Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death ar-1

by M C Beaton

  P.C. Griggs was on duty outside, warding off all questions with a placid

  "Can't say anything now, I'm sure."

  Agatha went slowly home. She ate some breakfast and picked up an Agatha Christie mystery and tried to read, but could not focus on the words. What did fictional mysteries matter when there was a real-live one in the village? Had Mrs. Cummings-Browne hit him on the top of his pointy head with the poker?

  She threw down the book and went along to the Red Lion. It was buzzing with rumour and speculation. Agatha found herself in the centre of a group of villagers eagerly discussing the death. To her disappointment, she learned that Mr. Cummings-Browne had suffered from high blood pressure.

  "But it can't be natural causes," protested Agatha. "All those police cars!"

  "Oh, we likes to do things thoroughly in Gloucestershire," said a large beefy man. "Not like Lunnon, where there's people dropping dead like flies every minute. My shout. What you ', Mrs. Raisin?"

  Agatha ordered a gin and tonic. It was all very pleasurable to be in the centre of this cosy group. When the pub finally closed its doors at two in the afternoon, Agatha felt quite tipsy as she walked home.

  The heavy Cotswolds air, combined with the unusually large amount she had drunk, sent her to sleep. When she awoke, she thought that Cummings-Browne had probably had an accident and it was not worth finding out about anyway. Agatha Christie now seemed much more interesting than anything that could happen in Carsley, and Agatha read until bedtime.

  In the morning, she decided to go for a walk. Walks in the Cotswolds are all neatly signposted. She chose one at the end of the village beyond the council houses, opening a gate that led into some woods.

  Trees with new green leaves arched over her and primroses nestled among their roots. There was a sound of rushing water from a hidden stream over to her left. The night's frost was slowly melting in shafts of sunlight which struck down through the trees. High above, a blackbird sang a heart-breaking melody and the air was sweet and fresh. The path led her out of the trees and along the edge of a field of new corn, bright green and shiny, turning in the breeze like the fur of some huge green cat. A lark shot up to the heavens, reminding Agatha of her youth, in the days when even the wastelands of Birmingham were full of larks and butterflies, the days before chemical spraying. She strode out, feeling healthy and well and very much alive.

  By following the signs, she walked through fields and more woods, finally emerging on to the road that led down into Carsely. As she walked down under the green tunnels formed by the branches of the high hedges which met overhead and she saw the village lying below her, all her euphoria caused by healthy walking and fresh air left, to be replaced by an inexplicable sense of dread. She felt she was walking down into a sort of grave where Agatha Raisin would lie buried alive.

  Again she was plagued with restlessness and loneliness.

  This could not go on. The dream of her life was not what she had expected. She could sell up, although the market was still not very good. Perhaps she could travel. She had never travelled extensively before, only venturing each year on one of the more expensive packaged holidays designed for single people who did not want to mix with the riffraff rambling holidays in France, painting holidays in Spain, that sort of thing.

  In the village street, a local woman gave her a broad smile and Agatha wearily waited for that usual greeting of

  "Mawning," wondering what the woman would do or say if she replied, "Get stuffed."

  But to her surprise, the woman stopped, resting her shopping basket on one broad hip, and said, "Police be looking for you. Plain clothes."

  "Don't know what they want with me," said Agatha uneasily.

  "Better go and find out, m'dear."

  Agatha hurried on, her mind in a turmoil. What could they want? Her driving licence was in order. Of course, there were those books she had never got around to returning to the Chelsea library ... As she approached her cottage, she saw Mrs. Barr standing in her front garden, staring avidly at a small group of three men who were waiting outside Agatha's cottage. When she saw Agatha, she scurried indoors and slammed the door but immediately took up a watching position at the window.

  A thin, cadaverous man approached Agatha. "Mrs. Raisin? I am Detective Chief Inspector Wilkes. May we have a word with you?

  Indoors."

  Chapter Three.

  Agatha led them indoors. Detective Chief Inspector Wilkes introduced a dark, silent man beside him as Detective Sergeant Friend, and a young tubby oriental who looked like a Buddha as Detective Constable Wong.

