Dishing the Dirt

And then Justin’s voice. “It’ll only take a moment.”


Charles wondered what to do. Agatha had seemed smitten by Justin, then suspicious of him. She might be furious to find him lurking around. He sat down at the top of the stairs and waited.

In the kitchen, Agatha went over to the coffee percolator and asked, “Coffee?”

“Not for me, thank you.”

“I’ll have one,” said Agatha. “I’m barely awake.” Her eyes fell on her open handbag, lying on the counter with the electric light gleaming on the edge of her tape recorder. She poured herself a cup of coffee, and, before turning around, switched on the tape recorder.

Justin was already sitting at the kitchen table. Agatha sat down opposite him.

“I had a call from the Broody female,” he said. “Broody by name, broody by nature. She was sobbing and gulping and saying she had betrayed me but if I would only see her again, she would swear blind she had told you nothing. Then an old school friend phoned my dad and said you’d been asking odd questions of what I was like at the time of the divorce. May I remind you, sweetie, that you are being paid to investigate my stepmother’s death?”

“I know that,” said Agatha. “Look, I’m tired. Can’t this wait until tomorrow?”

“No, it can’t wait. You want the truth? Well, listen to this. Ruby made my life hell and she drove my father into alcoholism. I’ve dreamt for years of a way to get rid of her and you gave me that way. All those murders. Who would suspect me if another one was committed? So I watched and waited outside her house for an opportunity. That night I followed her to Mircester. I saw her park her car in the middle of that storm. I guessed the CCTV cameras wouldn’t be able to pick up anything because of the power cut and there was another crack of thunder and I broke the glass of the back window of her car.”

That beautiful face seemed to Agatha the epitome of evil. She had been trying to give up smoking but now she grabbed her packet of cigarettes and lit one up.

He grinned. “Last cigarette before the execution?”

Then he dodged as Agatha seized a milk bottle off the table and threw it at him. From his pocket, he produced a length of wire with a piece of wood at the end. Agatha jumped to her feet and made for the garden door. He seized her and bore her down onto the floor.

“Help me!” screamed Agatha as the cruel wire went round her neck.

Then suddenly he went limp. Panting, Agatha rolled out from under him and struggled to her feet. Charles was standing there with a poker in his hand.

“Got anything to tie him up?” he asked. “I hope I haven’t killed him.”

With shaking hands, Agatha jerked open a kitchen drawer and pulled out a roll of garden twine.

“Phone the police,” ordered Charles. “I’ll tie him up after I find out if he’s still breathing.”

While Agatha phoned, he tied Justin’s hands and feet and then checked his pulse. “He’s alive. Hope I haven’t given the bastard brain damage or we won’t get a confession.”

“I got it on tape,” said Agatha. Her face was chalk white and her legs seemed to have turned to jelly.

Justin recovered consciousness. “You’ve got nothing,” he whispered. “I’ll deny the whole thing.”

Agatha fumbled in her handbag and took out the tape recorder. She ran the tape back and then pressed the button to play it. Appalled, Justin heard his voice coming over loud and clear.

*

Charles and Agatha were finally left alone, after a long night. Agatha wondered how Justin’s father would survive the news. It transpired he had been sacked from his job months before for drunkenness. Agatha had not been thanked for her detective work and Charles had been grilled about whether he thought he had used reasonable force.

“Aren’t you going to phone the press and tell them it was you who solved Ruby’s murder?” asked Charles.