'Oh.' Agatha blushed guiltily. 'I had forgotten. I've got some men coming to put in new fencing.'
Mrs Bloxby looked surprised. 'As I remember, there is a very good strong pine fence around your garden.'
'Falling apart in bits,' lied Agatha. She thought quickly. She could leave a note on the door for Roy saying she was at the tombola stand, and when he came along she could give him the keys. Not that he really needed them. The workmen could get to the back garden along the path at the side of the house.
'Give me five minutes,' she said. 'I'll follow you along.'
She wrote a note for Roy and pinned it to the door. The May festivities would take all day. On the other hand, if she could do a good sales pitch at the tombola stand, perhaps she could clear it quickly and then she would be free.
The one good thing, she thought as she made her way to the fair, which was taking up the length of the main street, blocked off to traffic for the day, was that practically everyone at the village would be working at or watching the festivities, and so there would be no one around to ask awkward questions about the fencing.
She took her place behind the table, which held a motley collection of prizes. Apart from a bottle of whisky and a bottle of wine presented by the Red Lion, the rest were odds and ends, a can of pilchards, for example, and a bottle of shampoo 'for brunettes'.
Most of the crowd of locals and tourists were watching the schoolchildren dancing around the maypole. Agatha fretted until the dancing ended in the crowning of the May Queen, a little girl with a sweet old-fashioned face, and then she gave tongue. 'Roll up! Roll up!' she shouted. 'Loads of prizes to be won. Tickets only twenty pee.'
Startled and then amused at such hustling in a quiet village, people began to gather round.
Agatha had quickly slipped the tickets for the bottle of wine and the bottle of whisky into her pocket. She knew the sight of them, unwon, would spur the punters on.
'Oh, you've won the can of pilchards,' she said to elderly Mrs Boggle.
'So what?' grumbled Mrs Boggle. 'I wanted the Scotch.'
'Lovely for sandwiches, those pilchards,' said Agatha cheerfully. 'Try again.'
So Mrs Boggle reluctantly prised a twenty-pence piece out of an ancient purse and handed it over. She won again, this time the shampoo for brunettes. 'This is a rip-off,' said Mrs Boggle. 'I'm grey-haired.'
'Then that'll turn you brown and make you look years younger,' snapped Agatha. 'Next!'
Mrs Boggle shuffled off. Agatha's voice rose in pitch. 'Roll up! Roll up! What have we here? A set of plastic egg-cups. Very useful. Come along. All in a good cause.'
'Does she usually go on like that?' Mary Fortune, over at the home-made cake stall, asked Mrs Bloxby.
'Mrs Raisin is an excellent saleswoman,' said Mrs Bloxby, 'and uses her talents to help the village.'
Despite Agatha's efforts, the day crawled on. Just as she got a crowd of people around the tombola stand, another diversion, such as dancing by the morris men, would take them all away again.
It was late afternoon when Roy popped up at Agatha's elbow. 'You'd better come home,' he said. 'I've got the workmen there and they need to put a padlocked gate on that path to the back garden. See, I thought of everything. And the fencing is sectioned. On the big day they'll take the top section off.'
'Oh, Roy, look, I'll give you the keys. Go along and take care of everything. I can't move until I've shifted this lot.'
'No, you've got to be there yourself.'
'Here...' Agatha slipped him a twenty-pound note. 'Buy all the tickets and let me out of here.'
She quickly slipped the tickets for the whisky and the wine back into the box.
'Damn, I have to open all these,' grumbled Roy, opening ticket after ticket. 'Really, Aggie, plastic egg-cups, a tea-cosy, and a scarf in magenta and sulphur-yellow.'
Finally, before the amused eyes of the spectators, Roy cleared the table and gloomily piled the contents into the box which had held the tickets. Agatha gave the money to a startled Mrs Bloxby, who said, 'That was quick. And everything gone! A lot of that stuff has turned up year in and year out.'
'Before we go, Aggie,' said Roy, leading her back to the now empty tombola table, 'sign here, or fence and workmen go right back to London.'
He spread a contract out on the table which bound Agatha to Pedmans for six months starting on the first of October.
She hesitated. She could pay Roy for his time and trouble and send the workmen away. But at that moment she heard James's laugh behind her and turned around. He was chatting to Mary and he had already bought two cakes. Mary was wearing a green-and-white-checked shirt with dark green trousers. Her bright hair gleamed in the sunlight.
Agatha turned away and scrawled her signature on the contract, which Roy seized and stuffed in his pocket. 'Give that box of stuff back to Mrs Bloxby,' said Agatha. 'I don't suppose you want any of it apart from the booze.'
'Not a bit of it. It'll come in handy for Christmas presents. I've got a little staff now.'
'You are conscienceless,' said Agatha. 'When you worked for me, what would you have said if I had given you a set of plastic egg-cups for Christmas?'
'Times are hard.' Roy picked up the box of junk and held it close. 'Let's go.'
'There's that young friend of Agatha's again,' said James to Mary, turning to watch them as they walked away.
Mary laughed. 'Quite a goer is our Agatha.'
'What do you mean by that?' James's face was stiff.
'Oh, come on, James. Get real. I think she's having a little fling.'
'Rubbish. Look, I'd better be getting along.'
James marched off but got waylaid by the vicar, who explained he had found a diary in the vicarage which had been kept by one of the villagers during the Napoleonic wars. Agatha temporarily forgotten, James went along to the vicarage in high excitement. Once there, he pored over the diary with a flat feeling of disappointment. The wars may have been raging across Europe, but all this villager had been interested in was the price of everything from wheat to turnips. It was dreary, it was boring, and it was of no use whatsoever, particularly as the prices of everything in England during that period had already been well documented. Still, he thanked the vicar and said he would take it home and study it further.
As he went into his own front garden, he saw a truck with workmen and that Roy Silver driving off from Agatha's. He wondered for the first time that day if Agatha had been stupid enough to plant out her seedlings. He ran upstairs, opened his bedroom window and leaned out.
He blinked. A great high cedarwood fence had been erected around Agatha's garden. What on earth was she doing? That fence was so high it would surely block out any sunlight. Curiosity got the better of him and he went next door and rang her bell.
Agatha answered the door and looked flustered when she saw him.
'That new fence you've got,' said James, 'will block out all sunlight. What are you doing?'
'It's a surprise,' said Agatha. 'You'll see on Open Day. Coffee?'
'Yes, please.' He followed her into the kitchen. The blind was down over the kitchen window, so he could not see the garden.
'Did you plant out your seedlings?' he asked.
'No, do it tomorrow,' said Agatha gruffly.
'That's an enormous fence you've got at the back. Are you sure the sun is going to reach your plants?'
'Oh, yes, don't let's talk about gardening. I'm bored with the subject.'
'Is that why you left the pub without saying goodbye?'
Agatha opened her mouth to say crossly that she did not think her going would be noticed, particularly by him, but a new wisdom made her say instead, 'I just remembered I had forgotten to feed the cats. By the way, I'll be leaving the village for a bit in the autumn.'
'Why?'
'Pedmans, that firm I sold out to, have coaxed me back for six months. May as well make some money.'
He looked surprised. 'I thought you had put all that life behind you.' His eyes sparkled. 'I know what it is. There isn't any gory murder to keep you occupied.'
