Agatha's quiche had a thin slice cut out of it, as had the others. She looked at it smugly. Three cheers for The Quicherie. The spinach quiche was undoubtedly the best one there. The fact that she was expected to have cooked it herself did not trouble her conscience at all.
The band fell silent. Lord Pendlebury was helped up to the platform in front of the band.
The winner of the Great Quiche Competition is ... ' quavered Lord Pendlebury. He fumbled with a sheaf of notes, picked them up, tidied them, took out a pair of pince-nez, looked again helplessly at the papers, until Mr. Cummings-Browne pointed to the right sheet of paper.
'Bless me. Yes, yes, yes,' wittered Lord Pendlebury. 'Harrumph! The winner is ... Mrs. Cartwright.'
'Snakes and bastards,' muttered Agatha.
Fuming, she watched as Mrs. Cartwright, a gypsy-looking woman, climbed up on to the stage to receive the award. It was a cheque. 'How much?' Agatha asked the woman next to her.
Ten pounds.'
Ten pounds!' exclaimed Agatha, who had not even asked before what the prize was to be but had naively assumed it would be in the form of a silver cup. She had imagined such a cup with her name engraved on it resting on her mantelpiece. 'How's she supposed to celebrate by spending that? Dinner at Mcdonald's?'
'It's the thought that counts,' said the woman vaguely. 'You are Mrs. Raisin. You have just bought Budgen's cottage. I am Mrs. Bloxby, the vicar's wife. Can we hope to see you at church on Sunday?' 'Why Budgen?' asked Agatha. 'I bought the cottage from a Mr. Alder.' 'It has always been Budgen's cottage,' said the vicar's wife. 'He died fifteen years ago, of course, but to us in the village, it will always be Budgen's cottage. He was a great character. At least you do not have to worry about your dinner tonight, Mrs. Raisin. Your quiche looks delicious.'
'Oh, throw it away!' snarled Agatha. 'Mine was the best. This competition was rigged.'
Mrs. Bloxby gave Agatha a look of sad reproach before moving away.
Agatha experienced a qualm of unease. She should not have been bitchy about the competition to the vicar's wife. Mrs. Bloxby seemed a nice sort of woman. But Agatha had only been used to three lines of conversation: either ordering her staff about, pressuring the media for publicity, or being oily to clients. A faint idea was stirring somewhere in her brain that Agatha Raisin was not a very lovable person.
That evening, she went down to the Red Lion. It was indeed a beautiful pub, she thought, looking about: low raftered, dark, smoky; with stone floors, bowls of spring flowers, log fire blazing, comfortable chairs and solid tables at proper drinking and eating height instead of those 'cocktail' knee-high tables which meant you had to crouch to get the food to your mouth. Some men were standing at the bar. They smiled and nodded to her and then went on talking. Agatha noticed a slate with meals written on it and ordered lasagne and chips from the landlord's pretty daughter before carrying her drink over to a corner table. She felt as she had done as a child, longing to be part of all this old English country tradition of beauty and safety and yet being on the outside, looking in. But had she, she wondered, ever really been part of anything except the ephemeral world of PR? If she dropped dead, right now, on this pub floor, was there anyone to mourn her? Her parents were dead. God alone knew where her husband was, and he would certainly not mourn her. Shit, this gin's depressing stuff, thought Agatha angrily, and ordered a glass of white wine instead to wash down her lasagne, which she noticed had been micro-waved so that it stuck firmly to the bottom of the dish.
But the chips were good. Life did have its small comforts after all.
Mrs. Cummings-Browne was preparing to go out to a rehearsal of Blithe Spirit at the church hall. She was producing it for the Carsely Dramatic Society and trying unsuccessfully to iron out their Gloucestershire accents. 'Why can't any of them achieve a proper accent?' she mourned as she collected her handbag. They sound as if they're mucking out pigs or whatever one does with pigs. Speaking of pigs, I brought home that horrible Raisin woman's quiche. She flounced off in a huff and said we were to throw it away. I thought you might like a piece for supper. I've left a couple of slices on the kitchen counter. I've had a lot of cakes and tea this afternoon. That'll do me.' T don't think I'll eat anything either,' said Mr. Cummings-Browne.
