Dishing the Dirt

“It’s been kept very quiet,” said Agatha. She was heading for the door when she stopped still. What if Jenny had stolen something from Jill and it was still in her room?

She turned around. The nurse had left the reception desk and was hurrying into the back regions. Agatha ran lightly up the stairs and located Jenny’s room. When that nurse had gone back to get her wallet, she had gone to the desk. In the drawers of the desk were old photographs, scarves, and cheap jewellery. Grateful for all the programmes on antiques on television which showed where secret drawers were located in old desks, Agatha found one. Inside was a small black book. She snatched it up as she heard footsteps in the corridor outside. The footsteps went on past the door. Agatha ran down the stairs and out to her car and drove away as quickly as possible.

She stopped a little way from Sunnydale, parking in a space by a farm gate.

Agatha opened the book. Jill’s name was on the inside front page. It was a sort of small ledger with lists of payments. The entries ranged from twenty to five hundred pounds. Beside each sum of money was only one initial and the dates of the payments. Agatha sighed. If, by a very long shot, this book belonged to Jill and was evidence of blackmail, then it followed that she should turn it over to the police so that they could match it with any files they had taken from Jill’s office or with anything on her computer.

But she could imagine the questions. “You stole this book, Mrs. Raisin. Did you inform Sunnydale you had taken it without a patient’s knowledge?” And on and on it would go.

It must be Jill’s, surely. It had her name on it. The payments stopped one day before her murder.

Were these single initials from first or last names? The twenty-pound payment was marked with the initial V. Could that be Victoria Bannister?

Agatha thirsted for revenge on Victoria. She decided to go to Carsely and confront the woman. Then she would decide what to do about the book.

*

Victoria was weeding in her front garden when Agatha opened the gate.

“What do you want?” Victoria demanded harshly.

“I wondered why you were paying Jill Davent blackmail to the sum of twenty pounds a month,” said Agatha.

Victoria’s face turned a muddy colour. “Nonsense!”

Agatha shrugged and held up the little book. “Just thought I’d give you a chance to explain before I turn this record over to the police.”

Victoria slumped down onto the grass and buried her face in her hands.

“If you tell me and it’s nothing really awful, I won’t tell the police,” said Agatha.

Victoria slowly got to her feet. “Do you mean that?”

“Depends what you did.”

“Come inside. Someone might hear us.”

The kitchen into which Victoria led Agatha was surprisingly welcoming and cheerful to belong to such an acidulous woman. There was a handsome Welsh dresser with Crown Derby plates and geraniums in tubs at the open window.

They both sat down at an oak table. “It’s like this,” said Victoria. “Do you remember Mrs. Cooper’s dog?”

“The nasty little thing that yapped all the time?”

“She lives next door. I couldn’t bear the noise anymore. I crushed up a lot of my sleeping pills and put them in a bowl of chopped steak. When the beast fell unconscious, I put it in a sack and drowned it in the rain barrel. Then I buried it.”

“And how did Jill find out?”

“She seemed ever such a good listener, and no one ever listens to me. So I paid for a consultation. The death of that dog was on my conscience. So I told her. The next thing I know she was demanding regular payments for my silence. I had to pay up.”

“You’ve confirmed for me that this was Jill’s,” said Agatha. “I won’t tell the police. But why did Jill tell you about my background?”

“That was before I actually consulted her. We were having a drink and she told me.”

“So why spread it around?”

She hung her head. “I don’t know. I told the police about you threatening to kill her because I didn’t want them to start looking at me.”

“Just keep clear of me in the future,” said Agatha. “You are a sickening woman.”