Agatha Raisin and The Murderous Marriage

FOUR

SIR Desmond Derrington lived in a pleasant Cotswold mansion a few miles outside Mircester on the Oxford road. As they approached it, Agatha saw a poster stuck on a tree-trunk beside the road which advertised the fact that Sir Desmond's gardens were open that day to the public.

"I hope he's there," said James when it was pointed out to him. "I hope he hasn't gone off and left the local village ladies to show people around."

Agatha, desperate for anyone who looked like a murderer, felt disappointed when she first saw Sir Desmond. He was bending over an ornamental shrub and explaining its history and planting to a fat woman who was shifting her bulk uneasily and looking as if she wished she had never asked about it. Sir Desmond looked like a pillar of the community, middle-aged, greying, long-nosed, and married to a rangy loud-voiced wife who was holding forth in another part of the garden. Lady Derrington was wearing a short-sleeved cotton print dress despite the chill of the day and had a hard fiat bottom and a hard flat chest. Her brown hair was rigidly permed and her patrician nose looked down at each flower and plant with a faintly patronizing air, as if all had sprung from the earth without her permission.

The fat woman waddled away from Sir Desmond and James approached him. "I was admiring that fine wisteria you've got on the wall over there," he said.

"Oh, that." Sir Desmond blinked myopically in the direction of the house wall. "Very fine in the spring. Masses of blossom."

"I'm experiencing a bit of difficulty with mine," said James. "I planted it two years ago but it hasn't grown very much and has very few blossoms."

"Where did you get it from?"

"Brakeham's Nurseries."

"Them!" Sir Demond gave a contemptuous snort. "Wouldn't get anything from there. Hetty, my wife, got given a present of a hydrangea from there. Died after a week. And do you know why?" Sir Desmond poked James in the chest with a long finger. "Wo roots."

"How awful. I'll give them a clear berth in future."

Agatha was approaching to join them. Then she heard Sir Desmond say, "Lot of charlatans about. Where are you from?"

"Carsely."

"Do you know I went to see the gardens there when they were open to the public and some woman had bought everything fully grown from a nursery and tried to pretend she had planted the lot from seed. Didn't even know the names of anything."

Recognizing a description of herself, Agatha veered off, leaving the conversation to James.

She approached Lady Derrington instead. "Nice garden," said Agatha.

"Thank you," said Lady Derrington. "We have some plants for sale on tables over by the house. Very reasonable prices. And there are tea and cakes. Our housekeeper makes very good cakes. Just follow the crowd. Why, Angela, darling, how wonderful to see you!"

She turned away. Agatha looked back at James. He was now deep in conversation with Sir Desmond. Judging they had moved from the subject of that dreadful woman in Carsely, Agatha went to join them. They were swapping army stories. Agatha fidgeted and stifled a yawn.

"I was just about to take a break and have some tea," said Sir Desmond finally. "Do join us. The women from the village are quite capable of coping with this crowd."

James introduced Agatha as his wife, Mrs. Perth. Agatha was surprised that he should maintain that bit of deception, but James did not want Sir Desmond to remember Agatha as the gardening cheat of Carsely.

Sir Desmond walked them over to his wife and introduced them. Lady Derrington seemed slightly displeased that two strangers should have been invited for tea. Agatha suspected that she would have been better pleased if they had paid for it.

They found themselves in a pleasant drawing-room. The green leaves of the wisteria fluttered and moved outside the windows, dappling the room in a mixture of sunlight and shadow. Two sleepy dogs rose at their entrance and yawned and stretched before curling down and going to sleep again. Lady Derrington threw a log on the fire and then poured tea. No cakes, noticed Agatha with a beady eye. Only some rather hard biscuits. She wanted a cigarette but there was no ashtray in sight.

They answered questions about Carsely and then James leaned back in his chair, stretched his long legs, and said with seeming casualness, "My wife and I have just returned from a short stay at Hunters Fields."

Sir Desmond was lifting a cup of tea to his lips. His hand holding the cup paused in mid-air. "What's that?" he demanded sharply.

"It's that health farm," said his wife. "Horribly pricey. The Pomfrets went there but they've got money to burn."

