“Are they having an affair? What sort of things does he think they’re saying?”
“He denies any affair. She comes from Geneva, and graffiti in the ladies’ loo calls her his ‘Swiss roll.’”
“I don’t want to get involved in that,” said Agatha, shaking her head. “I don’t mind us sweeping a place to remove bugs, but I won’t plant them in order to eavesdrop on ordinary people simply to deal with office gossip. Anything else?”
“We have a Mrs. Jessop, who believes that a poltergeist is rearranging her kitchen cupboards and digging up her garden.”
“A poltergeist?” said Agatha. “A ghost? Creepy, but interesting.”
“And,” said Toni, “Mrs. Fletcher, who lives just outside Carsely, wants us to investigate someone dumping at the bottom of her garden.”
“Dumping?” said Patrick. “You mean fly-tipping? Leaving piles of rubbish? That’s a matter for the local council, isn’t it?”
“No, not fly-tipping,” said Toni. “Someone has been having a dump. Leaving piles of excrement. Quite a lot of it, she says.”
“That’s disgusting,” said Agatha, wrinkling her nose. “Who would do a thing like that?”
“She has no idea,” Toni explained, “but the piles are being added to on a regular basis in the middle of the night.”
“Right,” said Agatha, drawing the meeting to a close. “Let’s keep everything moving forward. Patrick, can you use your contacts to try to trace the car that dropped off Mrs. Chadwick’s visitor? Toni and I will take over the Chadwick case to see if we can make some progress there. We will also find out if Mrs. Jessop’s poltergeist is worth investigating. Simon, you can take on the case of the phantom pooper.”
“But that’s…” Simon’s objection wilted under the weight of Agatha’s withering stare.
“Yes, I know—it’s a shit job,” she said, “but somebody has to do it, and the quicker you clear it up, the sooner you can move on to something else.”
Simon and Patrick dragged their chairs away, heading for the door, but Agatha motioned Toni to stay.
“I need you to get up to speed on the Chadwick case,” she said. “Give me a call later and we can meet up to stake out that house tonight. I will be out of the office this afternoon.”
“Are you going to see Charles?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“You really have to try to talk to him…”
“I don’t have to do anything of the sort!” Agatha scowled, a note of anger in her voice.
“You need to do something,” said Toni. “This has been plaguing you for months. You had a thoroughly miserable Christmas and you’ve been on edge ever since. You need to come to terms with what’s happening.”
“I am perfectly capable of deciding what I will or will not do, and I certainly do not need personal advice from someone as young as you—someone who was still in nappies when I was being wined and dined by some of London’s most eligible bachelors!”
“And how did that work out?” said Toni, struggling to subdue her own rising temper. “You ended up abandoning London to live in the Cotswolds. Look, we’ve been through a lot together and I care about—”
“I don’t need you to care about anything except your work!” barked Agatha. “I shouldn’t have to explain—”
“Well I’m so sorry!” Toni snapped. “It must be very difficult explaining anything to someone as young as me!”
“Not at all,” said Agatha, “but I left the crayons and colouring books at home today.”
Toni stormed out and Agatha snatched the newspaper from the desk, hurling it into the waste-paper basket. She knew that Toni was trying to help, motivated by the best of intentions, but the situation with Charles had been festering for so long that the slightest mention of it plunged her into a cauldron of fury. With a sigh, she reluctantly admitted to herself that Toni was right. She needed to clear the air with Charles, for her own peace of mind. Still, that would have to wait. She reached for the blue plastic folder.
* * *
That afternoon Agatha drove out of Mircester along the road toward Carsely. The sun shone bright and clear in the pale-blue spring sky and newborn lambs tussled shakily with each other in the fields. The hedgerows were sprouting green, and here and there wild flowers decorated the roadside—a blush of red clover, dainty white primroses and glimpses beyond the hedges of bluebells beginning to carpet the woodland. She turned down a narrow, winding side road that led to the gates of Barfield House. The ornamental wrought-iron gates stood open, as ever, leaning drunkenly away from their hinges on the tall stone gateposts, the bottom edges buried in tall grass.
The trees that lined the long driveway eventually opened onto the landscaped lawns surrounding the house, allowing the building space to breathe. On the manicured grass stood the biggest marquee that Agatha had ever seen. Tented pavilions of various shapes and sizes were not a rare sight on Barfield’s grounds. The house hosted local fairs, agricultural shows and a plethora of community events. Charles had always said that while he owned the house and the estate, they really belonged to the local people. He regarded himself as something of a caretaker—an enormously privileged caretaker, Agatha mused, but a caretaker nonetheless. Marquees, therefore, regularly graced Barfield’s lawns.
There was, however, a distinct lack of grace about the monstrosity that now stood there. A team of workmen hauled on ropes and hammered at wooden stakes to secure the acres of canvas. Flags, pennants and bunting fluttered from every upright, and the great round roof was a hideous segmented pink-and-white candy-striped eyesore. It looks, Agatha thought, bringing her car to a halt in order to gawp at the thing, just like a … It is! It’s a circus tent! They’re holding the wedding in a big top! How appropriate—Mary has opted to turn her charade of a wedding into a circus! Send in the clowns!
Agatha rolled the car onwards. Even Barfield House, the huge Victorian edifice built in what the architect must have imagined to be a romanticised representation of a grand medieval mansion, did not deserve to have the garish circus tent inflicted upon it. Charles had always agreed with her that the house was not particularly pleasing on the eye, despite its multitude of mullioned windows twinkling in the sunshine, but Agatha was aghast at the bizarre tent sprawling on the lawn below. It simply looks awful, she thought. It’s as though the old house has hitched up her lawn to flash her knickers. It’s … vulgar.
She parked near the stone steps leading to the heavy black-studded oak door that was Barfield’s main entrance. Charles seldom used this door, and had shown Agatha many other ways into the house, but, having arrived unannounced and uninvited, she decided that this was her only option. Rather than risk her pristine nail polish with the large cast-iron knocker, she pressed the electric bell push set into the door frame. Almost immediately, she heard the familiar click of Gustav’s heels crossing the polished floor of the vast hall. A combination of butler, household manager and handyman, Gustav had served Charles’s father and had become almost part of the fabric of the building. Agatha knew that Charles saw him as indispensable, yet she and Gustav had always been, at best, sworn adversaries.