Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death

by Beaton, M. C.

  Agatha finished her gin and took her leave. Somehow what Ella had said about the Cummings-Brownes’ marriage made sense. There was no reason for any further investigation. Agatha realized that, deep in her heart, she must have thought Vera Cummings-Browne the murderess all along. This time she really would take Bill Wong’s advice.

  But as she walked back to her own cottage, she saw to her surprise that there was a large FOR SALE notice outside Mrs Barr’s cottage. Mrs Barr saw her coming and stood at her garden gate waiting for her.

  ‘You have driven me away,’ said Mrs Barr. ‘I cannot continue to live next door to a murderess.’

  ‘Fat chance you’ll have of selling it,’ said Agatha. ‘No body’s buying these days, and who the hell is going to want a twee cottage called New Delhi anyway?’

  She marched to her own cottage and went in and slammed the door.

  But Agatha felt bleak. She had poked a stick into the village ponds and stirred up a lot of mucky feelings.

  That evening, before the Carsely Ladies’ Society meeting, she went to the Red Lion for dinner. The landlord, Joe Fletcher, gave her a cheerful good evening and then asked her what all this business about John Cartwright trying to kill her had been. Immediately several of the villagers crowded around to hear the story. Agatha told them everything – about the wire across the road and how Bill Wong had come to her rescue and how the police had found the money from the robbery in Cartwright’s house – while they all pressed closer, occasionally making sure her glass was refilled. ‘I gather his last crime was in Essex,’ said Agatha. ‘Does that mean he wasn’t from here?’

  ‘Born and brought up here,’ said a large farmer called Jimmy Page. ‘Decent people, his folks were. Lived down the council houses. Died a whiles back. Couldn’t do a thing with him, not since he was so high. Got Ella in the family way and her father came after him with a shotgun and that’s how they got married. Kept going off to make his fortune, he said, and sometimes he’d come back flush and sometimes he wouldn’t. Bad lot.’

  Agatha realized dimly that she had not eaten but she did not want to leave the bar and the company. She knew also that she was sinking an unusually large amount of gin.

  ‘I see Mrs Barr has put her house up for sale,’ she remarked.

  ‘Oh, aye, her’s been left a bigger cottage over Ancombe way,’ said the farmer. ‘Aunt of hers died.’

  ‘What!’ Agatha stared. ‘She let me believe it was to get away from me.’

  ‘Wouldn’t pay no heed to her,’ said Farmer Page comfortably. A small man popped his head over Mr Page’s beefy shoulder. ‘Her hasn’t been the same since that play.’ His voice rose to a falsetto. ‘“Oh, Reg, Reg, kiss me.”’

  ‘That be enough now, Billy,’ admonished another man. ‘We all makes a fool o’ ourself sometime or t’other. No cause to throw stones. Turning into a scorcher of a summer, ain’t it?’

  In vain did Agatha try to find out about Mrs Barr. Gossip was over for the night. Farming and the weather were the subjects allowed. The old grandfather clock in the corner of the pub gave a small apologetic cough and then chimed out the hour.

  ‘Goodness!’ Agatha scrambled down from the bar stool. ‘I’m late.’

  She felt very tipsy as she hurried to the vicarage. ‘You’re not terribly late,’ whispered Mrs Bloxby after she had opened the door to her. ‘Miss Simms has just finished reading the minutes.’

  Agatha accepted a cup of tea and two dainty sandwiches and sat down as near to the rest of the eats as she could get.

  ‘Now,’ said Mrs Mason, ‘our guest of the evening, Mr Jones.’

  Polite applause while Mr Jones set up a screen and a slide projector. He was a small spry man with white hair and horn-rimmed glasses.

  ‘For my first slide,’ he said, ‘here is Bailey’s grocery store in the 1920s.’ A picture, at first fuzzy, came into focus: a store with striped awnings, and grinning villagers standing in front of it. Delighted cries from the older members. ‘Reckon that’s Mrs Bloggs; you see that liddle girl standing to the right?’

