she weakly made a jug of instant coffee and suggested they sit in the living-room and drink it while she waited for Wong.
Having got rid of them, she studied the recipe. Provided she did exactly as instructed, she should be able to get it right. She had meant to take up baking and so she had scales and measures, thank God.
Wong returned with a brown paper bag full of groceries.
'Join the others in the living-room!' ordered Agatha, ' I'll let you know when it is ready.'
Wong sat down in a kitchen chair. 'I like kitchens,' he said amiably.
'I'll watch you cook.'
Agatha shot him a look of pure hatred from her little brown eyes as she heated the oven and got to work. There were old ladies being mugged all over the country, she thought savagely. Had this wretched man nothing better to do? But he seemed to have infinite patience. He watched her closely and then, when she finally put the quiche in the oven, he rose and went to join the others. Agatha stayed where she was, her mind in a turmoil. She could hear the murmur of voices from the other room.
It was like being back at school, she thought. She remembered the headmistress telling them that they all must open their lockers for inspection without explaining why. Oh, the dread of opening her own locker in case there was something in it that shouldn't have been there. A policewoman had silently gone through everything. No one explained what was wrong. No one said anything. Agatha could still remember the silent, frightened girls, the stern and silent teachers, the competent policewoman. And then one of the girls was led away.
They never saw her again. They assumed she had been expelled because of whatever had been found in her locker. But no one had called at the girl's home to ask her. Judgement had been passed on her by that mysterious world of adults and she had been spirited out of their lives as if by some divine retribution. They had gone on with their schooldays.
Now she felt like a child again, hemmed in by her own guilt and an accusing silence. She glanced at the clock. When had she put it in?
She opened the oven door. There it stood, raised and golden and perfect. She heaved a sigh of relief and took it out just as Wong came back into the kitchen.
'We'll leave it to cool for a little,' he said. He opened his notebook. 'Now about the Cummings-Brownes. You dined with them at the Feathers. What did you have? Mmmm. And then? What did they drink?'
And so it went on while out of the corner of her eye, Agatha saw her golden-brown quiche sink slowly down into its pastry shell.
Wong finally closed his notebook and called the others in. 'We'll just cut a slice,' he said. Agatha wielded a knife and spatula and drew out one small soggy slice.
'What did he die of?' asked Agatha desperately.
'Cowbane,' said Friend.
'Cowbane?' Agatha stared at them. Ts that something like mad cow disease?' 'No,' said Detective Chief Inspector Wilkes heavily. 'It's a poisonous plant, not all that common, but it's found in several parts of the British Isles, including the West Midlands, and we are in the West Midlands, Mrs. Raisin. On examining the contents of the deceased's stomach, it was shown he had eaten quiche and drunk wine just before his death. The green vegetable stuff was identified as cow-bane. The poisonous substance it contains is an unsaturated higher alcohol, cicutoxin.'
'So you see, Mrs. Raisin,' came the mild voice of Wong, 'Mrs. Cummings-Browne thinks your quiche poisoned her husband ... that is, if you ever made that quiche.'
Agatha glared out of the window, wishing they would all disappear.
'Mrs. Raisin!' She swung round. Detective Constable Wong's slanted brown eyes were on a level with her own. Wasn't he too small for the police force? she thought in consequently 'Mrs. Raisin,' said Bill Wong softly, ' is my humble opinion that you have never baked a quiche or a cake in your life. Your cookery books had obviously never been opened before. Some of your cooking utensils still had the prices stuck to them. So will you begin at the beginning? There is no need to lie so long as you are innocent.' 'Will this come out in court?' asked Agatha miserably, wondering if she could be sued by the village committee for having thrust a Quicherie quiche into their competition.
Wilkes's voice was heavy with threat. 'Only if we think it necessary.'
Again, Agatha's memory carried her back to her schooldays. She had bribed one of the girls to write an essay for her with two chocolate bars and a red scarf. Unfortunately, the girl, a leading light in the Young People in Christ movement, had confessed all to the headmistress and so Agatha had been summoned and told to tell the truth.
In a small, almost childish voice, quite unlike her usual robust tones, she confessed going up to Chelsea and buying the quiche. Wong was grinning happily and she could have wrung his neck. Wilkes demanded the bill for the quiche and Agatha found it at the bottom of the rubbish bin under several empty frozen food packets and gave it to him.
They said they would check her story out.
Agatha hid indoors for the rest of that day, feeling like a criminal.
She would have stayed in hiding the next day had not the cleaner, Mrs. Simpson, arrived, reminding Agatha that she had promised her lunch.
Agatha scuttled down to Harvey's and bought some cold meat and salad.
Nothing seemed to have changed. People talked about the weather. The death of Cummings-Browne might never have happened.
Agatha returned to find Mrs. Simpson down on her hands and knees, scrubbing the kitchen floor. A sign of her extreme low state was that Agatha's eyes filled with weak tears at the sight. When had she last seen a woman scrubbing a floor instead of slopping it around with a mop? She had hired a succession of cleaning girls through an agency in London, mostly foreign girls or out-of-work actresses who seemed expert at producing an effect of cleanliness without actually ever getting down to the nitty-gritty.
Mrs. Simpson looked up from her cleaning. 'I found him, you know,' she said. 'I found the body.'
'I don't want to talk about it,' said Agatha hurriedly and Mrs. Simpson grinned as she wrung out the floor cloth.
'That's a mercy, for to tell the truth, I don't like talking about it.
Rather get on with the work.'
Agatha retreated to the living-room and then, when Mrs. Simpson moved upstairs, she prepared her a cold lunch, put it on the kitchen table beside an envelope containing Mrs. Simpson's money, and called upstairs, 'I'm going out. I have a spare key. Just lock up and put the key through the letter-box.' She received a faint affirmative, shouted over the noise of the vacuum cleaner.
Agatha got in her car and drove up and out of the village. Where should she go? Market day in Moreton-in- Marsh. That would do. She battled in the busy town to find a parking place and then joined the throngs crowding the stalls. The Cotswolds appeared to be a very fecund place. There were young women with babies and toddlers everywhere, pushing them in push chairs which they thrust against the legs of the childless with aplomb. She had read an article once where a young mother had explained how she had suffered from acute agoraphobia when her child had grown out of the push chair It certainly seemed to give the mothers an aggressive edge as, like so many Boadiceas, they propelled their chariots through the market crowd.
Agatha bought a geranium for the kitchen window, fresh fish for dinner, potatoes and cauliflower. She was determined to cook everything herself. No more frozen food. After depositing her shopping in the car, she ate lunch in the Market House Restaurant, bought scent in the chemist's, a blouse at one of the stalls, and then, at four o'clock, as the market was closing down, she reluctantly returned to her car and took the road home.
Mrs. Simpson had left a jug of wild flowers on the middle of the kitchen table. Bless the woman. All Agatha's guilt about having lured her away from Mrs. Barr evaporated. The woman was a queen among cleaners.
The following morning there was a knock at the door and Agatha groaned inwardly. Anyone else, she thought bitterly, would not be depressed, would expect some friend to be standing on the doorstep. But not Agatha Raisin. She knew it could only be the police.
Detective Constable Wong stood there. 'This is an informal call,' he said. 'May I come in?'
'I suppose so,' said Agatha ungraciously. 'I was just about to have a glass of sherry, but I won't ask you to join me.'
