"It's me, Agatha Raisin," she snapped. "Get out there and get a cab for me."
The commissionaire, who loathed Agatha, stared down at her, a smile breaking across his face. So the old bag had fallen on hard times. Let her get her own bloody cab.
"Shove off," he said. "We don't want the likes of you in here."
Agatha opened her mouth to blast him, but a quiet voice behind the commissionaire said, "Jock, get Mrs. Raisin a cab, and hop to it."
Mr. Wilson stood there. "Going off to a fancy dress party, Mrs. Raisin?"
"That's it," said Agatha.
Jock ran out into the street and flagged down a cab, and with his face averted held the door open for Agatha and Roy. Agatha pressed something into his hand. He touched his hat. The cab rolled off. Jock opened his hand. A penny! He hurled it into the gutter and stumped back inside.
"You haven't brought your handbag?" asked Roy.
"No, I left it with your secretary. It's in her desk. You left your wallet, I hope?"
"Yes, but who's paying for this cab?"
"You are!"
"But I left all my money behind!"
"So did 1.1 mean, I've got about a pound in change, but that won't pay for this cab to Waterloo."
"What are we going to do?" wailed Roy. "Of all the stupid - "
"Let's just hope it's not one of those cabs where they lock the doors." The cab slowed and stopped at traffic lights.
"Now!" said Agatha.
She wrenched open the door and, followed by Roy, dived out into the street, pursued by the outraged howls of the cabby.
"You can still run," panted Roy when they finally came to a halt. Agatha clutched her side. "I've got a pain. I really must get back into condition."
They started to walk, an aroma of methylated spirits floating out from them. "I think we had better do some begging," said Agatha, stopping in the middle of London Bridge.
"We don't look appealing enough. We need a dog or a child."
"We haven't got one. Can't you sing or something?"
"Nobody would hear a note with this traffic noise. Beg- i gars who get money are either pathetic or threatening."
"Okay." Agatha stepped in front of a business man and held out her hand. "Money for food," she said. "Or else."
He stopped and looked her up and down.
"Or else what?"
"Or else I'll hit you with my bottle."
"Get lost, or I'll call the police, you scum. It's layabouts like you that are bringing this country to its knees. You're too old to work, but you should get your son to support you."
Roy giggled maliciously.
The business man appealed to the passers-by. "Can you believe this? They're demanding money with menaces."
"Come on, Aggie," pleaded Roy, getting frightened, as a crowd started to collect. "Police!" a woman started to shout. "Police!"
They took to their heels and ran again, thumping their way over the bridge until they had left the crowd behind.
"All this running, birdbrain," snarled Agatha. "We should have run back to the office and got some money."
"Not far now," said Roy. "Let's get it over with."
Dusk was falling. The roar of the going-home traffic drummed in their ears. Agatha thought of James and wondered what he was doing.
James was feeling guilty. He had taken Helen Warwick out for lunch and then gone back to her flat at her suggestion for coffee. She had a day off, she had explained. Life was quiet when the House wasn't sitting.
Perhaps because she had really nothing more to tell him than she had already told to James and Agatha, perhaps be-cause she did not seem nearly as charming as she had when he had first met her, James was able to realize that this visit had been prompted more by a desire not to let Agatha dominate his life than by any real interest in Helen. She was very clever at extracting information, and the information she seemed most interested in was the size of his bank balance. No question was direct or vulgar. Talk of stocks and shares, whether he had suffered over the Lloyd's or Barings disasters, things like that. And the friends they were supposed to have in common began to seem to James like people she had met at parties and in the course of her work but did not really know very well.
"Do you mind if I make a telephone call?" he said at last. "And then I really must go."
"Help yourself."
He dialed home and let it ring for a long time.
"No reply," he said with a rueful smile.
"Were you trying to get Mrs. Raisin?"
"Yes."
"Oh, she's in town."
"How do you know that?"
"I saw her driving past when we walked out for lunch."
"Why didn't you say anything?"
"I was just about to, but you were talking about something and then the whole matter slipped my mind."
Now James felt like a guilty husband who had been caught out in an adulterous act. He then became angry because he was sure Agatha had come to town for no other purpose but to spy on him.
"I'd better go. Thanks for the coffee."
"Oh, do stay," said Helen. "I've nothing planned for this evening."
"I'm afraid I have."
She stood up and moved close to him. He moved back and found his legs pressed against the sofa. She raised her arms to put them around his neck, a slow seductive smile on her face. James ducked, stepped up on the sofa and walked over the back, his long legs taking him straight to the door.
"Goodbye," he said, opened the door, and ran down the stairs.
"Silly old fool," he said aloud, but he meant himself and not Agatha Raisin.
Agatha had had the foresight to buy two bottles of cheap sweet wine called Irish Blossom. They were the kind of wine bottles with screw-tops rather than corks. She and Roy found a group of down-and-outs near where Jimmy Raisin used to hang out. They were a mixed bunch, but more solid alcoholics than drug addicts, the drug addicts being younger and favouring better sites. The Celtic races predominated, Scottish and Irish, making Agatha wonder if there was any truth in the statement that alcohohsm got worse the farther north in the world one went.
No one seemed to want to know them, until Agatha fished in one of her plastic bags and produced one of the bottles of wine.
The others gathered around. Roy passed the bottle round. The contents were soon gone. An old man came up. He had two bottles of cider, which he proceeded to share. He had an educated voice and told everyone he used to be a professor. Soon they all began to talk, and Agatha and Roy found they were surrounded by jet pilots, famous footballers, brain surgeons, and tycoons. "It's a bit like those people who believe they had a previous life," muttered Agatha. "They were always Napoleon or Cleopatra or someone like that."
"They believe what they're saying," whispered Roy. "They've told the same lies so many times, they actually believe them now."
Agatha raised her voice. "We had a mate used to hang around about here," she said. "Jimmy Raisin."
The man with the educated voice, who was called Charles, said, "Someone said he got killed. Good riddance, sleazy little toe-rag."
They must have heard about the murder by word of mouth, thought Agatha. Few of them would ever look at a newspaper.
"What happened to his stuff?" asked Roy.
"Perlice took it away," said a thin woman with the sort of avid face and glittering eyes of a Hogarth drawing. "Took 'is box and all. But Lizzie got 'is bag o'stuff."
"What stuff?" Roy's voice was sharp.
"Just who the hell are you?" asked Charles.
Agatha glared at Roy. "I'll tell you who I am," he said, his voice slightly slurred. "I'm a big executive in the City. I only come down here evenings because I like the company."
There was a general easing of tension as the brain surgeons, jet pilots, and tycoons in general regarded what they thought was one of their own kind. "And I'll tell you something more." Roy fished in the capacious inside pocket of his Oxfam jacket. "I took this bottle of Scotch out of the desk before I came here."