“So this is where the murder was committed…” Agatha Raisin leaned against a wooden gate, craning her neck to peer into the meadow beyond. The shallow, grassy slope glistened with moisture, the morning sun having banished the overnight frost, leaving only furtive patches of white cowering in the sparse shade of leafless trees and the more substantial shadows lurking behind stone walls.
“It was around here that William Harrison’s slashed hat and bloodstained scarf were found.” Sir Charles Fraith stood behind her, leaning against his Range Rover, the large car dominating the roadside turn-off leading to the gate.
Agatha gave up straining to see into the meadow, instead stepping towards a stone stile set in the perimeter wall that gave access to a public footpath. She put one foot on the stile, then changed her mind. The four-inch heels on her mauve suede shoes were not designed for climbing over walls, even this low, waist-high boundary. Slipping off the shoes, she handed them to Charles.
“Here,” she said. “Look after these. I want to take a look at the crime scene.”
When she pushed herself up onto the stile step, she felt the unmistakable pop of a seam stitch at the back of her skirt. She sighed. The skirt had been a little tight when she first eased herself into it earlier that morning but it was the perfect purple to complement her new shoes. Surely it should have slackened off with wearing, not shrunk even tighter? She hitched it up, easing the strain but raising the hemline well above her knees. There was a murmur of approval from behind her. She turned and glowered at Charles.
“Well,” he said, shrugging and smiling, “you’ve always had great legs.”
“You’d best not try lines like that on any of your new employees, Charles,” she warned him with a wag of her finger. “You’ll be accused of using inappropriate language and sexism, and likely be sued for compensation for the distress you’ve caused.”
“You needn’t worry about that,” Charles said, smiling. “I’ve brought in the very best people at the vineyard, in the winery and in the ice-cream business for that matter. I’m not going to risk losing any of them now that we’re up and running. You can count on that, Aggie.”
She gave him a cool look out of the corner of her eye. He’d used that name again. It was fine when they had been together, when they had been lovers, but once his dalliances with younger women had put an end to that, the pet name, “Aggie,” had become an irritant. She had warned him countless times not to call her that, but old habits, especially in a man like Charles, who had never grown accustomed to letting anyone tell him what to do, died hard. In any case, she had a murder scene to scrutinise. She concentrated on traversing the stile without splitting any seams and took a couple of paces on the meadow’s wet grass, ignoring the moisture seeping into the soles of her tights.
To her right she could see the graveyard of St. James’ Church in Chipping Campden and the ornate church tower. In front of her, across the wide, grassy slope, lay fields and trees stretching off towards distant, hazy hills. The far edge of the meadow was marked by another stone wall and, dominating the wall, a curious, three-storey stone building with twin gables in its slate roof. Four pinnacles, like small minarets, rose from each corner of the building. Although poor imitations of their far more majestic counterparts proudly adorning the church tower, they still managed to lend the building an air of grandeur.
“What’s that house over there?” Agatha asked, pointing towards the building with one hand while using the other to shield her eyes from the low winter sun.
“That’s the East Banqueting House,” Charles replied. “Looks rather splendid in this light, doesn’t it?” He reached into the pocket of his heavy tweed shooting jacket, retrieving his phone to snap a picture of the scene. “It was once part of Campden House, although the old mansion was burned down in 1645.”
Agatha turned to face him. She had seen no sign of any police tape, nor notices warning the public to stay clear, nor anything at all to indicate that a murder investigation was underway. She frowned at Charles, then instantly imagined her eyebrows, normally high, graceful, well-manicured arches, stooping to meet low on her forehead like two kissing snakes. She felt a wrinkle puckering. That would never do. She released the snakes.
“When exactly did this murder take place?” she asked.
“Ah, yes,” Charles said, tucking his phone back into his pocket. “That’s the really interesting bit. William Harrison went missing on the sixteenth of August 1660.”
