Agatha Raisin and the Witch of Wyckhadden

Agatha put on her coat and then opened her door and looked cautiously up and down the corridor. There must surely be a fire-escape somewhere.

She walked along silently round the corner, quickly past Daisy's room, past other rooms to the end. There it was, clearly marked. FIRE-ESCAPE. She pushed down the bar and opened the door. An iron fire-escape led down to the hotel gardens at the side. She could not shut the door from the outside. She would just need to leave it, closed as much as possible, but not locked, until she returned.

It was even colder than the day before and a chill wind whipped at the skirts of her coat as she made her way down. She scuttled around the side of the hotel and into her car and drove off without looking up at the hotel windows, frightened that she would see Daisy glaring out at her.

Jimmy's tall figure could be seen waiting outside the cinema. He got in the car. "This is a very small car," said Agatha apologetically. "You'd better push that seat back a bit. Now, where do you want to go?"

"If you drive straight ahead, we can go along the coast a bit. I'd like to talk. What have you been up to?"

"Not behaving very well. No, I've been behaving all right, I think. No, I haven't."

"Out with it, Agatha."

"It's like this. If it weren't for you, Jimmy, I would sign off at the police station and go home."

"What! You! The great amateur detective of the Cotswolds."

"I'm not the great amateur detective of anywhere. Inspector Wilkes, you know the one at Mircester, he was right when he said I didn't solve crimes, I just blundered about in people's lives until something happened." She told him about Daisy and the colonel. She ended by saying, "So you see, I was disloyal to Daisy. The colonel's not the slightest bit interested in her, but she doesn't know that. First I shatter Mary's dream and now I'm well on the way to shattering Daisy's. It was selfish of me. I was restless and bored and the colonel is good company."

"Better than me?"

"No, nothing like that, Jimmy. He's a polite, elderly gentleman, that's all."

There was a little silence and then Jimmy said, "You are a very attractive woman, Agatha. You should be very careful. Don't let Colonel Lyche fall in love with you."

"I think that's highly unlikely, but it's nice of you to say I'm attractive, Jimmy." Agatha privately did not think she was attractive at all. Attractive women were the anorexic ones you saw in the magazines with the glossy pouting lips. They were not stocky middle-aged women with small eyes.

"Now how do I make my peace with Daisy?" she asked.

"You could say you wanted to get the colonel alone to find out what he really thought of Daisy?"

"That might be raising false hopes. He actually doesn't rate Daisy very highly. I would need to lie."

"Why don't you move out of that hotel and move in with me?"

Here was an opportunity to find out what life would be like with Jimmy. But she thought of that bright sterile bungalow up at the back of the town and repressed a shudder.

"Not yet, Jimmy. I'll stick it out a little bit longer. How's the case going?"

"It's going nowhere. The super doesn't agree with me. I think it's the work of a lucky amateur. I think in each murder, he or she saw the opportunity and took it."

"But the murder of Francie was planned, surely. The money that was taken. I really don't think it can be any of them at the hotel, Jimmy. I mean, the idea that one of them could murder Francie and then calmly sit and play Scrabble is beyond belief. And wait a bit, wait a bit! You say she wasn't murdered in the middle of the night?"

"No. Early in the evening."

"So what was she doing in bed? She was murdered in bed?"

"Yes."

"So she could have been waiting for a lover!"

"Could be. We're still trying to find out if there was anyone she was playing around with over in Hadderton."

"Any sign of the murder weapon?"

"Not yet. But we're pretty sure now what was used."

"What?"

"Cliff told us the other day that Francie always had one of those marble rolling-pins in the kitchen and it's gone."

"Took his time about it."

"He was only making a suggestion. I mean, it's not something that Cliff, or probably even Janine, would notice was missing."

"What was he doing in the house?" asked Agatha. "I thought he didn't inherit anything."

"We took him back there and made him go through everything. It was my idea. I was sure it was in a way a murder committed out of fright and rage. The more I think about it, the more I am sure Francie had something on someone."

"Blackmail?"

"It's possible, and it's possible her daughter knew who she was blackmailing."

"That lot at the hotel all went to her, and Harry and Daisy knew her seances were a trick."

"But you forget, Agatha, quite a lot of people in Wyckhadden went to her as well, including people from Hadderton who preferred her skills to her daughter's."

Agatha sighed. "I suppose it will end up one of those unsolved mysteries."