They were just getting into the car in the farmyard when Hal came hurrying out. He thrust a packet of sausages at Toni. “Here you are,” he said. “Prime pork. My own pigs.”
“That’s very kind of you,” said Toni. “Does it always pong like this round here?”
He laughed. “I’ve got a load of pig muck stacked up to sell to the farmers for fertilizer. It’ll be cleared out tomorrow. My pigs don’t smell. Come back sometime and I’ll give you a tour.”
“Hal!” called Mrs. Bassett from the doorway.
“Coming.”
“You’ve made a conquest there,” said Agatha, feeling low. How great it would be to be young and pretty like Toni. George would surely pay attention to her.
“George was in the tent as well,” said Toni. “I forgot about that. Do you know anything about him?”
“No, only that his wife died.”
“Maybe he poisoned her.”
“Just drive,” said Agatha sourly. “And find the manor house. We’d better have a word with Miss Triast- Perkins.”
Toni drove back down into the village. “Aren’t we supposed to be reporting to the police?”
“Later.”
People were returning from the church service. Toni lowered the window and asked for directions to the manor, and was told it was at the other end of the village, just beyond the church. “Did you see the way they were all looking at us?” asked Toni. “They’re all in their Sunday best, but if you put them in, say, medieval dress, their faces would fit. They looked as if they would really like to lynch us. I bet there’s a lot of nasty things go on behind closed doors here—wife beating, incest and drunkenness.
“Or maybe they’re too God-fearing to get up to anything nasty,” said Agatha. “Anyway, I could imagine one of them poisoning the jam with some nasty poisonous plant. But LSD? I don’t think any of them would even know where to get it.”
“Oh, oh.” Toni braked suddenly.
“What is it?”
“Bill’s waving us over to the mobile police unit.”
Another hour and a half of rigorous questioning by Collins and Wilkes left Agatha beginning to feel as if she had put the LSD in the jam herself.
When she and Toni were finally allowed to go, Agatha looked around, hoping to see a sign of George, but he was nowhere to be seen.
They got in the car and drove to the manor house. The large iron gates were propped open. Beside the gates was a lodge house, fallen into disrepair. “I wonder why the lodge was left like that,” said Agatha. “With the clamour for housing these days, you’d think she’d have sold it off.”
The manor house was a square Georgian building, the front of which was covered by the twisting branches of an old wisteria just coming into flower. Like the village, it had a blank, secretive air. Several of the windows had been blocked up from the days when owners tried to avoid the window tax.
They got out of the car and Agatha rang the bell. They waited patiently. Turning round, Toni noticed that the garden was unkempt—just a weedy lawn and several bushes planted around it.
The door opened. “Are you Miss Triast-Perkins?” asked Agatha.
She was a small thin woman with grey hair worn straight from a centre parting. Her face was thin and her large eyes were pale blue. She was wearing a faded print summer dress.
“You are that woman who organized the fete,” she said. “You’d better come in.”
They followed her into a gloomy sitting room where nothing seemed to have been changed since Victorian times: heavy furniture, stuffed birds in glass cases, framed photographs, and a grand piano covered by a fringed shawl.
“You were in the jam-tasting exhibition before it opened,” began Agatha. “I wonder if you noticed anyone lifting the covers over the jam.”
“No. I asked Mrs. Glarely if I could see that my marmalade was in a prominent position, but she went all bossy and refused to let me see. Those normally quiet sheepish women can turn quite bullying when they are put in charge of anything. Mr. Bassett came in to see if he could get a taste, but she refused him as well. Mr. Bassett and I talked to the vicar and that silly wife of his, who had just turned up. Oh, and dear Mr. George Selby. Poor man. He does mourn for his wife. She was such a pretty woman and did a lot of work for the parish.”
“How did she die?” asked Agatha.
“The poor thing fell downstairs. She was carrying a tray of things and missed her footing. George is an architect and I’d warned him about those stairs. He has an old cottage near the church. Very old staircase, stone, you know, with deep steps.”
“When did this happen?”
“Last year, in June. I don’t think he’ll ever marry again. No one could match up to Sarah.”
“Sarah being his late wife?”
“Yes.”
“And she was pretty?”
What on earth was Agatha doing? wondered Toni.
“Oh, so dainty. A little slip of a thing.”
Agatha began to feel large and lumpy.
