Agatha Raisin and The Potted Gardener

hydrangea. It is, in fact, a Robinia pseudoacacia called Frisia. And this - '

'You don't know what you're talking about,' snapped Agatha.

'He's right,' came a woman's voice, a visitor to the village, a hard-faced woman in a straw hat and print dress. 'I would say all these flowers and plants have the wrong labels on them.' Her hard eyes fastened on Agatha. 'I've been listening to you and you do not know the first thing about the plants in your garden. I think you just bought them lock, stock and barrel from some nursery and the nursery put the wrong labels on them.'

There was a silence. Agatha was aware of Mrs Bloxby standing listening, of Bill Wong, who had just arrived in time to hear it all.

'Would anyone like some tea?' asked Agatha desperately.

People began to shuffle out of the garden until there was only Agatha, Roy, Mrs Bloxby, and Bill Wong left. 'Lock the side gate,' Agatha ordered Roy. 'What a disaster!'

'What happened?' asked Mrs Bloxby.

'I'll tell you what happened,' said Bill. 'Our Agatha has been cheating again. You did get all those plants from a nursery, didn't you? Just like you said you would.'

Agatha nodded miserably.

'That's no crime,' said Mrs Bloxby. 'A lot of the villagers buy extra plants and flowers and things to put in before Open Day. The nurseries around here do a roaring trade. It is only a pity that the nursery you went to proved to be so incompetent.'

'They're the best there is,' said Roy defensively. 'They'd never have got the wrong labels.'

Bill leaned forward and peered into a flowerbed. 'Come here, Agatha,' he said. He pointed downwards. 'I don't think any of your dedicated gardeners would tramp over your flowerbeds.'

In the soft earth was a clear imprint of a large booted foot.

'I brought men with me to put them in,' said Roy. 'Probably one of them.'

Bill turned to the vicar's wife. 'Could someone possibly have switched the labels?'

Mrs Bloxby put on her spectacles and went from plant to flower to tree, reading the labels. Then she straightened up. 'Why, how clever of you! That's exactly what is wrong.'

'Are you sure?' demanded Agatha. From inside the house came the sound of the doorbell.

'I'll get that,' said Roy, disappearing inside.

'I think that's what happened,' said Bill. 'Someone's played a trick on you, Agatha. When could they have done it?'

'It must have been sometime between, say, five in the morning and nine.'

'Daylight. Someone might have seen something.'

Roy came back into the garden with James Lacey. Agatha groaned.

'You've done magnificently, Agatha,' said James.

'You may as well know the truth.' Agatha looked thoroughly wretched. James listened to the tale of her deception, his eyes crinkling up with laughter.

When she had finished, he said, 'You don't do things by halves. All these months of hiding behind that high fence - I'm glad to see you've got it lowered at last - and all the lies and secrecy, and all for one Open Day in an English village!' He stood and laughed while Agatha stared at her shoes.

Mrs Bloxby's gentle voice cut across James's laughter. 'You know, I think it might be a nice idea to have tea out here among these lovely flowers and things. I see you have a little garden table and chairs there. I'll help you get the tea-things.'

Agatha, glad to escape from James's amusement, went inside with her.

Bill turned to James. 'Look, you're her nearest neighbour. Did you see anyone around this cottage this morning?'

'I saw a few people. Let me think. I was up very early. Mrs Mason has just got herself a dog. She came walking past and called out a good morning. I was tidying up my front garden. Then there was Mrs Bloxby.'

'What would she be doing along Lilac Lane?' asked Bill. 'It doesn't lead anywhere.'

'She often goes for a walk about the village in the early morning. Then along Lilac Lane, away from the village end, I heard a couple, a man and a girl, I think. I heard the girl laugh.' He stood for a moment, looking bewildered. 'That's odd!'

'What's odd?'

'I just remembered. The night Agatha and I discovered Mary had been murdered, as we were waiting outside her house to see if she would answer the bell, a man and a girl passed behind us on the road. I heard the girl laugh.'

'Why didn't you tell me this?' demanded Bill sharply.

'It slipped my mind. It didn't seem important. Just a village sound. I mean, they weren't coming away from the house or anything like that.'

Agatha and Mrs Bloxby came into the garden carrying tea-things.

James swung round. 'Agatha, do you remember that couple on the road the night we discovered Mary dead?'

'Yes,' said Agatha. 'I do now. I'd clean forgotten about them.'

'And now James here says he heard a couple at the end of this road this morning, early.'

'They could have been walkers,' said Mrs Bloxby. 'There's a lot of them about the Cotswolds. Although Lilac Lane doesn't lead anywhere. I mean, you can't drive anywhere, there is that footpath across the field at the end of it.'

'You were out early, Mrs Bloxby,' said Bill. 'Did you see anyone?'

'I only saw Mr Lacey's bottom. He was leaning over a flowerbed in his front garden, weeding, I think.'

'Do you think it could have been that Beth Fortune and her boyfriend?' asked Roy eagerly, who had been told all the details of the murder during the night by Agatha.

'I think I'll pay a call on them,' said Bill.

'Where exactly were Beth and John on the night of the murder?' asked Agatha.

'They were in Beth's rooms in college, studying.'

'Any witnesses to that?'

'No, but usually only guilty people arrange cast-iron alibis.'

'Come back when you've seen them and let us know what they say,' urged Agatha.

When he had gone and James, Agatha, Roy and Mrs Bloxby were seated around the table, James said, 'Even if it turns out that John Deny and Beth played a trick on you, Agatha, it's a far cry from murder.'

'Perhaps not,' said Agatha. 'I mean, surely the destruction of the gardens ties up somewhere and somehow with Mary's death. I wish I had never thought of this silly scheme. Now I have to go and work for Pedmans, the PR firm, in the autumn, and for six months, too.'

'I don't understand,' said Mrs Bloxby. 'How did that come about?'

Roy kicked Agatha under the table. She yelped, rubbed her ankle, and glared at him. 'I'm going to tell them,' she said. She explained about the deal.

'You must be very good at your job,' said Mrs Bloxby. She tried to surreptitiously feed Hodge, the cat, with a piece of muffin. Agatha had bought a packet of a product new on the market which promised 'real American blueberry muffins from your own microwave'. They tasted like wet cardboard. Hodge took it from her fingers and then spat it out on the grass. James crumbled his, so that his plate was covered in muffin crumbs. He hoped Agatha might think he had eaten some of it.

'She is,' said Roy. Somehow Mrs Bloxby, without saying anything, was making him feel guilty about getting Agatha to sign that contract. Away from the world of PR, away from London, things which passed as normal business in the city had a way of appearing, well, shabby in this rural tranquillity.

He gave himself an angry little shake, like a wet dog. People didn't go about planting people in London; mugging, raping, knifing and shooting, but not planting.

'I think,' said Mrs Bloxby in her quiet voice, 'that the full enormity of Mary Fortune's death is striking me at last. Someone in this village is mad enough and deranged enough to have killed her and left her body in such a dreadful way. What on earth could she have done to engender such hate?'