Agatha Raisin Companion

by Beaton, M. C.

  Although she appears to be free of her obsession, Agatha is horrified to receive an invitation to James’s engagement party, barely a month after his last letter.

  On the day of the wedding, however, his bride is murdered, leaving Agatha, once more, to prove that they are both innocent.

  Sir Charles Fraith

  Despite the fact that he is only a minor baronet, Agatha’s lowly roots mean she is initially intimidated by the dapper aristocrat during the Walkers of Dembley case. Sir Charles lives in the vast Barfield House, ‘a large building in the fake medieval style, vaguely William Morris, with mullioned windows’ which is, in Charles’s own words, ‘hardly an architectural gem’. It stands in a thousand acres of ‘good arable land’ and, when they first meet, Charles is under suspicion of the murder of a rambler, killed with a spade while crossing his rape field. Agatha is asked to investigate by Deborah, his latest conquest, and gets off on the wrong foot at an awkward lunch at the house. Rattled by the surly manservant, Gustav, and put down by the elderly aunt, she insults the family and insinuates that it would suit them to accuse a farmhand. Later she tells James she thought Sir Charles ‘stupid and silly’, and Charles dismisses her as a ‘rather odd woman with a massive chip on her shoulder’.

  The relationship thaws through the intervention of James and they become closer after Agatha saves his life during an attack by the real murderer.

  Sir Charles is ‘a small, neat man with fine, fair hair and a mild, sensitive face’. Eternally well-dressed in perfectly tailored suits and beautifully pressed shirts, he rarely has a hair out of place. ‘Even naked, he never looked vulnerable, but as if he were wearing a neat white suit.’ (Fairies of Fryfam)

  Although he is a clever intellectual, with a First in History from Cambridge, he prefers to play the ‘bluff squire type, on the hearty side, given to rather obvious jokes and puns’, but he also hides a shy character, afraid to let anyone get too close to him.

  An incorrigible ladies’ man, Sir Charles adds Agatha to his list of conquests in Terrible Tourist and then becomes one of her closest friends and an occasional partner in crime detection. By the end of the Cyprus case, the pattern for their relationship is set when he rings Agatha and says, ‘Bored. Let’s go for dinner.’ From that day forward, Charles turns up whenever he has nothing to do. He flits in and out of Agatha’s life depending on his romantic situation and, as he possesses a key to the cottage, he often moves into her spare room at short notice, disappearing again every time he meets a potential lover.

  Despite Agatha’s usual obsessive nature, her original fling with Charles and the occasional lapses since lack passion, and she often wonders whether he cares for her at all. Whenever he is in her company, Agatha also ponders how long he will stick around. ‘In the past, he had had a habit of suddenly deciding to leave her, either because he had a date or because he had become bored. He led a self-contained, orderly bachelor life and maintained that lifestyle by doing exactly what he wanted and when he wanted to.’

  A brief marriage to a French girl, in Day the Floods Came, leaves Charles uncharacteristically plump, with ‘thinning hair and a double chin’. After leaving his wife, however, he is soon restored to the immaculate baronet he has always been and reveals that he has been getting over lung cancer, hence the thinning hair.

  Paul Bladen

  The new vet has the women of the village all a-flutter and, despite her crush on James, Agatha is quite taken with him herself. In his early forties, he has thick, fair hair and light-brown eyes which ‘crinkled up as though against the desert sun’. Using her recently acquired cat as an excuse, Agatha dresses up to the nines to visit the surgery, only to find all the women of Carsely in the waiting room. She is delighted when he invites her out for dinner, but flees the house when things begin to get steamy between them. As the Vicious Vet’s true character emerges, it seems Agatha has had a lucky escape.

  Guy Freemont

  Owner of the Ancombe Water Company in Wellspring of Death, he charms her with champagne and dinner dates while she is nursing a broken heart following the aborted wedding to James. The first time she meets him, Agatha thinks Guy is ‘beautiful’. In his mid-thirties, tall and slim with black hair, blue eyes and ‘an athlete’s body’, he flatters the middle-aged detective with his attentions and she sleeps with him, driving James mad with jealousy.