  Agatha stifled a yawn and slowly reached out in the gloom for a hefty slice of plum cake. She felt sleepy and bored. All the frights of the past few weeks which had kept her adrenalin flowing had faded away. The attacks on her had been made by a burglar who was now on the run. Maria Borrow was a crazy old fright. Barbara James was a pain in the neck. Something nasty had happened in the wood-shed of Mrs Barr’s past. Who gave a damn? And what was she, the high-powered Agatha Raisin, doing sitting in a vicarage eating plum cake and being bored to death?

  Slide followed slide. Even when photos of ‘our village prize-winners’ jerked on to the screen, Agatha remained in a stupor of boredom. There was Ella Cartwright being presented with a ten-pound note by Reg Cummings-Browne, looking as long dead as the old photos of villagers she had already seen. Then Vera Cummings-Browne getting a prize for flower arranging, then Mrs Bloxby getting a prize for jam. Mrs Bloxby? Agatha looked at the photo of the vicar’s wife standing with Reg Cummings-Browne and then relapsed back into her torpor. Mrs Bloxby? Not in a hundred years!

  And then she fell asleep and in her dreams she cycled down into Carsely in the fading light and standing in the middle of the road waiting for her and brandishing a double-barrelled shotgun was Mrs Barr. Agatha awoke with a shriek of fear and found the slide show was over and everyone was looking at her.

  ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Miss Simms, who was next to her. ‘It was that nasty fright you had.’

  When Agatha made her way homeward, she decided to get some sort of alarm system installed the very next day and then wondered why. Somewhere at the back of her mind, she had decided to leave the village.

  The next day, she phoned a security firm and placed an order for their best of everything in the way of burglar-proofing and then went around opening the doors and the windows to try to get a breath of cool air. The heat was building up. Before, when it had been fine, the days had been sunny and the nights cool, but now the sky burnt blue, deep blue above the twisted cottage chimneys and the sun beat down. By lunch-time, the heat was fierce. She took a small thermometer outside and watched as it shot up over the 100 degrees Fahrenheit mark and disappeared. Mrs Simpson was vacuuming busily upstairs, having changed her cleaning day to fit in a dentist’s appointment. Agatha remembered the talk about Mrs Barr and climbed the stairs. ‘Can I have a word with you?’ she shouted over the noise of the vacuum. Mrs Simpson reluctantly turned the machine off. She was proud of doing a good job and felt she had already wasted too much time earlier hearing Agatha’s adventures.

  ‘I was asking in the pub last night why Mrs Barr was selling up and I heard an aunt had died and left her a larger cottage over Ancombe way.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’ Doris Simpson’s hand hovered longingly over the vacuum switch.

  ‘Why don’t you come down to the kitchen and have a cup of coffee, Doris?’

  ‘Got too much to do, Agatha.’

  ‘Skip for once. I’m still getting over my fright and I want to talk,’ said Agatha firmly.

  ‘I meant to clean the windows.’

  ‘It’s too hot. I’ll hire a window cleaner. Doris!’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ said Doris ungraciously.

  Would anyone in this day and age believe you had to beg a cleaner to leave her work? marvelled Agatha.

  Once in the kitchen and with coffee poured, Agatha said, ‘Now tell me about Mrs Barr.’

  ‘What’s to tell?’

  ‘Someone in the pub said something about her having disgraced herself and then said in a high voice as if imitating her, “Reg, Reg, kiss me.” ’

  ‘Oh, that!’

  ‘Oh, what, Doris? I’m dying of curiosity.’

  ‘Curiosity killed the cat,’ said Doris sententiously. ‘Well, there was this young chap over at Campden and he wrote a play, sort of old-fashioned type thing it were, you know, where they has long cigarette holders and talks like them ol
d British war films. He was a protégé of Vera Cummings-Browne. Anyway, Mrs Cummings-Browne said she would get the dramatic society to put it on. Two of the parts were about a middle-aged couple remembering the passion of their youth, or that’s how the programme put it. This was played by Mrs Barr and Mr Cummings-Browne. Dead boring that whole play was. Anyway, they were supposed to be on a liner and there they was sat, in deck chairs and with travel rugs over their knees saying things like, “Remember India, darling?”’

  ‘Sort of fake Noel Coward?’