“The sixteenth of…?” Agatha stomped back to the stile as well as anyone could stomp in stockinged feet on soggy grass, mounting the stile with scant regard to the danger of a split seam. “You told me there was a mysterious murder to be solved here, not some ancient fairy tale from nearly four hundred years ago! You’ve hoodwinked me into coming along this afternoon!”
She snatched her shoes from him, managing to fix him with a look of simmering fury while still accepting his arm for balance as she crammed her damp feet back into her shoes.
“I promised you a proposition that would interest you, a murder case that would fascinate you, and Sunday lunch,” Charles said calmly, trying hard not to seem too amused by what he recognised as a relatively mild manifestation of the infamous Raisin temper. “We haven’t even scratched the surface yet.”
“Well, you can scratch it on the way to the restaurant,” Agatha said, yanking open the car’s passenger door. “Let’s go!”
“First, the murder,” Charles said, climbing into the driver’s seat and starting the engine. “William Harrison was a well-respected man in this area. He was steward of the estate that belonged to Lady Juliana Noel, whose father built Campden House. Lady Juliana no longer lived in the area, but she trusted Harrison, who had worked for the family since her father’s time, to run the estate. He set off to collect rents from Lady Juliana’s tenants one afternoon, telling his wife he would be home in time for supper, but he never returned. She sent their servant, John Perry, out to look for her husband, but Perry didn’t come back that night either.”
“Was he killed, too?” Agatha slipped her shoes off again, letting the car’s heater warm and dry her feet.
“No, he showed up the next morning when Harrison’s nineteen-year-old son, Edward, went out looking for his father.”
“Where was Harrison going?” Agatha asked, and Charles felt a flush of triumph. In that instant, with those two questions, he knew he’d piqued her interest and that now there would be no stopping her until she knew all the details.
“Actually, we’re heading in that direction now,” he explained. “Harrison aimed to collect rents from the villages of Charingworth and Paxford, and also call in at Ebrington on the way home. We’re booked for lunch at the Ebrington Arms.”
He pulled out onto the road, heading away from Chipping Campden.
“We’ll be there in no time,” he said. “It’s only a couple of miles, a little less the way the old man would have walked across the fields.”
“Old?” Agatha asked. “How old?”
“He was probably in his mid-sixties, but it was a journey he’d taken many times. He had worked for the Noel family pretty much all his life. He was also on the board of the local grammar school—a very methodical, particular and proud man by all accounts.”
“He’d also have been very old for the time, wouldn’t he? People didn’t live so long back then.”
“There’s certainly some truth in that,” Charles said, his head rocking from side to side as though weighing points for and against with his ears. “Infant mortality was dreadfully high but if you made it to adulthood and then into your twenties and were still reasonably healthy, you were clearly made of strong stuff. If you ate well and kept active, you could expect to live on into your seventies.”
“So what did actually happen to him?”
“Therein lies the mystery!” Charles slapped a hand on the steering wheel to emphasise his point. “John Perry’s account of how he went looking for his master didn’t make much sense, so the local magistrate had him locked up to make sure he didn’t disappear. Villagers were organised into search parties to try to find Harrison, but all they turned up was the hat and scarf.”
“I assume the magistrate would then have suspected foul play.”
“Quite right. John Perry was questioned again, and this time he pointed the finger at his brother, Richard, and their mother, accusing them of having bumped off old Harrison to rob him of the rents he had collected. He said they told him they were going to dump the body in a pond or a cesspit.”
“Yuck! Were the mother and brother still in the area?”
“Yes. They were arrested but denied everything. Look—we’re almost there.”
An attractive, modern-looking house faced with mellow Cotswold stone came into view on the left, and the ditches and hedgerows that had lined the road gave way to neatly trimmed grass verges. Charles followed the road round to the right where Ebrington’s older cottages crowded in on both sides before they came upon a short yet elegant terrace of houses with expertly thatched roofs. Agatha made a mental note to make enquiries with the owners should she ever need work done on the thatch of her own cottage in Carsely.
