The Deadly Dance - M. C. Beaton [5]
“Very well,” said Emma calmly, tucking the notebook into her capacious handbag. “Thank you for the coffee.”
And that’ll be the last I’ll hear from her, thought Agatha.
Emma Comfrey checked the address in the notebook. She went into a pet shop nearby and bought a cat carrier and asked for a receipt. Mrs. Evans lived on a housing estate on the outskirts of Mircester. Emma tucked herself into her small Ford Escort and drove out to the housing estate. She noticed that Mrs. Evans lived in a row of houses whose back gardens bordered farmland. The farmers had been getting the harvest in and Emma knew that meant lots of field mice for a cat to chase.
She parked the car and made her way to a path that led to the fields. She walked into the first field, her sensible shoes treading through the stubble. The day was warm and pleasant, with little feathery wisps of cloud on a pale blue sky. Emma studied the field and then looked back to where the Evanses’ back garden was located. There were a bordering of gorse bushes and tall grass at the edge of the field. She made her way there and suddenly sat down on the ground, feeling rather shaky. She could not believe now that she’d had the temerity to ask for the job, and felt sure there was no hope of finding the cat.
Emma had been married in her early twenties to a barrister,Joseph Comfrey. He had a good income, but barely three weeks after the honeymoon, he said that it was bad for Emma to sit around the house and she should get work. Emma, an only child, had been bullied by her parents, and so she had meekly taken the Civil Service exams and settled into boring secretarial work for the Ministry of Defence. Joseph was mean. Although he spent quite a lot on himself—the latest Jaguar, shirts from Jermyn Street and suits from Savile Row—he took control of Emma’s wages and only gave her a small allowance. When she retired, he grumbled day in and day out about the paucity of her pension. Two years ago he had died of a heart attack, leaving Emma a very wealthy woman. She did not have any children; Joseph did not approve of children. At first she had spent long days and nights alone in their large villa in Barnes. The habits of strict economy forced on her by her husband were hard to break. She could still hear his nagging, hectoring voice haunting the rooms.
At last she found courage to sell the house. She packed up her husband’s clothes and gave them to charity. She presented his law books to an aspiring barrister and bought the cottage in Lilac Lane next to Agatha’s. Although the women in the village were friendly, she became interested in the stories she heard about her next-door neighbour and then she saw Agatha’s advertisement for a secretary. Time was lying heavy on her hands. It took a great deal of courage to walk into Agatha’s office and ask for the job. Had Agatha been less pugnacious, the normally timid Emma might have apologized her way out of any chance of securing the post, but Agatha’s manner brought forcibly to Emma’s mind her bullying husband and various nasty people she had worked with over the years and that had given her courage.
Emma sighed. Her little moment of glory was over. The wretched cat could be anywhere: picked up as a stray, flattened by a truck. Emma had been brought up as a Methodist, but gradually she had ceased to attend the services. She still believed vaguely that there must be a power for good in the universe. She sat for a long time, hugging her bony knees and watching cloud shadows chase each other across the golden stubble. She suddenly felt at peace, as if the past and its miseries and the future and its uncertainties had all been wiped from her mind. At last she rose and stretched. Time to go through the motions of looking for the cat.
Just as she was turning away, a shaft of sunlight struck down on the tall grass and gorse bushes and she caught a glimpse of something. She parted the grass and peered down. A black-and-white cat was lying fast asleep.
Emma went