Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage

stop his marrying her.
    The fine weather broke the next day and rain dripped from the thatch on the roof of Agatha’s cottage. She was busy all day supervising the packing. Then Doris Simpson, her cleaner, called round in the late afternoon to help clear up the mess left behind. Bill’s elephant stood behind the kitchen door.
    ‘Now that’s what I call handsome,’ said Doris, admiring it. ‘Who gave you that?’
    ‘Bill Wong.’
    ‘He’s got good taste, I’ll say that for him. So you’re marrying our Mr Lacey at last, and all of us thinking him a confirmed bachelor. But as I said, “What our Agatha wants, our Agatha gets.”’
    ‘We’re going out for dinner, so I’ll leave you to it,’ said Agatha, not liking what she felt was the implication that she had bulldozed James into marriage.
    Dinner that evening was at a new restaurant in Chipping Campden. It turned out to be one of those restaurants where all energy and effort had gone into the writing of the menu and little into the cooking, for the food was insubstantial and tasteless. Agatha had ordered ‘Crispy duck with a brandy-and-orange sauce nestling on a bed of warm rocket salad and garnished with sizzling sauté potatoes, succulent garden peas, and crispy new carrots.’
    James had a ‘Prime Angus sirloin from cattle grazed on the lush green hillsides of Scotland, served with pommes duchesse, and organic vegetables culled from our own kitchen garden.’
    Agatha’s duck had a tough skin and very little meat. James’s steak was full of gristle and he said sourly that it was amazing that the restaurant’s kitchen garden had managed to produce such bright-green frozen peas.
    The wine, a Chardonnay, was thin and acid.
    ‘We should stop eating out,’ said James gloomily.
    ‘I’ll cook us something nice tomorrow,’ said Agatha.
    ‘What, another of your microwave meals?’
    Agatha glared at her plate. She still fondly imagined that if she microwaved a frozen meal and hid the wrappings, James would think she had cooked it herself.
    She suddenly looked across the table at him as he pushed his food moodily about on his plate and said, ‘Do you love me, James?’
    ‘I’m marrying you, aren’t I?’
    ‘Yes, I know, James, but we never talk about our feelings for each other. I feel we should communicate more.’
    ‘You’ve been watching Oprah Winfrey again. Thank you for sharing that with me, Agatha. I’m not a talking-about-feelings person, nor do I see the need for it. Now shall I get the bill and we’ll go home and have a sandwich?’
    Agatha felt so crushed, she didn’t even have the heart to complain about the food. He was silent as he drove them home and Agatha felt a lump of ice in her stomach. What if he had gone off her?
    But he made love to her that night with his usual silent passion and she felt reassured. You couldn’t change people. James was marrying her, and nothing else mattered.
    The rain-clouds rolled back on the day of Agatha’s wedding. Sunlight sparkled in the puddles. The rain-battered roses in Agatha’s garden sent out a heady scent. Doris Simpson was to look after Agatha’s cats while she was on her honeymoon. Her cottage stood empty now. Only the elephant and her clothes had been transferred to James’s cottage.
    Agatha, sitting down to make up her face on the great day, wiped off the liberal application of a brand-new anti-wrinkle cream and then stared at her face in horror. She had come out in a red rash. Her face was fiery. She rushed and bathed it in cold water, but the redness remained.
    Mrs Bloxby arrived to find Agatha almost in tears. ‘Look at me!’ wailed Agatha. ‘I tried that new anti-wrinkle cream, Instant Youth, and look what it’s done.’
    ‘Time’s getting on, Agatha,’ said Mrs Bloxby anxiously. ‘Haven’t you any thick make-up you could put on?’
    Agatha found an old tube of pancake make-up and put a heavy layer over her face. It left a line where her chin ended and her neck began, so she applied the stuff to her neck as well, and then a layer of powder. Eyeshadow, blusher and mascara followed. Agatha groaned at the resultant mask-like effect. But Mrs Bloxby, looking out of the window, said the limousine to take Agatha to Mircester had arrived.
    So much for the most important day of my life, thought Agatha dismally.
    The day was fine but with a blustery wind, which snatched Agatha’s hat from her head as she was about to get into the limousine and sent it bowling along Lilac