"But you were there yourself," said James. "You were both there at the same time as two people we know, Mrs. Gore-Appleton and Jimmy Raisin."

"We have never been there and I have never heard of them," said Sir Desmond evenly. "Now if you will forgive me..."

He stood up and walked to the door and held it open. His wife looked surprised but did not say anything.

He strode out angrily back into the gardens followed by Agatha and James and then turned to face them. "I'm tired of scum like you. You are not getting a penny."

He rushed off, cannoned off a pair of surprised visitors, and disappeared around a corner of the house.

Agatha made to go after him but James held her back. "He must have been there with someone else, someone who wasn't his wife. Leave it, Agatha. Someone was blackmailing him, probably Jimmy. It's time to tell Bill Wong what we know."

They left a message for Bill Wong when they returned home, but it was the following day before they saw him again.

He arrived in the afternoon. When she opened the door, Agatha could see the dreadful Maddie sitting beside him in the car. Bill followed Agatha into the living-room. "Coffee?" said James.

"No, thank you. I haven't much time. What did you want to see me about?"

They told him about their investigations, ending up with the visit to Sir Desmond Derrington.

Bill Wong's chubby face was severe. "I've been there all night," he said sternly. "Sir Desmond is dead. It appears to have been a shooting accident. His shotgun went off when he was cleaning it. But he was cleaning it in the middle of the night, you see, and it now seems to me he thought you were taking over where Jimmy Raisin left off. We roused the health farm at two in the morning. Sir Desmond stayed there at the same time as Jimmy Raisin with a woman who gave her name as Lady Derrington. The real Lady Derrington is the one with all the money. Had she divorced Sir Desmond, he would have been virtually penniless. He had been paying out the sum of five hundred pounds a month for a year, probably the year Jimmy Raisin was sober, and then the payments stopped. He was proud of his position in the community - local magistrate, all that sort of thing. Does it dawn on you interfering pair that you might have killed him?"

"Oh, no," said James, horrified. "Surely it was an accident?"

"Why decide to clean a gun in the middle of the night, and the night after your visit?" said Bill wearily. "It's dangerous to interfere with police work."

James glanced sideways at Agatha's stricken face. "Look," he said, "we were about to give you all this information anyway. So what would happen? You would start with the health farm and then you would call on Sir Desmond. Would you think of asking them to describe the woman who said she was Lady Derrington? No, you would not. So you would have approached him and he would know his wife was going to find out all about it and the result would have been the same."

"We thought of that. But Maddie pointed out that a visit from the police might not have tipped the balance of his mind the way the appearance on the scene of what appeared to be a couple of blackmailers would do."

"Maddie says, Maddie says," jeered Agatha tearfully. "You think the sun shines out of her arse!"

There was a shocked silence. Agatha turned red.

"Go upstairs and put some make-up on or something," said James quietly. When Agatha had left the room, he said to Bill, "Agatha heard an unfortunate conversation between you and Maddie in the pub in Mircester. The toilets are behind where you were both talking. Maddie was manipulating you into calling on us to find out if we knew anything. I gather her remarks about Agatha were pretty insulting. Had Agatha not been so badly hurt and had I not sympathized with her, we might have told you all this earlier. Friendship," said James sententiously, "is a valuable thing. All you had to say to Maddie was that you would be calling on us anyway as part of your investigations. Do you not feel she is using you to find out extra facts which might help her to solve the case?"

"No," said Bill hotly. "Not a bit of it. She is a hardworking and conscientious detective."

"Oh, really? Well, let's return to the question of Sir Desmond's death. His wife held the purse-strings. So how did he manage to pay out this five hundred a month, if that was blackmail money and not some money to a young mistress, without his wife finding out?"

"He had a monthly income from Lady Derrington's family trust. It was generous, but Sir Desmond had quite an extravagant life-style in a quiet way. Hunting, for example, takes a bit of money, not to mention the shirts from Jermyn Street and the suits from Savile Row. Lady Derrington never checked his bank account. It was overdrawn each month. That came as a surprise to her."

"So I gather you insensitive cops put her wise to the mistress. How did Lady Derrington take it?"

