• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“Why?”

“I cannot think anyone would have made themselves such an obvious suspect.”

“We’re going round and round in circles. Aren’t you shocked about the schoolgirls’ video games?”

“I don’t think anything shocks me any more,” said Mrs. Bloxby sadly. “The last time I went to the hairdresser, I had forgotten to take a book. There was a pile of magazines meant for girls in their early teens. They were all about sex. Quite disgusting. I think this Burt put them up to it and they thought it a bit of a lark.”

“If Joyce isn’t the culprit, surely Mrs. Smedley might be. She says she didn’t know Robert was having an affair with Joyce, but I am sure she must have known there was something going on.”

“Not necessarily. And how is your detective friend?”

Agatha let out a strangled sob. “I don’t think he’s a friend any more.”

“Why? What happened?”

“It was Charles’s fault.” Agatha plunged into a description of what had happened at the dreadful lunch.

When Agatha had finished, Mrs. Bloxby put a handkerchief to her mouth. “Excuse me.” She fled out of the room. They heard muffled sounds coming along the corridor.

“Is she ill?” asked Agatha. “Should I go to her?”

“I think she’s laughing.”

“Laughing? I’ve just lost my one best friend and she’s laughing?”

Mrs. Bloxby came back into the room. Agatha did not notice that Charles’s eyes had become suddenly cold.

“I am sorry,” said Mrs. Bloxby. “But it really was so funny.”

Agatha stared at her and then slowly began to giggle. “I suppose it is.”

Charles rose to his feet. “If you ladies will excuse me. I’ve just realized, Agatha, that I have been neglecting things at home. No, don’t get up. I’ll walk back.”

He went out, slamming the door. “What’s the matter with him?” asked Agatha.

“Did you say anything when I was out of the room?”

“Let me see. I could hear sounds and I asked Charles if I should go to you. He said he thought you were laughing. I couldn’t see the funny side of it just then. That’s all. Maybe he has just remembered something urgent. I’m tired of murder. Tell me the parish news.”

“Miss Simms—I think she will always be Miss Simms to me—is getting a divorce from Patrick.”

“They said nothing to me!”

“Probably didn’t want any fuss. It’s by mutual agreement. Both of them thought they wanted to settle down. Patrick found it didn’t suit him. I think our Miss Simms missed her casual affairs.”

Agatha felt she should phone Charles that evening and ask him why he had decided to leave so suddenly. But an absent Charles meant a Charles who would, hopefully, not be around on Wednesday evening. She fed her cats and then switched on her computer and began to look up everything she could on Zimbabwe. She was just printing off some pages when the phone rang.

She answered it, expecting it to be Charles, but it was Bill Wong. “You’re a bad girl, Agatha, but really, Mum is over the moon about that magnificent present. She and Dad just sit there looking at it.”

“I can only repeat how sorry I am.”

“It was really Charles’s fault. I’ve got this girlfriend, Harriet, a policewoman. I phoned her up and told her what Charles had done and how the pair of you had run away. She laughed and laughed and then she said my mum’s cooking was awful. I never noticed. Is it?”

“It’s a bit of an acquired taste. Oh, Bill, I am so glad we are friends again.”

“Well, keep safe. And if you find a murderer, don’t go tackling him on your own.”

* * *

Agatha found it hard to get to sleep that night. Instead of concentrating on alibis for the morning of the murder, everyone should have been concentrating on the period from Friday until Monday. Anyone could have got in and poisoned the milk. But how would anyone get in unobserved with cameras all over the place and the gates locked?

Burt Haviland. Now he was the one with a criminal record. She resolved to go and see him the following day and take Phil with her. There might just be a connection between the two murders.

Agatha was grateful to Mabel Smedley