Agatha Raisin and the Perfect Paragon - M. C. Beaton [68]
“How long before the murder?”
“Can’t think. Maybe a week.”
“Did you tell the police?”
“Naw. They was asking about people calling the night o’ the murder.”
“Thank you very much, Mr. Burden.”
“Wouldn’t like to wait a bit, young fellow? I go down to the pub at eleven.”
“Got to go.”
Bill Wong had decided to risk Wilkes’s wrath and go to Jensens Electronics late afternoon on the following day. He didn’t think they would demand a search warrant. He was told to wait and then was confronted by Miss Morrison, who raised her eyebrows when he said he wanted to examine the cheese plant in her office.
“Don’t take all day about it,” she said. “I’ve got work to do.”
Bill followed her through to the office where the cheese plant in all its greenery loomed up against the window. He took out a thin metal rod. “I’ll try not to destroy it.”
“Won’t bother me,” said Miss Morrison. “I hate the thing.”
Bill crouched down by the pot and slid the rod into the earth. He hit something hard. Maybe it was just the bottom of the pot or there were stones in the bottom.
He pulled a garbage bag out of his pocket, took out a trowel from another pocket and began to scoop the earth into the bag. He scooped and scooped, occasionally changing his tactics to scrape away the soil. Deep down in the pot he saw a gleam of glass. He gently scraped and scraped until a milk bottle was partly uncovered.
God bless Harry Beam, he thought. He took out his phone and called Wilkes.
Agatha, Patrick, Harry and Phil met at her cottage. “Right,” said Agatha. “I suggest we go tomorrow morning and confront Mabel with what we’ve got.”
“I think we should tell the police,” said Patrick.
“We’ve found out things they couldn’t,” said Agatha. “Let’s see her first and then talk to them.
They set out for Ancombe the next morning. Harry wondered whether to tell Agatha about his theory about the milk bottle but decided against it. She might be angry with him for telling the police and not her.
Patrick and Phil were in Agatha’s car and Harry followed on his motorbike.
The drive outside Mabel’s home was empty. Her car was gone.
“We’ll wait for her,” said Agatha.
“You know,” said Patrick, getting out of the car, “that house has an awfully empty look.”
He walked up to the windows and peered in. He turned round. “Everything’s gone,” he said. “All the furniture. Everything.”
“She must have sold the house and moved.”
“The ‘For Sale’ sign is still up,” said Agatha, “and believe me, if it had been sold, then the estate agents would have a big ‘Sold’ sign. We’d better tell the police.”
She rang and was told that neither Bill Wong nor Wilkes was available, but they would pass on a message. So Agatha left an urgent message that they thought Mabel Smedley might have disappeared. She said they were outside Mabel’s house and would wait until someone arrived.
The police had just finished searching Joyce’s house again. Bill had pressed to have it searched the previous evening, but it had been late by the time he got hold of Wilkes and Wilkes had said they should organize a team for the morning. There was no sign of her, and although all her furniture was still in place, it looked as if some of her clothes were missing.
Bill got the call from headquarters that Agatha was at Mabel Smedley’s house and that she appeared to have sold or stored all the contents and fled.
Wilkes, Bill Wong and a police officer raced over to Ancombe.
“What put you on to her?” asked Wilkes. “As you are all here, I assume it wasn’t a social call.”
Agatha handed him the video. “Phil originally came to call on her—they were friends—and he found this in the back garden beside a drum full of burnt stuff. He took it home and looked at it and found it was a video of the girls’ Web site. Phil didn’t look in the windows, he had merely gone round to the back garden in case she was there, so he told us and we all came round to see what she had to say about it.”
“You should have phoned me right away!” raged Wilkes.
“It wouldn’t have made any difference,” said Agatha