shoes. They left the car and slid down the bank and began searching among the bushes at the bottom. They’d gone at least a mile away from the car when Agatha panted, “It’s no good. This is mad.”
“Let’s sit down. I’ve got the coffee.”
Restored by two cups of black coffee, a chicken sandwich and a cigarette, Agatha looked around. Behind her, up on the dual carriageway, the traffic whizzed past. Round about them, the ground was dotted with litter thrown from cars. She looked idly to left and right and then exclaimed, “Knickers!”
“Yes, it is very hot,” said Phil amiably.
“No, I mean I think that’s a pair of knickers over there.”
She got to her feet and went a little way to her left and stooped down. A brief torn pair of lace knickers was hanging on the twig of a stunted bush. “Could be anyone’s,” she muttered. “Let’s look around here.”
“Here’s a shoe!” said Phil. “What was she wearing when she disappeared?”
“Let me think. A pink cropped top with sequins, jeans and highheeled black sandals. No coat because the night was warm, and one of those things called bumbags although women usually wear them round the front.”
“This is a black sandal. Should we call the police?”
“No, let’s look further. If she had her knickers torn off and if it’s Jessica, the jeans must be here somewhere.”
Phil nipped back up the grass bank.
“Where are you going?” shouted Agatha.
“Get a better look from the top.”
Agatha continued to move slowly along the ditch, parting the bushes, impervious to thorns catching at her tights.
“Someone’s dumped an old fridge there,” called Phil.
Agatha moved forward. The fridge, a large one, was lying on its side. Taking out a handkerchief, she opened the door. “Nothing!” she called.
“Let’s keep trying.”
“Maybe the police have been all over here.”
“They missed the shoe and the knickers.”
Agatha suppressed a groan. Then she decided instead of searching away from where the shoe had been found and keeping to the ditch, she should go back to the shoe and move forwards, away from the dual carriageway where the ground rose up again towards a wooded area.
She entered the trees, glad to get out of the sun. She was suddenly tired. The whole thing was useless. What could she find that teams of searchers could not? She turned to go back and the sun shone into her eyes, momentarily blinding her. She tripped over something and fell headlong.
“Snakes and bastards,” muttered Agatha, heaving herself up on one elbow and twisting round to see what had tripped her. She found herself looking into a pair of staring dead eyes and flung herself backwards.
Jessica Bradley, naked from the waist down, and half covered with branches which had been torn out of the ground and put over the body to conceal it, lay sprawled like a broken doll. Agatha knew it was Jessica from the pink sequinned crop top, which had a huge bloodstain over most of the front. The body had probably been completely concealed, but predators had been at work and most of a leg had been chewed off.
“Phil!” screamed Agatha. She tottered right out of the woods and then sat down and put her head between her knees.
Phil came running to join her. “She’s in there. It’s horrible, horrible,” babbled Agatha.
“I’ll phone the police,” he said. “I’ll photograph everything while we wait. Where is she?”
“In there,” said Agatha, pointing.
Phil went into the woods and then, to her amazement, she could hear the busy click-click of his camera.
He came out and said, “I’ll phone the police now.”
Agatha felt some courage seeping back. “I’ll phone the press. Don’t want the police taking credit for this.”
Soon they heard the wail of sirens in the distance. Police arrived first, then detectives, Agatha’s friend Bill Wong amongst them, and then a forensic team.
Agatha and Phil told their stories over and over again and then were told to follow a police car to Mircester Police Headquarters to make their statements.
Agatha was interviewed by Detective Inspector Wilkes and Bill Wong. “Now, let’s go over it again,” said Wilkes.
And Agatha did, over and over.
When she was finished, she said, “Now I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“Haven’t got the time,” said Wilkes. “Wong, see her out.”
“I’ll nip over to your place sometime when I can get away,” whispered Bill as he led her out.
“Oh, Mrs. Raisin!” Wilkes’s voice sounded behind them in the corridor.
“Yes?”
“No talking to the press.”
“If they ask me questions, then I will answer them,” said Agatha.
“Bet you’ve phoned them already,” murmured Bill.
Agatha found Phil waiting for her in reception and they left the police station together and straight into a crowd of reporters and photographers and television crews.
“I promised we wouldn’t say anything to the press,” whispered Phil urgently.
“Bollocks to that,” said Agatha. “I have a business to run.”
She faced up to the press. “I’ll make one statement and then I’m off. It was a shocking discovery.”
She was just about to brag that the discovery had been because of her brilliant intuition when she became sharply aware of Phil standing beside her. Mrs. Bloxby’s mild face rose before her eyes.
“It was the idea of my new photographer and, er, detective,” said Agatha. She told them about Phil’s idea but then bragged about how it was her idea to search in the woods.
She finished by saying, “That’s all, folks.”
As they were pushing their way through the press to get to Phil’s car, one reporter shouted, “How old are you, Mr. Witherspoon?”
“Seventy-six,” said Phil cheerfully.
“Oh, get in the car and drive off,” snarled Agatha.
She had dealt with the press for a long time and knew that the innocent Phil had just stolen her moment of glory. There would be headlines in the tabloids about Grandpa Sleuth. Geriatric Sherlock. Pah.
Sir Charles Fraith had gone back to his own home to collect a few more things. He let himself in with a set of keys Agatha had given him a few years ago. He shooed her cats out into the garden after dumping his bag in the hall. Then he went into the sitting room, fixed himself a drink and turned on the television news.
He raised his glass to take a first sip and then froze as the announcer said, “A seventy-six-year-old grandfather, Phil Witherspoon, has discovered the body of the missing teenager, Jessica Bradley.” There was a shot of Agatha and Phil leaving police headquarters and then the scene moved to outside Phil’s cottage in Carsely. He looked flustered. “Really, it was all Mrs. Raisin’s doing. I just made a few suggestions.”
“How long have you been employed by the detective agency?”
“Today was my first day. I did suggest we go back and follow her route home and when we got to the dual carriageway, I did suggest she might have got into a car instead of crossing the road. It was then Mrs. Raisin took over and with a marvellous piece of detective work guessed where the body might be.”
Like Agatha, Charles knew that Phil would turn out to be the hero of the day in the morning papers. He was seventy-six and at his first day of work. Poor Agatha.
Charles heard the front door crash open and hurriedly switched off the television set.
Agatha came in and stood glowering at him. “Bad day at the office, dear?” asked Charles.
She marched over to the drinks trolley and helped herself to a large gin and tonic, lit a cigarette and then slumped down on the sofa next to him.
“I employ some geriatric out of the kindness of my heart,” she raged. “I find a body that the police couldn’t find and he gets all the credit. I met Miss Simms on the road and she stopped my car and told me she had seen all the television cameras up at Phil’s cottage. Have any of them been here?”
