row of cottages.
Vera came back with a brisk step. 'I've just got time for a cup of tea, Mrs. Raisin, and then I really must go. I am setting up a flower-arranging competition at Ancombe and someone needs to show these silly village women what to do.'
She bustled into the kitchen to make tea. Take a seat in the drawing-room, Mrs. Raisin. Won't be long.'
Agatha sat down in the small living-room and looked about. Here was where it had all happened. A bright flash of lightning lit up the dark room and then there was a tremendous crash of thunder.
'How dark it is in here!' exclaimed Vera, coming in with a tray of tea-things. She set them down on a low table. 'Milk and sugar, Mrs. Raisin?' 'Neither,' said Agatha gruffly. 'Just tea.' Now it had come to it, she felt almost too embarrassed to begin. There was something so normal about Vera as she poured tea -from her well-coif fed hair to her Liberty dress.
'Now, Mrs. Raisin,' said Vera brightly. 'What brings you? Starting another auction? Do you know, it's actually getting cold. The fire's made up. I'll just put a match to it. In fact, the fire's been made up for weeks. Hasn't this weather been fierce? But it's broken now, thank goodness. Just listen to that storm.'
Agatha nervously sipped her tea and wished Vera would settle down so that she could get the whole distasteful business over and done with.
Trickles of sweat were running down inside her clothes. How on earth could Vera find the room cold? The fire crackled into life.
Vera sat down, crossed her legs and looked with bright curiosity at Agatha.
'Mrs. Cummings-Browne,' said Agatha, 'I know you murdered your husband.'
'Oh, really?' Vera looked amused. 'And how am I supposed to have done that?'
'You must have had it planned for some time,' said Agatha heavily. 'You had already baked a poisoned quiche and put it in the freezer in the school hall along with the other goodies that the ladies use when the tea-room is in operation. You were waiting for a good chance to use it. Then I gave you that chance. You naturally did not want your husband to die after appearing to eat one of your own quiches. When I said I was leaving mine, you saw your chance and took it. You got rid of mine with the rest of the rubbish left over after the competition.
You took your own quiche home, defrosted it, and left two slices for your husband's supper. I don't know whether you checked to see whether he had died when you came home.
Then you heard I had actually bought that quiche in London. You're a greedy woman, I know that, from the way I was conned into paying for that expensive meal in a lousy restaurant in which you own part of the business. You saw an opportunity of getting money out of poor Mr. Economides, and so you went straight to London to tell him you were suing him. Who knows? You probably hoped he would settle out of court. But he confessed that the quiche had come from his cousin's shop in Devon. His cousin grew his own vegetables and there is no cow bane in Devon. So you told the police you had decided to forgive him and not press charges. You said you did not know what cow bane looked like. But you borrowed a book on poisonous plants from the library, and furthermore, I found out from a photo Mr. Jones had given me that you had used cow bane already in one of your floral arrangements. So that's how it was done!'
Agatha triumphantly drained her teacup and stared defiantly at Vera.
To her surprise, Vera's only reaction was to get up and put coal on the blazing wood on the fire.
Vera sat down again. She looked at Agatha.
'As a matter of fact, you are quite right, Mrs. Raisin.' She raised her voice above the noise of the thunder. 'You just had to go and cheat in that competition, didn't you, you silly bitch? So I thought I'd get some financial mileage out of it and yes, I did hope that Greek would volunteer to settle out of court. Then he let fall the bit about Devon. But at least I had him so frightened, he didn't even examine the quiche closely. I had a bad moment thinking he would and that he would say it wasn't his. So everything looked safe. I was tired of Reg's bloody philandering, but I turned a blind eye to it until that Maria Borrow came on the scene. She turned up here one day and told me Reg was going to marry her. Her! Pathetic mad old spinster. It was the ultimate shame. I knew he didn't mean to divorce me but sooner or later this Borrow fright was going to tell everyone he did and I wasn't standing for that. Do you know I thought it hadn't worked? I came home and saw the lights burning and the television on but no sign of Reg. I was a bit relieved. He'd gone out before and left everything on. So I just went to bed. When they told me in the morning he was dead, I couldn't believe I had caused it. I used to dream of getting rid of him and I almost thought that the baking of that poisoned quiche and the substitution for yours had all been in my mind and that they would tell me he'd died of a stroke. What's the matter, Mrs. Raisin?
