"When he calls this evening," said Agatha huffily, "I'm not speaking to him."
"And what good will that do? He's our only contact with the police. Instead of going into a huff, Agatha, you should simply tell him what you overheard. Maddie said some nasty things about you, but Bill said none."
"I don't want to speak to him again!"
"Agatha, be sensible'. 'I'm sick and tired of being sensible," shouted Agatha and burst into tears.
He gave her a clean handkerchief, he fetched her a stiff brandy, he suggested she lie down.
And Agatha, who had suddenly and desperately wanted a shoulder to cry on, a shoulder to lean on, pulled herself together and said on a sob that, yes, she would see Bill.
She would have been comforted could she have known that James felt as if he could cheerfully strangle both Bill Wong and Maddie, but James showed none of this as he returned to his word processor. Agatha went up to bed for a nap, James tried to work, but his doorbell sounded shrilly. He thought it must be some persistent member of the press. Normally he would not have answered the door, but he had a desire to relieve his feelings on somebody, even if that somebody was Bill Wong.
So he opened the door and found Roy Silver on the step.
James took the hapless Roy by the throat and shook him hard. "Get the hell away from here, you little worm," he roared. James gave him a final shake and then a push and Roy staggered backwards and fell into the hedge.
"I only came to help," said Roy shrilly. "Honest. I've got information about Jimmy Raisin. I've found out things which might explain why someone murdered him! I did it to help Aggie."
James, who had been about to slam the door, hesitated. "What are you talking about?"
Roy extricated himself from the hedge and tittuped forward cautiously. "I hired a detective to find out about Jimmy Raisin. I've got her report." He held up the brief-case he had managed to hang on to during James's assault on him.
"Oh, very well," said James. "Come in and I'll see if Agatha's prepared to listen to you."
When Agatha came down the stairs, Roy backed nervously behind a chair. He had blonded his hair, which somehow made his face look weaker and whiter.
But Agatha had had time to think. If Roy had any information worthwhile, then she and James might solve the case and that would leave Bill and his precious Maddie with egg all over their faces.
"Sit down, Roy," she said. "If you've got anything of importance, I'd like to hear it, but don't think I'm ever going to forgive you for what you did to me."
"He stopped you from committing bigamy," said James.
Agatha glared at both of them.
"Let's hear what he has to say," said James mildly.
Agatha nodded. Roy edged round the chair and sat down nervously, his brief-case on his lap. "I assume," said Agatha, "that you initially hired this detective out of spite to find out if I was still married, and hired the detective again because you couldn't live with yourself, you creep!"
Roy cleared his throat. "Always looking for the worst motives, aren't we, Aggie? I thought your husband was dead and I thought you would thank me if I gave you conclusive proof of that death as a wedding present. And you can huff and puff but that's the truth, or may God strike me dead!" Agatha looked at the beamed ceiling. "I'm waiting for the thunderbolt to fall on you, Roy."
"This is getting us nowhere," said James sharply. "Let's hear your report."
Roy opened the brief-case and took out a sheaf of papers. "I wondered how it was that Jimmy had managed to live so long," he said. "But it seems that at one time a philanthropist, a Mrs. Serena Gore-Appleton, had taken Jimmy up as a worthwhile cause and borne him off to an expensive health farm. Although the place was hardly the Betty Ford Clinic and more a place where rich boozers went to dry out to recover and drink another day, it seemed to have worked for Jimmy, who became clean and sober and subsequently worked as a counsellor for Mrs. Gore-Appleton's charity, Help Our Homeless. Now here's the interesting bit.
"Jimmy always seemed to have a lot of money to flash around. How my detective, a Ms. Iris Harris, found that out was because Jimmy liked to queen it in front of his old down-and-out cronies. Then, after a year of sobriety, he suddenly went downhill amazingly quickly and soon reappeared among the beggars, junkies, and general down-and-outs of the London streets.
"One down-and-out who has recently sobered up offered the information that Jimmy delighted in finding out things about people, and even in his lowest stage was not above blackmailing someone for a bottle of meths with some threat such as reporting them to the social security if he found out they had work and were still drawing the dole, that kind of thing."
Roy beamed about him triumphantly. "So you see, sweeties, this agile brain of mine came to the conclusion that if Jimmy could blackmail the poor, why not the rich while working with this Gore-Appleton female? Maybe he saw one of his pigeons in Mircester and the pigeon saw a likely opportunity of killing Jimmy and took it."
"It all seems too much of a coincidence," said James slowly. "Agatha here decides to get married in Mircester. Had it not been for that, Jimmy would never have come down to the Cotswolds. Why on earth should one of his victims suddenly appear as well?"
Roy looked downcast. Then his face brightened. "Ah, but do you know where the health farm he went to is situated? At Ashton-le-Walls, ten miles outside Mircester."
"Yes, but people who go to health farms don't usually come from the immediate neighbourhood, do they?" asked Agatha. "I mean, they come from all over the country."
"Oh, you are such a pair of downers?" said Roy petulantly. "And coincidences do happen in real life. Do you remember that Australian friend of mine, Aggie? The tourist from hell?"
"Yes, I thought he was rather nice. Steve, that was his name."
"Anyway, him. I thought he was back in Australia, never to return. The other week I was in a pub and I got talking about Steve to this friend, about his dreary camcorder and his dreary guidebooks, and I was just saying I hoped I would never see him again when I felt these eyes drilling into the back of my head and I turned round and there was Steve! He flounced off but I can tell you, it gave me a turn, and it was in a pub in Fulham I've never been to before."
James turned to Agatha. "He's at least given us something to go on. We should start off tomorrow by going up to London to try to find this Mrs. Gore-Appleton."
Agatha brightened visibly at the thought of taking some action.
The doorbell rang. "That'll be Bill Wong," said James, getting to his feet.
Agatha grabbed his sleeve. "Let's not tell him anything about this, James. Let's keep it to ourselves for a bit."
He looked about to protest and then slowly nodded. "All right, but no getting yourself into danger again, Agatha. You've been involved in some scary murders in the past."
Bill Wong came in and stopped short, surprised to see Roy.
"I thought they would have killed you."
"Aggie and I are old friends," said Roy defensively. "I only wanted to give her Jimmy's death certificate as a wedding present."
Bill gave a him a slanting cynical look. "If you say so."
Roy picked up the papers, which James had left on the table, and thrust them into his brief-case.
"What's that?" asked Bill.
"PR stuff," said Roy. "I came down here to get Agatha's help."
Bill looked around at the three faces. There was a wary, almost hostile atmosphere in the room. He decided ruefully that James and Agatha must be under a great strain. He should have called before this.
"I wish I had some good news for you," he said, "but we still cannot find out any reason why your late husband was murdered, Agatha. If it had been among the down-and-outs in London, then it might have been decided he had been killed for no greater reason that the bottle in his pocket. But here, in the Cotswolds?"