  Agatha sat in an armchair by the fireplace and the three sat down on the sofa, side by side. "We are here to ask you about your quiche, Mrs. Raisin," said Wilkes. "I understand the Cummings-Brownes took it home. What was in it?"

  "What's all this about?" demanded Agatha.

  "Just answer my questions," said Wilkes stolidly.

  What was in a quiche? wondered Agatha desperately. "Eggs, flour, milk and spinach," she volunteered hopefully.

  Detective Constable Wong spoke up. He had a soft Gloucestershire accent. "Perhaps it would be best if Mrs. Raisin took us into her kitchen and showed us the ingredients."

  The three detectives promptly stood up and towered over Agatha. Agatha got up, registering that her knees were trembling, and led the way into the kitchen while they crowded in after her.

  Under their watching eyes, she opened the cupboards. "Strange," said Agatha. "I seem to have used everything up. I am very thrifty."

  Wong, who had been watching her with amusement, said suddenly, "If you will write down the recipe, Mrs. Raisin, I'll run down to Harvey's and buy the ingredients and then you can show us how you baked it."

  Agatha shot him a look of loathing. She took down a cookery book called French Provincial Cooking, opened it, wincing at the faint crack from its hitherto unopened spine, and looked up the index. She found the required recipe and wrote down a list of the ingredients. Wong took the list from her and went out.

  "Now will you tell me what this is about?" asked Agatha.

  "In a moment," said Wilkes stolidly.

  Had Agatha not been so very frightened, she would have screamed at him that she had a right to know, but she weakly made a jug of instant coffee and suggested they sit in the living-room and drink it while she waited for Wong.

  Having got rid of them, she studied the recipe. Provided she did exactly as instructed, she should be able to get it right. She had meant to take up baking and so she had scales and measures, thank God.

  Wong returned with a brown paper bag full of groceries.

  "Join the others in the living-room!" ordered Agatha, ' I'll let you know when it is ready."

  Wong sat down in a kitchen chair. "I like kitchens," he said amiably.

  "I'll watch you cook."

  Agatha shot him a look of pure hatred from her little brown eyes as she heated the oven and got to work. There were old ladies being mugged all over the country, she thought savagely. Had this wretched man nothing better to do? But he seemed to have infinite patience. He watched her closely and then, when she finally put the quiche in the oven, he rose and went to join the others. Agatha stayed where she was, her mind in a turmoil. She could hear the murmur of voices from the other room.

  It was like being back at school, she thought. She remembered the headmistress telling them that they all must open their lockers for inspection without explaining why. Oh, the dread of opening her own locker in case there was something in it that shouldn't have been there. A policewoman had silently gone through everything. No one explained what was wrong. No one said anything. Agatha could still remember the silent, frightened girls, the stern and silent teachers, the competent policewoman. And then one of the girls was led away.

  They never saw her again. They assumed she had been expelled because of whatever had been found in her locker. But no one had called at the girl's home to ask her. Judgement had been passed on her by that mysterious world of ad
ults and she had been spirited out of their lives as if by some divine retribution. They had gone on with their schooldays.

  Now she felt like a child again, hemmed in by her own guilt and an accusing silence. She glanced at the clock. When had she put it in?

  She opened the oven door. There it stood, raised and golden and perfect. She heaved a sigh of relief and took it out just as Wong came back into the kitchen.

  "We'll leave it to cool for a little," he said. He opened his notebook. "Now about the Cummings-Brownes. You dined with them at the Feathers. What did you have? Mmmm. And then? What did they drink?"

  And so it went on while out of the corner of her eye, Agatha saw her golden-brown quiche sink slowly down into its pastry shell.

  Wong finally closed his notebook and called the others in. "We'll just cut a slice," he said. Agatha wielded a knife and spatula and drew out one small soggy slice.

  "What did he die of?" asked Agatha desperately.

  "Cowbane," said Friend.

  "Cowbane?" Agatha stared at them. Ts that something like mad cow disease?" "No," said Detective Chief Inspector Wilkes heavily. "It's a poisonous plant, not all that common, but it's found in several parts of the British Isles, including the West Midlands, and we are in the West Midlands, Mrs. Raisin. On examining the contents of the deceased's stomach, it was shown he had eaten quiche and drunk wine just before his death. The green vegetable stuff was identified as cow-bane. The poisonous substance it contains is an unsaturated higher alcohol, cicutoxin."

