The Quiche of Death (12 page)

"Fat chance you'll have of selling it," said Agatha. "Nobody's buying these days, and who the hell is going to want a twee
cotage called New Delhi anyway?"

She marched to her own cottage and went in and slammed the door.

But Agatha felt bleak. She had poked a stick into the village ponds and stirred up a lot of mucky feelings.

That evening, before the Carsely Ladies' Society meeting, she went to the Red Lion for dinner. The landlord, Joe Fletcher,
gave her a cheerful good evening and then asked her what all this business about John Cartwright trying to kill her had been.
Immediately several of the villagers crowded around to hear the story. Agatha told them everything—about the wire across the
road and how Bill Wong had come to her rescue and how the police had found the money from the robbery in Cartwright's house—while
they all pressed closer, occasionally making sure her glass was refilled. "I gather his last crime was in Es­sex," said Agatha.
"Does that mean he wasn't from here?"

"Born and brought up here " said a large farmer called Jimmy Page. "Decent people, his folks were. Lived down the council
houses. Died a whiles back. Couldn't do a thing with him, not since he was so high. Got Ella in the family way and her father
came after him with a shotgun and that's how they got married. Kept going off to make his fortune, he said, and sometimes
he'd come back flush and sometimes he wouldn't. Bad lot."

Agatha realized dimly that she had not eaten but she did not want to leave the bar and the company. She knew also that she
was sinking an unusually large amount of gin.

"I see Mrs. Barr has put her house up for sale," she remarked.

"Oh, aye, her's been left a bigger cottage over An­combe way," said the farmer. "Aunt of hers died."

"What!" Agatha stared. "She let me believe it was to get away from me."

"Wouldn't pay no heed to her," said farmer Page comfortably. A small man popped his head over Mr. Page's beefy shoulder. "Her
hasn't been the same since that play." His voice rose to a falsetto. 'Oh, Reg, Reg, kiss me.'"

"That be enough now, Billy," admonished another man. "We all makes a fool o' ourself sometime or t'other. No cause to throw
stones. Turning into a scorcher of a summer, ain't it?"

In vain did Agatha try to find out about Mrs. Barr. Gossip was over for the night. Farming and the weather were the subjects
allowed. The old grandfather clock in the corner of the pub gave a small apologetic cough and then chimed out the hour.

"Goodness!" Agatha scrambled down from the bar stool. "I'm late."

She felt very tipsy as she hurried to the vicarage. "You're not terribly late," whispered Mrs. Bloxby after she had opened
the door to her. "Miss Simms has just finished reading the minutes."

Agatha accepted a cup of tea and two dainty sandwiches and sat down as near to the rest of the eats as she could get.

"Now," said Mrs. Mason, "our guest of the evening, Mr. Jones."

Polite applause while Mr. Jones set up a screen and a slide projector.

He was a small spry man with white hair and horn­rimmed glasses.

"For my first slide," he said, "here is Bailey's grocery store in the 1920s." A picture, at first fuzzy, came into focus:
a store with striped awnings, and grinning villagers standing in front of it. Delighted cries from the older members. "Reckon
that's Mrs. Bloggs; you see that liddle girl standing to the right?"

Agatha stifled a yawn and slowly reached out in the gloom for a hefty slice of plum cake. She felt sleepy and bored. All the
frights of the past few weeks which had kept her adrenalin flowing had faded away. The attacks on her had been made by a burglar
who was now on the run. Maria Borrow was a crazy old fright. Barbara James was a pain in the neck. Something nasty had happened
in the woodshed of Mrs. Barr's past. Who gave a damn? And what was she, the high-powered Agatha Raisin, doing sitting in a
vicarage eating plum cake and being bored to death?

Slide followed slide. Even when photos of "our village prize-winners" jerked onto the screen, Agatha remained in a stupor
of boredom. There was Ella Cartwright being presented with a ten-pound note by Reg Cummings-Browne, looking as long dead as
the old photos of villagers she had already seen. Then Vera Cummings-Browne getting a prize for flower arranging, then Mrs.
Bloxby getting a prize for jam. Mrs. Bloxby? Agatha looked at the photo of the vicar's wife standing with Reg Cummings-Browne
and then relapsed back into her torpor. Mrs. Bloxby? Not in a hundred years!

