Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage

Thin spinster. But surely that has nothing to do with anything.’
    ‘Jimmy Raisin was a blackmailer,’ said Agatha.
    Mrs Comfort choked on her drink and then appeared to rally. ‘Really?’ she said brightly. ‘How sickening.’
    Agatha took a gamble. ‘The real reason we are here is because we think he may have been blackmailing you.’
    ‘How dare you! There is nothing about me that anyone could blackmail me about. I think you should both go.’
    Mrs Comfort got to her feet. They rose as well. ‘You would not like to try the real story out on us first?’ asked James gently.
    ‘What do you mean, on you first?’
    ‘The police will be here soon and they will ask you the same questions. Then they will check your bank statements to see if you have been drawing out regular sums of money to pay blackmail, or if you ever issued a cheque to Jimmy Raisin.’
    She sat down as if her legs had suddenly given way. Her puffy face crumpled and she looked about to cry. Agatha and James slowly sat down again.
    She mutely held out her now empty glass to James. He took it, sniffed it, and then went behind the white leather bar and filled it with neat whisky and carried it back to her. They waited while she drank in silence and then she said, ‘Why not hear it all?
    ‘As I said, Jimmy Raisin was a wreck when he first came, but he soon smartened up. He was charming and amusing and . . . well, the others seemed a lot of stuffed shirts, and because I was a woman on my own, I was put at the same table as Miss Purvey, and that made me feel like shit.
    ‘Jimmy started to flirt with me and then he said he’d been down to the village that afternoon and he had a couple of Cornish pasties in his room. I went along to have one because I was so hungry and we were giggling like schoolchildren at a midnight feast. One thing led to another and we ended up spending the night together. We were very civilized about it the next day. As far as I was concerned, it was a one-night stand. I was married, and happily married, too, but those Cornish pasties had seduced me in the same way as vintage champagne would have done on another occasion.’
    She paused to drink more whisky thirstily.
    ‘Do you know, I almost forgot about the whole episode? It meant that little. Then one day, when my husband had just gone off to work – we were living in Mircester then – Jimmy turned up. He said that unless I paid him, he would tell my husband about our night together. I told him to get lost. It was his word against mine, and I would deny the whole thing. But he wrote to my husband and described certain details about me and . . . and . . . my husband divorced me.’
    There was a long silence.
    Agatha said quietly, ‘Why did you tell us this? You paid him nothing, so there would be no way anyone could find out anything from your bank statements.’
    She shrugged wearily. ‘I’ve never told anyone. Can you imagine the shame? Thirty years of married life down the tubes, just like that. I hated Jimmy Raisin, but I didn’t kill him. I’m too much of a wimp. I was shattered. All those years of marriage, and Geoffrey, my husband, wouldn’t forgive me. He rushed the divorce through. I was amazed at the generous settlement, and then I found out why. I found out why after the divorce because that’s when your best friends come forward and tell you what they should have told you before. He’d been having an affair with a woman in his office and all I did was hand him a big golden opportunity on a plate.’
    ‘This Mrs Gore-Appleton,’ said James. ‘Didn’t Jimmy talk about her, explain to you why he was there with her?’
    ‘He said she was some sort of do-gooder who was paying for his treatment, but that was all. We didn’t talk much except about the health farm and joked about the awful exercises and the food.’
    She began to cry quietly. ‘We’re sorry,’ said Agatha. ‘We’re just trying to find out who murdered Jimmy.’
    She dried her eyes and blew her nose. ‘Why? Who cares?’
    ‘Until we find out who murdered him, we’re all suspects, even you.’
    Her eyes widened in alarm. ‘I shouldn’t have told you about sleeping with Jimmy. You won’t tell the police?’
    And the two amateur detectives, who were still smarting over having been told to keep out of the investigations, both nodded their heads. ‘We won’t tell,’ said Agatha. She fished in her handbag and found one of her cards. ‘Here’s my address and number. If you