Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell

group and arrange to meet you tomorrow.’
    Agatha drove back to Carsely feeling exhilarated. But as her car wound down to the village under a green archway of trees, her mood darkened. She let herself into her own cottage where she still kept her business papers and computer. She had logged the name of the pop group and their manager into her computer, a sort of public relations reflex. She then went to a stack of telephone directories. She selected the Gloucester directory and began to look up the manager’s name, Harry Best. There were several H. Bests listed. She settled down to phone them all. One of the H. Bests turned out to be the father of the manager she was looking for. He gave her Harry Best’s number and she dialled that. She crisply outlined her plan for publicizing the Cotswold Way boot.
    ‘I dunno,’ said Harry Best in that estuary-English accent that Agatha found so depressing. ‘We’re hot stuff. Cost you a lot.’
    Agatha took a deep breath. ‘This needs to be discussed face to face,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m coming over to Gloucester. Give me your address.’
    He gave her a Churchdown address. Church-down is actually outside Gloucester. As Agatha drove off again, past James’s cottage, past the white blur of his face at the window, she reflected she would not be back in time for dinner. A good wife would phone and say she was going to be late.
    ‘But I am no longer a good wife,’ said Agatha out loud, gripping the steering wheel tightly.
    The traffic was heavy and there were not only road-works on the A40 to contend with but various lethargic men driving tractors at ten miles per hour. By the time she found Harry’s address, she was feeling weak and disheartened. She longed to chuck it all up and return to James, try to conciliate him, try to make the marriage from hell work somehow. But a weedy, balding man with what was left of his hair worn in a ponytail was standing outside a shabby villa waiting for her.
    Agatha studied him as she approached. He had those little half-moon glasses perched on a beaky nose which drooped over a small pursed mouth. She judged him to be nearly forty and he was wearing that clinging-on-to-youth outfit of cowboy boots, jeans, and a black leather jacket.
    Mr Harry Best was as little impressed with Agatha as she was with him. He saw a stocky woman with shiny brown hair worn in a French pleat. Her round face had a good mouth and a neat nose, but her eyes were wary, brown and bearlike.
    ‘I’m Agatha Raisin.’ Agatha gave one of his limp, clammy hands a firm shake. ‘May we go inside to discuss business?’
    ‘Sure. Follow me.’
    The room into which he led her showed signs of hasty and not thorough house-cleaning. A wastepaper basket was bulging with empty Coke cans. Under a cushion on an armchair Agatha could see a pile of newspapers and magazines which had been thrust underneath to hide them.
    Agatha got down to business. She outlined the promotion, the idea of writing a song to go with the new boots and then they haggled over price. He tried to drive the price up by saying if the group advertised something, people would think they were unsuccessful. Agatha pointed out that many successful pop stars had appeared on advertisements. ‘What about Michael Jackson?’ she asked crisply.
    Harry Best began to visibly weaken under her onslaught. Agatha reminded him of his grandmother, a forceful woman who had terrified his early childhood. At last, the deal was struck. The one good thing he felt he had got out of Agatha was that she agreed to hire a rehearsal hall for the group, as they were shortly to be evicted from the friend’s garage they were using.
    When Agatha finally left, it was dark and late and she was hungry. She stopped at a pub on the road home and had a simple meal and a glass of water. Now to deal with James.
    Residents of Carsely, walking their dogs along Lilac Lane where Agatha and James had their cottages, were to describe later how they had heard Agatha shouting, and then the sound of breaking china. James had decided to put his foot down. Agatha was told in no uncertain terms that she had to give up this stupid job and start trying to behave like a married woman.
    If he had been angry at that point, Agatha might, just might have capitulated. But it was the calm scorn in his voice that got to her. He looked pained, as if she were giving him another headache. She had never thought of herself before as a china-smashing woman, but the