And then she fell asleep and in her dreams she cycled down into Carsely in the fading light and standing in the middle of
the road waiting for her and brandishing a double-barrelled shotgun was Mrs. Barr. Agatha awoke with a shriek of fear and
found the slide show was over and everyone was looking at her.

"Sorry," she mumbled.

"Don't worry," said Miss Simms, who was next to her. "It was that nasty fright you had."

When Agatha made her way homeward, she decided to get some sort of alarm system installed the very next day and then wondered
why. Somewhere at the back of her mind, she had decided to leave the village.

The next day, she phoned a security firm and placed an order for their best of everything in the way of burglar-proofing and
then went around opening the doors and the windows to try to get a breath of cool air. The heat was building up. Before, when
it had been fine, the days had been sunny and the nights cool, but now the sky burnt blue, deep blue above the twisted cottage
chimneys and the sun beat down. By lunch-time, the heat was fierce. She took a small thermometer outside and watched as it
shot up over the one-hundred-degrees Fahrenheit mark and disappeared. Mrs. Simpson was vacuuming busily upstairs, having changed
her cleaning day to fit in a dentist's appointment. Agatha remembered the talk about Mrs. Barr and climbed the stairs. "Can
I have a word with you?" she shouted over the noise of the vacuum. Mrs. Simpson reluctantly turned the machine off. She was
proud of doing a good job and felt she had already wasted too much time earlier hearing Agatha's adventures.

"I was asking in the pub last night why Mrs. Ban-was selling up and I heard an aunt had died and left her a larger cottage
over Ancombe way."

"Yes, that's right." Doris Simpson's hand hovered longingly over the vacuum switch.

"Why don't you come down to the kitchen and have a cup of coffee, Doris?"

"Got too much to do, Agatha."

"Skip for once. I'm still getting over my fright and I want to talk," said Agatha firmly.

"I meant to clean the windows."

"It's too hot. I'll hire a window cleaner. Doris!"

"Oh, all right," said Doris ungraciously.

Would anyone in this day and age believe you had to beg a cleaner to leave her work? marvelled Agatha.

Once in the kitchen and with coffee poured, Agatha said, "Now tell me about Mrs. Barr."

"What's to tell?"

"Someone in the pub said something about her having disgraced herself and then said in a high voice as if imitating her, 'Reg,
Reg, kiss me.'"

"Oh, that!"

"Oh, what, Doris? I'm dying of curiosity."

"Curiosity killed the cat," said Doris sententiously. "Well, there was this young chap over at Campden and he wrote a play,
sort of old-fashioned type thing it were, you know, where they has long cigarette holders and talks like them old British
warfilms.He was a protege of Vera Cummings-Browne. Anyway, Mrs. Cummings-Browne said she would get the dramatic society to
put it on. Two of the parts were about a middle-aged couple remembering the passion of their youth, or that's how the programme
put it. This was played by Mrs. Barr and Mr. Cummings-Browne. Dead boring that whole play was. Anyway, they were supposed
to be on a liner and there they was sat, in deck chairs and with travel rugs over their knees saying things like, 'Remember
India, darling?'"

"Sort of fake Noel Coward?"

"I s'pose. I wouldn't know. Anyways, Mrs. Barr suddenly turns to him and says, 'Reg, Reg, kiss me.' Well, that waren't in
the scrip' and what's more, the character Mr. Cummings-Browne was playing was called Ralph. He muttered something and she
threw herself at him, his deck chair went over, and we all cheered and laughed, thinking it was the first funny thing that
evening, but the playwright screamed awful words and tried to climb up on the stage and Mrs. Cummings-Browne closed the curtains.
We could hear the most awful row going on backstage and then Mrs. Cummings-Browne came out in front of the curtains and said
the rest of the play was cancelled."

"So Mrs. Barr must have been having an affair with Cummings-Browne!"

"You know, I often wonder if that one did more than have a bit of a kiss and cuddle. I mean, take Ella Cartwright; for all
she looks like a slut, all she really cares about is getting money for the bingo. Now can I go back to work?"

The security firm arrived and Agatha paid over a staggering sum and then they began to fit lights and alarms and pressure
pads.

