Agatha Raisin and The Walkers of Dembley

gooders chattered on about poverty but no one was starving, apart from old age pensioners who were not tough enough to demand benefits owing to them. It was a poverty of the very soul, where imagination was fed by violent videos, drink and drugs.

'And old Chalmers said to me when I came back from Beirut, 'You're too wily and tough a bird, Ross, to get kidnapped.''

'Absolutely,' said Agatha. 'What would you like to drink?'

'Mind if I choose? I find the ladies know nothing about wine,' which Agatha translated into meaning that the ladies might order inexpensive wine, or half a bottle, or something unacceptable. She thought, he will choose the second most expensive wine, being greedy but not wanting to appear so, and he did. Like some of his ilk, he ordered in the way of food what he thought was due to his position rather than because he enjoyed the taste of it. He did not eat much of it, obviously longing for the brandy at the end of the meal and for someone to take all the expensive muck away. So he barely ate snails, followed by rack of lamb, followed by profiteroles.

Over the brandies, Agatha wearily got down to business. She described Jeff Loon as a nice boy, 'too nice for the pop world', who was devoted to his mother and two brothers. She described his forthcoming release. She handed over photographs and press handouts.

'This is a load of shit, you know,' said Ross, smiling at her blearily. 'I mean, I checked up on this Jeff Loon and he's got a record, and I mean criminal record. He's been found guilty on two counts of actual bodily harm and he's also been done for taking drugs, so why are you peddling this crap about him being a mother's boy?'

The pleasant middle-aged woman that had been his impression of Agatha Raisin disappeared and a hard- featured woman with eyes like gimlets faced him.

'And you cut the crap, sweetie,' growled Agatha. 'You know damn well why you were invited here. If you had no intention of writing anything even half decent, then you shouldn't have come, you greedy pig. I'll tell you something else: I don't give a sod what you write. I just never want to see your like again. You chomp and swig like the failed journalist you are, boring the knickers off me with apocryphal stories of your greatness, and then you have the cheek to say that Jeff is a phony. What about you?'

'Oh, it's not on for PRs to complain, but hear this! I'm going to break the mould. Your editor is going to hear all your stories, verbatim, and get it along with the price of this evening.'

'He'll never listen to you!' said Ross.

She fished under the napkin on her lap and held up a small but serviceable tape recorder. 'Smile,' said Agatha. 'You're on Candid Camera.'

He gave a weak laugh. 'Aggie, Aggie.' He covered her hand with his own. 'Can't you take a joke? Of course I'm going to write a nice piece on Jeff.'

Agatha signalled for the bill. 'I couldn't care less what you write,' she said.

Ross Andrews had sobered rapidly. 'Look, Aggie...'

'Agatha to you, but Mrs Raisin will do now that we've got to know each other so well.'

'Look, I promise you a good piece.'

Agatha signed the credit card slip. 'You'll get the tape when I read it,' she said. She got to her feet. 'Goodnight, Mr Andrews.'

Ross Andrews swore under his breath. Public relations! He hoped never to meet anyone like Agatha Raisin again. He felt quite tearful. Oh, for the days when women were women!

Far away in the heart of Gloucestershire in the market town of Dembley, Jeffrey Benson, seated in the back of a schoolroom which was used for the weekly meeting of the rambling association, the Dembley Walkers, was thinking pretty much the same thing as he watched his lover, Jessica Tartinck, address the group. This feminist business was all very well, and God knew he was all for the equality of women, but why did they have to dress and go on like men?

Jessica was wearing jeans and a workman's shirt hanging loose. She had a pale scholarly face - she held a first in English from Oxford - and thick black hair worn long and straight. She had superb breasts, large and firm. She was rather thick about the thighs and did not have very good legs, but then the legs were always in trousers. Like Jeff, she was a schoolteacher at the local comprehensive. Before she had somehow declared herself leader of the Dembley Walkers, they had been a chatty, inoffensive group of people who enjoyed their weekend rambles.

