Agatha Raisin Companion

by Beaton, M. C.

  Despite being sensible for a seventeen-year-old, Toni is almost raped on her first case when she agrees to meet a pub landlord at midnight, but Agatha follows her and comes to the rescue.

  Pretty and blonde with ‘pale-blue eyes fringed with thick, fair lashes in a neat-featured face’, Toni is good at her new job and often gets to the answer before her boss. She brings out an almost maternal instinct in Agatha, who is torn between caring for her and jealousy at her youth and detecting success.

  Toni’s feelings about Agatha are equally mixed, soaring between gratitude for the difference she has made to her life, and the desire to be around younger people and to advance in the business without being tied to one agency. This dilemma is solved when, prompted by jealousy when Toni steals the limelight, Agatha suggests she helps the girl set up her own agency. However, Agatha’s former employee, Harry Beam, steps in and offers to fund it himself, meaning the rival firm is now out of Agatha’s control.

  After a former classmate becomes their accountant and rips her company off, Toni returns to the fold, bringing best friend and colleague Sharon with her. However, she is still restless and fed up with being handed the minor cases. After confronting Agatha, who in a rare, honest moment admits she is jealous of her young colleague and promises to change, Toni feels, more than ever, that she can’t leave.

  Sharon Gold

  Toni’s best friend, who joins Agatha after the collapse of the second detective agency. Agatha finds her appearance off-putting. Sharon is a large girl who squeezes herself into inappropriately tight clothing and frequently changes the vibrant colour of her hair. But she is bright and sharp-witted, and is useful to Agatha because she fits in amongst the teens at trendy nightclubs and pubs, and therefore doesn’t raise suspicion.

  Paul Kenson and Fred Auster

  After Toni and Sharon find a teenager who has gone missing in a highly publicized case, business is booming. Agatha decides to take on the two new sleuths, both in their forties and keen to leave the police force. Paul is ‘thin, gangly and morose’ and Fred is ‘chubby and cheerful’, but they are both excellent detectives.

  Never a feline fan before moving to the Cotswolds, Agatha is given her first pet by new friend Bill Wong. The gift of a tabby kitten comes after his mum’s cat has a litter, and is intended to save it from a watery death. Agatha is initially dismayed by the odd present, and vows to get rid of it as soon as possible. However she soon falls for the cute creature, which she names Hodge, and worries that she has been ‘reduced to the status of a village lady, drooling over an animal’.

  On a trip to London, where she has temporarily rented a flat, she loses Hodge and, after searching high and wide, tracks him down in Cornwall Square. On her return to the flat, she finds the real Hodge lying contentedly on the kitchen chair and realizes the other tabby is a stray. As the pair seem to get on, Agatha decides to keep him and takes him back to Carsely Having learned that Hodge was the name of Samuel Johnson’s cat, she keeps up the literary reference by calling the newcomer Boswell, after Johnson’s biographer.

  Although she is not a natural pet lover, Agatha’s cats Hodge and Boswell are the one permanence in her life and she cares deeply for them. She sees no irony in the fact that she cooks them fresh fish and chicken livers for dinner, while happily dining on microwaved curries herself. She often plays with them and pampers them, and their instinctive reaction to danger has saved her from certain death on many occasions.

  In Witch of Wyckhadden, Agatha adopts a third cat after finding it wandering on the promenade, starving and dirty. She believes it to be the creature which attacked her when she found Francie Juddle’s body, and takes it back to her hotel, where she feeds it up and calls it Scrabble. When she returns to Carsely, however, she feels it is unfair to her other two cats to keep it, so her kindly cleaner, Doris Simpson, takes Scrabble in.

  Although she spends the greater part of her time there, Agatha’s adventures are by no means confined to the Cotswolds. Murder and mayhem occur wherever she travels, whether it is in the UK or abroad. She enjoys foreign travel, although she insists on five-star treatment wherever she goes, and she has occasionally taken breaks – willingly or otherwise – in English resorts.

