paving as well.'
'I might like a gnome,' said Agatha. 'No, not for me,' she added, thinking of Mrs. Simpson.
'We'd better sit in the kitchen,' she said when they arrived home. The living-room is chock-a-block with all the stuff for the sale.' 'Are you cooking?' asked Roy nervously.
'Yes, one of the members of the Carsely Ladies' Society, Mrs. Mason, has been giving me some lessons.'
'What is this ladies' society?' Agatha told him and then gave him a description of her outing to Mircester and he laughed till he cried.
The dinner consisted of vegetable soup, followed by shepherd's pie and apple crumble. 'Keep it simple,' Mrs. Mason had said.
'This is remarkably good,' said Roy. 'You're even wearing a print dress, Aggie.' 'It's comfortable,' said Agatha defensively. 'Besides, I'm battling with a weight problem.'
''Wider still and wider, shall her bounds be set,' quoted Roy with a grin.
'I never believed in the middle-aged spread before,' said Agatha.
thought it was just an excuse for indulgence. But the very air seems to make me fat. I'm tired of bicycling and exercise routines. I feel like giving up and becoming really fat.'
'You can't get thin eating like this,' said Roy. 'You're supposed to snack on lettuce leaves like a rabbit.'
After dinner, Agatha showed him the pile of goods in the living-room.
'A delivery van is coming first thing in the morning,' she said, ' then, after they've dropped the whole lot off at the school hall, they'll go to Cheltenham and pick up the new stuff. Perhaps when you learn about plants you can tell me what to do about the garden.' 'Not too late even now to put things in,' said Roy, airing his new knowledge. 'What you want is instant garden. Go to one of the nurseries and load up with flowers. A cottage garden. All sorts of old-fashioned things. Climbing roses. Go for it, Aggie.'
'I might. That is, if I really decide to stay.'
Roy looked at her sharply. 'The murder, you mean. What's been happening?' 'I don't want to talk about it,' said Agatha hurriedly. 'Best to forget about the whole thing.'
In the morning, Agatha stood with her hands on her hips and surveyed the school hall with dismay. The contents of her living-room looked sparse now. Hardly an event. Mrs. Bloxby appeared and said in her gentle voice, 'Now this looks really nice.'
'The hell it does,' said Agatha. 'No suggestion of an occasion. Not enough stuff. What about if the ladies put some more stuff in, anything at all? Any old junk.'
'I'll do what I can.'
'And the band, the village band, should be playing. Give a festive air. What about some morris dancers?' 'You should have thought of this before, Mrs. Raisin. How can we organize all that in such a short time?'
Agatha glanced at her watch. 'Nine o'clock,' she said. The auction's at three.' She took out a notebook. 'Where does the bandmaster live?
And the leader of the morris dancers?'
Bewildered, Mrs. Bloxby supplied names and addresses.
Agatha ran home and roused Roy, who had been sleeping peacefully.
'You've got to paint some signs quick,' said Agatha. 'Let me see, the signs for the May bay celebrations are stored at Harvey's, because I saw them in the back room of the shop. Get them and paint over them.
Put, 'Bargains, Bargains Bargains. Great Auction. Three o'Clock.
Teas. Music. Dancing.' Put the signs up on the A44 where the drivers can see them and have a big arrow pointing down to Carsely, and then you'll need more signs in the village itself pointing the way.'
'I can't do that,' protested Roy sleepily.
'Oh yes, you can,' growled the old Agatha. 'Hop to it.'
She got out the car and drove to the bandmaster's and ruthlessly told him it was his duty to have the band playing. 'I want last-night-of-the-prom stuff,' said Agatha, ''Rule, Britannia', 'Land of Hope and Glory', 'Jerusalem', the lot. All the papers are coming.
You wouldn't want them to know that you wouldn't do anything for charity.'
The leader of the morris dancers received similar treatment. Mrs. Doris Simpson was next on the list. To Agatha's relief, she had taken a day off work for the auction. 'It's the hall,' said Agatha feverishly. 'It looks so drab. It needs flowers.'
'I think I can get the ladies to do that,' said Doris placidly. 'Sit down, Agatha, and have a cup of tea. You'll give yourself a stroke going on like this.'
But Agatha was off again. Round the village she went, haranguing and bullying, demanding any items for her auction until her car was piled up with, she privately thought, the most dismal load of tat she had ever seen.
Roy, sweating in the already hot sun, crouched up on the A44, stabbing signs into the turf. The paint was still wet and his draughtsmanship was not of the best, but he had bought two pots of paint from Harvey's, one red and one white, and he knew the signs were legible. He trudged back down to the village, thinking it was just like Agatha to expect him to walk, and started putting up signs around the village.
With a happy feeling of duty done, he returned to Agatha's cottage, meaning to creep back to bed for a few hours' sleep.
But Agatha fell on him. 'Look!' she cried, holding up a jester's outfit, cap and bells and all. 'Isn't this divine? Miss. Simms, the secretary, wore it in the pantomime last Christmas, and she's as slim as you. Should be a perfect fit. Put it on.'
Roy backed off. 'What for?'
'You put it on, you stand up on the A44 beside the signs and you wave people down to the village. You could do a little dance.'
'No, absolutely not,' said Roy mulishly.
Agatha eyed him speculatively. 'If you do it, I'll give you an idea for those nurseries which will put you on the PR map for life.'
'What is it?'
'I'll tell you after the auction.'
'Aggie, I can't. I'd feel ever such a fool.'
'You're meant to look like a fool, man. For heaven's sake, you parade through London in some of the ghastliest outfits I've ever seen. Do you remember when you had pink hair? I asked you why and you said you liked people staring at you. Well, they'll all be staring at you. I'll get your photo in the papers and make them describe you as a famous public relations executive from London. Look, Roy, I'm not asking you to do it. I'm telling you!'
'Oh, all right,' mumbled Roy, thinking that at times like this Agatha Raisin reminded him forcefully of his own bullying mother.
'I'll tell you one thing,' he said, making a bid for some sort of independence, 'I'm not walking all that way back in all this heat. I'll need your car.'
'I might need it. Take my bike.'
'Cycle all the way up that hill? You must be mad.'
'Do it!' snapped Agatha. 'I'll get you the bike while you put on your costume.'
Well, it wasn't too bad. It wasn't too bad at all, thought Roy later as he capered beside the road and waved his jester's sceptre in the direction of Carsely. Motorists were honking and cheering, a busload of American tourists had stopped to ask him about it, and hearing the auction was ' of rare antiques', they urged their tour guide to take them to it.
At ten minutes to three, he got on Agatha's bike and free-wheeled down the long winding road to the village. He had meant to remove his outfit, but everyone was looking at him and he liked that, so he kept it on. Outside, the morris dancers were leaping high in the sunny air.
Inside, the village band was giving 'Rule, Britannia' their best effort, and lo and behold, a sturdy woman dressed as Britannia was belting out the lyric. The school hall was jammed with people.
Then the band fell silent and Agatha, in a Royal Garden Party sort of hat, white straw embellished with blue asters, and wearing a black dress with a smart blue collar, stood at the microphone.
Agatha planned to start with the least important items and work up.
She sensed that the crowd had a slightly inebriated air, no doubt thanks to old Mrs. Rainworm from Mircester, who had set up a stand outside the auction and was selling her apple brandy at fifty pence a glass.
