Agatha Raisin and the Christmas Crumble

PART ONE

    Agatha Raisin, private detective, and her friend Mrs. Bloxby, the vicar’s wife, sat in the shabby vicarage drawing room in the Cotswold village of Carsely one Saturday in late November, drinking coffee and looking out at a vista of sleety rain driving across the tombstones of the churchyard at the end of the garden.
    “Are you going away for Christmas, Mrs. Raisin?” asked Mrs. Bloxby. Both women still addressed each other by their surnames, a fashion started in the now defunct Ladies Society but which they kept up.
    “I might have a Christmas party here,” said Agatha.
    “But you tried that before!” exclaimed Mrs. Bloxby.
    “This time it will be all right,” said Agatha mulishly. Mrs. Bloxby surveyed her with affectionate exasperation. Good detective though she was and the very picture of modern woman from her glossy brown hair to her patent leather high boots, Mrs. Bloxby reflected, not for the first time, that there was a part of Agatha that had never grown up.
    “People are apt to chase after a romantic image of Christmas which does not exist,” said Mrs. Bloxby cautiously. She brushed a wisp of hair from her face and looked anxiously at her friend. “Most of the population only experience a spiritual feeling of awe when they are small children and look on Santa Claus for the first time. That’s what they remember and are ever after chasing that magic.”
    “I never met Santa Claus,” said Agatha, thinking of her own deprived childhood in a Birmingham slum.
    “I think,” pursued Mrs. Bloxby, “that the true Christmas feeling is thinking and caring about other people—like the elderly and infirm, say.”
    Agatha brightened. “Great idea.”
    “What?” asked Mrs. Bloxby nervously.
    “There are a lot of crumblies in this village. I mean sometimes the Cotswolds feel like God’s waiting room. Come in, number five, says a voice from the heavens. Your number’s up. I’ll give them a slap-up Christmas dinner.”
    “They will probably be having Christmas with their families. But come to think of it, I do know six elderly people who were left alone last Christmas.”
    “That’s a nice little number,” said Agatha. “I’m always working, so I’m a bit out of touch with the villagers. Who are they?”
    “There’s Mrs. Matilda Glossop, Mr. Harry Dunster, Mr. Jake Turnbull, Miss Freda Pinch, Mr. Simon Trent and . . .”
    She hesitated. “And who?” prompted Agatha.
    “There’s Len Leech, but he can be difficult.”
    “How difficult?”
    “He fancies himself as a ladies’ man.”
    “How old is he?”
    “I believe he’s in his eighties.”
    Agatha laughed. “He’s at the Look, don’t touch age. I can handle that.”
    Mrs. Bloxby turned pink. “He pinched my bottom. And in the church!”
    “The old devil. Maybe he got you mixed up with Pippa Middleton. What did you do?”
    “I preferred to ignore it.”
    “I’d have hit him with my handbag. Don’t worry. I’ll cope. Have you their addresses?”
    Mrs. Bloxby rose and walked over to an old bureau. Opened a drawer and pulled out a large ledger. “I keep all the names and addresses of the parishioners in here.”
    Agatha took out a notebook. “Fire away. I’ll give this lot of crumblies the best Christmas they have ever had.”

    Matilda Glossop was a fine-looking woman in her late seventies. She had a pleasant face, thick white hair and brown eyes. She stared down at the pretty invitation card Agatha had sent her and felt tears well up in her eyes. Matilda had met Agatha at a fundraiser and had found her to be a rather terrifying woman. On the other hand, her son and daughter had written—not phoned—to say they were spending Christmas in the Bahamas. The year before, it had been the Maldives. They always holidayed together with their spouses and grandchildren. She sat down to pen an acceptance.
    Harry Dunster was ninety years old and proud of it. “Go on! Guess my age,” he was fond of demanding. He was a small man with a dowager’s hump and he walked painfully with the aid of a stick. His tragedy was that he had outlived his son, Charles, who had been killed in a motor accident when he was only twenty-one. Shortly after that, Harry’s wife had died of cancer. He was often quite hungry, his pension going on cigarettes and petrol for his ancient Ford. He was delighted with Agatha’s invitation, imagining a slap-up meal of turkey and all the trimmings.
    Jake Turnbull was eighty-five, a stocky barrel-shaped