Before the light faded, she took a last look around the garden. She shivered in the sudden chill as the large red sun sank down behind the Cotswold hills. She glared up at the sky. There couldn’t be frost, could there? Agatha, like most of the British public, swore that the meteorologists were often wrong, forgetting all the times they were right.
She stood there until the sun had disappeared, taking the light from the garden, bleaching the green from the plants. It was all so very still and quiet. A dog barked somewhere up on the fields above, its sudden noise intensifying the silence that followed.
Agatha shook her head like a baffled bull. It was nearly summer. By frost they had meant a little nip in the air, not that nasty white stuff which blanketed the Cotswolds in winter.
She went indoors, determined to watch some television and have an early night. She would set the alarm for six in the morning and would no doubt awake to a warm day.
When the alarm went off at six, shrill and imperative, she looked at it blearily, her first thought being that she had to get to the airport, which had been the case the last time she had set the alarm for six. Then memory came back. She threw back the duvet, went to the window, which overlooked the garden, took a deep breath and pulled back the curtains.
White! Everywhere. Thick white frost under the pale dawn sky. Her eyes fell slowly to the plants. Surely they would have survived. She would not fret. She would get back into bed and wait for the sun to rise and then everything would be all right. And, despite her worry, she did fall asleep and did not awake until nine. She determinedly avoided looking out of the window. She showered and dressed in the old skirt and blouse she used for gardening and then she went downstairs and marched out into the garden. The sun was blazing, the frost was melting, and it was melting to reveal each pathetic little shrivelled and blackened plant that she had so lovingly placed in the earth the day before.
She wanted someone to turn to for help. But who? She didn’t want her failure spread all over the village. James certainly wouldn’t tell anyone but he would tell her she ought to have listened to Mary, and Agatha felt she couldn’t bear that.
And then she thought of Roy Silver. She went indoors and rang his London number.
Roy was off work because it was a bank holiday. He complained Agatha’s call had dragged him out of bed.
‘Listen,’ snapped Agatha, cutting across his complaints. She told him about the frost and how she had refused to take advice. ‘And now,’ she wailed, ‘I’ll be damned as a failed gardener.’
‘No, no, no, sweetie. It’s no use going on like a sandwich short of a picnic. Cunning is what you need here. Low cunning. You’ve got used to simple village ways. Let me think. You know that nursery chain I handle?’
‘Yes, yes. But I’m surrounded with nurseries down here.’
‘Listen. Keep everyone out of your garden. Can that Lacey chap see into it from next door?’
‘There’s a hedge between us. He would need to hang out of the window and crane his neck.’
‘Good. Now that account Wilson wants you to handle. If I can get you to promise you’ll give him six months of your time, say, starting in September, I’ll be down there with a truck of super-duper fencing.’
‘I’ve got fencing!’
‘You want the high non-see-through type. I’ll come with workmen. We’ll put it up all round the garden, and don’t let anyone out the back. Then, before the big day, I’ll come down with a load of fully grown exotica, stuff it in the good earth, and bingo! You’ll be the talk of the village.’
‘But what about Doris, my cleaner? She’ll find out.’
‘Swear her to secrecy, but no one else.’
‘I could do it,’ said Agatha doubtfully, ‘but six months working for Wilson . . .’
‘Do it. What’s six months?’
A lot when you get to my age, thought Agatha sadly after she had agreed to his plan and put down the phone.
She could not help feeling like a criminal. What did it all matter anyway? But she did so hope to score over Mary.
A ring at her doorbell made her jump guiltily. She opened it cautiously and saw Mrs Bloxby.
‘Did you sleep in?’ asked the vicar’s wife anxiously.
‘No,’ said Agatha. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘You’re supposed to be manning the tombola stand. Is one allowed to say “manning” these days? Does one say womaning or personing? Anyway, Mrs Mason and I have it all set up.’
‘Oh.’ Agatha blushed guiltily. ‘I had forgotten. I’ve got some men coming to put in new fencing.’
Mrs Bloxby looked surprised. ‘As I remember, there is a very good strong pine fence around your garden.’
