The Quiche of Death

by M C Beaton

  "Did you tell the police this?" asked Agatha. The Greek looked horrified. "I didn't want to put the police onto my cousin." He looked at Agatha solemnly.

  Agatha stared at him in bafflement and then the light dawned. "Is it the immigration police you're frightened of?"

  He nodded. "My cousin's daughter's fiance came on a visitor's visa and they married in the Greek Orthodox Church but haven't yet registered with the British authorities and he is working for his father-in-law without a work permit and so . . ." He gave a massive shrug.

  Agatha did not know anything about work permits but she did know from her dealings with foreign models in the past that they were paranoid about being deported. "So it was just as well Mrs. Cummings-Browne didn't sue," she said.

  A shutter came down over his eyes. Two customers walked into the shop and he said a hurried goodbye before scuttling back behind the counter.

  Agatha finished her coffee and took a stroll around her old haunts. She had a light lunch at the Stock Pot and then decided an air-conditioned cinema would be the best way to pass the afternoon. A little voice in her head was telling her that if she was determined to move back to London, she should start looking for a flat to live in and business premises to work from, but she shrugged the voice away. There was time enough, and besides, it was too hot. She bought an Evening Standard and discovered that a cinema off Leicester Square was showing a rerun of Disney's Jungle Book. So she went there and enjoyed the film and came out with the pleasurable prospect of seeing Roy, feeling sure that he would galvanize her into starting her new business.

  It was hard, she thought, when she descended to the hotel bar at seven-thirty, to get used to the new Roy. There he was with one of the latest flat-topped haircuts and a sober business suit and an imitation of a Guard's regimental tie.

  He hailed her affectionately. Agatha bought him a double gin and asked him how his nursery project was going and he said it was coming along nicely and that they had made him a junior executive and had given him a private office and a secretary because they were so impressed by his getting his photo in the Sunday Times. "Have another gin," said Agatha, wishing that Roy were still unhappy at Pedmans.

  He grinned. "You forget I've seen the old Aggie in action. Fill 'em up with booze and then go in for the kill over coffee. Break the habit, Aggie. Hit me with whatever is on your mind before we get to dinner."

  "All right," said Agatha. She looked around. The bar was getting crowded. "Let's take our drinks to that table over there."

  Once they were both settled, she leaned forward and looked at him intently. "I'll come straight out with it, Roy. I'm coming back to London. I'm going to set up in business again and I want you to be my partner."

  "Why? You're through with the mess. You've got that lovely cottage and that lovely village . . ."

  "And I'm dying of boredom."

  "You haven't given it time, Aggie. You haven't settled in yet."

  "Well, if you're not interested," said Agatha sulkily.

  "Aggie, Pedmans is big, one of the biggest. You know that. I've got a great future in front of me. I'm taking it serious now instead of camping about a few pop groups. I want to get out of pop groups. One of them hits the charts and then, two weeks later, no one wants to know. And you know why? The pop business has become all hype and no substance. No tunes. All thump, thump, thump for the discos. Sales are a fraction of what they used to be. And do you know why I want to stick with Pedmans? I'm on my way up and fast. And I plan to get what you've got—a cottage in the Cotswolds.

  "Look, Aggie, no one wants to live in cities anymore. The new generation is getting Americanized. Get up early enough in the morning and you don't need to live in London. Besides, I'm thinking of getting married."

  "Oh, pull the other one," said Agatha rudely. "I don't think you've ever taken a girl out in your life."

  "That's all you know. The thing is that Mr. Wilson likes his execs to be married."

  "And who's the lucky girl?"

  "Haven't found her yet. But some nice quiet girl will do. There are lots around. Someone to cook the meals and iron the shirts."

  Really, thought Agatha crossly, under the exterior of every effeminate man beats the heart of a real chauvinist pig. He would find a young girl, meek, biddable, a bit common so as not to make him feel inferior. She would be expected to learn to host little dinner parties and not complain when her husband only came home at weekends. They would learn to play golf. Roy would gradually become plump and stuffy. She had seen it all happen before.

  "But as my partner, you could earn more," she said.

  "You've lost your clients to Pedmans. It would take ages to get them back. You know that, Aggie. You'd have to start small again and build up. Is that what you really want? Let's go in for dinner and talk some more. I'm famished."