Turning right onto a road signposted for Paxford and Blockley, the Ebrington Arms appeared ahead of them, the sign above its quaint bay window announcing it as a LICENSED VICTUALLER AND RETAILER OF SPIRITUOUS LIQUORS. Agatha hoped they also served hearty meals as she hadn’t eaten a thing since the lasagne ready meal she had nuked in the microwave the evening before. Her quiet, relaxing Saturday night in had almost been ruined when she’d attempted to watch some mindless garbage on TV, but she had rescued herself from the professionally feigned exuberance of a game-show host and the ecstatic howling of his studio audience simply by pressing the “off” button on her remote. She had then curled up on her sofa with her two cats, a glass of wine, and a much-thumbed copy of Agatha Christie’s Problem at Pollensa Bay short-story collection.
Pollensa, on Mallorca, had a special relevance for her right now as the Spanish island was the next port of call for the Ocean Palace Splendour cruise liner. On board was John Glass, a former detective inspector with Mircester Police. The two had spent a great deal of time in each other’s company since they had danced together at the wedding of their mutual friends, police officers Alice and Bill Wong. John was an expert dancer and Agatha had allowed him to sweep her off her feet during a subsequent series of dance dates. Their romance blossomed, their mutual love of dancing whisking them forward from dance partners to lovers. On retiring from the police, John had accepted a job as a dance instructor on the cruise liner but Agatha had refused to travel with him. Instead, they had agreed to meet in all the most romantic places visited by the ship on its voyage around the world. Their next rendezvous was to be in Mallorca.
Charles pulled into the car park at the side of the pub and they walked into the traditional country inn, its low ceilings supported by ancient oak beams. The bar was of gleaming, polished wood, proudly displaying pump handles labelled with a variety of real ales and, behind, shelves groaning under the weight of an impressive array of spirits. At one end of the room, beneath a massive timber mantelpiece, a log fire blazed in an age-blackened stove. Although it was distinctly chilly outside, the Ebrington Arms offered a cosy welcome, a little too warm for Agatha near the stove, so she was glad when the waitress who greeted them showed them to a table that wasn’t too close to the fireplace.
“This looks like a lovely pub.” Agatha’s eyes roamed around the room, taking in her surroundings. “Would William Harrison have popped in here for an ale?”
“Probably not,” Charles guessed. “I doubt he was the type to frequent drinking establishments and, in any case, this building was probably still a farmhouse back in 1660. It’s someplace I don’t believe we’ve ever tried before. Someplace new for us, in keeping with the new proposal I want to discuss with you.”
“First things first,” Agatha said, removing her wool jacket to hang it over the back of her chair. The lilac silk top was warm enough for sitting at the table. “You haven’t finished your murder mystery story.”
“Ah, yes,” he said, clasping his hands together to help concentrate on gathering the threads of the tale. “Ponds and cesspits were drained and rivers dragged, but there was still no sign of a body. John Perry was questioned again and he further embellished his story. He now claimed that there had been a break-in at his master’s house a few months before. It was a Sunday and Perry had been at church with the Harrison family. Servants were expected to accompany their employers to Sunday worship. They returned home to find they had been robbed. Around £140 was missing, a substantial sum back then, equivalent to many thousands of pounds today.
“Although he had said nothing at the time, Perry now maintained that the burglar had been his brother, Richard, who had forced him to say where money was kept in the house and to point out the best way to break in. He also claimed that Richard and their mother, Joan, had demanded he keep them informed of Harrison’s movements, so they could plan an ambush in order to steal the rent money. He knew they were out to get Harrison that August evening and even caught them in the act. He said Harrison was laid out on the ground and Richard was on top of him, strangling him, while his mother counted the loot. He pleaded with them not to kill his master, but they told him to get lost.”
“It sounds to me like Perry was what we might call a vulnerable person,” Agatha said, sitting back in her chair, perusing the menu, yet still concentrating on what Charles had to tell her. “He was easily led and easily manipulated by his family. Sadly for him, he was still an accomplice.”
