Agatha Raisin and the Potted Gardener

by Beaton, M. C.

  But there was the carrot held out in front of her of an almost immediate loss of weight.

  They drove to Evesham and bought apples, melons, bananas, grapes, pineapples, oranges and a selection of ‘yuppie’ fruit from an exotic and highly priced variety.

  Back home again, they both ate as much as they could and assured each other that they felt terribly well already. Then they went out cycling, Roy borrowing a cycle from the vicarage. It was to be the best part of the weekend as they flew along the frosty lanes in the clear air, returning home under a burning red sun which set the frost-covered grass and trees aflame and made the frozen puddles in the roads burn like monsters’ eyes.

  But instead of sitting down that evening to a warming meal, there was nothing but more fruit and mineral water.

  ‘What’s this proposition you were talking about?’ asked Agatha.

  ‘You remember Mr Wilson of Pedmans, my boss?’

  Agatha’s eyes narrowed. She had sold her PR business to Pedmans. Wilson had gone back on all his assurances that her offices and staff would remain intact, had fired the staff with the exception of Roy, and had sold the offices. ‘Of course.’

  ‘He was talking about you the other day. Said you were the best ever. I said I was going to see you,’ said Roy, carefully and conveniently forgetting that his decision to visit Agatha had been prompted after he had heard his boss’s praise of her. ‘He said he would like to employ you as an executive. Pure Cosmetics are playing up. You used to handle them.’

  ‘Bunch of toe-rags,’ said Agatha moodily. Pure Cosmetics was run by a temperamental and demanding woman, a modern slave-driver.

  ‘But that woman, Jessica Turnbull, the director of Pure Cosmetics, you could always handle her. That’s what Wilson said.’

  ‘I’m retired,’ said Agatha. ‘Hey, you’re spotty.’

  Roy squawked and ran upstairs to the bathroom. He returned and said, ‘I look like a fourteen-year-old with acne. You’re spotty as well.’

  ‘Let’s chuck this stupid diet.’

  ‘No,’ said Roy firmly. ‘It’s toxic waste. The impurities are being purged out of our bodies.’

  ‘I agreed to this stupid thing to look better, not to get spotty.’

  ‘But you look slimmer already, Aggie,’ said Roy craftily. ‘Don’t think about Wilson’s offer now. We’ll watch that video I got and then we’ll have an early night.’

  Agatha awoke early the next day, hungry and bad-tempered. She went downstairs and gloomily ate six apples, drank a glass of mineral water, and smoked five cigarettes. The doorbell rang. She went to the door and peered through the spyhole. She recognized James Lacey’s chest, which was all she could see of him.

  She put her hands up to her face. She could almost feel the spots.

  Agatha backed away from the door. She longed to open it, but not like this, not spotty-faced and in her dressing gown.

  Outside, James turned slowly away. He had just decided it was silly to nourish a childish resentment of Agatha because she had made a rude gesture at him, and all that time ago, too. As he approached his cottage, he saw Mary’s blonde head turning into the lane. Without thinking why, he quickened his step and plunged into his cottage like some large animal into its burrow, and when his own doorbell rang imperatively a few moments later, he did not answer it, persuading himself that he needed to get down to work.

  He was still working on a history of the Peninsular Wars. He switched on his computer and looked gloomily at the last paragraph he’d written. Then he flicked it off and stared moodily at the screen. There was a heading saying simply, ‘Case’. That was when Agatha and he had been trying to solve a murder and he had typed out all the facts and had studied them. That had been fun. It had been exciting. Perhaps Agatha was on to something new. He shook his head. No one had been murdered for miles around. Carsely was still locked in its winter’s sleep. He wondered uneasily why Agatha had not answered the door. She must have been home because her car was parked outside and smoke had been rising from the chimney. That fellow Roy was staying with her. He had seen them the day before on their bicycles. There couldn’t be any romantic interest there. The fellow was too young. Still, in these modern days of toy boys, one could never tell. They were probably having a high old time, laughing and joking while he sat sunk in boredom.

  ‘I don’t like Wilson and I don’t like Pedmans,’ Agatha was saying sourly. ‘I loathe fruit and I could kill for a big greasy hamburger.’

