Harry slumped down in a chair and picked up a copy of the local paper. When he was sure the five minutes were up, he strolled round to the car park. A couple were getting into their car near where Agatha was parked, so he went over to his motorbike and pretended to examine it until they had driven off.
“Into the backseat and keep your head down,” said Agatha. “I’ll drive us somewhere quiet.”
Agatha had rented the car after having parted from Cyril. She drove up into the downs until she saw a pub called the Feathers standing on its own at a crossroads.
Harry, who had been lying down on the backseat, eased himself out of the car. “I think this place is far enough away,” said Agatha.
They walked into the pub. No brewer’s renovation had modernized the Feathers. It consisted of one room with a long bar. There was a pool table at one end. It was surprisingly full with rough-looking men.
“Feels like a villains’ pub,” said Harry uneasily.
“It’ll do,” said Agatha. She ordered a bottle of beer for Harry and an orange juice for herself and they retreated to one of the few free tables.
“So what have you found out?” asked Agatha.
Harry told her about the necklace. “I’d swear they were real diamonds,” he said. “What if Wayne has the jewels from the robbery?”
“Keep your voice down,” ordered Agatha. All the tables were very close together. A thickset man was at the next table on their left. There was something about his stillness that made Agatha afraid he was listening.
“I think we should tell the police,” said Harry, lowering his voice.
“They’d never get a search warrant just because you thought a necklace was real diamonds. Besides, I’d like to show them that the detective agency can find out what they can’t. Is there any hope you could take Wayne and Chelsea out this evening?”
“I’ll try. What do you plan to do?”
“Wait till they leave the hotel and search their room.”
“How? The door will be locked.”
“Let me think. I know. If you can’t get them to go out with you, we’ll watch and see if they leave. If they do, you chat up that ditzy receptionist and I’ll pinch their key.”
“Lot of ifs in your plans.”
“We’ve got to try. Can you really tell genuine diamonds from fake?”
“The sun shone on that necklace and it sparkled the way only real diamonds can sparkle.”
“Okay, but there are very good fakes. Still, we’ve got nothing else. Don’t bother to ask them out. I’d feel better if you were with me when I get a look at their room.”
When they returned separately to the hotel, the receptionist handed Agatha a postcard showing a view of Dover Castle. It was from James. “Come and join me,” she read. “I will be with friends outside Marseilles.” Name and address followed.
Agatha’s lips tightened. He had simply driven off in a huff and now he expected her to make her own way to the south of France. She ignored the inner Agatha, who was longing to go.
Before she had parted from Harry, she had arranged that she should lurk in reception that evening to see if Wayne and his wife went out. If they did, she would phone Harry in his room so that he could come down and distract the receptionist.
There was nothing else she could think to do that day, and the hours dragged on leaving her nothing else to think of but James.
By early evening, she was seated in a corner of the reception area, hidden behind a magazine. Did Wayne find the food at the hotel as awful as she did? The evening meal was not included, so there was no incentive for him to dine in the hotel.
At eight o’clock, to her relief, she peered over her magazine in time to see Wayne and Chelsea make their way out of the hotel. She took out her mobile phone, dialled the hotel and was put through to Harry’s room. “They’ve gone,” she whispered. “Be right down,” replied Harry.
Agatha waited anxiously until she heard him running lightly down the stairs. There was a creaky old lift, which juddered and shuddered up through the floors of the old hotel and hardly ever seemed to be available, so people used the stairs.
She waited to hear Harry chat up the receptionist, but he went straight to the hotel door and looked out. Then he shouted to the receptionist, “You’ll never believe it. Come and see this!”
“What?”
She left the desk and went to join him. Agatha darted to the desk, went behind it and lifted down the key to Wayne’s room. Harry had found out the number earlier. She scurried back to her seat and raised her magazine just as Harry and the receptionist came back. “I don’t know where he went to,” Harry was saying. “But it was this man on stilts walking past with a monkey on his shoulder. There must be a circus in town.”
“Haven’t heard of it.” The receptionist, Betty Teller, went behind the desk again. Harry made for the stairs, and after a few moments Agatha followed him.
She caught up with him in the first landing. “I’ve got the key,” she said triumphantly. They walked up to the next floor and along a corridor. “Here we are,” Harry was just saying when they heard the creaking and groaning of the lift.
They retreated to the end of the corridor and round a corner. With a sinking heart, Agatha heard Wayne’s voice. “I’m telling you, I left my key at the desk not long ago.” The receptionist could then be heard protesting, “Well, it’s not there. I’ll let you in with the pass key.”
They heard the sound of the lift clanking to a halt, the clatter of the old-fashioned gate being drawn back and, shortly after that, the sound of a key being turned in the lock.
“I’ll go downstairs right now and look for it again, Mr. Weldon,” said the receptionist.
“That’s that,” muttered Agatha. “We may as well try again tomorrow. Can you somehow get down there and throw the key on the floor or something?”
“Will do. What are you going to do now?”
“Get myself something to eat, I suppose.”
Sitting alone at a table in the Chinese restaurant, Agatha pulled the postcard from James out of her handbag. She had a weak longing to go and join him.
After she had finished her meal, she took out her phone and dialled Mrs. Bloxby’s number. Agatha had no intention of telling Mrs. Bloxby about James’s desertion, but no sooner had she heard her friend’s sympathetic voice on the line than she blurted it out. “He even sent me a postcard with an address outside Marseilles asking me to join him,” she said.
“You are not going to, are you?”
“No,” said Agatha, fighting back a desire to cry.
“What has been going on? I read a bit about it in the newspapers.”
Agatha told her as much as she knew and described the abortive attempt to find the jewellery.
“Could you speak up?” pleaded Mrs. Bloxby. “The line’s bad.”
Agatha looked around, There was no one near her. The only other customers were a middle-aged couple and a man in workman’s overalls, so she raised her voice. When she had finished, Mrs. Bloxby said seriously, “Do be careful. It all sounds very dangerous.”
She began to chat about village gossip and Agatha felt soothed when she had rung off. It was only then that Mrs. Bloxby realized she had failed to tell Agatha that Sir Charles had been looking for her.
Betty Teller, the receptionist, took a last look around on the floor behind the desk and let out an exclamation when she saw the key. She wondered whether to phone young Mr. Weldon and then decided to tell her replacement, who was due on duty any minute, to doit.
Her replacement, a sour-looking Croatian named Nick Lon-car, was late as usual. When he finally arrived she was so angry with him that she forgot to tell him about the key. Nick waited until she had gone and then nipped through to the bar and ordered a double whisky. He had just downed it when he heard the bell ring at the desk.
It turned out to be the last of the guests, other than Agatha and her party, checking out. They were an elderly couple. He listened with an impassive face to the all-too-familiar complaints of how the hotel had gone downhill and how awful the food was.
