Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage

Agatha glared at him. ‘They knew all along that Jimmy had been strangled and yet they let me think I might have caused him to strike his head on a rock or something. I’ve a damn good mind to sue them. And as for James – James murder my husband? James? Believe me, the whole experience will have been so vulgar, so distasteful to my ex-lover that all he will want to do is put as many miles between us as possible. So he can’t have been hanging around the village to murder Jimmy. That takes rage and passion, and in order to experience that amount of rage and passion, he would need to have been in love with me!’
    ‘Come on, Agatha. The man had a bad shock.’
    ‘If he had loved me, he would have stood by me,’ said Agatha. ‘And do you know what I feel for him now? Nothing. Sweet eff all.’
    ‘Either you’re still in shock or you couldn’t have loved him all that much yourself,’ said Bill.
    ‘What do you know about it? You’re too young.’ Bill was in his twenties.
    ‘More than you think,’ said Bill ruefully. ‘I think I’ve fallen myself.’
    ‘Go on,’ said Agatha, momentarily diverted from her troubles. ‘Who?’
    ‘Maddie Hurd.’
    ‘That hatchet-faced creature?’
    ‘Now, you are not to talk about her like that, Agatha. Maddie’s bright and clever and . . . and . . . I think she cares for me.’
    ‘Oh, well, chacun à son goût, as we say back at the buildings. Or everyone to their own bag. But if they think James did it, they’re wasting time. Look, Harry Symes saw me. Didn’t he see anyone else on the road?’
    Bill shook his head. ‘I’ve got to be getting back. I’ll call on you as soon as I hear anything more.’
    Agatha thought of asking him for a lift back to Carsely but then decided she had endured enough of the police for one day and went off to get a cab at the rank in the square. Bill went back to police headquarters. Maddie was waiting for him.
    ‘Get anything out of her about Lacey?’ asked Maddie eagerly.
    Bill told her what Agatha had said, feeling treacherous because Maddie had sent him to find out what he could from Agatha.
    ‘She trusts you,’ said Maddie. ‘Keep close to her.’
    ‘Are you doing anything tonight?’ asked Bill eagerly. ‘I thought we could take in a movie.’
    ‘Not tonight, Bill,’ said Maddie. ‘Too much to do. And don’t you want to be around when they pull Lacey in?’
    ‘Of course,’ said Bill, banishing romantic pictures of the back row of the cinema and his arm around Maddie’s shoulders.
    There was only one good thing, thought Agatha wearily as she paid off the taxi outside her cottage – nothing else could possibly happen that day. That was until she turned around and saw a large, tweedy woman standing by the gate.
    ‘Have you forgotten me, Mrs Raisin?’ demanded the woman. ‘I am Mrs Hardy, to whom you sold this cottage, and I am appalled to see your stuff is still here.’
    ‘I know we signed the papers and everything, but I told the estate agents it was now not for sale,’ said Agatha desperately.
    ‘You took my money. This cottage is mine!’
    ‘Mrs Hardy,’ pleaded Agatha, ‘cannot we come to some arrangement? I will buy it back from you and you will make a profit.’
    ‘No, this place suits me. I am moving in tomorrow evening. Get all your stuff out or I will take you to court.’
    Agatha pushed past her, put her key in the door, let herself in and went wearily through to the kitchen. How could she, who prided herself on her business sense, have assumed that because she had told the estate agents the house was no longer on the market, all she would have to do was to transfer the money for the sale back to Mrs Hardy?
    She glanced at the clock. She phoned the removal company and told them to call the following morning and take her stuff into storage. She then went along to the Red Lion, where she knew they often let out rooms to holidaymakers. But the landlord, John Fletcher, mumbled that he did not have anything to spare and would not meet her eyes. No one else in the pub seemed to want to talk to her.
    Agatha abandoned her drink untouched and walked out. There was now nothing left for her in Carsely. The only thing she could do was move back to the anonymity of London with her cats and wait for death. She was comforting her battered soul with equally gloomy thoughts when she turned into Lilac Lane. Her heart began to thud.
    James Lacey was getting out of his car outside his cottage. He went round to the