  ‘I s’pose. I wouldn’t know. Anyways, Mrs Barr suddenly turns to him and says, “Reg, Reg, kiss me.” Well, that waren’t in the scrip’ and what’s more, the character Mr Cummings-Browne was playing was called Ralph. He muttered something and she threw herself at him, his deck chair went over, and we all cheered and laughed, thinking it was the first funny thing that evening, but the playwright screamed awful words and tried to climb up on the stage and Mrs Cummings-Browne closed the curtains. We could hear the most awful row going on backstage and then Mrs Cummings-Browne came out in front of the curtains and said the rest of the play was cancelled.’

  ‘So Mrs Barr must have been having an affair with Cummings-Browne!’

  ‘You know, I often wonder if that one did more than have a bit of a kiss and cuddle. I mean, take Ella Cartwright; for all she looks like a slut, all she really cares about is getting money for the bingo. Now can I go back to work?’

  The security firm arrived and Agatha paid over a staggering sum and then they began to fit lights and alarms and pressure pads.

  ‘Going to be like Fort Knox here,’ grumbled Doris.

  Agatha went out and sat in the garden to get away from the workmen, but the sun was too fierce. The air of the Cotswolds is very heavy and on that day the sun seemed to have burnt all the oxygen out of it. She felt as isolated as if she were on a desert island, even with Doris working away and men bustling about fixing the alarm system. She moved her chair into a patch of shade. She would not make any rash decisions. She would see how quickly Mrs Barr sold her house and try to find out how much she got for it. If the sale was a healthy one, then she would put her own cottage on the market. She would move back to London and start all over again in the PR business. She would try to lure Roy away from Pedmans. He was shaping up nicely.

  Although the news bulletins said the tar was melting on the streets of London under the heat, she saw it under rainy skies with the pavements glistening in the wet, reflecting the colours of the goods in the shop windows. She had become used to the international population of London, to the different-coloured faces, to the exotic restaurants. Here she was surrounded by Anglo-Saxon faces and Anglo-Saxon ways. The scandal of John Cartwright was over, she knew that. Already plans were being made for the annual village band concert, money to Famine Relief this time. Apart from sending money off to the distressed of the outside world, the villagers were not much concerned with anything that went on which disturbed the slow, easy tenor of their days. Suffocating! That’s what it was. Suffocating, thought Agatha, striking the arm of her chair.

  ‘Someone to see you,’ called one of the workmen.

  Agatha went into the house. Bill Wong was standing at the front door. ‘Come in,’ called Agatha. ‘Have they caught him?’

  ‘Not yet. See you’re getting every security system going.’

  ‘They’ve started, so they may as well finish,’ said Agatha. ‘Let’s hope it adds to the price of the house, for I mean to leave.’

  He followed her into the kitchen and sat down. ‘Leave? Why? Anyone else been trying to murder you?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Agatha sat down opposite him. ‘I’m bored.’

  ‘Some would think you were leading a very exciting life in the country.’

  ‘I don’t fit in here,’ said Agatha. ‘I mean to go back to London and start in business again.’

  His almond-shaped eyes studied her without expression. Then he said, ‘You know, you haven’t given it much time. It takes about two years to settle in anywhere. Besides, you’re a different person. Less prickly, less insensitive.’

  Agatha sniffed. ‘Weak, you mean. No, nothing will change my mind now. Why are you here?’

  ‘Just to ask after your health.’ He fished in the pocket of the jacket which he had been carrying over his arm when he arrived and which was now on the back of the chair. He produced a jar of home-made jam. ‘It’s my mother’s,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Thought you might like some. Strawberry.’

  ‘Oh, how lovely,’ said Agatha. ‘I’ll take it up to London with me.’

  ‘You’re surely not leaving right away!’

  ‘No, but I thought while you were talking that it would do me good to take a short holiday from Carsely – book into some hotel in London.’

  ‘How long for?’

  ‘I don’t know. Probably a week.’

  ‘So this means your life as an amateur detective is over.’

  ‘It never really got started,’ said Agatha. ‘I thought the fuss I was causing was because there was a murderer in the village. But all I was doing was riling people up.’

  Bill studied her for a few moments and then said, ‘Perhaps you might find you have changed. Perhaps you will find London doesn’t suit you any more.’

  ‘Now, that I very much doubt,’ laughed Agatha. ‘I tell you what I’ll do when I get back. I’ll invite you for dinner.’ She looked at him, suddenly shy. ‘That is, if you want to come.’

