Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(152)

They worked their way into the rose garden. Agatha paused. She found that her breath was not coming easily—thanks to the bloody stroke, she fumed—and she used the excuse of examining the bushes to have a rest. Damn it all, when would she have her strength back?

“Blast it!” she snapped. “Why haven't these roses been sprayed? Just look at this, Mary. D'you see these leaves? Aphids are dining at my expense and no one's doing a bloody thing about it! Do I have to tell the damn gardener how to do his job? I want these plants sprayed, Mary Ellis. Today.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Mary Ellis said. “I'll phone Harry. It's not like him to overlook the roses, but his son had a burst appendix two weeks ago and I know it's worrying Harry cause they haven't been able to make him right.”

“He's going to have something more than a burst appendix to worry about if he lets the aphids ruin my roses.”

“His son's only ten years old, Mrs. Shaw, and they haven't been able to get all the muck out of his blood. He's had three operations, Harry said, and he's still all swelled up. They think—”

“Mary, do I look as if I wish to engage in a discussion of paediatric medicine? We all have personal problems. But we continue to meet our responsibilities in spite of those problems. If Harry can't do that, then he'll be sacked.”

Agatha turned from the roses. Her stick had become imbedded in the freshly turned earth at the edge of the flower bed. She attempted to free it, but found she lacked the strength.

“Damn and blast!” She jerked the handle and nearly lost her balance. Mary caught her by the arm. “Stop babying me! I don't need your coddling. Christ in heaven, when will this heat abate?”

“Mrs. Shaw, you're getting yourself in a state.” There was caution in Mary's voice, that eighteenth-century cringing tone of a servant who was afraid of being struck. Listening to it was worse than struggling with the miserable stick.

“I am not in a state,” Agatha said from between clenched teeth. She gave a final yank to the stick and freed it, but the effort robbed her of breath again.

She wasn't about to let something as basic as respiration defeat her, however. She gestured towards the lawn beyond the flowers and resolutely began to move forward once again.

“Don't you think you'd like a rest?” Mary asked. “You've gone a bit red in the face and—”

“What do you expect in this heat?” Agatha demanded. “And I don't need a rest. I mean to see my tennis court and I mean to see it now.”

But the going on the lawn was worse than the going in the flower bed, where at least there had been a pebble path to follow. Here the ground was uneven, and the sun-browned grass masked its irregularity. Agatha stumbled and righted, stumbled and righted. She yanked herself away from Mary and snarled when the girl said her name solicitously. Damn the garden to hell, she cursed silently. And how had she forgotten the very nature of her own lawn? Had movement been so easy before that she'd never noticed the land's pernicious anomalies?

“We c'n rest if you want,” Mary Ellis said. “I c'n fetch some water.”

Agatha lurched on. Her destination was in sight, no more than thirty yards away. It spread out like an umber blanket, with its net in place and its boundaries chalked freshly in anticipation of her next match. The court shimmered in the heat, and an illusion of light made it look as if steam were snaking up from it.

A trickle of perspiration worked its way from Agatha's forehead into her eye. Another followed. She found that her chest had grown quite tight and that her body felt as if a hot rubber shroud encased it. Every movement was a battle, while next to her Mary Ellis simply glided along like a feather in the wind. Blast her youth. Damn her health. Curse her blithe assumption that both youth and health gave her some sort of hegemony in their small household.

Agatha could sense the girl's unspoken superiority, could even read her thoughts: pathetic old woman, broken-down cow. Well, she would show her. She would stalk onto that tennis court and batter her opponent into fragments. She would serve her old serve of fire and wind. She would play the net and thunder returns down her victim's throat.

She would show Mary Ellis. She would show everyone. Agatha Shaw was not to be defeated. She'd bent the town council to her will. She'd breathed new life into Balford-le-Nez. She'd regained her strength and redesigned her life's purpose. And she would do the same to her contemptible body.

“Mrs. Shaw …” Mary's tone was chary. “Don't you think that a rest …? We can sit under that lime tree over there. I c'n get you a drink.”

“Rubbish!” Agatha found that she could only gasp the word. “I want …see …tennis.”

“Please, Mrs. Shaw. Your face's like a beetroot. I'm scared that—”

“Pish! Scared!” Agatha tried to laugh, but it came out like a cough. How was it that the tennis court seemed just as distant as it had done when they'd first set out? It seemed they'd been walking for ages—for miles—and their destination wavered mirage-like, no closer. How could this be? She was slogging forward, dragging her stick, dragging her leg, and she was feeling as if she were being pulled first backward then downward like a hundredweight sinking. “You're …holding me …back,” she gasped. “Damn …girl. Holding me, aren't you?”