send someone to show us around. No, we won’t go in the front gate. Go along outside the side of the garden and then we’ll climb over the fence.’
Which Toni could probably have leapt in one bound, thought Agatha.
‘Right,’ said James in a low voice. ‘Over here and we can try to get in through the conservatory at the back.’
Agatha tried to scale the high wooden fence but fell backwards on to the ground.
‘I’ll give you a boost,’ said James. He held out his clasped hands, and Agatha gingerly placed one foot in them. He gave a great heave. Up she went and over, landing, winded, on grass on the other side.
‘That was dangerous,’ grumbled Agatha. ‘What if it had been a greenhouse I landed on?’
‘Stop wittering. We’ve got work to do.’
James went up to the conservatory door. He took out a pencil torch and flashed a beam at the lock. He took out a thin piece of metal and inserted it between the lock and the doorjamb. There was a satisfying click as the door sprang open.
They eased their way quietly inside, and James closed the door behind them. The place had all been cleaned up. Whatever plants there had been in the conservatory had been removed.
They moved from room to room. Agatha could not see any of the expensive pieces of furniture that Bill had mentioned. Amy must have sold them.
‘There are no drawers or anything left to search,’ she muttered dismally. ‘Where could he have hidden something that neither the police nor his killers could find? The garden?’
‘It’s been all dug over. The police will have searched there as well.’
‘I wonder if there’s a loft. People often hide things up in lofts.’
They felt their way up the stairs in the darkness. The upper floor contained two bedrooms, a bathroom and a cupboard with a hot-water boiler. James shone his torch at the ceiling. ‘No evidence of any loft.’
‘Nothing but fake olde world beams on the ceiling. How naff,’ said Agatha.
‘Now there’s an interesting thing.’ James studied the beams. ‘He might have made a hollow in one of those beams to cache something.’
‘I don’t see how he could have done that without leaving some trace,’ said Agatha. ‘Oh, let’s get out of here.’
‘You can go and wait in the car if you like.’
‘Not on my own. I’ll stay here until you are finished. I mean, James, they’re not thick original beams. They’re just really slats made to look like beams.’
‘Wait a minute.’ James got down on his knees and began to delicately run his hands along the skirting board.
Agatha sat on the floor, feeling sore after her crash over the fence. ‘If I wanted to hide something in the skirting board,’ she said wearily, ‘it would probably be behind my bed.’
‘There’s a thought. I wonder which room he slept in.’
‘The bigger of the two, I suppose,’ said Agatha nervously. ‘Can’t we just leave?’
‘Not long now.’
James went into the larger bedroom. There were two closets in the right-hand wall. He was just making for them when they heard a car coming along the road and lights shone across the ceiling. He took a quick look out of the window. ‘It’s the police. Damn it. Someone must have seen us. Let’s get into that closet and hope when they find the doors locked that they’ll go away.’
The closet they crowded into had once been used as a wardrobe. A few steel hangers hung from a rod.
Then they heard the voices of the police outside the house. ‘Looks all locked up,’ said one voice. ‘Try round the back, Harry.’
There was a silence and then Harry’s voice. ‘Locked up round the back. Shall we leave it?’
They were joined by a woman. ‘I was walking my dog and I’ll swear I saw two people going up the side of the house.’
‘What were you doing walking your dog at this time of night?’ demanded the policeman called Harry.
‘I couldn’t sleep right, not after that horrible murder, I couldn’t,’ she said.
‘Better phone it in,’ said Harry’s companion.
‘What are you doing?’ demanded Agatha as James switched on his torch.
‘Still desperately trying to find something that might make them forgive us if they find us. There’s something down here on the floor.’
Harry’s voice sounded. ‘They’ve roused the estate agent. He’ll be along in a minute or two with the keys.’
‘Sunk,’ said Agatha.
‘There’s this odd knothole thing. I wonder if I push . . .’
The back of the closet slid open, revealing a small room beyond. ‘It’s like Narnia –
They sat down on the floor, huddled together, after he had shut them in. Agatha’s hormones gave a treacherous lurch. Not now, she told them.
After what seemed an age but was only a quarter of an hour, they heard the arrival of the estate agent. Then the unlocking of the front door and the clump of policemen’s boots. Then came the fretful voice of what Agatha guessed was the estate agent. ‘It’s no use looking for fingerprints or footprints,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how many people have been through this house, and believe me, they all turned out to be ghouls, wanted to look at a house where a murder had been committed.’
Footsteps came up the stairs and into the bedroom.
‘Oh, God, I’m going to sneeze,’ said Agatha.
James twisted her face round and kissed her full on the mouth. Her senses reeled. She faintly heard a voice say, ‘Nothing here.’
‘Why, James!’ said Agatha softly.
‘Anything to shut you up,’ he muttered.
Agatha’s hormones packed up their bags and left again.
They waited until the police had left the house, waited while they heard the complaints of the estate agent for having been dragged out in the middle of the night, waited while the dog-walking woman grumbled her way off down the lane, frightened to move until the police car drove off.
‘Now,’ said James, switching on the torch. ‘What have we here?’
‘There’s a light switch,’ said Agatha, ‘and no windows. We could risk switching it on.’
James went to the switch in the wall. A naked light bulb shone down on them.
Both of them looked around. The tiny secret room contained only a crumpled sleeping bag in one corner and, beside it, a ledger. ‘We could take this home and read it in comfort,’ said Agatha.
‘No,’ replied James sharply. ‘Got your gloves on? Good. We take a quick look and then, somehow, we’ve got to let the police know where to look for it.’
James gingerly opened the ledger. ‘It’s in some sort of code or something,’ he said. ‘I should have brought a camera. I know, let’s get out of here and borrow it for a bit. It means we’ll have to sneak back here and replace it. We’ll need to make sure there’s not a trace of a fingerprint or footprint. Damn, that really is messing up any police evidence. Well, we got this far and they didn’t. Might just photograph the thing and post it to them.’
Agatha agreed. She felt it was wrong, but on the other hand, to notify the police meant explaining that they had broken into Gary Beech’s house.
James was wearing a dark leather jerkin and had the ledger zipped up inside it. ‘Don’t you think,’ whispered Agatha plaintively, ‘that there might be a back gate to this garden?’
‘I suppose there might be,’ said James, wondering why on earth he hadn’t thought of it before.
They made their way quietly out of the house. James risked flashing his torch around the garden. ‘There’s a gate at the end over there, but it’s going to be the same problem. It’s solid and it’s as high as the fence. It’s padlocked.’
‘Can’t you pick the lock?’
‘It’ll take a few moments. It’s a pity you’re not more agile. We could just have shinned over it. You should get that hip replacement.’
