Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell

Junot. Up by the Sacré Coeur, there was a square where artists drew tourists. She stood for a while and watched them before going up and into the great church.
    As she stood and looked about her, she began to wonder about what she always thought about the God bit. God, for Agatha, stood for Grand Old-fashioned Disapproval. How could anyone reach out their mind with such pure belief as to cure illness?
    At last, Agatha walked out on the steps in the sunshine and looked over Paris. Tourists moved up the steps and down the steps in a colourful, almost hypnotic, stream. She sat down and lit a cigarette. If I find James, then I’ll quit again, she told herself. I quit before. I can quit again.
    She then rose and went to a café and ordered coffee and a sandwich, realizing she was hungry. She looked at her watch when she had finished. The hour was more than up.
    Agatha walked back to the Avenue Junot to find Charles emerging from a block of flats. He looked smug, and when he got into the car he smelt of fresh soap, as if he had just taken a shower. Had he had sex with the mysterious Yvonne? And if he had, why should the very idea upset her and make her feel old and lonely?
    ‘How was Yvonne?’ she forced herself to ask.
    ‘Same as ever. Except she’s got four – four! – noisy brats and one of them puked over me, so a pleasant time was wasted while she and her husband sponged my clothes and I took a shower.’
    Agatha’s spirits lifted. Paris spread before them as they sped downwards through the ever-thickening traffic. Perhaps she should try to put ideas of finding James out of her mind and just enjoy a holiday.
    Charles suggested they should break their journey in Arles and carry on to Agde on the following morning, and Agatha, anxious now to delay what she was sure was going to be a disappointment, readily agreed.
    When they started out from Arles the following morning, it had begun to rain, cold, drizzling, chilly rain. The weather seemed like a bad omen. The windscreen wipers clicked backwards and forwards like a metronome.
    Then Charles said, ‘There’s a little bit of blue sky just ahead. In my youth, Father William, they used to say that if you saw a bit of blue sky, enough to patch a sailor’s trousers, then it was going to get sunny.’
    ‘Huh,’ grunted Agatha, who was beginning to feel depressed again.
    But Charles was right. As they headed ever south, the rain stopped, the clouds parted and a warm Provençal sun shone down on red-tiled roofs, vineyards and fields. They stopped in Agde for a meal, and Charles in his impeccable, if English-accented French, asked for directions to the monastery of St Anselm.
    ‘South a bit from here, towards the Pyrenees,’ he said cheerfully.
    ‘I don’t know if I said so, but this is very good of you,’ said Agatha awkwardly. ‘I mean, it is a bit of a wild-goose chase.’
    ‘Worth a try,’ said Charles amiably. ‘You’ll need to start trying to drive on the other side of the road, Agatha. Delicious sea food and no wine to go with it. Only water for me.’
    ‘I’ve only had water as well. I didn’t want to arrive at the monastery smelling of booze.’
    ‘Those monks probably smell of booze the whole time. Right, let’s go.’
    Charles, under instructions from the restaurant owner, had drawn a map. After they had been following the coast road for some miles, he turned off on to a narrower road and the car began to climb up a steep gradient.
    ‘That must be it at the top,’ said Charles after a while. ‘It looks more like a medieval fortress.’
    He parked outside the main door of the monastery. There was one of those old bell-pulls at the side. Charles gave it a tug.
    ‘Charles,’ said Agatha urgently, ‘maybe it’s not such a good idea, you being with me. I mean, if James is here, it might upset him.’
    ‘If James is here, I’ll make myself scarce.’
    A panel in the door opened and a monk looked out at them through the grille.
    In French, Charles asked if they had a Mr James Lacey in the monastery.
    ‘I do not recall anyone of that name,’ said the monk courteously, replying in English.
    Agatha pushed forwards. ‘I am Agatha Raisin,’ she said eagerly. ‘And he has been missing, and we knew he came here before and we wondered . . .’ Her voice faltered and died. She suddenly felt silly. What on earth was she doing outside a monastery in the south of France?
    The monk bowed his head. ‘I will make inquiries.’
    They waited. A cloud