"Coldly. She said, 'Silly old goat'."

"And who was this charmer who seduced Sir Desmond?"

"A secretary from the House of Commons, secretary to an MP friend of Sir Desmond's. We're trying to get her. She's on holiday in Barbados at the moment. Called Helen Warwick. Not young. Blonde, yes, but in her forties."

"Married?"

"No."

"So no blackmail there?"

"We'll need to wait and see. She is a respectable lady and might not want to feature in a divorce case. Look, I'd better talk to Agatha. Things overheard are always worse than things said direct."

"Leave it for the moment," said James curtly. "I'll speak to her."

"Well, don't do any more detecting without telling me. In fact, don't do any detecting at all."

Bill left and climbed into the car beside Maddie. "Well, did you tell that interfering pair what you thought of them?" she asked.

"I was the one that was made to feel guilty. Agatha overheard a conversation between us in the pub where you were urging me to sound them out to see what they knew and she also heard some of your unflattering remarks."

"Serves her right." Maddie shrugged.

For the first time, Bill's mind made a separation between lust and love. For a brief moment, he wondered if he even liked Maddie, but when she crossed her legs in their sheer black stockings, lust took over and rationalized all his feelings back into romance.

Agatha came back into the living-room and said in a weary voice, "Has he gone?"

"Yes, and very guilty about having hurt you, too." James surveyed Agatha. Her face was scrubbed free of make-up and she was wearing an old sweater and a rather baggy skirt and flat heels. He had always considered privately that women did not need to plaster their faces with make-up, but he found himself missing the Agatha of the high heels, make-up, French perfume and ten-denier stockings. He had not forgiven her for having made such a fool of him on the wedding day. Somewhere in his heart he knew he would never forgive her and therefore he did not want to get romantically involved with her again, but he did not like to see her so down and crushed.

"Bill has asked us to butt out, as usual," said James, "but I say, let's go on with it. That'll cheer you up. We'll have an easy day and then try the next on the list, Miss Janet Purvey."

"And have her kill herself?"

"Now, Agatha. Sir Desmond would have been found out anyway and the result would have been the same. Do you want to go out for dinner tonight?"

"I'll see. I promised to go to Ancombe with the Carsely Ladies' Society. We're being hosted by them. They're putting on a revue."

"Well, well, the delights of the countryside. Have fun."

"At the Ancombe Ladies' Society? You must be joking."

"Why go?"

"Mrs. Bloxby expects me to go."

"Oh, in that case..."

Agatha was not religious. Often she thought she did not believe in God at all. But she was superstitious and felt obscurely that divine punishment for the death of Sir Desmond was just beginning when Mrs. Bloxby asked her apologetically if she would mind taking the Boggles over to Ancombe in her car.

"I know, Agatha," said Mrs. Bloxby ruefully, "but we put names in a hat before you came and you got the Boggles. Ancombe isn't far, about five minutes' drive at the most."

"Okay," said Agatha gloomily.

She drove round to the Boggles' home, named Culloden, on the council estate. Like most of the people on the estate, they had bought their house. How could James even think for a moment I would live in a place like this, thought Agatha. It was admittedly a well-built stone house, but exactly the same as all the other houses round about. She stood looking dismally up at it. The door opened and the squat figure of Mrs. Boggle appeared, followed by her husband. "Are you goin' to stand there all day," grumbled Mrs. Boggle, "or are you coming to help me?"

Agatha repressed a sigh and went forward to support the bulk of Mrs. Boggle, who smelt strongly of chips and lavender, towards the car.

They both got in the back while Agatha, chauffeur-like, got into the driving-seat. Mrs. Boggle poked Agatha in the back as she was about to drive off. "Us shouldn't be going with the likes of you," she said. "Poor Mr. Lacey. What a disgrace."

Agatha swung round, her face flaming. "Shut up, you old trout," she said viciously. "Or walk."

"I'll tell Mrs. Bloxby on you," muttered Mrs. Boggle but then relapsed into silence during the drive to Ancombe.

