had taken her hand as they raced together through crops of golden oil-seed rape and fields of blue flax flowers, wheat and turnips.
'Are you sure we're going the right way?' shouted James.
'Yes,' shouted back Agatha, who enjoyed studying Ordnance Survey maps as a pastime. But one bit of the countryside was beginning to look so much like another that she could hardly believe it when at last at some distance across the fields she saw the bulk of Barfield House.
She plunged gamely on, forgetting about the blister on her heel and the stitch in her side. Deborah was in danger. She, Agatha, the great detective, had been called in to help Deborah, and help Deborah she must.
Deborah turned off the bath taps and looked down at the unconscious Sir Charles Fraith as he lay on his own bathroom floor. The air around smelt of roses.
She sat down on a bathroom chair and stared bleakly in front of her. It had all been for nothing. All of it. And yet her mind felt quite cold and set. She knew what she had to do.
She dressed neatly and carefully and then went around and wiped every surface she might have touched, scrubbing and polishing, cocking her head occasionally in case there was the sound of an approaching car. Then she seized Sir Charles by the ankles and began to drag him out of the bathroom, out of the bedroom, slowly along the corridor and then, bump, bump, bump, down the stairs and then slid him easily across the polished floor of the hall, along the corridor at the end and, bump, bump, down the two steps to the kitchen.
She then set about cleaning up the kitchen, clearing and washing the remains of the meal, her mind carefully sorting things out. Gustav would tell the police she had been invited. But she had been incredibly lucky so far. It was Gustav's word against her own. All she had to do was to stick to her story. She pulled Sir Charles over to the oven and turned on the gas. She frowned. Wasn't there something about North Sea gas not doing the job the way the old coal gas used to? Perhaps she was worrying over too much. She heaved his head into the oven, then looked around. She picked up two dishcloths and got out various cleaning rags. She went out and shut the kitchen door behind her and stuffed the cloths and rags under the space at the bottom of the door.
She went into Sir Charles's study, where she remembered seeing a typewriter. All she had to do was find some documents with his signature on them, and forge his signature to a typed suicide note, in which he also confessed to the murders of Jeffrey and Jessica. But a handwriting expert would no doubt find the signature to be a forgery. Oh, well, she thought on a sigh, she would just need to leave an unsigned note. It was such a pity about handwriting experts; without their interference it might have been possible to make out a will supposed to be from Sir Charles, leaving everything to her. Everything.
For one moment, her eyes filled with weak tears. All her dreams. Everything. She had imagined holding fetes and garden parties at Barfield, with her in a wide shady straw hat greeting the guests, maybe making the opening speech. She blinked her tears away. She sat down at Sir Charles's desk and began to type.
Agatha and James ran up the drive of Barfield House. Behind them in the distance they could hear the wail of police sirens. 'Something must have happened,' panted Agatha.
'I think
'Deborah's car's there,' said Agatha stubbornly. 'You can do what you like, but I'm just going to walk in and say I knocked and no one answered.'
She heaved the handle of the massive door and let out a sigh of relief when it swung open. James followed her into the hall. He was beginning to think the only person who was mad was Agatha. How on earth were they going to explain themselves?
And then Agatha said, 'Gas. There's a smell of gas. Where's the kitchen?'
'The smell seems to be coming from there,' said James pointing off the hall and down the corridor. They ran along and immediately saw the rags under the door. They pulled open the door. Agatha rushed across to the oven, turned off the gas, and flung open the kitchen windows.
'I'll call the police,' said James.
Approaching sirens wailed from outside.
'They're here,' said James. 'I'll go and meet them. Oh, God, it was Deborah all the time, unless Gustav has murdered both of them.'
He went back out, but as he was approaching the door, he heard the sound of a typewriter coming from the study. He pushed open the study door. Deborah was sitting typing, her back to him. He took off his belt and crept up behind her, then whipped it round her to pin her arms to her side.
The loud screams of invective that burst from Deborah's lips drowned out the sound of the sirens.
James and Agatha sat in the flat in Sheep Street that evening, sharing a bottle of wine and waiting for Bill Wong to call on them as he had promised. Both felt that it was unfair that the reason for the convenient police presence at Barfield House had been because both of them had been charged with trespass, some irate farmer reporting how two hooligans had driven their car right through his crop, dumped their car in the ditch, and taken off across the fields to trample down more crops on foot.
'Deborah! I just don't understand it,' said Agatha, for seemingly the umpteenth time. 'Oh, there's the doorbell. That must be Bill.'
James rose and went to let him in. Bill looked weary. He accepted James's offer of a glass of wine, saying he was off duty, and then turned to Agatha. 'How did you suss out it was Deborah?'
Agatha flashed James a little warning look and said airily, 'Woman's intuition. But we'd rather hear all about it from you, Bill.' She did not want to lose face by admitting to Bill Wong that they had thought the murderer was Sir Charles.
Bill shook his head in bewilderment. 'She must be crazy. She told us the whole thing in this little-girl voice, on and on and on. She had always driven herself on to get away from her background, aided and abetted by her doting mother. The reason she had an affair with Jessica was not because Deborah is lesbian but, would you believe it, because she thought Jessica was 'good class'. Jessica had been to Oxford, you see. Deborah had adopted the politics of Jessica and her friends as a passport to a better society. I think it was on the fatal day Sir Charles invited her for tea that something in her snapped. Even over the first cup of tea, she saw a chance of becoming Lady Fraith. 'Jessica was in my way,' she kept saying over and over again. She was terrified Jessica might tell Sir Charles about that lesbian affair, terrified that Jessica would spoil her chances by creating a scene. Can I have some more wine?'
James filled his glass. Bill took a sip of wine and went on. 'She was amazingly lucky. She drove to the Barfield estate. She said she wanted to catch up with Jessica before she did any damage. She found Jessica at the edge of that field. When she let out that she was keen on Sir Charles, how Jessica had laughed! It seems Jessica, once the gloves were off, was a middle-class snob of the worst kind. She sneered at Deborah for her accent, background and clothes, said she hadn't a hope in hell, said she would let Sir Charles know about Deborah's lesbianism. Then Jessica started stamping her way across that field. Deborah saw the spade and saw red at the same time. She ran up behind Jessica, keeping in her tracks, and brought the spade down on her head. When she found Jessica was dead, she scraped and dug that shallow grave - when you think of all those plant roots, it must have taken manic strength - buried the body, wiped the shovel and took off.'
'But she asked Mrs Mason for my help,' cried Agatha. 'Why would she do that?'
Bill looked rueful. 'You're not going to like this. Evidently Mrs Mason had given Deborah the impression that you were an inept amateur, taking credit for police work, and so she thought that by hiring you, she would look innocent and yet be in no danger of being found out.'
'I will never speak to Mrs Mason again,' said Agatha wrathfully. 'Old toad. I never liked her anyway.'
Bill smiled at her and took up his story. 'As I say, she was amazingly lucky. Her car had been seen on the road out of Dembley, but no one had actually seen her going into the estate. Then the waters were muddied by Sir Charles's lying about what he had been doing and by the others' lying as well.'
'But why Jeffrey?' asked James.
'Ah, well, she had let slip in the pub that she was going to dinner at Barfield House. Jeffrey, who had got a bit tipsy after his confrontation with Ratcliffe, phoned her up just as she was leaving for Barfield House and asked her to come round, saying he was a better bet any day than Sir Charles. Deborah told him to get lost. He then told her, maliciously, that he had a good mind to tell Sir Charles about her affair with Jessica. Deborah said, still in that awful little voice, that she didn't take it really seriously until she was on her way back from the dinner at Barfield House.
