The Deadly Dance - M. C. Beaton [39]
It would be better fun than looking for this cat. Agatha had two cats. Emma was beginning to hate cats.
She turned into the street where Biggies’s owner lived. Emma peered over the hedge into the garden. Biggies was sunning himself on the lawn. She thought quickly. She knew the owner, a widow, Mrs. Porteous, would be out at work.
Emma opened the garden gate and pounced on the sleeping cat. She thrust it into the cat carrier she was carrying with her. She decided to take Biggies home with her. He could be considered missing for another day and that would give her time to go to the fete. It was amazing how many cat owners didn’t just wait for their precious animals to reappear.
She put the carrier with the now angry cat in the back of her car, which she had parked a few streets away. Then she wondered uneasily if Mrs. Porteous knew her cat had returned and had left it out in the garden while she went to work. Emma flipped open her address book and found the work number and dialled.
“This is Emma Comfrey,” she said. “Just to let you know we’re still looking.”
“Oh, bless you,” said Mrs. Porteous. Her voice became quavery. “I worry the whole time about him. I fear he might be dead.”
“There, there,” said Emma. “Em working all day long looking for him.”
Bill Wong had nothing to tell them that they didn’t know already. But they were able to tell him about Joyce Peterson’s violent partner.
“She didn’t tell us she was living with anyone,” said Bill. “We had a devil of a job tracing her. How did you catch up with her?” “Someone told us.”
“I wonder who that someone was. Anyway, you say this Mark is violent. What gave you that idea?”
“She had an enormous bruise on her cheek. She said she had walked into an open cupboard door, which is a battered woman’s variation on the theme of41 fell downstairs’.”
“We’d better check him out. Got a second name for him?”
“No, just Mark. He might have killed Harrison Peterson in a jealous rage.”
“I hope not,” said Bill.
“Why?”
“Because that would mean that we would still be left with the shooting at the Laggat-Browns. This Mark would have ho reason to want to kill the daughter. It’s one of those cases that’s going to drag on and on. I haven’t had time to do anything in the garden, and despite last night’s rain, it’s as dry as a bone. Do you think there’s something in this global warming business?”
Said Charles, “It was evidently as hot as hell in medieval times. Give it another hundred or so years and we’ll have another mini ice age.”
“What now?” asked Charles after they had said goodbye to Bill.
“Paris, I suppose. While you’re playing lord of the manor at your fete, I’ll take a day off and run up to London and take Roy out.”
“Shouldn’t you be doing some work?”
“I’ve got staff. Why keep a kennelful of dogs and bark myself?”
Emma’s face lit up when Agatha said she was going up to London to see Roy on the following day.
“Such a dear boy,” she said, and added coyly, “Give him my love.”
“Will do.”
With Agatha out of the road, thought Emma, she could deliver the pesky cat to its grateful owner and have the whole day free.
SEVEN
WHAT had happened to London? Agatha wondered, and not for the first time. Had the streets always been so dirty? Perhaps if she were living in London again, she would not notice.
She took Roy to the Caviar Restaurant in Piccadilly. Agatha did not like caviar and thought it a waste of money, but she was anxious not to lose Roy’s friendship and knew that the very prices on the menu would delight him.
Roy listened carefully while she told him that Peterson had been murdered.
“There’s been nothing in the papers,” said Roy. He was wearing a very conventional business suit, shirt and tie.
“Probably the police are keeping it quiet. Honestly, I’ve been going over