"Going to be like Fort Knox here," grumbled Doris.

Agatha went out and sat in the garden to get away from the workmen, but the sun was too fierce.The air of the Cotswolds is
very heavy and on that day the sun seemed to have burnt all the oxygen out of it. She felt as isolated as if she were on a
desert island, even with Doris working away and men bustling about fixing the alarm system. She moved her chair into a patch
of shade. She would not make any rash decisions. She would see how quickly Mrs. Barr sold her house and try to find out how
much she got for it. If the sale was a healthy one, then she would put her own cottage on the market. She would move back
to London and start all over again in the PR business. She would try to lure Roy away from Pedmans. He was shaping up nicely.

Although the news bulletins said the tar was melting on the streets of London under the heat, she saw it under rainy skies
with the pavements glistening in the wet, reflecting the colours of the goods in the shop windows. She had become used to
the international population of London, to the different-coloured faces, to the exotic restaurants. Here she was surrounded
by Anglo-Saxon faces and Anglo-Saxon ways. The scandal of John Cartwright was over, she knew that. Already plans were being
made for the annual village band concert, money to Famine Relief this time. Apart from sending money off to the distressed
of the outside world, the villagers were not much concerned with anything that went on which disturbed the slow, easy tenor
of their days. Suffocating! That's what it was. Suffocating, thought Agatha, striking the arm of her chair.

"Someone to see you," called one of the workmen.

Agatha went into the house. Bill Wong was standing at the front door. "Come in," called Agatha. "Have they caught him?"

"Not yet. See you're getting every security system going."

"They've started, so they may as well finish," said Agatha. "Let's hope it adds to the price of the house, for I mean to leave."
He followed her into the kitchen and sat down. "Leave? Why? Anyone else been trying to murder you?"

"Not yet." Agatha sat down opposite him. "I'm bored."

"Some would think you were leading a very exciting life in the country."

"I don't fit in here," said Agatha. "I mean to go back to London and start in business again."

His almond-shaped eyes studied her without expression. Then he said, "You know, you haven't given it much time. It takes about
two years to settle in anywhere. Besides, you're a different person. Less prickly, less insensitive."

Agatha sniffed. "Weak, you mean. No, nothing will change my mind now. Why are you here?"

"Just to ask after your health." He fished in the pocket of the jacket which he had been carrying over his arm when he arrived
and which was now on the back of the chair. He produced ajar of home-made jam. "It's my mother's," he said awkwardly. "Thought
you might like some. Strawberry."

"Oh, how lovely," said Agatha. "I'll take it up to London with me."

"You're surely not leaving right away!"

"No, but I thought while you were talking that it would do me good to take a short holiday from Carsely—book into some hotel
in London."

"How long for?"

"I don't know. Probably a week."

"So this means your life as an amateur detective is over."

"It never really got started," said Agatha. "I thought the fuss I was causing was because there was a murderer in the village.
But all I was doing was riling people up."

Bill studied her for a few moments and then said, "Perhaps you might find you have changed. Perhaps you will find London doesn't
suit you anymore."

"Now, that I very much doubt," laughed Agatha. "I tell you what I'll do when I get back. I'll invite you for dinner." She
looked at him, suddenly shy. "That is, if you want to come."

"I'd like t h a t . . . provided it isn't quiche."

After he had gone, Agatha paid Doris Simpson and told her she would be away the following week but gave her a spare key and
got the head workman to instruct both of them in the mysterious working of the burglar alarms. Then she phoned up a small
but expensive London hotel and booked herself in for a week. She was lucky they had just received a cancellation, and as it
was, she had to reserve a double room.

Then she began to pack. The evening brought little respite from the heat and a good deal of nuisance. The news that all the
lights outside Agatha's cottage went on when anyone passed on the road quickly spread amongst the village children, who ran
up and down with happy swooping screams like giant swallows until the local policeman turned up to drive them away.

Agatha went along to the Red Lion. "We all need airconditioning," she said to the landlord.

"Happen you're right," he said, "but what's the point of the expense? Won't see another summer like this in England for years.
Fact is, maybe we'll get a bad winter. Old Sam Sturret was just in here and he was saying how the winter's going to be mortal
bad. We'll be snowed up for weeks, he says."