  "So you see, Mrs. Raisin," came the mild voice of Wong, "Mrs. Cummings-Browne thinks your quiche poisoned her husband ... that is, if you ever made that quiche."

  Agatha glared out of the window, wishing they would all disappear.

  "Mrs. Raisin!" She swung round. Detective Constable Wong's slanted brown eyes were on a level with her own. Wasn't he too small for the police force? she thought in consequently "Mrs. Raisin," said Bill Wong softly, ' is my humble opinion that you have never baked a quiche or a cake in your life. Your cookery books had obviously never been opened before. Some of your cooking utensils still had the prices stuck to them. So will you begin at the beginning? There is no need to lie so long as you are innocent." "Will this come out in court?" asked Agatha miserably, wondering if she could be sued by the village committee for having thrust a Quicherie quiche into their competition.

  Wilkes's voice was heavy with threat. "Only if we think it necessary."

  Again, Agatha's memory carried her back to her schooldays. She had bribed one of the girls to write an essay for her with two chocolate bars and a red scarf. Unfortunately, the girl, a leading light in the Young People in Christ movement, had confessed all to the headmistress and so Agatha had been summoned and told to tell the truth.

  In a small, almost childish voice, quite unlike her usual robust tones, she confessed going up to Chelsea and buying the quiche. Wong was grinning happily and she could have wrung his neck. Wilkes demanded the bill for the quiche and Agatha found it at the bottom of the rubbish bin under several empty frozen food packets and gave it to him.

  They said they would check her story out.

  Agatha hid indoors for the rest of that day, feeling like a criminal.

  She would have stayed in hiding the next day had not the cleaner, Mrs. Simpson, arrived, reminding Agatha that she had promised her lunch.

  Agatha scuttled down to Harvey's and bought some cold meat and salad.

  Nothing seemed to have changed. People talked about the weather. The death of Cummings-Browne might never have happened.

  Agatha returned to find Mrs. Simpson down on her hands and knees, scrubbing the kitchen floor. A sign of her extreme low state was that Agatha's eyes filled with weak tears at the sight. When had she last seen a woman scrubbing a floor instead of slopping it around with a mop? She had hired a succession of cleaning girls through an agency in London, mostly foreign girls or out-of-work actresses who seemed expert at producing an effect of cleanliness without actually ever getting down to the nitty-gritty.

  Mrs. Simpson looked up from her cleaning. "I found him, you know," she said. "I found the body."

  "I don't want to talk about it," said Agatha hurriedly and Mrs. Simpson grinned as she wrung out the floor cloth.

  "That's a mercy, for to tell the truth, I don't like talking about it.

  Rather get on with the work."

  Agatha retreated to the living-room and then, when Mrs. Simpson moved upstairs, she prepared her a cold lunch, put it on the kitchen table beside an envelope containing Mrs. Simpson's money, and called upstairs, "I'm going out. I have a spare key. Just lock up and put the key through the letter-box." She received a faint affirmative, shouted over the noise of the vacuum cleaner.

  Agatha got in her car and drove up and out of the village. Where should she go? Market day in Moreton-in-Marsh. That would do. She battled in the busy town to find a parking place and then joined the throngs crowding the stalls. The Cotswolds appeared to be a very fecund place. There were young women with babies and toddlers everywhere, pushing them in push chairs which they thrust against the legs of the childless with aplomb. She had read an article once where a young mother had explained how she had suffered from acute agoraphobia when her child had grown out of the push chair It certainly seemed to give the mothers an aggressive edge as, like so many Boadiceas, they propelled their chariots through the market crowd.

  Agatha bought a geranium for the kitchen window, fresh fish for dinner, potatoes and cauliflower. She was determined to cook everything herself. No more frozen food. After depositing her shopping in the car, she ate lunch in the Market House Restaurant, bought scent in the chemist's, a blouse at one of the stalls, and then, at four o'clock, as the market was closing down, she reluctantly returned to her car and took the road home.