But Jessica seemed to delight in confrontations with landowners, whom she hated like poison. She was a frequent visitor to the Records Office in Gloucester, poring over maps, finding rights of way which, buried in the mists of time, now had crops planted over them.

Jessica, on arriving to teach at the school a few months before, had immediately looked around for A Cause. She often thought in capital letters. She had learned of the Dembley Walkers through a fellow teacher, a timid, fair-haired girl called Deborah Camden who taught physics. All at once Jessica had found her cause, and in no time at all, without any of the other ramblers' knowing quite how it had happened, she had taken over. That her zeal in finding rights of way for them across private land was fuelled by bitterness and envy and, as in the case of her previous 'protests' - she had been an anti-nuclear campaigner on Greenham Common - by a desire for power over people, never crossed her mind. Jessica could find no fault in Jessica, and this was her great strength. She exuded confidence. It was politically incorrect to disagree with her. As most of the genuine ramblers who just wanted a peaceful outing had left and been replaced by ones in Jessica's image, she found it easy to hold sway. Among her most devout admirers, apart from Deborah, was Mary Trapp, a thin, morose girl with bad skin and very, very large feet. Then there was Kelvin Hamilton, a professional Scot who wore a kilt at all times and made jokes about 'saxpence'; he claimed to have come from a Highland village but actually came from Glasgow. There was Alice Dewhurst, a large powerful woman with a large powerful backside, who had known Jessica during the Greenham Common days. Alice's friend, Gemma Queen, a thin, anaemic shop-girl, did not say much except to agree with everything Alice said. Lastly were two men, Peter Hatfield and Terry Brice, who worked at the Copper Kettle Restaurant in Dembley as waiters. Both were thin and quiet, both effeminate, both given to whispering jokes to each other and sniggering.

Jessica looked particularly attractive that evening because she had found fresh prey. There was an old right of way across the land of a baronet, Sir Charles Fraith. She herself had surveyed the territory. There were crops growing across the right of way. She had written to Sir Charles herself to say that they would be marching across his land the Saturday after next and that there was nothing he could do about it.

Deborah suddenly found her hand shooting up. 'Yes, Deborah?' asked Jessica, raising thin black eyebrows.

'C-couldn't we j-just once,' stammered Deborah, 'j-just go for a walk like we used to? It was fun when old Mr Jones used to lead us. We had picnics and things and...'

Her voice trailed away before the supercilious expression on Jessica's face.

'Come, now, Deborah, this is not like you. If it weren't for rambling groups like ours, there wouldn't be rights of way at all.'

One of the original pre-Jessica ramblers, Harry Southern, said suddenly, 'She's got a point. We're going back to Farmer Stone's land this Saturday. He chased us off with a shotgun a month ago and some of the ladies were frightened.'

'You mean you were frightened,' said Jessica haughtily. 'Very well. We will put it to a vote. Do we go to Farmer Stone's this weekend or not?'

As her acolytes outnumbered the others, the vote was easily carried. Even Deborah no longer had the courage to protest, and after the meeting, when Jessica put an arm around her shoulders and gave her a hug, she felt her doubts ebbing away and all her usual slavish devotion returning.

POETS day in the City, the acronym standing for Piss Off Early Tomorrow's Saturday, had arrived at last. Agatha Raisin cleared her desk. She had an almost childish desire to erase all the telephone numbers of contacts on the Filofax to make it harder for whoever replaced her, but managed to restrain herself. Outside her door, she could hear her secretary singing a happy tune. Agatha had gone through three secretaries during her short stay. The present one, Bunty Dunton, was a big jolly county girl with a skin like a rhinoceros, and so Agatha's often virulent outbursts of temper had seemingly left her untouched. But she had never sounded so happy before.

It would be all right when she returned to Carsely, thought Agatha. She was popular there.

Her office door opened and Roy Silver edged in. His hair was slicked back with gel and now worn in a pony-