Agatha Raisin and The Potted Gardener

dinner in Evesham?'

'Very well indeed. That was the day I got food poisoning.'

'And that was the day you visited Mary!'

'What are you getting at, Agatha? I didn't dine with her.'

'But surely you had something to eat?'

'Let me see, coffee and home-made cakes, as I recall.'

Agatha's eyes gleamed. 'And then you were too ill afterwards to take me for dinner. I had told Mary you were taking me for dinner.'

'Wait a minute,' said Bill. 'Just hold it there. Are you suggesting that Mary put something in the cakes so that James would be ill and would not be able to go?'

Agatha nodded.

'That's ridiculous,' said James.

'Did she eat the cakes as well?'

James said slowly. 'No, she didn't. She said something about being on a diet.' In fact, what she had said was that she had no intention of becoming as frumpish as Agatha Raisin by letting her figure go.

Bill Wong's eyes were suddenly shrewd. 'I think you're suggesting also that Mary Fortune might have been the one who ruined the gardens. Do you know something about Mrs Bloxby, say, that you're not telling us, Agatha?'

'No,' mumbled Agatha.

He gave her a long look and then said, 'Okay. Let's start with you, James. Now the idea was that whoever ruined the gardens wanted to put competition out of the running. But let's just give Agatha's theory a whirl. Did you upset Mary before your garden was set alight?'

'As a matter of fact, it was shortly after I had told her the affair was over.'

'So let's examine the rest. Mr and Mrs Boggle?'

'Forget them,' said Agatha. 'They annoy everyone.'

'All right. Miss Simms, then, the unmarried mother who is secretary of the Ladies' Society.'

'We'd need to ask her,' said Agatha. 'She's not the type to irritate anyone.'

'And Mrs Mason?'

'The same,' said Agatha gloomily. 'Need to ask.'

'Mr Spott, he of the poisoned fish? I mean, if by some far-fetched chance Mary was out for petty revenge, then it need not be just plants.'

'Bernard Spott adored Mary,' said James. 'He would never have said a word to annoy her.'

'We're getting nowhere,' sighed Bill. 'I don't think your argument's got a leg to stand on, Agatha. Say one of those maddened gardeners decided to get revenge on Mary, which one can you see doing it? Mrs Bloxby, Miss Simms, James here, Mrs Mason, or the Boggles or old Mr Spott?'

'Must be someone from her family or her past,' said Agatha. 'Was the husband in America the whole time?'

'Yes.'

'But it must have been someone she knew,' said James suddenly.

'Why?'

'There was no forced entry. She opened the door to whoever. She was poisoned. Someone slipped weedkiller in her drink. What drink?' he demanded, looking at Bill.

'Hard to say, but from the contents of her stomach, brandy, I think. It was a strong measure of weedkiller.'

'And you've checked all the weedkiller suppliers?'

Bill groaned. 'Do you know just how many places in the Cotswolds sell weedkiller? Legion. But yes, we are getting around to them all.' Agatha had taken a menu from the waitress and was studying it. 'Never say you are going to order pudding, Agatha?'

'Icky-sticky pudding,' said Agatha firmly. 'Anyone else?' They all ordered the sticky toffee-syrup-laced sponge. Why was it, thought Agatha gloomily when she had finished the last crumb, of pudding, that desserts like this, which could slip down her gullet in the old days without any effect, immediately made the waistband of her skirt as tight as a corset?

'I think the daughter is the best bet,' she said over coffee. 'Surely it's very simple. She inherits. She did it, or her boyfriend.'

'Her own mother?' protested James.

'She could have wanted it to look like the work of some maniac,' said Agatha.

'I tell you this,' said Bill, 'if it was a maniac, it might just have been some fellow who called at the door.'

'And she let him in and offered him brandy! Not likely,' said Agatha firmly.

Bill heaved a sigh. 'Thanks for lunch. I've got to be getting back. It might have been done by someone from her past and we'll never find out who it is.'

'Makes you want to forget about the whole thing,' said James after Bill had left.

'I think people will start talking soon,' said Agatha. 'We could start off by calling on Mrs Mason. She's a sensible lady. All we can do is keep on asking questions until we get a lead.'

Seven

At first, that afternoon, as they sat over tea and scones in Mrs Mason's living-room, it looked as if they weren't going to get very far. Mrs Mason talked in a hushed voice about 'poor Mary'. Both Agatha and James ferreted about in their minds for a way to find out what the chairwoman of the Carsely Ladies' Society actually thought about the dear deceased.

It was James, spurred to his own defence by Mrs Mason's murmur of 'You, above all others, must be grief- stricken, Mr Lacey,' who found an opening. 'I regret to tell you, Mrs Mason,' he said, leaning back in one of her velveteen-covered armchairs and stretching his long legs out in front of him, 'that although I am shocked and saddened by the murder, I am not grieving. I did not know Mary very well.' Mrs Mason looked startled. 'But I thought...'

'I had an affair with Mary Fortune. Most people in the village seem to have known that. It finished a while ago. But despite that, I repeat, I did not know her very well and I am beginning to believe that she had a knack of putting people's backs up.'

'I think,' said Agatha quickly, remembering what Mrs Bloxby had said, 'that she had a way of making people ashamed of themselves and so nobody confided in anyone else what she had said or done.' James gave her a sharp look.

'Well, of course, put like that...' Mrs Mason adjusted her glasses and peered at Agatha. 'I thought I was making too much of it.'

'Too much of what?'

'She said, in the nicest way possible, that she wondered why no elections were held for the posts in the Ladies' Society. 'Whatever can you mean, Mrs Fortune?' I asked. She smiled and said that she gathered that I had been chairwoman for several years and Miss Simms had been secretary. I pointed out that nobody had complained. 'They wouldn't complain to you, dear,' she said. 'But there have been certain murmurings,' yes, that's what she said, murmurings. 'About what?' says I, getting sharpish. 'Oh,' says she as sweet as pie, 'some of the ladies would like to see new blood at the helm.' I found myself getting angry. 'Like yourself?' I says, irritated-like. And she says, 'Why not? Would you have any objections?'

'Not me,' says I, 'but it's up to the group.''

Mrs Mason paused for breath. A red tide of colour rose up her neck. 'It would have been all right if she had left it at that. But she went on to say that the Ladies' Society over at Little Raddington had a very presentable chairwoman who was quite young.'