‘Falling apart in bits,’ lied Agatha. She thought quickly. She could leave a note on the door for Roy saying she was at the tombola stand, and when he came along she could give him the keys. Not that he really needed them. The workmen could get to the back garden along the path at the side of the house.
‘Give me five minutes,’ she said. ‘I’ll follow you along.’
She wrote a note for Roy and pinned it to the door. The May festivities would take all day. On the other hand, if she could do a good sales pitch at the tombola stand, perhaps she could clear it quickly and then she would be free.
The one good thing, she thought as she made her way to the fair, which was taking up the length of the main street, blocked off to traffic for the day, was that practically everyone at the village would be working at or watching the festivities, and so there would be no one around to ask awkward questions about the fencing.
She took her place behind the table, which held a motley collection of prizes. Apart from a bottle of whisky and a bottle of wine presented by the Red Lion, the rest were odds and ends, a can of pilchards, for example, and a bottle of shampoo ‘for brunettes’.
Most of the crowd of locals and tourists were watching the schoolchildren dancing around the maypole. Agatha fretted until the dancing ended in the crowning of the May Queen, a little girl with a sweet old-fashioned face, and then she gave tongue. ‘Roll up! Roll up!’ she shouted. ‘Loads of prizes to be won. Tickets only twenty pee.’
Startled and then amused at such hustling in a quiet village, people began to gather round. Agatha had quickly slipped the tickets for the bottle of wine and the bottle of whisky into her pocket. She knew the sight of them, unwon, would spur the punters on.
‘Oh, you’ve won the can of pilchards,’ she said to elderly Mrs Boggle.
‘So what?’ grumbled Mrs Boggle. ‘I wanted the Scotch.’
‘Lovely for sandwiches, those pilchards,’ said Agatha cheerfully. ‘Try again.’
So Mrs Boggle reluctantly prised a twenty-pence piece out of an ancient purse and handed it over. She won again, this time the shampoo for brunettes. ‘This is a rip-off,’ said Mrs Boggle. ‘I’m grey-haired.’
‘Then that’ll turn you brown and make you look years younger,’ snapped Agatha. ‘Next!’
Mrs Boggle shuffled off. Agatha’s voice rose in pitch. ‘Roll up! Roll up! What have we here? A set of plastic egg-cups. Very useful. Come along. All in a good cause.’
‘Does she usually go on like that?’ Mary Fortune, over at the home-made cake stall, asked Mrs Bloxby.
‘Mrs Raisin is an excellent saleswoman,’ said Mrs Bloxby, ‘and uses her talents to help the village.’
Despite Agatha’s efforts, the day crawled on. Just as she got a crowd of people around the tombola stand, another diversion, such as dancing by the morris men, would take them all away again.
It was late afternoon when Roy popped up at Agatha’s elbow. ‘You’d better come home,’ he said. ‘I’ve got the workmen there and they need to put a padlocked gate on that path to the back garden. See, I thought of everything. And the fencing is sectioned. On the big day they’ll take the top section off.’
‘Oh, Roy, look, I’ll give you the keys. Go along and take care of everything. I can’t move until I’ve shifted this lot.’
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‘No, you’ve got to be there yourself.’
‘Here . . .’ Agatha slipped him a twenty-pound note. ‘Buy all the tickets and let me out of here.’
She quickly slipped the tickets for the whisky and the wine back into the box.
‘Damn, I have to open all these,’ grumbled Roy, opening ticket after ticket. ‘Really, Aggie, plastic egg-cups, a tea-cosy, and a scarf in magenta and sulphur-yellow.’
Finally, before the amused eyes of the spectators, Roy cleared the table and gloomily piled the contents into the box which had held the tickets. Agatha gave the money to a startled Mrs Bloxby, who said, ‘That was quick. And everything gone! A lot of that stuff has turned up year in and year out.’
‘Before we go, Aggie,’ said Roy, leading her back to the now empty tombola table, ‘sign here, or fence and workmen go right back to London.’
