know.”
Agatha looked at him silently. “Oh, very well,” he said reluctantly. “When you’re finished with Fred, I’ll bring Dawn down to the bar.”
“We would really like to talk to your wife on her own,” said James.
“Why?”
“Wives often find the presence of a husband a bit intimidating.”
As if
“All right,” said Cyril with obvious reluctance.
He walked on and they followed him along one of the hotel’s long corridors. He stopped at a door and shouted, “It’s me, Cyril.”
A faint voice answered and he opened the door and went in, followed by Agatha and James.
Fred Jankers was sitting in a chair by the window. He was a small man with black hair, which looked as if it had been dyed, combed in sparse lines across his head. He had a small face and small black eyes.
He was wearing a charcoal-grey suit which hung about him in folds, a striped shirt and a black silk tie.
“Sit down,” said Fred. His room faced the sea. They could hear the waves pounding the sea wall.
Agatha and James found two hard chairs and Cyril sat on the bed.
“I want you to find out who killed my Geraldine,” said Fred. His voice was high and reedy.
“We’ll do our best,” said James and Agatha threw him an irritated look. After all,
“We’d like to know as much as you can tell us about your late wife,” said Agatha. “Where did you meet her?”
“Ballroom dancing class. I was a bit shy, but she latched on to me right away.”
“What is your job or profession?”
“I own a chain of small dress shops. I think that’s what attracted Geraldine to me. She was very fashion- conscious.”
Like hell she was, thought Agatha, remembering Geraldine’s blowsy appearance; it was your money she was after.
“Do you inherit your wife’s money?” she asked.
“No, she left it all to her son, Wayne. I only found that out this morning when I phoned the solicitor.”
“I suppose she hadn’t had time to change her will,” put in James.
“That must be it. Geraldine was devoted to me.”
“Now, the night of the murder,” said Agatha, “you went to sleep as usual. What time was this?”
“About eleven o’clock in the evening. She was pacing up and down the room. I said, ‘Come to bed. This isn’t much of a honeymoon.’ She said, ‘Go to sleep. I’ve got to think.’ I slept all night and when I awoke, I saw her bed wasn’t slept in and then the police arrived.”
“They found my scarf round her neck. I lost it. Did she pick it up?”
Fred looked uncomfortable. “It was lying on the dining room floor. Yes, she said something about finders, keepers.”
“Did you tell the police this?”
“I didn’t like to. I wanted to protect her memory. I didn’t want the police to think of her as a thief.”
“You’d better tell them now. You could have saved me from enduring hours of questioning. Did she receive a phone call?”
“No, not that I know of.”
“Have you a photo of your wedding day?” asked James.
“Yes, I have one with me.” Fred pulled out his wallet and extracted a square photograph. There was Geraldine, slimmer, looking demure in a blue silk tailored suit and a little blue hat with an eye veil.
James handed back the photograph. “Immediately after you were married, did she change? When was the wedding?”
“Four weeks ago. We decided to delay the honeymoon because I had a lot of business to attend to. Did she change? She ate an awful lot and put on weight. Apart from that, she was pretty much the same.”
“Why Snoth-on-Sea?” asked Agatha.
“Geraldine came here as a kid. She said she and her parents were staying at a bed and breakfast. She said the Palace Hotel was ever so posh and she always dreamed of staying there.”
“Did you know that her second husband was in jail for armed robbery?”
“No!” He looked amazed. “You see, it was a whirlwind romance.” He gave a reminiscent smile. “She swept me off my feet. We were married a few weeks after I met her. I didn’t have much time to find out who she knew. I didn’t even know she had a son and daughter-in-law until she told me they would be coming on the honeymoon, along with her friend, Cyril, and his wife.”
“Didn’t you object?”
He shifted uneasily in his chair. “I did say something, but she said we would have the rest of our lives together. Then I found out I had to pay for everyone and I wasn’t too pleased. But she hugged me and said, ‘You can afford it, darling, and it would make me so happy.’ ”
Agatha wondered what Geraldine had actually said. The foul-mouthed woman had probably bullied the meek Fred into it.
“So you can’t think of anyone who would want to kill her?”
“Why would anyone?” Fred raised his eyes to the ceiling. “As God is my witness, she hadn’t an enemy in the world.”
She made me one in two seconds flat, thought Agatha.
Neither Agatha nor James could think of anything else to ask him. Fred thanked them and again said he hoped they could find out who had murdered his wife.
As they walked downstairs, James said, “Well, that was odd. He doesn’t seem entirely broken up, does he?”
“Grief takes people in odd ways,” said Agatha. “But no, he did seem unnaturally calm about the whole thing. And he phoned the solicitor. I wonder how much Geraldine was worth.”
Cyril Hammond and his wife, Dawn, were waiting in the bar. “Poor Fred,” said Cyril. “How’s he taking it?”
“Seems to be bearing up pretty well,” commented Agatha. “Now may we have a word with Mrs. Hammond on her own?”
Cyril looked about to protest, but then said, “Okay, I’ll be up in my room.”
Agatha and James sat down with Dawn. Her hair was an even more ferocious colour of red than when Agatha had first seen her, and she was unnaturally thin, with deep shadows under her eyes and arms like sticks.
“What about a drink?” she asked in a throaty voice.
James signalled to the waitress. “What would you like?”
“Vodka and Red Bull.”
James ordered what she wanted, gin and tonic for Agatha and a bottle of beer for himself.
“We are trying to get a picture of what Mrs. Jankers was like,” began Agatha.
“Why? You saw her.”
“I mean her personality, her friends, anyone she was frightened of.”
The drinks arrived. Dawn took a swig of hers and then said, “People were frightened of Geraldine, not the other way round. Me, I didn’t want to come on this bleeding honeymoon, but Cyril, he says that Geraldine had pleaded with him to come along. Now, take my word for it, dear Geraldine never pleaded with anyone. But Cyril always had a soft spot for her. You want to know what she was like? A great fat spider, that’s what. Always on the lookout for a fellow with money. Before she married Fred, she was as meek as anything. After they were married, she reverted to her usual shit-mouthed self. I said to Cyril that this whole honeymoon was sick, sick, sick.”
“Did you know that her second husband was doing time for armed robbery?”
“Charlie, oh, sure. I knew Charlie. The only thing I liked about that villain was that he knew how to shut Geraldine up. Smacked her across the mouth once.”
“Who did he rob?”