  Wyckhadden

  Agatha hides in the old-fashioned seaside town while her hair, destroyed by a vengeful hairdresser, grows back. ‘There is nothing more depressing for a middle-aged, lovelorn woman with bald patches on her head than to find herself in an English seaside resort out of season.’ A windy promenade displays torn posters and old summer bunting and a cobbled side street boasts holiday homes painted in pastel colours. The prosperity of the town in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has disappeared as cheap foreign holidays entice people abroad. Agatha stays in a faded Victorian boarding house called the Garden Hotel and drinks in a dingy pub, The Dog and Duck.

  Fryfam

  After a wrecked engagement to Jimmy Jessop, and still pining for lost love James, Agatha seeks solace in this tiny fictional Norfolk village, where she has rented a house called Lavender Cottage. Fryfam has a large village green surrounded by flint cottages, a pub called the Green Dragon and a church, and is something of a step back in time when it comes to values. The locals are a tight-knit, superstitious and often unfriendly bunch.

  Snoth-on-Sea

  Fictional Sussex seaside town where James enjoyed idyllic holidays as a child. After returning to his cottage in Love, Lies and Liquor, he takes Agatha on a mystery break, only to find that the town has become dirty and shabby and the Palace Hotel, the grand guest house of his youth, is now a grim B&B. To top it all, the pair are caught up in a murder when Agatha’s scarf is used to strangle another guest.

  Hewes and Downboys

  Hewes is an attractive market town in Sussex, built along a river, where Agatha and her friends go to attend James and Felicity’s wedding in There Goes the Bride. It also boasts a picturesque marina and a pleasant pub-cum-hotel where the party stay.

  In the neighbouring village of Downboys, the bride’s family owns a huge estate which backs on to the water. The village is built around a crossroads and has a pub, a church and a grocery store. ‘It seemed a very gloomy sort of place.’

  Kyrenia

  Following their ruined wedding day, James flees to Kyrenia, in Northern Cyprus, where they were due to have spent their honeymoon. Agatha, of course, flies out in pursuit and books into the resort’s real Dome Hotel.

  ‘The Dome Hotel is a large building on the waterfront at Kyrenia, Turkish name Girne, which has seen better days and has a certain battered colonial grandeur. There is something endearing about the Dome.’ Agatha’s room has a balcony overlooking the Mediterranean and a seawater pool carved out of rock.

  Later she moves to the villa that James is borrowing from a friend for an extended stay, which is near the Onar Village Hotel.

  While there, she visits Famagusta (Gazimagusa), the second largest city in Northern Cyprus and described as ‘one of the most remarkable ruins in the world’. Shakespeare’s Othello was possibly set here and Agatha visits the local landmark known as Othello’s Tower, a Lusignan citadel built to protect the harbour and reconstructed by the Venetians in 1492.

  After meeting a group of holiday-makers, she dines with them at a restaurant called the Grapevine, which is a favourite with British tourists. Later they eat at the Ottoman House restaurant in Zeytinlik and also at the fish restaurant, the Altinkaya, which backs on to their villa. All three are actual eateries in the area.

  Together they also travel to Nicosia (Leftkosa to the Turkish population) and visit the covered market. ‘The centre of Nicosia was a pleasant, friendly place with a lot of interesting old buildings and shops.’

  Robinson Crusoe Island

  After James flees to a monastery in France, Agatha decides to get away from it all and to lick her wounds in Day the Floods Came. She chooses the remote South American island where Alexander Selkirk was stranded for four years from 1704, inspiring the Danie
l Defoe classic, Robinson Crusoe. The island, just off the coast of Chile, is in the Juan Fernandez Archipelago and reachable by a small plane from Tobalaba Airport in Santiago. This terrifying flight, and the bumpy Jeep ride to the resort, is not Agatha’s cup of tea, but the hotel, the Panglas, turns out to be stunning, and she meets a friendly group of fellow travellers. However, the tropical paradise she imagined turns out to be a rocky, barren land and she learns that Defoe set his own tale in the Caribbean instead of Selkirk’s true location.

