Agatha Raisin and the Wizard of Evesham

The business was in his name. After that, Elaine Shawpart set up on her own, but she didn’t do very well. He did all right after he’d had the place redone. Then he sold up and disappeared and his wife – they’d got a divorce by this time – she sold up and went off as well.’
    ‘Do you happen to know where he lived?’
    ‘Don’t know. Wait a bit. I’ve got some old phone books in the back. Never throw them away. Might be in one of those.’
    They waited while she went to look. Driers hummed and the air was full of the bad-egg smell of perms. Beyond the plate-glass windows, people went to and fro. Perhaps one of them had been blackmailed by John, perhaps one of them followed him to Evesham.
    ‘You’re lucky,’ said Mary, bustling back. ‘Here we are. Shawpart. Blacksmith’s End. Number two. Blacksmith’s End is one of those private builder’s projects out on the west of the town.’
    She gave them directions.
    ‘Now we’re getting somewhere,’ said Roy, retrieving the car.
    Blacksmith’s End turned out to be a quiet cul-de-sac of stone-built houses, very quiet and suburban with manicured lawns at the front and lace curtains at the windows.
    They walked up the neat path of number 2 and rang the doorbell, which emitted Big Ben chimes.
    A little woman as neat as the house – neat permed hair, neat little features, trim pencil skirt and tailored blouse – answered the door.
    ‘I never buy from door-to-door salesmen,’ she said.
    ‘We’re simply asking questions about John Shawpart.’
    ‘But I’ve told the police everything!’
    Agatha felt like the amateur she was. Of course the police would have been checking into his background.
    ‘I was the person who found him when he was dying,’ said Agatha.
    ‘Come in. I’m Mrs Laver.’
    ‘Agatha Raisin and Roy Silver,’ said Agatha as they followed her into a sparklingly clean living-room: three piece suite in Donegal tweed, glass coffee-table, stereo, television; pot plants everywhere, green and lush.
    ‘It must have been dreadful for you, seeing him dying like that,’ said Mrs Laver. ‘But really, I don’t know anything other than we bought the house from him.’
    ‘Did he live here with his wife?’
    ‘No, I gather he moved here after they split up.’
    Agatha looked around at the plants as if for inspiration. ‘Did anyone come calling, looking for him, after you moved in here?’
    ‘A couple of women – not together – at separate times. They seemed quite distressed.’
    ‘Did you get their names?’
    ‘No, when I said he had gone, they asked where to, but he didn’t leave a forwarding address.’
    ‘That’s odd,’ said Roy. ‘What did you do with the mail?’
    ‘Just marked it “Not Known at This Address” and gave it back to the postman.’
    Agatha noticed a faint flush rising up on Mrs Laver’s face and the way her hands twisted together nervously in her lap.
    ‘It must have been a bit of a chore,’ said Agatha, ‘remembering to return all that mail to the postman. I had that to do when I first moved into my cottage. I got so fed up I forgot to return a couple of letters, and after two months, I regret to say I just threw them on the fire. Did you do that?’ she demanded sharply.
    ‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that. That’s criminal!’ cried Mrs Laver. ‘But . . .’
    ‘But what?’ demanded Agatha eagerly. ‘You’ve still got one, haven’t you?’
    She flushed again. ‘It arrived some time after he’d gone from Portsmouth. My husband was away on business and I had the flu, so I put it in the kitchen drawer and thought I’d give it to the postman when I felt better. But then I forgot about it and I was too ashamed to hand it over after all this time.’
    Agatha felt her heart beating hard with excitement. ‘If you give it to us,’ she said, ‘we’ll give it to the Worcester police. You don’t need to worry. We’ll just say it got stuck under the doormat.’
    ‘Oh, you couldn’t say that,’ said Mrs Laver. ‘People would think I didn’t clean under the doormat in my own home.’
    Agatha looked at her impatiently.
    ‘Then we’ll say it came through the letter-box and slipped under a crack in the skirting in the hall.’
    ‘But I don’t have crack in the skirting. This is a very sound house!’
    Agatha felt like tearing her hair in frustration.
    She forced herself to say gently, ‘Then I’ll just tell them the truth. You were ill. You put it in the kitchen drawer and only remembered it when we