The Deadly Dance - M. C. Beaton [28]
Patrick stopped in a lay-by with a phone-box. “Ed better give the police an anonymous call and then get the hell back on the road because they can trace calls immediately they’re made these days.”
Agatha waited while Patrick went into the phone-box. He spoke briefly and then jumped back in the car. “Off we go,” he said, “and as fast as possible. Now when we get to the office, we tell a white lie and say he’s dead and the police got there before us, so we turned about.”
“They’re all very loyal. We could swear them to secrecy.” “I don’t trust anybody.”
“Okay, we’ll do it your way. Means the end of working for Mrs. Laggat-Brown.”
He shrugged. “Who needs her anyway? Cases are coming in by the day.”
Agatha suddenly missed Charles. She felt uneasy aboutHarrison’s death. She felt she could think more clearly if she discussed it with Charles. Still, Roy was coming and he was always a good listener.
Mrs. Laggat-Brown phoned later that day to tell Agatha that Harrison had been found and that it was all such a relief. She ended by saying, “I should have followed Jeremy’s advice and left the whole thing to the police and saved myself a lot of money.”
Agatha longed to say that if it hadn’t been for her agency’s investigation, the case might never have been solved.
She phoned Charles, but his aunt said he had gone abroad.
Agatha sat and drummed her fingers on the desk. Then her eyes lit up. If by any chance it should turn out that there weren’t any fingerprints on the vodka bottle or on the glass, then that would mean someone had faked the suicide.
She phoned Patrick on his mobile. “I’ll check it out, Agatha,” he said. “But I’m afraid you’re going to have to get back to dogs, cats, divorces and missing teenagers.”
Miss Simms entered, flushed with success, having not only found the missing teenager she had been looking for but having delivered the girl back to her parents.
“Oh, well done,” said Agatha. “Let me build up a little more profit and I’ll get another girl to do the secretarial work and put you on the road.”
“You look lovely, Emma,” said Miss Simms brightly. “What have you been doing to yourself? Got yourself a fella?”
Emma blushed. “Just felt like smartening up,” she mumbled.
On Friday evening, Agatha picked up Roy from the station at Moreton-in-Marsh.
The young man was all in white—white raw-silk suit, white panama hat and white high-heeled boots.
“Now what are you supposed to be?” asked Agatha. “You look like the man from Del Monte.”
“It’s the cool look, sweetie,” said Roy. “It’s the ice cream look. This weather’s been so hot. I assure you, I’m the new black.”
“Do you want to eat out or in?”
“Out,” said Roy, who had sampled Agatha’s microwave cooking several times.
“What do you feel like eating?” “Chinese.”
“There a great one in Evesham. That’s if you don’t mind driving. I’m tired. It’s been a gruelling week.”
Between mouthfuls, as they picked their way with chopsticks through a large Chinese meal, Agatha told him all about the Laggat-Brown case and the suicide of Harrison Peterson.
Her story took her right through the meal until the pot of green tea was being served.
“Well,” said Roy, leaning back and patting fussily at his mouth with his napkin, “it all seems odd. I mean, he makes an appointment with this detective of yours and then kills himself.”
“That’s what I thought. But Patrick has contacts in the police and if there had been anything fishy, he’d let me know. I mean, Peterson typed the suicide note on his computer and printed it off. If anyone else had typed it for him, they’d have wiped the keys clean.”
“I watch all these forensic detectives stories on television,” said Roy. “The things they can find out.”
“I don’t think it actually works like that here,” said Agatha.
“I mean, the labs are backed up with cases. They aren’t going to look too hard when they’ve got a suicide note, an empty vodka bottle and an empty bottle of sleeping pills.”
“Who supplied the sleeping pills? The doctor’s name would be on the bottle.”
“Why should I bother?”
“It would