  Istanbul

  A favourite city of author M.C. Beaton. Agatha travels there, in There Goes the Bride, on her way to visit the site of the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimea. She is hoping to impress the recently engaged James, who accused her of never listening to him, with her knowledge of military history.

  She has previously stayed in the Pera Palace Hotel, made famous by Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, but this time she opts for a hotel on the other side of the Golden Horn in the Sultan Ahmet district ‘under the shadow of the Blue Mosque’. The real Artifes, in the heart of the Old City, boasts a rooftop restaurant and views over the Marmara Sea.

  On her return she visits the tourist sites, including the splendid domed sixth-century basilica, the Ayasofya, which is now a museum, and the Spice Market, where James Bond was blown up in From Russia with Love. On finding out her James is off to Gallipoli, the site of the disastrous Allied landings in the First World War, Agatha changes her plans. Unfortunately, James spots her there and thinks he is being stalked.

  The Crimea

  From Istanbul, Agatha catches a ‘Russian rust bucket’ to Balaclava in the Crimea, the only autonomous state in the Ukraine. The boat is full of Ukrainian women and manned by a Russian crew who speak no English, and the only food she can face is soup. Two days of sailing across the Black Sea take her to the Dakkar Resort hotel which offers ‘the blessings of a civilized hotel with a smiling, beautiful receptionist and a well-appointed room’. Instead of showing her the site of the Charge of the Light Brigade, the famous Crimean War battle, her guide drags her round one Soviet Second World War memorial after another. Finally Agatha gets to the battlefield, but she is sadly disappointed as it is now merely a plain full of vineyards. When James and his fiancée arrive, Agatha flees the hotel and catches a plane back to Istanbul.

  Paris

  Agatha pops over to Paris in many a book, including There Goes the Bride when she is foolishly pursuing Frenchman Sylvan Dubois. After calling him, and finding he has a woman in bed with him, she leaves the city in shame.

  In Deadly Dance, Agatha is prompted to open her own detective agency after her purse is stolen on the Metro and the police treat her with disdain. On this occasion, in a rare fit of thrift, she has booked into a small hotel off St-Germain-des-Prés in the Latin Quarter, but soon regrets the decision as the heat rises to 105°F and her room has no air-conditioning.

  Later, she and Charles fly to Paris to interview Felicity Felliat, the daughter of a friend of Charles who was supposed to be working for a couturier in the Rue St-Honoré. They stay in the Hôtel Duval on the Boulevard St-Michel, where suspect Jeremy Laggatt-Brown claimed to have been staying when his daughter was shot at. They walk by the Seine and eat at Maubert-Mutiliaté. While she is there, a hitman is found dead in her kitchen at home.

  Later they return and find a drunk by the fountain on Place Maubert, who helps them solve the case.

  A fertile mind, a belligerent soul and a propensity to argue mean there is never a dull moment when Agatha is around. Not one to take the accepted view as read, she has her own brand of logic which can throw up pearls of wisdom, or purely perverse argument. The following are random thoughts from the mind of the great detective:

  ‘Not for the first time, Agatha wondered about British Rail’s use of the word “terminate”. One just expected the train to blow apart. Why not just say “stops here”?’ Quiche of Death.

  When Roy remarks, ‘Age does bring wisdom,’ Agatha replies: ‘Not really. I’ve found that stupid young people grow up to be stupid old people.’ Perfect Paragon.

  ‘How strange that few people talked about love any more. They were obsessed, taken hostage or co-dependent – anything rather than admit they were not in control, for the word “love” now meant weakness.’ Terrible Tourist.

  ‘People always talked about hearts breaking but the pain was always right in the gut.’ Wellspring of Death.

  Reasoning that the countryside is more damaging to the environment than her smoking: ‘I just read that a farting cow produces more damage to the ozone layer than a four-wheel drive.’ Spoonful of Poison.

  After spotting neighbour Paul Chatterton eyeing up a young secretary in a short skirt:

  ‘It just wasn’t fair on middle-aged women. If she eyed up a young man, she would be considered a harpy. But a man of the same age, provided he had kept his figure, would never be regarded with the same contempt.’ Haunted House.

