Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death

by Beaton, M. C.

  Even Roy grew weary of his friend’s monologue and cut across it, saying, ‘What’s all this about you being involved in a death, Aggie?’

  ‘It was an awful mistake,’ said Agatha. ‘I entered a spinach quiche in a village competition. One of the judges ate it and died of poisoning.’

  Roy’s eyes filled with laughter. ‘You never could cook, Aggie dear.’

  ‘It wasn’t my cooking,’ protested Agatha. ‘I bought a quiche from The Quicherie in Chelsea and entered that.’

  Steve looked at her solemnly. ‘But surely in these sort of home-baking competitions you’re supposed to cook the thing yourself?’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  ‘But she was trying to pull a fast one as usual,’ crowed Roy. ‘Who was the judge and what did he die of?’

  ‘Mr Cummings-Browne. Cowbane poisoning.’

  ‘Struck down by a bane of cows? What is it? One of those peculiar agricultural diseases like swine fever or violet-root rot?’

  ‘No, cowbane is a plant. It must have got mixed up in the spinach that Mr Economides of the deli used.’

  Steve put down his fork and looked gravely at Agatha. ‘So you murdered him.’

  Roy screeched with laughter. He kicked his heels in the air, fell off the chair and rolled around the dining-room carpet, holding his stomach. The other diners studied him with the polite frozen smiles the English use for threatening behaviour.

  ‘Oh, Aggie,’ wheezed Roy when his friend had picked up his chair and thrust him back into it, ‘you are a one.’

  Patiently Agatha explained the whole sorry business. It had been a sad accident.

  ‘What do they think about you in the village?’ asked Roy, mopping his streaming eyes. ‘Are they calling you the Borgia of the Cotswolds?’

  ‘It’s hard to know what they think,’ said Agatha. ‘But I had better sell up. The whole move to Carsely was a terrible mistake.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Steve. He carefully extracted a piece of lobster and popped it in his mouth. ‘Where does this cowbane grow?’

  ‘In the West Midlands, and this, as the police pointed out, is the West Midlands.’

  Steve frowned. ‘Does it grow in farms among the regular vegetables?’

  Agatha searched her memory for what she had read about cowbane in the book in Foyle’s. ‘It grows in marshy places.’

  ‘I’ve heard the Cotswolds are famous for asparagus and strawberries . . . oh, and plums and things like that,’ said Steve. ‘I read up on it. But not spinach. And how could a marshy plant get in among a field of spinach?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Agatha, ‘but as I recall, it grows in other parts of the British Isles as well. I mean, the stuff at Nine Elms comes from abroad and all over the place in Britain.’

  Steve shook his head slowly, his mouth open as he contemplated another piece of lobster. ‘Are you wondering if there’s an aargh in the month?’ demanded Roy. ‘You look like one of those faces at the fairground where you’ve to try and toss a ball into the mouth.’

  ‘It just doesn’t happen,’ said Steve.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, look here. A field of spinach is harvested. For some reason a marshy plant gets caught up with the spinach. Right? So how come no one else dropped dead? How come it all got into one spinach quiche? Just the one. Surely a bit of it would have got into another quiche. Surely another one of this Economides’s customers would bite the dust.’

  ‘Oh, the police will have looked into all that,’ said Roy a trifle testily. He felt Steve was taking up too much of the conversation.

  Steve shook his head slowly from side to side.

  ‘Look,’ said Agatha. ‘Be sensible. Who was to know I would walk off in a huff and leave that quiche? Who would even know that the Cummings-Brownes would take it home? The vicar could have taken it and given it to some old-age pensioner. Lord Pendlebury could have taken it.’

  ‘When did you take your quiche to the competition?’ asked Steve.

  ‘The night before,’ said Agatha.

  ‘So it was just lying there all night, unattended, in this hall? Someone could have baked another quiche with cowbane in it and substituted it for Agatha’s quiche.’

  ‘We’re back to motive,’ said Agatha. ‘So say someone substituted a poisoned quiche for mine. Who was to know Cummings-Browne would take it? I didn’t even know I was going to walk off and leave it until the last minute.’

  ‘But it could have been meant for you,’ said Steve. ‘Don’t you see? Even if you had won that competition, only a little slice was taken out for the judging, and then you would have taken the rest home.’ He leaned forward. ‘Who hates you enough?’

