empty look. He must be already there. With a feeling of going on-stage, she opened the pub door and went into the smoky low-ceilinged room. James was standing at the bar talking to Mr Bernard Spott, the man who headed the horticultural society. James hailed Agatha and bought her a gin and tonic. She had just taken her first sip and was looking for an inroad into the conversation about dahlias that James was having with Bernard when the pub door opened and Mary Fortune sailed in. Agatha had known the pangs of jealousy before but never anything as bad as this. She felt her face becoming stiff, as stiff as if she had just applied the white of egg. Mary was wearing a short white jersey dress and gold jewellery. The dress clung to her excellent figure. It was the first time Agatha had seen her wear anything other than green. The skirt of the dress was very short, exposing Mary's long legs encased in tan stockings and ending in high-heeled strapped sandals. Her golden hair glowed in the light. Her eyes were very wide and very blue. She had never looked more magnificent and her entrance was greeted with a sudden appreciative silence. James, too, had fallen silent and was gazing at Mary in open admiration. Oh, jealousy as sour as bile engulfed Agatha. She felt old and diminished.
James found his voice. 'Mary,' he said warmly. 'What are you having?'
'Campari soda, darling.' Mary linked her hand over his arm and smiled at him in an intimate way that made Agatha want to strike her. Old Bernard was tugging at his tie and staring at her in rapture. 'What were you talking about?' asked Mary.
'Gardening,' said James.
'Tomorrow's my big day,' declared Agatha. 'I'm planting out my seedlings.'
'Oh, I wouldn't do that, Agatha,' exclaimed Mary. 'There's going to be a big frost on Sunday night. I'm leaving mine until the weather settles.'
Was it Agatha's soured imagination, or was this delivered with a certain, well, patronizing air?
'I didn't hear anything about frost,' she said mulishly.
Bernard Spott was a tall, thin man in his eighties, whose sparse grey hair was greased in strips over his scalp. He had a large beaky nose with which he looked down at whomever he was speaking to. He waggled an admonitory finger under Agatha's nose. 'Better listen to what Mary says. She's our expert.'
'Certainly is,' murmured James.
Agatha gave what she hoped was an enigmatic smile. The evening then proceeded to be a total disaster for her. If one has never had anything to do with gardening before, then one has little to contribute to a conversation in which a bewildering set of Latin names fly back and forth. And so Agatha stood mostly silent, as the names came and went and mulch was discussed and other organic fertilizers. Mary held court and Agatha stood on the outskirts. At last, when she saw her cleaner, Doris Simpson, and her husband seated over in a corner of the bar, Agatha murmured an excuse and went to join them.
Doris did not help Agatha's burning jealousy by remarking, 'Mrs Fortune looks like one of them film stars tonight.'
Agatha turned the conversation away from Mary but all the while she talked of village matters she had half an ear tuned to the sound of James's frequent bursts of laughter.
Suddenly she couldn't bear it any more. She rose, said, 'Goodnight,' abruptly, and walked straight out of the pub, looking neither to right nor left.
Doris looked at her husband, her eyes shrewd behind her spectacles. 'The next murder done in this village,' she said, 'will be committed by our Agatha.'
Agatha stared up at the calm starlit sky as she walked home. The night air was balmy against her cheek. Frost, indeed. She was going to plant out her seedlings tomorrow and nothing was going to stop her!
The next day was sunny and warm, warm enough to wear a short-sleeved blouse, and Agatha hummed to herself as she planted out those tender green seedlings in well-weeded flowerbeds. She felt quiet and content. She felt she was getting on top of this gardening thing. That was the trouble about gardeners, they like to blast you with science, when it was all quite easy, really.
Before the light faded, she took a last look around the garden. She shivered in the sudden chill as the large red sun sank down behind the Cotswold hills. She glared up at the sky. There couldn't be frost, could there? Agatha, like most of the British public, swore that the meteorologists were often wrong, forgetting all the times they were right.
She stood there until the sun had disappeared, taking the light from the garden, bleaching the green from the plants. It was all so very still and quiet. A dog barked somewhere up on the fields above, its sudden noise intensifying the silence that followed.
Agatha shook her head like a baffled bull. It was nearly summer. By frost they had meant a little nip in the air, not that nasty white stuff which blanketed the Cotswolds in winter.
She went indoors, determined to watch some television and have an early night. She would set the alarm for six in the morning and would no doubt awake to a warm day.
When the alarm went off at six, shrill and imperative, she looked at it blearily, her first thought being that she had to get to the airport, which had been the case the last time she had set the alarm for six. Then memory came back. She threw back the duvet, went to the window, which overlooked the garden, took a deep breath and pulled back the curtains. White! Everywhere. Thick white frost under the pale dawn sky. Her eyes fell slowly to the plants. Surely they would have survived. She would not fret. She would get back into bed and wait for the sun to rise and then everything would be all right. And, despite her worry, she did fall asleep and did not awake until nine. She determinedly avoided looking out of the window. She showered and dressed in the old skirt and blouse she used for gardening and then she went downstairs and marched out into the garden. The sun was blazing, the frost was melting, and it was melting to reveal each pathetic little shrivelled and blackened plant that she had so lovingly placed in the earth the day before.
She wanted someone to turn to for help. But who? She didn't want her failure spread all over the village. James certainly wouldn't tell anyone but he would tell her she ought to have listened to Mary, and Agatha felt she couldn't bear that.
And then she thought of Roy Silver. She went indoors and rang his London number.
Roy was off work because it was a bank holiday. He complained Agatha's call had dragged him out of bed.
'Listen,' snapped Agatha, cutting across his complaints. She told him about the frost and how she had refused to take advice. 'And now,' she wailed, 'I'll be damned as a failed gardener.'
'No, no, no, sweetie. It's no use going on like a sandwich short of a picnic. Cunning is what you need here. Low cunning. You've got used to simple village ways. Let me think. You know that nursery chain I handle?'
'Yes, yes. But I'm surrounded with nurseries down here.'
'Listen. Keep everyone out of your garden. Can that Lacey chap see into it from next door?'
'There's a hedge between us. He would need to hang out of the window and crane his neck.'
'Good. Now that account Wilson wants you to handle. If I can get you to promise you'll give him six months of your time, say, starting in September, I'll be down there with a truck of super-duper fencing.'
'I've got fencing!'
'You want the high non-see-through type. I'll come with workmen. We'll put it up all round the garden, and don't let anyone out the back. Then, before the big day, I'll come down with a load of fully grown exotica, stuff it in the good earth, and bingo! You'll be the talk of the village.'
'But what about Doris, my cleaner? She'll find out.'
'Swear her to secrecy, but no one else.'
'I could do it,' said Agatha doubtfully, 'but six months working for Wilson...'
'Do it. What's six months?'
A lot when you get to my age, thought Agatha sadly after she had agreed to his plan and put down the phone.
She could not help feeling like a criminal. What did it all matter anyway? But she did so hope to score over Mary.
A ring at her doorbell made her jump guiltily. She opened it cautiously and saw Mrs Bloxby.
'Did you sleep in?' asked the vicar's wife anxiously.
'No,' said Agatha. 'What's the matter?'
'You're supposed to be manning the tombola stand. Is one allowed to say 'manning' these days? Does one say womaning or personing? Anyway Mrs Mason and I have it all set up.'