He spread a contract out on the table which bound Agatha to Pedmans for six months starting on the first of October.
She hesitated. She could pay Roy for his time and trouble and send the workmen away. But at that moment she heard James’s laugh behind her and turned around. He was chatting to Mary and he had already bought two cakes. Mary was wearing a green-and-white-checked shirt with dark green trousers. Her bright hair gleamed in the sunlight.
Agatha turned away and scrawled her signature on the contract, which Roy seized and stuffed in his pocket. ‘Give that box of stuff back to Mrs Bloxby,’ said Agatha. ‘I don’t suppose you want any of it apart from the booze.’
‘Not a bit of it. It’ll come in handy for Christmas presents. I’ve got a little staff now.’
‘You are conscienceless,’ said Agatha. ‘When you worked for me, what would you have said if I had given you a set of plastic egg-cups for Christmas?’
‘Times are hard.’ Roy picked up the box of junk and held it close. ‘Let’s go.’
‘There’s that young friend of Agatha’s again,’ said James to Mary, turning to watch them as they walked away.
Mary laughed. ‘Quite a goer is our Agatha.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ James’s face was stiff.
‘Oh, come on, James. Get real. I think she’s having a little fling.’
‘Rubbish. Look, I’d better be getting along.’
James marched off but got waylaid by the vicar, who explained he had found a diary in the vicarage which had been kept by one of the villagers during the Napoleonic wars. Agatha temporarily forgotten, James went along to the vicarage in high excitement. Once there, he pored over the diary with a flat feeling of disappointment. The wars may have been raging across Europe, but all this villager had been interested in was the price of everything from wheat to turnips. It was dreary, it was boring, and it was of no use whatsoever, particularly as the prices of everything in England during that period had already been well documented. Still, he thanked the vicar and said he would take it home and study it further.
As he went into his own front garden, he saw a truck with workmen and that Roy Silver driving off from Agatha’s. He wondered for the first time that day if Agatha had been stupid enough to plant out her seedlings. He ran upstairs, opened his bedroom window and leaned out.
He blinked. A great high cedarwood fence had been erected around Agatha’s garden. What on earth was she doing? That fence was so high it would surely block out any sunlight. Curiosity got the better of him and he went next door and rang her bell.
Agatha answered the door and looked flustered when she saw him.
‘That new fence you’ve got,’ said James, ‘will block out all sunlight. What are you doing?’
‘It’s a surprise,’ said Agatha. ‘You’ll see on Open Day. Coffee?’
‘Yes, please.’ He followed her into the kitchen. The blind was down over the kitchen window, so he could not see the garden.
‘Did you plant out your seedlings?’ he asked.
‘No, do it tomorrow,’ said Agatha gruffly.
‘That’s an enormous fence you’ve got at the back. Are you sure the sun is going to reach your plants?’
‘Oh, yes, don’t let’s talk about gardening. I’m bored with the subject.’
‘Is that why you left the pub without saying goodbye?’
Agatha opened her mouth to say crossly that she did not think her going would be noticed, particularly by him, but a new wisdom made her say instead, ‘I just remembered I had forgotten to feed the cats. By the way, I’ll be leaving the village for a bit in the autumn.’
‘Why?’
‘Pedmans, that firm I sold out to, have coaxed me back for six months. May as well make some money.’
He looked surprised. ‘I thought you had put all that life behind you.’ His eyes sparkled. ‘I know what it is. There isn’t any gory murder to keep you occupied.’
‘I’m used to being busy, and there’s not much for me here.’
There was something a trifle lost and wistful at the back of Agatha’s small eyes which made him say, ‘That was rather a disastrous dinner we had. What about another one? There’s a new restaurant just off the Evesham road, just outside Evesham. What about trying it?’
The old Agatha would have gushed. The new Agatha said quietly, ‘That would be nice. When?’
‘What about tonight?’
‘Lovely.’
‘Good. I’ll call for you at seven. I’ve got to go now. I promised to see Mary about something.’