  Mrs. Simpson had left a jug of wild flowers on the middle of the kitchen table. Bless the woman. All Agatha's guilt about having lured her away from Mrs. Barr evaporated. The woman was a queen among cleaners.

  The following morning there was a knock at the door and Agatha groaned inwardly. Anyone else, she thought bitterly, would not be depressed, would expect some friend to be standing on the doorstep. But not Agatha Raisin. She knew it could only be the police.

  Detective Constable Wong stood there. "This is an informal call," he said. "May I come in?"

  "I suppose so," said Agatha ungraciously. "I was just about to have a glass of sherry, but I won't ask you to join me."

  "Why not?" he said with a grin. "I'm off duty."

  Agatha poured two glasses of sherry, threw some imitation logs on the fire and lit them. "What now?" she asked. "And what do I call you?"

  "My name is Bill Wong. You may call me Bill."

  "An appropriate name. If you were older, I could call you the Old Bill. Now, what about the quiche?" "You're off the hook," said Bill. "We checked out your story. Mr. Economides, the owner of The Quicherie, remembers selling you that quiche. He cannot understand what happened. He buys his vegetables from the greengrocer's across the road. Greengrocer goes to the market at Nine Elms every morning to buy his stock. Stuff comes from all over the country and abroad. Cowbane must have got in with the spinach.

  It's a tragic accident. Of course, we had to tell Mrs. Cummings-Browne where the quiche came from."

  Agatha groaned.

  "She might have accused you of murder otherwise."

  "But look here," protested Agatha, ' could have killed her husband by putting cow bane in my quiche."

  "Like most of the British population, I'd swear she couldn't tell a piece of cow bane from a palm tree," said Bill. "Also, it couldn't have been you. When you left that quiche, you had no idea it would be taken home and eaten by Cummings-Browne. So it couldn't have been you.

  And it couldn't have been Mrs. Cummings-Browne. Poisoning like that would need to be a cold-blooded, premeditated act. No, it was a horrible accident. Cowbane was only in part of the quiche."

  "I feel sorry for Mr. Ec
onomides," said Agatha. "Mrs. Cummings-Browne could sue him." "She has generously said she will not press charges. She is a very rich woman in her own right. She has the money. She had nothing to gain from his death."

  "But why did Cummings-Browne not drop dead at the tasting when he had a slice of it? Perhaps someone substituted another quiche. Or ... let me think ... wouldn't there have been some cow bane in that wedge, the juice, for instance?" "Yes, we wondered about that," said Bill. "Mrs. Cummings-Browne said her husband did feel a bit queasy after the tasting but she put that down to the amount of pre competition drinks he had been knocking back." Agatha asked all about the case, all the details she had not asked before. He had been found dead in the morning. Then why, asked Agatha, had Mrs. Cummings-Browne gone straight up to bed?

  "Oh, that was because her husband was usually late, drinking at the Red Lion."

  "But that precious pair or rather, it was Mrs. Cummings-Browne told me they wouldn't be seen dead in the Red Lion. Mind you, that was before they socked me for a disgracefully expensive load of rubbish at the Feathers."

  "He drinks at the Red Lion, all right, but Mrs. Cummings-Browne owns twenty-five percent of the Feathers."

  The cow! I'll be damned. Anyway, how did you guess I never cooked that quiche? For you did, you know, even before I baked one."

  "The minute I saw there wasn't a single baking ingredient in the kitchen I was sure." He laughed. "I asked you to make one to be absolutely sure. You should have seen your face!"

  "Oh, very funny."

  He looked at her curiously. What an odd woman she was, he thought. Her shiny brown, well-groomed hair was not per med but cut in a sort of Dutch bob that somehow suited her square, rather truculent face. Her body was square and stocky and her legs surprisingly good. "What," asked Bill, ' so special to a recently ex-high-powered businesswoman like yourself about winning a village competition?"

  "I felt out of place," said Agatha bleakly. "I wanted to make my mark on the village."

  He laughed happily, his eyes closing into slits. "You've done just that. Mrs. Cummings-Browne knows now you cheated and so does Fred Griggs, the local bobby, and he's a prize gossip."