  ‘Take a look in the mirror,’ retorted Roy crossly, made bitter by diet and the fact that his mission was to get Agatha back to work. ‘You’ve let yourself go. Okay, so you’ve had a bit of excitement in this place before, but nothing is ever going to happen here again and you may as well make up your mind to it. Think of London, Aggie!’

  And Agatha thought of London and thought of how odd and alien she felt now on her infrequent visits – London, which had once been the centre of her universe.

  ‘I’m happy here,’ she said defiantly. ‘All right, I’ve let myself go a tiny bit, but I’ll be back on form soon enough.’

  ‘But Wilson’s prepared to offer you eighty-five thousand a year, for starters.’

  Agatha’s eyes narrowed. ‘Wait a bit. You and Wilson seem to have discussed this thoroughly, and knowing what a weak little creep you are, Roy, you probably said, “Leave it to me. I’ll nip down there for the weekend and get the old girl to come around.” You probably bragged as well. “Oh, Aggie and I are like that. She’d do anything for me.”’

  This was so nearly exactly what Roy had said that he blushed under his spots and then became furious. ‘No, it’s not at all what happened,’ he screeched. ‘The trouble with you, Aggie, is that you wouldn’t know a real friend if you met one in your soup. I’m sick of this, sick of this. I’m going up to shave and get packed.’

  ‘Do that,’ Agatha shouted after him, ‘but watch your spots. In fact, to help you on your way, I’ll run you into Oxford!’

  An hour later, they set off together on the Oxford road, Agatha driving in a bitter silence. Her stomach wasn’t rumbling, it was letting out moans. She hated Roy, she hated Carsely, she hated James Lacey, she hated the whole of the Carsely Ladies’ Society, she hated Mrs Bloxby . . .

  She was driving along the A40 as that last name in the catalogue came into her mind. She swerved off the road and parked outside a restaurant.

  ‘So what are we doing here?’ demanded Roy, speaking for the first time since they had left the village.

  ‘I don’t know about you, but I am going to eat one great big hamburger smothered in ketchup,’ said Agatha. ‘You can watch me or join me, I don’t care.’

  Roy followed her into the restaurant and then watched moodily as she ordered coffee and a ‘giant’ hamburger and ‘giant’ French fries. Then, in a tight, squeaky voice, he said to the waitress, ‘The same for me.’

  When the food arrived, they ate their way stolidly through it. Then Agatha imperiously summoned the waitress. ‘Same again,’ she said.

  ‘Same again,’ said Roy, through a sudden fit of the giggles.

  ‘Sorry I was so bitchy,’ said Agatha. ‘Can’t stand diets.’

  ‘That’s all right, Aggie,’ said Roy. ‘Can be a bit of a bitch myself.’

  ‘And thank Wilson for his offer and tell him I’ll think about it. And –’ Agatha leaned back and dabbed at her greasy mouth and gave a small burp – ‘tell him I would do it for you if I did it for anyone.’

  ‘Thanks, Aggie.’

  ‘Furthermore, I’ll run you all the way to London if you’ll join me in ordering a large amount of chocolate cake with chocolate sauce and ice cream.’

  ‘You’re on.’

  When they left the diner they were laughing and giggling as if they had been drinking instead of eating. They sang all the way to London and told jokes until Agatha dropped Roy outside his Chelsea flat.

  ‘Why not stay the night?’ said Roy.

  ‘No, I’ve got my cats to feed. Must g
et home.’

  ‘Well, your spots have gone.’

  ‘So they have.’ Agatha peered in the driving mirror. ‘Nothing’s better for the skin than a greasy hamburger.’

  She felt quite happy when she reached Carsely again. She would attend the Carsely Ladies’ Society meeting that evening at the vicarage. When she walked into the kitchen and saw bowls piled high with fruit, she gave a shudder. There would be sandwiches and fruit cake and perhaps one of Miss Simms’s chocolate cakes and she intended to eat as much as she could. Her figure could wait.

  It was only when she was seated in the vicarage and reaching out for the first ham sandwich that she realized she had felt no desire to stay in London. Her cleaner had the key to the cottage and would gladly have fed the cats if Agatha had decided to stay in town for the night. Changed days, thought Agatha, where tea and sandwiches at the vicarage took precedence over anything London had to offer.