“That’s also how the judge at the September assizes in Gloucester saw it,” Charles confirmed. “He decided to try all three for the robbery at the house, but wouldn’t proceed with a murder trial at that time because no body had been found. I should think he was hoping either that Harrison would reappear, or his body would be discovered.
“Then, a strange thing happened. Even though they had always said that John Perry’s accusations were totally untrue, when they were tried for robbery, his mother and brother pleaded guilty.”
“Really?” Agatha’s eyebrows soared high enough to achieve a personal best. “Why would they do that?”
“It’s thought they were poorly advised that their quickest route to freedom would be to plead guilty and then be acquitted under the 1660 Indemnity and Oblivion Act.”
“The what? Never heard of it.”
“I’m not surprised. It’s not something that crops up much in conversation, or even in court, nowadays. The law was repealed years ago.” Charles smiled, then saw a fleeting look cross Agatha’s face and immediately knew she was wondering whether he was pulling her leg. “It was a law enacted by Parliament under Charles II as a general pardon for crimes committed during the English Civil War and its aftermath. The aim was to stop acts of vengeance turning into vendettas that could relight old fires and start another war.”
The waitress appeared and they ordered a bottle of primitivo. When it duly arrived, Charles insisted that Agatha taste the wine. She declared it delicious, and the waitress poured a glass for each of them and took their food order. Agatha went for the breaded whitebait as a starter followed by roast beef, traditional vegetables and Yorkshire pudding. She had been enviously eyeing other diners’ generously loaded Sunday roast platefuls ever since they had arrived, hoping all the while that no one else could hear her stomach rumbling the way that she could. Charles opted for leek-and-potato soup and the roast beef.
“You’ve clearly been putting your history degree to good use on the Harrison case,” Agatha said once the waitress had departed with their orders. “So were the Perrys pardoned?”
“Pardoned for the robbery, but not the murder. They were held in Gloucester Gaol until the next assizes in March 1661 when a different judge decided that, body or no body, all three of the Perrys should stand trial for murder.
“Then, partly because they had pleaded guilty to the robbery, the judge and jury found it difficult to accept their ‘not guilty’ murder pleas.”
“John Perry was found guilty, too?”
“Yes. His story kept changing. His account of what had happened on the night William Harrison disappeared never really added up. At one point, he even said he’d agreed with his mother and brother that they should rob the old man, but had then chickened out when it came to killing him. Then he tried to retract the accusations altogether, saying he’d gone temporarily insane. In the end, the only thing the jury believed was that the three of them had stolen William Harrison’s rent collections and done away with the old boy.”
“Were they then pardoned for the murder as well?”
“Unfortunately for them, the Indemnity and Oblivion rule didn’t apply to murder. All three were hanged on Broadway Hill, where the Broadway Tower now stands.”
“They were all hanged together?”
“The mother first,” Charles said, sampling his wine. “Some believed Joan Perry was a witch and that if she were hanged first, it might release her sons from whatever spell she had cast over them and they would then confess and reveal where old Harrison’s body was buried.”
“A witch?” Agatha shook her head in disbelief. “Ridiculous! Did her sons confess?”
“No.” Charles paused for a moment while Agatha received her fish and his soup was placed carefully on the table in front of him. “Richard went to his death protesting his innocence and John said nothing to support his brother.”
“They sound like a very strange family.”
“I’m sure they were. I’m also pretty sure their neighbours in the area wouldn’t have had much time for them. They may well have been regarded as a bad bunch, and the break-in at Harrison’s house could well have been their doing. It wasn’t uncommon for women held in low esteem to be accused of being witches. Joan may have been a petty criminal but she wasn’t a witch, and the Perrys were most certainly not murderers.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because a year or so later, in 1662, who should show up in Chipping Campden but William Harrison himself!”
“He wasn’t dead at all!”
