'No, don't,' said Agatha, repressing a shudder.
'I thought not.' Was the saintly Mrs. Bloxby being catty? Perish the thought.
'It's about these strange lights.' Agatha told her all about them and about the locals' reluctance to even discuss them.
'You've a mystery to solve,' said Mrs. Bloxby.
'I'm supposed to be meeting my destiny here, according to that fortune-teller.'
'It's early days. You've only just arrived. I'm sure you'll stir something up. Oh, Charles phoned. Wanted to know where you were.'
Agatha thought briefly of Sir Charles Fraith, lightweight, tightwad, fickle. 'No, if my destiny is to meet some fellow, I don't want him hanging around.'
'So, any eligible men around?'
'Apart from some gnarled old codger who put his hand on my knee and a sweaty estate agent, I haven't met any. And this cottage has no central heating, nothing but log fires.'
'The weather can get grim over there. Are you sure you don't want to come back? You could use the lack of central heating as an excuse.'
'Not yet, but you're right. I can leave this place any time I want. I meant to tell that estate agent I was leaving, but I'll hang on a bit longer.'
After she had rung off, Agatha felt much cheered. Of course, she could simply pack up and go. But first, see what the local copper had to say.
She drove out of the village a little way and soon saw the police station. She parked outside and went and rang the bell. There was a police car on the short drive at the side, so she was sure PC Framp was at home.
After some minutes, the door was opened. PC Framp was a tall, thin man with receding hair above a lugubrious face. He had an apron on and was holding a frying pan.
'It's my day off,' he said defensively.
Agatha ignored that. 'My name is Agatha Raisin and I have just rented Lavender Cottage. There have been peculiar lights at the bottom of my garden and a vase is missing.'
'Come in,' he said wearily. 'But don't mind if I cook my lunch.'
Agatha followed him through the police office, and then along a corridor to a stone-flagged kitchen. It was amazingly dirty and smelt of sour milk. It was also very hot. The policeman put the frying pan on top of an Aga cooker, poured in oil, cracked in two eggs, then added two rashers of bacon and two slices of bread. A fine mist of fat rose from the pan and covered the already greasy black top of the cooker.
She sat down at a crumby plastic-topped kitchen table. She leaned her elbows on it and then realized she had put one elbow in a smear of marmalade. At last Framp shoveled the mess out of the frying pan onto a chipped and cracked plate and sat down opposite her.
'So,' began Agatha impatiently, 'what about these lights?'
'Some kids playing pranks.'
'So you know that for a fact?'
'Educated guess.' He stabbed the corner of a piece of fried bread into the yolk of an egg and shoved it in his mouth.
'So you don't really know?'
He chomped steadily, filled a mug with tea, took a great swallow, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and then said, 'Nothing important's ever taken. Just bits and pieces. A worthless picture, a cream jug, three forks, things like that.'
'Why don't you come round to my cottage and fingerprint the place?'
'I don't fingerprint things. CID does that and they ain't going to come running over with their kit and the forensic boys over a load of junk.'
'It doesn't seem to bother you that someone is frightening the village with their antics. They won't talk about it.'
'Well, no, they wouldn't. Not to you.'
'Why?'
'They think it's fairies.'
Agatha stared at him and then said, 'Oh, come on. Fairies at the bottom of the garden!'
'Fact.'
'Fairies are not fact! And you've got egg on your chin. Look, the women I've met are not inbred peasants. They wouldn't believe in fairies.'
'That they do. Some have been putting salt round their houses to keep the fairies away, others are leaving gifts like saucers of milk and things like that.'
Agatha looked at him, puzzled, and then her face cleared. 'Oh, I know what it is. You're pulling my leg.'
'No. I'm telling you, Mrs. Raisin. This is a very old part of Britain and strange things do happen here.'
'I don't believe in fairies and I don't think you do either.' Agatha got to her feet. 'I won't waste any more of your time. I'll solve the mystery myself. I am by way of being a detective.'
She turned at the kitchen door and looked back, but he was dunking the last of his fried bread in the remaining egg.
Agatha got in her car in a bad temper. She drove slowly along until she came to a lodge-gate. This then must be the manor. She checked her watch. Three-thirty. Too early. She lowered the windows. The village of Fryfam nestled in pine woods and the air was sweet with the scent. A lazy bee blundered into the car, as if bewildered by all this late sunshine and warmth. Agatha wondered whether to swat it, but then realized she could not. She shrank back in her seat until it blundered out again.
Fairies, indeed! She decided furiously that the lazy policeman was probably trying to take the mickey out of a tourist.
Her thoughts turned to the vicar's wife, Mrs. Bloxby. Agatha knew that Mrs. Bloxby did not approve of her ongoing love for James Lacey and felt irritated. She should be sympathetic, understanding and supportive. Still, surely the whole reason for her flight to Norfolk, apart from the fortune-teller's prophecy, was to get James out of her hair. Not for a moment would she admit to herself that the real reason was because she wanted him to return to Carsely, find her gone and miss her.
She tried to jerk her thoughts back to the mystery of the dancing lights, but they kept returning to the way she would behave when she saw him again and what she would say. So immersed was she in her thoughts that it was with a start of surprise she realized the clock on the dashboard was registering five minutes past four. She started the car and turned into the drive. The pine trees were thick on either side. She was just wondering if she would ever reach the house when she turned a bend in the drive, and there it was, a square eighteenth-century building like a hunting-box, with a Victorian servants' wing stuck on one side. It had a small porticoed entrance with a very new coat of arms stuck on top. Two heraldic beasts supported a shield. Agatha squinted up as she got out of the car but could not make out the details. What had the Trumpington-Jameses put on their shield? Bathroom showers rampant?
She rang the bell at the side of the door. Lucy TrumpingtonJames answered the door wearing a gold silk Armani suit and a quantity of gold jewellery, chains round the neck and bracelets on her thin wrists.
'Come in,' she said. 'Tolly's in the drawing-room.'
Agatha followed her across a dark hall with console tables topped with Chinese vases of autumn leaves. Harriet's work?
The drawing-room came as a shock to Agatha, who had been expecting something country-house with chintz, Persian rugs, and oil paintings. There were two large oatmeal sofas in front of the fire, the sort you made up of blocks of chairs. In front of them was an oblong black-lacquered table. The walls were painted blood-red and the fitted carpet was a gleaming expanse of white. The paintings were modern abstracts. The side tables were of white lacquer and covered with photo frames holding pictures of the Trumpington-Jameses out hunting, at parties, at Henley, at Ascot and various other fashionable places. A black-lacquered wall unit held a television set, a CD player and very new and unread-looking books. The fire was one of those electric fake-log ones. The room was bright; lit by a crystal chandelier overhead, and by angular brass standard lamps in corners.
'Do sit down, Mrs. Raisin,' said Tolly Trumpington-James, rising to meet her. He was wearing a hacking jacket and cavalrytwill trousers. His Tattersall shirt was open at the neck.
