'No, apart from that. The British are as bad as the Americans. The Americans want to believe in the good old days of June Allyson standing at the white picket fence with an apple pie. The British want the rural dream of croquet and skittles and my lord dishing out the prizes. Now usually these village affairs are tacky, I grant you that. But this one could be groomed to look like something out of a Merchant-Ivory film. And I'll get that American film star, Jane Harris, to open it.'
'The Commie?'
'Doesn't matter. Her health and beauty videos sell by the ton. And I'll get some local doddering aristo as well.'
'It could work,' said Guy slowly. 'But we can't control the weather. Crowds aren't going to come to an idyllic English fgte if it's pissing down with rain.'
'July's usually a lousy month,' said Agatha. 'Make it for the end of August, before the kids go back to school.'
They discussed the pros and cons of the village fgte. Agatha clinched it by pointing out the obvious. It was being marketed as Ancombe water, so where better to have the launch than in Ancombe itself?
'There's one last thing,' said Agatha. 'This meeting in the village hall makes me uneasy. I think we should be there to represent the company. It will be very bad publicity if we end up with the villagers against us. I'll let you know when the meeting is to be held.'
'Guy will go along with you,' said Peter.
Portia entered. 'What is it?' asked Peter.
'That dead man,' said Portia. 'He was murdered.'
'Thank you for telling us.'
Both men waited until the secretary had left. 'Not bad, not bad,' said Peter.
'I can't see how a murder is going to help us.' Agatha looked at them. Then she said slowly, 'Of course, it means there will be a lot of the press at that meeting at the village hall.'
'Exactly,' said Peter. 'And good PR woman that you are, you'd better find a way to swing everyone one hundred per cent behind us. God knows, you're being paid enough.'
Agatha did not like the flick of the whip. 'You get what you pay for when you hire me,' she said evenly. 'Now, if that is all, gentlemen...?'
'Bit tasteless that last remark of yours, bro,' murmured Guy after Agatha had left.
'Rolls off that sort of woman. Hard as nails.'
'Sexy with it, though,' said Guy reflectively, staring at the door through which Agatha had just exited.
Agatha arrived back in Carsely to find the press waiting on her doorstep. Mindful of her new role, she invited them all in for drinks and, after describing how she had found the body, put in a good plug for the new water company.
After the press had left, Roy Silver phoned her, eagerly asking how she had got on. 'Very well,' said Agatha, 'although there was a nasty crack from Peter about what they were paying me. I assume you are giving me my usual fee?'
'Told you so. Told them if they wanted quality PR, they had to pay for it.' Agatha told him about the meeting in the village hall.
'I'd better be there, too,' said Roy. A picture of the glamorous Guy rose in Agatha's mind.
'Don't want you around,' she said gruffly.
'Who got you this job?'
'Want it back?'
'Just my little joke, Aggie.'
Agatha hung up.
She realized that if she kept a bright picture of Guy Freemont at the front of her mind, then the image of James Lacey's face was blocked out.
With more cheerfulness and energy than she had felt for a long time, she got out her laptop and began to work busily, writing down the names of journalists she could lure to the opening.
After several hours she stretched and yawned, feeling all the satisfaction of having done a good job. She corrected what she had written, ran it off on the printer and then drove over to Mircester, where she left her papers at the reception desk addressed to the Freemont brothers.
She was driving back through Mircester when she saw Bill Wong just leaving police headquarters. She called to him and stopped the car. He came over.
'What's all the news?' she asked.
'Park and come for a drink. I'll tell you the little I know.'
Agatha parked and walked with him to the George, a gloomy pub in the shade of the abbey.
'It was murder,' said Bill, when they were both settled. 'Someone clubbed him on the back of the head.'
'And laid him backwards in the spring?'
'Yes, but forensic say there is every evidence that he was killed elsewhere, carried to the spring and dumped there.'
'Must have been someone very strong, or more than one.'
'Exactly.'
'And do you think it had something to do with this water business?'
'It certainly looks that way. Mr Struthers was a widower. He lived alone. He has a son down in Brighton who was certainly in Brighton on the night of the murder. He hadn't all that much money to leave. Anyway, the son has a first-class job in computers and has no need of money.'
'What are the other members of the parish council like? Miss Mary Owen, for example.'
'She's quite a commanding personality, tall, thin and leathery. One of those ladies who does good works, not out of any feeling of charity for the less fortunate, but because that's the sort of work ladies do. She's independently wealthy. Some family trust.'
'She's going to make some sort of protest speech. Has she enough personality to sway the villagers?'
'Yes, I should think so.'
'Rats. What about the others?'
'The others against the water company. I'll start with them. Mr Bill Allen. He runs the Ancombe Garden Centre. Very class-conscious and got a bit of an inferiority complex. Father was a farm labourer. So Mr Allen supports all the things he considers Right. Bring back hanging, slaughter the foxes, bring back National Service, that sort of thing.'
'Then I would have thought he would have been all for this water company. Capitalism rules, okay.'
'I believe Miss Owen implied that the Free-mont brothers were not gentlemen. Enough said. Now the last of those against is Mr Andy Stiggs, a retired shopkeeper. He's seventy-one and hale and hearty.'
'Maybe there's something in this water after all.'
'Maybe. Anyway, he loves the village and thinks that lorries rumbling through it to take away the water will be a desecration of rural life. Do you remember that supermarket that was proposed for outside Broadway? Well, he got up a petition against it.'
'So what about the ones in favour?'
'There's Mrs Jane Cutler. She's a wealthy widow, sixty-five but doesn't look it. Rumoured to be on her third face-lift. Blonde and shapely. Not very popular in the village but I can't see why. I found her charming. She says the village could do with more tourist trade and Ancombe Water will publicize the village and bring trade in. Then there's Angela Buckley, big strapping girl, forty-eight, but still called a girl. Not married. Rather loud and red-faced, good-natured, but apt to bully the villagers in a patronizing I-know-what's-best-for-the-peasants manner which irritates the hell out of them. Fred Shaw is the last. Electrician. Bossy, sixty, aggressive manner, powerful for his age.'
'Oh, dear,' said Agatha. 'Those against sound more palatable than those for.'
'So what did you make of the Freemonts?'
'Peter Freemont seemed like the usual City businessman. Guy Freemont is charming. Where did they come from?'
'I gather that they ran some export-import company in Hong Kong and got out like everyone else before the