  Agatha decided to leave the subject for the moment and began to tell him about the attack on her by John Cartwright and how he had turned out to be a burglar.

  "Honestly, Aggie, don't you see—London would be tame by comparison. Besides, a friend tells me you're never alone in the country. The neighbours care what happens to you."

  "Unless they're like Mrs. Barr," said Agatha drily. "She's selling up. The cow had the cheek to claim I had driven her off, but in fact she was left a bigger cottage by an aunt in Ancombe."

  "I thought she was an incomer," said Roy. "Now you tell me she's had at least one relative Living close by."

  "If you haven't been born and brought up in Carsely itself, take it from me, you're an incomer," reported Agatha. "Oh, something else about her."

  She told Roy about the play and he shrieked with laughter. "Oh, it must be murder, Aggie," he gasped.

  "No, I don't think it was any more, and I don't care now. I visited Economides today and the reason he's glad to let the whole business blow over is that the quiche he sold me was actually baked on his cousin's premises down in Devon and the cousin has a new son-in-law working for him who doesn't have a work permit."

  "Ah, that explains that, and the burglaring John Cartwright explains his behavior, but what of the women that Cummings-Browne was philandering with? What of the mad Maria?"

  "I think she's just mad, and Barbara James is a toughie and Ella Cartwright is a slut and Mrs. Barr has a screw loose as well, but I don't think any of them murdered Cummings-Browne. Here I go again. It wasn't murder, Roy. Bill Wong was right."

  "Which leaves Vera Cummings-Browne."

  "As for her, I was suddenly sure she had done it, that it was all very simple. She suddenly thought of the murder when I left my quiche. She went home and dumped mine and baked another."

  "Brilliant," said Roy. "And she wasn't found out because Economides was so frightened about work permits and things that he didn't look at or examine the quiche that was supposed to be his!"

  "That's a good theory. But the police exploded that. They checked everything in her kitchen, her pots and pans, her groceries and even her drains. She hadn't been baking or cooking anything at all on the day of the murder. Let it go, Roy. You've got me calling it murder and I had just put it all behind me. To get back to more interesting matters . . Are you determined to stay with Pedmans?"

  "I'm afraid so, Aggie. It's all your fault in a way. If you hadn't arranged that publicity for me, I wouldn't have risen so fast. Tell you what I'll do, though. You get started and I'll drop a word in your ear when I know any client who's looking for a change... not one of mine, of course. But that's all I can do."

  Agatha felt flat. The ambition which had fueled her for so long seemed to be draining away. After she had said goodbye to Roy, she went out and walked restlessly about the night-time streets of London, as if searching for her old self. In Piccadilly Circus, a couple of white-faced drug addicts gazed at her with empty eyes and a beggar threatened her. Heat still seemed to be pulsing up from the pavements and out from the buildings.

  For the rest of the week, she took walks in the parks, a sail down the Thames, and went to t
heatres and cinemas, moving through the stifling heat of London feeling like a ghost, or someone who had lost her cards of identity. For so long, her work had been her character, her personality, her identity.

  By Friday evening, the thought of the village band concert began to loom large in her mind. The women of the Carsely Ladies' Society would be there, she could trot along to the Red Lion if she was lonely, and perhaps she could do something about her garden. Not that she was giving up her idea! A pleasant-looking garden would add to the sale price of the house.

  She arose early in the morning and settled her bill and made her way to Paddington Station. She had left her car at Oxford. Once more she was on her way back. "Oxford. This is Oxford," intoned the guard. With a strange feeling of being on home ground, she eased out of the car-park and drove up Worcester Street and then Beaumont Street and so along St. Giles and the Woodstock Road to the Woodstock Roundabout, where she took the A-40 bypass to Bur-ford, up over the hills to Stowe-on-the-Wold, along to the A-44 and so back down into Carsely.

  As she drove along Lilac Lane to her cottage, she suddenly braked hard outside New Delhi, SOLD screamed a sticker across the estate agent's board.

  Wonder how much she got, mused Agatha, driving on to her own cottage. That was quick! But good riddance to bad rubbish anyway. Hope someone pleasant moves in. Not that it matters for I'm leaving myself, she reminded herself fiercely.

