“We’ll trot about. Isn’t there an abbey? What does the guidebook say? Ah, there was an abbey built in 700 A.D. but Henry the Eighth got rid of it. There’s a museum in the old Almonry.”
“You’re as bad as the hairdresser,” grumbled Agatha. “I got a whole lecture on Simon de Montfort.”
“Then seduce him with your superior knowledge.”
The Almonry, where the almoner, the medical-social worker of his day, helped the less fortunate of the town, is a rambling fourteenth-century building.
Agatha and Charles went in. Agatha paid the entrance fee, for Charles took so long finding any money- deliberately, Agatha thought. Evesham is twinned with Dreux in France, where Simon de Montfort was born. They studied the charter proclaiming that fact. “Heard about Stow-in-the Wold?” asked Charles.
“No, what?”
“Some nice little town on the Loire wanted to be twinned with Stow, so the parish council put the vote to the townspeople and got a resounding NO.”
“Why?”
“Didn’t want anything to do with the French. Can you believe it? They must still be fighting the battle of Waterloo over there.”
“So who did they decide to twin with?”
“Nobody. They’re going to have a drinking fountain instead. I say, look at this map of the world, Aggie-1392, can you believe it?”
Agatha sighed. The heat was suffocating and she longed for a cigarette.
“Evesham is also twinned with Melsungen in Germany and Evesham, New Jersey.”
“Yawn,” said Agatha. “Can’t I go and sit in the garden and wait for you?”
“No, there’s more upstairs. Come on.”
Agatha found herself becoming fascinated with two examples of Victorian dress. Usually in museums the ladies’ shoes were tiny, but these Evesham ladies had great big feet.
They moved on. Agatha became uneasy as she saw household items she remembered from her youth.
She was relieved when the tour was over. But then Charles wanted to see the two churches, St. Lawrence and All Saints. She fretted behind him wondering how such a frivolous man could become so excited over the sight of a Norman arch. Then they walked through the dark arch of the old Bell Tower, built between 1529 and 1539, chattered Charles, and so across the grass and down towards the river Avon. Just before the river was a paddling pool shrill with the cries of children. “That’s where the monks used to fish,” said Charles.
“Let’s sit down for a moment,” said Agatha wearily.
They sat down together on a bench. It was a lazy, sunny scene. A band was churning out selections from My Fair Lady. Families sprawled on the grass. It looked so safe, so English, so far from the violence of the inner cities. Agatha relaxed. Evesham had a laid-back charm.
“Let’s take a boat,” said Charles.
“Are you going to row?”
“Too hot. One of those pleasure boats.”
They walked back out into Bridge Street, past the multistorey car-park and so down to the landing stage, where a boat was just about to leave.
The boat went under the Workman Bridge and circled back when it came to a weir, then went back under the bridge and slowly along beside the Abbey Gardens, as they are called.
“Do you know that Evesham Abbey was larger than Gloucester Cathedral?” said Charles.
“Urn,” said Agatha absently.
“And do you know that-What?” For Agatha had suddenly clutched his arm.
“Over there. Mr. John,” hissed Agatha.
The open pleasure boat was sliding slowly past a tea garden. Charles looked. “Blond chap?”
“Yes.”
Agatha twisted her head backwards as the boat moved on. “Don’t know. Oh, yes. I think it’s a customer of his called Maggie. We’re all first names at the hairdresser’s.”
“She didn’t look all that happy.”
“We go back this way again, don’t we?”
“Shortly, I should think. The trips are only half an hour long, so we should be turning back any moment now.”
Sure enough, the boat soon made a circle.
“Get ready,” said Agatha. “Be prepared for a good look at them this time.”
But as the boat passed the tea garden, the table at which Mr. John had been sitting with Maggie was empty.
“Pity,” said Agatha. “She was bitching to him about how her husband didn’t appreciate her. Do you think it really is blackmail? He might just be a philanderer.”
“So why was Mrs. Friendly so frightened?”
“I’d forgotten about Mrs. Friendly. I’ll ask Mrs. Bloxby, the vicar’s wife. She might know something. Want to come with me?”
He looked at his watch. “Can’t. Got to get home soon. Going out tonight.”
“Where?”
“Taking this girl to see Macbeth at Stratford.”
“Oh,” said Agatha in a small voice. She felt disappointed but reminded herself that Charles was a bachelor with his own life to lead.
When they left the boat and walked back towards the car-park, the heat was suffocating.
“Thunder tonight,” said Charles as they drove out of Evesham. Agatha looked ahead. There were purple clouds building up over Fish Hill.
“There’s a thunderstorm almost every night,” she said, “and yet the next day is always as hot and humid as ever.”
Charles grunted by way of reply. He seemed immersed in his own thoughts. Agatha could feel the edges of that depression in her brain. She would go and see Mrs. Bloxby. Perhaps that would take up some of the lonely evening ahead.
When Charles dropped her off, he did not say anything about seeing her again. Agatha had a feeling that the mystery of the hairdresser had become a bore. She said goodbye to him in a subdued voice and let herself into her cottage just as the first fat raindrops struck the thatch on the roof.
She hurried to let her cats in and then opened a can of cat food for them. Her cats, Hodge and Boswell, although they purred around her ankles, seemed so self-sufficient, so little in need of the company of Agatha Raisin.
A blinding flash of lightning lit up the kitchen. Then came a crack of thunder which seemed to rock the old cottage to its very foundations. Agatha switched on the kitchen light only to find out that Carsely was suffering from one of the village’s many power cuts.
She crept up to her bedroom and into bed without undressing, pulled the sheet over her and lay listening to the fury of the storm. She fell into an uneasy sleep, waking at seven in the evening feeling hot and gritty. Late sunlight streamed in at the windows.
She climbed out of bed and looked out of the window. Everything in the garden glittered in the sunlight. She leaned out. The air was as warm and sticky as ever.
Agatha showered and changed and then made her way along to the vicarage.
She hesitated on the doorstep as she heard the vicar’s angry voice, “Does that woman never think to phone first?”
She was about to turn away. That was the trouble with true Christians like Mrs. Bloxby; one never thought of them as having any life of their own.
But the door opened and Mrs. Bloxby smiled a welcome, pushing a wisp of grey hair out of her eyes.
“I saw you coming up the road,” she said. “Come in.”
“And so did your husband,” said Agatha ruefully. “He’s quite right. I should have phoned first.”
“Never mind him. The heat is making us all irritable and he’s got evening service.”
“In that case… ”