“Far from it. He explained his disappearance with some cock-and-bull story about having been abducted, spirited away on a ship and sold into slavery in Turkey. He said he escaped when the bloke who bought him died and he then made his way back to England. Clearly, given that the supposed murder victim was still alive, the Perrys had been executed by mistake.”
“But that’s awful!” Agatha gazed out the window with a faraway look in her eyes, as if in an effort to see all the way to Broadway Hill. “The poor souls may not have been model citizens, but they didn’t deserve to die for a murder they didn’t commit. Why on earth did John Perry accuse his mother and brother of a crime that simply didn’t happen?”
“Nobody knows,” Charles said with a shrug. “The story became known as ‘The Campden Wonder’ and the whole thing remains a mystery to this day.”
“It’s certainly that … a real mystery … but it’s not why you brought me here, is it?” Agatha said, pushing the events of 1660 to the back of her mind in order to concentrate on the “proposition” that Charles had promised. “I’m afraid my professional services as an investigator don’t extend to solving four-hundred-year-old conundrums, so let’s drag ourselves forward into the twenty-first century, shall we?”
She took a sip of wine, the notion occurring to her that, following accepted convention, she should probably be drinking white wine with the whitebait, but primitivo was one of her favourites and this was a particularly fine bottle. In any case, she had roast beef on order, so to hell with convention. She tucked into her whitebait.
“Well, the truth is I need your help,” Charles said, sounding like he was laying his cards on the table, although Agatha knew he was bound to be holding something back. Charles wasn’t one ever to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. “Thankfully, I’m not in need of a private detective, but I do need a public relations expert.”
“I don’t do that anymore,” Agatha said bluntly.
“I realise that, of course,” Charles said, then paused, spooning soup into his mouth. “The trouble is, I’ve met lots of these PR people and they’ve all been.…”
“Bright, smiley and enthusiastic but ultimately full of crap,” Agatha cut in.
“Pretty much.” Charles nodded, laughing. “I need someone I can trust to handle a job that has to be done to a fairly tight deadline, and you were the best in the business when you ran your own agency in London.”
Agatha eyed Charles suspiciously while finishing off the last of her fish with the final smear of curried mayonnaise sauce.
“Not interested,” she said. “Raisin Investigations keeps me busy enough and I have plenty going on in my life without diving back into the PR world.”
“At least hear me out,” Charles said, confident that he had her attention at least until she had polished off her roast beef, which the waitress who cleared their plates promised would be with them shortly. “I want to stage the biggest event our area has seen in years. I want people to be talking about it far and wide. There is so much going on in the Cotswolds right now. Our farm produce is second to none whether it be meat and dairy or fruit and vegetables. Local barley is used to make award-winning Cotswold malt whisky, first-class gin is distilled using Cotswold wheat and a locally produced Cotswold sauvignon blanc took top honours against international competition. I want our wine, Château Barfield, to be up there with the best as well.”
“Surely you’re not actually producing wine already?” Agatha was surprised. “I wouldn’t have thought your vines were old enough.”
“You’re absolutely right,” Charles confirmed. “We won’t be producing wine from Barfield grapes for another three years, but the winery is in operation using local grapes from other growers in the vicinity. We’re ready to launch Château Barfield in April and I want to do it with a huge event at Barfield House.”
“April?” Agatha scoffed. “We’re already at the end of February. The kind of people you would want to attend the launch will have diaries booked out well beyond May.”
“I have a few names already on board. Benjy’s an old school chum and he’s pledged his support.” Charles gave the waitress a smile of approval as she delivered their main course.
“Benjy?” Agatha gave him a quizzical look, searching her memory for the Benjy she recalled meeting once with Charles. “You mean Lord Benjamin Darkworth, head of the Manor Hotels group?”
