Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death

charity in this village. I could load up the car with the stuff on Tuesday and take it along to the vicarage. Ingratiate myself a bit there.
    Dinner was excellent. I must learn to cook, thought Agatha. I’ve got little else to do. Steve opened his notebook. ‘Tomorrow, if you do not think it too much, Agatha, I would like to visit Warwick Castle.’
    Agatha groaned. ‘Warwick Castle’s like Bourton-on-the Water, wall-to-wall tourists from one year’s end to the other.’
    ‘But it says here,’ said Steve, fishing out a guidebook, ‘that it is one of the finest medieval castles in England.’
    ‘Well, I suppose that’s true but –’
    ‘I would very much like to go.’
    ‘All right! But be prepared for an early start. See if we can get in there before the crowds.’
    Warwick Castle is a tourist’s dream. It has everything from battlements and towers to a torture chamber and dungeon. It has rooms peopled by Madame Tussaud’s waxworks depicting a Victorian house party. It has signs in the drive saying: DRIVE SLOWLY, PEACOCKS CROSSING. It has a rose garden and a peacock garden. It takes a considerable amount of time to see everything and Steve wanted to see everything. With unflagging energy and interest, he climbed up the towers and along the battlements and down to the dungeons. Oblivious to the tourists crowding behind, he lingered in the state rooms, writing busily in his notebook. ‘Are you going to write about all this?’ asked Agatha impatiently.
    Steve said only in letters. He wrote a long letter home each week to his mother in Sydney. Agatha hoped they could finally escape, but the tyranny of the notebook was replaced by the tyranny of the video camera. Steve insisted they all climb back up to the top of one of the towers and he filmed Agatha and Roy standing at the edge leaning against the crenellated parapet.
    Agatha’s feet were aching by the time she climbed back in her car. They had lunch at a pub in Warwick and Agatha, numb with fatigue, found herself agreeing to take them round the Cotswold villages they had not seen, the ones whose names intrigued Steve, like Upper and Lower Slaughter, Aston Magna, Chipping Campden, and so on. Steve found shops open in Chipping Campden and bought groceries, saying he would cook them dinner that evening.
    She was so tired when dinner was over that all Agatha wanted to do was go to bed, but it turned out that Steve’s camera was the type you could plug in to the TV and show the film taken.
    Agatha leaned back and half-closed her eyes. She hated seeing herself on film anyway. Then she heard Roy exclaim, ‘Wait a minute. At Warwick Castle. On top of the tower. That woman. Look, Aggie. Run it again, Steve.’
    The film flickered back and then began to roll again. There she was with Roy on top of the tower. Roy was giggling and clowning. The camera then slowly panned over the surrounding countryside, inch, it seemed, by inch, Steve obviously trying to avoid the amateur’s failing of camera swing. And then suddenly it focused on a woman, standing a little way from Agatha and Roy. She was a spinsterish creature in a tweed jacket, drooping tweed skirt and sensible shoes. But she was glaring at Agatha with naked venom in her eyes and her fingers were curled like claws. The film moved back to Agatha and Roy.
    ‘Enter First Murderer,’ said Roy. ‘Anyone you know, Aggie?’
    Agatha shook her head. ‘I’ve never seen her before, not in the village anyway. Run it again.’
    Again those hate-filled eyes loomed up. ‘Perhaps it wasn’t me she was glaring at,’ said Agatha. ‘Perhaps her husband had just come up the stairs.’
    Steve shook his head. ‘There was no one else there. I remember seeing just that woman when I was filming. Then, just as I’d finished, a whole lot of tourists appeared.’
    ‘How odd.’ Roy stared blankly at the television screen. ‘How could she know you enough to hate you? What were we saying?’
    ‘Roy was clowning,’ said Agatha slowly. ‘It’s a pity you haven’t any sound on that film, Steve.’
    ‘I forgot. There is. Usually I don’t bother about it and tape some music to go with the English travelogue and then send it home to my mother.’
    ‘Turn the sound up,’ said Roy eagerly.
    Into the room came the sound of the wind on the top of the battlements. Then Roy’s voice. ‘Do you want Aggie to throw herself off the battlements like Tosca?’ And Agatha saying, ‘Oh, do give over, Roy. Gosh, it’s cold