  Agatha thought uneasily of Mrs Barr and then shrugged. ‘This is ridiculous. Do you read Agatha Christie?’

  ‘All the time,’ said Steve.

  ‘Well, so do I, but delightful as those detective stories are, believe me, murders are usually sudden and violent and take place in cities, some drunken lout of a husband bashing his wife to death. Don’t you see, I would like it to be murder.’

  ‘Yes, I can see that,’ said Steve, ‘because you have been exposed as a cheat.’

  ‘Here, wait a minute –’

  ‘But it all looks very odd.’

  Agatha fell silent. If only she had never tried to win that stupid competition.

  Again a feeling of loneliness assailed her as she paid the bill and ushered her guests out into the night. She had a whole weekend in front of her entertaining this precious pair, and yet their very presence emphasized her loneliness. Roy had no real affection for her of any kind. His friend had wanted to see rural England and so he was using her.

  Roy pranced around the cottage, looking at everything. ‘Very cute, Aggie,’ was his verdict. ‘Fake horse brasses! Tch! Tch! And all that farm machinery.’

  ‘Well, what would you have?’ said Agatha crossly.

  ‘I dunno, sweetie. Looks like a stage set. Nothing of Aggie here.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s understandable,’ said Steve. ‘There are people who do not have personalities that transfer to interior decorating. You need to be a homebody.’

  ‘You can go off people, you know,’ commented Agatha waspishly. ‘Off to bed with both of you. I’m tired. The village festivities don’t begin until noon, so you can have a long lie-in.’

  The next morning Roy took over the cooking when he found Agatha was about to microwave the sausages for breakfast. He whistled happily as he went about the preparations and Agatha told him he would make someone a good wife. ‘More than you would, Aggie,’ he said cheerfully. ‘It’s a wonder your health hasn’t crumbled under a weight of microwaved curries.’

  Steve came down wrapped in a dressing-gown, gold and blue stripes and with the badge of a cricket club on the pocket. ‘He got it at a stall in one of the markets,’ said Roy. ‘Don’t bother talking to him, Aggie. He doesn’t really wake up until he’s had a jug of coffee.’

  Agatha read through the morning papers, turning the pages rapidly to see if there was anything further about the quiche poisoning, but there wasn’t a word.

  The morning passed amicably if silently and then they went out to the main street, Roy doing cartwheels down the lane past Mrs Barr’s cottage. Agatha saw the lace curtains twitch.

  Steve took out a large notebook and began to write down all about the festivities, which started off with the crowning of the May Queen, a small pretty schoolgirl with a slimly old-fashioned figure. In fact all the schoolchildren looked like illustrations in some long-forgotten book with their innocent faces and underdeveloped figures. Agatha was used to seeing schoolgirls with busts and backsides. The Queen was drawn by the morris men in their flowered top hats, the bells at their knees jingling. Roy was disappointed in the morris dancers, possibly because, despite the flowered hats, they looked like a boozy rugby team and were led by a white-haired man who struck various members of the audience with a pig’s bladder. ‘Supposed to make you fertile,’ said Steve po
nderously and Roy shrieked with laughter and Agatha felt thoroughly ashamed of him.

  They wandered around the stalls set up in the main street. Every one seemed to be selling wares in support of some charity or other. Agatha winced away from the home-baking stand. Roy won a tin of sardines at the tombola and got so carried away, he bought ticket after ticket until he managed to win a bottle of Scotch. There was a game of skittles which they all tried, a rendering of numbers from musicals by the village band, and then the morris dancers again, leaping up into the sunny air, accompanied by fiddle and accordion. ‘Don’t you know you are living in an anachronism?’ said Steve ponderously, scribbling away in his notebook.

  Roy wanted to try his luck at the tombola again and he and Steve went off. Agatha flicked through a pile of second-hand books on a stall and then looked sharply at the woman behind the stall. Mrs Cartwright!

  She was, as Agatha had already noticed, a gypsy-looking woman, swarthy-skinned among all the pink-and-white complexions of the villagers. Her rough hair hung down her back and her strong arms were folded across her generous bosom.

  ‘Mrs Cartwright?’ said Agatha tentatively.