“Yes, that’s the chap,” Charles replied, sliding his knife through a beautifully tender slice of roast beef. “Dickie and Hog want to get involved as well, so does old Binkie and…”
Agatha munched on a roast potato, studying Charles’s face while he reeled off a list of aristocratic friends and acquaintances. His skin was smooth and almost wrinkle free, giving him the appearance of a man at least ten years younger. Or was he was so fired with enthusiasm for his new ventures that he had acquired a vibrant, youthful energy she hadn’t seen in him in years? Whatever it was, she couldn’t help feeling the new, supercharged Charles was markedly more attractive than the laidback Lothario she had once known.
“… and, naturally, I would expect you to charge a substantial fee,” Charles concluded. “Pulling this all together will take a huge effort and you must be suitably rewarded.”
Agatha dabbed gravy from her lower lip with her napkin, noticed a smear of lipstick on the white cloth but resisted the temptation to rush off and reapply.
“Who do you want at this shindig?”
“Local suppliers and customers,” Charles said coolly, trying hard to suppress the growing glow of triumph he felt at hearing her begin to ask questions, “but we need wine buyers, restaurateurs, hotel owners, pub chains, supermarket buyers—everyone who can help put Château Barfield on the map. We have a few potential partners already, but we need more and I want to impress them. I want an event that will have them associate Château Barfield with quality and feeling good. Say you’ll do it, Aggie. It will be so much fun working together. I want the whole thing to be fun, spectacular and enormously … glamorous.”
Agatha sampled some broccoli, eyeing Charles across the table. She could give him a fun day that people would remember and make it stunningly spectacular. As for glamorous—well, that was practically her middle name. He was sitting bolt upright, not quite on the edge of his seat but close enough for her to know that he was desperate for her answer.
“I’ll think about it,” was all she said.
“We don’t have much time, you know, Aggie, and…”
“I said,” Agatha stated bluntly, cutting him off as efficiently as she sliced into her roast beef, “I’ll think about it.”
By the time Charles delivered Agatha back to her cottage in Lilac Lane, it was already growing dark, although it was not yet six o’clock in the evening. He had resisted pressing her any further for an answer about the launch event for fear of her simply saying “no.” He could tell she was interested. He knew her well enough to be sure that he’d intrigued her with the prospect of staging a fantastically “glamorous” event. That was the word that had been the real bait, the word that had dangled a sparkle of temptation. Agatha could create an event dripping with glamour and would take great delight in doing so, but was she finding the thought of it as irresistible as he hoped? Only time would tell. He watched her hurrying up her garden path, waiting until she had unlocked her front door before he headed home to Barfield House. If he knew Agatha Raisin, and he prided himself on knowing her better than most, he’d have her answer before midday tomorrow.
Agatha stepped into her hallway and was immediately ambushed by her two cats, Boswell and Hodge, who wound themselves round her legs, purring as though they were powered by tiny cat engines. She promised to feed them, shooed them out from under her feet and made her way upstairs to her bedroom where she kicked off her shoes before easing herself out of the purple skirt. She was amazed that it had survived the mammoth Sunday lunch, given the way that stitch had popped on the stile, but she now needed something a good deal less constricting. Although she would never dream of wearing them outside her own four walls, she pulled on a baggy pair of sweatpants emblazoned with Mircester United Football Club’s crest. They had been acquired during a recent case and had gone on to become something of a guilty pleasure when she was lounging around at home.
Enjoying the freedom of loose-fitting polyester cotton, she skipped downstairs to the living room where she lit the log fire she had laid that morning. Her central heating was set to provide acceptable background heat but she loved the comforting warmth of the open fire. She then surrendered to the cats’ demands, feeding them in the kitchen before returning to the living-room fire with her phone in one hand and a gin and tonic in the other.
Roy Silver was lolling on the couch in his Kensington apartment watching TV when his phone rang. He let out a long sigh, considered ignoring it, but ultimately picked it up on the fourth ring.
“Roy, it’s me,” was all the voice said but, of course, he recognised her instantly.
“Agatha, sweetie! How lovely to hear from you!”
“I’ll get straight to the point, Roy—I need your help.”
“Ooooh…” Roy was suddenly all ears. “What is it, darling—another juicy murder case?”