  Mr John

  Stunning hairdresser who fixes a colouring problem for Agatha before asking her out for dinner. Tall, blond and ‘very very handsome’, he has an easy manner and ‘very bright blue eyes, startlingly blue, as blue as a kingfisher’s wing’. Women adore him for his ability to transform them and his flattery, and often confide in him. After he is murdered, it transpires that he used the information to blackmail them.

  Jimmy Jessop

  Kindly police inspector Jimmy meets Agatha while she is holed up in the seaside town of Wyckhadden. He has ‘a lugubrious face and large pale eyes under heavy lids’, black hair ‘like patent leather’ and is ‘far from an Adonis’. But his generous nature, when met with Agatha’s loneliness, sparks a romance. A widower who was devoted to his wife, he is an old-fashioned gentleman who takes Agatha dancing and finally proposes to her. But their first foray into the bedroom is a disaster and, when he finds her in bed with Charles, the engagement is most definitely off. Jimmy quickly finds a new bride and, when Agatha returns to Wyckhadden, is about to become a father.

  John Armitage

  A successful and very good-looking crime writer who moves into James’s old cottage, next to Agatha’s house, after her marriage breaks down. As a novelist, he is interested in Agatha’s cases and helps her out in Day the Floods Came and Curious Curate. At the end of the first case, he makes a clumsy pass at her, assuming she is an easy woman, and Agatha is outraged. In the aftermath, she is flattered by the attentions of the new curate, murdered on the night he has dinner with her, but later discovers he was only after money. In order to save face, she gets John to pretend he is her fiancé for the duration of the case. But as soon as the murder is solved, he sells up and moves to London.

  Paul Chatterton

  A charming IT expert who takes over the house after John moves out. He has a shock of white hair, sparkling black eyes and a clever face, and is besieged by the village ladies as soon as he moves in. Although Agatha avoids him at first, she succumbs when he suggests investigating the haunted house in Hebberden. While watching the house from a field, Paul kisses Agatha and she, of course, falls for him. He is married to a temperamental Spanish beauty called Juanita, who chose to stay in her homeland when he moved to Carsely. Paul goes off in a jealous huff after Charles resurfaces and stays at Agatha’s house. Saved by Agatha after being locked in an Anderson shelter, he brings her flowers in the middle of the night and is attacked by his volatile wife, eventually moving back to Spain with her.

  George Shelby

  Handsome widower and events organizer of the Comfrey Magna fête, where the jam is laced with LSD in Spoonful of Poison, George is ‘tall, with fair hair, a lightly tanned, handsome face, and green eyes’. Agatha is clearly more taken with him than he is with her. When she is asked to help promote the fête, and then solve the case of the drug-laced plum jam, she uses it as an excuse to spend more time with him. She soon discovers that she is competing with his late, perfect wife and that there are suspicious circumstances surrounding her death as well. After a romantic tryst is ruined by Charles, Agatha learns that her green-eyed suitor may be more interested in her purse strings than her heart strings.

  Freddy Champion

  Introduced to Agatha by their mutual friend, Sir Charles, Freddy is a handsome landowner who has recently been thrown out of Zimbabwe. Visiting from South Africa, he woos Agatha behind Charles’s back and neglects to tell her he is married with children. After Freddy first asks her to dinner, Agatha allows herself to be ‘wrapped in rosy dreams’, but the date ends in disaster when the police arrive to quiz her about a murder, and he scuttles off in a mos
t unchivalrous manner. He later returns for another date, but Sir Charles spots the pair in a restaurant and puts Agatha straight about Freddy’s marital status before she gets in too deep.

  Sylvan Dubois

  A suave Frenchman with grey hair and hooded eyes who Agatha meets at James’s engagement party and enjoys flirting with. When she later turns up in Paris, and calls him, he is with another woman, and she returns home, feeling silly. They meet again on the eve of James’s wedding in Sussex and see more of each other after the murder of the bride. Sylvan takes Agatha out for dinner and kisses her, but his habit of showing up at every crime scene begins to look a little suspicious.

  Bob Jenkins

  The briefest of relationships almost ends in marriage when a bruised and battered Agatha, fresh from several attempts on her life and a self-imposed retirement, meets new local Bob. He seems a nice, normal widower, and good company. Within two months, the couple are engaged and head off for a holiday in Normandy. Alarm bells start to ring when he insists she should cook the meals and clean the house they have rented. He also suffers from mood swings. She rings Charles and asks him to rescue her and they drive off to the south of France.

