Agatha Raisin and the Perfect Paragon - M. C. Beaton [64]
“Let me see,” said Agatha. “Burt had been having an affair with Joyce. He knew about Joyce’s affair with Smedley. Say he threatened to tell Mabel. It turns out everything was in Mabel’s name. She could have sold the business from under him. It’s a wonder he didn’t murder her. And why was everything in her name? I got the impression she was a bullied wife.”
“Evidently she has a great deal of money of her own. She was the one who funded the business to get it started on the understanding that everything was kept in her name. And if Smedley was being blackmailed, then he could have paid someone to deposit the money.”
Harry sat lost in thought. He had hit upon a plan to get into that office.
The next day, Phil phoned in and said he was feeling poorly and would like the day off. What he really wanted to do more than anything was to call on Mabel. After a lot of thought, he had decided that there was surely an innocent explanation for that diploma. He was beginning to fantasize about marrying Mabel. He was years older than she was, but he was sure she was not indifferent to him.
Patrick had left early for the office, so he did not have to pretend to be sick. Phil decided to walk the two and a half miles to Ancombe.
The day was fine but unseasonably chilly, all the sunny promise of that glorious spring having disappeared. Perhaps he might rnn into her in the village. When he got to Ancombe, he went into the village shop in the hope that she might be there. Then he remembered she often did the flowers at the church, but the church was empty.
Surely it would be all right just to call at her home. They were friends, after all. He walked to Mabel’s home and rang the bell. There was no reply, but he could smell smoke coming from the back garden.
He walked around to the back of the house. Mabel was standing over an oil drum from which black smoke was pouring. Something made him retreat to the comer of the house, put his head round and watch. She went back into the house and shortly afterwards came back out with a pile of video cassettes. She threw them into the drum and poured what looked like petrol on top of them. She stared down into the drum and then gave an exclamation of annoyance and went back into the house.
Gone for matches, thought Phil. He never knew later what prompted his next action but he nipped across the back garden and seized one of the videos out of the drum and scampered back to the shelter of the house just as Mabel reappeared with a box of matches. She struck a match and threw it into the drum and backed away as the contents went up in a sheet of flame.
Phil hurried off. By the time he reached home, he had a stitch in his side and was feeling his age.
He went into his house and took out the video, which he had stuffed in the poacher’s pocket of his waxed coat. Then he smiled. “Well, I’ll be damned. Brief Encounter. That’s the film Harry took Joyce to see,” he said aloud. Mabel must be cleaning out the house. But then he wondered why such a do-gooder as Mabel had not sent her videos to a church sale or to some old folks’ club.
May as well see it anyway, he thought. I’m supposed to be ill. Funny how some people still have video cassettes. I thought everyone had DVDs these days.
He dug out his old video recorder, glad he hadn’t thrown it away, fixed it up and slotted the video in.
He leaned back in his armchair. Then he sat up straight and gazed at the screen in horror.
He fumbled for the phone and dialled Agatha. “You’d better come to my cottage immediately,” he said in a quavering voice. “There’s something you’ve got to see.”
Agatha and Patrick eventually arrived to find Phil looking white and shaken. “You really do look ill,” said Agatha.
“It’s not that. I went to see Mabel. She was burning videos in her back garden and didn’t see me. I don’t know why, but when she went indoors to get matches, I stole this one. Look!”
They stared at the screen. Jessica, Trixie and Fairy were cavorting on what they now knew to be Burt Haviland’s bed.
“It was in a Brief Encounter container,” said Phil. “But there