Free Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage by MC Beaton Page B

never heard of them,’ said Sir Desmond evenly. ‘Now if you will forgive me . . .’
    He stood up and walked to the door and held it open. His wife looked surprised but did not say anything.
    He strode out angrily back into the gardens followed by Agatha and James and then turned to face them. ‘I’m tired of scum like you. You are not getting a penny.’
    He rushed off, cannoned off a pair of surprised visitors, and disappeared around a corner of the house.
    Agatha made to go after him but James held her back. ‘He must have been there with someone else, someone who wasn’t his wife. Leave it, Agatha. Someone was blackmailing him, probably
Jimmy. It’s time to tell Bill Wong what we know.’
    They left a message for Bill Wong when they returned home, but it was the following day before they saw him again.
    He arrived in the afternoon. When she opened the door, Agatha could see the dreadful Maddie sitting beside him in the car. Bill followed Agatha into the living-room. ‘Coffee?’ said
James.
    ‘No, thank you. I haven’t much time. What did you want to see me about?’
    They told him about their investigations, ending up with the visit to Sir Desmond Derrington.
    Bill Wong’s chubby face was severe. ‘I’ve been there all night,’ he said sternly. ‘Sir Desmond is dead. It appears to have been a shooting accident. His
shotgun went off when he was cleaning it. But he was cleaning it in the middle of the night, you see, and it now seems to me he thought you were taking over where Jimmy Raisin left off. We roused
the health farm at two in the morning. Sir Desmond stayed there at the same time as Jimmy Raisin with a woman who gave her name as Lady Derrington. The real Lady Derrington is the one with all the
money. Had she divorced Sir Desmond, he would have been virtually penniless. He had been paying out the sum of five hundred pounds a month for a year, probably the year Jimmy Raisin was sober, and
then the payments stopped. He was proud of his position in the community – local magistrate, all that sort of thing. Does it dawn on you interfering pair that you might have killed
him?’
    ‘Oh, no,’ said James, horrified. ‘Surely it was an accident?’
    ‘Why decide to clean a gun in the middle of the night, and the night after your visit?’ said Bill wearily. ‘It’s dangerous to interfere with police work.’
    James glanced sideways at Agatha’s stricken face. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘we were about to give you all this information anyway. So what would happen? You would start with the
health farm and then you would call on Sir Desmond. Would you think of asking them to describe the woman who said she was Lady Derrington? No, you would not. So you would have approached him and he
would know his wife was going to find out all about it and the result would have been the same.’
    ‘We thought of that. But Maddie pointed out that a visit from the police might not have tipped the balance of his mind the way the appearance on the scene of what appeared to be a couple
of blackmailers has done.’
    ‘Maddie says, Maddie says,’ jeered Agatha tearfully. ‘You think the sun shines out of her arse!’
    There was a shocked silence. Agatha turned red.
    ‘Go upstairs and put some make-up on or something,’ said James quietly. When Agatha had left the room, he said to Bill, ‘Agatha heard an unfortunate conversation between you
and Maddie in the pub in Mircester. The toilets are behind where you were both talking. Maddie was manipulating you into calling on us to find out if we knew anything. I gather her remarks about
Agatha were pretty insulting. Had Agatha not been so badly hurt and had I not sympathized with her, we might have told you all this earlier. Friendship,’ said James sententiously, ‘is a
valuable thing. All you had to say to Maddie was that you would be calling on us anyway as part of your investigations. Do you not feel she is using you to find out extra facts which might help