murder.'
'Don't go looking for more trouble. That's why there's a police force.
Best let everyone forget about your part in the death. Economides is lucky as well. With all this going on in the Middle East, not one London paper has bothered to pick up the story.'
'I still wonder why you came?'
He drained the last of his coffee and stood up.
'Perhaps I like you, Agatha Raisin.'
Agatha blushed for about the first time in her life. He gave her an amused look and let himself out.
Chapter Four.
Agatha felt quite nervous as she waited for the Cotswold Express to pull in at Moreton-in-Marsh station. What would this friend of Roy's be like? Would she like him? Agatha's main worry was that the friend might not like her, but she wasn't even going to admit to that thought.
The weather was calm but still cold. The train, oh, miracle of miracles, was actually on time. Roy descended and rushed to embrace her. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt which bore the legend I HAVE BEEN USED. Following him came a slight young man. He had thick black hair and a heavy moustache and wore a light-blue denim jacket, jeans, and high-heeled cowboy boots. Butch Cassidy comes to Moreton-in-Marsh.
This then was Steve. He gave her a limp handshake and stood looking at her with doggy eyes.
'Welcome to the Cotswolds,' said Agatha. 'Roy tells me you're Australian. On holiday?' 'No, I am a systems analyst,' said Steve in the careful English accents of an Eliza Doolittle who hadn't yet quite got it. 'I work in the City.'
'Come along, then,' said Agatha. 'The car's parked outside. I thought I would take you both out for dinner tonight. I'm not much of a cook.'
'And neither you are, ducks,' said Roy. He turned to Steve. 'We used to call her the queen of the microwave. She ate most of her meals in the office and kept a microwave oven there, awful stuff like the Rajah's Spicy Curry and things like that. Where are we going to eat, Aggie?' 'I thought maybe the Red Lion in the village.'
She unlocked the car door but Roy stood his ground. 'Pub grub?' he asked.
'Yes.'
'Steak and kidney pie and chips, sausage and chips, fish and chips and lasagne and chips?'
'Yes, so what?'
'So what? My delicate little stomach cringes at the thought, that's what. My friend Jeremy said there was ever such a good restaurant in the Red Huntsman at Bourton-on-the Hill. Don't you just love these place names, Steve? See, he's drooling already.' Steve looked impassive. 'They're Basque and do all those sort of fishy dishes. I say, Aggie, have you heard the one about the fire at the Basque football game? They all rushed to get out of the stadium and all got crushed in the exit and do you know what the moral of that is, my loves? Don't put all your Basques in one exit. Get it?'
'Stop wittering,' said Agatha. 'All right. We'll try the place, although if it's that good they may not have a table left.'
But it turned out the Red Huntsman had just received a cancellation before they arrived. The dining-room was elegant and comfortable and the food was excellent. Agatha asked Steve to tell her about his work and then regretted it bitterly as he began a long and boring description of his job in particular and computers in general.
Even Roy grew weary of his friend's monologue and cut across it, saying, 'What's all this about you being involved in a death, Aggie?' 'It was an awful mistake,' said Agatha. 'I entered a spinach quiche in a village competition. One of the judges ate it and died of poisoning.'
Roy's eyes filled with laughter. 'You never could cook, Aggie dear.'
'It wasn't my cooking,' protested Agatha. 'I bought a quiche from The Quicherie in Chelsea and entered that.'
Steve looked at her solemnly. 'But surely in these sort of home-baking competitions you're supposed to cook the thing yourself?'
'Yes, but'
'But she was trying to pull a fast one as usual,' crowed Roy. 'Who was the judge and what did he die of?'
'Mr. Cummings-Browne. Cowbane poisoning.'
'Struck down by a bane of cows? What is it? One of those peculiar agricultural diseases like swine fever or violet-root rot?'
'No, cow bane is a plant. It must have got mixed up in the spinach that Mr. Economides of the deli used.'
Steve put down his fork and looked gravely at Agatha. 'So you murdered him.'
Roy screeched with laughter. He kicked his heels in the air, fell off the chair and rolled around the dining- room carpet, holding his stomach. The other diners studied him with the polite frozen smiles the English use for threatening behaviour.
'Oh, Aggie,' wheezed Roy when his friend had picked up his chair and thrust him back into it, ' are a one!'
Patiently Agatha explained the whole sorry business. It had been a sad accident.
'What do they think about you in the village?' asked Roy, mopping his streaming eyes. 'Are they calling you the Borgia of the Cotswolds?'
'It's hard to know what they think,' said Agatha. 'But I had better sell up. The whole move to Carsely was a terrible mistake.' 'Wait a minute,' said Steve. He carefully extracted a piece of lobster and popped it in his mouth. 'Where does this cow bane grow?'
'In the West Midlands, and this, as the police pointed out, is the West Midlands.'
Steve frowned. 'Does it grow in farms among the regular vegetables?'
Agatha searched her memory for what she had read about cow bane in the book in Foyle's. 'It grows in marshy places.'
'I've heard the Cotswolds are famous for asparagus and strawberries ..
. oh, and plums and things like that,' said Steve. 'I read up on it. But not spinach. And how could a marshy plant get in among a field of spinach?' 'I don't know,' said Agatha, ' as I recall, it grows in other parts of the British Isles as well. I mean, the stuff at Nine Elms comes from abroad and all over the place in Britain.'
Steve shook his head slowly, his mouth open as he contemplated another piece of lobster. 'Are you wondering if there's an R in the month?' demanded Roy. 'You look like one of those faces at the fairground where you've to try and toss a ball into the mouth.'
'It just doesn't happen,' said Steve.
'What?'
'Well, look here. A field of spinach is harvested. For some reason a marshy plant gets caught up with the spinach. Right? So how come no one else dropped dead? How come it all got into one spinach quiche?
Just the one. Surely a bit of it would have got into another quiche.
Surely another one of this Economides's customers would bite the dust.'
'Oh, the police will have looked into all that,' said Roy a trifle testily. He felt Steve was taking up too much of the conversation.
Steve shook his head slowly from side to side.
'Look,' said Agatha. 'Be sensible. Who was to know I would walk off in a huff and leave that quiche? Who would even know that the Cummings-Brownes would take it home? The vicar could have taken it and given it to some old-age pensioner. Lord Pendlebury could have taken it.'
'When did you take your quiche to the competition?' asked Steve.
The night before,' said Agatha.
'So it was just lying there all night, unattended, in this hall?
Someone could have baked another quiche with cow-bane in it and substituted it for Agatha's quiche.'
'We're back to motive,' said Agatha. 'So say someone substituted a poisoned quiche for mine. Who was to know Cummings-Browne would take it? I didn't even know I was going to walk off and leave it until the last minute.' 'But it could have been meant for you,' said Steve. 'Don't you see?
Even if you had won that competition, only a little slice was taken out for the judging, and then you would
