Agatha Raisin and the Fairies of Fryham

conversation.
    She felt she was being let out of school when Harriet said after an hour, ‘Well, that’s it for tonight.’
    As Agatha was leaving, she stopped to admire an arrangement of autumn leaves in a vase in the hall. Harriet lifted out the bunch of leaves and thrust it at Agatha. ‘Take it,’ she said. ‘I dip the leaves in glycerine so they should last you the winter.’
    Agatha walked homewards bearing the leaves. She remembered there was a large stone vase on the floor by the fireplace in the sitting-room. She let herself into the cottage, glad that she had brought her cats for company as Hodge and Boswell undulated about her ankles.
    She walked through to the kitchen and put the bunch of leaves on the kitchen counter. She looked out of the window and the dancing lights were there again.
    Agatha unlocked the door and walked down the garden. The lights had disappeared.
    Muttering to herself, she walked back to the house. Something funny was going on. She had not imagined those lights and there was nothing wrong with her eyesight.
    She walked through to the sitting-room to get that vase. It was no longer there. Agatha began to wonder if she had imagined it. She took the inventory out of the kitchen drawer. Yes, there it was under ‘Contents of Sitting-Room’ – one stone vase.
    Agatha suddenly felt threatened. She checked the doors were locked and went up to bed. Her stomach rumbled, reminding her she had not had any dinner, but the thought of going downstairs again frightened her. She bathed and undressed and crawled under the duvet and pulled it over her head to shut out the terrors of the night.

Chapter Two

    Another sunny morning and Agatha, ashamed of her night-time fears, decided to drive into Norwich, buy a microwave, have breakfast, and then return to tackle the estate agent over the lack of central heating.
    Being in Norwich brightened up the feelings of city-bred Agatha immensely. She bought a microwave and a further supply of microwavable meals in Marks and Spencer, had a large cholesterol-filled breakfast, bought a cheap glass vase, and returned to Fryfam in a confident frame of mind.
    After she had unpacked her shopping and fed her cats, she walked to the estate agent’s.
    She pushed open the door of Bryman’s and walked in. To her intense irritation, she saw the droopy figure of Amy Worth sitting behind a computer screen. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you worked here?’ complained Agatha.
    ‘There didn’t seem much point,’ said Amy defensively. ‘I’m just the typist. I don’t have anything to do with the renting of the houses.’
    ‘So who do I speak to?’
    ‘Mr Bryman. I’ll get him.’
    Secretive about nothing at all, fumed Agatha. Amy re-emerged and held open the door to an inner office. ‘Mr Bryman will see you now.’
    Agatha walked past her. A youngish man with a sallow face, thick lips and wet eyes stood up and extended his hand. ‘Welcome, Mrs Raisin.’
    Agatha shook his hand, which was clammy. What a damp young man, she thought. He was in shirt-sleeves and there were patches of sweat under his armpits. There was also an unpleasant goaty smell emanating from him. Amy, Agatha had noticed, was wearing the same clothes she had worn the day before. Perhaps no one in Fryfam bothered about baths.
    Agatha sat down. ‘You should have warned me there was no central heating,’ she began.
    ‘But the logs are free,’ he protested. ‘Stacks of logs.’
    ‘I do not want to have to set and clean all those fireplaces when the weather turns cold.’
    ‘We’ll let you have a couple of Calor gas heaters like the one in the kitchen. I’ll bring them round today.’
    ‘Don’t you have anywhere else?’
    ‘Not to rent. For sale only. Quite a lot of the houses in Fryfam are second homes. People leave them empty in the winter. Only come down for the summer months. There’s always a demand for second homes. You’ll find there’s few of us here in the winter.’
    ‘Okay, I’ll take the heaters. Now, there’s something else.’
    He raised his eyebrows in query.
    ‘I checked the inventory yesterday. There was definitely a stone vase in the sitting-room. Well, it’s disappeared. I saw these lights at the end of the garden and went to investigate and when I came back the vase had gone.’
    ‘Oh, I think we can overlook that, Mrs Raisin. It’s just an old vase.’
    ‘I am not going to overlook it,’ said Agatha stubbornly. ‘Is there a policeman here? There must be. I