  Agatha has many rivals in love, and some of them come to a sticky end.

  Freda Huntingdon

  An attractive newcomer referred to as ‘the Merry Widow’ by the jealous Agatha in Vicious Vet, Freda has a small, pretty face, like that of an enamelled doll, large hazel eyes with (false?) eyelashes and a ‘pink, painted mouth’.

  Left a great deal of money by her late husband, she moves to Carsely and soon sets her sights on James. After a couple of ill-advised affairs, including vet Paul Bladen, and finding no joy with James, she decides to sell up and move away.

  Mary Fortune

  The Potted Gardener of the book title, Mary moves into Mrs Josephs’ house after the murder in the previous book. She is a keen gardener who raises tropical plants in her conservatory and is also a superb baker, according to Mrs Bloxby. Agatha returns from a holiday to find Mary has become close to James. ‘She’s a remarkably good-looking lady and a great help at our horticultural society meetings,’ Mrs Bloxby tells her.

  ‘She and Mr Lacey are both such keen gardeners.’ When Agatha first calls on her, ‘the woman who answered the door made Agatha’s heart sink. She was undoubtedly attractive, with a smooth, unlined face, blonde hair and bright-blue eyes.’ Her house is decorated with green, which is also the only colour she wears.

  Mary is murdered and left with her head stuck in the earth like a potted plant (hence, Potted Gardener). After the pair discover her body in the conservatory, Agatha is devastated when James reveals that he slept with Mary. Having assumed James led the life of a monk, she is crushed to find out he has ‘lain in Mary’s bed in Mary’s arms. Her mind writhed under the weight of her miserable thoughts’.

  Melissa Sheppard

  In Fairies of Fryfam, while Agatha is away in Norfolk, this attractive divorcée moves to Carsely and is an instant hit with the Ladies’ Society. Mrs Bloxby describes her as ‘in her forties, blonde, very smart. Great sense of humour’, causing an instant flash of jealousy in Agatha. Melissa pursues James and becomes his lover, but he is soon bored with her. On Agatha’s return, James immediately proposes and Melissa is furious. However, James apparently sleeps with her again after the wedding.

  In Love from Hell, Melissa becomes the next murder victim and James, who has disappeared, is suspected of the crime.

  Deborah Fanshaw

  Attractive divorcée who moves to the village in Love, Lies and Liquor and immediately begins to pursue ‘Carsely’s most wanted single man, James Lacey.

  In her forties, rich and attractive and intent on marrying again, she is described as ‘a tall, leggy woman with masses of brown curly hair and a great deal of energy’. Mrs Bloxby however, finds her rather tiresome and, after Deborah vows to snare her man, she comments, ‘I think she has too many hormones.’

  Although James shows little interest in her, Deborah follows him to Snoth-on-Sea, where he is staying in a hotel with Agatha. James shows no interest and, after being washed out to sea by a freak wave, Deborah switches her affection to Charles as she recovers in hospital. Frightened by her over-zealous pursuit, Charles tells her that he is the one who is set to marry Agatha and, when Deborah goes to confront her love rival in the hotel room, she is shot through the head by a gunman.

  Felicity Bross-Tilkington

  Although she believes she is over James, Agatha is shocked to receive an invitation to his engagement in Spoonful of Poison. At the party she is introduced to his bride-to-be and instantly feels inadequate. ‘Felicity was exquisite. She had wide-spaced grey eyes in a tanned face. Her thick brown hair cascaded down on her shoulders in an artful arrangement of waves and curls.’On the eve of the wedding in There Goes the Bride, James admits he doesn’t want to go through with it, but it is too late to back out. When Felicity fails to turn up, and is found murdered at home, James and Agatha are both prime suspects.

  In one of his more insightful moments, Charles tells Agatha that it will never work with James because he is a ‘twenty-per-cent person.

