By the time she got to police headquarters, all she could do was wait in the reception area for Toni and Sharon to reappear.

Two hours went past and then Toni and Sharon came out, looking weary.

Agatha listened as Toni described how they had managed to find Trixie. When she had finished, Agatha said coldly, ‘You should have phoned me immediately.’

‘I did phone,’ said Sharon. ‘There wasn’t time to phone earlier and Toni could have made a mistake.’

Agatha immediately felt mean and petty. She must have missed Sharon’s message. But surely the operator had said there was only one message and that had been from Patrick.

‘It was good work,’ she said. ‘Are the parents delighted?’

‘They’re interrogating Mr Ballard. Toni told me that it seemed as if Trixie had run away because the father had been abusing her. The couple at the nursery thought she was seventeen years old and she said she was waiting for her employment card and that she was an orphan. So they set her to work in the nursery and gave her bed and board.’

When they left headquarters, the press had increased in numbers. Agatha tried to make a statement but they called for Toni and Sharon. Biting her lip, Agatha stood aside and watched her two young detectives get all the glory.

When Agatha finally got home and stared in her bathroom mirror, she saw to her dismay that bits of face pack were sticking to her eyebrows and in the front of her hair.

She had always been the one before who had been blessed with these leaps of detective intuition, she thought. Agatha remembered how she had tried to grab the limelight outside police headquarters and curled up into a tight ball on her bed, in an attempt to make herself as small as she felt.

Chapter Eight

DESPITE THE THREATENING recession, business was booming at Agatha’s detective agency. The publicity given to the finding of Trixie had engendered a great deal of work. It was time to expand. A surprising number of policemen were anxious to get out of the force, fed up with government targets. If an officer did not achieve a good number of arrests he had little chance of promotion, which meant that the more ruthless were charging normally law-abiding citizens with every petty offence they could think of. They were also overburdened with paperwork. She hired two men in their forties, Paul Kenson and Fred Auster. Paul was thin, gangly and morose and Fred was chubby and cheerful. But they were both highly competent.

Only, Toni and Sharon were becoming increasingly upset. The interesting cases no longer came their way. Agatha had them both back to looking for missing pets.

Phil and Patrick were pleased with the newcomers because both were able to take a much-needed holiday.

Phil had decided to spend his holiday at home, working in his garden.