somehow, by her very presence, constrain Agatha to offer to drive the horrible couple.
'There's another meeting tonight,' said Miss Simms.
'I'll be there.' Agatha stood up. 'I think we'd better go. Anything to ask, James?'
He shook his head. 'I think I've heard enough.'
Outside, James said, 'So you won't be going to the Red Lion?'
'I'll join you there after the ladies' meeting. What about rounding up the day with a visit to Mr Spott?'
'All right. But that one will have nothing but praise for Mary.'
Mr Spotfs cottage, like Agatha's, was thatched. The external woodwork was painted bright harsh blue; window-frames, front door and fencing. It made the cottage look unsuitably garish, like a children's drawing executed in chalk colours. He had a small garden fronting on the road.
'The pond must be at the back,' said Agatha as James rang the doorbell.
Bernard Spott answered the door promptly. He was in his shirt-sleeves and gardening trousers, but his thin hair was as carefully greased across his bald spot as ever.
'Come in, come in,' he said.
They followed him into a pleasant living-room, low-beamed and with some fine old pieces of furniture.
'We have been trying in our amateurish way to find out what happened to Mary Fortune,' said James pleasantly. 'Strange as it may seem, Agatha and I feel we never really knew her and wondered if you had any insights.'
'It was a shocking murder,' said Bernard, 'really shocking. All that beauty and life extinguished in such a barbaric way.' He took out a handkerchief and blew his large nose in it with a trumpeting sound. 'It hardly bears thinking about.'
'How did you find Mary?' asked Agatha. 'I mean, being chairman of the horticultural society, you must have known her quite well.'
'Yes, we were very good friends,' said Bernard. 'She not only was a superb gardener, she used to bake me cakes and bring them round.'
'We have found,' said Agatha, 'that contrary to what we both thought, she was not all that popular.'
'You amaze me.'
'It seems she had a way of riling people up. Did you experience any of that?'
'No.' He looked bewildered. 'She was always kind to me.'
'To go on to another matter,' said James, 'have you any idea who poisoned your goldfish?'
'No, and our police force are inept, to say the least. I wrote to the chief constable to complain about Fred Griggs.'
'That's not fair,' protested James. 'Fred's a good man.'
'Tcha! What crime has he ever had to deal with? Those murders we had here before, it was the CID who solved them.'
'It was more Agatha here than the CID,' corrected James. 'Besides, the CID have been investigating the garden sabotage and they haven't come up with anything, so it's not fair to blame Fred.'
'He knows the people in this village. He should have come up with something,' said Bernard mulishly.
'So,' said Agatha helplessly, 'you have absolutely no idea who might have poisoned your fish or who might have murdered Mary?'
'No, and if you will both take my advice, you will leave the whole thing to the police.'
'But you just said the police weren't doing a good job!'
He stood up as a sign that he wanted them to leave. 'I do not mind being interviewed by the police,' said Bernard. 'I accept that as one of the more unpleasant duties of being a British subject. Coming from you, however, it seems like vulgar curiosity.'
There somehow did not seem to be anything to reply to that.
As they walked away from the cottage, Agatha said, 'I'll find out what I can, and then I'll meet you at the Red Lion.'
As they turned into Lilac Lane, Agatha exclaimed, 'There's Beth waiting on your doorstep.'
They hurried towards her. She held out a couple of books as they came up to her. 'I just remembered my mother saying something to me about your interest in the Napoleonic wars, Mr Lacey, and wondered if these books might interest you.'
'How very kind.' James glanced at the titles. 'Diaries! Where did you get these?'
'I borrowed them from the college. History is my subject.' She smiled at him suddenly and that smile gave her face something like beauty.
'Come inside,' said James. 'We'll have coffee.'
'I'd like that,' said Beth, 'but I would like to talk to you in private as well.' She looked at Agatha.
'See you later, James,' said Agatha and went slowly along to her own house, burning with curiosity.
She had just fed her cats when her doorbell rang. She was expecting to see James, come to report on Beth's visit, but it was Bill Wong who stood there.
'Oh,' said Agatha, that 'oh' being a little dying fall of disappointment. She reminded herself about her new- found freedom from emotional involvement with James and invited Bill in.
'I've come to ask you about Mrs Bloxby,' said Bill.
'Can't you ask Mrs Bloxby about Mrs Bloxby?'
'Don't be defensive, Agatha. I could tell she had told you something.'
Agatha stared at him for a long moment as she remembered something that Mrs Bloxby had told her, not about Mary's disparaging remarks or about the horticultural show; something she should have told Bill.
'I've just remembered,' said Agatha.
'I don't believe that, but out with it.'
'Mary got Mr Bloxby, the vicar, to take her confession.'
'Now that is something. Something must have been troubling her badly. I mean, the vicar doesn't normally take confessions, does he?'
'No, but he'll listen to anyone in trouble.'
'I'd better go and ask him. I wonder what it was about.'
It was about making a pass at him, thought Agatha, but there might have been something else there.
Bill left and Agatha prepared herself an early-evening meal. She wondered how Beth and James were getting along, and the more she wondered, the more she worried. Why had Beth, who had been so rude, done such an about-face as to offer books to her mother's ex-lover?
Eight
Bill Wong drove along to the vicarage. It was, he reflected, not like going to see a Roman Catholic priest. It had not been a formal confessional, surely, and the vicar was not High Church of England.
Mrs Bloxby welcomed him. 'I always expect to see our Mrs Raisin with you,' she said, ushering him in. 'What can I do for you?'
Bill stood in the shadowy hall of the vicarage. 'Actually, it was your husband I came to see.'
'Alf's in the church.'
'What is he doing?'
Mrs Bloxby looked surprised. 'Praying, I suppose. You can step over. He's never very long.'
Bill went back out of the vicarage and walked through the cemetery to the church next door. Huge white clouds were moving slowly above over a large summer sky. It was as if, during a good summer, the skies over the Cotswolds expanded in size, giving the impression of limitless horizons. Old gravestones leaned over the smooth cropped grass of the churchyard, the names faded long ago.
He went to the side door, pushed it open and walked into the warmth of the old church. The foundations were Saxon but the powerful arches were Norman. It was a simple church, with plain wooden pews and plain glass in the windows, Cromwell's troops having smashed the stained-glass ones. There was an air of benevolence and
