Agatha Raisin and The Murderous Marriage

clear. Agatha's a friend of mine and I wish you'd stop bitching about her. I don't know if she exactly solved those last crimes, but she made things happen by poking her nose in; otherwise we'd never have got to the murderers.'

'I'm entitled to my own opinion,' said Maddie. 'Look at her odd relationship with Lacey. Their engagement breaks u, p because she's lied to him and yet they're living together.'

'I think they're very well suited,' mumbled Bill. He had invited Maggie home to meet his parents for dinner that very evening and he did not want anything to go wrong. 'Can't we just agree to disagree?'

'Have it your way. Haven't got the hots for old Agatha, have you?'

'She's old enough to be my mother!'

'Just wondered.'

Bill had been looking forward to showing off Maddie to his parents. Now a worm of uneasiness was beginning to wriggle in his brain. Could it be that his darling was, well, just a tiny bit abrasive?

Agatha and James drove in the direction of Mircester. The fog had lifted and it was a beautiful autumn day. The hedgerows were bright with hawthorn berries, and red-and-gold trees lined the edges of brown ploughed fields.

'The country doesn't seem beautiful at first,' said Agatha. 'I used to long for London. Then I got used to it. I sta noticing the changing seasons, and then it began to look beautiful, like watching a series of landscape paintings, one after another. Except for those clouds. Someone ought to do something about those clouds, James. They're like those neat and regular water-colour ones painted by the Cotswold amateurs. The light is different, too. It sort of slants in the autumn.' Shafts of golden sunlight cut through the trees onto the winding road ahead. James braked sharply as a clumsy pheasant dithered about in front of his wheels which crunched on a carpet of beech nuts.

'I don't often want to put the clock back,' said Agatha in a small voice. 'But on days like this, I wish I had never got into this mess, and I know I won't be free until it's over. I can't even grieve for Jimmy. I think he'd turned into a right bad lot and if he hadn't been so bad, he would be alive and kicking. I could deal with a live Jimmy and get him out of my hair forever, but I can't fight a dead man. He came between us, James.'

'You put him there, Agatha. If you had found out his existence, we could have dealt with it.'

Agatha gave a small dry sob.

James took one hand off the steering wheel and gave her a quick hug. 'You need to give me time,' he said, and Agatha's heart suddenly rocketed with hope, like another pheasant which flew up at their approach and sailed over a hedge.

They received a set-back after they had made their statements at police headquarters and gone in search of Mrs. Gloria Comfort. They learned from neighbours that she had moved to one of the outlying villages. No one knew her new address but one of the neighbours remembered the house had been sold by Whitney and Dobster, estate agents.

At the estate agents', they found to their relief that the man who had organized the sale of Mrs. Comfort's house in Mircester was still working there and cheerfully accepted their story that they were old friends trying to get in touch with her. He produced an address in Ancombe.

'Well!' exclaimed Agatha outside the estate agents' office, 'that's very close to Carsely, and to the scene of Jimmy's murder, too. Do you think the police will have been there before us?'

'Don't know. They always have such a lot of red tape to get through and we don't.'

Agatha suddenly hesitated. 'They'll be furious if they arrive and find us there.'

'It's getting late. They've either been there or they're getting there tomorrow.'

Ancombe was one of those Cotswold villages about the size of Broad Campden that seemed too perfect to be true. Very small but with an old church in the centre, thatched cottages, beautiful gardens, and everything with a manicured air.

Mrs. Gloria Comfort lived in one of the prettiest of the thatched cottages under the shadow of the church. There was no answer to the door. 'Let's try round the back,' said James. 'I can hear some noises coming from there'. 'Probably writhing in her death agonies,' said Agatha gloomily.

They walked up the narrow path which led to the back garden. A plump blonde woman was weeding a flower-bed. 'Excuse me,' began James, and she rose and turned around. Her hair was gloriously bleached blonde, not a dark root showing, but her middle-aged face was puffy and her eyes held that glittering look caused by a film of moisture, the sign of a heavy drinker. She was dressed unsuitably for gardening in a sort of Lady Tart outfit of tightly tailored tweed jacket and skirt, frilly white blouse, pearls, and high heels.

'Mrs. Comfort?' said James.

'Are you collecting for something?'

'No, I am James Lacey and this is Agatha Raisin.'

'Oh, dear, you're the wife of that man who was murdered. You'd better come indoors.' She teetered across the lawn, her spiked heels making holes in the green turf. 'Good for the lawn,' she remarked. 'It aerates it.'

Indoors was in keeping with her dress. Everything was amazingly vulgar. Awful ruched curtains at the windows, fake horse brasses, fake old masters on the walls, and a padded white leather bar in one corner of the living-room. Mrs. Comfort headed straight for the bar. 'Drink?'

Agatha said she would have a gin and tonic, and James, a whisky.

'Now,' Mrs. Comfort said, perching on the very edge of an overstuffed sofa, 'what's this all about?'

'You were at the health farm at the same time as Jimmy,' began Agatha. 'We're interested in who he talked to. We're also very interested in the woman who accompanied him, a Mrs. Gore-Appleton.'

Mrs. Comfort took a strong pull of the very dark liquid in her glass. Then she said, 'It's hard to remember. It all seems so long ago. Jimmy Raisin was hailed as one of the successes. He arrived looking like a wreck, and by the end of the first week he looked like a different man. I can't tell you anything about Mrs. Gore-Appleton. I didn't talk to her much except for the odd remark about the weather and how awful it was to feel so hungry - that sort of thing. I can't really be of much help to you, I'm afraid.'

James said, 'Have the police been to see you yet?'

'No. Why should they want to see me? Oh, because of Mrs. Raisin being murdered.'

'It's not as simple as that. You may not have noticed in the newspapers today because of all the world news, but a certain Miss Purvey was murdered in Mircester.'

'Purvey? Purvey! She was there at the health farm. Thin spinster. But surely that has nothing to do with anything.'

'Jimmy Raisin was a blackmailer,' said Agatha. Mrs. Comfort choked on her drink and then appeared to rally. 'Really?' she said brightly. 'How sickening.'

Agatha took a gamble. 'The real reason we are here is because we think he may have been blackmailing you.'

'How dare you! There is nothing about me that anyone could blackmail me about. I think you should both go.'

Mrs. Comfort got to her feet. They rose as well. 'You would not like to try the real story out on us first?' asked James gently.

'What do you mean, on you first?'

'The police will be here soon and they will ask you the same questions. Then they will check your bank statements to see if you have been drawing out regular sums of money to pay blackmail, or if you ever issued a cheque to Jimmy Raisin.'

She sat down as if her legs had suddenly given way. Her puffy face crumpled and she looked about to cry. Agatha and James slowly sat down again.

She mutely held out her now empty glass to James. He took it, sniffed it, and then went behind the white leather bar and filled it with neat whisky and carried it back to her. They waited while she drank in silence and then she said, 'Why not hear it all?

'As I said, Jimmy Raisin was a wreck when he first came, but he soon smartened up. He was charming and amusing and...well, the others seemed a lot of stuffed shirts, and because I was a woman on my own, I was put at the same table as Miss Purvey, and that made me feel like shit.