‘Now, if we go quietly along this lane at the backs of the houses, we should reach my car. That way there’s no fear of someone in the houses seeing us.’
‘Someone could be looking out of a back window.’
‘Too many trees and bushes at the back, and I can’t see a light in a window anywhere. Come on.’
Agatha was so grateful to be finally back in her cottage kitchen. ‘Coffee would be nice,’ said James.
‘A stiff gin and tonic would be nicer,’ said Agatha.
‘Well, make a strong coffee for me. I’ll nip next door and get my camera. Don’t touch that ledger with your bare hands!’ James was Agatha’s nearest neighbour.
When James returned, Agatha had moved to her living room and was stretched out on the sofa asleep, a glass of gin and tonic perilously balanced on her chest and a smouldering cigarette in one hand.
He gently removed her drink and stubbed out her cigarette. He decided to leave her to sleep while he had a look in the ledger himself.
The entries in the ledger were baffling. There were long lines of columns with cryptic entries such a c.h. b. P.L., t. r. P.L. and so on in the same style. He woke Agatha, who blinked up at him and then came fully awake, crying, ‘What did you find?’
‘Nothing but a lot of gobbledygook. Come and have a look before I photograph the pages. There are only about five pages of entries. If this is what the killers were looking for, then I wonder why they wasted their time.’
Agatha followed him into the kitchen and stared in bafflement at the entries.
‘Now what do we do?’ she asked.
‘I photograph all the entries and then, so help me, I’ve got to take the book back, make sure the place is swept clean so there’s no trace of our visit and then drop an anonymous line to the police.’
Agatha awoke the next morning with the feel of James’s lips burning into her memory. In his way, he had been passionate in bed when they were married, but somehow only during the sex act itself. When it was over, he had rolled over to his side of the bed and gone to sleep as if she didn’t exist. Agatha tried to erase her feelings over the kiss by remembering how awful the marriage had been: all his infuriating pernickety bachelor ways such as complaining about the laundry, trying to forbid her to work. She gave herself a mental shake. She did not want to end up in the miserable depths of an obsession for James again.
But in its way, obsession was as necessary to Agatha Raisin as drink to an alcoholic. In the way that an alcoholic will endlessly chase the dream of when drink brought pleasure and escape, Agatha usually remembered only the beginning of obsessions, when the days were brighter and she felt young again.
She wondered whether to call on James before she went to the office but steeled herself against the urge.
Agatha was just about to leave her cottage after letting her cats out into the back garden for the day when the postman arrived with a large parcel. ‘Grand day,’ said the postman.
Agatha could almost smell the countryside coming to life after the bitter winter. The sky above was pale blue, and somewhere nearby a blackbird poured down its song.
It was on mornings like this that Agatha realized why she loved living in the Cotswolds so much. Perhaps, she thought, there is nowhere more beautiful in Britain than this man-made piece of England with its thatched cottages and gardens crammed with flowers.
The parcel was very heavy. She heaved it in and on to the kitchen table. It was addressed to her in block capitals. There was no return address.
She stared down at it, wondering at the same time if James had been successful in returning the ledger and somehow telling the police about the secret room without revealing their identities.
Agatha took a sharp knife out of the kitchen drawer and sliced the tape that sealed the parcel. Just before she wrenched it open, she paused. What if it were a bomb?
She put her ear to the parcel and then told herself she was being silly. Surely bombs ticked only in old movies.
She was reminded of some old game show on television where people would shout either ‘Don’t open the box!’ or ‘Open the box!’
She tore open the top flaps. Whatever was in there was covered in bubble wrap. She gingerly opened the coverings and then stared down at the revealed contents. Rigid with shock, she looked into the dead eyes of Gary Beech. His face was encrusted with little pellets of ice. The head had been frozen.
She sank down into a chair and grasped her knees to stop them from shaking.
Agatha felt she did not have enough strength to get up and call the police from the phone on the kitchen counter. She reached up and pulled her handbag down from the kitchen table and fished out her mobile and dialled 999.
James looked out of his window and saw police cars and a forensic unit arriving outside. He rushed out of doors in time to see a white-faced Agatha being led out and ushered into a police car.
He tried to get to her but had his way blocked by a policeman. ‘Can’t go there, sir,’ he said.
‘Agatha!’ shouted James. ‘What’s up?’
‘Head!’ screamed Agatha wildly as she was thrust into the car, which then sped off, and the road in front of her cottage was taped off.
Agatha, who had refused offers of treatment for shock and simply wanted to get any interview over with, told Inspector Wilkes about the arrival of the package. While she was making her statement in a weak, faltering voice quite unlike her own, the interview was suddenly suspended as Wilkes was summoned from the room.
She waited, staring blankly into space, reviving only enough to refuse a policewoman’s offer of hot sweet tea.
Wilkes eventually returned. His face was grim. ‘Do you know there was a note for you with the head?’
‘Too much of a shock to look further,’ said Agatha. ‘What did it say?’
‘It says, “You’re next, you nosy bitch, if you keep on interfering.” What have you been up to?’
Agatha thought wildly of her visit to Gary Beech’s home. She said, ‘I was investigating his death at the request of his ex-wife . . .’
‘Who you found murdered?’
‘Yes.’
‘And?’
‘That’s all.’
‘Have you found out anything at all you are not telling us? You see, we got an anonymous call at dawn, telling us about a secret room in Gary Beech’s house. You wouldn’t know about that, would you?’
‘A secret room!’ exclaimed Agatha. ‘That sounds like something out of Enid Blyton. It would never cross my mind.’ She leaned forward wearily. ‘Do you know yet exactly how Beech was killed?’
‘We are waiting for the pathologist’s report on the head. But the initial report says there is evidence of severe blunt-force trauma to the back of the skull.’
Shocked though she was, Agatha was aware of a heavy atmosphere of suspicion in the room. I’ve got to solve this case, she thought wildly. I’m rapidly becoming the number one suspect. But that’s ridiculous. I would hardly send a severed head to myself. And where is the rest of the body? The feet and legs are missing.
‘Mrs Raisin!’ said Wilkes sharply. ‘Pay attention. I want you to go back to the late Mrs Richards. We must assume that she knew something and that was the reason she was killed.’
‘You have my statement,’ said Agatha. ‘I gave you everything then.’
‘Nonetheless. Go over it again.’
Agatha eventually had to be supported from the interview room by a policewoman. She felt her legs had turned to jelly. James was waiting for her.
‘I rescued your cats from the garden,’ he said, ‘and took them to my place. I suggest you move in with me until things are safer. It’s all right, Officer, I’ll take her home.’
‘Take me for a drink first,’ said Agatha.