Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death

by Beaton, M. C.

  Imagine living in London and complaining about cigarette smoke, marvelled Agatha. One had only to walk down the streets to inhale the equivalent of four packs of cigarettes.

  She finished her coffee and cigarette and went up to her room, already suffocatingly hot, and phoned Pedmans and asked for Roy.

  At last she was put through to him. ‘Aggie,’ he cried. ‘How are things in the Cotswolds?’

  ‘Hellish,’ said Agatha. ‘I need to talk to you. What about lunch?’

  ‘Lunch is booked. Dinner?’

  ‘Fine. I’m at Haynes. See you at seven thirty in the bar.’

  She put down the phone and looked around. Muslin curtains fluttered at the window, effectively cutting off what oxygen was left in the air. She should have gone to the Hilton or somewhere American, where they had air-conditioning. Haynes was small and old-fashioned, like a country house trapped in the middle of Mayfair. The service was excellent. But it was a very English hotel and very English hotels never planned on a hot summer.

  She decided, for want of anything better to do, to go over to The Quicherie and see Mr Economides. The traffic was congested as usual and there wasn’t a taxi in sight, so she walked from Mayfair along through Knightsbridge to Sloane Street, down Sloane Street to Sloane Square, and so along the King’s Road to the World’s End.

  Mr Economides gave her a guarded greeting, but Agatha had come to expect friendship and set herself to please in a way that was formerly foreign to her. The shop was quiet and relatively cool. It was the slack part of the day. Soon the lunch-time rush of customers would build up, buying coffee and sandwiches to take back to their offices. Agatha asked about Mr Economides’s wife and family and he began to relax perceptibly and then asked her to take a seat at one of the little marble-topped tables while he brought her a coffee.

  ‘I really should apologize for having brought all that trouble down on your head,’ said Agatha. ‘If I hadn’t decided to cheat at that village competition by passing one of your delicious quiches off as my own, this would never have happened.’

  At that moment, for some reason, the full shock of the attack on her by John Cartwright suddenly hit her and her eyes shone with tears.

  ‘Now, then, Mrs Raisin,’ said Mr Economides. ‘I’ll tell you a little secret. I cheat, too.’

  Agatha dabbed at her eyes. ‘You? How?’

  ‘You see, I have a sign up there saying “Baked on the Premises”, but I often visit my cousin in Devon at the weekends. He has a delicatessen just like mine. Well, you see, sometimes if I’m going to be back late on a Sunday night after visiting him and I don’t want to start baking early on Monday, I bring a big box of my cousin’s quiches back with me if he has any left over. He does the same if he’s visiting me, for his trade, unlike mine, is at the weekends with the tourists, while mine is during the week with the office people. So it was one of my cousin’s quiches you bought.’

  ‘Did you tell the police this?’ asked Agatha.

  The Greek looked horrified. ‘I didn’t want to put the police on to 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 fiancé 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 a conventional haircut and a sober business suit and an imitation of a Guards 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 seriously 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 any more. 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 Cartw
right 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 behaviour, 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. 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 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 dustbin 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 fuelled her for so long seemed to be draining away. After she had said goodbye to Roy, she went out and walked restlessly about the nighttime 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 boat trip down the Thames, and went to theatres 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 carpark 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 A40 bypass to Burford, up over the hills to Stow-on-the-Wold, along to the A44 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 £400,000 and was very pleased with the offer she had received.

  ‘I want £450,000 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 m
y 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 on to 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.