Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage

Lane, where it settled in a muddy puddle.
    ‘Oh dear,’ mourned Mrs Bloxby. ‘Do you have another hat?’
    ‘I’ll go without one,’ said Agatha, fighting back a sudden impulse to cry. She felt that everything was suddenly turning against her. And she dare not cry. For tears would channel runnels through her mask of make-up.
    Mrs Bloxby gave up trying to make conversation on the road to Mircester. The bride-to-be was unusually silent.
    But Agatha’s spirits appeared to lift when the registry office came in sight and James could be seen standing in front of it, talking to his sister and Bill Wong. Roy Silver was also there, feeling virtuous now that he had done nothing to wreck Agatha’s marriage, or so he told himself. If Jimmy Raisin wasn’t dead, he soon would be. He might have mentioned to Jimmy that Agatha was getting married and lived in Carsely, but Jimmy had been so drunk, so sodden, that Roy was sure the man hadn’t really taken in a word he said.
    And so they all went into the registry office, James’s relatives, and, on Agatha’s side, the members of the Carsely Ladies’ Society.
    Mrs Bloxby took a spray of flowers out of its florist’s box and pinned it on the lapel of Agatha’s white suit. She noticed that some of Agatha’s make-up had stained the white collar of her suit but did not like to say so, thinking that Agatha was already feeling low enough about her appearance.
    Fred Griggs, Carsely’s village policeman, was unusual in that he liked to walk about the village, instead of patrolling it in the police car. He looked with distaste at the shambling figure of a stranger entering the village by the north road.
    ‘What’s your name and what’s your business here?’ asked Fred.
    ‘Jimmy Raisin,’ said the stranger.
    Jimmy was sober for the first time in weeks. He had bathed and shaved at a Salvation Army hostel, and then had begged enough money for the bus fare to the Cotswolds. The Salvation Army had also furnished him with a decent suit and a pair of shoes.
    ‘Relation of Mrs Raisin, are you?’ asked Fred, his fat face creasing in a genial smile.
    ‘I’m her husband,’ said Jimmy. He stared about him at the quiet village, at the well-kept houses, and gave a little sigh of satisfaction. His sole reason for seeking out his wife was to find himself a comfortable home in which to quietly drink himself to death.
    ‘Can’t be,’ said Fred, the smile leaving his face. ‘Our Mrs Raisin is getting married today.’
    Jimmy drew a much-folded and dirty piece of paper from his pocket, his marriage lines, which he had somehow held on to over the years, and silently handed it to the policeman.
    Appalled, Fred exclaimed, ‘I’d better stop that wedding. Oh, my! Wait right here. I’ll get the car.’
    The registrar did not get as far as pronouncing James and Agatha man and wife. They heard a commotion from the back of the room and then a voice shouting, ‘Stop!’
    Agatha turned slowly around. She recognized Fred Griggs, but he was with a man she thought she did not know at all. Even though Jimmy might have been drunk when she left him all those years ago, he had been a handsome fellow with thick curly black hair. The man with Fred had greasy grey hair and a bloated face with a swollen nose and his thin shoulders were stooped. In fact, his figure looked too frail to carry the weight of the large swollen gut which hung over the waistband of his trousers.
    Fred went quickly up to her. He had planned to take her aside, to break the news to her tactfully, but Agatha’s horrified, mask-like face unnerved him and he blurted out in front of everyone, ‘Your husband’s here, Agatha. This is Jimmy Raisin.’
    Agatha looked about her in a bewildered way. ‘He’s dead. Jimmy’s dead. What’s Fred talking about?’
    ‘It’s me, Aggie, your husband,’ said Jimmy. He waved his marriage lines under her nose.
    Agatha was aware of the shocked rigidity of James Lacey beside her.
    She looked at Jimmy Raisin again and saw beneath the wastage of the years the faint resemblance to the husband she had once known.
    ‘How did you find me?’ she asked faintly.
    Jimmy turned around. ‘Him,’ he said, jerking a thumb in Roy’s direction. ‘Turned up at my box, he did.’
    Roy let out a squawk of fright, took to his heels and ran.
    One of James’s aunts, a thin beanpole of a woman with a loud, carrying voice, said clearly, ‘Really, James, to have avoided marriage all these years and then to