'Well, if you change your mind, pop the quiche in the microwave.'
Mr. Cummings-Browne drank a stiff whisky and watched television, regretting that the hour was before nine in the evening, which meant no hope of any full frontal nudity, the powers-that-be having naively thought all children to be in bed by nine o'clock, after which time pornography was permissible, although anyone who wrote in to describe it as such was a fuddy-duddy who did not appreciate true art. So he watched a nature programme instead and consoled himself with copulating animals. He had another whisky and felt hungry. He remembered the quiche. It had been fun watching Agatha Raisin's face at the competition. She really had wanted her dinner back, silly woman.
People like Agatha Raisin, that sort of middle-aged yuppie, lowered the tone decidedly. He went into the kitchen and put two slices of quiche in the microwave and opened a bottle of claret and poured himself a glass. Then, putting quiche and wine on a tray, he carried the lot through to the living-room and settled down again in front of the television.
It was two hours later and just before the promised gang rape in a movie called Deep in the Heart that his mouth began to burn as if it were on fire. He felt deathly ill. He fell out of his chair and writhed in convulsions on the floor and was dreadfully sick. He lost consciousness as he was fighting his way toward the phone, ending up stretched out behind the sofa.
Mrs. Cummings-Browne arrived home sometime after midnight. She did not see her husband because he was lying behind the sofa, nor did she notice any of the pools of vomit because only one dim lamp was burning.
She muttered in irritation to see the lamp still lit and the television still on. She switched both off.
Then she went up to her bedroom it had been some time since she had shared one with her husband - removed her make-up, undressed and soon was fast asleep.
Mrs. Simpson arrived early the next morning, grumbling under her breath. Her work schedule had been disrupted. First the change-over to cleaning Mrs. Raisin's place, and now Mrs. Cummings-Browne had asked her to clean on Sunday morning because the Cummings-Brownes were going off on holiday to Tuscany on the Monday and Vera Cummings-Browne had wanted the place cleaned before they left. But if she worked hard, she could still make it to her Sunday job in Evesham by ten.
She let herself in with the spare key which was kept under the doormat, made a cup of coffee for herself, drank it at the kitchen table and then got to work, starting with the kitchen. She would have liked to do the bedrooms first but she knew the Cummings-Brownes slept late. If they were not up by the time she had finished the living-room, then she would need to rouse them. She finished cleaning the kitchen in record time and then went into the living-room, wrinkling her nose at the sour smell. She went round behind the sofa to open the window and let some fresh air in and her foot struck the dead body of Mr. Cummings-Browne.
His face was contorted and bluish. He was lying doubled up. Mrs. Simpson backed away, both hands to her mouth. She thought vaguely that Mrs. Cummings-Browne must be out. The phone was on the window-ledge.
Plucking up her courage, she leaned across the dead body and dialled 999 and asked for the police and an ambulance. She then shut herself in the kitchen to await their arrival. It never occurred to her to check if he was really dead or to go out and get immediate help. She sat at the kitchen table, hands tightly clasped as though in prayer, frozen with shock.
The local policeman was the first to arrive. Police Constable Fred Griggs was a fat, jolly man, unused to coping with much more than looking for stolen cars in the tourist season and charging the odd drunken driver.
He was bending over the body when the ambulance men arrived.
In the middle of all the commotion, Mrs. Cummings Browne descended the stairs, holding a quilted dressing- gown tightly about her.
When it was explained to her that her husband was dead, she clutched hold of the newel-post at the foot of the stairs and said in a stunned voice, 'But he can't be. He wasn't even here when I got home. He had high blood pressure. It must have been a stroke.'
But Fred Griggs had noticed the pools of dried vomit and the distorted bluish face of the corpse. 'We can't touch anything,' he said to the ambulance men. 'I'm pretty damn sure it's poisoning.'
Agatha Raisin went to church that Sunday morning. She could not remember having been inside a church before, but going to church, she believed, was one of those things one did in a village. The service was early, eight thirty, the vicar having to go on afterwards to preach at two other churches in the neighbourhood of Carsely.
She saw P.C. Griggs's car standing outside the Cummings-Brownes' and an ambulance. 'I wonder what
