Agatha Raisin and the Fairies of Fryham

vegetables, but he likes the lawns kept trim. Then, three weeks ago, he sacks me. I says to him, “Is my work unsatisfactory?” And he says, “I want a real gardener. Going to get the place landscaped.”’
    ‘Do you know how he was killed?’ asked Charles.
    ‘No, but Mrs Jackson is telling everyone that Mrs Raisin and her boyfriend were the last to see him alive, so I reckon the police’ll be calling on you soon enough.’
    ‘Thanks, Barry. You can go back to work. I’d better get dressed. You, too, Charles.’
    Agatha had only just finished dressing when the doorbell went again. She ran downstairs and opened the door to the man she remembered as Detective Inspector Percy Hand. He was accompanied by another detective.
    ‘You are Mrs Raisin?’ he asked.
    ‘Yes, come in. It’s about this murder?’
    She led both men into the sitting-room. The sun was shining again, streaming through the windows to light up the debris of Charles’s night-time television viewing – coffee-cup, biscuit packet and TV guide.
    ‘Sit down,’ said Agatha. ‘Coffee?’
    ‘Thank you.’
    Agatha called up the stairs on her way to the kitchen, ‘Hurry up, Charles. The police are here.’
    As she plugged in the percolator, she suddenly remembered the manuscript of Death at the Manor lying on the desk in the sitting-room. The desk was in a dark corner. Surely he wouldn’t prowl around looking at things.
    The coffee seemed to take ages to percolate. Where was Charles? He should be doing this and giving her the opportunity to get that manuscript. At last she poured two mugs of coffee and put them on a tray along with milk and sugar and a plate of biscuits.
    She walked into the sitting-room, carrying the tray – and nearly dropped it. Hand was standing at the desk flicking through her manuscript.
    ‘Aren’t you supposed to have a search warrant before you go poking through my things?’ asked Agatha harshly.
    ‘We can get one,’ said Hand, looking at her mildly. ‘I find it interesting that your book is called Death at the Manor , and here we have a death at the manor.’
    ‘Coincidence,’ snapped Agatha, setting the tray down on the coffee-table.
    ‘A lot of coincidence,’ he murmured. ‘This is Detective Sergeant Carey.’ And to Agatha’s rage, he handed Carey the manuscript, saying, ‘Have a look at this.’
    Charles came in at that moment and Agatha hailed him with a furious cry of ‘Charles, they’re reading my book and they don’t have a search warrant.’
    ‘I didn’t know you were writing a book,’ said Charles. ‘Still, you lot are being a bit cheeky.’
    ‘Mrs Raisin’s book is called Death at the Manor ,’ said Hand.
    Charles laughed. ‘Oh, Aggie, your first attempt at writing?’
    Agatha nodded.
    Charles turned to Hand. ‘How was Tolly murdered?’
    ‘His throat was cut with a razor.’
    ‘You mean, one of those old-fashioned cutthroat razors?’
    ‘Exactly. And in Mrs Raisin’s manuscript, the owner of the manor, Peregrine Pickle, is murdered when someone slits his throat.’
    ‘You can’t call him Peregrine Pickle,’ said Charles, momentarily diverted.
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘It’s the title of a book by Tobias Smollett. A classic, Aggie.’
    ‘I can change the name.’ Agatha turned red. She hated the gaps in her education being pointed out. ‘But what on earth are we doing discussing literary points? They’ve got no right to look at anything of mine without my permission.’
    ‘She is right, you know,’ said Charles.
    There was a ring at the doorbell. ‘That’ll be for us,’ said Hand. He went to the door and came back waving a piece of paper. ‘Now, this is a search warrant, Mrs Raisin. Before I get my men in, I would like to ask you some questions.’
    Agatha sat down on the sofa next to Charles, defeated. Her outrage at the detectives looking at her manuscript was not because she was furious at the intrusion, but because she was ashamed of her work.
    She and Charles answered the preliminary questions: who they were, where they came from, what they were doing in Fryfam.
    ‘So we get to what you were both doing at the manor yesterday,’ said Hand. ‘Mr Trumpington-James said something about the pair of you being amateur detectives.’
    Before Charles could stop her, Agatha, nervous, had launched into a full brag of all the cases she had solved. Charles saw the cynical glances the detectives exchanged and knew they were putting Agatha down as a slightly unbalanced