  Urged by a superstitious feeling that the village was settling around her and claiming her for its own, she left her suitcase inside the door and drove off again to the estate agent's offices in Chipping Campden, the same estate agent who had sold Mrs. Barr's house.

  She introduced herself and said she was putting her house on the market. How much for? Well, the same amount as Mrs. Barr got for hers would probably do. The estate agent said he was not allowed to reveal how much Mrs. Barr had got but added diplomatically that she had been asking for £150,000 and was very pleased with the offer she had received.

  "I want one hundred seventy-five thousand pounds for mine," said Agatha. "It's thatched and I'll bet it's in better nick than that tart's."

  The estate agent blinked, but a house for sale was a house for sale, and so he and Agatha got down to business.

  I don't need to sell to just anyone, thought Agatha. After all, I owe it to Mrs. Bloxby and the rest to see that someone nice gets it.

  The village band was playing outside the school hall. Before Agatha went to hear it, she carried a present she had bought for Doris Simpson along to the council estate. When she pushed open the gate of Doris's garden, she noticed to her surprise that all the gnomes had gone. But she rang the bell and when Doris answered, put a large brown paper parcel in her arms.

  "Come in," said Doris. "Bert! Here's Agatha back from London with a present. It's ever so nice of you. You really shouldn't have bothered."

  "Open it, then," said Bert, when the parcel was placed on the coffee-table in their living-room.

  Doris pulled off the wrappings to reveal a large gnome with a scarlet tunic and green hat. "You really shouldn't have done it," said Doris with feeling. "You really shouldn't."

  "You deserve it," said Agatha. "No, I won't stay for coffee. I'm going to hear the band."

  Inside the school hall, stalls had been set up. Agatha went in and wandered about, amused to notice that some of the items from her auction were being recycled. And then she stopped short in front of a stall run by Mrs. Mason. It was covered in garden gnomes.

  "Where did you get all these?" asked Agatha, filled with an awful suspicion.

  "Oh, that was the Simpsons," she said. 'The gnomes were there when they moved into that house and they've been meaning to get rid of them for ages. Can I interest you in buying one? What about this jolly little fellow with the fishing rod? Brighten up your garden."

  "No, thanks," said Agatha, feeling like a fool. And yet how could she have known the Simpsons didn't like gnomes?

  She wandered into the tea-room, which was off the main hall, to find Mrs. Bloxby helping Mrs. Mason. "Welcome back," cried Mrs. Bloxby. "What can I get you?"

  "I haven't had lunch," said Agatha, "so I'll have a couple of those Cornish pasties and a cup of tea. You must have been up all night baking."

  "Oh, it's not all mine, and when we have a big affair like this, we do it in bits and pieces. We bake things and put them in the freezer, that big thing over there, and then just defrost them in the microwave on the day of the event."

  Agatha picked up her plate of pasties and her teacup and sat down at one of the long tables. Farmer Jimmy Page joined her and introduced his wife. Various other people came over. Soon Agatha was surrounded by a group of people all chatting away.

  "You'll know soon enough," she said at last. "I'm putting my cottage up for sale."

  "Well, that's a pity," said Mr. Page. "You off to Lunnon again?"

  "Yes, going to restart in business."

  "S'pose it's different for you, Mrs. Raisin," said his wife. "I once went up there and I was so lonely. Cities are lonely places. Different for you. You must have scores of friends."

  "Yes," lied Agatha, thinking bleakly that the only friend she had was Roy and he had only become a friend since she had moved to the Cotswolds. The heat was still fierce. Agatha felt too lazy to think what to do next and somehow she found she had accepted an invitation to go back to Jimmy Page's farm with a group of them. Once at the farm, which was up on a rise above the village, they all sat outside and drank cider and talked idly about how hot the weather was and remembered summers of long ago, until the sun began to move down the sky and someone suggested they should move to the Red Lion and so they did.

  Walking home later, slightly tipsy, Agatha shook off doubts about selling the house. Once the winter came, things in Carsely would look different, bleaker, more shut off. She had done the right thing. But Jimmy Page had said her cottage was seventeenth century. Nothing fake about it, he had said, apart from the extension.

