'I won't know anyone,' said Agatha. 'People keep selling up and the incomers get older and older.'
'Apart from myself and Miss Simms,' said Mrs. Bloxby, 'you never cared much for the last lot. Oh, do come along.' Her usually mild and pleasant voice took on an edge. 'What else are you going to do? Sit at home and brood?'
Agatha gave her friend a startled look. In the tradition of the society they addressed each other by their second names, dating from some now long-forgotten time when the use of first names had been considered vulgar.
'I just can't seem to get interested in anything or anyone,' sighed Agatha. 'All right, I'll drive you over. I've never been to Odley Cruesis.'
'It's a pretty village. Nice people. The meeting is to be held in the vicarage. The vicar's wife, Penelope Timson, is an excellent baker. Her cakes are the talk of the neighbourhood.'
Odley Cruesis was situated ten miles from Carsely, reached along winding roads glittering with frost. With its old Tudor thatched houses, it seemed a little part of England that time had forgotten. To Agatha's dismay, cars were parked bumper to bumper outside the vicarage. 'I'll never be able to park,' she moaned.
'Yes, you will,' said Mrs. Bloxby. 'There's a space right there.'
'I'm not driving a Mini,' said Agatha.
'Let me. I'll park it for you.'
Agatha got out and Mrs. Bloxby got into the driver's seat and then parked Agatha's Rover neatly between two cars, leaving only inches on either end.
Agatha walked up to the vicarage. She could faintly hear the chatter of voices. She sighed. Cakes and boredom. Why had she come?
The vicarage drawing room was large. There seemed to be around twenty-five people there. But apart from Miss Simms, Agatha could not recognise anyone else from Carsely. Mrs. Bloxby whispered in a disappointed voice that they must have decided not to attend. Agatha waved to Miss Simms, Carsely's unmarried mother, who was wearing a very short skirt, pixie boots, one of those fake French fisherman's jerseys, and long dangling earrings. There was a log fire on the hearth giving out a dim glow and occasionally sending puffs of smoke into the room.
Agatha refused tea and cakes. She could not be bothered to balance a teacup and plate. All the comfortable chairs had been taken up. Extra hard chairs had been brought in. Agatha sat down in a hard chair and wondered how long this wretched evening was going to last. The room was cold. Long French windows had been let into one wall of the old building and she could see steam from the breaths of all the cold visitors beginning to form on the glass.
A new arrival was being greeted with great enthusiasm. Agatha judged her to be in her seventies. She had leathery brown skin criss-crossed with wrinkles, thick black hair streaked with grey, and sparkling blue-grey eyes. 'Freezing out there,' she said, divesting herself of her coat and pashmina. 'They say we're going to have a blizzard tonight.'
'Who is she and what's that accent?' asked Agatha.
'She's Mrs. Miriam Courtney, widow, South African, millionaire,' whispered Mrs. Bloxby. 'She bought the manor house here about two years ago.'
Miriam looked brightly around the room. 'Am I expected to sit on one of those bum-numbing seats?'
'Have my chair,' said Miss Simms eagerly, surrendering her armchair.
Agatha felt a twinge of jealousy.
'Goodness, it's cold,' said Miriam. 'You've got coal in the scuttle over there. Why not throw some of that on the fire and get up a blaze?'
'It's not smokeless,' protested Penelope Timson, a tall thin woman with very large hands and feet and stooped shoulders, as if she had become bent after years of bending down to speak to smaller parishioners. She was wearing two cardigans over a sweater, a baggy tweed skirt, and woollen stockings which ended surprisingly in a pair of fluffy pink slippers in the shape of two large pink mice. 'You know what Mr. Sunday is like. He tours around looking for smoke. We're supposed to burn smokeless.'
'Oh, never mind him. Courage. Chuck on a few lumps,' urged Miriam.
Bowing to a stronger will, Penelope picked up the tongs and deposited a few lumps. A blaze sprang up but the fire smoked even more.
'Damn, I brought brandy and I've left it in the car. I'll go and get it,' said Miriam. 'Don't wait for me. Get started.'
'I thought we weren't supposed to drink and drive,' muttered Agatha.
'She's probably thinking of herself,' said Mrs. Bloxby. 'She can walk home. I wonder why she bothered to drive.'
'I wonder why anyone local bothered to drive,' said Agatha. 'Couldn't they just walk?'
'It's only in cities that people walk, I think,' said Mrs. Bloxby. 'These days, in the country, people seem to drive even a few yards.'
Penelope called the meeting to order. Agatha's thoughts drifted off. Perhaps she could rescue the little that was left of her holiday and go somewhere warm. But she didn't like beach holidays anymore, and Miriam's skin was surely an example of what happened to women who baked in the sun. It was all so stupid, reflected Agatha, this obsession with tanning. Understandable in the old days when only the rich went abroad in the winter and people wanted to appear to be jet-setters, but now the British from every walk of life flew out to exotic destinations, visiting a tanning parlour before they left. I mean, thought Agatha, you wouldn't leave a fine piece of leather out in the sun to dry and crack, so why do it with your skin? She remembered the slogan, 'Black is beautiful.' Quite right, too. But if she invented a slogan saying, 'White is beautiful,' she'd probably end up before the Race Relations Board.
Then she became aware that Penelope was asking, 'Where is Mrs. Courtney? She should be back. I hope she hasn't slipped on ice.'
'I'll go and look for her,' said Miss Simms eagerly.
The meeting went on. Descriptions of the iniquities of Grudge Sunday wandered in and out of Agatha's brain. She wondered where her ex-husband was and reflected on how glad she was that she had got over her obsession for him, and yet, how empty life seemed without it.
'Found her! Mrs. Courtney had to go home for the hooch. It wasn't in the car,' cried Miss Simms from the doorway. She came into the room followed by Miriam. Both were carrying bottles. Penelope went off to find glasses and returned with a tray full of them.
The room was soon full of genteel murmurs--'Oh, I am sure one wouldn't hurt.' 'Such a cold night, one does need something.' 'Ooh, not so much!'--as brandy was poured.
'I think it's going to snow,' said Miriam. 'The wind's getting up.'
'Too cold for snow,' said Agatha, prompted by a sudden desire to contradict Miriam on any subject she cared to bring up.
The room was filling up with smoke. Penelope batted at it ineffectually with her large hands. 'Must get the sweep in,' she said.
She stared at the French windows and screamed. The tray she was holding with a few remaining glasses fell to the floor. Everyone stood up, turned and looked towards the French windows and soon the smoky air was full of cries.
His face pressed against the glass, his bloodied hands smearing the windowpanes as he slowly sank down, was John Sunday. Seen dimly through the steamy glass, it all looked unreal, like something out of a horror movie.
Agatha was never to forget that long night. They were trapped in the cold vicarage drawing room. The Scenes of Crimes Operatives in their white suits worked outside the windows while a policeman stood guard. They seemed to take forever. Then there was a long wait for the arrival of the Home Office pathologist. After he was finished, Detective Inspector Wilkes, with Agatha's friend Detective Sergeant Bill Wong and one of Agatha's pet hates Detective Sergeant Collins, an acidulous woman, arrived. One by one they were interviewed. Bill went on as if
