‘I’ll join you there,’ she said. ‘Tell Paul I’ve gone home.’
‘Great! I mean, all right,’ said Agatha hurriedly.
Toni, familiar with the layout of police headquarters, left by the back door. She made her way slowly around to the front of the police station. There was no sign of Paul. She had left her car at Agatha’s cottage, having driven Paul to Carsely. She assumed he had either got a lift in a police car or had taken a taxi to get to Mircester.
She saw a passing taxi and hailed it.
Agatha’s cottage was besieged by press and television, Roy having phoned every branch of the media he could think of. Roy stood, grinning, next to Agatha, occasionally forgetting he was bald and tossing his head like someone in a shampoo advertisement. When he later saw himself on television, he howled in dismay. He had a fatuous grin on his face, and his tossing head looked like a nervous twitch.
Agatha made a brief statement. Toni shoved her way through the reporters. ‘Toni, Toni!’ called several reporters, recognizing the girl. ‘Give us a statement.’ Swinging round, Agatha fixed Toni with a baleful stare. Her beautiful detective hadn’t even been there when the body was found, and she wasn’t going to let her steal the limelight.
Toni nipped into the cottage, Agatha followed her and slammed the door. Roy and Charles were already in the living room. Charles had switched on the television.
‘Turn that off!’ ordered Agatha.
‘But it’s a rerun of CSI Miami on Sky,’ protested Charles. ‘Oh, suit yourself.’
‘Right,’ said Agatha. ‘We’ve got to solve this one.’
‘Can’t do much until we know who the pig was,’ said Charles, stifling a yawn. ‘Bill interviewed you, Agatha. Did he tell you anything about what happened before we arrived on the scene?’
‘No, but I overheard Wilkes interviewing the two men who operated the spit. They said two men dressed as knights carried the pig to the spit in a canvas sack. One of the spit operators, forget his name, he said the local butcher was supposed to bring it along in his van, but the knights said the butcher had thought if they dressed up and took the pig along, it would be more colourful. Police were ordered to search for these knights, but I don’t know if they found anything.’
‘Whoever it was on that spit,’ said Toni, ‘it must be someone really deeply hated. To go to such trouble and risk being found out! If you hadn’t recognized it wasn’t a pig, Agatha, there would have been a lot of cannibals at Winter Parva.’
‘I’m tired,’ said Roy. ‘I bet I’m going to have nightmares. I’m off to bed.’
‘I think I’ll go home,’ said Charles. ‘Toni can sleep on the sofa.’
Toni smiled at him gratefully. She had switched off her mobile phone. She had mixed feelings. She felt she was being disloyal to Paul, and yet detective work was her life, and uneasily she remembered the times when Paul had laughed indulgently about her job.
Agatha’s phone rang. She answered it. ‘Oh, Paul, it’s you,’ Toni heard her say. ‘No, not here. She said something about going down to Southampton to see her mother . . . What? . . . Yes, I’ll tell her.’ She rang off. ‘I didn’t think you wanted to see him tonight.’
‘Not tonight,’ agreed Toni. ‘I’ll talk to him tomorrow.’
The next morning, after breakfast, they all waited eagerly for the news on television. The report was disappointingly short. Roy shrieked again with dismay over his appearance. ‘I’m starting growing my hair today,’ he said.
There came a ring at the doorbell. When Agatha answered it, she found Inspector Wilkes, Bill Wong, another detective she did not know and a policewoman standing on the doorstep.
‘Come in,’ said Agatha. ‘Toni, Charles and Roy are all in the living room. Do you want to interview us all together?’
‘We’ll start with you, Mrs Raisin,’ said Wilkes.
‘Then come through to the kitchen,’ said Agatha.
When they were all seated around the kitchen table, Agatha was taken over her statement again. When the questioning was over, she asked eagerly, ‘What’s the latest?’
Bill said, ‘The butcher who was supposed to deliver the pig to the roast was found drugged and bound up in his shop. We still have not established the identity of the dead man. Now, we would like to speak to your assistant, Toni Gilmour.’
By the time the police left, they all felt shaky and very tired. Delayed shock was settling in. Roy said weakly that he would like to go back to bed, and Toni said she would go home. Charles decided to leave as well.
Agatha poured herself a hot-water bottle for comfort and retreated with her cats to her bed. As she drifted off into sleep, she remembered shouting about that awful policeman and wishing he would roast in hell on a spit. Her eyes flew open. Someone or some people had viciously hated whoever it was they had killed. People still shouted the epithet of ‘pig’ at policemen. Too farfetched, she told herself, go back to sleep. But sleep would not come.
She flicked open the address book she kept beside the bed and found Bill Wong’s mobile number.
When he answered, Agatha asked, ‘Any policemen missing?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The dead man,’ said Agatha. ‘People call the police pigs. Just a thought.’
Bill laughed. ‘You should write fiction, Agatha. Forget it. Leave it to the police. I don’t want you meddling in this one. These killers will be highly dangerous.’
Feeling rather silly, Agatha said goodbye and fell into a deep sleep.
‘What did the Raisin woman want?’ asked Wilkes the following morning. He had overheard Bill’s end of the conversation during the previous night.
Bill gave a reluctant laugh. ‘Mrs Raisin has just suggested that the dead man might be a policeman.’
‘And where did that flight of fancy come from?’
‘Policemen are often called pigs, and so she has leapt to that conclusion.’
‘Ridiculous. Now, pass me that roster. I want every man out on this case. Get Police Sergeant Tulloch in here.’
When Tulloch entered the room, Wilkes said, ‘Are they all in the briefing room? I’ll be along in a few moments.’
‘All there,’ said Tulloch, a burly Scot with a shock of fair hair. ‘Oh, except Beech. I’ve phoned his home, but there’s no reply.’
Wilkes and Bill looked at each other in sudden consternation. ‘You don’t think . . .’ began Wilkes.
‘He’s never missed a day before,’ said Bill uneasily.
‘Get round there,’ said Wilkes, ‘and take Detective Peterson with you.’
Bill brightened. Alice Peterson had recently joined them from Gloucester CID to replace Detective Collins, an acidulous woman, who, to Bill’s relief, had finally secured a transfer to London – not to Scotland Yard, her ambition, but to Brixton.
Alice was clever and almost pretty with her neat dark curls and blue eyes.
On the road to Beech’s home, Bill told her about Agatha Raisin’s odd idea. ‘I’ve heard about Mrs Raisin,’ said Alice. ‘She has had a lot of successes in the past. Everyone says she just blunders into things and gets lucky, but I think she must be clever.’
‘In this case, I hope not. Here we are.’
Bill parked in front of a trim little cottage on the outskirts of Winter Parva.
‘Why doesn’t he live in Mircester?’ asked Alice.
‘It’s cheaper here, he says. Let’s go.’
There was no doorbell, but there was a large brass door-knocker in the shape of a lion’s head. Bill performed an energetic rat-a-tat on it.
Silence.
Both detectives looked at each other. They knew from experience that empty houses have a particular silence.
Bill tried the door. ‘It’s locked,’ he said, ‘and the curtains at the front window are closed. I’ll go round the back. You keep an eye on the front.’