The Deadly Dance - M. C. Beaton [23]
“I thought they might be able to tell us more about the Laggat-Browns than the Laggat-Browns have been telling me. Do you know where they live?”
“Let me think. I know. Ancombe. They’ll be in the phone book. By the way, I took your assistant, Emma, out for lunch yesterday.”
“Did you? That’s nice. Should we go and visit the Felliets?”
“All right. Like old times. What about the detective agency?”
“They don’t need me at the moment. Runs itself. Emma and a retired detective I’ve hired can deal with everything.”
The Felliets turned out to live in a small cottage on the outskirts of Ancombe. Even small cottages in the Cotswolds now cost quite a lot of money, but as Charles held open the garden gate for her, Agatha reflected that it must have been a sore climb-down for the Felliets to have to give up their manor-house for this.
A small rotund man in his mid-forties wearing stone-washed jeans and an open-necked striped shirt answered the door. “Why, Charles,” he exclaimed, “what brings you here? Haven’t seen you in yonks. Come in.”
They followed him into a little living-room. Agatha glanced around. It was as if a country-house drawing-room had been scaled right down. There were pretty pieces of antique furniture, and family portraits crowded the walls.
“My wife’s out,” said George Felliet, “but I’ve got a pot of coffee in the kitchen. That do?”
“Fine,” said Charles. “Agatha, George. George, Agatha.”
“We don’t have a sit-in kitchen,” said George. “Wait there and I’ll fetch the coffee.”
“His old man was a bit of a gambler,” said Charles while they waited. “Then the death duties took a lot of what they had.”
“Is he a baronet like you?”
“Yes, very old family. The manor-house had been in the family for centuries.” “Pity.”
George came in bearing a tray. “Here we go. Milk, Agatha?” “Black will do.”
“Charles, help yourself. Now, what brings you?”
“Agatha is a detective,” said Charles, “and she’s investigating that shooting at the manor. Have you any idea why someone would want to shoot their daughter?”
“No. Had it been the Laggat-Brown woman, I could have understood it. Did you see what she did to the manor? No soul. The name isn’t really Laggat-Brown.”
“Oh, what is it?”
“Ryan. For some reason Jeremy Ryan decided that Laggat-Brown sounded better and changed it by deed poll.”
“You’d think he’d have chosen something grander,” said Charles.
“I tell you, that lot have only a veneer of sophistication. Underneath, they’re as common as muck. She made her money out of Daddy’s business. And do you know what that was?”
“No.”
“Dog biscuits.”
“You’re being snobbish, George. Nothing up with dog biscuits.”
George sighed. His rubicund face and small mouth gave him the look of a hurt baby.
“I am, I know. It was just the way she went on. Rubbing salt in the wound. Kept saying things like, ‘If you can’t afford to keep up a place like this, it’s much more sensible to sell it to someone like me who can.’ Dealt with us with a mixture of pity and contempt. I really hate that woman. And if I really hate that woman, then, believe me, she’s rubbed someone else up the wrong way.”
“Where’s the wife?” asked Charles.
“Down in the village, shopping.”
“And Felicity?”
“She’s abroad. Travels a lot.”
“What does she do at the moment?”
“Assistant in some dress shop.”
“Which dress shop?”
“Charles, I’m getting angry about all these questions. One would think you suspected the Felliet family of having tried to kill that lumpy daughter of hers.”
“I’m sorry, George,” said Charles. “I’m so used to going around with Agatha trying to find out who murdered whom that I get a bit carried away. Let’s talk about other things.”
Agatha drank her coffee and listened to their reminiscences and longed for a cigarette, but could see no sign of an ashtray anywhere.
At last Charles decided to leave. As they drove off, he said, “Poor old George. I really did rile him up with all those questions. It can’t be anything to do with them. I wish we had the powers of the police. Maybe it would be easier for us to find Peterson then. You