Agatha hoisted the two Boggles from the car outside Ancombe church hall and sent them inside and then went to join Mrs. Mason, the chairwoman of the Carsely group, Miss Simms, the secretary, and Mrs. Bloxby. "Shame about you landing them Boggles," said Miss Simms, Carsely's unmarried mother. "Don't worry, I had them last time."

"I didn't know you had a car," said Agatha.

"My gentleman friend bought me one. Hardly the wages o' sin. Not a Porsche but a rusty old Renault five."

Agatha turned to Mrs. Bloxby. "Has that woman who's bought my cottage joined the Ladies' Society?"

"I did ask her," said the vicar's wife, "but she said she couldn't be bothered and shut the door in my face."

"Nasty cow," said Agatha. "Oh, if only I hadn't sold my cottage! I'd better look for somewhere else. I can't live out of a suitcase at James's forever." She walked off into the hall.

"Now there's a thing," said Miss Simms, picking a piece of tobacco offher teeth. "I thought the wedding would happen sooner or later."

Doris Simpson, Agatha's cleaner, joined them. "Poor Agatha," she said. "She do miss her home and I miss the cleaning."

"Don't you do for Mr. Lacey, then?" asked Miss Simms.

"No, he does his own cleaning, and that's unnatural in a man, if you ask me."

"I had a fellow like that once. Went off and left me for another fellow," said Miss Simms. "It all goes to show."

"I do not think our Mr. Lacey is that way inclined," said Mrs. Bloxby.

"Never can tell. Some of 'em don't come out o' the closet till they're quite old and then they run around saying, "This is the life," and bugger the wife and kids," Mrs. Simpson said.

"'Bugger' being the word," said Doris Simms and gave a cackle of laughter.

"Shall we go in, ladies?" suggested the vicar's wife.

The revue consisted of songs and sketches. In the way of amateur productions, the singer most on stage was the one with the weakest voice and had chosen to sing a selection from the musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber, petering out in the high notes and dying in the low notes and shrill in the middle. The rendering of 'Don't Cry for Me, Argentina' was, Agatha reflected sourly, music to stun pigs by.

Usually when she was out at some event that bored her, she looked forward to returning home to her cottage and cats. But there was only James's cottage to return to, where she seemed to exist by sufferance on the periphery of his well-ordered life.

Damn that Hardy woman, she thought. And then she stifled a little gasp. Mrs. Hardy, that could be it! Come from God knows where. Who knew anything about her? And her arrival in the village had been coincidental with the death of Jimmy Raisin. Agatha barely heard the rest of the concert. She wanted to rush home and tell James about her suspicions, but there was tea to take afterwards and the grumbling Boggles to run home.

By the time she was free, her splendid idea had been replaced by doubts. But none the less she told James of her suspicions. To her relief, he listened to her seriously and said, "I've been wondering about that woman myself. There doesn't seem much point in trying to talk to her, she doesn't seem the chatty sort, to say the least."

There was a ring at the doorbell and Agatha went to answer it. Mrs. Bloxby stood there. "Come in," said Agatha.

"I can't. I brought your scarf. You left it at the hall. I'm just going to pick up the keys from Mrs. Hardy. For some reason she wants me to keep the spares while she's in London. I told her to leave them with our policeman, Fred Griggs, but she said she didn't want to."

"When does she leave?" asked Agatha. "About now, I think. I had better go." Agatha thanked her for the scarf and went thoughtfully back indoors.

"There's a thing," she said, sitting down opposite James. "The Hardy woman's off to London. Left her spare keys with Mrs. Bloxby. Wouldn't it be interesting to get a look in there?"

"Can't very well ask Mrs. Bloxby for the keys. And I wouldn't like to try lock-picking in broad daylight."

"But I've got another set to the cottage. I found them in my case."

"Won't she have changed the locks?"

"I've a feeling that one would not go to any expense if she could do otherwise. Oh, just think, James, what if she proves to be Mrs.- Gore-Appleton?"

"Too much to hope for. But I'd like to find out more about her. How do we get in there without anyone seeing us? There always seems to be someone about in this village when you don't want them to be, and we can't wait until the middle of the night. Did Mrs. Bloxby say anything about when she planned to return?"

