Why me? wondered Agatha. If that’s some drunk sleeping it off, I’ll need to get help for the poor sod.
She walked round the row of trolleys and bent down. Whoever it was was completely covered by a blanket. Agatha pulled the blanket away from the face.
The moon shone down. The hellish children’s voices cackled out. And Agatha stared down at the dead face of Amy Richards.
Inside the supermarket, although it was closed, she could see the shelf stackers at work.
She hammered on the glass doors. Faces turned towards her. A security man came to the door and waved at her to go away.
Agatha took out her notebook and printed in large letters: DEAD BODY IN CAR PARK.
Chapter Six
Agatha had to stop the security guard from trying to resuscitate Amy. ‘Leave her,’ she yelled, dragging him off. ‘Any idiot can see she’s stone dead. You’re tampering with evidence.’
Feeling sick and shaken, Agatha, who had phoned the police, heard the wail of sirens, and then police cars, marked and unmarked, poured into the car park. A grim-faced policewoman whom Agatha did not know began to question her and then said she was to go in a police car to headquarters and wait there to make a statement.
Agatha phoned her lawyer, a mild man called inappropriately Bill Sykes, and told him to meet her at headquarters. Agatha had previously used him to make out her will. He protested that he did not handle criminal law, to which Agatha snapped, ‘Then get down here and learn.’
Agatha ploughed on through the questioning with little help from her timid, sleepy lawyer. She had taken the precaution of summoning him, knowing well that the police would consider this one coincidence too far – that she had suddenly decided to dump trash in the middle of the night after watching Amy’s house and had conveniently found her dead body. Over and over her story she went while the asthmatic clock on the wall above her head wheezed out the minutes.
At last, she held up her hand. ‘Do you mind telling me how she died?’
Wilkes, who had been conducting the interview, scowled at her. A thickset detective sergeant by the name of Briggs asked nastily, ‘Don’t you know?’
‘If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking you,’ howled Agatha.
‘As far as we can gather, she was stabbed through the heart,’ said Wilkes.
‘What with?’ asked Agatha.
‘What do you think?’ asked Briggs sarcastically.
Mr Sykes, the lawyer, was tired. He found a reserve of bad-tempered courage he did not know he possessed.
‘Answer Mrs Raisin’s question,’ he snapped, ‘and stop wasting time with your bullying.’
Briggs looked as if a rabbit had just bitten him in the ankle. Wilkes said heavily, ‘Some thin-bladed knife, we think.’
‘Are you charging my client with anything?’ said little Mr Sykes, glaring through his thick glasses.
‘Not at this moment,’ said Briggs heavily.
‘Then you are free to leave, Mrs Raisin,’ said Mr Sykes, wrapping a long muffler around his neck. ‘Come along.’
‘Hold yourself ready for more questioning,’ Wilkes called after their retreating backs.
Outside the interview room, Agatha hugged the startled Mr Sykes. ‘Oh, well done. I am so tired, I didn’t know how to stand up to them, and believe me, that’s something that hardly ever happens to me.’
‘Where is your car?’ asked Mr Sykes.
‘I left it at the supermarket.’
‘I shall take you there. And,’ said Mr Sykes, quite overcome by the memory of his own bravery, ‘you can smoke if you like.’
When they got to the car park, a tent had been erected over the body. But all Agatha wanted to do was to get home and go to sleep. She thanked her lawyer again, got into her car and set off over the whitened landscape. The snow had ceased, and the road down into Carsely was slippery again. She cruised down it in second gear, finally turning into Lilac Lane with a sigh of relief.
As she climbed out of her car, she found her knees were trembling. She clicked the lock on the car. She heard a voice call, ‘Agatha!’
She swung round. The moon had disappeared behind a bank of clouds, and she saw a tall, dark figure approaching her. She was just opening her mouth to scream when a once loved voice said, ‘Are you all right? I heard about the murder on the radio.’
‘James?’ said Agatha in a wondering voice. ‘Is it really you?’
‘Who else?’ replied her ex-husband, James Lacey.
‘Oh, I am so glad to see you,’ said Agatha, and burst into tears.
Inside Agatha’s cottage, James waited patiently in the kitchen while Agatha fled upstairs to repair her make-up. He looked just the same, she thought, with his thick hair going only a little grey at the sides and those intense blue eyes of his.
Satisfied at last that she had done as much to her face as was possible, she sprayed on Coco Mademoiselle and went down the stairs.
‘When did you get back?’ she asked.
‘Today . . . late. I was listening to the radio news when I learned a body had been found in the car park at Tesco’s supermarket. I thought it better to wait in Carsely for you to get back rather than miss you on the road. I’ve poured you a brandy. I suppose hot sweet tea would have been better, but you look as if you need something to cheer you up.’
Agatha nodded. He went through to the sitting room and returned with a goblet of brandy. Agatha took a gulp and smiled at him mistily. ‘It’s very good to see you. It seems I am now the number one suspect in the murder of Amy Richards.’
‘If you’re not too tired, tell me about it.’
‘I would like to,’ said Agatha. ‘I’m exhausted, but too strung up and nervous to sleep. Oh, I should have phoned Toni. They’ll have questioned her as well. Toni’s another problem. I’ll tell you all about it.’
James produced a small notebook and pen while Agatha talked and talked. He occasionally made notes.
When she had finished, James prompted, ‘You said there was some trouble with Toni. What is it?’
Wearily, Agatha outlined the situation and finished by saying plaintively, ‘Don’t look so severe. I’ve made a mess of things and I don’t know what to do.’
‘Simon was very young,’ remarked James. ‘And he certainly didn’t have undying love for Toni or he wouldn’t have fallen for this new girl so easily. The trouble is that you cannot possibly do anything about it. Toni will need to make her own mistakes from now on. She may come round. She is, you know, fiercely independent.’
‘But she’s so young!’
‘As you were once, Agatha, and I bet you were a bulldozer compared to Toni. I could try to have a word with her.’
‘Would you? She always respected you.’
‘Now, you’d best get off to bed. We’ll meet tomorrow, say, for lunch at the George. Have a long lie-in. I’ll phone the office for you.’
‘Where have you been?’
‘I still write travel books, but I’ve moved on to the large glossy type, exploring more remote parts of the world.’
‘Are there any remote parts left? I thought even the top of Everest was getting overcrowded.’
‘Oh, there are a few places. Lock up after me and go to bed.’
When he had gone and Agatha was drifting off to sleep, she was glad to find her old obsession for him had not returned. But I’m so weary of being on my own, she thought. Charles is like my cats, self-sufficient, and Roy would drop me like a shot if he got a good PR assignment.
But Agatha got only a few hours’ sleep. She was awakened at nine o’clock by her cleaner, Doris Simpson, telling her that Bill Wong and some female detective were downstairs waiting to talk to her.
Agatha gloomily surveyed her face in the bathroom mirror. She applied a cream that was supposed to remove bags and dark circles from under her eyes. It didn’t work. She put on a thick layer of make-up and decided she looked awful. Why was foundation cream either ghostly white or brown? She washed off the whole lot and put on a thin layer of tinted moisturiser instead. She could hear water dripping from the thatch on her cottage roof. A thaw had set in.