Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell

person when they married again.’
    Charles sat down on the bed. ‘Wait a minute. Let’s think about this.’
    ‘It was only a stupid dream.’
    ‘But Mrs Bloxby said that in the case of Mrs Allan, she had married the same type of person, and that people do.’
    Agatha stared at him. ‘Do you mean that in some way Megan Sheppard might be like Melissa?’
    ‘Could be. Remember James was trying to find out about another psychopath.’
    ‘Pass me my dressing-gown,’ said Agatha, swinging her legs out of bed. ‘Those papers downstairs.’
    ‘What about them?’
    ‘Mrs Green said she met a child. A child! With Megan’s girlish appearance and Mrs Green’s bad eyesight, she could have met Megan!’
    ‘Bit far-fetched, but I’m game to try anything.’
    They went downstairs and began to look through the papers again. ‘Here’s Mrs Green’s paper. Is there anything else about a child?’
    They settled down to go through the papers again. ‘Nothing,’ said Charles at last.
    ‘Let’s see Mrs Green in the morning.’

Chapter Ten
    But in the morning, both Agatha and Charles were beginning to think that they had leapt at the idea of the child’s being Megan, of somehow Melissa and Megan having the same personalities.
    ‘Might as well have a go anyway,’ said Charles. ‘We’re at a dead end otherwise and all that church-hall business will have been a waste of time.’
    Agatha and Charles walked out to Mrs Green’s cottage, which lay up the hill on the road leading out of the village. It was a mellow day with misty golden sunlight flooding the countryside. ‘If we don’t get anything out of this,’ said Agatha suddenly, ‘I’m going to forget about the whole thing.’ She waved an arm to encompass the sunny village. ‘Ever since James left, I’ve been wandering around in darkness. I want to start living again.’
    ‘Without James?’
    ‘Yes, without James. Even if by some miracle I found him, even if he wanted to come back to me, it wouldn’t work. I kept expecting him to change and he kept expecting me to change, and neither of us could.’
    ‘You haven’t been smoking. That’s a start.’
    ‘But how long does it take for the craving to go away?’
    ‘You could stop carrying cigarettes in your handbag.’
    ‘Works for me. As long as I’ve got them with me, I feel the strength to keep on resisting them.’
    ‘If you say so,’ said Charles. ‘This the cottage?’
    ‘Yes. Here goes.’
    Mrs Green answered the door and looked on Agatha Raisin with disfavour. ‘Oh, it’s you.’
    ‘I found what you wrote in your report very interesting,’ said Agatha, giving her that crocodile smile one gives people one doesn’t like. ‘May we come in?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘You said on the night Melissa was murdered you saw a child,’ said Charles. ‘Can you describe this child?’
    Mrs Green was a snob and her face softened at the sound of Charles’s upper-class voice. ‘It was dark, Sir Charles, and . . . Won’t you come in?’
    ‘Thank you.’ Charles stepped past her into the cottage and she promptly shut the door in Agatha’s face.
    Cheeks flaming, Agatha opened the door and followed them into the cottage parlour, which was a dark room in which framed photographs covered every surface. The darkness of the room was caused by the leaves of a large wisteria growing outside the window and by the leaves of a large cheese plant just inside the window. Mrs Green’s autocratic face swam in the gloom.
    ‘I would say she was in her early teens,’ she said. ‘She was chewing gum, a disgusting habit, and had one of those little rucksacks on her back that young people affect these days instead of carrying a handbag.’
    ‘Colour of hair?’ asked Charles.
    ‘I couldn’t really tell.’
    ‘What was she wearing?’ asked Agatha.
    ‘Shorts with a bib top and these ugly boots they all wear these days.’
    ‘Did you tell the police?’ asked Charles.
    ‘Of course not. They are looking for a murderer, not a child. And if I may say so, you would be better off leaving the whole thing to the police. What do we pay taxes for? I suppose such nosiness is understandable in the case of a person like Mrs Raisin, but you, Sir Charles, should know better.’
    ‘You forget,’ said Agatha icily, ‘that my husband is missing.’
    ‘Poor Mr Lacey. I am not surprised. According to the people of this village, you led him a dog’s life.’
    Agatha, who had taken a seat on a sofa, rose to her feet. ‘You are a