Agatha Raisin & the Vicious Vet

the letters. They were mostly junk mail but there was one from the income tax.

Agatha's heart sank down to her cold feet. Law-abiding, financially secure people were the ones that kept in touch with the Inland Revenue.

She then took out a pocket atlas of London and looked up Ramillies Crescent, which was in a network of streets behind the hospital.

Everyone at the main road junction in Archway at the exit to the tube looked depressed. You could, thought Agatha bleakly, take the lot and dump them on the streets of Moscow and no one would notice they were foreigners. She ploughed up the steep hill from the tube and turned off towards Ramillies Crescent when she got to the hospital.

It turned out to be a run-down crescent of Victorian houses. No one here was obviously feeling the recession, for no one had ever got to any point from which to recess to.

The gardens were untended and most of them had been concreted over to make space for some rusting car. Agatha arrived at Number 8. Sure enough, 8A was the basement flat. Edging her way around a broken pram which looked as if it had been thrown there rather than left to rot, she rang the doorbell. Marcia Pomfret, she vaguely remembered, was a statuesque blonde.

At first she did not recognize Marcia in the woman who opened the door to her, a woman with a faded, lined face and black roots, who looked at her without a spark of recognition.

'What are you selling?' asked Marcia in a weary, nasal voice.

Agatha made up her mind to lie. Tm not selling anything' she said brightly. 'Your name was given to me because I believe you and your husband lived in Spain. I am doing research for the Spanish government. They would like to know why various British families did not settle in Spain but returned'

Agatha scooped the clipboard and papers out of her briefcase and stood waiting.

'You may as well come in' said Marcia. 1 usually stand talking to the walls here, and that's a fact.'

She led the way into a dark living-room. Agatha's sharp eyes recognized what she called landlord's furniture and she sat down on a worn sofa in front of a low glass-and-chrome coffee-table.

'Now' she said brightly, 'what took you to Spain?'

'It was my husband, Jack' said Marcia. 'He'd always wanted to run a bar. Thought he could do it. So he sold the business and the house and we bought this little bar on the Costa Del Sol. He called it Home from Home. Made it British-like. San Miguel beer and steak-and-kidney pud. We had a little flat above the bar. Slave labour, it was. While he was out chatting up the birds in the bar, I was in the kitchen, wasn't I, turning out those hot English meals when it was cooking-hot outside.'

'And were you successful?' asked Agatha, pretending to take notes.

'Naw. We was just another English bar among all them other English bars. Couldn't get help. The Spanish'll only work for top wages. Nearly died with the heat, I did. 'Soon it'll be all right,' Jack said. 'Spend the days on the beach and let someone do the work for us.' But the place never really got off the ground. Once the tourist season was over, that was that. I said to Jack he'd have been better to make it Spanish, get the locals and the better-class tourists who don't come all this way for English muck, but would he listen? So we sold up and came back to nothing.'

Agatha asked a few more questions about Spain and the Spanish to keep up the pretence. Then she put the clipboard away and rose to go. 1 hope you will soon be on your feet again'

Marcia shrugged wearily and Agatha suddenly remembered what she had looked like ten years ago at a party, blonde and beautiful. Jack's latest bimbo, they had called her, but he had married her.

'Have you any children?' Agatha asked.

Marcia shook her head. 'Just as well' she said sadly. 'Wouldn't want to bring them up here'

And just as well, indeed, thought Agatha miserably as she trailed off down the street. For when he finds I haven't been suckered, he'll search around for a new wife, and one with money this time. She remembered his letters and stopped beside a pillar-box, readdressed the lot and popped them in.

Jack Pomfret was standing on the up escalator at Archway tube when he saw the stocky figure of Agatha Raisin on the down escalator and opened his copy of The Independent and hid behind it. He ran all the way home once he was out in the street.

'Was that Raisin woman here?' he demanded.

'What Raisin woman?' demanded Marcia. 'There was only some woman from the Spanish government asking questions about British who had left Spain'

'What did she look like?'

'Straight brown hair, small brown eyes, bit of a tan.'

'You silly bitch, that was Agatha Raisin smelling out God knows what kind of rats. What did you tell her?'

'I told her how we couldn't make that bar work. How was I to know . . .'

Jack paced up and down. The money he'd spent feeding that old cow at the Savoy! The money he'd paid to those two actor friends to impersonate businessmen! Perhaps he could still save something.

Agatha packed up her stuff and left the rented flat for a new one, sacrificing the money she'd paid in advance. She moved to another rented service flat in Knightsbridge, behind Harrods. She would see a few shows and eat a few good restaurant meals before returning to that grave called Carsely.

She knew Jack would come looking for her and she did not relish the confrontation, for like all people who have been tricked, she felt ashamed of her own gullibility.

So when Jack Pomfret, sweating lightly despite the cold, called at her old flat, he did not find anyone there. The owners did not know she had left, for she had not returned her keys, and assumed she was out, and so Jack called and called desperately in the ensuing days until even he had to admit to himself that there was little hope of getting any money out of Agatha Raisin.

Apart from going to shows and restaurants, Agatha took the new cat to the Emergency Veterinary Clinic in Victoria, learned it was female, got it its shots, named it Boswell despite its gender, with some idea of keeping up the literary references, and decided that two cats were as easy to keep as one.

One evening, walking home from the theatre through Leicester Square, she was just priding herself at how easily she fitted back into city life when a youth tried to seize her handbag. Agatha hung on like grim death, finally managing to land a hefty kick on her assailant's shins. He ran off. Passers-by stared at her curiously but no one asked her if she was all right. When one lived in town, thought Agatha, one became street-wise, developed an instinct for danger. But in sleepy Carsely, where she often did not bother to lock her car at night, such instincts had gone. She walked on purposefully, striding out with a confident step which declared, don't mug me, I'm loaded for bear, the step of the street-wise.

At the end of a week, she headed back to Carsely, carrying two cat baskets this time.

For the first time, she had an odd feeling of coming home. It was a sunny day, with a faint hint of warmth in the air. Snowdrops were fluttering shyly at village doorsteps.

She thought of the vet, Paul Bladen, again. Now she had a new cat, she had every excuse to take it to the vet for a check-up. On the other hand, if Bill Wong was to be believed, Paul Bladen did not like cats. She decided to go along and say she needed some eye ointment.

She had really only half believed Bill, however, and was surprised to find the waiting-room empty. Miss Mabbs looked up listlessly from a torn magazine and said Mr Bladen was up at Lord Pendlebury's racing stable but would be back soon. Agatha waited and waited.

After an hour, Paul Bladen walked into the waiting-room, nodded curtly to Agatha and disappeared into the surgery. Agatha had half a mind to leave.

But after only a few moments, Miss Mabbs told her to go through.

He listened to Agatha's tale of the cat's eye infection and then scribbled out a prescription, saying they were out of the ointment, but that she could get it at the chemist's in Moreton-in-Marsh. He then obviously waited for Agatha to leave.

'Don't you think you owe me an explanation?' demanded Agatha. 'I tried to go to that restaurant in Evesham but the snow was so bad, I crashed. I tried to phone you but some woman answered the phone, saying she was