They got out and walked up an ankle-spraining front path made of pieces of brick. The garden was neglected and weedy and the net curtains at the windows were dingy.
Agatha pressed the doorbell. “No ring,” said Charles. “Knock.”
Agatha rapped on the glass panes of the door. I wonder why anyone ever becomes a newspaper reporter, she thought. They condemn themselves to days of rejection.
The door opened on a chain and one of Maggie’s protuberant eyes stared at them.
Agatha smiled brightly. “Do you remember me, Mrs. Henderson? We met in the hairdressing salon, Mr. John’s, in Evesham.”
“What do you want?”
“We wanted to talk to you about Mr. John.”
“I’ve nothing to say.”
“We know he was blackmailing you,” said Charles.
The door slammed. Agatha and Charles looked at each other.
Then they heard the sound of the chain being dropped and the door opened.
Maggie Henderson looked at them triumphantly. “You can’t do anything to me now. I suppose you got hold of the letters that bastard had. Well, the damage is done. My husband’s left me, so go screw.”
“We’re not blackmailers,” said Agatha. “Can we come in? All the evidence is destroyed.”
“In the fire?”
Agatha nodded. “The reason I want to find out who killed him and who set the house on fire is that I was in the house when it was set alight. I went there to try to destroy any evidence. But don’t tell the police that. They don’t know.”
Maggie’s face softened. “So you were a victim as well. Come in.”
“Not really…” began Agatha, but Charles pressed her arm warningly as they followed Maggie into the house, as if to say, let her think you’re a fellow sufferer.
The living-room was untidy and dusty. “I had a call from a policewoman,” said Maggie. “Sit down. She was only checking her way through the list of customers and when I read that his house had burned down, I prayed my letters had gone up with it. I thought, you see, with all the rain that day that they might not, but the policewoman told me that he had used Calor gas and kept spare cylinders in the basement. The gas exploded. She said even the stuff in the filing cabinet had been destroyed.”
I did’t even see the filing cabinet, thought Agatha.
“So what happened between you and Mr. John?” she asked. “I am Agatha Raisin and this is Sir Charles Fraith.”
“Well, Mrs. Raisin… ”
“Call me Agatha.”
“That’s a name you don’t hear much these days,” said Maggie. “I had a friend called Agatha but she changed her name to Helen. Said she couldn’t bear people calling her Aggie.”
“I know how she feels,” said Agatha, casting a fulminating glance at Charles.
“I was so glad when I heard he was dead,” said Maggie. “I could’ve murdered him. But I’m such a rabbit. Things weren’t going too well in my marriage. Pete was a good husband, I suppose, but always a dab hand at nasty little putting-down remarks. Any time we went out to the pub with friends, I knew there would be a post-mortem in the road home. “Why did you say that, you made a fool of yourself, you looked like a tart,” that sort of thing. But that’s marriage for you. Then Mr. John started to ask me out, meetings on the sly. Pete was out at work and I was enjoying the school holidays. He made me feel like a princess. I began to complain about Pete to him. He was very sympathetic. He said a lot of women were stuck in lousy marriages because they hadn’t the funds to leave. I said I had always had my own money. My parents died in a car crash and left me comfortably off. He exhilarated me. 1 saw for the first time that it might be possible to find the courage to leave Pete. This is my house.”
She fell silent.
“Then what happened?” prompted Agatha.
“He made love to me and I felt beautiful.” Agatha felt a slight pang of regret that she hadn’t given the hairdresser a fling. “Then, after that, he was suddenly too busy to see me or even to do my hair. I was obsessed, frantic. The school holidays were coming to an end and I knew I wouldn’t have much freedom. So I wrote to him, reminding him of our love, of our afternoon of love.
“When he said he wanted to see me again, I was overjoyed. We met at those tea gardens on the river. He told me he wanted money, five thousand pounds. If I didn’t give it to him, he would send my letter to my husband. I hated him in that moment. I didn’t believe for a minute he would do it. So I told him to do his worst.
“I felt guilty about the way I had cheated on Pete over this useless, evil man. The next day, the very next day, Pete was off work with a cold. The post hadn’t arrived when I went out to work. So Pete got the letter. John must have posted it right after I left him the day before.
“When I got home, Pete had packed up and left. My letter was on the table and Pete left me his own letter, calling me all sorts of names… slut, whore.” Her voice broke.
“I’m so lonely without him. I never thought I would be. I used to dream day and night of getting my freedom and now I’ve got it, and it sucks.”
She began to cry.
Agatha handed her a pile of tissues from a box on the dusty table. Maggie blew her nose and wiped her eyes.
“Where is your husband now?” asked Charles.
“Over at his mother’s in Honeybourne.”
“Did either you or your husband go to the police?”
“Oh, no! I burnt my letter and Pete’s. And when I read about the murder I was frantic. I thought Pete had done it. But it was poisoning and Pete would have been more likely to club him to death. My Pete has a violent temper.”
“Perhaps we should have a word with your husband,” suggested Charles, thinking of Agatha’s description of the bruised face.
Agatha expected Maggie to exclaim in horror, but she pressed her trembling hands together and said, “If you could. He won’t speak to me and his mother takes all the calls and refuses to let me speak to him. Tell him I miss him. I mean, he wasn’t much company, but he was good at fixing things.”
“Give us the address,” said Charles, “and we’ll see what we can do.”
“It’s ten, Parton Lane, Honeybourne. But you mustn’t tell the police about me! I’m falling apart as it is. All I want is Pete back. You never know what you’ve got until you haven’t got it any more.”
If only James Lacey thought like that, mourned Agatha.
As Charles and Agatha got in the car again, Charles looked at his watch and said, “Can’t be too long on this next call. I’ve got to take Josie out for dinner.”
“We’ve got time,” said Agatha. “Honeybourne’s not far.”
They found the address quite easily. “Here goes,” said Charles.
The door was answered by a small, bent woman who peered up at them from under a thatch of grey hair.
“Mrs. Henderson?” said Agatha.
“Yes, and I’m not interested in buying anything.”
“We’re not selling anything.”
“We’ve come to see your son,” said Charles.
“Who are you?”
“Mrs. Agatha Raisin and Sir Charles Fraith.”
She scowled at them suspiciously and then retreated into the house. There was the sound of some altercation from the nether regions and then a large burly man filled the doorway. “Yes?” he demanded truculently.
How easy it would be to be a police detective, thought Agatha. Flash the identification and demand that they go indoors.
“It’s about that hairdresser, John Shawpart,” said Agatha.
“What the hell’s it got to do with you?”
“We wondered why you had beaten him up,” said Charles, edging in front of Agatha.
“You the police?”
“No, we became involved in the case.”
Pete Henderson roundly told Charles to go and perform an impossible anatomical act upon himself. The door began to close.
“Maggie misses you,” said Agatha desperately. “She really does.”