Agatha Raisin and the Perfect Paragon - M. C. Beaton [71]
It was when Jessica started saying, “This isn’t the road home,” that Mabel had pulled the car over to the verge, taken a knife out of her handbag, and stabbed her in the chest. She waited patiently until the girl died and then, when the road was clear, pulled her out of the car and rolled her body down from the verge and dragged it up into the woods.
She ripped Jessica’s knickers off, hoping the police might think it a sex crime. Then she saw the ring on the chain round Jessica’s neck, an engagement ring, and tore it off the girl’s dead body in a fury.
Two days later, she took the dagger out of its hiding place in her kitchen and decided to bury it in the garden. Robert appeared behind her. He looked down at the knife and said, “You killed Jessica.”
She had stared at him in terror. Then he had said if she did not sign the firm and all the money and the house over to him, he would go to the police. She promised. What else could she do?
That was when she decided to enlist Joyce’s help, saying that when the fuss died down she would pay her a quarter of a million pounds. She had been alarmed when she had found Robert had hired a detective agency and told him he’d better call them off or she would not sign anything.
Joyce, beside her in the passenger seat, remembered how she had said she wouldn’t do it. That was until that weekend in Bath, when Robert had calmly told her he had no intention of divorcing his wife.
At first, after the murder, she couldn’t believe her luck. She was sure the police would search the plant and cursed herself for not having got the milk bottle out of the office somehow. But when she had got back into the office, she somehow couldn’t bear to dig up that milk bottle. The police hadn’t found it. Better to leave it where it was, that’s what she had thought. What a fool she’d been!
And then, just when things looked as if they were settling down, Burt had called on Mabel and blackmailed her, saying he would tell the police about his affairs with her and with Joyce. He said he was sure one of them had killed Jessica.
In a panic, they had gone together to his flat and murdered him.
Joyce turned plans over in her head. Why shouldn’t she have all Mabel’s money herself? Mabel was carrying a great deal in cash just in case the police somehow managed to freeze that account in the Cayman Islands. Maybe it would be better to get rid of Mabel, some sort of accident, or something that looked like food poisoning.
Agatha and Patrick left on an Iberian Airline flight to Marbella the next morning. Patrick volunteered he had never been abroad before. Agatha wondered, as she had done before, what the flirtatious Miss Simms had ever seen in the retired detective with his lugubrious face and thinning hair. He was wearing a dark suit, striped tie, and highly polished black shoes. Agatha thought that, however retired, Patrick’s whole appearance screamed copper.
“I hope you brought some light clothes,” said Agatha. “It’s going to be hot down there. I’m going to study this guidebook and try to figure out where they might be. I think Joyce would want a beach, but there are so many—Casa Blanca beach, La Fontanilla beach, El Faro beach—oh, here’s something. Nagueles beach. It says here it’s situated on the Golden Mile of Marbella. There’s the Hotel Puente Romano and the Hotel Marbella Club. Sounds just like the sort of places Joyce would like unless Mabel has persuaded her to hide in a pension in the backstreets.”
“I’m worrying about this,” said Patrick. “Surely Mabel won’t just go where Joyce wants her to go.”
“Maybe she has to. Maybe Joyce is threatening to go to the