of the calendars she used to treasure as a girl. It was low and thatched, new thatch, Norfolk reed, and with casement windows and built of the golden Cotswold stone. There was a small garden at the front and a long narrow one at the back. Unlike practically everyone else in the Cots-wolds, the previous owner had not been a gardener. There was little else but grass and depressing bushes of the hard-wearing kind found in public parks.
Inside there was a small dark cubby-hole of a hall. To the right was the living-room; to the left, the dining- room, and the kitchen at the back was part of a recent extension and was large and square. Upstairs were two low-ceilinged bedrooms and a bathroom. All the ceilings were beamed.
Agatha had given the interior decorator a free hand. It was all as it should be and yet ... Agatha paused at the door of the living-room.
Three-piece suite covered in Sanderson's linen, lamps, coffee-table with glass top, fake medieval fire-basket in the hearth, horse brasses nailed to the fireplace, pewter tankards and toby jugs hanging from the beams and bits of polished farm machinery decorating the walls, and yet it looked like a stage set. She went into the kitchen and switched on the central heating. The super-duper removal company had even put her clothes in the bedroom and her books on the shelves, so there was not much for her to do. She went through to the dining-room. Long table, shining under its heat-resistant surface, Victorian dining chairs, Edwardian painting of a small child in a frock in a bright garden, Welsh dresser with blue-and-white plates, another fireplace with a fake-log electric fire, and a drinks trolley. Upstairs, the bedrooms were pure Laura Ashley. It felt like someone else's house, the home of some characterless stranger, or an expensive holiday cottage.
Well, she had nothing for dinner and after a life of restaurants and take-aways, Agatha had planned to learn how to cook, and there were all her new cookery books in a gleaming row on a shelf in the kitchen.
She collected her handbag and made her way out. Time to investigate what few village shops there were. Many of the shops, the estate agent had told her, had closed down and had been transformed into ' reses'. The villagers blamed the in comers but it was the motor car which had caused the damage, the villagers themselves preferring to go to the supermarkets of Stratford or Evesham for their goods rather than buy them at a higher price in the village. Most people in the village owned some sort of car.
As Agatha approached the main street, an old man was coming the other way. He touched his cap and gave her a cheerful
'Afternoon.' Then in the main street, everyone she passed greeted her with a few words, a casual 'Afternoon' or
'Nasty weather.' Agatha brightened. After London, where she had not even known her neighbours, all this friendliness was a refreshing change.
She studied the butcher's window and then decided that cookery could wait for a few days and so passed on to the general store and bought a 'very hot' Vindaloo curry to microwave and a packet of rice. Again, in the store, she was met with friendliness all round. At the door of the shop was a box of second-hand books. Agatha had always read 'improving' books, mostly non-fiction. There was a battered copy of Gone With the Wind and she bought it on impulse.
Back in her cottage, she found a basket of pseudo-logs by the fire, little round things made out of pressed sawdust. She piled some up in the grate and set fire to them and soon had a blaze roaring up the chimney. She removed the lace antimacassar which the decorator had cutely draped over the television screen and switched it on. There was some war going on, as there usually was, and it was getting the usual coverage; that is, the presenter and the reporter were having a cosy talk. 'Over to you, John. What is the situation now? Well, Peter ..
.' By the time they moved on to the inevitable '' in the studio, Agatha wondered why they bothered to send any reporter out to the war at all. It was like the Gulf War all over again, where most of the coverage seemed to consist of a reporter standing in front of a palm tree outside some hotel in Riyadh. What a waste of money. He never had much information and it would surely have been cheaper to place him in front of a palm tree in a studio in London.
She switched it off and picked up Gone With the Wind. She had been looking forward to a piece of intellectual slumming to celebrate her release from work, but she was amazed at how very good it was, almost indecently readable, thought Agatha, who had only read before the sort of books you read to impress people. The fire crackled and Agatha read until her rumbling stomach prompted her to put the curry in the microwave. Life was good.
