Agatha began to wish Toni would hurry up. It was as if there was a feeling of dislike emanating from the very stones of the old cottages. She kept feeling there was a face at one of the windows, just seen out of the corner of her eye, but when she whipped round, the window was empty and blank.
She heaved a sigh of relief when she saw Toni arriving with her car at last. Agatha climbed in. “I’ve got a pair of flat shoes in the back,” she said. “I’ll put them on when we get to the farm.”
The farm turned out to be nearly at the top of a very steep hill leading out of the village. “I bet he looks like one of his pigs,” said Agatha. “All that jam. He’s probably round and pink like a porker.”
“It does pong something awful,” said Toni when she drove into the farmyard.
“I hope he’s at home after all this.” Agatha put on a pair of flat sandals and flexed her toes with relief.
“It was a funny time of year for a jam tasting,” said Toni. “I mean, you would think maybe after the strawberries came out.”
“In this backward dump, they probably make jam out of weeds,” said Agatha. “The farm door’s open. Hullo! Anybody at home?”
A thin, commanding-looking woman dressed in jeans and a washed-up cotton blouse appeared in the doorway. She had thick grey hair, grey eyes and a thin mouth.
She looked Agatha up and down and sighed. “You Jehovahs,” she said in an upper-class accent. “Dragging your poor children from door to door.”
“I am not a Jehovah,” snapped Agatha. “My name is Agatha Raisin and this is one of my detectives, Miss Toni Gilmour.”
“Oh, so you’re the female responsible for the deaths yesterday.”
“Look,” said Agatha, “I would like to speak to Mr. Bassett.”
“I am Mrs. Bassett.” Her eyes raked Agatha from head to foot. You could leave the Birmingham slum, thought Agatha, but it was always there, deep inside, waiting to make you feel inferior.
“It’s Mr. Bassett I want to speak to.” Agatha’s small eyes bored truculently into Mrs. Bassett’s face.
“Come in,” she said abruptly.
They followed her into a kitchen which was like something out of the pages of
“Wait there,” commanded Mrs. Bassett, pointing towards a kitchen table surrounded by Windsor chairs.
She strode out the back door and called in stentorian tones, “Hal!”
There was a faint answering cry.
“He’s coming,” said Mrs. Bassett, striding back into the kitchen.
As usual, Agatha’s eyes ranged around the room looking for an ashtray, but she could not see a single one.
Mrs. Bassett began to grind coffee beans. She had her back to them and seemed unaware of their very existence.
Hal Bassett came into the kitchen. Mrs. Bassett swung round. “Boots!” she said.
Hal retreated to the doorway, sat down on a small stool at the entrance and tugged off his green wellies.
“Who are they?” he asked.
“It’s that Agatha Raisin woman and her sidekick,” said Mrs. Bassett.
Hal walked up to the kitchen table, twisted a chair round and straddled it. I hate men who do that, thought Agatha.
He was a tall brown-haired man dressed in a checked shirt and cords. He smelt strongly of pig. “So you’re the female responsible for the mayhem yesterday,” he remarked. His voice was light and pleasant. He had a square regular face. He did not look at all like the kind of person to haunt a jam-tasting exhibition.
“I’m not responsible for the LSD in the jam—if that is what the drug was,” said Agatha.
“What did you expect, encouraging a load of riff-raff to come here?” said Hal.
“It seems as if it had nothing to do with the visitors,” said Agatha. “The exhibition was set up in the marquee early in the morning by the organizers, Mrs. Glarely and Mrs. Cranton. The only people to visit the tent before the opening were yourself, Miss Triast-Perkins, the vicar and his wife and Mr. Selby. Did you taste any of the jam?”
“No,” said Hal. “I tried to buy a pot of plum jam from the ones on sale, but I was told I’d have to wait. Mrs. Cranton wouldn’t let me try any of the samples until the place was open to the public. Fair carried away with all this pop-singer nonsense.”
“Did you go back?”
“Couldn’t. Got a sow in farrow. I had to get back here.”
Toni smiled at him. “We aren’t suggesting you had anything to do with it. Of course not. But we wondered whether you might have seen anything when you were in the marquee.”
Hal smiled back. “What’s a pretty thing like you doing being a detective? No, I didn’t see anything out of the way. But if I remember something, I’ll phone you. Got a card?”
Toni took out one of her business cards, but before he could take it, it was snatched by Mrs. Bassett, who said icily, “Hal has work to do. If you’ve finished, we’d like to get on.”
