Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage

looked at her. ‘I remember now. You and Mr Lacey here were to be married but Jimmy turned up at your wedding.’ She laughed again. ‘That must have been quite a scene. You’ll be able to marry now.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Agatha.
    ‘We haven’t made any plans,’ said James.
    There was an awkward silence.
    ‘We should go,’ said Agatha harshly.
    ‘Could you just wait until I finish my coffee, dear ?’
    Agatha, who had half-risen, sat down again.
    ‘Lacey, Lacey,’ Helen was saying. ‘Are you any relative of Major-General Robert Lacey?’
    ‘My father. He died some time ago.’
    ‘Oh, then you must know . . .’ And what followed was the sort of conversation Agatha dreaded, James and Helen animatedly talking about people she did not know.
    At last, when Agatha felt she could not stand another moment without screaming, James got to his feet with obvious reluctance.
    They took their leave, Agatha first, muttering a grumpy thanks, James after her, stopping to kiss Helen on the cheek and promising to see her again, giving her his card and taking one of hers.
    Agatha fumed the whole way back to Carsely. She complained bitterly about harpies who sponged off men instead of going out to work. James tried to point out that as a secretary to a Member of Parliament, Helen did go out to work, but that only seemed to make Agatha worse. He left her at the cottage, saying he had to see someone, whereupon Agatha tortured herself with mad jealousy, imagining him driving back to London to spend the night with Helen. She finally went to bed and tried to read, listening all the while for the sound of his key in the door. At last, just after midnight, she heard him return, heard him come upstairs and go into the bathroom, heard him wash, heard him go to his own room without coming in to say goodnight to her, although he could surely see the light shining under her door.
    She raised her head and banged her pillow with her fist, put out the light, and tried to compose herself for sleep. But sleep would not come as she tossed and turned, tormenting herself with pictures of a world out there full of women all too ready to snatch James away from her.
    And then she stiffened. She heard a furtive noise from somewhere downstairs and then the clack of the letterbox, then a sound like water being poured. She pulled on her dressing-gown and ran down the stairs. She opened the door to the hall as a gloved hand threw a lighted match through the letterbox. In that instant Agatha leaped back into the living-room and screamed, ‘James!’ just as a sheet of flame reached out for her.
    He came hurtling down the stairs. ‘We’re on fire,’ shouted Agatha. She made to open the door again but he pulled her back.
    ‘Go up to the bathroom and pour buckets of water on the floor. It’s over the hall. We’ve got to stop the fire getting to the thatch!’
    James ran to the kitchen as Agatha scampered up the stairs. Swearing, he filled a bucket of water and running back with it, hurled the contents at the living-room door, which was already beginning to blister and crackle.
    Upstairs, Agatha, sobbing with fright, poured water on the bathroom floor. There were shouts and yells from outside. Agatha clearly heard the voice of the pub landlord, John Fletcher, calling, ‘Keep throwing that earth. We daren’t wait for the fire brigade. Oh, Mrs Hardy. More earth. Let’s be having it! That there’s a petrol fire. I can smell it.’
    Then, just as James shouted up, ‘It’s all right now, Agatha,’ she heard the sirens of police cars and the fire engine in the distance. She went slowly down the stairs and sat on the bottom steps with her head in her hands.
    The living-room door now stood open to reveal the black and smouldering wreck of the little hall, piled high with a mound of earth.
    ‘Who would do a thing like this?’ demanded James. ‘Someone meant to roast us alive.’
    ‘Probably Helen Warwick,’ said Agatha, and burst into tears.

Chapter Seven

    Suddenly the house seemed to be full of people.
    Fred Griggs, the policeman; Mrs Bloxby, with a sweater and trousers pulled on over her pyjamas; John Fletcher, the publican; Mrs Hardy; and various other villagers.
    ‘You’ve got Mrs Hardy here to thank for quick action,’ said Fred. ‘She phoned the fire brigade and then ran with buckets of earth to put on the fire. Water don’t do much to stop a petrol fire.’
    ‘Are you all right, Mrs Raisin?’ Mrs Hardy’s normally bad-tempered