She was an angular woman who, despite the chill of the evening, was wearing a print dress of the type beloved by civil servants' wives abroad. She had a receding chin and rather bulbous eyes and her hair was dressed in a forties style, pinned back in rolls from her face. All this Agatha was able to see as the woman straightened up.
'Evening,' called Agatha.
The woman turned on her heel and walked into her house and closed the door.
Agatha found this rudeness a welcome change after all the friendliness of Carsely. It was more what she was used to. She walked back through her own cottage, out the front door, up to the cottage next door, which was called New Delhi, and rapped on the brass knocker.
A curtain at a window near the door twitched but that was the only sign of life. Agatha gleefully knocked again, louder this time.
The door opened a crack and one bulbous eye stared out at her.
'Good evening,' said Agatha, holding out her hand. 'I'm your new neighbour.'
The door slowly opened. The woman in the print dress reluctantly picked up Agatha's hand, as if it were a dead fish, and shook it. 'I am Agatha Raisin,' said Agatha, ' you are ...?' 'Mrs. Sheila Barr,' said the woman. 'You must forgive me, Mrs ... er ... Raisin, but I am very busy at the moment.' 'I won't take up much of your time,' said Agatha. 'I need a cleaning woman.'
Mrs. Barr gave that infuriating kind of laugh often described as 'superior'. 'You won't get anyone in the village. It's almost impossible to get anyone to clean. I have my Mrs. Simpson, so I'm very lucky.'
'Perhaps she might do a few hours for me,' suggested Agatha. The door began to close. 'Oh, no,' said Mrs. Barr, 'I am sure she wouldn't.'
And then the door was closed completely.
We'll see about that, thought Agatha.
She collected her handbag and went down to the Red Lion and hitched her bottom on to a bar stool. 'Evening, Mrs. Raisin,' said the landlord, Joe Fletcher. Turned nice, hasn't it? Maybe we'll be getting some good weather after all.' Sod the weather, thought Agatha, who was tired of talking about it.
Aloud she said, 'Do you know where Mrs. Simpson lives?'
'Council estate, I think. Would that be Bert Simpson's missus?'
'Don't know. She cleans.'
'Oh, ah, that'll be Doris Simpson all right. Don't recall the number, but it's Wakefield Terrace, second along, the one with the gnomes.'
Agatha drank a gin and tonic and then set out for the council estate.
She soon found Wakefield Terrace and the Simpsons because their garden was covered in plastic gnomes, not grouped round a pool, or placed artistically, but just spread about at random.
Mrs. Simpson answered the door herself. She looked more like an old-fashioned schoolteacher than a char woman. She had snow-white hair scraped back in a bun, and pale-grey eyes behind spectacles.
Agatha explained her mission. Mrs. Simpson shook her head. 'Don't see as how I can manage any more, and that's a fact. Do Mrs. Barr next to you on Tuesdays, then there's Mrs. Chomley on Wednesdays and Mrs. Cummings-Browne on Thursdays, and then the weekends I work in a supermarket at Evesham.'
'How much does Mrs. Barr pay you?' asked Agatha.
'Five pounds an hour.'
'If you work for me instead, I'll give you six pounds an hour.'
'You'd best come in. Bert! Bert, turn that telly off. This here is Mrs. Raisin what's taken Budgen's cottage down Lilac Lane.'
A small, spare man with thinning hair turned off the giant television set which commanded the small neat living-room.
'I didn't know it was called Lilac Lane,' said Agatha. 'They don't seem to believe in putting up names for the roads in the village.'
'Reckon that's because there's so few of them, m'dear,' said Bert.
'I'll get you a cup of tea, Mrs. Raisin.'
'Agatha. Do call me Agatha,' said Agatha with the smile that any journalist she had dealt with would recognize. Agatha Raisin was going in for the kill.
While Doris Simpson retreated to the kitchen, Agatha said, 'I am trying to persuade your wife to stop working for Mrs. Barr and work for me instead. I am offering six pounds an hour, a whole day's work, and, of course, lunch supplied.'
'Sounds handsome to me, but you'll have to ask Doris,' said Bert. 'Not but what she would be glad to see the back of that Barr woman's house.'
'Hard work?'
'It's not the work,' said Bert, ''s the way that woman do go on. She follows Doris around, checking everything, like.'
'Is she from Carsely?'
'Naw, her's an in comer. Husband died a whiles back. Something in the Foreign Office he was. Came here about twenty year ago.'
Agatha was just registering that twenty years in Carsely did not qualify one for citizenship, so to speak, when Mrs. Simpson came in with the tea-tray.
'The reason I am trying to get you away from Mrs. Barr is this,' said Agatha. 'I am very bad at housework. Been a career woman all my life.
I think people like you, Doris, are worth their weight in gold. I pay good wages because I think cleaning is a very important job. I will also pay your wages when you are sick or on holiday.'
'Now that's more than fair,' cried Bert. 'Member when you had your appendix out, Doris? Her never even came nigh the no spital let alone gave you a penny.' True,' said Doris. 'But it's steady money. What if you was to leave, Agatha?'
'Oh, I'm here to stay,' said Agatha.
'I'll do it,' said Doris suddenly. 'In fact, I'll phone her now and get it over with.'
She went out to the kitchen to phone. Bert tilted his head on one side and looked at Agatha, his little eyes shrewd. 'You know you'll have made an enemy there,' he said.
'Pooh,' said Agatha Raisin, ''ll just need to get over it.'
As Agatha was fumbling for her door key half an hour later, Mrs. Barr came out of her cottage and stood silently, glaring across at Agatha.
Agatha gave a huge smile. 'Lovely evening,' she called.
She felt quite like her old self.
Chapter Two.
Plumtrees Cottage, where the Cummings-Brownes lived, was opposite the church and vicarage in a row of four ancient stone houses fronting on to a cobbled diamond-shaped area. There were no gardens at the front of these houses, only narrow strips of earth which held a few flowers.
The door was answered late the next morning to Agatha's knock by a woman whom Agatha's beady eyes summed up as being the same sort of species of expatriate as Mrs. Barr. Despite the chilliness of the spring day, Mrs. Cummings-Browne was wearing a print sun-dress which showed tanned middle-aged skin. She had a high autocratic voice and pale-blue eyes and a sort of ''s lady' manner. 'Yes, what can I do for you?'
Agatha introduced herself and said she was interested in entering the quiche competition but as she was new to the village, she did not know how to go about it. 'I am Mrs. Cummings-Browne,' said the woman, ' really all you have to do is read one of the posters. They're all over the village, you know.' She gave a patronizing laugh which made Agatha want to strike her. Instead Agatha said mildly, 'As I say, I am new in the village and I would like to get to know some people. Perhaps you and your husband might care to join me for dinner this evening. Do they do meals at the Red Lion?'
Mrs. Cummings-Browne gave that laugh again. 'I wouldn't be seen dead in the Red Lion. But they do good food at the Feathers in Ancombe.' 'Where on earth is Ancombe?' asked Agatha.
'Only about two miles away. You really don't know your way about very well, do you? We'll drive. Be here at seven thirty.'
