Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage

too ill. See you tomorrow.’
    James replaced the receiver and went upstairs.
    ‘Who was that?’ called Agatha.
    James knew that if he told Agatha the truth, she would insist on coming. ‘Just some reporter from the Daily Mail,’ he said soothingly. ‘Try to sleep.’
    The next day, when Agatha finally crept downstairs, it was to find a note from James on the table saying he had gone to police headquarters in Mircester. James did not want there to be any danger of Agatha following him to London.
    Agatha trailed into the kitchen and made herself a cup of coffee. The cottage seemed quiet and sinister without James, and it still smelt of burnt wood and paint from the fire. The temporary chipboard door erected by the carpenter to make do until James’s insurance claim went through seemed a flimsy barrier against the outside world.
    She let her cats out into the garden after feeding them. Her legs felt like jelly. She had another cup of coffee and two cigarettes, each of which tasted vile, and then crawled back to bed.
    James approached Temple tube station with a feeling of excitement. If only there would be something, somewhere in Jimmy’s things that might give him a clue. He was worried about leaving Agatha alone. It was ten minutes to twelve when he arrived at the tube station. On impulse, he phoned Mrs Hardy and asked her if she would phone Agatha or pop round and see if she was all right. Mrs Hardy answered cheerfully that she wasn’t doing anything else and would be happy to look after Agatha, and, reassured, James put the phone down.
    He turned round to see Roy and his formidable detective waiting for him. Roy made the introductions.
    ‘Now where is this woman?’ asked James, looking around. ‘What if she doesn’t show?’
    ‘She’ll show,’ said Iris. ‘Just think of all the booze one hundred pounds will buy her.’
    ‘Aggie should be here,’ said Roy. ‘How is she?’
    ‘Pretty poorly,’ said James. ‘Look, I didn’t tell her about this or she would have come racing up to London and she’s not fit.’
    ‘There she is,’ said Iris.
    A small woman in layers of shabby clothes was shuffling into the tube station. Her eyes were sunk into her head and she had no teeth. She was bent and aged-looking and her hands clutching two plastic bags were twisted and crippled with arthritis.
    ‘Hello, Lizzie,’ said Iris briskly. ‘Give us the bag.’
    ‘Money first,’ said Lizzie. ‘I want a thousand pounds.’
    Before James or Roy could say anything, Iris said, ‘Well, that’s that, Lizzie. We’ll take our hundred pounds and go. I doubt if there is anything in there worth even a fiver.’
    And James saw from the look in Lizzie’s eyes that she had already gone through the late Jimmy Raisin’s effects and agreed with Iris.
    ‘’Ere, wait a minute.’ A claw-like hand clutched at Iris’s sleeve. ‘You got the money?’
    Iris nodded to James, who took out his wallet and extracted five twenty-pound notes. Lizzie’s eyes gleamed.
    ‘Bag, Lizzie,’ prompted Iris.
    ‘The money,’ said Lizzie.
    ‘Oh, no. Is this the right bag?’ Iris took it from her. ‘I’ll just have a quick look in here first. It could be nothing but old newspapers.’
    Iris looked inside and fumbled around. All Jimmy’s worldly goods seemed to consist of a few photographs, a corkscrew, some letters and a battered wallet.
    ‘All right,’ said Iris.
    James handed over the money. ‘I hope you are going to buy yourself some food with this.’
    Lizzie looked at him as if he were mad, seized the money and stowed it somewhere under her layers of clothes, and then shambled off.
    ‘Let’s go somewhere and look at what we’ve got,’ said James.
    ‘We’ll go to my office,’ said Iris. ‘But you’re going to be disappointed. Seems to be nothing but scraps of paper and a few photographs.’
    They took a taxi to Iris’s office in Paddington and, once there, tipped the contents out on the desk.
    There were love letters from various women, damp and crumpled and stained. Jimmy had probably kept them to gloat over. There was a photograph of a thin girl with small eyes and heavy dark brown hair. That was in the wallet and the only thing it contained. James said, ‘By God, it’s our Agatha as a girl. You can hardly recognize her.’ There were various other photographs of women, and then one of Jimmy on a beach. A middle-aged blonde woman in a swimsuit was rubbing oil on his back. She was thin and muscular. Her face was