  ‘You are an eighty-five-per-cent person and James only gives twenty per-cent. It’s not a case of won’t, it’s a case of can’t. A lot of men are like that but women will never understand. They go on giving. And they think if they go to bed with the twenty-percenter, and they give that last fifteen per cent, they’ll miraculously wake up next to a hundred-per-center. Wrong. Anyway, if they wake up next to him it will be a miracle. Probably find a note on the pillow saying, ‘Gone home to feed the dog,’ or something like that.’ (Wizard of Evesham)

  Mrs Bloxby knows Agatha’s obsessions of old. When Agatha begins to gush about the beauty of a Cotswold spring, she ‘repressed a sigh’. Agatha was heading for another obsession, and while it lasted, the Cotswolds would be beautiful and every pop tune would have a special meaning.’ (Spoonful of Poison)

  A robbery which Agatha refers to as the ‘Paris incident’ prompts her to make her detecting legitimate, by setting up an agency. She hires an office in Mircester and advertises with the promise, All calls discreetly dealt with – video and electronic surveillance.’

  Her first employees are her next-door neighbour, Mrs Emma Comfrey and Carsely’s unmarried mum, Miss Simms. She also employs a former press photographer and a surveillance expert on a freelance basis.

  The bread and butter work consists of missing pets and evidence for divorce cases, and Agatha finds that tedious. But she gets her first major case in Deadly Dance, when an anxious mother employs her to protect her daughter, who has received a death threat in the run-up to her wedding.

  Although business is booming, Agatha vows to retire from the firm and leave things in the charge of her colleagues after the wedding murder is solved in There Goes the Bride. But Agatha can never stay away for too long.

  Emma Comfrey

  Agatha’s tall, thin, middle-aged neighbour, and a good detective until she develops an obsessive crush on Sir Charles Fraith. This leads to a hatred of Agatha and psychopathic behaviour.

  Miss Simms

  Carsely’s unmarried mum is briefly employed by the agency until she meets Patrick Mulligan and decides to settle down.

  Patrick Mulligan

  A retired detective and ‘a tall, cadaverous man who rarely smiles’, he is hired by Agatha to clear up the backlog while she is embroiled in the case of the Deadly Dance, but he soon proves invaluable in solving bigger crimes. He is an ex-policeman with great contacts within the force, and can often find out information that Agatha is not privy to. After falling for Miss Simms, he asks her to marry him and she accepts. When they split, Patrick returns to the agency and once more becomes an asset to Agatha.

  Mrs Freedman

  Agatha’s secretary from Evesham. ‘Middle-aged, competent, quite a treasure.’ She is always called by her second name, in the tradition of the Ladies’ Society. She is plump, pleasant, with
thick, grey, curled hair, and never wears any make-up. Although efficient, she upsets Agatha by talking to the Boggles about a case in Perfect Paragon.

  Phil Witherspoon

  A Carsely villager and keen photographer who is looking to supplement his pension by working at the agency. At seventy-six, Agatha believes he is too old to be employed but, as a favour to her friend Mrs Bloxby she employs him on a trial basis. He immediately helps Agatha find the body of a murdered teenager in Perfect Paragon, thereby earning the firm a huge amount of precious publicity. Agatha keeps him on and finds he often gains the trust of elderly women because of his age and courteous nature. A slim, average-sized man who still possesses thick grey hair, he has a face ‘not so much lined as crumpled, as if one only had to take a hot iron to it to restore it to its former youth.

  Harry Beam

  Mrs Freedman’s nephew, who first appears in Perfect Paragon wearing a nose stud, dressed from head to toe in black and sporting a shaven head. Agatha believes he will be useless but gives him a day’s trial. He impresses his potential boss by finding three cats and a dog in a few hours, and neglects to tell her that they were all at the animal shelter. He helps Agatha through his gap year before going to Oxford University and turns out to be a huge asset, particularly when cases involve hanging round in nightclubs. He also manages to win over potential suspects when he smartens up and turns out to be quite good-looking when dressed normally.

  Toni Gilmour

  A young girl from a rough council estate in Mircester who answers an ad for a trainee detective in Kissing Christmas Goodbye. Although she is not sure at first, Agatha is swayed by Toni’s success in getting snaps of a cheating husband. She rescues her new employee from life with a violent brother and alcoholic mother and sets her up in a flat, giving her driving lessons and even buying an old car for her to drive.