The day was sunny and unusually warm. People came and went in the High Street with their amiable, non-threatening Evesham faces. Agatha suddenly felt silly. In the clear sunshine, her idea began to seem mad. All that would happen would be that she would end up with a truly dreadful hair-style.
Agatha pushed open the door and went in.
Josie was painting her nails and did not look up. “I’ve an appointment,” snarled Agatha. “Jump to it!”
Josie gave a stage sigh and said, “Follow me,” and, waving her painted nails in the air to dry them, led Agatha through to the wash-basins. Eve was sitting reading a magazine. There were no other customers.
“That’s all right, Josie,” said Eve, putting down her magazine. “You can take the rest of the day off. I’ll attend to Mrs. Raisin. Would you like a coffee first, Mrs. Raisin?”
“No, thank you.” Agatha did not want to risk getting coffee laced with ricin.
Josie went off Eve unhitched a gown and held it out to Agatha.
“I’d like a word with you first… Mrs. Shawpart,” said Agatha.
“Who’s she?”
“You are the wife of the hairdresser who was murdered, aren’t you?” demanded Agatha.
Eve looked at her in bewilderment. “I never even knew John Shawpart,” she said. “I had a hairdressing establishment in Worcester and moved here. Whatever gave you such an odd idea?”
“Despite the colour of your hair,” pursued Agatha, although she was beginning to feel stupid and acutely conscious of Brian and Charles listening in, “you fit the description given me of Mrs. Shawpart. Your husband divorced you and collected all the insurance from your salon when it burned down. You were jealous of his success.”
Eve looked at her wearily. “You are talking absolute rubbish. Wait a minute.”
She went away and came back with a business card. “That was the business I had last year and I was in business in Worcester for ten years. Ask anyone.”
Agatha dismally looked down at the business card. It said, “Eve’s Hairdressing,” with an address in the Foregate in Worcester.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled.
“Well, we all make mistakes. Come over to the washbasin. What on earth gave you such a mad idea?”
Agatha allowed her to put the gown on and then sat down meekly at the wash-basin.
“I’d been investigating because I was the one who found him when he was dying,” she said. “He was a blackmailer.”
“Never!”
“Yes. So at first I thought that it might be one of the people he had been blackmailing and then I suddenly thought it might be his wife, and since you suddenly appeared and took over his staff, I leaped to the wrong conclusion that you might be his wife. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. Lean your head back. Comfy?”
Agatha nodded.
Across the road, Brian and Charles, with their headphones, on looked at each other. Brian removed his. “May as well take these things off.”
“Keep listening,” said Charles. “Poor Aggie. Let’s hear just how much of a fool she’s making of herself.”
“But I tell you one thing,” said Agatha. “I plan to go on and on until I track down the missing Mrs. Shawpart.”
Eve shampooed Agatha’s head with strong fingers. Suddenly those fingers buried themselves in her hair and held her head in a strong grip.
“Did you tell anyone you were coming here?” asked Eve.
“No,” lied Agatha.
“Just as well.”
“Why?”
“Because, you interfering bitch, you’re not going to get out of here alive.”
Across the road, Charles whipped out a mobile phone and called the police.
Agatha tried to get up and then yelped in pain as Eve held tightly on to her hair.
“He had it coming to him,” said Eve viciously. “He always said the success of the salon in Portsmouth was due to his talents. I thought, I’ll show the bastard. After the divorce, I set up a rival salon, but he poisoned people’s minds against me.”
Agatha forced herself to remain still, hoping against hope that the microphone was working. “And did you blackmail women as well?”
“I didn’t even know about that, not until just before I left Portsmouth, when some stupid woman came whining to me.”
“You set his house on fire? How come you had the keys?”
“I came back and cosied up to him. John was so vain, he thought he was irresistible. We spent a few nights together for old time’s sake and I got him to give me a set of keys.”
“But why set his house on fire?” Keep her talking and pray to God Charles has phoned the police, thought Agatha. Her knees were trembling and sweat from her forehead trickled down her face.
“Because I didn’t want the police finding our marriage certificate or any papers.”
“But he might have told someone that you were around!”
“He laughed and swore he hadn’t. Liked to keep his ladies thinking there was no one else but them in his life.”
Agatha strained her ears for the wail of a police siren but heard only the drivelling Muzak that was playing in the salon.
“But why didn’t the police find you? If you’ve changed your name by deed poll, they’d have got on to it.”
“Got forged papers in Glasgow. You can always get forged papers if you’re prepared to pay the price. Set up a bank account in my new name. Easy.”
“And where did you get the ricin?”
“When I was married to John, one of our customers gave me some castor-oil beans he’d got in India. He told me about the poison. I put them away in a drawer and forgot about them, until I realized how I could use them. I got another of my crooked friends in Glasgow to extract the poison and put it in a syringe. I simply injected it into the bastard’s vitamin pills and sat back and waited for results.”
“But why?” asked Agatha. “So he was cheating on you. Why kill him?”
“He did worse than cheat on me,” hissed Eve. “He said I was no good as a hairdresser. He took away my customers. No one insults my hairdressing skills.
“You were jealous of him,” said Agatha. “You bloody hairdressers are a lot of prima donnas. You killed him out of jealousy. But you were lucky. You could have been seen in Evesham. You could-”
Eve banged Agatha’s head painfully against the basin. “Shut up. I’m bored with you, you dreary old frump. He got into your knickers, didn’t he?” She banged Agatha’s head painfully again and Agatha yelled.
Keep her talking, thought Agatha although her head hurt and she was terrified.
“So you were never in Worcester?”
“No, I got some business cards printed in a machine, just in case.”
“And what about Mrs. Dairy?”
“The old cow recognised me and-”
Suddenly Eve stiffened. The salon was suddenly filled with the wail of police sirens.
Eve released Agatha’s hair.
Screaming like a banshee, Agatha hurtled out of the chair just as police poured into the shop. She did not wait for all the joy of hearing Eve being cautioned, she went straight out of the shop into Charles’s arms.
“What kept them so long?” she kept sobbing over and over again.
At the end of a long day of police questions and statements, Agatha and Charles finally found themselves alone in Agatha’s cottage.
“And the only praise I got from Bill,” said Agatha sourly, “was that he supposed it took one rank amateur to find another.”
“John’s wife certainly had the luck of the devil,” said Charles, nursing a brandy. “Your head’s still stiff with shampoo. Aren’t you going to wash it off?”
Agatha gave a squawk of alarm. “You should have said something before this. I wonder how she planned to kill me?”
“Well, she was banging your head. Probably meant to keep on banging it until you looked like Mrs. Dairy.”
“And then what would she have done?”