Agatha Raisin and the Fairies of Fryham

at the door. Agatha had a brief hope that a messy Rosie would answer with her hair in curlers, but the Rosie who answered the door looked like any man’s dream of femininity. Her thick blond hair was in a knot on the top of her head. She wore a frilly apron over a crisp cotton blouse and tailored skirt and held a mixing bowl under one arm.
    ‘Come in,’ she said. ‘I was just about to take a break from my baking.’ The large kitchen was comforting and warm and smelt of baking and spices. An elderly woman rose as they entered. ‘My mother,’ said Rosie.
    ‘I’ll just go upstairs,’ she said, gathering up a bundle of knitting.
    ‘Sit down,’ urged Rosie. ‘I’ve got some coffee ready.’
    ‘We came to see if you knew any gossip,’ began Agatha, plunging right in. Charles thought, as he often did, that Agatha Raisin had all the subtlety of a charging rhino.
    ‘Well, I don’t know about that, Mrs Raisin, dear,’ said Rosie, pouring two cups of coffee into French-type coffee bowls and then lifting a tray of hot scones out of the Aga. ‘I hear a lot of gossip but I find it safer to forget about it, if you take my meaning.’
    She put a pat of golden butter on the table, and tilted the scones on to a plate. ‘Help yourselves,’ she said. ‘Let me see, I think a pot of my blackcurrant jam would go nicely with those.’
    She sat down with them and smiled slowly and warmly at Charles. Somehow that smile irritated Agatha, so she crashed tactlessly on. ‘Was Lucy Trumpington-James having an affair with anyone in the village?’
    There was a veil over Rosie’s blue eyes now, like the cloud veiling the sun. After a little hesitation, she said, ‘If she was, then it was her business, if you take my meaning.’
    ‘Come on, you can tell us,’ urged Agatha.
    ‘Don’t reckon as how I can. I’d have no customers if I talked about folks’ private lives.’
    ‘But surely Lucy didn’t drink in the pub?’
    ‘No, but there’s others who do.’
    ‘Meaning she had a lover and he drank in the pub,’ exclaimed Agatha. ‘That narrows the field. It’s really only the ordinary villagers who drink in your pub, not the members of the hunt.’
    ‘Now you’re going on as if only rich aristocrats hunt,’ chided Rosie. ‘Mr Freemantle, Mr Dart and Mr Worth all hunt. So does Mrs Carrie Smiley. Real attractive she looks in her hunting costume, too.’
    Agatha leaned forward. ‘But you know .’
    ‘I don’t know anything,’ said Rosie sharply. ‘You’re letting your coffee get cold.’
    Charles spoke. ‘I think you left the cats out in the garden, Agatha, and the frost will hurt their paws. You’d better go and let them in.’ He looked blandly at Agatha and Agatha took it that he meant that as she was getting nowhere, she’d best leave it to him.
    She affected a look of dismay and said, ‘I’m sorry, Rosie. I forgot about the cats. Got to go.’
    Outside, she wondered what to do. She could not lurk around outside the pub waiting for Charles. Yet, on the other hand, she was reluctant to return to the cottage. She decided to walk out of the village to the lake, to see if she could clear her thoughts and put them in some sort of order.
    As she entered the road leading out of the village, she marvelled how quiet the day was and how very still.
    The pine trees on either side looked ready for Christmas with their frosting of white. On she went until she crested the hill again and looked out across the great vast flat silence of Norfolk.
    When she got to the lake, she sat down on a large flat rock. Ice had formed on the edges of the lake. She wondered if people skated on it when it was completely frozen over. What if they had skating parties, with Rosie handing out glasses of mulled wine and mince pies? And what if a visitor like herself should come across such a scene? She would envy them, thinking they all led a safe, typically English sort of life, unaware of all the passions that lurked beneath the surface. A little breeze rippled across the glassy waters of the lake and she shivered and rose to her feet again. She could not go any further in her thoughts without some proof. It was as she approached the gates to the manor that Agatha suddenly remembered the maintenance man. What was his name? Joe something. And would a maintenance man have a cottage on the estate? She turned up the drive and then took the fork which led to Redfern’s cottage. As she rounded the bend, she could see police tape fluttering