Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell

both crouched down in the front seat.
    After a few moments, Agatha whispered, ‘I’m getting cramp. Has she gone?’
    ‘Wait a bit longer.’
    Agatha counted to ten, then twenty. She had nearly reached thirty when Charles said, ‘All clear.’
    Agatha straightened up with a groan.
    ‘Let’s go. I think I saw someone behind the curtains in that house to the right of Felicity’s.’
    They walked down the street, keeping a careful look-out in case Felicity should come hurrying back. They mounted the steps to the neighbour’s door and rang the bell. A thin, stooped man opened the door.
    Agatha went through the introductions and the reason for their visit. ‘Come in,’ he said. ‘I am William Dalrymple. I’ll tell you what I know, but it isn’t much. Can I offer you something?’
    ‘No, we’re all right,’ said Agatha. He ushered them into a pleasant sitting-room on the first floor. It was lined with bookshelves. There was a desk by the window overlooking the garden, piled high with books and papers.
    ‘Do you teach at the university?’ asked Agatha.
    ‘Yes, history.’
    How James would have loved to meet him, thought Agatha. James, where are you?
    They sat down. ‘What precisely do you want to know?’ asked William.
    ‘We want to know,’ said Agatha, ‘if you met Melissa Sheppard. What impression did you get of her, and were there any rows?’
    ‘I can’t help you about the rows, because the walls of these houses are very thick. But Melissa called round several times until I told her not to.’
    ‘Tell us about it,’ said Charles.
    ‘Shortly after they had moved in, Melissa came round and asked if she could borrow a screwdriver. I invited her in and went to look for one. When I came back, she had taken one of my books off the shelf, Arthur Bryant’s Age of Elegance , and was reading it. She asked if she could borrow it. I warned her that I thought it was in places a rather glamorized version of early-nineteenth-century history. She said she liked glamorous things and flirted a bit. I am an old bachelor and I must confess I was flattered. But I sent her on her way with book and screwdriver.
    ‘She came back a few days later to return them. She said she had found the book fascinating, and asked if I had anything on Marie Antoinette. I realized then that she probably was only interested in history in the Hollywood sense – you know, Joan of Arc, Mary Queen of Scots, that sort of thing. I said I didn’t have what she wanted but I was sure Blackwell’s could find her something. She began to talk about herself. She said she believed in reincarnation and was sure she had been Josephine – you know, Napoleon’s missus, in a previous life. I said it was amazing how people who believed in reincarnation always believed they had been someone important in a previous life, like Cleopatra or someone; I mean, never a scullery maid. We were both sitting on the sofa and she put a hand on my knee and said, “Oh, William, can you see me as a scullery maid?” I removed her hand and said rather testily that I had a paper to prepare. I thought that would be the end of it. But she came back one more time.
    ‘It was late at night. I heard the bell ringing and ringing. I opened the door and she flung herself into my arms and said her husband did not love her and could she stay with me.
    ‘I thrust her away and told her never to call on me again. I slammed the door in her face. I thought she was mad. I mean, look at me! I’ve never been the sort of man that women go for.’
    Agatha, looking at his gentle face, his droopy cardigan, and his other-worldly air, thought that before Melissa threw herself at him, there had probably been many approaches made to him which he had not even noticed.
    ‘It’s all I can tell you,’ said William. ‘Except I was not surprised to read of her murder. She was intensely narcissistic.’
    ‘Do you happen to know if she was friendly with anyone else in the street?’ asked Charles.
    ‘She did say during her mad reasoning on incarnation that a Mrs Ellersby at number twenty-five shared her views.’
    ‘Right, we’ll try her.’
    Agatha felt suddenly weary of the whole thing. She would have liked to stay longer in William’s pleasant sitting-room. ‘I was sorry to hear about your missing husband,’ said William as he walked them to the door. He gave Agatha an awkward pat on the back. ‘Don’t worry. I always feel that no news is good news. Live people can hide, dead