Agatha Raisin and the Busy Body

got two holes in my head. Look! I feel like a bowling ball.'

'Whatever possessed you to do such a dangerous thing?' asked Agatha.

'I thought I could stir something up, just like you. Anyway, I phoned Pedmans and they've given the Bulgarian account to Mary.' Mary, a rival public relations officer, was always trying to poach Roy's accounts. 'As soon as I get out of here, I'll hand in my notice.'

'And do what?' asked Charles.

'Don't know. Maybe something in the country. I could work for you, Aggie.'

'It's mostly work out in the countryside and villages, Roy. I always think of you as a town person.'

Roy suddenly remembered the sinister darkness and silence of Odley Cruesis with not even one jolly red London bus to break the brooding fear of the place.

'I'll think of something anyway,' he said brightly. 'Do you know a British surgeon goes out to the Ukraine every year and performs these operations with a Black and Decker electric drill because they haven't the equipment out there?'

Bill Wong and Inspector Wilkes came in to interview Roy, and Agatha and Charles were banished to the waiting room. 'I'll be off,' said Charles. 'See you later.'

Agatha flicked through the glossy pages of a magazine. There were photographs of jolly people at openings of this and that and at hunt dinners. How happy they all look, she thought. How the camera lies. Nothing to show the raving row on the road home or the imminent divorce or the threat of bankruptcy or the social pain because Lady Bollocks-to-You snubbed the garage owner's wife. The magazine slipped from her lap and she fell asleep.

Charles came back late in the afternoon and woke Agatha up. 'You've been asleep for hours,' he said. 'Toni and Sharon have been around and Phil and Patrick. Pedmans has sent a hamper from Fortnum and Mason and everyone seems to be eating bits out of it except Roy. His real uncle and aunt have turned up and are going to take him away tomorrow to look after him. Funny that, I never think of Roy as having any family at all.'

They approached the room but were told by a nurse that Roy was asleep and it would be better to let him rest.

Agatha looked at her watch. 'I'd better get to the office and find out if anyone has discovered anything.'

'See you tomorrow,' said Charles.

She watched his well-tailored back disappear along the corridor. Had that brief fling in the south of France meant anything to him? He had never mentioned it before today. She took a small mirror out of her handbag and squawked in dismay at her face. Her mascara was lying in little black blobs under her eyes in that irritating way that supposedly waterproof mascara is apt to do. It was a magnifying mirror and she felt her pores made her face look like part of the surface of the moon.

By the time she had washed her face and repaired her make-up and had driven to the office, it was to find Mrs. Freedman just about to close up and Sharon brushing out her long tresses, blond streaked with purple.

She told them the latest news of Roy. 'The others are all still over at that terrible village trying to find out something,' said Mrs. Freedman. 'Would you like me to stay on?'

'No, you can go. Sharon, I want a word with you.'

Sharon threw down the hairbrush and retreated to her desk. 'What is it now?'

Agatha waited until Mrs. Freedman had closed the office door behind her and then said, 'What drugs are you taking?'

'I ain't taking none.'

'Don't lie to me. What is it? Coke, crystal meth, heroin--what?'

'Nothing. Gotta go.'

'The pupils of your eyes are tiny. You're on something. You can't work for me and be on drugs.'

'What about you, you boozy old bat with your fags and gin?' demanded Sharon. 'Stuff your job.'

Sharon rushed out of the office, leaving only an aroma of sweat and cheap perfume behind her.

Why should I bother? thought Agatha mutinously. I'm not her mother.

_______

When she arrived at her cottage it was to find a large bouquet of pink roses on the kitchen table with a note from Doris, which read: 'These arrived today. Got yourself a fellow?'

Agatha read the card attached to the roses. 'Don't be mad at me. Love, Tom.'

Freak, thought Agatha bitterly. She fed her cats and then carried the bunch of roses up to the vicarage. 'These might look nice in the church,' said Agatha, handing them to Mrs. Bloxby.

'How kind of you!'

'I'm afraid kindness doesn't enter into it. I'm getting rid of them.'

'Come in anyway. We'll have coffee. How is Roy? I heard it all on the news.'

'He's recovering all right.'

Agatha sank down wearily into the feathered cushions on the old vicarage sofa. 'The flowers are from Tom Courtney. He took me out to dinner last night. He asked me if I had any sexually transmitted diseases and then he asked me if I had shaved.'

'Shaved! Oh, I see.' The vicar's wife turned a little pink. 'I never will understand the lack of romance in this modern age. We get a lot of couples coming to the vicarage for advice on marriage. They only do it, mainly, because the girl wants a church wedding and usually they've never been near the place since they were baptised. There was one young man who said to his fiancee in front of Alf, 'We're going to Antigua on our honeymoon so she'd better get to one of those tanning parlours and get an allover tan. Don't want her looking like a shark's belly on the beach.' It seems men can make demands these days and without even paying for it like the days when they had to go to a brothel.'

'Nothing like the good old days.' Agatha giggled.

'Well, no romance like there used to be. Nothing like a bit of frustration for engendering romance. You're surely not still going to go on working for him?'

'Sure. Money's short these days and he pays generously. It's funny. I have a gut feeling that Tom Courtney is the sort who might be capable of murdering his own mother, but he's got such a cast-iron alibi. I wonder, too, about that sister of his. I mean she could have got her friend to swear she was there at the time of the murder. Oh. I forgot. There's no record of her entering the UK.'

'There is a such a great deal of money involved,' said Mrs. Bloxby.

'They could have paid someone,' said Agatha slowly. 'I've a good mind to nip over to Philadelphia and take a look around. I know, I'll go back and see Roy and get him to put it about that I'm taking him off to a health resort and I'll be back in a few days.'

_______

Roy was sitting up in bed, eating grapes from a huge basket of fruit on the table beside his bed. 'Guess who's just been to see me, Aggie?'

'The fruit fairy?'

'Mr. Pedman himself! He brought me all that lovely fruit. Do you remember that idea of mine of sending an anonymous letter to the police saying the Bulgarians were into sex trafficking?'

'My idea, actually.'

'Whatever. Anyway, it turns out to be true. Drugs as well as girls. Bitch, Mary, had been singing their praises and said I had only been reluctant to work for the vulgar Bulgars because I was running out of steam. She is definitely not the flavour of the month. I'm getting a raise in pay!'

'Okay. In return for my help--my help, mind--I want you to do something for me. Tell everyone who calls on you, including Bill--especially Bill--that I've gone off to a health farm for a few days and, no, you don't know which one.'

'Do you want to see my picture in the local paper?'

'No, Narcissus. I'm off.'

Chapter Five

Agatha was feeling very low as it was announced that the plane was approaching Philadelphia. She had begun to question her own motives in taking this expensive trip. What did she know of men these days? Maybe they