Agatha Raisin and the Fairies of Fryham

wonder how whoever it is gets in houses so easily to take stuff?’
    ‘A lot of people don’t lock their doors, or they leave the key under the doormat or on a string hanging through the letterbox. Forget about fairies, Agatha. Try to get something on Tolly.’
    After she had left, Agatha decided to go back to writing her book. Determined not to read a word of it until she had completed one chapter, she ploughed on. It was only when the light started fading outside that she realized she was ferociously hungry and that she had promised to meet the women at the pub.
    She put a frozen curry in the microwave, and when it was ready, ate it quickly and went up to change her clothes.
    The pub was relatively empty. Harriet, Amy and Polly were there with their husbands. When Agatha showed signs of joining them, Henry Freemantle gave her a venomous glare. No one offered to buy her a drink.
    Agatha was suddenly fed up with the lot of them. ‘What can I get you, Mrs Raisin?’ asked Rosie Wilden. Her blond hair was piled up on her head, apart from one errant curl straying down to a creamy bosom, almost down to the nipple exposed by another plunging blouse, black this time.
    ‘A bottle of arsenic,’ said Agatha sourly.
    Rosie let out a peal of laughter. ‘You are a one.’
    ‘Aren’t I?’ said Agatha. ‘Are you having an affair with Tolly Trumpington-James?’
    Rosie’s good humour was undented. ‘Mrs Raisin, dear, according to the local gossip, I’m having an affair with every man in this village. Tolly don’t even come in here. Too common for him.’
    ‘I think I’ll change my mind about ordering a drink,’ said Agatha. ‘I don’t want to go and sit with that lot.’
    ‘Suit yourself. Sit somewhere else?’
    ‘No, tell them I’ve left something in the oven.’
    Agatha made her escape, walking straight past the table where her new friends and their husbands were sitting.
    This time, she remembered to pick up her car. She drove home. Her cats were in the garden. They came in on stiff legs, backs arched, fur standing out. Agatha looked down at them. Then she looked down the garden. Those lights were dancing around again.
    With a roar of rage, she ran down the garden. The lights flickered and disappeared.
    She ran back into the house and through it and out to her car, where she got a torch.
    Then she hurried back to the garden again and began to search every inch of ground where she had seen those lights. The grass was springy and uncut, being a wild area beyond the drying green which Barry had mowed.
    Baffled, she returned to the house. She took out the inventory and began to check everything carefully. Nothing seemed to be missing.
    But she felt frightened and uneasy.

Chapter Three

    The bad weather Agatha had seen approaching had arrived by the following morning. Agatha awoke to the sounds of howling wind and rain pattering against the windows. She dressed and went downstairs. The house was cold.
    She went into the sitting-room. With sunlight streaming in the windows, it had seemed tastefully furnished, the sofa and chairs upholstered in checked tweed, the carpet a warm burnt orange. But now it appeared what it was, a room in a rented cottage with ornaments on the mantelpiece that she would never have bought and pictures that she would never have hung.
    She lit the fire. Must get more fire-lighters, she thought. Agatha used half a packet to light a fire. When the logs were crackling merrily, she went into the kitchen and made herself a coffee and carried it back to the sitting-room.
    Agatha felt lost and alien. She rose after a while and went to the phone in the hall. Must get an extension and put it in the sitting-room, she vowed. Silly to have to stand in a cold hall. She phoned Mrs Bloxby. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ said the vicar’s wife. ‘No, he isn’t back yet.’
    ‘I’m not phoning about that,’ said Agatha crossly. ‘I might come back earlier than I intended.’
    ‘It’ll be nice to see you. But, why? Has anything suddenly gone wrong?’
    ‘It’s a bit boring and it’s started to rain.’ Not for a moment would Agatha admit that the fairy lights had frightened her. Agatha Raisin was frightened of so many things – love, confrontations, ageing, living alone – that she went at life with both fists metaphorically swinging.
    ‘You’re near Norwich, aren’t you?’ asked Mrs Bloxby in her gentle voice.
    ‘Not far, no.’
    ‘Might be an idea to go and see a silly movie and look at the