Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage

stayed alive.
    Only when Iris Harris had agreed to work for him again and had left did Roy feel more comfortable with himself.
    Agatha and James stayed indoors most of the following week, only venturing out at night for dinner. The press besieged James’s cottage at all hours of the day. It would have been normal, Agatha thought, for them to have discussed their relationship, discussed what had happened, but James talked only about the murder, politics and the weather. He worked away steadily at his military history while Agatha played with her cats in the garden and read books.
    At night, she slept in the spare room, strangely undisturbed by any longing for the body asleep along the narrow corridor. The shocks of the wedding and the murder had driven passion from Agatha’s mind. She was itching to get started on the murder investigation. Bill Wong had not called and she felt desperate for news. But soon the press would give up and go away to fresh woods and murders new and leave them in peace.
    On the morning the doorbell finally stopped ringing and the telephone at last was silent, Agatha decided to go to Mircester to try to see Bill Wong. James said he would stay and work at his writing.
    On arriving at police headquarters, Agatha found out it was Bill’s day off. She wondered whether to call at his home, but decided against it. He lived with his parents and Agatha found them rather intimidating. So she shopped for a new dress, although she did not need one, and for a new lipstick to add to the twenty or so already cluttering up the shelf in James’s bathroom. The lipstick promised to make ‘lips full and luscious as never before’. Agatha, who never believed a word of most advertisements, was a sucker for any cosmetic promotion. Hope sprang eternal and she believed every word until she tried it out. She decided to treat herself to a bar lunch in the George, but she would put on that lipstick first.
    She went into the pub toilet, read all the claims of the lipstick as if reading her horoscope, unscrewed it and decided to apply it.
    She had it halfway to her mouth when a familiar voice said, ‘But Agatha’s my friend. It makes it difficult.’
    Agatha turned round, startled. Then she remembered the odd acoustics of the George. There was a fanlight window above the door, usually open, as it was that day, so that any diners sitting at a table on the other side of the door almost sounded as if they were in the toilet itself.
    That’s Bill Wong, thought Agatha with a smile. She tucked the lipstick away in her handbag, unapplied, and made for the door.
    Then she heard a female voice saying, ‘As far as I am concerned, Bill, Agatha Raisin is still a murder suspect. She could easily have put on a pair of men’s shoes to baffle Forensic, and she’s strong enough to strangle a man. Beefy sort of woman.’
    Agatha stood stock-still, her mouth a little open, her hand stretched out to the handle of the door.
    ‘Look, Maddie’ – Bill’s voice again – ‘I know Agatha, and she would not murder anyone. She’s a lady.’
    ‘Oh, come on, Bill, the way you go on about the old trout, one would think you were her toy-boy. And ladies don’t go around belting chaps over the face.’
    ‘What you are asking me to do is spy on Agatha,’ said Bill, ‘and I don’t like it.’
    Maddie Hurd’s voice came sharp and clear. ‘All I’m asking you to do is police work, Bill. If she didn’t do it, and Lacey didn’t do it, then the clues as to who did lie in Jimmy Raisin’s background. I mean, I’m surprised you haven’t called on her before this.’
    ‘I would have done,’ said Bill, ‘if you hadn’t made me feel like a traitor.’
    Maddie’s voice softened. ‘You know I wouldn’t ask you to do anything bad, Bill. Did you enjoy last night?’
    Bill’s voice, husky with tenderness, replied, ‘You know I did.’
    ‘Let’s go or we’ll miss the start of the movie. But you will find out what you can?’
    ‘I’ll take a run over there tonight.’
    There was a scraping-back of chairs, then Agatha heard their retreating footsteps.
    She felt desperately alone now. Bill’s friendship had always been rock-solid. He had been her first friend in a hitherto friendless life. Now she felt she had no one to trust, certainly not James, who seemed to be handling the current situation by treating her as impersonally as he would another man.
    And yet Bill Wong was obviously very much in love. What could he see in such a