He ordered them a taxi and carried their bags to the door. He held out his hand for a tip, but they ignored him. Swearing under his breath, he returned to the desk.
By seven in the morning when the girl for the early shift, Kylie Smith, arrived, he was fast asleep. She nudged him awake. “I got a call from Betty last night,” she said. “She forgot to tell you that young Mr. Weldon’s room key was missing last night and she had to let him in with the pass key. She found his key later on the floor behind the desk. She says you’d better phone him and tell him.”
“Stupid cow,” said Nick, whose command of the English language had improved in leaps and bounds since he had arrived in Britain eight months ago. “But he won’t be awake. You do it.”
He yawned and stretched and made his way out of the hotel.
Kylie waited until nine o’clock and phoned Wayne’s room. There was no reply. She phoned again at ten. Still no reply.
She left the desk and went up to his room. A DO NOT DISTURB sign was hanging outside the door. I’d better wake him, thought Kylie. The maid’s got to get in to clean up. She knocked loudly on the door and called out, “Mr. Weldon!”
Cyril Hammond came along the corridor at that moment and asked her what was up. She explained about the key.
“Well, just use it and we’ll go in and wake him up,” said Cyril. “He and Chelsea probably got pissed last night and they’re sleeping it off.”
Kylie unlocked the door and walked in. Then she screamed and screamed
FIVE
AGATHA was in her room telling Patrick about the failed attempt to find out whether Wayne had the jewels, when they heard screams. They both ran out into the corridor. Agatha’s room was on the third floor. The screams were coming from the floor below. They both ran down.
Cyril Hammond was holding Kylie in his arms and trying to calm her down. “I’ll need to call the police,” he was saying.
“What’s up?” asked Agatha.
Cyril nodded in the direction of Wayne’s room. Agatha and Patrick looked in. Wayne was lying on his back, his T-shirt covered in blood. Chelsea was lying over by the window, the side of her head blown away. A few feathers from a pillow lying on the floor drifted in a draught from the window.
“Shot through the pillow,” muttered Patrick. “Tried to deaden the sound.”
Kylie’s screams still rent the air. Agatha went back to her and slapped her soundly across the face and she dissolved in sobs.
Agatha took out her phone and called the police. Then she turned to Cyril. “You’d best take this girl downstairs and get her some sweet tea or something to calm her down.”
Patrick waited until they had gone. Then he extracted the key from the lock and wiped it thoroughly with a handkerchief, and holding it by the handkerchief, put it back in the lock again.
“You’re destroying evidence,” gasped Agatha.
“Exactly. No doubt the murderer wore gloves. I’ll bet neither you nor Harry did when you were handling the key. We’ll all be fingerprinted.”
Guilty thoughts raced through Agatha’s shocked brain. She had talked to Harry about the jewels in that pub. She had talked again to Mrs. Bloxby about them. What if Charlie Black, the armed robber, had been one of the listeners?
The police arrived, headed by Detective Inspector Barret. He told Agatha and Patrick to wait downstairs.
Harry was already there, having heard the grim news from one of the maids.
“They’re going to find out about that missing key,” said Agatha.
“They’ll assume the murderer took it,” said Patrick. “I mean, he must have. You say Harry left it on the floor behind the desk. The girl probably found it and put it back. We’re all in for a lot of hard questioning. I think Harry here should tell them about that necklace. The sooner they start looking for Charlie Black, the better.”
“And how are all the happy holidaymakers?” asked a cheerful voice behind them.
They swung round. Charles Fraith stood there, the smile dying on his face as he saw their strained looks.
“What’s happened?” he asked.
James Lacey finally reached the villa owned by his friends, Kenneth and Mary Clarke. Before his retirement from the army, he had done a short desk stint at the Ministry of Defence. That was where he had got to know Kenneth along with the Hewitts, now retired to Ancombe. He had kept in touch with Kenneth, learning that Kenneth on his retirement had decided to set up a bed and breakfast in France. He remembered Kenneth as a round, jolly man with a charming wife.
But the Kenneth who came out to welcome him had changed. He looked so much older and had lost weight. His once thick grey hair was now thin and his pink scalp shone though. He was wearing a Hawaiian beach shirt and droopy grey cotton shorts and open leather sandals with black socks.
“Come in,” he cried. “Mary’s down at the shops. She’ll be back soon. You’re our only guest, so we’ll have plenty of time to catch up on the gossip.”
“Is she here?” asked James.
“Who?”
“My ex. Agatha Raisin.”
“No, old chap. Were you expecting her?”
“I sent her your address. I expected her to join me.”
“Might come along later. Let’s have a drink. I’ll show you to your room first.”
The bedroom had a double bed, a large Provencal wardrobe, one easy chair and a washbasin with a mirror above over by the window.
“Just leave your things,” said Kenneth. “We’ll sit in the garden.”
He led the way back downstairs and through a cluttered messy kitchen and out into the back garden, where chairs and tables had been placed on a stone terrace overlooking a weedy and uncultivated garden.
“So how are things?” asked James, accepting a glass of the local wine and wondering where Agatha was. Surely she would come and join him. He thought ruefully of the times he had changed his holiday destination just to make sure that Agatha did «or join him.
“To tell you the truth, I’m a bit homesick. Gets lonely up here when we don’t have guests.”
“What about the locals?”
“Difficult to get to know. Never could master the language.”
“Can’t you learn? Surely it would help.”
“Fact is,” said Kenneth moodily, “I’m homesick. I’d swap all this for rainy London. Damned euro. Everything’s so expensive.”
“You’ve got a big garden. You could grow your own vegetables.”
“My back hurts,” said Kenneth.
They heard the sound of a car. “That’ll be Mary. She’s dying for some company.”
They heard the front door open. Kenneth shouted, “In the garden, darling. James is here.”
James remembered Mary as a neat blonde woman. As she came onto the terrace, he barely recognized her. Her hair was grey and she had put on weight She was wearing a faded blue house-dress and her bare feet were thrust into a pair of battered espadrilles.
“How are you, James?” She gave him a peck on die cheek. “Do pour me a glass of wine, darling. It was hot as hell in the town. So what have you been up to, James, since we last saw you?”