"No. But I have the key to the back door. All we need to do is to go out and over the fence of your garden and then over the fence and into mine - I mean hers."

"Okay. I'll go outside and weed the front garden so I can see her leaving."

James, bent double over a flower-bed, thought after half an hour that Mrs. Hardy might have changed her mind, but then, as he straightened up, he was rewarded by the sight of her truculent face behind the wheel of her car, heading off down Lilac Lane. He stood and craned his neck, hearing the sound of the car retreating through the village, and then seeing it climbing up the hill out of Carsely.

He went back indoors. "Right, Agatha," he said. "Let's go."

Agatha shinned over James's garden fence, thinking that detective work might prove too energetic a business for a middle-aged woman. James had gone over lightly and had crossed the narrow alley between his garden and that of Mrs. Hardy and was already climbing over her fence.

That James should expect her to scramble after him with-out an offer of help riled Agatha. She felt she was being treated like a man. She suddenly wanted James to notice her again, really look at her as a man ought to look at a woman. She thought that when she reached the top of Mrs. Hardy's fence, she would call to him for help. He would stretch his arms up to her and she would drop down into them, her eyes closed, and she would whisper, "James, oh James."

"Help!" she called softly. She dropped down the other side of the fence, stumbled and landed face-down in a flowerbed. She got to her feet and glared. James, totally oblivious to the romantic script she had written for him, was unlocking the kitchen door. Agatha gave herself a mental shaking. She did not love him any more, she told herself. It was just that she had become so used to being in love, to having her brain filled with bright dreams that without them she was left with herself. Agatha did not find herself very good company.

She looked around her garden as she headed for the back door. It had a weedy, neglected air.

Inside the house, she looked around the kitchen. It was gleaming and sterile. She opened the fridge. Nothing but a bottle of milk and some butter. She was about to open the freezer compartment when James said angrily from behind her, "We're not here to find out what she eats but who she is."

She followed him through to the living-room. Agatha had never credited herself with having much taste, but looking around what had once been her cosy, chintzy living-room, she felt her cottage had undergone a species of rape. There was a mushroom-coloured fitted carpet on the floor. A three-piece suite in mushroom velvet was ornamented with gold tassels on the arms and gold fringe above the squat legs. A low glass coffee-table glittered coldly. No pictures or books. Her lovely open hearth had been blocked up and an electric fire with fake legs stood in front of it.

"Absolutely nothing here," said James. "Let's try upstairs. You'd best stay down here in case you hear her coming back." And Agatha was glad to agree, not wanting to see what Mrs. Hardy had done to the rest of the cottage. She went to the window and peered out. Autumn had come. A thin mist was curling around the branches of the lilac bush at the gate. Water dripped from the thatch with a mournful sound.

Agatha suddenly wondered what on earth she was doing living in the country, a feeling that only assailed her during the autumn. It was the Cotswold fogs that were the problem. Last winter hadn't been too bad, but the winter before had been awful, crawling into Moreton-in-Marsh or Evesham to do the shopping with the fog-lights on, sometimes not knowing whether she was still on the road or not, driving home at night where the fog seemed to rear up and take on tall pillared, shifting shapes, eyes aching, longing for the wind to blow and lift it.

In London there were shops, brightly lit, and tubes and buses, theatres and cinemas. Of course, she could get all that in Oxford, but Oxford was thirty miles away, thirty miles of fog-filled road.

She heard James call softly, "You'd better come up here."

She ran up the stairs. "In here," he called. "The main bedroom."

The room was dominated with a large four-poster bed, a modern four-poster bed. "How did she get that up the stairs?" marvelled Agatha.

"Never mind. Look at this. Don't touch anything. I'm going to put it all back the way I found it." There were papers spread out on the floor. Agatha knelt down and studied them. Any hope Agatha might have had that the mysterious Mrs. Hardy might turn out to be the missing Mrs. Gore-Appleton quickly fled.

There was a birth certificate: Mary Bexley, born in Sheffield in 1941. Then marriage lines. Mary Bexley had married one John Hardy in 1965. Death certificate for John Hardy. Died in car crash 1972.

