Dishing the Dirt

*

They had just parked outside the allotments when another car drew in behind them and Toni and Simon got out.

“Charles really panicked,” said Bill. “Come on, you two. Let’s get it over with and we can all go home.”

They walked into the allotments, all shouting “Agatha!” at the tops of their voices.

A man emerged from a shed and shouted, “Wot you bleeding lot doing, stomping my prize marrows? I’ll ’ave the law on yer.”

“We’re looking for a friend,” said Bill.

“Ud that be old Mrs. Tweedy?”

Bill froze for a moment. “Where’s her allotment?”

“Up back. But you’re going to pay for that marrow wot you stood on.”

They hurried up, Bill and Alice shining their torches. They came across a deep hole in the ground. With a spasm of terror, Bill shone his torch into it and saw, under a pile of earth, a woman’s foot sticking out.

He shouted to Alice to phone headquarters and get help, and then he and Simon eased themselves down into the hole and frantically began to clear the earth away from the body underneath until Agatha was revealed, her face covered in blood.

He felt her neck. “There’s a pulse,” he said. “I daren’t move her. Toni, there’s some of that silver stuff we use for shocked people in the back of my car. Get it and we’ll wrap her up until the ambulance comes.”

A voice behind him made him jump. “Is she dead?” Charles stood there, his face white in the moonlight.

“No, but she’s in a bad way,” said Bill.

“Where’s the Tweedy woman—or man, if Agatha’s got it right?”

“We haven’t had time to look. But Alice has phoned headquarters. They’ll be a nationwide search for her.”

Villagers had got wind of a fuss up at the allotments. Alice got police tape out and cordoned off the area. The marrow man was driven outside, still grumbling about his prize vegetables.

To Bill’s immeasurable relief, an air ambulance helicopter soared round overhead and landed in the field opposite. Paramedics came rushing up with a stretcher.

Unconscious, Agatha was lifted up and taken to the helicopter. Charles was allowed to go with her, but Toni and Simon were told to wait behind until their statements were taken.

*

The surgeons estimated that Agatha’s thick hair had saved her skull. When she recovered consciousness, Agatha found Bill and Inspector Wilkes beside her bed.

She gave a feeble grin. “So I’m alive?”

“We would like to take a few notes,” said Wilkes. Then, as if it were being forced out of him, he said, “That was a good piece of detective work. Tell me how you figured it out.”

In a weak voice, Agatha told him about meeting Bob Dell and how his remark about not being alone and his subsequent murder had started her to think of Mrs.—or as they now suspected—Mr. Tweedy. But soon her eyes closed and she fell asleep.

The next day, she was stronger and able to give a full account. When she had finished, Mrs. Bloxby came in, her kind face creased with worry. “I should never have told you about those allotments,” she said.

“Just as well you did,” said Agatha. “Is there a police guard on my room?”

“Of course. They haven’t caught Tweedy yet.”

“I bet they’ve been too slow to freeze the bank accounts. He could be anywhere.”

“Why did we never think Mrs. Tweedy might be a man?” asked the vicar’s wife.

Agatha sighed. “She appeared old and rude. Some old people lose sexuality or femininity, or whatever and people never really look at them properly. I wish they would catch her. And how did a woman who’d never had a job know how to bug my cottage? Oh, I suppose it was easy with all those little gadgets you can buy. Once she’d got in, all she had to do was spread them around. I keep saying ‘she.’”