“No, Roy, something far more glamorous,” Agatha said, deliberately using the word she knew Charles had used to try to snare her. “It’s the PR opportunity of a lifetime and I want to bring you in on it.”
“Oh…” Roy made no attempt to disguise the disappointment in his voice. “Well, the thing is, sweetie, I’m absolutely rushed off my feet right now, working all hours, and—”
“Roy, that’s rubbish and we both know it. You have a fantastic team working for you who do all the donkey work. My guess is that you left work early on Friday afternoon, drove up here to the Cotswolds and spent all day Saturday riding at Tamara Montgomery’s stables, then sped back down to London for some party or other in a swish nightclub. You got up late this morning, had lunch at the Devonshire Arms and you’re now lying on your sofa watching an old Doris Day movie on TV.”
Roy reached for his remote control, pausing Calamity Jane in order not to miss one of his favourite scenes—when the reluctant drag artist singing “Hive Full of Honey” in the Deadwood saloon had his wig whipped off by the trombone.
“Have I really become so dreadfully predictable?” he said, sounding wounded.
“Not predictable,” Agatha assured him, “but utterly reliable. That’s why I need you with me on this job.” She described how the launch of Château Barfield would be the biggest event in the Cotswolds for years and heard a whistle of approval from Roy when she rattled off the names of a few of Charles’s aristocratic chums.
“People will be talking about the Great Barfield Extravaganza until we’re both old and grey,” she said.
“Oh, come now,” Roy replied, laughing and running a hand through his hair. “You and I are both far too fabulous ever to grow old, darling, and as for grey … well, that’s simply never going to happen!”
“Exactly!” Agatha agreed. “So people will never stop talking about it!”
“I have to admit that working with you again is very tempting—the dynamic duo reunited. You were the best in the business. There was never a dull moment working with Agatha Raisin!”
“So you’ll do it?” Agatha knew she had won him over. “I’ll need you up here in Mircester tomorrow to get started. You can stay in my spare room and you can have a desk at my office in town. You should be able to keep tabs on your business in London while we pull the extravaganza together.”
“You’re on,” Roy confirmed. “You know, I think this is going to be rather fun.”
They said their goodbyes and Roy restarted the movie, turning up the volume in order to hear it as he headed for his bedroom. He had masses of packing to do, but nothing was going to stop him duetting with Doris on “Secret Love.”
Agatha pressed a speed-dial number on her phone and listened to the phone at the other end ring for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, someone picked up.
“Barfield House,” announced the unmistakable, fruity baritone of Gustav, Charles’s butler.
“Gustav, it’s me,” Agatha said. “Put me through to Charles, please.”
“I’m afraid I cannot announce anyone simply as ‘me,’ so whom may I say is calling?”
“You know perfectly well who I am, Gustav, just put me through!” Agatha drummed the fingernails of her free hand on the arm of her sofa. Gustav was more to Charles than just a butler. He had worked for the Fraith family for as long as Charles could remember, and during the lean years when Charles had struggled to keep the estate going, Gustav had acted as servant, cook, housekeeper, driver, gardener, handyman and whatever else was required. His exact age and ancestry were something of a mystery, although Agatha had heard he was part Hungarian. The one thing that no one could dispute about him was his absolute loyalty to Charles. That had led Gustav and Agatha to become allies in the past, when Charles most needed their help, yet the butler’s innate snobbery had always compelled him to look down on her. He had disapproved of her relationship with his master, mainly because he did not regard her as the right sort of woman to take on the role of consort to the lord of the manor. He did not believe she had the requisite breeding. She did not have the correct family background. In short, Gustav did not consider Agatha to be a lady. When she called Barfield House, therefore, he put her through the same rigmarole each time.
“By the coarseness of your tone I surmise that I have Mrs. Raisin on the line,” Gustav conceded. “I shall enquire if Sir Charles is taking calls this…”
“Gustav!” Agatha heard Charles yelling from his desk in the library to where Gustav stood at the telephone table in the reception hall. “If that’s Agatha, for goodness’ sake put her through!”