Bank-books and statements in the name of Mary Hardy. There were photographs, dull and boring. It appeared that the late Mr. Hardy had been the company director of an electronics firm. Photos of Mr. Hardy at firm functions. No children.

"So that's very much that," commented Agatha gloomily as she straightened up. James carefully replaced everything.

"We'll try Miss Janet Purvey tomorrow," he said.

Miss Janet Purvey lived in Ashton-Le-Walls, quite near the health farm. It was a sleepy village wreathed in the thick mist which still persisted to haunt the countryside. Late roses drooped over cottage walls, blackened busy Lizzies, suffering from the first frost of the autumn, drooped along the edge of flower-beds. The trees were turning russet and birds piped dismally, seemingly the only sounds in the village of Ashton-Le-Walls, where nothing and no one but Agatha and James seemed to be alive in the fog.

The year was dying and Agatha felt lost and strange and loveless. The only thing that seemed to be keeping herself and James locked together was this detective investigation. She felt that once it was all over, they would drift apart, farther than they had ever been before, as if they had never lain in each other's arms.

A poem she had learned at school suddenly ran through Agatha's brain:

Western wind, when wilt thou blow? The small rain down can rain, -

Christ, if my love were in my arms And I in my bed again!

She felt if only the wind would blow away the mist and fog, her spirits would lighten. Autumn seemed to be inside her very brain, darkness and falling leaves and the haunting spectre of decay and old age.

Miss Purvey lived in a cottage called The Pear Tree in the middle of the village. It was in a terrace of other small cottages, dark, secret, and lightless in the fog.

Agatha had not asked James whether he knew how old this Miss Purvey was and dreaded finding out she was a sophisticated blonde who might capture James's affections.

Her first feeling on seeing Miss Purvey when she answered the door was one of relief, the second, contempt accompanied by the thought, what a frumpy old bag.

The middle-aged, like Agatha, can be extremely cruel about the old, possibly because they are looking at their immediate future. Miss Purvey was, in fact, only about seventy, with a mouth like Popeye, a small nose, twinkling watery eyes, and rigidly permed white hair. Her face was wrinkled and sallow. Only in Britain, thought Agatha, looking at the sunken line of the jaw and the thin, drooping mouth, could you still come across women of means who went in for having their teeth removed. It was still George Orwell's country of people with bad teeth or no teeth at all.

"No reporters," said Miss Purvey in a plummy voice.

"We are not reporters," said James. "Have you had the press here?"

"No, but the police have been asking me impertinent questions. Are you Jehovahs?"

"No, we're - "

"Selling something?"

"No," said James patiently.

"Then what?" The door began to inch closed.

"I am Mrs. Agatha Raisin," said Agatha, stepping in front of James.

"The widow of that man who was murdered?"

"Yes."

"Well, I'm very sorry for you, but I can't help you."

James took over. "I feel perhaps you can, Miss Purvey. You look like a charming and intelligent woman to me." He smiled and Miss Purvey suddenly smiled back. "We are concerned to find out what Mrs. Raisin's husband was doing at the health farm. We need a lady with good powers of observation rather than some dry police report."

"Well..." She hesitated. "Mother always used to say I noticed what the average person missed. Do come in."

Agatha followed James into the cottage quickly, feeling that Miss Purvey would have been quite happy to shut the door in her face.

The cottage was as dark as the day outside. A small fire burnt in the living-room grate. There were photographs everywhere, on the many side-tables, on the upright piano in the corner, and on the mantelpiece, old photographs taken on forgotten sunny days.

"So," began James when they were seated, "did you speak to Mr. Raisin?"

"Only a little," said Miss Purvey. "And to be quite frank, I was amazed that such a type of person should be at such an expensive health farm."

"But you saw him," said James. "What was your impression of him?"

She put her finger to her forehead, rather like the Dodo in Alice, and frowned. "He was very friendly to everyone, chatting here and there and table-hopping at meals. He had a very loud laugh. His clothes were good, but they didn't seem to belong to him. Not a gentleman."

"And Mrs. Gore-Appleton?"

"She seemed quite all right. But too old to have her hair dyed that improbable shade of gold and her exercise clothes were much too flashy."

