them.'
Agatha felt weak and childlike before the simple, uncomplicated goodness in Mrs. Bloxby's eyes and filled again with that desire to please.
And the women as they were leaving spoke to her of this and that and not one mentioned quiche.
With a feeling of belonging, Agatha walked home. Lilac Lane was beginning to live up to its name. Lilac trees, heavy with blossom, scented the evening air. Wisteria hung in purple profusion over cottage doors.
Must do something about my own garden, thought Agatha.
She unlocked and opened her front door and switched on the light. One sheet of paper lay on the doormat, the message scrawled on it staring up at her: 'Stop nosey-parking, you innerfering old bich.'
Picking it up with the tips of her fingers, Agatha stared at it in dismay. For the first time she realized how very quiet the village was in the evening. She was surrounded by silence, a silence that seemed ominous, full of threat.
She dropped the note into the rubbish bin and went up to bed, taking the brass poker with her, propping it up by the bedside where she could reach it easily.
Old houses creak and sigh as they settle down for the night. For a long time Agatha lay awake, starting at every sound, until she suddenly fell asleep, one hand resting on the knob of the poker.
Chapter Six.
The next morning, rough winds were shaking the darling buds of May.
Sunlight streamed in Agatha's windows. It was a day of movement and bright, sharp, glittering colour. She took the threatening note out of the rubbish. Why not show this to Bill Wong? What did it mean? She had not been doing any investigating to speak of. But he would ask a lot of questions and she might slip up and tell him of her visit to Mrs. Cartwright and that Mrs. Cartwright had told her to call again.
She smoothed out the note and tucked it in with the cookery books.
Perhaps she should keep it just in case.
After breakfast, there was a knock at her door. She had a little scared feeling it might be Mrs. Barr. Damn the woman! She was nothing but a warped middle-aged frump, and she should not cause a stalwart such as Agatha Raisin any trouble at all.
But it was Mrs. Bloxby who stood there, and behind her, to Agatha's dismay, Vera Cummings-Browne.
'May we come in?' asked Mrs. Bloxby.
Agatha led the way into the kitchen, bracing herself for tears and recriminations. Mrs. Bloxby refused Agatha's offer of coffee and said, 'Mrs. Cummings-Browne has something to say to you.'
Vera Cummings-Browne addressed the table-top rather than Agatha. 'I have been most distressed, most upset about the death of my husband, Mrs. Raisin. But I am now in a calmer frame of mind. I do not blame you for anything. It was an accident, a strange and unfortunate accident.' She raised her eyes. 'You see, I have always believed that when one dies, it is meant. It could have been a car driven by a drunken driver which mounted the pavement. It could have been a piece of fallen masonry. The police pathologist felt that Reg could have survived the accidental poisoning had he been stronger. But he had high blood pressure and his heart was bad. So be it.' 'I am so very sorry,' said Agatha weakly. 'How very generous of you to call on me.'
'It was my Christian duty,' said Mrs. Cummings-Browne.
Behind the mask of her face, which Agatha hoped was registering sorrow, sympathy, and concern, her mind was rattling away at a great rate. 'So be it ... Christian duty?' How very stagy. But then Mrs. Cummings-Browne buried her face in her hands and wept, gasping through her sobs, 'Oh, Reg, I do miss you so. Oh, Reg!'
Mrs. Bloxby led the weeping Mrs. Cummings-Browne out. No, thought Agatha, the woman was genuinely broken up. Mrs. Cummings-Browne had forgiven her. All Agatha had to do was to get on with life and forget about the whole thing.
She set about phoning up the editors of local newspapers to raise publicity for the auction. Local editors were used to timid, pleading approaches from ladies of the parish. Never before had they experienced anything like Agatha Raisin on the other end of the phone.
Alternately bullying and wheedling, she left them with a feeling that something only a little short of the crown jewels was going to be auctioned. All promised to send reporters, knowing they would have to keep their word, for Agatha threatened each that she would phone on the morning of the auction to see if they had indeed dispatched someone.
That passed the morning happily. But by the afternoon and after a snack of Farmer Giles' Steak and Kidney Pie ('Suitable for Microwaves'), Agatha found her steps leading her in the direction of the Cartwrights'.
Mrs. Cartwright answered the door herself, her hair back in pink rollers, her body in a pink dressing- gown.
'Come in,' she said. 'Drink?'
Agatha nodded. Pink gin again. Where had Mrs. Cart-wright learned to drink pink gins? she wondered suddenly. Surely Bacardi Breezers, lager and lime, rum and Coke would have been more to her taste.
'How was bingo?' asked Agatha.
'Not a penny,' said Mrs. Cartwright bitterly. 'But tonight's my lucky night. I saw two magpies in the garden this morning.'
Agatha reflected that as magpies were a protected species, one saw the wretched black-and-white things everywhere. Surely it would have been more of a surprise if Mrs. Cartwright had not seen any magpies at all.
'I wanted to know about Mr. Cummings-Browne,' said Agatha.
'What, for example?' Mrs. Cartwright narrowed her eyes against the rising smoke from the cigarette she held in one brown hand.
From the living-room where they sat, Agatha could see through to the cluttered messy kitchen hardly the kitchen of a dedicated baker.
'Well, as you won the prize year after year, I thought you might have known him pretty well,' she said.
'As much as I know anyone in the village.' Mrs. Cartwright took a slug of her gin.
'Do you bake a lot?'
'Naw. Used to. Occasionally do some baking for Mrs. Bloxby. Terrible woman she is. Can't say no to her. Come in the kitchen and I'll show you.'
Dirty dishes were piled in the sink. A tattered calendar showing a picture of a blonde in nothing but a wisp of gauze and sandals leered down from the wall. But on a cleared corner of the kitchen table beside the half-empty milk bottle, the pat of butter smeared with marmalade, lay a tray of delicate fairy cakes. They looked exquisite.
There was no doubt Mrs. Cartwright could bake.
'So I'd make a quiche and get a tenner for it,' said Mrs. Cartwright.
'Silly waste of time if you ask me. My husband doesn't like quiche.
Used to make them for the Harveys and they'd sell them down at the shop for me. Went well, too. But I can't seem to find the time these days.' She tottered back to the living-room in her pink high-heeled mules.
Agatha decided to get down to some hard business. 'I paid you twenty pounds for information yesterday,' she said bluntly, ' which I have not yet received.'
'I spent it.'
'Yes, but how you spent it or what you spent it on is not my affair,' snapped Agatha.
Mrs. Cartwright put a finger to her brow. 'Now what was it? Dammit, my bloody memory's gone wandering again.'
Her eyes gleamed darkly as Agatha fished in her capacious handbag.
Agatha held up a twenty. 'No, you don't,' she said as Mrs. Cartwright reached for it. 'Information first. Is your husband liable to come in?'
'No, he's up at Martin's farm. He works there.'
'So what have you got to tell me?' 'I was surprised,' said Mrs. Cartwright, ' Mr. Cummings-Browne died.'
'Oh, weren't we all,' commented Agatha sarcastically.
'I mean, I thought he would've murdered her.'
'What, why?'
'He spoke to me a bit. People are always telling me their troubles.
It's because I'm the maternal type.' Mrs. Cartwright yawned, reached inside her dressing-gown and
