“No. Look—let’s start again. I’m still upset at Arnold’s death. Have the police any idea who broke into your cottage? It must be the same person who killed Arnold and stole the money.”
Agatha sighed. “If it were a television programme, some forensics scientist would hold up one bit of hair and say, ‘Aha! This matches the DNA of Arthur Chance or whoever.’ But the police are probably sitting on their hands because it’s me and it’s only a burglary where nothing was stolen. Have you any idea at all who could have killed Arnold? You said you’d fill me in.”
Suddenly in Agatha’s mind that last sentence seemed to have a sexual connotation. She flushed and studied her glass of Merlot.
“I know that Arthur phoned Arnold on the day he was murdered and said they should both go to the bank that afternoon. Then he got a phone call from a Mrs. Wilmington, who was once a parishioner, pleading for his spiritual help and saying that she was close to death. So Arthur phoned Arnold and put the appointment off until the following day, because Mrs. Wilmington had given him an address in Warwick.
“When he got to the address in Warwick, he found it was a betting shop and no one in the flats above had ever heard of Mrs. Wilmington. He returned to the vicarage and looked up her last address, which was in Ancombe. He phoned. Mrs. Wilmington answered the phone, claimed she was fit and well and had never phoned him.”
“Didn’t he immediately call the police?”
“No, he thought it was someone playing a tiresome joke.”
“So there’s now a woman in the case. Probably a woman working in partnership with some man.” Agatha silently cursed the police. They had held back all this from her.
“Let’s talk about something else. Ah, here’s our food. Tell me how you came to start a detective agency?”
In between eating and drinking, Agatha gave him a highly embroidered version of the cases she had solved and how she had at last decided to turn professional.
Then she realized that George had ordered another bottle of wine for her. “I’ll need to take a taxi,” said Agatha. “Oh, well, tell me about yourself. I’ve done all the talking.”
George began. He was an architect and had settled in the Cotswolds because there were so many demands for house extensions and garage conversions. He was kept very busy. Of course, in a couple of cases, his clients had declared bankruptcy and he had not received any money for months of work. “I hadn’t realized until I moved to the Cotswolds that bankruptcy had become a sort of growth industry. I mean, I knew there were a lot around, but I thought it was from people who had used too many shop credit cards charging high interest.”
“You must miss your wife very much,” said Agatha, mellowed with wine.
He heaved a sigh. “Sarah was such a homebody. She made all the curtains herself when we moved in, and loose covers for the chairs. Her cooking was plain but delicious. She never had any ambition. When we were in financial difficulties, I suggested she might like to get a job to help out. But she cried and said our home was her job.”
“What about Fred Corrie?” asked Agatha, thinking that perhaps George was attracted to the useless clinging type.
“What about her?”
“Does she work?”
“She paints. Watercolours. Don’t sell very well, but she’s got an income from a family trust. Did anyone ever tell you that you are a very sexy woman”?
Agatha blinked. Then she said, “Maybe.”
He laughed and called for the bill. “I’ll take you home in a taxi. We can pick up our cars tomorrow.”
In the darkness of the taxi, he reached out and took her hand. He said softly, “I think our evening is not over yet.”
Agatha took rapid inventory of her body. Legs—yes, shaved. Armpits, ditto. Was she ready for this?
As the cab drew up outside her cottage, she saw all the lights were on inside. “That’s odd,” said Agatha. “I think someone’s in there.”
George curtly told the taxi to wait. Agatha unlocked the door and marched straight into the sitting room. Charles was lying on the sofa, one leg in plaster propped up on a cushion.
“What happened to you?” raged Agatha.
“I fell down your stairs and broke my leg,” said Charles plaintively. “I called the ambulance and got fixed up.”
“Why didn’t you go home?”
“Aunt’s away and Gustav is on a break, so I decided you’d be the best person to look after me, light of my life.”
“I’d better go,” said George.
Agatha saw him to the door. “Charles is just a friend,” she said.
“Oh, really? ’Night.”
After he had gone, Agatha marched back inside. Charles was sitting upright on the sofa. Beside him on the floor was the discarded plaster cast, looking like a white umbrella stand.
“What in hell’s name were you playing at?” raged Agatha.
“Calm down. No, don’t shout. Listen. George Selby is a suspect, or had you forgotten? Ever since you’ve got over James, you’ve been desperate for a replacement. Think about it. Were you really going to fall into bed with a man who might have organized the death of his wife? A man who may even have killed poor Arnold?”
Agatha sat down beside him on the sofa. “How did you know I might come back with him?” she asked