"Was she in love with Mr. Raisin?" asked James.

"They were very much a couple and I saw her coming out of his room in the middle of the night." Miss Purvey's lips folded in such disapproval that they disappeared into the lines of her face.

"But you personally did not have anything to do with him?" Agatha put in.

"He did...er...come on to me. That is the modern expression, is it not? But I would have none of it."

Both Agatha and James were struck by the same thought at the same time - that it was hard to imagine Miss Purvey repulsing the advances of any man. There was an avid eagerness about her as she looked at James and she constantly reached out to touch his arm. "But then," she went on, "he turned his attentions to Lady Derrington, or the woman who, I now gather, was not Lady Derrington. I fear these health clinics nurture lax morals."

"Did the police broach the subject of blackmail to you?" asked James.

"Yes, they did. But as I pointed out, there are still ladies around in these days." Miss Purvey's eyes rested briefly on i Agatha, as if dismissing her from the lady class.

"Can you think of anyone he might have been blackmailing?" Agatha's voice was thin with dislike.

"I don't know if he was blackmailing her. But there was a certain Mrs. Gloria Comfort. He was all over her. Mrs. Gore-Appleton didn't seem to mind."

"What was Mrs. Gore-Appleton really like?" asked Agatha. "I don't mean her appearance, but her character."

"Well, as I said, she was a lady," said Miss Purvey reluctantly. Again those eyes fastened on Agatha. "And although her clothes were unsuitable, they were very expensive. She was well-made-up and quite thin, but very fit." So goodbye, Mrs. Hardy, thought Agatha, conjuring up a picture of that powerfully built woman. Agatha still nourished hopes that Mrs. Hardy would miraculously turn out to be the missing Mrs. Gore-Appleton, but then she desperately wanted her cottage back.

Agatha began to fidget. She now loathed Miss Purvey and felt the small dark living-room claustrophobic.

But James seemed determined to discuss the matter further, and to Agatha's dismay accepted an offer of coffee. He followed Miss Purvey into the kitchen to help her. Agatha walked around the room looking at the photographs. They all featured Miss Purvey at various stages of her life. Agatha was surprised to note that as a young woman she had been very pretty. Why hadn't she married? There were parents and what looked like two brothers. There was a photo of Miss Purvey at her coming-out in the days when debs were still presented to the queen, so the family must have had money. She could hear the voices from the kitchen and then heard Miss Purvey give a flirtatious laugh. Damn James!

They returned from the kitchen together, Miss Purvey's old face slightly pink. To Agatha's amazement, Miss Purvey's attitude to her had changed. She pressed Agatha to try her cakes and then chatted about life in the village and the work she was doing for the Women's Institute. "Ladies like us, Mrs. Raisin," she said, "must do our bit."

"Yes," agreed Agatha faintly, wondering what had brought about this change and not knowing that James had whispered to Miss Purvey the lie that Agatha was a niece of the Duke of Devonshire.

"Now although I said Mrs. Gore-Appleton was a lady," confided Miss Purvey, putting a wrinkled hand on Agatha's knee, "I did get the impression that she had gone to the bad, if you know what I mean. It's hard to put my finger on it, but there was a raffishness about her, a seediness, and something else...I don't know what, but I was quite frightened of her. As I was telling Mr. Lacey, I remember she did begin to talk to me towards the end of my stay. She was talking about money and business and told me she was running a charity. She said that everyone had money worries today and I said I was quite comfortably off, thank you, and she asked me if I would contribute to her charity, but when I heard it was for the homeless, I refused. I said if these people were homeless, then it was their own fault."

To Agatha's relief, James abruptly lost interest in anything further that Miss Purvey might have to say. He put down his cup.

"Thank you for your hospitality. We really must be going."

"Oh, must you? I could be of help to you, I think."

"You have already been of great help," said James courteously.

"That's very kind of you." Agatha said, getting to her feet and gathering up her handbag and gloves. "But I don't see - "

"My powers of observation," she cried. "I would make a very good detective. Now, now, Mr. Lacey," she said roguishly, "you have already marked me down as an expert sleuth!"