  And then Mary Fortune walked into the room, borne forward on a cloud of French perfume. She was slim but curvaceous in tailored trousers, silk blouse and jacket. All green. She never seemed to wear any other colour.

  Agatha, her mouth full of sandwich, was dismally aware of the tightness of the skirt she was wearing. As she looked at Mary, she felt herself becoming fatter and fatter. Mary was carrying a cake she had baked and the women were exclaiming in delight. Caraway cake! How clever! Thought no one still remembered how to bake one. Mary beamed all round as she accepted their plaudits. She saw an empty seat next to Agatha and came and sat down next to her.

  ‘I’m glad you are joining the horticultural society,’ said Mary with a charming smile.

  ‘I’ve ordered a greenhouse,’ said Agatha. ‘Going to plant my own stuff this year.’

  ‘I’ll be glad to give you any cuttings you want,’ said Mary.

  Reflecting that she wouldn’t have the faintest idea what to do with a cutting, Agatha mumbled thanks. Mary was obviously making a determined effort to please, and something in the new Agatha Raisin that was capable of reaching out to any offered warmth like a frost-bitten plant towards the sun, responded gradually with equal warmth. Agatha found herself inviting Mary round for coffee the following morning.

  The meeting started with a discussion on catering. Soon after the annual horticultural show, the gardens of Carsely were open to the public to raise money for charity. The Ladies’ Society had been approached by the horticultural society, who wanted them to serve teas in the school hall. Agatha, who usually liked to be at the centre of things, kept her mouth shut. She decided at that moment that all her energies must be conserved for her garden. People would flock to see it and it would glow with colour and outshine James Lacey’s next door. In fact, it would outshine every other garden in the village. She could almost see James’s face glowing with admiration.

  The next morning, Agatha remembered her invitation to Mary. She decided not to bother dressing up. She put on a comfortable but baggy skirt with a loose blouse over it.

  But the minute Mary arrived, Agatha wished she had put in some work on her appearance. Mary was wearing a green wool dress which clung to her figure, a figure which had bumps only in the right places. Over it she wore a loose coat of greenish tweed, and despite the coldness of the day outside, Mary was wearing very high-heeled green leather sandals and sheer stockings.

  Mary slung off her coat, which she had been wearing loose around her shoulders, and dropped it on a chair. ‘What a charming place you have, Mrs Raisin,’ she said, looking around. ‘I am glad of this opportunity to get to know each other better. Carsely is very pleasant, but people here do not travel much. In fact, for most of them a trip to the market in Moreton is a great adventure.’

  ‘I believe you spent some time in America,’ said Agatha, for the first time not wanting to be classed as different from the other village women.

  ‘Yes, New York.’

  Agatha had a vague idea that California was the home of the face-lift but decided that they probably had plenty of cosmetic surgeons in New York. There was a plastic look about Mary’s face. Still, it could be her, Agatha’s, jealousy prompting her to believe it was the result of a face-lift.

  ‘I’ll just get the coffee,’ said Agatha and then her doorbell rang.

  She went and opened it and found James Lacey standing on the step. Her first thought was that he had seen Mary going into her house and that was the reason for the call. ‘Come in,’ she said bleakly, ‘Mary’s here,’ and turned away immediately and so missed the slightly hunted look in his eyes. In the kitchen, Agatha piled coffee-cups and warmed-up Danish pastries, plates and napkins on to a tray and decided to give up on James Lacey entirely. But she still had a nagging longing to escape upstairs and put on something more glamorous.

  James looked up as Agatha came into the room and courteously rose to his feet and took the tray from her and set it on the table. For some reason there was an awkward silence. Agatha wondered what they had been talking about in the brief time she had been out of the room. The fire crackled, the china clinked as she arranged spoons on saucers, and from outside a starling gave out the long descending, sorrowful note of winter.

  ‘I can’t stay very long,’ said James. ‘Just dropped by to see how you were.’

  ‘My morning for callers,’ said Agatha as the doorbell went again.

