“She’ll love it,” said Agatha. “Trust me.”
What so horrified Charles was a cylindrical plastic floor lamp in which golden bubbles rose and fell along with tiny plastic sea horses in jewelled colours.
They went into the shop and Agatha explained she wanted to buy it and have it delivered immediately.
“I haven’t anyone to deliver it today,” said the sales assistant.
“I tell you what; just wrap it up and give me a gift card. I’ll send it out in a taxi.”
Agatha paid while Charles wrote a card of apology. They carried the box with the lamp in it over to the taxi rank and paid a driver to take it to Bill’s home.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” said Charles. “That lamp might turn out to be adding insult to injury.”
“Let’s go and visit Mrs. Bloxby. Haven’t seen her in a while.”
They saw Mrs. Bloxby walking along the main street, stopped the car and hailed her.
“How are you getting on?” asked the vicar’s wife. ‘1 was just going home for a cup of tea. Care to join me?”
“Get in the car,” said Charles cheerfully, “and we’ll all go together.”
In the vicarage sitting room, while Mrs. Bloxby went to fetch tea, Agatha relaxed and looked around her. She could never quite understand why Mrs. Bloxby’s shabby sitting room should have such peaceful charm compared to her own. Everything was worn and parts of the silk cushions on the sofa were showing signs of splitting. There was a small round table by the window holding a blue jug of wildflowers and bits of chipped antique furniture in comers of the room. But somehow it created a harmonious whole.
Mrs. Bloxby came back with the tea things and a plate of shortbread. “How is this business about Mr. Smedley’s murder going?” she asked.
Agatha proceeded to tell her everything they had found out. When she had finished, Mrs. Bloxby said, “I don’t somehow think it could have been this secretary.”
“Why?”
“I cannot think anyone would have made themselves such an obvious suspect.”
“We’re going round and round in circles. Aren’t you shocked about the schoolgirls’ video games?”
“I don’t think anything shocks me any more,” said Mrs. Bloxby sadly. “The last time I went to the hairdresser, I had forgotten to take a book. There was a pile of magazines meant for girls in their early teens. They were all about sex. Quite disgusting. I think this Burt put them up to it and they thought it a bit of a lark.”
“If Joyce isn’t the culprit, surely Mrs. Smedley might be. She says she didn’t know Robert was having an affair with Joyce, but I am sure she must have known there was something going on.”
“Not necessarily. And how is your detective friend?”
Agatha let out a strangled sob. “I don’t think he’s a friend any more.”
“Why? What happened?”
“It was Charles’s fault.” Agatha plunged into a description of what had happened at the dreadful lunch.
When Agatha had finished, Mrs. Bloxby put a handkerchief to her mouth. “Excuse me.” She fled out of the room. They heard muffled sounds coming along the corridor.
“Is she ill?” asked Agatha. “Should I go to her?”
“I think she’s laughing.”
“Laughing? I’ve just lost my one best friend and she’s laughing?”
Mrs. Bloxby came back into the room. Agatha did not notice that Charles’s eyes had become suddenly cold.
“I am sorry,” said Mrs. Bloxby. “But it really was so funny.”
Agatha stared at her and then slowly began to giggle. “I suppose it is.”
Charles rose to his feet. “If you ladies will excuse me. I’ve just realized, Agatha, that I have been neglecting things at home. No, don’t get up. I’ll walk back.”
He went out, slamming the door. “What’s the matter with him?” asked Agatha.
“Did you say anything when I was out of the room?”
“Let me see. I could hear sounds and I asked Charles if I should go to you. He said he thought you were laughing. I couldn’t see the funny side of it just then. That’s all. Maybe he has just remembered something urgent. I’m tired of murder. Tell me the parish news.”
“Miss Simms—I think she will always be Miss Simms to me—is getting a divorce from Patrick.”
“They said nothing to me!”
“Probably didn’t want any fuss. It’s by mutual agreement. Both of them thought they wanted to settle down. Patrick found it didn’t suit him. I think our Miss Simms missed her casual affairs.”
Agatha felt she should phone Charles that evening and ask him why he had decided to leave so suddenly. But an absent Charles meant a Charles who would, hopefully, not be around on Wednesday evening. She fed her cats and then switched on her computer and began to look up everything she could on Zimbabwe. She was just printing off some pages when the phone rang.
She answered it, expecting it to be Charles, but it was Bill Wong. “You’re a bad girl, Agatha, but really, Mum is over the moon about that magnificent present. She and Dad just sit there looking at it.”
“I can only repeat how sorry I am.”
“It was really Charles’s fault. I’ve got this girlfriend, Harriet, a policewoman. I phoned her up and told her what Charles had done and how the pair of you had run away. She laughed and laughed and then she said my mum’s cooking was awful. I never noticed. Is it?”
“It’s a bit of an acquired taste. Oh, Bill, I am so glad we are friends again.”
“Well, keep safe. And if you find a murderer, don’t go tackling him on your own.”
Agatha found it hard to get to sleep that night. Instead of concentrating on alibis for the morning of the murder, everyone should have been concentrating on the period from Friday until Monday. Anyone could have got in and poisoned the milk. But how would anyone get in unobserved with cameras all over the place and the gates locked?
Burt Haviland. Now he was the one with a criminal record. She resolved to go and see him the following day and take Phil with her. There might just be a connection between the two murders.
Agatha was grateful to Mabel Smedley for having suspended the staff from work. That way she had a chance of finding the ones she wanted to talk to at home. There was no reply at Burt Haviland’s home, so she and Phil decided to wait outside in the car.
“It’s a funny business, the Internet,” mused Phil. “It’s so useful for research and yet everyone has easy access to pom. Now although what the girls were showing could be classified as soft pom, it’s still one more thing to corrupt the young. Even their figures have changed. In my youth, they stayed very slim and nearly flat-chested right up until they started work, but now they’ve got busts and backsides starting around the age of eleven years. Then they either start dieting ferociously or become as fat as anything. Not to mention the terrific rise in sexually transmitted diseases.”
Agatha winced. She was mentally planning to start an affair with Freddy. But these were difficult days. No more tumbling carefree into bed. Always wondering if the sexual partner was really some sort of diseased time bomb.
“Oh, here he comes,” said Phil.
Burt Haviland was walking along the street carrying a grocery bag. They both stepped out of the car.
“Oh, it’s you,” he said. “Haven’t I enough to put up with having the police in my face all the time?”
“Just a few questions,” said Agatha.
He leaned against her car. “Fire away. I’m not asking you inside.”
“Who has the keys to the factory?”
“The security man. He opens up and locks up. Smedley would have had a set.”
“Look, we’re not accusing you of anything,” said Phil. “But is there any way anyone could get into the factory without keys, say at night?”
“Well, there is. Berry was sometimes too quick off the mark at locking up. One of the men found himself locked in one night. He managed to get out through a fire door, but he couldn’t find Berry anywhere. He walked round the perimeter fence and found a bit where the chain fence was loose at the bottom and prised it up and