But the fact that he was leaving to see Mary could not spoil Agatha’s sunny mood for the rest of the day. By evening, she was in a high state of excitement. When the phone rang at ten minutes to seven, she looked at it in irritation and then decided not to answer it. Nothing was going to stop her walking out of that door with James at seven. The phone rang for quite a long time and then fell silent. Seven came and went while she sat and fidgeted, handbag on her lap.
Then the doorbell went, and with a little sigh of relief, she went to answer it. James Lacey stood there. His face was pale and his eyes glittered feverishly.
‘I’m sorry, Agatha,’ he said. ‘I’ll need to cancel our dinner. I’ve been so ill. I’ve been to the doctor and he is treating me for food poisoning.’
‘Perhaps if you had something to eat you would feel better?’ asked Agatha, willing him to recover.
‘No, no. I just want to go to bed. I feel like hell. Another time.’ And he went off.
Agatha retreated indoors and sat down feeling lost and empty. She had become friends with Mary but now she almost hated her. Mary had entertained James earlier. She had probably slipped him something. Her common sense tried to tell her she was being silly, but her emotions were in a turmoil and she felt she could not bear to have anything to do with Mary again.
Chapter Four
Despite Agatha’s determination not to have anything to do with Mary, a village is a small place and one cannot ignore people the way one can in the city. She could not hold out against Mary’s friendliness, and although James had not repeated his dinner invitation, Agatha felt she no longer had any grounds for silly jealousy.
And then a series of crimes happened, which was to initially draw the villagers together and then drive them apart, as suspicion and fear crept into their normally quiet lives.
Mrs Mason found that her prize dahlias had been uprooted and mangled and stamped into the ground. Mrs Bloxby’s roses had been poisoned by weedkiller, and most of James Lacey’s flowers were no more. Some maniac had doused his garden with petrol and set it alight. And the crimes went on. A nasty hole was dug in Miss Simms’s lawn. Even that old couple, the Boggles, had black paint sprayed on their white rosebush, turning all the roses black. Fred Griggs, the local policeman, tried to cope on his own, but as the list of incidents grew, the CID were called in from Mircester, and so Bill Wong was back at work in Carsely again.
At first, when the crimes against gardens had just started, the Red Lion did a roaring trade, as the customers gathered together to discuss the events, all deciding that hooligans from Birmin
gham had been descending on the village during the night and spitefully wrecking the gardens. Groups of villagers patrolled the streets at night armed with shotguns. There was a wartime feeling of a community working together against a common evil. It was Mrs Boggle, crouched over a pint in the Red Lion one evening, who administered the first blow to this cosy feeling. ‘Reckon this would never have happened in the old days. In the old days we didn’t have no newcomers.’
Her elderly voice had been loud. There was a sudden silence. Agatha, standing with Mary at the bar and hoping despite all her good resolutions that James Lacey would come in, felt an almost tangible chill creeping into the communal warmth. And then no one wanted to discuss the outrages with them. Not all at once, but gradually, people began to leave and Agatha and Mary were left alone at the bar.
‘Oh, dear,’ said Mary. ‘That wretched old woman.’
The next day, Agatha had more to worry about. Bill Wong called, but not for coffee and a chat. ‘I have to inspect everyone’s gardens, Agatha,’ he said apologetically. ‘You know, to see if anyone’s been using more weedkiller than they ought or got used cans of petrol stacked anywhere.’
‘We’re friends,’ protested Agatha desperately. ‘You know me. I wouldn’t do anything like that!’
‘But I’m an honest cop, Agatha, and you can’t expect me to lie. Besides, what have you got to hide?’
‘But –’
‘Agatha!’
Miserably, Agatha led him through to the kitchen and unlocked the back door. Bill stared in amazement at the bare garden and then up at the high fence.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ he asked. ‘I thought you were a member of the horticultural society.’
‘Look, don’t put this in your report, Bill. I planted out my seedlings and they were all killed by the frost. That friend of mine, Roy Silver, put a fence around the garden so that no one could see in. Then just before Open Day – you know, when the village gardens are open to the public – he was going to come down with a load of plants.’
Agatha Raisin and the Potted Gardener Page 5