Agatha Raisin and the Perfect Paragon - M. C. Beaton [62]
Then it dawned on him that the business had been sold very quickly. Didn’t wills take longer to process?
He telephoned Agatha. She said that they had just recently been asking themselves the same question, and Patrick had found out through old police contacts that everything had been in Mabel Smedley’s name.
He stood looking at the factory, wondering if Joyce had killed Smedley and if she had done so, what she had done with that milk bottle. Joyce carried a capacious handbag. Maybe she had slipped it in there. She said she had scalded it out and put it in the rubbish, but the police had not been able to find it in the bin in her office or in any of the outside garbage bins.
So, thought Harry, if she had it and took it home, would she keep it? Hardly. All she had to do was drop it in a bin in the city centre. Police would have searched the office thoroughly.
He decided to get back to following Joyce for another couple of days.
Meanwhile, Agatha, Patrick and Phil went over and over their notes. At last Agatha said wearily, “We’ll need to go back to the beginning and take it one case at a time. I think I’ve confused the issue by trying to connect them all up. I think we should talk to Trixie and Fairy again. It’s half-term. Let’s see if we can find them.”
They found them both at Trixie Sommers’s home. “They’re up in Trixie’s room,” said Mrs. Sommers nervously. “I’ll call them down.”
The girls sidled into the living room. “Sit down,” snapped Agatha. “We’ve got a few more questions for you.”
“Got better things to do,” said Fairy.
Mrs. Sommers cracked. “Answer the woman’s questions, damn it!” she yelled.
The pair looked shocked and sat down and stared at Agatha, Patrick and Phil with mutinous expressions.
“Now,” said Agatha, “you both knew she was romantically involved with Burt. Were you jealous of her?”
“Naah,” drawled Fairy. “She was so wet—Burt this, Burt that. How they was going to get married. Carried her engagement ring on a chain round her neck.”
Agatha stiffened. She remembered Jessica’s body clearly. There had been no chain round her neck with any ring.
“It wasn’t on her body when she was found.”
“Then whoever killed her nicked it,” said Trixie. “Can we go?”
“No, stay where you are,” ordered Agatha. “If Burt loved her, how did he inveigle her into posing for that Web site?”
“Told her it was just a bit of fun, nothing really dirty, and we’d all make money. She’d have done anything for him.”
“Did Jessica know Burt had already done time for armed robbery?”
“None of us knew,” said Fairy. “Cool.”
“Did you know that Jessica had at least one evening out with your maths teacher?”
“Yeah,” said Trixie. “Like she told us. Said he was an awful old ponce, bitching about the wine and trying to get into her knickers.”
“And you didn’t think to tell the police?”
“Don’t tell the fuzz everything.”
“Look, if you know anything at all, you should tell us. We know Burt had an affair with Joyce Wilson, the secretary at Smedleys. Did Jessica know about that?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Did you ever see him with any other woman?”
“No, but he had a reputation around the factory as a lady-killer. We told Jessica to get him to have a test before she let him get his leg over,” said Trixie. “I mean, these days, you never know where they’ve been.”
Oh, the innocence of youth! Where has it gone? wondered Agatha.
“Is that the lot?” asked Trixie.
“I suppose so,” said Agatha, feeling defeated. Not only was she never going to solve Jessica’s murder, she thought wearily, but her investigations on the other two were going nowhere as well.
Harry was about to give up watching Joyce, but then, towards evening, she emerged from her house and got into a taxi. He ran to the end of the street where he had parked his motorbike and set out in pursuit. He followed the cab out along the Fosse until it turned off down a country lane. She’s going to Ancombe, thought Harry. Maybe a break at last.
The cab went