Mavis’s yes narrowed. “So where the hell do you pair get off, tormenting me?” She stood up. “Get out of here!”
“We’re only trying to find out who did it,” said Agatha patiently.
“That’s a job for the police. I’ve a good mind to report you.”
“If you do that,” said Charles, “we’ll be obliged to tell the police what we know about you.”
Mavis crumpled. “I’m sorry. But it has all been so horrible. I’m sorry I got angry.”
“That’s all right. We’ll be off,” said Charles. “Think no more about it.” He stood aside to let Agatha past, and then whipped round.
“You weren’t ever married to John Shawpart, were you?”
“No!”
“Know anything about his wife?”
“He said something about her being jealous of him. She was a hairdresser as well.”
They thanked her and left.
“How did you know about her, Charles?” asked Agatha as they drove off.
“I didn’t. I just guessed.”
“Why? How?”
“Well, Shawpart seems to have been a cunning bastard. If there was no money in it, he dropped them.”
“So what made you think he hadn’t dropped Mavis? She told me she had told him that she hadn’t any money and I believed her.”
“It was a lucky guess. I thought it was worth a try. I mean, she did tell him all those lies about herself to get his interest. She must have told him the one about her drug-dealing daughter was a lie or he wouldn’t even have bothered bedding her. He’d just have used that.”
“Let’s go back and make some notes,” said Agatha.
“Interested again?”
“Sort of. There might be something I’ve missed.”
“Now,” said Charles, sitting over a sheet of paper at Agatha’s kitchen table half an hour later, “let’s see what we’ve got. We’ve got Mavis Burke. She could have put ricin in his vitamin pills. Then there’s the receptionist, Josie. She was in love with him. Mr. and Mrs. Friendly. Maggie Henderson or her brutal husband. Harriet of Portsmouth or her husband.”
“But Harriet’s husband left her for the secretary.”
“So she said. Could be another liar. She could have looked shocked when Luke turned up on her doorstep, not at seeing him again but in case you guessed she’d been telling a pack of lies. Anyone else?”
“Jessie Lang, but that’s a non-starter.”
Charles leaned back in his chair. “Yes, let’s think about Jessie Lang. Why would our philandering blackmailer waste his time on a bit of crumpet with no money? Not his scene.”
“I’m sure she was telling me the truth,” said Agatha hotly. “You think she’s lying because I got a lot more out of her than you did!”
“It’s a thought all the same. Then there’s Mrs. Shaw-part.”
“But we don’t know where she is!”
“Don’t we? We don’t know how long any of the married women suspects have been married. Could be Mavis.”
“Who miraculously produces a teen-aged daughter and son after about a year?”
“Did you see any photos of her children? I didn’t. I don’t trust Mavis one bit.”
“We’re forgetting Mrs. Dairy,” said Agatha. “Poor Mrs. Dairy. What on earth could she have possibly found out that we didn’t?”
“That’s a point. Why don’t we trot along to the vicarage and ask Mrs. Bloxby for some gossip?”
As they approached the vicarage door, Agatha found herself hoping the vicar was not at home to start shouting in front of Charles about “that dreadful woman.”
But Mrs. Bloxby answered the door with her usual glad smile of welcome. Agatha knew her to be a busy woman and yet she never appeared to be flustered by the unheralded arrival of visitors.
“This is nice,” said Mrs. Bloxby. “Come into the kitchen. I’ve got some fresh coffee ready.”
Agatha sat down at the kitchen table and half-closed her eyes, letting the peace of the vicarage wash over her. Why did she always create such an insane world for herself, she wondered, where the totally unacceptable became the acceptable? What was she doing sitting here companionably with Charles? She should have told him to get lost, she should have said she would never see him again. And, what was even more important, she should stop this silly business of pretending to be a detective and let the police get on with it.
Mrs. Bloxby put down thin china mugs of coffee in front of them and a plate of chocolate biscuits before sitting down herself. “You were away yesterday, Agatha?”
“Yes”
“The press were suddenly all over the place. You know, there were only a few directly after the murder. The police must have released that there was some connection between Mrs. Dairy and the murder of the hairdresser, although they appear to have released nothing about John Shawpart’s blackmailing activities. You see, there wasn’t much of a fuss before because the press thought it was just another murder of a pensioner in the Midlands. How awful that sounds! Just another murder. But there are so many. The longer people live, the more pensioners there are, and the more that get murdered. They’re such an easy, vulnerable target.”
“Someone will be after Aggie next,” said Charles.
“I’m not a pensioner,” snapped Agatha.
“So were you investigating yesterday?” asked Mrs. Bloxby.
“Went to Portsmouth.”
“With her toy boy,” murmured Charles.
“Now why does that ring a bell? Portsmouth,” mused Mrs. Bloxby, ignoring Charles.
“That’s where John Shawpart came from,” said Agatha.
“So it is. But there’s something else… Never mind, it’ll come to me. So how did you get on?”
Agatha told her about Harriet. “That poor woman!” exclaimed Mrs. Bloxby.
“If she was telling the truth,” Charles put in. “Aggie here is very gullible.
“I think that remark was uncalled for,” said Mrs. Bloxby.
“Tell him about Mavis,” said Agatha.
Mrs. Bloxby listened intently and then said, “But it does not follow that Harriet was lying. Why should she lie? She paid, didn’t she, and it’s thanks to Agatha that she got that five thousand pounds back.”
“There’re too many suspects,” said Agatha gloomily. “Because of Mavis, I think everyone has been lying to me. When I overheard that woman telling John she would kill him, he said it was the woman in the shop next door talking to her husband, but she said she wasn’t married. So she wasn’t married, but what if John had got his clutches into her?”
“So where do you go from here?” asked Mrs. Bloxby.
“I don’t know,” said Agatha wearily.
Charles nibbled on a chocolate biscuit. Then he said, “What about us visiting Bill Wong? He surely knows something about that wife of John’s. In fact, he probably knows a hell of a lot more than we do.”
Agatha brightened. “That’s an idea. Let’s go and see Bill. In fact, I think we’ll do that now. Thanks for the coffee.”
She and Charles got up.
Agatha turned in the doorway. “I quite forgot to ask you: Do you know where Mrs. Dairy came from? Where did she live before she came to Carsely?”
“How stupid of me,” exclaimed Mrs. Bloxby. “How could I have forgotten?”
“Forgotten what?”
“Why, Portsmouth, of course. Mrs. Dairy came from Portsmouth!”
EIGHT
“PHEW!” said Agatha. “I’m feeling as if I’ve been just struck by a blinding flash of the obvious.”
“What do you mean?” asked Charles as they walked back to the cottage.
“Why, Mrs. Dairy, of course. She wouldn’t have been clever enough to ferret out anything dangerous about the murderer in such a short time. She must have known Mr. John in Portsmouth! So it follows she probably knew who murdered him.”
“How could she know that?” asked Charles. “She’d just have been in the same fix as we are. All those people being blackmailed. Who to choose from?”