Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage

to help the grumbling Mrs Boggle out of her wraps.
    Mrs Hardy and Agatha were handed printed programmes.
    The first performer was to be Miss Simms, the society’s secretary, who was billed to sing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’.
    But the opening number was a line-up of the village ladies performing a Charleston, dressed in twenties outfits. Agatha blinked. Where on earth had the portly Mrs Mason come by that beaded dress? Mrs Mason, she remembered, had threatened to leave the village after her niece had been found guilty of murder, but she had finally elected to stay and no one ever mentioned the murder. The ladies did quite well, apart from occasionally bumping into one another on the small stage.
    Then Miss Simms walked forward and adjusted the microphone. She was still wearing the skimpy flapper dress she had worn for the opening number. She opened her mouth. Her voice was thin and reedy, screeching on the high notes and disappearing altogether in the low notes. Agatha had never realized before what a very long song it was. At last it was mercifully over. Fred Griggs then took up a position on the stage in front of a table full of rings and scarves. Fred fancied himself as a conjurer. He got so many things wrong that the kindly village audience decided he was doing it deliberately and laughed their appreciation. The only person not joining in the laughter was Fred, who grew more and more anguished. At last a large box like a wardrobe was wheeled on the stage, and Fred nervously asked for a volunteer for the vanishing-lady trick.
    Mrs Hardy walked straight up the aisle and climbed on the stage.
    Fred whispered to her and she went into the box and he shut the door.
    ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said Fred. ‘I will now make this lady vanish.’
    He waved his stick and two schoolchildren turned the box round and round.
    Then Fred, with a flourish, opened the door. Mrs Hardy had vanished.
    Warm applause.
    Fred beamed with relief and signalled to the schoolchildren, who revolved the box again.
    ‘Viola!’ cried Fred. He meant ‘Voilà,’ thinking French some magical language. He opened the door. His face fell and he slammed it shut again and muttered something to the schoolchildren. The box was revolved again.
    Again Fred cried, ‘Viola!’ and opened the door.
    No Mrs Hardy.
    It must be part of the act, thought the audience, as Fred, with his face red and sweating, began to search inside the box.
    ‘You couldn’t even find my cat,’ shouted Mrs Boggle. ‘No wonder you can’t find that woman. Can’t even find your brains on a good day, Fred.’
    Fred glared down at her. Then he bowed. Schoolchildren ran forward to clear his props from the stage and a villager called Albert Grange came on and began to play the spoons.
    Agatha slipped out of her seat and went quickly out of the village hall. She hurried towards Lilac Lane. She was beginning to wonder if something awful had happened to Mrs Hardy.
    And then, as she turned the corner into Lilac Lane, she saw the stocky figure of Mrs Hardy in front of her.
    ‘Mrs Hardy!’ called Agatha.
    She swung round.
    ‘Whatever happened?’ asked Agatha, coming up to her.
    ‘It was such a boring, awful affair,’ said Mrs Hardy with a grin, ‘that I just walked out of the back of the box and out of the back of the hall.’
    ‘But poor Fred,’ protested Agatha.
    ‘Why bother? He’d got everything else so mucked up that I reckoned another failure wouldn’t matter.’
    Agatha looked at her doubtfully. ‘It seems a bit cruel to me.’
    ‘I can’t make you out,’ said Mrs Hardy. ‘I know you used to run a successful business and yet here you rot, wasting your time and energy going to a dreadful affair like that. How can you bear it? I’ve never met such a dreary bunch of yokels in my life before.’
    ‘They’re not dreary! They are very kind and warm-hearted.’
    ‘What? People like that smelly old Boggle woman? Those pathetic village women cavorting around in the Charleston? Get a life!’
    Agatha’s eyes narrowed. ‘I was beginning to think you were all right. But you’re not. I’m glad you’re leaving Carsely. You don’t belong here.’
    ‘No one whose brains haven’t turned into mush belongs here.’
    ‘There are brilliant people living in the Cotswolds! Writers.’
    ‘Middle-aged menopausal women churning out Aga sagas about naughty doings in the vicarage? Ancient, creaking geriatrics making arrangements out of dried flowers and painting bad