by M C Beaton
"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 Cart-wright 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 in comer 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 in comer 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 bur glaring John Cart-wright 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 night-time 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 car-park 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.
brie 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." y "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, ' 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 my 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.
She sat there for a long time before slowly rising and switching on the house lights, moving from room to room, switching them all on as she had done before when she was frightened.
Agatha wondered whether to call Mrs. Bloxby. It was probably one of the young men of the village, or someone walking a dog. Slowly her fear left her, but when she went up to bed, she left all the lights burning.
In the morning she was heartened to see a huge removal van outside New Delhi and the removal men hard at work. Obviously Mrs. Barr did not see anything wrong in moving house on the Sabbath. Agatha was just wondering whether to go to church or not when the phone rang. It was Roy.
"I've got a surprise for you, love."
Agatha felt a sudden surge of hope. "You've decided to leave Pedmans?"
"No, I've bought a car, a Morris Minor. Got it for a song. Thought I'd drive down and bring the girlfriend to see you.
"Girlfriend? You haven't got one."
"I have now. Can we come?"
"Of course. What's her name?"
"Tracy Butterworth."
"And what does she do?"
"She's one of the typists in the pool at Pedmans."
"When will you get here?"
"We're leaving now. Hour and a half if the roads aren't bad. Maybe two."
Agatha looked in the fridge after she had rung off. She hadn't even any milk. She went to a supermarket in Stow-on-the-Wold which opened on Sundays and bought milk, lettuce and tomatoes for salad, minced meat and potatoes to make shepherd's pie, onions and carrots, peas, a frozen apple pie and some cream.
There was no need to do any cleaning when she returned. Doris had been in while she had been in London and the place was impeccable. As she drove down into Carsely, the removal van passed her, followed by Mrs. Barr in her car. They must have been at it since six in the morning, thought Agatha, making a mental note of the removal firm.
She put away her groceries when she got home, found a pair of scissors, edged through the hedge at the back into Mrs. Barr's garden, and cut bunches of flowers to decorate her cottage.
She prepared the shepherd's pie after she had arranged the flowers, thinking that she really must do something about the garden. It would look lovely in the spring if she put in a lot of bulbs but, of course, she would not be in Carsely in the spring.
As she was still an inexperienced cook, the simple shepherd's pie took quite a long time and she was just putting it in the oven when she heard a car draw up.
Tracy Butterworth was all Agatha had expected. She was thin and pallid, with limp brown hair. She was wearing a white cotton suit with a pink frilly blouse and very high-heeled white shoes. She had a limp handshake and said, "Please ter meet you," in a shy whisper and then looked at Roy with devotion.
"I see a removal van outside that awful woman's cottage," said Roy.
"What!" Agatha cast an anguished look at the vases of flowers. "I thought she'd gone."
"Relax. Someone's moving in, not out. Say something, Tracy. She won't eat you."
"You've got ever such a lovely cottage," volunteered Tracy. She dabbed at her forehead with a scrap of lace-edged handkerchief.
"It's too hot to be dressed up," said Agatha. Tracy winced and Agatha said with new kindness, "Not that you don't look very smart and pretty.
But make yourself at home. Kick off your shoes and take off your jacket."
Tracy looked nervously at Roy.
"Do as she says," he ordered.
Tracy had very long thin feet, which she wriggled in an embarrassed way once her shoes were off. Poor thing, thought Agatha. He'll marry her and turn her into the complete Essex woman. Two children called Wayne and Kylie at minor public schools, house in some twee builder's close called Loam End or something, table-mats from the Costa Brava, ruched curtains, Jacuzzi, giant television set, boredom, out on Saturday night to some road-house for scampi and chips washed down with Beaujolais nouveau and followed by tiramisu. Yes, Essex it would be and not the Cotswolds. Roy would be happier with his own kind. He too would change and take up weight-lifting and squash and walk around with a mobile glued to his ear, speaking very loudly into it in restaurants.
"Let's go along to the pub for a drink," said Agatha, after Roy had been talking about the days when he worked for her, elaborating every small incident for Tracy's benefit. Agatha wondered whether to offer Tracy a loose dress to wear but decided against it. The girl would take it as a criticism of what she was wearing.
In the pub, Agatha introduced them to her new-found friends and Tracy blossomed in the undemanding company which only expected her to talk about the weather.
The heat was certainly bad enough to be exciting. The sun beat down fiercely outside. One man volunteered that a temperature of 129 degrees Fahrenheit had been recorded at Cheltenham.
Back at the cottage Tracy helped with the lunch, her high heels stabbing little holes into the kitchen linoleum until Agatha begged her to take them off. There was some shade in the garden after lunch and so they moved there, drinking coffee and listening idly to the sounds of the new neighbour moving in.
"Don't you even want to peek over the hedge or take a cake along or something?" asked Roy. "Aren't you curious?"
Agatha shook her head. "I've seen the estate agent and this house goes up for sale next week."
"You're selling?" Tracy looked at her in amazement. "Why?"
"I'm going back to London."
Tracy looked around the sunny garden and then up to the Cotswold Hills above the village, shimmering in a heat haze. She shook her head in bewilderment. "Leave all this? I've never seen anywhere more beautiful in all me life." She looked back at the cottage and struggled to express her thoughts. "It's so old, so settled. There's some think peaceful about it, know what I mean? Of course, I s'pose it's diff'rent for you, Mrs. Raisin. You've probably travelled and seen all sorts of beautiful places." Yes, Carsely was beautiful, thought Agatha reluctantly. The village was blessed with many underground springs, and so, in the middle of all the drought around, it glowed like a green emerald.
"She doesn't like it,
" crowed Roy, ' people keep trying to murder her."
Tracy begged to be told all about it and so Agatha began at the beginning, talking at first to Tracy and then to herself, for there was something nagging at the back of her mind.
That evening, Roy took them out for dinner to a pretentious restaurant in Mircester. Tracy only drank mineral water, for she was to drive Roy home. She seemed intimidated by the restaurant but admiring of Roy, who was snapping his fingers at the waiters and, as far as Agatha was concerned, behaving like a first-class creep. Yes, thought Agatha, Roy will marry Tracy and she will probably think she is happy and Roy will turn out to be someone I can't stand. I wish I had never got him that publicity.
When she waved goodbye to them, it was with a feeling of relief. The time was rapidly approaching when Roy would phone expecting an invitation and she would make some excuse.
But of course she wouldn't need to bother. For she would be back in London.
Chapter Eleven.
On Monday morning, Agatha rose late, wondering why she had slept so long and wishing she had risen earlier to catch any coolness of the day. She put on a loose cotton dress over the minimum of underwear, went downstairs and took a mug of coffee out into the garden.
She had been plagued with dreams of Maria Borrow, Barbara James, and Ella Cartwright, who had appeared as the three witches in Macbeth. "I have summoned the evil spirits to kill you," Maria Borrow had croaked.
Agatha sighed and finished her coffee and went for a walk to the butcher's which was near the vicarage. The sign saying
"New Delhi' had been taken down. There was no evidence of the new owner, but Mrs. Mason and two other women were standing on the step, carrying cakes to welcome the new comer. Agatha walked on, reflecting that nobody had called on her when she had first arrived.
She was about to go into the butcher's when she stiffened. A little way away, Vera Cummings-Browne was standing talking to Barbara James, who had a Scottie on a leash. Agatha dived for cover into the butcher's shop and almost collided with Mrs. Bloxby.
"Seen your new neighbour yet?" asked Mrs. Bloxby.