  Agatha’s Niggles

  Many everyday irritations make Agatha’s hackles rise, from the opening hours of British shops to the smoking ban. Here are a few of her bugbears:

  After her train grinds to a halt for no apparent reason, and the passengers sit stoically waiting: ‘Why are we like sheep that have gone astray?’ wondered Agatha. ‘Why are the British so cowed and placid? Why does no one shout for the guard and demand to know the reason? Other, more voluble, races would not stand for it.’ Quiche of Death.

  The lady whose voice is on Call Minder always seemed to Agatha to be an irritating relic of the days when women took elocution lessons. It was a governessy, eat-your-porridge-or-you-won’t-go-to-the-circus sort of voice. “Two messages,” said the voice. “Would you like to hear them?” Did anyone not want to hear messages? thought Agatha crossly. Wellspring of Death.

  Agatha is annoyed to find a garage closed on Saturday. ‘Isn’t that so bloody British? No wonder half our businesses are being outsourced abroad.’ There Goes the Bride.

  A frequent beef of Agatha’s is the closing of local police stations in rural areas. She believes the police in towns such as Mircester are overstretched. ‘Crime has spread in the countryside in a big way,’ she grumbles. ‘Do you know, the farmers can’t even leave their combine harvesters out in the field at night? One farmer found that they had pinched the whole thing, dismantled it and shipped it off.’ Deadly Dance.

  How well do you know the redoubtable Mrs Raisin? Test your knowledge with a fun quiz and see if you are a super-sleuth or a rank amateur.

  What is the name of the cat that Agatha rescued from Wyckhadden and gave to Doris Simpson?

  The cottage next door to Agatha was known by which exotic and inappropriate name before James bought it?

  Shortly before James’s wedding to Felicity in There Goes the Bride, Agatha travelled to the Ukraine to visit the site of which famous battle?

  How did James get out of the country when he fled Carsely, and Agatha, suffering from a brain tumour?

  What is the name of Charles’s distinctly unfriendly manservant?

  Which large PR firm did Agatha sell out to?

  Which famous artist’s painting was stolen from the manor in Fairies of Fryfam?

  What caused Deborah Fanshawe to be hailed a heroine in Love, Lies and Liquor?

  Charles lives with his elderly aunt. What is her name?

  What was the occupation of Agatha’s neighbour, John Armitage?

  Who ran the dried flower shop in Carsely before becoming involved in a murder plot in Vicious Vet?

  What was unusual about the serving staff at the party on the eve of James’s wedding to Felicity?

  Which garden gift did Agatha proudly present to Doris Simpson on her return from a stay in London, only to have it given back a little later?

  Who funded Toni’s ill-fated venture into her own private detective business?

  What was the name of the awful old couple who Agatha was trapped into taking out for a day in Bath?

&nbs
p; Where were Agatha and James due to go on their honeymoon after the ill-fated wedding day ruined by Jimmy’s arrival?

  What does elderly villager Mr Crinsted teach Agatha in Curious Curate?

  What is Doris Simpson’s husband called?

  What does Agatha get the up-and-coming pop group Stepping Out to promote in Love from Hell?

  What is the name of Paul Chatterton’s fiery Spanish wife?

  ANSWERS

  Scrabble

  New Delhi

  The Charge of the Light Brigade

  He hitched a ride to France on a friend’s boat

  Gustav

  Pedmans

  Stubbs

  She was swept out to sea by a wave and miraculously survived

  Mrs Tassy

  He was a crime writer

  Josephine Webster

  They were naked

  A gnome

  Harry Beam

  The Boggles

  Northern Cyprus

  Chess

  Bert

  Walking boots

  Juanita

  Although she is keen to try the local food when abroad, there’s nothing Agatha likes more than good solid English cooking. Happier with ham, egg and chips or a fried breakfast than a Caesar salad, she loves stodge and often pays for it with her waistline.