  ‘I’d like that . . . provided it isn’t quiche.’

  After he had gone, Agatha paid Doris Simpson and told her she would be away the following week but gave her a spare key and got the head workman to instruct both of them in the mysterious working of the burglar alarms. Then she phoned up a small but expensive London hotel and booked herself in for a week. She was lucky they had just received a cancellation, and as it was, she had to reserve a double room.

  Then she began to pack. The evening brought little respite from the heat and a good deal of nuisance. The news that all the lights outside Agatha’s cottage went on when anyone passed on the road quickly spread amongst the village children, who ran up and down with happy swooping screams like giant swallows until the local policeman turned up to drive them away.

  Agatha went along to the Red Lion. ‘We all need air-conditioning,’ she said to the landlord.

  ‘Happen you’re right,’ he said, ‘but what’s the point of the expense? Won’t see another summer like this in England for years. Fact is, maybe we’ll get a bad winter. Old Sam Sturret was just in here and he was saying how the winter’s going to be mortal bad. We’ll be snowed up for weeks, he says.’

  ‘Don’t the snow-ploughs come around?’

  ‘Not from the council, they don’t, Mrs Raisin m’dear. Us relies on the farmers with their tractors to try to keep the roads clear.’

  Agatha was about to protest that considering what they paid in council tax, they ought to have proper gritting and salting lorries, not to mention council snow-ploughs, and was about to say she would get up a petition to hand in to the council when she remembered she would probably be living in London by the winter.

  One by one, the locals began to drift into the pub. The landlord told them all he had put out tables in the garden and so they moved out there and Agatha was asked to join them. One man had brought along an accordion and he began to play and soon more villagers came in, drawn by the sound of the music, and then all began to sing along. Agatha was surprised, when the last orders were called, to realize she had been out in the pub garden all evening.

  As she walked home, she felt muddled. That very afternoon, the burning ambition she had lived with so long had returned in full force and she had felt her old self again. Now she began to wonder whether she wanted to be her old self again. Her old self didn’t sit singing in pubs or, she thought as she saw Mrs Bloxby outside her cottage door under the glare of the new security lights, get visits from the vicar’s wife.

  ‘I heard you
were leaving for London tomorrow,’ said Mrs Bloxby, ‘and came to say goodbye.’

  ‘Who told you?’ asked Agatha, unlocking her front door.

  ‘That nice young detective constable, Bill Wong.’

  ‘He always seems to be about. Doesn’t he have any work to do in Mircester?’

  ‘Oh, he often calls round the villages,’ said Mrs Bloxby vaguely. ‘He also said something very distressing – about you leaving us for good.’

  ‘Yes, I plan to go back into business. I should never have retired so early.’

  ‘Well, that’s a great pity for Carsely. We planned to make more use of your organizing skills. You will be back by next Saturday afternoon?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Agatha, when they were both seated in the living-room. ‘Why next Saturday afternoon?’

  ‘That’s the day of the village band concert. Mrs Mason is doing the cream teas. Quite an event.’

  Agatha gave her a rather pitying smile, thinking that it was a sad life if all you had to look forward to was a concert by the village band.

  They talked for a little longer and then Mrs Bloxby left. Agatha packed a suitcase, carefully putting the pot of strawberry jam in one corner. She lay awake for a long time with the bedroom windows wide open, hoping for a breath of air, but buoyed up by the thought of London and a return from the grave that was Carsely.

  Chapter Ten

  London! And how it smelt! Awful, thought Agatha, sitting in the dining-room of Haynes Hotel. She lit a cigarette and stared bleakly out at the traffic grinding past through Mayfair.

  The man at the table behind her began to cough and choke and flap his newspaper angrily. Agatha looked at her burning cigarette and sighed. Then she raised a hand and summoned the waiter. ‘Remove that man from the table behind me,’ she said, ‘and find him somewhere else. He’s annoying me.’

  The waiter looked from the man’s angry face to Agatha’s pugnacious one and then bent over the man and said soothingly that there was a nice table in the corner away from the smoke. The man protested loudly. Agatha continued to smoke, ignoring the whole scene, until the angry man capitulated and was led away.