“He knows you.”
“He only knows me like this. Believe me, he won’t recognize me.”
“I don’t want you running into any danger,” said Agatha.
“I could park my car outside,” said Phil. “With glasses and a tweed cap pulled down, he wouldn’t know me. He’s always sneering at me and calling me ‘grandad.’ Patrick can scrunch down in the back seat. Then, when Jimmy goes out, Patrick can break into his flat. It’s no use protesting, Patrick. I know you’ve got a set of skeleton keys.”
“Going to be right difficult,” said Patrick. “The long-light nights are here. Say he lives up at the top end of Port Street, well, it’s pretty deserted at night. Then, if it’s just the one flat above a shop, I’ll look conspicuous standing there fiddling with the lock.”
“Can’t you send him away somewhere?” suggested Charles.
“You might have something there. He’s also got the Tropper case. Mrs. Tropper suggests her husband might be taking his totty to a hotel in Brighton. That’s it. I’ll send him off tomorrow.”
“What if I take Mrs. Freedman with me for the break-in?” said Patrick. “Jimmy’s some relative of hers.”
“She’d be too shocked and she might say something to him.”
“Right. We’ll just send him on his way tomorrow and then decide what to do about it.”
Agatha could not believe her luck the next morning when she found Jimmy, stretched out on the sofa, fast asleep. The office was full of stale beer fumes. His jacket was hanging over the back of a chair. She felt in the pockets and extracted his keys. Quietly she let herself out and rushed to the nearest key cutters. She looked at her watch. Ten to nine. The shop door was closed. She impatiently rattled the handle. The blind on the door was raised and the shopkeeper mouthed, “Closed,” and pointed to his watch.
Agatha opened her handbag and took a twenty-pound note out of her wallet and waved it. The door opened. “I need an extra set of house keys,” said Agatha. “Twenty pounds over the price if you do it now.”
Soon she had the keys copied and hurried back to the office. Jimmy was sitting up, staring blearily around.
Agatha walked towards her desk and knocked his jacket to the floor as she did so. She slipped Jimmy’s keys on top of the jacket and then rounded on him.
“What where you doing sleeping in the office?”
“I had a bit of a bevvy last night,” said Jimmy. “Too many coppers around, so I decided to sleep it off here.”
“You’d better go home and get a bath and then take yourself off to Brighton. It’s the Tropper case. Mrs. Tropper thinks he’s taking his bit of stuff to Brighton. He told her he was there on a sales conference. Check and see.”
Jimmy stood up. “I’ll get off. I’ll need an advance for expenses.”
Agatha unlocked the office safe and took out a wad of notes. “I want you to account for every penny of that.”
“Sure. See you. Bye.”
The rest of Agatha’s staff were all out on jobs. She telephoned each of them to say she had the keys and they all said they would come back in for a council of war. She suggested they meet at the Sorrento Cafe in Mircester so that Mrs. Freedman wouldn’t know what they were up to. She phoned Charles as well, but he said he had to go home to deal with things.
Agatha could only hope and pray that Jimmy would not turn out to be the culprit. Such a scandal would hit the agency hard.
When they were all seated in the cafe, Agatha said, “Toni and I had better go. We’d be less conspicuous.”
“Are you sure?” asked Phil. “I could come along as bodyguard.”
Agatha looked affectionately at Phil’s elderly face and white hair and said, “We’ll be all right. Jimmy’s not going to hurry back from an expenses-paid trip to Brighton.”
Jimmy’s flat turned out to be at the top end of Port Street near the garage above a small grocery store.
They were not wearing any disguises. Agatha had said that she had a good excuse. She could say she had forgotten she had sent Jimmy to Brighton and was checking up on him.
There were two keys on the ring. Agatha correctly guessed that the bigger of the two opened the street door.
Inside, worn stone steps led up to the floor above. “Good,” Agatha whispered. “Only one door. No neighbours.”
She unlocked the door and they both went in. “What a tip!” exclaimed Agatha. Empty beer cans lay about the floor. Empty pizza boxes were piled up on the coffee table. “Oh, well, hold your nose and let’s get started. Try to put everything back the way it was. Here’s a pair of gloves.”
It was only a tiny flat, consisting of one living room, one bedroom and a minuscule kitchen. The bathroom contained a shower so small, Agatha wondered how Jimmy managed to get his bulk into it. They worked steadily, searching cupboards and under the bed, in the bathroom cistern and even making a slit in the side of the mattress in case Jimmy had stuffed the money in there.
Agatha began to feel quite cheerful. She really didn’t want Jimmy to be the culprit. “Give up!” she called to Toni, who was still searching the bedroom. “I’m beat.”
She carefully removed two newspapers from a plump armchair and collapsed into it with a sigh of relief. Then she stiffened and slowly stood up. “Toni, come here!”
“Found anything?” asked Toni, coming through from the bedroom.
“The big seat cushion on that armchair feels as if it’s stuffed with something.”
“Let’s have a look.” Toni picked up the huge seat cushion. “It’s been clumsily stitched up at the back,” she said.
