Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell

said Charles. ‘And my father had let the land go to rack and ruin. The farms weren’t paying. It was a hard fight to turn things around; getting a good stockbroker so that money could make money. I couldn’t bear to lose the house and land. I got used to economizing on everything I could and the habit’s stuck, I’m afraid. I even took a diploma in agriculture and a course in bookkeeping so I could do the accounts and save the expense of an accountant. For a while I even opened the house to the public.’
    ‘Don’t want to run down your home,’ said Agatha. ‘But it’s a great Victorian pile, hardly an architectural gem.’
    ‘I invented a ghost,’ said Charles. ‘I engineered an occasion for dry ice to leak out through the walls of the library. Gave the visitors no end of a thrill. They used to come in coach-loads. But the minute I got solvent, I stopped the house tours. That stockbroker is a whiz. He made me a fortune.’
    ‘Mine’s pretty good, too,’ said Agatha, and so they talked comfortably about stocks and shares until they reached the outskirts of Worcester.
    ‘We may not be lucky enough to find him at home this time,’ said Agatha.
    And this proved to be the case. No answer to the doorbell, but at least the Neighbourhood Watch woman was nowhere in sight.
    ‘Let’s try next door,’ said Charles. ‘I saw a curtain twitch.’
    ‘No, let’s not,’ said Agatha hurriedly. ‘The neighbour probably last saw us being carted off by the police. I saw a newspaper shop just outside the housing estate. They might know where he is. We forgot to ask him if he worked at anything.’
    The Pakistani shopkeeper volunteered the information that Mr Dewey kept an antique shop in The Shambles opposite the back of Marks & Spencer in the centre of Worcester, and so they drove into the main car park by the river, where swans sailed majestically up and down. The rain was quite heavy now. Charles produced a large golf umbrella from the boot of the car and under its shelter they walked up and across the main street and through to The Shambles.
    It turned out to be a very small shop selling nothing but antique dolls. They stood for a moment looking in the window. ‘There’s something scary about old dolls, I always think,’ said Charles. ‘All those watching eyes. I sometimes think a bit of the personality of each child who loved them is still there inside them.’
    They entered the dark shop and walked in. Mr John Dewey was sitting at a small table at the back of the shop. He rose to meet them. ‘Oh, it’s you again,’ he said.
    ‘I hope you got my cheque,’ said Agatha.
    ‘Yes, thanks.’
    ‘Our conversation was interrupted.’
    ‘I can’t think of anything else to tell you. Do you mind if I go on working?’
    He sat down at the table and picked up a large Edwardian doll with only one blue eye. ‘Just getting a new eye for her,’ he said. He had a tray of glass eyes in front of him. ‘It’s a matter of getting just the right colour and the right size,’ he said.
    ‘Ah, perhaps this.’ He picked out an eye and carried it to the window. ‘Mmm, I think this will do.’ He returned and sat down and held the doll on his lap. ‘Soon have you seeing the world again,’ he said. With one deft movement he removed the head. ‘I fix it from the inside,’ he said, looking up at them.
    He looked so small and neat and absorbed in his work that Agatha blurted out, ‘How could you marry someone like Melissa?’
    ‘I sometimes ask myself that,’ he said. ‘I’d never bothered much about the ladies before. But then she seemed to have such a knowledge of antique dolls. Wait, I’ll show you something.’ He put down the doll he was working on and went into the back shop.
    ‘He’s weird ,’ muttered Agatha. ‘If he comes back swinging a hammer, run for it.’
    ‘What made you think of a hammer?’ asked Charles. ‘They never found a weapon.’
    ‘I always thought of a hammer, I don’t know why.’
    Mr Dewey came back carrying a doll. ‘This is my favourite. Eighteenth-century. Do you notice these old dolls often have human faces?’
    The doll had a leather face and green eyes. The hair was powdered and the dress was panniered silk. Agatha looked at it uneasily. She thought the doll had a mocking, knowing look. ‘What’s this doll got to do with Melissa?’
    ‘Everything. We had been talking in the shop for a few weeks and then we occasionally had lunch, always talking about dolls. Then