Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell

told herself severely that the next man she became involved with would be someone who really loved her, not someone she irritated every minute of the day as she had irritated James, or a fickle lightweight like Charles.
    If Charles comes around again, she told herself, I’ll tell him to get lost.
    But when she turned the corner into Lilac Lane, and saw Charles’s car parked outside her cottage, she experienced a feeling of relief. Not yet, she told herself. I’ll tell him to get lost when all this is over.

Chapter Nine
    Charles had let himself in, having kept the spare key, and was watching television and drinking whisky.
    ‘Back again,’ he said lazily. ‘Where have you been?’
    ‘Just around. Oh, you may as well know – I went to Wyckhadden.’
    Agatha sat down with a weary sigh. Charles studied her. ‘I’d better not ask you why you went there. Whisky or gin?’
    ‘Whisky with water.’ Charles rose and poured her a drink and handed it to her.
    ‘I went to tell Jimmy – remember Jimmy?’
    ‘Could I forget? Found us in bed together and broke off your engagement.’
    ‘I thought if I told him all about the case, he might come up with something.’
    ‘And did he?’
    ‘He had an idea. He said usually in cases, people would say they had seen or heard nothing, but if we asked again, someone might come up with something they thought was too ordinary or insignificant to mention.’
    ‘He’s got a point there,’ said Charles. ‘We never really questioned the villagers. That’s all been left to the police. Oh, God, that means going from door to door.’
    ‘Maybe not. I’ve an idea. We could see Mrs Bloxby and suggest a meeting in the church hall. Give them all sheets of paper and ask them to write down anything at all they might have seen or heard on the day James was attacked and on the night Melissa was murdered.’
    ‘That’d be a start. I can’t help myself, Aggie. Did you actually go to Wyckhadden to kindle the old flame?’
    ‘Of course not,’ said Agatha quickly. ‘What about Tara?’
    ‘What about her?’
    ‘What about this gorgeous creature you were straining at the bit to see.’
    ‘Didn’t work out.’
    ‘What went wrong?’
    ‘Well, I took her out for dinner. She said she was a feminist – she works for some magazine – and believed in women paying their own way, so we decided to split the bill. We went to Père Rouge, a new place in Stratford. When the bill came round, she gave me exactly half. I said, “Wait a minute, you had the oysters to start, a whole dozen; I only had one glass of wine and you had the rest of the bottle; I had pasta and you had fillet steak; I didn’t have pudding and you had crêpes Suzette;” so I took out my pocket calculator and worked out her share of the bill, which seemed fair enough to me. Then I worked out the tip; she hadn’t even offered to cover that, and told her the total. She looked at me in a cold way and asked me if I was joking. I said I couldn’t see anything funny. She got to her feet, said, “Be back in a minute,” and then she didn’t come back. So I had to pay the whole bill. Then when I got home, it was to find she had arrived before me in a taxi, kept the taxi waiting, packed her things and headed off.’
    ‘Oh, Charles, couldn’t you just have left it? I mean, taking out a pocket calculator.’
    ‘What’s wrong with that? She said she would pay her share and I wasn’t going to let her get away with just paying a measly half when the greedy cow had gorged her way through the most expensive things on the menu.’
    ‘Charles, that meanness of yours will keep you a bachelor until the end of your days.’
    ‘I am not mean. I take people at their word. If someone says they’ll pay their share, I expect them to do so.’
    ‘Never mind. Let me tell you what happened this weekend.’ Agatha told him about the fête and Roy’s encounter with Dewey.
    ‘Everything does seem to point to him. Did Jessop suggest anything else?’
    ‘He did seem to think it was Julia. He said there were two good motives, money and hate. Also I still think it odd that Melissa left everything to Julia. And did Julia know about the will?’
    Charles groaned. ‘I’ve a feeling we might have to make another trip to Cambridge.’
    ‘Let’s try this village meeting first. We’ll see Mrs Bloxby in the morning.’
    The next day, Mrs Bloxby listened carefully to their suggestion. ‘I do not see what harm it will do,’ she said. ‘Wait