Agatha Raisin & the Vicious Vet

She wandered dismally back into Cornwall Gardens. Someone was stumbling through a Chopin sonata in an amateurish way. Someone else was having a party, a press of people standing shoulder to shoulder in a front room.

And then Agatha saw a cat walking slowly towards her, a tabby cat. She advanced slowly, praying under her breath. Hodge was a tabby, a striped grey and black, hardly an original-looking animal.

'Hodge' said Agatha gently.

The cat stopped and looked up at her. 'Oh, it is you' said Agatha gratefully and scooped the cat up into her arms.

Tm glad someone's picked up that poor stray' said a man who was walking his dog. 1 was going to phone the RSPCA. Been living in these gardens for about two weeks. In this cold, too. Still, cats are great survivors'

'It's my cat' said Agatha, and clutching the animal as fiercely as a mother does her hurt child, she stalked off to her flat.

She opened the door and closed it firmly behind her, put the cat on the floor and said, 'Hot milk is what you need'

Agatha went into the minuscule kitchen. Hodge rose from a kitchen chair and stretched and yawned.

'How did you get there?' demanded Agatha, bewildered. She swung round. The tabby she had picked up in Cornwall Gardens came into the kitchen, mewing softly. In the full glare of the fluorescent light, Agatha saw that it was a skinny thing, not at all like Hodge.

Two of them' groaned Agatha. She couldn't keep two. One was worry enough. Where had Hodge been? thought Agatha, who was not yet well enough versed in the ways of cats and did not know they could appear to vanish into thin air. She thought of putting the new cat back out in the gardens. But that would be cruel. She could take it to the RSPCA but they would probably gas it, for who would want a plain tabby cat?

She warmed milk and put down two bowls of it and then two bowls of cat food. Hodge seemed to have placidly accepted the newcomer. Agatha changed the litter in the tray, hoping the new animal was house- trained.

When she went to bed, the cats settled down on either side of her. It was comforting. What would they say in Carsely when she returned with two? But then, she would only be returning to Carsely to pack up.

But the village was still fresh in her mind when she awoke the next morning. She decided to phone Bill Wong and tell him her news. At police headquarters in Mircester, they said it was his day off and so Agatha phoned his home.

Bill listened carefully while she outlined all her plans and told him of the visit of the two managing directors.

There was a silence. Then he said in his soft Gloucester accent, 'That's odd'

'What is?' demanded Agatha.

T mean, two managing directors of big companies turning up just like that. I don't know much about business . . .'

'No, you don't' put in Agatha.

'But I would have thought a meeting would have been set up for you, liaison with the advertising department, the firms' public relations officers, that sort of thing.'

'Oh, they both happened to be in town for some business meeting.'

'And what do you really know about this Jack Pomfret? You're not just going to hand over any money or anything like that?'

'I'm not stupid' said Agatha, angry now, for she was beginning to think she was.

'A good way to find out about people' said Bill, 'is to call at their home. You can usually get an idea of how flush they are from where they live and what the wife is like.'

'So you think I should spy on him? And you're always telling me I don't know how to mind my own business'

'I think you're a Nosy Parker when you don't have to be and touchingly naive when you do have to be' said Bill.

Took, copper, I ran a successful business for years'

'Maybe Carsely's made you forget what an evil place the world can be'

'What? After all that murder and mayhem?'

'Different sort of thing'

'Well, I've finished with Carsely'

There was an amused chuckle from the other end of the phone. 'That's what you think'

Agatha settled down with a coffee and cigarette to go through the papers Jack had given her again. Did he really expect her just to hand over a cheque without seeing his equal contribution? The new cat and Hodge were chasing each other over the furniture, the stray seeming to have recovered amazingly.

Agatha opened her briefcase and found a clipboard and put the papers on it. She phoned Roy Silver, the young man who had once worked for her.

'Aggie, love' his voice lilted down the line. 'I was thinking of coming down to see you. What are you up to?'

'I need some help. Do you remember Jack Pomfret?'

'Vaguely'

'You wouldn't happen to have an address for him?'

'As a matter of fact I have, sweetie. I pinched your business address book when I left. Don't squawk! You'd probably have forgotten about it. Let me see ... aha, 121, Kynance Mews, Kensington. Do you want the phone number?'

'I've got that, but it doesn't seem like a Kensington one. Never mind. I'll walk round. It's only round the corner.'

'How long are you in London? I gather you are in London. Want to meet up?'

'Maybe later' said Agatha. 'Did you get married?'

'No, why?'

'What about that girl, what's-her-name, you brought down to meet me?'

'Ran off and left me for a lager lout'

'I'm sorry.'

I'm not,' said Roy waspishly. 'I can do better than that.'

'Look, I'll call you. I've got something to deal with first.' Agatha said goodbye and put the phone down. Why hadn't Jack said he was living just round the corner?

She walked along to the end of Kynance Mews to 121 and pressed the bell.

A thin, tweedy woman answered the door, the kind Agatha didn't like, the kind who wore cultured pearls and green wellies in London.

'Mr Pomfret?' asked Agatha.

'Mr Pomfret no longer lives here,' said the woman acidly. 'I bought the house from him. But I am not his secretary and I refuse to send any more letters on to him. All he needs to do is to pay a small amount of money to the post office in order to get his mail redirected'

'If you give me his address, I can take any letters to him' said Agatha.

' Very well. Wait there and I'll write it down'

Agatha stood in the freezing cold on the frost-covered cobbles of the mews. A skein of geese flew overhead on their way from the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens to St James's Park. Her breath came out in a little cloud of steam in front of her face. Two dog lovers stood at the entrance to the mews and unleashed their animals, which peed their way down from door to door and then both squatted down and defecated, before the satisfied owners called them to heel. There was no more selfish animal lover than a Kensington animal lover, thought Agatha.

'Here you are' said the woman, 'and here's the address' She handed Agatha a slip of paper and a pile of letters. Agatha thanked her and put the letters in her briefcase and then looked down in surprise at the address as the woman firmly closed the door: 8A Ramillies Crescent, Archway. Well, there were some mansions in Archway and some rich people left in that declining suburb, but 8A suggested a basement flat.

She headed off to the Gloucester Road tube, and not wanting to make a lot of changes took the District Line to Embankment and then the Northern Line to Archway. Once she was settled on the Northern Line, she took out