Dishing the Dirt

“Yes, please.”


Mrs. Bloxby returned, carrying a tray with the sherry decanter and two glasses. She paused for a moment in the doorway and studied her visitor. He had an interesting mobile face with a thin nose, fine grey eyes, and odd black brows that slanted upwards under a thick head of black hair with only a few threads of grey. He looked athletic, his slim body clothed in a well-tailored charcoal grey suit.

When the drinks were poured, Gerald leaned back in his chair with a sigh of satisfaction. “This is nice.”

“Which cottage have you taken?” asked Mrs. Bloxby.

“Poor Mr. Dell’s.”

“Are you a relative?”

“No, I bought it from his niece. I’ve lived in London all my life and thought I would like to bury myself in the country. I’m retired.”

“You look too young to retire,” commented Mrs. Bloxby, guessing he must be in his middle fifties.

“I was a detective with the Metropolitan Police Force at Scotland Yard. I came into a good inheritance. I’d become weary of crime. I may have chosen the wrong village.”

“Oh, we’re all quiet and peaceful now.” Here’s someone for Mrs. Raisin, she thought. Gerald had an attractive, husky voice.

“Tell me about yourself,” he said. “I should think you must have such a hardworking life.”

Mrs. Bloxby blinked in amazement. Apart from Agatha, no one else ever seemed interested in her days.

“It’s all the usual stuff,” she said.

He grinned. “I know, therapist, mother’s help, fetes, disputes, and all exhausting and no thanks. Should I say hullo to your husband?”

“He’s writing a sermon. I’ll ask him.”

She went along to her husband’s study and told him about their visitor. “Can you cope, dear?” he asked. “I’m awfully busy.”

On the road back, she popped into the bathroom and stared at her face in the mirror. Her brown hair with its streaks of grey was screwed up on top of her head. She loosened it and brushed it down before going back to join him.

They sat and talked for an hour while outside the storm rolled away. Mrs. Bloxby felt like a girl again.

After he had left, the phone rang. It was Agatha. “I hear there is some newcomer to the village,” she said.

If I tell her, thought the vicar’s wife, she’ll be right round there, made up to the nines.

To her horror, she heard herself impulsively lying. “I wonder who that can be?” she said, blushing as she said it.

*

Agatha heard all about the newcomer from Phil Marshall in the office the next morning, but was not pleased to hear that a detective, however retired, had landed in her village. As far as Agatha was concerned, she was the only detective that mattered.

“There’s one thing that bothers me still,” she said. “I would like to know who inherits the Tweedy estate. I mean, there’s madness in that family and I would like to be assured that there is not some relative of theirs going to call on me with an ax. Patrick, can you find out?”

She almost forgot about it until later in the day when Patrick said, “You’re out of touch with what is going on in that village of yours. An elderly fourth cousin inherits and has been round to look at the Tweedy house. She’s called Miss Delphinium Farrington.”

“If the weird Tweedys went so far as to leave everything to her, then it stands to reason she must be as weird as they were. I thought people couldn’t benefit from a crime.”

“They can if they didn’t commit it, or so I believe,” said Patrick. “Although I think the insurance company will want their money back.”

“You know,” said Agatha, “when I had a dream of moving to a Cotswold village, I envisaged placid rosy-cheeked villagers whose families had been around for generations, not a series of murderous incomers.”

“The old village families have all been priced out of their villages,” said Phil.

“Well, they shouldn’t have sold their properties,” said Agatha ruthlessly.