Feeling drowsy?'
Agatha felt her head swimming. The tea,' she croaked.
'Yes, the tea, Mrs. Raisin. Think you're so bloody clever, don't you?
Well, only a crass fool would drop in to accuse a poisoner and drink tea.'
'Cowbane!' gasped Agatha.
'Oh, no, dear. Just sleeping pills. I found out from Jones what you had been asking, and from that woman in the library. I followed you to Oxford. I had seen your car the night before parked up in one of the lanes. I was waiting for you when you drove off. So I went to Oxford, too, to a quack I'd heard of, a private doctor who gives all sorts of pills to anyone. I said I was Mrs. Agatha Raisin and couldn't sleep.
Here are the pills.' Vera dug in a pocket of her dress and held up a pharmacist's bottle. And with your name on them.'
She stood up. 'And so I just spread a few of these leaflets advertising the flower-arranging competition about the floor, and I help a live coal to roll out of the fire on top of them. I will tell everyone that I told you to make yourself comfortable and wait until I returned. Such a sad accident. Everything is under-dry with the heat.
You'll have quite a funeral pyre. I'll just drop what's left of these sleeping pills into your handbag and put it in the kitchen by the window and hope it survives the blaze.'
It was like a dream of hell, thought Agatha. She could not move. But she could see ... just. Vera spread the leaflets about, frowned down at them, and then went into the kitchen and returned with a bottle of cooking oil. She sprinkled some of that about and then took the bottle back to the kitchen. 'Such a good thing this cottage is heavily insured,' she remarked.
She picked up a glowing coal from the fire with the brass tongs and dropped it on the leaflets and then stood patiently while it smouldered on the floor. With a click of annoyance, Vera struck a match and dropped it on the leaflets, which leaped into flame. She edged towards the door. There was a stack of magazines in a rack by the fire. It burst into flames. Then she locked the living-room windows. With a little smile, Vera said, 'Bye, Mrs. Raisin,' and let herself out of the cottage. She walked to her garage, glancing over her shoulder. She had taken the precaution of closing the curtains. She would have to get away quickly all the same.
With one superhuman effort, Agatha shoved one finger down her throat and was violently sick. She fell off the chair on to the blazing carpet. Whimpering and sobbing, she crawled away from the roaring fire, dragging herself to the kitchen. Vera had locked the front door.
No use trying that way. Agatha feebly kicked the kitchen door closed behind her. The noise in her ears was deafening. The thunder was crashing outside, the fire was roaring inside.
Agatha's weak hands scrabbled upwards until she grasped the edge of the kitchen sink. Sinks had water and behind the sink was the kitchen window, which that hellcat might have forgotten to lock.
But despite the fact she had been sick, Agatha had swallowed quite a large amount of sleeping pills, or draught, or whatever it was that Vera had put in her tea. Blackness overcame her and she made one last effort heaving herself up, gazing out of the window, her mouth silently opening to form the word 'Help!' before she fell back on to the kitchen floor, unconscious.
'I don't see why we're working overtime on this Raisin woman, Bill,' grumbled the detective chief inspector. 'The fact that Mrs. Cummings-Browne had cow bane in her flower arrangement could be coincidence.'
'I've always been sure she had done it,' said Bill. 'I told Mrs. Raisin to mind her own business because I didn't want her getting hurt.
We've got to ask Vera Cummings-Browne about this photograph. What a storm!'
They were cruising in the police car slowly along Carsely's main street. Bill peered through the windscreen. A flash of lightning lit up the street, lit up the approaching Range Rover, and lit up the startled face of Vera behind the wheel. Almost without thought, Bill swung the wheel and blocked the street.
'What the hell!' shouted Wilkes.
