Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage

every time, realizing that she was quite a messy person. Housekeepers, thought Agatha, were born, not made. Being a good housekeeper was a separate talent, like being a ballet dancer or opera singer. Being brought up in a slum, where food came out of cans and cleaning was sporadic and clothes often were not washed from one week to the other, didn’t help one in future life. While she had had her own house, James had only seen the best of her. Had she suffered then from this hangover, she would have stayed indoors until she got rid of it, and then emerged, made up and dressed to kill. She ran an exploratory finger over her upper lip. A stiff little couple of hairs were sprouting there. She felt they were waving their antennae at James like insects. She made a hurried excuse and went up to the bathroom, waxed her upper lip clean, opened the bathroom window and tossed the wax out into the bushes, planning to retrieve it later and hide it in the kitchen garbage where James would not spot it. It’s such hard work being middle-aged, thought Agatha bleakly, and it will get much worse when I’m old, what with farting and incontinence and falling hair and teeth. God, I wish I were dead. And on that cheerful thought she went back downstairs.
    ‘Bill and I weren’t talking about the case,’ she said to James’s rigid back as he stood over the cooker scrambling eggs. ‘Maddie’s rejected him and he is deeply hurt.’
    ‘Oh.’ James’s back relaxed. ‘And you didn’t tell him about our visit to Gloria Comfort?’
    ‘No,’ said Agatha. ‘We got drunk to comfort him. Stupid, I know, and you were really good to take him home. Maddie may be a pill, but he’s mourning her all the same.’
    James slid a plate of fluffy scrambled eggs under Agatha’s nose. ‘Eat that and you’ll feel better.’
    ‘Nothing will make me feel better but the passing of time and the first stiff Scotch,’ said Agatha, but she managed to eat some of the egg and a piece of toast.
    The doorbell went again and she clutched her head and groaned. ‘If that’s anyone for me, get rid of them, James. I can’t even bear to see Mrs Bloxby.’
    But James returned with Bill, Maddie and Wilkes. Agatha felt her stomach lurch.
    ‘Now,’ said Wilkes severely, ‘I gather from descriptions received that you and Mr Lacey here called on a Mrs Gloria Comfort yesterday.’
    Agatha bleakly marvelled at the life of the English village. It had seemed completely deserted when they had called on Mrs Comfort, but hidden eyes had probably taken in every detail of their appearance.
    ‘She’s not dead, is she?’ asked Agatha.
    ‘Mrs Gloria Comfort packed up after you left, deposited her keys at the local police station, and said she was going on holiday to Spain. She took a flight to Madrid from Heathrow, hired a car at the Madrid airport and took off for God knows where. Now what we want to know is what did you say to her?’
    ‘And why,’ said Maddie in a flat voice, ‘were you calling on any suspect when you had been told not to?’
    ‘It’s a free country,’ said Agatha. ‘Anyway she hadn’t much to say. She said she wasn’t being blackmailed by Jimmy even after we told her the police would probably examine her bank accounts to make sure. She said nothing about going to Spain.’
    The questioning began in earnest. They told them everything, except the bit about Mrs Comfort spending the night with Jimmy.
    At last they rose to go. Maddie leaned over Agatha and said, ‘Just butt out, will you?’
    ‘Oh, go away,’ snarled Agatha. ‘Your face gives me a pain.’
    Bill looked at Agatha bleakly, but said nothing.
    After James had closed the door on them, Agatha said, ‘That’s a turn-up for the book. Why would she run like that? What had she to fear?’
    ‘Let’s go and break into her cottage tonight,’ said James.
    ‘What if we’re caught? And look how many people seemed to notice our visit and describe us. What if they phone the police?’
    ‘They won’t see us if we go in the middle of the night.’
    ‘Security lights? Burglar alarms?’
    ‘She had neither. I noticed that.’
    Agatha looked at him doubtfully. ‘These Cotswold villages are crammed with geriatrics, James, and old people don’t sleep much. They’d hear the car.’
    ‘We’ll drive a little way to Ancombe and then walk the rest. We’ll wear dark clothes but nothing too sinister-looking in case someone meets us on the road. Now, if I were you, I would go back to bed