  She kicked off her shoes and reached out a hand to switch on the lights when the security lights came on outside the house, brilliant and dazzling. She stood frozen. There came soft furtive sounds as though someone were retreating quietly from the door. All she had to do was to fling open the door and see who it was. But she could not move. She felt sure something dark and sinister was out there. It could not be children. Young people in Carsely went to bed at good old-fashioned times of the evening, even on holiday.

  She sank down onto the floor and sat there with her back against the wall, listening hard. And then the security lights went off again, plunging the house into darkness.

  She sat there for a long time before slowly rising and switching on the house lights, moving from room to room, switching them all on as she had done before when she was frightened.

  Agatha wondered whether to call Mrs. Bloxby. It was probably one of the young men of the village, or someone walking a dog. Slowly her fear left her, but when she went up to bed, she left all the lights burning.

  In the morning she was heartened to see a huge removal van outside New Delhi and the removal men hard at work. Obviously Mrs. Barr did not see anything wrong in moving house on the Sabbath. Agatha was just wondering whether to go to church or not when the phone rang. It was Roy.

  "I've got a surprise for you, love."

  Agatha felt a sudden surge of hope. "You've decided to leave Pedmans?"

  "No, I've bought a car, a Morris Minor. Got it for a song. Thought I'd drive down and bring the girlfriend to see you."

  "Girl-friend? You haven't got one." M. C. BEATON

  "I have now. Can we come?"

  "Of course. What's her name?"

  "Tracy Butterworth."

  "And what does she do?"

  "She's one of the typists in the pool at Pedmans."

  "When will you get here?"

  "We're leaving now. Hour and a half if the roads aren't bad. Maybe two."

  Agatha looked in the fridge after she had rung off. She hadn't even
any milk. She went to a supermarket in Stow-on-the-Wold which opened on Sundays and bought milk, lettuce and tomatoes for salad, minced meat and potatoes to make shepherd's pie, onions and carrots, peas, a frozen apple pie and some cream.

  There was no need to do any cleaning when she returned. Doris had been in while she had been in London and the place was impeccable. As she drove down into Carsely, the removal van passed her, followed by Mrs. Barr in her car. They must have been at it since six in the morning, thought Agatha, making a mental note of the removal firm.

  She put away her groceries when she got home, found a pair of scissors, edged through the hedge at the back into Mrs. Barr's garden, and cut bunches of flowers to decorate her cottage.

  She prepared the shepherd's pie after she had arranged the flowers, thinking that she really must do something about the garden. It would look lovely in the spring if she put in a lot of bulbs—but, of course, she would not be in Carsely in the spring.

  Being still an inexperienced cook, the simple shepherd's pie took quite a long time and she was just putting it in the oven when she heard a car draw up.

  Tracy Butterworth was all Agatha had expected. She was thin and pallid, with limp brown hair. She was wearing a white cotton suit with a pink frilly blouse and very high-heeled white shoes. She had a limp handshake and said, "Please ter meet you," in a shy whisper and then looked at Roy with devotion.

  "I see a removal van outside that awful woman's cottage," said Roy.

  "What!" Agatha cast an anguished look at the vases of flowers. "I thought she'd gone."

  "Relax. Someone's moving in, not out. Say something, Tracy. She won't eat you."

  "You've got ever such a lovely cottage," volunteered Tracy. She dabbed at her forehead with a scrap of lace-edged handkerchief.

  "It's too hot to be dressed up," said Agatha. Tracy winced and Agatha said with new kindness, "Not that you don't look very smart and pretty. But make yourself at home. Kick off your shoes and take off your jacket."

  Tracy looked nervously at Roy.

  "Do as she says," he ordered.

  Tracy had very long thin feet, which she wriggled in an embarrassed way once her shoes were off. Poor thing, thought Agatha. He'll marry her and turn her into the complete Essex woman. Two children called Nicholas and Daphne at minor public schools, house in some twee builder's close called Loam End or something, table-mats from the Costa Brava, niched curtains, Jacuzzi, giant television set, boredom, out on Saturday night to some road-house for chicken in a basket washed down with Beaujolais nouveau and followed by Black Forest gateau. Yes, Essex it would be and not the Cotswolds. Roy would be happier with his own kind. He too would change and take up weight-lifting and squash and walk around with a portable telephone glued to his ear, speaking very loudly into it in restaurants.