Agatha lost her temper. 'Prove it! Look here, you can see from the marks on her neck that my assistant was attacked. I suggest you concentrate on the real villain and stop wasting my time.'
After a half-hour of questioning, Collins ended the tape and said in a cold measured voice, 'I do not like you, Mrs Raisin, or your methods. I must ask you not to interfere in this case or I will charge you with obstructing the police in their duties.'
'I have been engaged by a member of the family to solve Mrs Tamworthy's murder,' protested Agatha.
'Just get out. I don't want to see you again.'
Chapter Six
Toni was released from hospital the following morning. She went to her flat and changed her clothes and then went to the office. Agatha squawked with dismay when she saw her.
'Get out of here,' said Agatha. 'I'm feeling guilty enough about you as it is. Go on. Have a good rest.'
But Toni, weighed down with gratitude for her flat and her job, refused to go. 'I'm a bit hoarse,' she said, 'but it's only bruising.'
'If you're sure...'
'Very sure.'
Patrick and Phil were there, notebooks at the ready.
'Now, what have we got?' said Agatha. 'I feel sure the motive must have been money. Bert's brickworks are not doing well. Might be an idea, Patrick, to snoop around and find out why.
Houses are being put up all over the place. Has he been gambling? Keeping a bit of totty on the side? His wife says she has her own money. How much? I wonder. And what did that county lady see in the very lower-middle- class Bert? 'Sir Henry just has a relatively small amount from a family trust. Does he work? Maybe you can find out, Phil, but before that I want you to go to Lower Tapor and see if you can chat up the two village women who were serving the meal on the last day of Mrs Tamworthy's life. I'll give you their names and their address. I think you might have better luck there than I did.' Agatha turned to Toni. 'I would feel easier if you would take on some of the lesser jobs today. We still have two dogs missing and three cats. Mrs Freedman will give you the details.' Toni opened her mouth to protest but then quickly decided that as the most junior employee, she should do as she was told.
Agatha set out again for the manor. She wondered what Charles was doing. Certainly he had dropped in and out of her past before, but he had always stuck with each case--well, more or less.
There was a slight chill in the air. Castles of white clouds rode high above in a pale-blue sky. Perhaps, thought Agatha, just for once it might be a cold winter. Perhaps there might even be snow. She could see it now, her house full of happy guests, holly and mistletoe, a roaring log fire and James, tall and handsome, smiling down at her.
She swung round a bend and nearly collided with a tractor. She mounted the verge to let the tractor past, swearing under her breath. The tractor driver from his higher perch looked down at her insolently, a cigarette dangling from his lower lip. Agatha was suffering from not enough sleep. 'Moron!' she shouted.
The man's eyes narrowed and he began to climb down from the tractor. Agatha wrenched the wheel, managed to get past the tractor and accelerated off. She could see his face, contorted with fury, in her rear-view mirror.
I must watch my temper, thought Agatha. If Paul Chambers gets out on bail, then I'll have enough danger from the local yokels without courting more.
Only Alison, Fran and Sadie were at the manor. 'Where is everybody?' asked Agatha.
'Bert has gone to the brickworks,' said Alison. 'Henry's gone up to London, and Jimmy's gone to close up the shop and put it up for sale.'
'Will Bert continue to run the brickworks now he doesn't have to?' asked Agatha.
'No, he wants to sell. He never liked the job anyway.'
Agatha glanced at Fran and Sadie. They seemed to be making up lists.
'Fran and Sadie are making lists of everything to divide up. Not that there's really anything of value. Come through to the morning room,' said Alison.
The morning room conjured up in Agatha's mind a charming refuge full of sunlight and comfortable chairs. But when Alison pushed open a door and ushered her in, she found herself in a small, dusty, dark room. The darkness was caused by a pile of boxes against the window. The only furnishings were a small round table covered with a dingy lace cloth and two battered leather chairs.
'I see nobody used this room,' said Agatha.
'Mother-in-law preferred the drawing room. The manor was too large for her. She would have been happier in a small bungalow but she was devoted to the memory of my father-in-law. He bought this place and so she was determined to stay.'
'And yet she had recently changed her mind?'
Alison sighed. 'I sometimes wonder if she really liked her own children. None of them were happy. Jimmy hated the shop. Bert did his best with the brickworks but after a time he began to lose interest.'
'I heard the business wasn't doing too well.'
'He wasn't gambling or anything. He was beginning to be late with orders and builders were moving their business to other brickworks. He'll be glad to get out of it.'
'If you will forgive me for saying so,' said Agatha, 'you seem an ill-assorted pair.'
For a moment, Alison looked angry. Then she shrugged. 'I was brought up on a farm. Although my father was rich and a gentleman farmer, he liked us--that's me and my sister, Hetty, and brother, George--to do the farm work. I hated it. I'm no oil painting and the other rich farmers' sons wanted to marry pretty girls. I met Bert at the Moreton-in-Marsh agricultural show. I was sitting by myself in the beer tent. The other tables were crowded and he asked if he could join me. We got talking and we soon had a mutual bond discussing bullying parents. He hated the brickworks and I hated farming. One thing led to another and we got engaged. He was my ticket out of farming. He said if I married him I wouldn't need to see another cow or sheep again.
'Phyllis--Mrs Tamworthy--was against me from the start. At my wedding she was on her worst behaviour and my family were furious. She actually got drunk, insisted on making a speech, and ran Bert down in front of everyone.'
'He must have hated her,' said Agatha.
'But he didn't kill her,' said Alison fiercely. 'He always made allowances for her.'
'What about Jimmy? Now, he hated that shop.'
'That was a bit of cruelty I'll never understand,' said Alison. 'She appeared to dote on him.'
'And he never married?'
'Bert said when Jimmy was younger, there were a couple of girls interested in him but Phyllis soon saw them off. He found out later when one of the girls was married to someone else that Phyllis had told her that Jimmy was subject to bad epileptic fits.'
'What about Fran? She's divorced. Did Phyllis have anything to do with that?'
'Not really. Fran longed to belong to the upper classes. She met this stockbroker, Peter Meadows. He was such a snob. She met him on holiday and they got married abroad. Later, when he got to know her family, he turned nasty and said they were common. But she was pregnant, so the marriage struggled on for a few years until the divorce. He was a pill, but Fran blamed her mother for not being posh enough.'
'Dear me. And Sadie?'
'Sadie seems happy with Henry but he doesn't have much money and Phyllis wouldn't give her anything for her daughter's education. Lucy had to go to a state school. Oh dear, I seem to be giving you a lot of motives for murder. But I know these people. I keep thinking it was someone from the village who took away the parsnips and replaced them with hemlock. I thought before that the tale of the death of Socrates we got at school was all bunkum or the Greeks must have mixed the hemlock with something else. But there was a case in Perthshire in the
