“Well, his ex is loaded and they’re getting married again.”
“I thought he was a charming man. Now I’m beginning to think he’s a rat.”
“Yes, but a rat who is devoted to his daughter.”
“And nothing bad in his background?”
“No. We checked out all his import/export business and interviewed his clients. He’s exactly what he says he is.”
“Catherine Laggat-Brown’s taken me off the case. Yet, I had dinner with Jeremy the night before and he said nothing about it.”
“Oho, have you been dating him?”
“No, Roy was there. He was interested in what we’d found out but I couldn’t tell him anything about Mulligan because I was told not to. Nothing in Harrison Peterson’s background?”
“We’re still digging, finding out who he made friends with in prison, that sort of thing.”
“Let me know when you find anything.” Agatha set two cups of coffee and a plate of biscuits on the table.
“I’m not supposed to.” Hodge climbed up Bill’s trouser leg and settled on his lap.
“Funny how much these cats love you. How are your parents?”
“Mother’s got bad arthritis in her hip. She had this pain for ages but she wouldn’t get the hip x-rayed and now she’s got to queue up for a hip operation.”
Agatha’s hip gave a sharp twinge and she thought, I can’t have arthritis. Surely only old people get it.
Bill finished his coffee, ate two biscuits and left, saying “Look after yourself. In fact, Agatha, stick to divorces and missing dogs and cats. You’re off the Laggat-Brown case. So leave it that way.”
Agatha made herself a supper of lasagne in the microwave. She overdid it and it was stuck to the sides of the plastic tray, but she scraped off what she could. She decided to cook up some fish for the cats, and after the fish was cooked switched off the gas and went upstairs.
She had a long hot bath, opened her bedroom window, and went to bed.
Agatha awoke with a start. There was a scratching and yowling from the thatch above her head. She leaped out of bed and opened the bedroom window wide and leaned out. Her cats were up on the roof. She could not see them but she recognized their cries.
Agatha pulled her head in and was just about to switch on her bedside light when she smelt gas. North Sea gas does not have the same strong smell as the old coal gas, but she knew it was gas all the same. She hurried down to the kitchen, trying to breathe as little as possible.
The gas under the fish pot was switched full on. She switched it off and opened the kitchen door and breathed in great lungfuls of fresh air.
It was then she realized that when she opened the kitchen door the burglar alarm had not gone off.
But her overriding thought was to rescue her cats.
She got an extension ladder out of the shed at the bottom of the garden, and carrying it up the path, placed it against the thatch and climbed up.
Agatha called to her cats, who approached her cautiously. She managed to get hold of Hodge, and Boswell leaped onto her shoulder. Agatha eased down the ladder with the cats and collapsed on the grass, holding her head in her hands and feeling sick.
Then she went indoors and opened the front door and all the windows before she phoned the police.
PC Boyd, accompanied by PC Betty Howse, arrived. At first they were sure that Agatha had simply forgotten to light the gas.
“It doesn’t light automatically,” said Agatha. “You have to push that button there to ignite it. And why didn’t the burglar alarm go off?”
Boyd put on a pair of thin gloves and lifted the cover off the main burglar alarm box.
“It’s switched off,” he said over his shoulder. “Are you sure you didn’t do it?”
“Absolutely not!”
“But when you came in this evening, it must have sounded before you punched in the code.”
“Come to think of it, it didn’t. Bill Wong was with me and I was talking to him and didn’t notice.”
“That would be Detective Sergeant Bill Wong?”
“Yes, we’re friends.”
“Who else has keys to your house?”
“Just Doris Simpson.”
“I’ll need her phone number.”
Agatha gave it to him and he picked up the phone and called Doris. Agatha’s heart sank as she heard Boyd’s end of the conversation. “What repair-man? What did he look like? Did he show you any identification? Did you leave your keys lying around? Did you leave him alone at any time?”
Meanwhile Betty Howse reached up and took down the instruction manual from the control box. “What’s this?” she demanded sharply, pointing to the numbers “5936” written on top of the instruction manual.
“It’s the code,” mumbled Agatha. “I kept forgetting it, so I wrote it down.”
Meanwhile, Boyd ended his interrogation of Doris. “A man saying he was from the security company who installed the burglar alarm called round when Mrs. Simpson was here. He flashed some sort of card at her and she let him in. Then she said she had to get down to the shops to get some more cleaning stuff and she left the keys on the table. Time enough for him to get an impression of them. He makes sure the alarm is switched off He then comes back when you’re asleep, lets himself in. But what puzzles me is that he couldn’t guarantee you wouldn’t notice the alarm had been switched off. He wouldn’t know that a short burst of alarm as he let himself in wouldn’t wake you. He didn’t have the code to switch it off quickly.”
“Oh, yes, he did,” said Betty and held out the instruction book with the code written on it.
“Amateurs. You, I mean,” said Boyd bitterly. “So it was planned to look like an accident. The house fills with gas. You switch on a light, and, boom, you’re history. Now I must ask you to leave the kitchen alone until a forensic team arrives. In fact, it would be better if you could stay with someone.”
Agatha thought desperately. “I could phone Mrs. Bloxby, the vicar’s wife, but it’s the middle of the night and her husband would be furious. I would check into an hotel, but they probably wouldn’t let me bring my cats and I don’t want to leave them here. I know, I’ll get Doris to drop in and look after the cats and then I’ll book into some hotel.”
“We need to know which one.”
“There’s a big one outside Bourton-on-the-Water called The Cotswold.”
“Phone them now.”
So Agatha phoned and was assured of a room. She went upstairs and got dressed and packed a bag. Then she put her cats into the large cat box and drove round to Doris Simpson. Doris was still awake and full of apologies. “Honestly, he was such a meek-looking little man. I didn’t think for a moment there was anything wrong. Of course I’ll look after the cats.”
Agatha drove off in the direction of Bourton-on-the Water, feeling numb. Why was she considered such a danger? She didn’t know much, and what she knew was surely considerably less than what the police knew. In the hotel room, she unpacked her few belongings, undressed and climbed into bed. She lay shivering despite the central heating. She felt they, whoever they were, were not going to give up. The only solution, surely, was to leave the country for an extended holiday and let everyone know she had left so that the murderer or murderers would no longer think her a threat.
She fell into an uneasy sleep and woke up in the morning remembering her dreams and feeling she had spent the night in some sort of Shakespearian play, with first murderer and second murderer waiting in the wings.
Agatha craved the soothing presence of Mrs. Bloxby, but first she drove to her cottage. A forensic team was working outside like so many figures from science fiction in their white hooded suits, gloves and white bags tied over their boots.
One of Agatha’s favourite programmes on television was
She left her car and walked up to the vicarage.
Mrs. Bloxby let her in and said that as the day was fine, they could sit in the garden where Agatha could have