  When she opened it, she saw with surprise and delight that her visitor was Detective Sergeant Bill Wong. ‘Heard through the grapevine you were back,’ he said cheerfully. ‘May I come in?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Agatha, longing to give the young man a hug but feeling uncharacteristically shy. ‘I’ve got James here and a newcomer, Mary Fortune.’

  Mary looked up as Bill Wong came in. She saw a small, chubby man with an oriental cast of features and very shrewd eyes.

  Agatha went to get another cup and Bill followed her into the kitchen. ‘Competition, Agatha?’ he asked gently.

  They had come to know each other very well during what Agatha thought of as her ‘cases’, but she felt that last remark had been going too far.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said huffily.

  ‘Oh, yes, you do,’ said Bill, taking a cup from her. ‘You’ll be getting a face-lift yourself soon.’

  Agatha grinned at him. ‘And I’d nearly forgotten how much I like you.’

  Somehow Bill’s very presence made her face Mary and James with equanimity. She introduced Bill properly to Mary and then asked him eagerly about what he was working on.

  ‘The usual round of things,’ said Bill. ‘You haven’t been around for a while, Agatha, so no one has been getting themselves murdered. But there have been terrible amounts of burglaries in the villages. They come down the motorways from Birmingham and London, finding the villages an easy target because people here don’t go in so much for security and burglar alarms, and a lot of them still leave their cars unlocked and their doors open. You’re well protected here, Agatha. Very sensible of you to get that alarm system in.’

  ‘Perhaps we should all follow Agatha’s example,’ said James.

  Mary gave a little laugh. ‘Some of us are not made of money. I think I will continue to trust human nature.’

  ‘I don’t think Agatha here is made of money either,’ said Bill sharply, ‘and considering the reason that she got the system in was because her life was under threat, I think that remark of yours was uncalled for.’

  It was obvious to James that Mary was not used to being pulled up for one of her ‘little remarks’. Then he realized with surprise that Mary quite often said things which could easily be classed as bitchy. He began to feel he had made a bit of a fool of himself over Mary.

  Mary turned slightly pink and said quickly, ‘I didn’t mean Agatha. How could you think such a thing! You didn’t think I meant you, did you, Agatha?’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ said Agatha.

  Mary spread her well-manicured hands in a deprecatory gesture. ‘What more can I say? I’m sorry, sorry, sorry.’

>   ‘You’re forgiven,’ said Agatha gruffly.

  ‘When is your greenhouse arriving?’ asked Mary.

  ‘Today. Any minute now.’

  Bill’s narrow eyes filled with humour as he looked at Agatha. ‘Never tell me you’re going in for serious gardening?’

  ‘Might try my hand. I’ve joined the horticultural society.’

  Bill raised his hands in mock horror. ‘Don’t tell me someone is going to be murdered. Don’t tell me you will be going in for any competitions.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Mary in surprise. ‘That’s part of the fun. We have the annual show and it’s a very friendly affair, I gather.’

  ‘You haven’t had Agatha in the society before,’ said Bill.

  ‘How’s your book coming along?’ Agatha had turned to James, feeling that if Bill went on he might reveal how she had once cheated in the village baking competition.

  ‘Slowly,’ said James. ‘I try to knuckle down to it and all the while I’m praying for the phone to ring or someone to call to distract me. Are you going to use the greenhouse right away, Agatha?’

  ‘Yes, I’m going to get some seed boxes and plant some things.’

  ‘Tell you what,’ said James, ‘I’ll go to the nursery with you and help you to choose something.’

  Agatha brightened but Mary said, ‘We’ll all go.’

  ‘Let me know, anyway.’ James got to his feet.

  ‘I’d best be going as well.’ Mary picked up her coat. ‘Lovely coffee. Probably see you later at the Red Lion. Come along, James.’

  James immediately felt like sitting down again, but he went off with Mary. Agatha slammed the door behind them with unnecessary force and went back to join Bill.

  ‘Handsome couple,’ commented Bill maliciously.

  ‘Drink your coffee,’ said Agatha sourly.

  ‘I’m teasing you. He actually doesn’t like her.’

  ‘But I gather they’ve been an item!’

  ‘They might have been. But not any more. Take things easy, Agatha. Relax. If you behave in a quiet, friendly way to him, he’ll come around.’