betray her. It was because of him that she was on the run. The fact that she had tried to poison Agatha Raisin did not cause her one pang of guilt. It was all Charles's fault. She had seen her photograph flashed up on the television news programmes, but it was an old one from her Ministry of Defence days and she knew that her new appearance bore no resemblance to the face on thescreen. She also deliberately “commonized” her accent, adopting the singsong tones of Birmingham.
In the past two days, her name and photograph had disappeared from the newspapers. A few more days, and she might make her way south when she had formulated a plan about what to do to Charles.
NINE
AGATHA did not enjoy the dinner as much as she had expected. She found she was worrying about Charles.
In her working days in London, she had been friendless. Her public relations firm was successful and consumed all her energies. Since moving to Carsely, Bill Wong had been her first friend, and then Mrs. Bloxby and Charles. She realized with a guilty pang that she had always taken Charles for granted. He came and went, often staying with her for quite long periods of time. She worried more about the emotional welfare of her cats than she did of that of Charles.
“You haven’t told me how you’re progressing with the case,” said Jeremy. “I’ve asked you twice, but you were staring off into space and not listening. There seems to have been a black-out on it in the newspapers. They only published that a murdered man had been found in your kitchen but nothing about who he was.”
“I’m sorry,” said Agatha. “I’m a bit distracted at the moment. I really must phone your wife. I have been instructed by the police and Special Branch to leave the case alone for the moment.”
“Special Branch? Why them?”
He smiled into her eyes, but Agatha remembered Patrick’s warning and so she lied. “They wouldn’t tell me.”
“And where were you for the last few days? I called several times.”
“I stayed at some hotel with Charles. I didn’t want to go home while the house was crawling with forensic people. Then the press usually come round in swarms.”
“So you don’t know who the man was?”
“No.”
“You’d never seen him before?” His eyes teased her. “Not a rejected lover, hey?”
Agatha smiled. “Nothing like that.” What was Charles doing? Had she been so very rude to him? “Bugger rocket,” she said, poking at the green mound on her plate.
He looked startled.
“Sorry,” said Agatha. “I didn’t realize I had spoken aloud. Rocket’s not my favourite vegetable.”
“I heard you were in Paris when the murder took place. What took you there?”
“I needed a break and Charles wanted to look up an old friend’s daughter.”
“What’s her name?”
Agatha began to feel a tinge of unease. “I don’t know because we never saw her. The police hauled us in and that was that. Never mind the dreadful murder. Let’s talk about something else. Are you going to the funeral?”
“No, I’ve got to work. Might be away for a bit.”
“Are you reconciled with your wife?”
“Pretty much. But only for Cassandra’s sake. She wants us to be together. But it’ll be a marriage in name only.” He smiled at her again. “We’ll be able to see a lot of each other.”
“I don’t date men if their living with their exes,” said Agatha.
He laughed. “You are now.”
“But that’s different. You’re part of a case I’m working on.” “I thought you weren’t working on it.” “As I said, not at the moment. And you are the ex-husband of a client.”
He took her hand. “And is that all?”
He was extremely handsome and possibly, if she had not been worrying about the absent Charles, she might have succumbed to his charm. But she drew her hand away gently and said, “I’m not in the mood for a flirtation at the moment, Jeremy. This murder and all has frightened me out of my wits. You do see that.”
“Of course, of course.” He began to talk about other things and then drove her home.
Agatha said goodbye to him on the doorstep. He tried to kiss her on the lips, but she turned her face so that the kiss fell on her cheek.
Once inside, she decided to phone Roy.
“You seem to be having a hairy time, sweetie,” he said. “Want me to come down?”
“Oh, would you?” Agatha was suddenly flooded with gratitude.
“I’ve got a few days owing. I’ll be down tomorrow. There’s a train gets in at Moreton around twelve- thirty.”
“I’ll be there.”
Agatha then phoned Charles’s number. Gustav answered the phone. “Who’s calling?” he asked in reply to her demand to speak to Charles.
“Agatha Raisin.”
