Agatha Raisin and the Busy Body

'Maybe not. I'd love a look inside, just in case there's anything left. Let's drive round there.'

The house had a small, weedy front garden. As Agatha pushed open the front gate, a neighbour opened her door and called out, 'Are you the house clearance people?'

'Yes,' said Agatha on the spur of the moment.

'Wait and I'll get the key,' said the neighbour. 'Mrs. Parker's still up north but she'll be here tomorrow. She's been right poorly and hasn't been able to get round to doing anything about her brother's house before this. She got in touch with you lot to sell off everything. She and her brother had a quarrel a long time ago and she didn't want to have anything to do with his stuff. She came down after his murder--poor man--and took away a few things, but she didn't want the rest.'

'We shouldn't be doing this,' muttered Phil.

'Shh! This is a great opportunity.'

When the neighbour came back with the key, Agatha said, 'I'm surprised Mrs. Parker took so long to call us in and put the house up for sale.'

'Well, like I said, she's poorly and she couldn't find the time before. Let me have the key when you've finished.'

Once inside, Phil said angrily, 'And what do we do if the real people turn up?'

'We'll leave the front door open,' said Agatha. 'If we hear them arriving, we'll just nip out the back way.'

The downstairs consisted of a living room and kitchen on one side of the dark passage and a study on the other. Upstairs were two bedrooms and one bathroom.

'I suppose the study's the place to start,' said Agatha, 'although the police are sure to be still hanging on to all his paperwork until his sister claims it.'

'I'll try the other rooms,' said Phil. 'Have you considered, Agatha, that when the real clearance people turn up, that neighbour is going to report us to the police and give our descriptions?'

'She seemed to be very shortsighted,' said Agatha hopefully.

Phil went off and Agatha began to search diligently, but it all too soon appeared that the police had taken away every bit of paper they could get their hands on. She took out the desk drawers in case anything was taped to the undersides, but there was nothing, except on the bottom of one drawer was 'A119X' written in felt-tipped pen. Agatha wrote it down.

They spent more than an hour searching for secret hiding places but finding none. It was bleakly furnished with the bare essentials. It seemed as if John Sunday had liked puzzles and jigsaws. One of the few human touches in the living room was a bookshelf containing boxes of jigsaw puzzles and crossword books. There were no photographs. A mirror hung over the fireplace reflecting the gloomy room. Phil thought that maybe the house had been built for workers at one time because the terrace faced north and didn't get much sunlight and he had noticed the building bricks were of poor quality.

They even searched under the cushions of the shabby brown corduroy sofa and down the sides of two armchairs. Phil reported that only one of the upstairs bedrooms had been used and that the other was completely empty.

When they left and locked up, Agatha had an idea. She took the key back to the neighbour and, reverting to the Birmingham accent of her youth, she said, 'Made an awful mistake, love. Should've been round the corner in Oxford Terrace. Please don't tell Mrs. Parker or we'll get in awful trouble.'

The neighbour peered at her. 'Don't you be worrying yourself, m'dear. We all get like that when we get older. Didn't I put the kettle on yesterday and clean forgot till it nearly burned dry?'

'That woman can hardly see a thing,' muttered Agatha crossly to Phil. 'I'm hungry. I need something to eat.'

They decided on a pub lunch at The George in Mircester. 'I wish I knew what A119X stood for,' said Agatha, 'and why it was written on the underside of the drawer. He liked puzzles. Nasty, devious mind, he probably had. He was probably the sort who would go to endless lengths to hide something somewhere difficult instead of just renting a safe deposit box.'

'Library!' said Phil suddenly.

'What library?' asked Agatha.

'I mean A119X looks like a number on the back of one of the Mircester Public Library books. They send a mobile library van round the villages and I borrow books from them. The library still uses the old card system.'

At the library, by asking at the desk, they discovered that A119X was a book entitled Go to the Ant by Percival Bright-Simmel. 'I'm afraid it hasn't been returned,' said the librarian. 'We meant to send out the usual letter reminding the borrower that the book was overdue, but when we found out it was that John Sunday who was murdered, well, we just needed to give it up for lost. We would have got rid of it pretty soon as we're due for an overhaul. No one else had taken that book out for a long time.'

'What kind of book was it?' asked Phil.

'It was in the nonfiction religious section.'

_______

Outside the library, Agatha said, 'We've got to get back into Sunday's house and search the bookshelves. What was so important about that book?'

But when they arrived back at Sunday's house, it was to find a van outside the door bearing the legend Pyrson's House Clearance. The door was standing open. Agatha looked cautiously towards the house next door but there was no sign of the neighbour who had given them the key.

'What are you doing?' hissed Phil as Agatha strode up towards the open door.

'I know what I'm doing,' said Agatha. She walked inside. Two men were crating up furniture.

'I'm from Mircester Library,' said Agatha. 'The previous owner failed to return one of our books. Do you mind if I take a quick look for it?'

'Go ahead,' said one of the men. 'We ain't got around to them yet.'

Phil had tentatively followed Agatha in. They both began to search the bookshelves. 'Puzzles and more puzzles,' muttered Agatha. 'Maybe there's something behind the books.' She began to pull them out. Phil was standing on a chair searching the top shelves when he said, 'Got something here. Yes, this is it. It was down behind the others along with this.'

'This' was a full bottle of whisky. 'Hey!' shouted one of the removal men. 'That there bottle's part o' the house contents.'

'You're welcome to it,' said Agatha. 'All we want is the book.'

They handed over the bottle of whisky and, clutching the book, made their way out of the house.

'What if that neighbour sees us?' fretted Phil. 'You told her we should have been round the corner at another house.'

'Oh, she'll just think we're part of the same business,' said Agatha airily. 'Let's get back to the office and have a good look, although it's not much of a book.' Go to the Ant was a thin, shabby book with an illustration on the front of a blond and blue-eyed Jesus Christ pointing accusingly, rather in the manner of the First World War posters, saying, 'Your Country Needs You.'

Toni was sitting at her computer typing up notes when they went into the office. Agatha noticed that the girl looked pale and listless. Must hire another young person, she thought. Maybe that will cheer her up. Agatha knew that the murder of Sharon had hit Toni hard.

'Stop typing, Toni,' she said, 'and help us with this.' She told Toni about how and why they had found the book.

The book turned out to be a sort of extended religious tract, written in 1926. It was a series of moral tales about unfortunate people who had behaved like the grasshopper and ended up starving to death or living in the workhouse.

'You wouldn't think he was a religious sort of person,' said Phil. 'I mean, he made trouble for two churches that we know of. There are no clues here. No words underlined.'

'Let me see.' Toni took the thin book and began to riffle through the pages. 'I think I've got something.' She ran her hand lightly over one of the pages. 'There are some pinpricks under some letters.'

'Good girl!' Agatha seized a pen. 'Read them out.'

'This page has a u and then an n. Nothing next page.