  The woman’s dark eyes focused on her. ‘Oh, you be Mrs Raisin,’ she said. ‘Bad business about the quiche.’

  ‘I can’t understand it,’ said Agatha. ‘I shouldn’t have bought it, but on the other hand, how on earth would cowbane get into a London quiche?’

  ‘London is full of bad things,’ said Mrs Cartwright, straightening a few paperbacks that had tumbled over.

  ‘Well, the result is that I will have to sell up,’ said Agatha. ‘I can’t stay here after what happened.’

  ‘’Twas an accident,’ said Mrs Cartwright placidly. ‘Reckon you can’t go running off after an accident. Besides, I was ever so pleased a London lady should think she had to buy one to compete with me.’

  Agatha gave her an oily smile. ‘I did hear you were the best baker in the Cotswolds. Look, I would really like to talk about it. May I call on you?’

  ‘Any time you like,’ said Mrs Cartwright lazily. ‘Judd’s cottage, beyond the Red Lion on the old Station Road.’

  Roy came prancing up and Agatha moved on quickly, afraid that Roy’s chattering and posturing might put Mrs Cartwright off. Agatha began to feel better. Mrs Cartwright hadn’t accused her of cheating, nor had she been nasty.

  But then, after Steve and Roy had rejoined her and as they were leaving the May Day Fair, they came face to face with Mrs Barr. She stopped in front of Agatha, her eyes blazing. ‘I am surprised you have the nerve to show your face in the daylight,’ she said.

  ‘What’s got your knickers in a twist, sweetie?’ asked Roy.

  ‘This woman’ – Mrs Barr bobbed her head in Agatha’s direction – ‘caused the death of one of our most respected villagers by poisoning him.’

  ‘It was an accident,’ said Roy, before Agatha could speak. ‘Bugger off, you old fright. Come on, Aggie.’

  Mrs Barr stood opening and shutting her mouth in silent outrage as Roy propelled Agatha past her.

  ‘Miserable old cow,’ said Roy as they turned into Lilac Lane. ‘What got up her nose?’

  ‘I lured her cleaning woman away.’

  ‘Oh, that’s a capital crime. Murder has been committed for less. Take us to Bourton-on-the-Water, Aggie. Steve wants to see it and we don’t need to eat yet after that enormous breakfast.’

  Agatha, although she still felt shaken by Mrs Barr, patiently got out the car. ‘Stow-on-the-Wold,’ screamed Roy a quarter of an hour later as Agatha was about to bypass that village. ‘We must see it.’ So Agatha turned round and went into the main square, thrusting her car head first into the one remaining parking place, which a family car had been just about to reverse into.

  She had never seen so many morris dancers. They seemed to be all over the place and of a more energetic type than the ones in Carsely as they waved their handkerchiefs and leaped in the air like so many Nijinskys.

  ‘I think,’ said Roy, ‘that if you’ve seen one lot of morris dancers, you’ve seen the lot. Put away your notebook, Steve, for God’s sake.’

  ‘It is all very interesting,’ said Steve. ‘Some say that morris dancing was originally Moorish dancing. What do you think?’

  ‘I think . . . yawn, yawn, yawn,’ said Roy pettishly. ‘Let’s go and sample the cosmopolitan delights of Bourton-on-the-Water.’

  Bourton-on-the-Water is certainly one of the prettiest villages in the Cotswolds, with a glassy stream running through the centre under stone bridges. The trouble is that it is a famous beauty spot and always full of tourists. That May Day they were out in force and Agatha thought longingly of the peaceful streets of London. There were tourists everywhere: large family parties, sticky crying children, busloads of pensioners from Wales, muscle-bound men with tattoos from Birmingham, young Lolitas in white slit skirts and white high-heeled shoes, tottering along, eating ice cream and giggling at everything in sight. Steve wanted to see all that was on offer, from the art galleries to the museums, which depressed Agatha, because a lot of the village museum displays were items from her youth and she felt only really old things should go into museums. Then there was the motor museum, also jammed with tourists, and then, unfortunately, someone had told Steve about Birdland at the end of the village and so they had to go there, and stare at the birds and admire the penguins. Agatha had often wondered what it would be like to live in Hong Kong or Tokyo. Now she knew. People everywhere. People eating everywhere: ice cream, chocolate bars, hamburgers, chips, munch, munch, munch went all those jaws. They seemed to enjoy being in such a crowd, except the many small children who were getting tired and bawled lustily, dragged along by indifferent parents.