"Quite," he said hastily. He took out a card and gave it to her. "If you find anything, I will be at this address."

After they had gone, Miss Purvey paced up and down her small cottage living-room. She felt excited, elated. That handsome Mr. Lacey had looked at her in such a way! She walked to the window and peered up, rubbing the glass. The mist had taken on a yellowish light showing that, far above, the sun was trying to struggle through.

Miss Purvey had a sudden longing for the lights and shops of Mircester. She had one close friend, Belinda Humphries, who ran a small dress shop in a shopping arcade in Mircester. Miss Purvey decided to go and see her, relishing the joys of describing James Lacey and the way he had looked at her. Of course, he had had Mrs. Raisin with him, but she had asked him in the kitchen if they were going to be married after all and he had said quietly, "Not now," and she, Miss Purvey, was only a teensy bit older than Mrs. Raisin.

She put on her coat and that sort of felt hat beloved by middle-class Englishwomen and damned as 'sensible', and made her way out to her Ford Escort, which was parked on the road outside the cottage.

Driving slowly and carefully, she joined the dual carriageway road some miles outside the village, and moving into the fast lane, drove at a steady thirty miles per hour, seemingly deaf to the furious horns and flashing lights of the drivers behind her.

To her dismay, the fog began to thicken as she approached Mircester. She found a parking place in the central square, got out, locked her car and went to the shopping arcade. A neat sign hanging on the glass door said CLOSED. She gave a little cluck of dismay. She had forgotten it was half-day in Mircester.

She felt too strung up to go home. Of course she could have gone to Belinda's cottage, but that lay in a village twenty miles in the opposite direction out of Mircester from where she herself lived.

Miss Purvey decided to treat herself to a visit to the cinema. A Bruce Willis Die Hard movie was showing and Miss Purvey found Bruce Willis exciting. She had seen it before but knew she would enjoy seeing it again.

She bought a ticket at the kiosk and took a seat in the still-lit cinema. The programme was due to start in a few minutes.

Miss Purvey settled down and took a packet of strong peppermints out of her handbag, extracted one and popped it in her mouth. There were not many people in the cinema. She twisted round to see if there was anyone she knew and then her gaze fastened on the person in the row behind her, a little to her left. She turned away and then stiffened in her seat. Surely she had seen that face before.

She twisted round again and said in her loud, plummy voice, "I've seen you somewhere before, haven't I?"

Kylie, the usherette, was fifty-something, with bad feet. The days when usherettes were pert young things with trays of ices had long gone. The ices and popcorn were bought at a kiosk in the foyer, and inside, tired middle-aged women showed people to their seats and then searched while the cinema was empty to make sure no one had left anything valuable.

Kylie saw the solitary figure sitting in the middle of one of the rows in the centre and thought, here's another old-age pensioner fallen asleep. It was hard to be patient with these old people. Some of them didn't even know where they were or who they were when they woke up. The Cotswolds was turning into geriatric country.

She edged along the row behind the still figure and, leaning forward, shook one shoulder. It was like a Hitchcock movie, thought Kylie, her heart leaping into her mouth. The figure slowly keeled sideways. Kylie gasped, leaned over and shone her torch into the figure's face, for although the lights were on in the cinema, they were still quite dim.

The bulging eyes of Miss Purvey stared glassily back at her. A scarf was twisted savagely around the old scrawny neck.

Shock takes people in strange ways. Kylie walked quickly to the foyer and told her fellow usherette to call the manager, and then she phoned the police. She told the man in the ticket office to come out and close the cinema doors and not let anyone else in. Then she lit a cigarette and waited. The police and an ambulance arrived, the CID arrived, pathologist, and then the forensic team.

Kylie told her story several times, was taken to the police station, where she repeated everything again, and then signed a statement.

She accepted a lift home in a police car and told the pretty young policewoman that she would be perfectly all right after she had a cup of tea.

When she let herself into her house, her husband shambled out of the living-room. He was wearing his favourite old moth-eaten cardigan and he had bits of boiled egg stuck to his moustache.

"I hate you!" screamed Kylie, and then she began to cry.