Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage

watercolours and all pretending to be upper-class?’
    ‘Mrs Bloxby is a good example of all that is fine about village life.’
    ‘The vicar’s wife? A sad creature who lives through other people because she has no life of her own. Oh, don’t let’s quarrel. You like it. I don’t. I’ll see you later.’
    Agatha went slowly back to the village hall. A woman she only knew slightly was at the microphone singing ‘Feelings’. Mr and Mrs Boggle had fallen asleep.
    Agatha sat down and looked about her. Mrs Hardy’s words seeped like poison into her brain. How pathetic and shabby the village hall looked. Rain had begun to fall, blurring the high windows. Surely there was more to life than this. Perhaps her loneliness had caused her to look at the whole thing through a pair of distorting, rose-tinted glasses. And what of her non-relationship with James? A woman of any maturity, of any guts and courage would have given him up as a bad job. And what would married life with him have been like anyway? He was handsome and clever, but so self-contained, so cold, that even if they were married, life would be pretty much the same. And what about sex? Didn’t he miss it? Didn’t he ever think of the nights they had spent together?
    It seemed to Agatha that he preferred to return to a life of celibacy, a celibacy broken by a few affairs.
    She had never really given London a chance. Yes, she had been friendless there, but that was because of the way she had gone on. She had changed. She had invested the money from the sale of her business very well. She would not need to work if she returned to London.
    The concert mercifully drew to a close with the cast singing ‘That’s Entertainment’.
    Then there was a general movement as chairs were drawn back and tables were set out for the lunch in honour of the Ancombe ladies. Agatha shivered. The hall was cold. Lunch turned out to be the inevitable quiche and salad. There was not even any home-made wine to wash it down, as there usually was at these functions, only rather dusty tea.
    Conversation was desultory. Agatha looked around. What have I done? she wondered. How could I ever have thought I would fit in here? I don’t really belong. I wasn’t born in a village, I was born in a Birmingham slum, where trees and flowers were things you ripped out of the earth as soon as they dared to show a leaf. There was a lot to be said after all for anonymous London. Perhaps Bill Wong would come up and visit her from time to time. Well, maybe Mrs Bloxby, too. As for James . . . well, she, Agatha Raisin, was worth better than James Lacey. She wanted a man with red blood in his veins, a man capable of intimacy, warmth, affection.
    ‘Dark thoughts?’
    The woman who had been sitting at one of the long tables next to Agatha had left. Mrs Bloxby had slid into her place.
    ‘I don’t really belong here,’ said Agatha, waving a hand about the room. ‘And do you know, I’m worth better than James. I want someone capable of intimacy. I don’t mean sex. I mean warmth and affection.’
    Mrs Bloxby looked at her doubtfully. ‘I have thought that perhaps the attraction James Lacey holds for you is because he lacks those things. By the very absence of them, the relationship lacks proper commitment. It did cross my mind recently that you were more like two bachelors living together than man and woman. And I wonder how you would cope with a man who demanded intimacy and love and affection from you, Mrs Raisin.’
    ‘Agatha.’
    ‘Yes of course, Agatha.’
    ‘I should think myself in seventh heaven.’
    ‘Why this sudden disgust at Carsely and all who sail in her?’
    Agatha bit her lip. She was too proud to admit she had been influenced by Mrs Hardy.
    ‘I just thought of it,’ she said.
    The vicar’s wife studied her averted face for a moment and then said, ‘I saw you leave the hall shortly after Mrs Hardy disappeared. Did you find her?’
    ‘Yes, she was heading home.’
    ‘Did she give any reason for humiliating Fred Griggs in that way?’
    Agatha still did not want to repeat any of Mrs Hardy’s remarks about the village and villagers.
    ‘I think Mrs Hardy considered Fred had already humiliated himself and wanted to leave and saw a convenient way to do it.’
    ‘Ah,’ said Mrs Bloxby, ‘perhaps my first impression of her was right.’
    ‘That being?’
    ‘That she was an unkind and unhappy woman.’
    ‘Oh, no, I think she’s a bit like me, used to a faster pace of