“As you wish…” There was a click and Agatha knew she had been transferred to the phone on Charles’s desk.
“You know, Charles, you really should try using your mobile phone or at least install a direct line,” she chided. “Gustav gets worse as time goes by.”
“I know,” Charles said, chuckling, “but he’s very useful for screening calls. Now, do you have some good news for me?”
“That depends on a number of things. I want to bring in Roy Silver to work with me—you know Roy—and our fees will be expensive. In fact, in order to create an event on the scale you appear to want in the limited time available, the whole thing is going to cost a fortune.”
“I expected it would,” Charles said. “I’m sure we can raise some of the cash from sponsors but I know we’ll still be taking a big hit. It will be worth it for the press and publicity. So—can I take it that you’ll do it?”
“You can. Once Roy and I have made some plans, I’ll get a contract to you.”
“Excellent!” Charles made no attempt to disguise the delight in his voice. “That’s the best news I’ve had all week!”
“One more thing,” Agatha added, almost as an afterthought. “What happened after the Perrys were hanged? I mean, what happened to William Harrison?”
“Ah, ‘The Campden Wonder’…” Charles replied, hoping Agatha couldn’t sense the self-satisfied smile now spreading across his face. “Harrison carried on as before. There are even documents from the grammar school bearing his signature, so we know that his standing within the local community was unaffected. He went back to his normal, respectable life.”
Charles’s aged aunt, Mrs. Tassy, turned her head towards him as soon as the call ended. Tall and unbowed by her years, she moved towards a wing-backed leather armchair, having selected a book from the shelves that lined one wall of the room. As always, she was wearing a long, dark dress with a string of pearls at her neck almost as pale as her ghostly features.
“Why on earth are you bothering that Raisin woman with the old Chipping Campden story?” she warbled, her voice wavering but her diction precise.
“Because Agatha Raisin works best under pressure,” Charles said, closing the folder on his desk, “and I now need her best work. Keeping her fully occupied will also make her happy and she’ll be devoting a lot more time to me and Barfield. Hopefully, she’ll come to associate being happy with being around me. In any case, we’re going to be seeing a lot more of Aggie here at the house in the near future and that’s just the way I want it. In fact, it makes me feel like celebrating—Gustav!”
The butler duly appeared, having paused outside the room long enough to allay any suspicion that he might have been listening at the open door, which, of course, he had been.
“Bring me some cognac, Gustav,” Charles demanded. “I’m now in a rather good mood this evening.”
“And a little more for me, I think,” Mrs. Tassy said, tapping a bony finger on the empty brandy balloon on her side table. “It means I sleep well.”
“You keep knocking it back the way you’ve been doing and it might mean you don’t wake up,” Gustav responded, collecting her glass.
“You know, Gustav,” the old lady said slowly, treating him to a cold stare and a mirthless smile, “at one time in this house, impudence such as yours would have been rewarded with a sound thrashing. Fortunately, the Fraith family has always found your attitude endearingly amusing. Now run along and fetch the cognac, there’s a good chap.”
Charles crossed the room and settled himself on a sofa adjacent to his aunt’s chair, stretching his legs out towards the log fire burning in the ornate marble fireplace.
“You need to be careful with Mrs. Raisin, Charles,” the old lady advised. “She’s not a woman to be trifled with.”
“I’m not trifling with her,” Charles said. “I’m giving her what she most needs. She’s spent far too much time lately jetting off all over the world to meet up with that dancing ex-policeman of hers.”
“I detect a note of jealousy,” said Mrs. Tassy, staring at Charles over her reading glasses.
“Jealous? Me? Jealous of him?” Charles scoffed, then his features softened slightly. “Well, maybe I am a bit. I’m only human, after all. But now I can set her straight again. The old Aggie was never happier than when she had a mountain of work to get through and a horribly complicated crime to solve, and I’ve just given her both!”