Agatha Raisin and the Fairies of Fryham

head. ‘Devoted couple, they was.’
    ‘You see, Lucy Trumpington-James did tell Mrs Raisin here that she thought her husband was being unfaithful to her.’
    Mrs Jackson’s heavy face registered shock and she gave her dentures an angry click. ‘That’s rubbish. I tell you what it was; Lucy got fits of jealousy, she was that mad about him, but they always made up. Fact is, she was laughing about it with him before she left for London. She says to him, she says, “I told that old trout who thinks she’s a detective that you was having it off with Rosie.” And they both had a laugh about that.’
    Agatha coloured angrily. Then she heard Charles say, ‘About the cleaning?’
    ‘It’s seven pounds an hour.’
    Agatha was about to yell that she was not going to pay London rates to a bad-tempered slut when Charles surprised her by leaping to his feet and putting his arms round her. ‘Shut up,’ he whispered. Then he turned to Mrs Jackson. ‘Why not start tomorrow? At ten, say. Nothing like work to keep your mind off things.’
    ‘Right you are, sir.’
    Charles smiled and propelled the raging Agatha out of the cottage. Agatha held her temper until they were out of earshot and then she confronted him with ‘How could you? I don’t want that old bitch around my cottage.’
    ‘Calm down. Be nice to her and you might get the truth out of her. You only came here to employ her to get gossip.’ He took her shoulders and gave her a little shake. ‘Just think , woman! Did Lucy give you the impression of a wildly jealous wife?’
    ‘Well, no,’ said Agatha. ‘Not in the slightest. She looks like some bimbo who married for money and despises her husband.’
    ‘So, isn’t that interesting? And why would the horrible Mrs Jackson lie about it? She doesn’t strike me as the staunch and loyal servant type.’
    Agatha’s anger ebbed away as she considered this. ‘No,’ she said slowly. ‘So why would she say such a thing? Of course she could simply have been out to humiliate me out of sheer nastiness.’
    ‘Could be. Let’s go and get a car and drive somewhere for a drink. Rosie’s pub will be full of reporters.’
    As they approached the village green, the pub door opened and several pressmen came out dragging one of their fellows. Their faces were boozy and flushed. Their intention appeared to be to dump a weedy colleague in the duck pond. Rosie appeared in the pub doorway and called to them to stop. They all crowded back into the pub except the weedy one, who set off away from the pub at a jogtrot, occasionally looking back over his shoulder like some weak animal rejected by the herd.
    ‘I thought they would all have been out at the manor,’ said Charles.
    ‘No,’ replied Agatha, wise in the ways of the press. ‘They’ll have been out there already. Hand will have told them that he will say nothing until a press conference at, say, about four o’clock.’
    ‘But you would think they’d all be knocking on doors in the village for background.’
    ‘They’ll get around to it. As long as there’s a pub, they’ll move in a bunch. They feel they’re safe just so long as they all keep together. That way they can drink as much as they want and not run the fear of being scooped.’
    ‘So what about the one that’s run off?’
    ‘They obviously don’t rate him highly. It’s not always like this. But if one of them’s a bully, he becomes the leader of the pack and they all stick together, swearing to share any morsels of information, and yet each one is privately determined to scoop the others at the first opportunity.’
    ‘Excuse me.’
    A voice behind them made them jump. They swung round. The weedy reporter had come back. ‘I’m Gerry Philpot of The Radical Voice ,’ he said. The paper he represented claimed to have unbiased views, the sort of paper which reported on the ‘warring factions’ in Bosnia to avoid pointing out the obvious truth, that the Serbs were murdering everyone. It was a sitting-on-the-fence and pontificating sort of newspaper which paid the lowest wages, hence Gerry Philpot, a youngish man with weak eyes, receding hair, a pea-green jacket, checked shirt, shabby corduroys and red tie. ‘Have you heard about the murder?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Agatha before Charles could say anything. ‘We were the last people to see Tolly Trumpington-James alive.’
    ‘Really!’ His eyes lit up. He pulled out a notebook. ‘If I can just get your name?’
    ‘Mrs Agatha