“I’ll call them down.”
The girls sidled into the living room. “Sit down,” snapped Agatha. “We’ve got a few more questions for you.”
“Got better things to do,” said Fairy.
Mrs. Sommers cracked. “Answer the woman’s questions, damn it!” she yelled.
The pair looked shocked and sat down and stared at Agatha, Patrick and Phil with mutinous expressions.
“Now,” said Agatha, “you both knew she was romantically involved with Burt. Were you jealous of her?”
“Naah,” drawled Fairy. “She was so wet—Burt this, Burt that. How they was going to get married. Carried her engagement ring on a chain round her neck.”
Agatha stiffened. She remembered Jessica’s body clearly. There had been no chain round her neck with any ring.
“It wasn’t on her body when she was found.”
“Then whoever killed her nicked it,” said Trixie. “Can we go?”
“No, stay where you are,” ordered Agatha. “If Burt loved her, how did he inveigle her into posing for that Web site?”
“Told her it was just a bit of fun, nothing really dirty, and we’d all make money. She’d have done anything for him.”
“Did Jessica know Burt had already done time for armed robbery?”
“None of us knew,” said Fairy. “Cool.”
“Did you know that Jessica had at least one evening out with your maths teacher?”
“Yeah,” said Trixie. “Like she told us. Said he was an awful old ponce, bitching about the wine and trying to get into her knickers.”
“And you didn’t think to tell the police?”
“Don’t tell the fuzz everything.”
“Look, if you know anything at all, you should tell us. We know Burt had an affair with Joyce Wilson, the secretary at Smedleys. Did Jessica know about that?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Did you ever see him with any other woman?”
“No, but he had a reputation around the factory as a lady-killer. We told Jessica to get him to have a test before she let him get his leg over,” said Trixie. “I mean, these days, you never know where they’ve been.”
Oh, the innocence of youth! Where has it gone? wondered Agatha.
“Is that the lot?” asked Trixie.
“I suppose so,” said Agatha, feeling defeated. Not only was she never going to solve Jessica’s murder, she thought wearily, but her investigations on the other two were going nowhere as well.
Harry was about to give up watching Joyce, but then, towards evening, she emerged from her house and got into a taxi. He ran to the end of the street where he had parked his motorbike and set out in pursuit. He followed the cab out along the Fosse until it turned off down a country lane. She’s going to Ancombe, thought Harry. Maybe a break at last.
The cab went straight to Mabel Smedley’s house—or what Harry assumed must be Mabel’s house. He thrust his bike into some bushes and waited until the cab had left and wondered how to get near the house without being seen. He shinned over the garden wall and crept through the shrubbery. There was a short tarmac drive up to the house, but it was bordered on either side with yew and laurel.
He eased closer to the house and parted the branches of a laurel bush. Both women were standing in the living room. There were no curtains at the window. He was to wonder later why the significance of that small detail didn’t mean more to him at the time. They were talking seriously. He wished he could hear what they were saying. Then they both rose and came out of the house and got into Mabel’s car. He hurried back to where he had left his motorbike. Agatha and Phil had told him how Mabel had spotted them following her to the cinema. He’d need to be careful.
He shrank into the bushes by his motorbike as Mabel’s car roared past. He got on his bike and followed after waiting impatiently. There were two roads out of the village. One led to Carsely and the other to the Fosse. He dared not get close enough to see which one they took and opted for the Fosse.
Sure enough, when he reached the top of the road and swung out onto the Fosse, he could see Mabel’s car ahead in front of two others. He followed at a careful distance. Mabel swung off before the place where Jessica’s body had been found. He realized she was taking Joyce home. Sure enough, she dropped Joyce at her house and then drove off again.
Phil phoned Mabel later that evening. “We didn’t make another arrangement,” he said. “I would like to see you again.”
“How nice,” said Mabel. “I’m pretty tied up this week. What about next Tuesday? We could have lunch.”
“Excellent,” said Phil. “I’ll pick you up at twelve-thirty and take you somewhere nice.”
Bill Wong called on Agatha that evening. She told him about the missing engagement ring. Bill gave an exclamation of annoyance. “You should have told me right away. Wait until I phone this information in.”
Agatha waited until he had finished. “I haven’t seen the pathology report,” said Bill. “We’ll need to ask the pathologist if there was any sign of a chain being ripped from her neck. We’ll also need to send men back out to the murder site to comb the area and look for that ring. Then we’ll need to check all the jewellers in case someone tried to sell it.”
“What did Mabel say when confronted about that diploma?”
“She insists that all she learned were the basic skills of computing and the college bears that out. She said that when we first asked her and she said that she knew nothing about computers, she thought they meant was she expert in computing.”
“Sounds like a load of cobblers,” said Agatha cynically. “There’s someone at the door. Wait a minute.”
She came back followed by Harry. “Bill, Harry’s been following Joyce. He says that earlier today she took a cab to Mabel’s, the two women talked and then Mabel ran Joyce home.”
“Interesting,” said Bill. “But maybe innocent. After all, Mabel would know Joyce from the business.”
“But why would she want to talk to the girl her husband had been having an affair with?”
“I’m sure she’ll have some perfectly innocent explanation.”
“That one always has some perfectly innocent explanation.”
“What I’m interested in,” said Harry, “is that milk bottle. The missing one. Say Joyce popped it in her handbag. I’m sure the police didn’t search it. Or maybe there was somewhere in her little office where she hid it.”
“The police searched everywhere.”
“If only I could get inside that office and have a look around,” said Harry.
“Don’t!” ordered Bill. “I’ve had enough of your unorthodox methods.”
“Jealousy,” said Agatha suddenly. “And blackmail. Have you found that teller who took the deposit yet?”
“Yes, she said a rather scruffy man deposited the money on both occasions.”
“What about the security tapes at the bank?”
“We were too late getting to them. The ones for the dates of the deposits had been reused.”
“Let me see,” said Agatha. “Burt had been having an affair with Joyce. He knew about Joyce’s affair with Smedley. Say he threatened to tell Mabel. It turns out everything was in Mabel’s name. She could have sold the business from under him. It’s a wonder he didn’t murder her. And why was everything in her name? I got the impression she was a bullied wife.”
“Evidently she has a great deal of money of her own. She was the one who funded the business to get it started on the understanding that everything was kept in her name. And if Smedley was being blackmailed, then he could have paid someone to deposit the money.”
Harry sat lost in thought. He had hit upon a plan to get into that office.
The next day, Phil phoned in and said he was feeling poorly and would like the day off. What he really wanted to do more than anything was to call on Mabel. After a lot of thought, he had decided that there was surely an innocent explanation for that diploma. He was beginning to fantasize about marrying Mabel. He was years older than she was, but he was sure she was not indifferent to him.