But a week passed, a week in which Agatha, in her usual headlong style, had set out to see the sights. She had been to Warwick Castle, Shakespeare's birthplace, Blenheim Palace, and had toured through the villages of the Cotswolds while the wind blew and the rain fell steadily from grey skies, returning every evening to her silent cottage with only a new-found discovery of Agatha Christie to help her through the evenings. She had tried visiting the pub, the Red Lion, a jolly low-raftered chintzy sort of place with a cheerful landlord. And the locals had talked to her as they always did with a peculiar sort of open friendliness that never went any further. Agatha could have coped with a suspicious animosity but not this cheerful welcome which somehow still held her at bay. Not that Agatha had ever known how to make friends, but there was something about the villagers, she discovered, which repelled in comers They did not reject them. On the surface they welcomed them. But Agatha knew that her presence made not a ripple on the calm pond of village life. No one asked her to tea. No one showed any curiosity about her whatsoever. The vicar did not even call. In an Agatha Christie book the vicar would have called, not to mention some retired colonel and his wife. All conversation seemed limited to 'Mawnin',' 'Afternoon,' or talk about the weather.
For the first time in her life, she knew loneliness, and it frightened her.
From the kitchen windows at the back of the house was a view of the Cotswold Hills, rising up to block out the world of bustle and commerce, trapping Agatha like some baffled alien creature under the thatch of her cottage, cut off from life. The little voice that had cried, 'What have I done?' became a roar.
And then she suddenly laughed. London was only an hour and a half away on the train, not thousands of miles. She would take herself up the following day, see her former staff, have lunch at the Caprice, and then perhaps raid the book shops for some more readable material. She had missed market day in Moreton, but there was always another week.
As if to share her mood, the sun shone down on a perfect spring day.
The cherry tree at the end of her back garden, the one concession to beauty that the previous owner had seen fit to make, raised heavy branches of flowers to a clear blue sky as Agatha had her usual breakfast of one cup of black coffee, instant, and two filter tipped cigarettes.
With a feeling of holiday, she drove up the winding hill that led out of the village and then down through Bourton-on-the-Hill to Moreton-in-Marsh.
She arrived at Paddington station and drew in great lungfuls of polluted air and felt herself come alive again. In the taxi to South Molton Street she realized she did not really have any amusing stories with which to regale her former staff. 'Our Aggie will be queen of that village in no time at all,' Roy had said. How could she explain that the formidable Agatha Raisin did not really exist as far as Carsely was concerned?
She got out of the taxi in Oxford Street and walked down South Molton Street, wondering what it would be like to see Tedmans' written up where her own name used to be.
Agatha stopped at the foot of the stairs which led up to her former office over the Paris dress shop. There was no sign at all, only a clean square on the paintwork where 'Raisin Promotions' had once been.
She walked up the stairs. All was silent as the grave. She tried the door. It was locked. Baffled, she retreated to the street and looked up. And there across one of the windows was a large board with FOR SALE in huge red letters and the name of a prestigious estate agent.
Her face grim, she took a cab over to the City, to Cheapside, to the headquarters of Pedmans, and demanded to see Mr. Wilson, the managing director. A bored receptionist with quite the longest nails Agatha had ever seen languidly picked up the phone and spoke into it. 'Mr. Wilson is busy,' she enunciated, picked up the women's magazine she had been reading when Agatha had arrived and studied her horoscope.
Agatha plucked the magazine from the receptionist's hands. She leaned over the desk. 'Get off your lazy arse and tell that crook he's seeing me.'
The receptionist looked up into Agatha's glaring eyes, gave a squeak, and scampered off upstairs. After some moments during which Agatha read her own horoscope' Today could be the most important day of your life. But watch your temper' the receptionist came tottering back on her very high heels and whispered, 'Mr. Wilson will see you now. If you will come this way ... '
