the bed and took off hershoes. Then she felt too weary to undress. She slumped back on the bed and hung on to it as it seemed to revolve round the room. Her eyes closed and she plunged into a drunken sleep.
In the morning she awoke with a dry mouth and a blinding headache. She was still dressed and felt as if alcohol had seeped out of her pores and into her clothes.
Agatha forced herself to strip and take a shower. But by the time she emerged from the bathroom, she felt too ill to dress. The phone rang. It was James.
“How are you?” he asked.
“I feel ill,” moaned Agatha. “I’m going back to bed.”
“I told you that alcohol was not the solution. I—”
Agatha replaced the receiver. She swallowed two painkillers and went back to bed.
Betty Teller turned over the reception desk to Nick Loncar and made her way out of the hotel, looking uneasily at the heaving sea. There had been storm forecasts on the radio all day, the radio she kept under the desk tuned to a pop-music programme. The announcer had even interrupted a fab Robbie Williams record to warn about the approaching storm.
She turned off the waterfront into the shelter of a side street and bumped into a handsome young man.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Didn’t look where I was going. But if I’ve got to bump into someone, I’m lucky it was a pretty girl like you.”
Betty looked at him, her mouth hanging a little open. He was
“Can I make it up to you? Buy you a drink?”
Betty did not hesitate for a moment. “That would be nice.”
He had curly dark hair and an olive skin. His clothes were casual but expensive. They went together into the Green Man. No pole dancers were performing and the bar was nearly empty.
He bought her a Baccardi Breezer and fetched a half pint of lager for himself. They sat at a table.
“Now what does a pretty girl like you do for a living?”
“I’m a receptionist at murder hotel.”
“You mean the Palace?”
“Yes.”
“It’s a wonder you don’t leave.”
“I can’t let the manager down,” said Betty virtuously. The real reason she stayed on was because of the press. Betty had dreams of being “discovered” and becoming a television star.
“I read about it in the papers,” he said. “That Mrs. Raisin must be one tough bird.”
“I think she’s feeling the strain,” said Betty. “It’s not only the murders. There’s that ex-husband of hers, Mr. Lacey. I don’t know what’s going on there except she’s still mad about him. You can see it in her face. I’d guess he divorced her and she wants him back.”
“Doesn’t he sleep with her?”
“Nope. Separate rooms.”
He had a slight foreign accent. Betty wished one of her friends would come in and see her with this handsome man. And he was so interested in everything she said. He got her to describe everyone in the hotel and what they were like.
After her third drink, Betty realized she would have to go to the loo. She excused herself.
But when she returned to the bar with her make-up carefully repaired, there was no sign of the young man.
She asked the barman where he had gone, hoping he had gone to the loo as well, but he said her escort had walked out as soon as she left the bar.
Betty felt wretched. She didn’t even know his name.
Agatha joined James for dinner. She was in a foul mood. Her hip had started hurting again. She knew it was arthritic but had gone in for a course of Pilates exercises and the pain had receded. But now it was back again. She felt old, slightly sick and in pain.
James, on the other hand, was buoyant and energetic.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said, “that they won’t keep us here much longer and then we can be off. We could go to Paris first and then motor down to the south.”
Agatha looked at him in silence. The wind screamed and howled outside like a banshee.
She thought of her cottage in Carsely and her beloved cats. She thought of the strain of being in James’s company, sleeping in separate rooms, waiting for the love that never came.
At last she looked across the table at him and said, “I want to go home.”
“But some sunshine would do us the world of good.”
“I do really want to go home, James.”
“You’re tired and upset and you’ve probably got some of that hangover left. I hope you’re not taking to the bottle.”
Agatha felt a stabbing pain at her hip. She got up stiffly. “Don’t lecture me. I’m going back to bed.”
“Do that. You’ll feel better in the morning.”
ELEVEN
AGATHA felt she simply had to get out of the hotel the next morning. Despite the warnings of an approaching storm, the day was sunny and blustery. She asked Patrick to accompany her, not wanting to see either Charles or James. Patrick hardly ever spoke unless spoken to.
Patrick accepted quietly Agatha’s explanation that she needed some exercise and that the hotel was beginning to feel like a prison.
As they walked along and round the streets, she could almost see the quiet fishing village as it must have been in James’s youth. In fact, apart from the widened main street, the centre of Snoth was quite small, with housing estates on the outskirts. The houses in the narrow streets leading up from the waterfront to the main street showed they had once probably been fishermen’s cottages. It was the large chain stores in the main street and the seedy little shops in the side streets which, she guessed, had robbed the town of its charm and innocence. It was almost as if the town had turned to catering for the unemployed with amusement arcades and sex shops. White-faced, seedy-looking youth hung out at the street corners.
“I’m feeling better now,” said Agatha at last. “Let’s have a coffee.”
She checked one cafe after another, peering in the windows to find out if there were welcoming ashtrays on the tables.
At last she found one. It advertised snacks and light refreshments. It was not very cosy, having Formica tables and very hard chairs, but each table had little tin ashtrays of the type the proprietor didn’t mind having stolen.
Agatha and Patrick ordered coffees and Agatha lit a cigarette and then watched the blue smoke drifting in a sunbeam shining through the plate-glass window.
Sunbeams were the enemy of smokers, thought Agatha, highlighting just how much of the poisonous stuff you were sending out into the surrounding air.
“I can’t help thinking about Deborah,” she said. “I didn’t like the woman, but she was so very brave to have survived that sea. What am I going to do, Patrick? James wants me to go off on holiday with him, but I only want to go home.”
Said Patrick, “The best thing then would be to persuade James to go home for a couple of weeks to see everything is all right.”
“That might be a good idea. I should really get back to the office. Poor Phil must be sadly overworked.”
“I spoke to him last night. He said to send Harry back as soon as possible. He says he can manage all right with Harry, but he finds it tough being on his own. Of course, he’s in his seventies.”