  The air was turning chilly when Steve with a sigh of pleasure at last closed his notebook. He looked at his watch. ‘It’s only half-past three,’ he said. ‘We can make it to Stratford-on-Avon. I must see Shakespeare’s birthplace.’

  Agatha groaned inwardly. Not so long ago Agatha Raisin would have told him to forget it, that she was bored and tired, but the thought of Carsely and Mrs Barr made her meekly walk with them to the car-park and set out for Stratford.

  She parked in the multi-storey Birthplace Car-Park and plunged into the crowds of Stratford with Roy and Steve. So many, many people, all nationalities this time. They shuffled along with the crowds through Shakespeare’s home, a strangely soulless place, thought Agatha again. It had been so restored, so sanitized that she could not help feeling that some of the old pubs in the Cotswolds had more of an air of antiquity.

  Then down to look at the River Avon. Then a search by Steve for tickets to the evening’s showing of King Lear by the Royal Shakespeare Company which, to Agatha’s dismay, he managed to get.

  In the darkness of the theatre with her stomach rumbling, for she had had nothing to eat since breakfast, Agatha’s mind turned back to the . . . murder? It would surely do no harm to find out a little more about Mr Cummings-Browne. Then Mrs Simpson had found the body. How had Mrs Cummings-Browne reacted? The first act passed unheeded before Agatha’s eyes. Two large gins at the interval made her feel quite tipsy. Once more, she imagined solving the case and earning the respect of the villagers. By the last act, she was fast asleep and all the glory of Shakespeare fell on her deaf ears.

  It was only as they were walking out – crowds, more crowds – that Agatha realized she had nothing at home for them to eat and it was too late to find a restaurant. But Steve, who had, at one point of the day, been lugging a carrier bag, said he planned to cook them dinner and had bought fresh trout at Birdland.

  ‘You really ought to dig in your heels and stay here,’ said Roy, as he got out of the car in front of Agatha’s cottage. ‘No people. Quiet. Calm. You’re lucky you don’t live in a tourist village. Do any tourists come at all?’

  ‘The Red Lion’s got rooms, I believe,’ said Agatha. ‘A few let out their cottages. But not many come.’

  ‘Let’s have a drink while Steve does
the cooking,’ said Roy. He looked around Agatha’s living-room. ‘If I were you, I would junk all those cutesy mugs and fake horse brasses and farm machinery, and get some paintings and bowls of flowers. It’s not the thing to have a fire-basket, particularly a fake medieval one. You’re supposed to burn the logs on the stone hearth.’

  ‘I dig my heels in over the fire-basket,’ said Agatha, ‘but I might get rid of the other stuff.’ She thought, They collect a lot for charity in this village. I could load up the car with the stuff on Tuesday and take it along to the vicarage. Ingratiate myself a bit there.

  Dinner was excellent. I must learn to cook, thought Agatha. I’ve got little else to do. Steve opened his notebook. ‘Tomorrow, if you do not think it too much, Agatha, I would like to visit Warwick Castle.’

  Agatha groaned. ‘Warwick Castle’s like Bourton-on-the Water, wall-to-wall tourists from one year’s end to the other.’

  ‘But it says here,’ said Steve, fishing out a guidebook, ‘that it is one of the finest medieval castles in England.’

  ‘Well, I suppose that’s true but –’

  ‘I would very much like to go.’

  ‘All right! But be prepared for an early start. See if we can get in there before the crowds.’

  Warwick Castle is a tourist’s dream. It has everything from battlements and towers to a torture chamber and dungeon. It has rooms peopled by Madame Tussaud’s waxworks depicting a Victorian house party. It has signs in the drive saying: DRIVE SLOWLY, PEACOCKS CROSSING. It has a rose garden and a peacock garden. It takes a considerable amount of time to see everything and Steve wanted to see everything. With unflagging energy and interest, he climbed up the towers and along the battlements and down to the dungeons. Oblivious to the tourists crowding behind, he lingered in the state rooms, writing busily in his notebook. ‘Are you going to write about all this?’ asked Agatha impatiently.