Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage

can think of any little thing that might help, please let me know.’
    ‘All right. I’m thinking already.’
    ‘You see,’ said James, ‘if we could find this Mrs Gore-Appleton, I feel we could get somewhere. There’s no evidence that she was in on this blackmailing lark. Jimmy was taking only five hundred pounds a month from Sir Desmond Derrington. Mrs Gore-Appleton gave an address in Mayfair to the health farm. Mind you, it seems to have been a false address, but believe me, if she had been in on the act, I feel the demand would have been higher. I don’t know why. Just an idea. What was she like?’
    Mrs Comfort frowned. ‘Let me see . . . blonde, good figure, bit muscular, loud laugh, sort of plummy voice, was very close to Jimmy but more like a mother looking after her child.’
    James remembered Miss Purvey saying that she had seen Jimmy going into Mrs Gore-Appleton’s bedroom one night but kept silent. ‘She didn’t speak to me much or to anyone else, for that matter,’ Mrs Comfort went on. ‘Apart from Jimmy, that is.’ Her watery eyes suddenly focused sharply on Agatha. ‘Why did you marry him?’
    Agatha remembered Jimmy when they had first married – reckless, handsome, full of fun. Then Jimmy slowly sinking into alcoholic stupors while she worked hard as a waitress, Jimmy surfacing occasionally from an alcoholic coma to beat her. Their marriage had been short and violent and she could still remember that feeling of glorious freedom when she had walked out on him for the last time, never to return.
    ‘I was very young,’ she said. ‘Jimmy began to drink heavily soon after we were married and so I left him. End of story.’
    James said suddenly, ‘Be careful, Mrs Comfort.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘There’s a murderer at large and it’s someone who was at that health farm, I’m sure of it. Someone recognized Miss Purvey and decided to shut her up. It could be that Jimmy had something on Miss Purvey and was blackmailing her. That someone could be carrying on the blackmail where Jimmy left off. Are you sure there is nothing else you can remember, however small and insignificant it might seem, which might help?’
    ‘There was only one stupid thing,’ she said. ‘It’s about Mrs Gore-Appleton.’
    ‘What’s that?’ asked Agatha eagerly.
    ‘Well, there were times when I thought she would have made a very good man.’
    James and Agatha stared at her in surprise.
    ‘It’s just a feeling. She had a very muscular body. She wasn’t exactly mannish. It was just something about her. Have you checked out everyone else who was there at the same time as me?’
    James shook his head. ‘Just the ones who lived near Mircester. There was Sir Desmond. Then there was Miss Purvey, and then yourself.’
    ‘But why did you assume the murderer was someone from near Mircester?
    ‘Because Jimmy Raisin was murdered in Carsely. It must have been someone who lives locally.’
    ‘But if you’re dealing with a blackmailer, or maybe a couple of blackmailers,’ protested Mrs Comfort, ‘then they could have followed their victims to London or Manchester or wherever! Then Jimmy Raisin could have let slip that he was going to your wedding.’
    ‘I don’t like that idea,’ said Agatha. ‘A friend of ours got a detective to find Jimmy Raisin and he was living in a packing-case at Waterloo. He was hardly in a state to go around blackmailing anyone.’
    ‘But when he heard you were getting married, he managed to get down to Mircester all right. He could have sobered up enough to go out from his packing-case to try one of his old victims and then said something like, oh, “I’m going to Mircester.”’
    Agatha groaned. ‘How many people were there at the same time as you?’
    ‘Not many. It’s so expensive. Only about thirty of us.’
    ‘Thirty,’ echoed Agatha in a hollow voice.
    ‘It’s got to be someone local,’ insisted James.
    ‘But who?’ demanded Agatha. ‘It’s obviously not Mrs Comfort here. Miss Purvey is dead. Sir Desmond is dead. Who’s left?’
    ‘Both of you,’ suggested Mrs Comfort with a tinge of malice in her voice.
    ‘Or Lady Derrington,’ said James. ‘What about Lady Derrington? She may have known about the blackmail all along and decided to get rid of Jimmy herself.’
    ‘Or what about Sir Desmond?’ put in Agatha. ‘He could have killed Jimmy and then committed suicide in a fit of remorse.’
    ‘So who killed Miss Purvey?’
    ‘That could have been Lady