Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death

more grief-stricken. It is best to put the whole matter behind you, Mrs Raisin. The Carsely Ladies’ Society meets tonight here at the vicarage at eight o’clock. Do come along.’
    ‘Thank you,’ said Agatha humbly.
    ‘Have you got rid of that dreadful woman?’ asked the vicar ten minutes later when his wife walked into his study.
    ‘Yes. I don’t think she’s really so bad and she is genuinely suffering about the quiche business. I’ve invited her to the women’s get-together tonight.’
    ‘Then thank goodness I won’t be here,’ said the vicar and bent over his sermon.
    Agatha felt cleansed of sin as she drove back to her cottage. She would go to church on Sunday and she would try to be a good person. She put a Healthy Fun Shepherd’s Pie in the microwave for Mrs Simpson’s lunch.
    Mrs Simpson picked at the hot mess tentatively with her fork and all Agatha’s saintliness evaporated. ‘It’s not poisoned,’ she snapped.
    ‘It’s just I don’t much care for frozen stuff,’ said Mrs Simpson.
    ‘Well, I’ll get you something better next time. Was Mrs Cummings-Browne very upset about the death of her husband?’
    ‘Oh, dreadful it was,’ said Doris Simpson. ‘Real shook, her were. Numb with shock at first and then crying and crying. Had to fetch the vicar’s wife to help.’
    Guilt once more settled on Agatha’s soul. She felt she had to get out. She walked to the Red Lion and ordered a glass of red wine and sausage and chips.
    Then she remembered her intention of calling on Mrs Cartwright. It all seemed a bit pointless now but it was something to do.
    Judd’s cottage where the Cartwrights lived was a broken-down sort of place. The garden gate was hanging on its hinges and in the weedy front garden was parked a rusting car. Agatha looked this way and that, wondering how the car had got in, but could see no way it could have been achieved short of lifting it bodily over the fence.
    The glass pane on the front door was cracked and stuck in place with brown paper tape. She rang the bell and nothing happened. She rapped at the side of the door. Mrs Cartwright’s blurred figure loomed up on the other side of the glass.
    ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said when she opened the door. ‘Come in.’
    Agatha followed her into a sour-smelling cluttered living-room. The furniture was soiled and shiny with wear. There was a two-bar electric fire in the grate with imitation plastic coals on the top. A bunch of plastic daffodils hung over a chipped vase on the window. There was a cocktail cabinet in one corner ornamented with pink glass and strips of pink fluorescent lighting.
    ‘Drink?’ asked Mrs Cartwright. Her coarse hair was wound up in pink foam rollers and she was wearing a pink wrap-over dress which gaped when she moved to reveal a dirty petticoat.
    ‘Thank you,’ said Agatha, wishing she had not come.
    Mrs Cartwright poured two large glasses of gin and then tinged them pink with Angostura. Agatha looked nervously at her own glass, which was smeared with lipstick at the rim.
    Mrs Cartwright sat down and crossed her legs. Her feet were encased in dirty pink slippers. All this pink, thought Agatha nervously. She looks like some sort of debauched Barbara Cartland.
    ‘Did you know Mr Cummings-Browne well?’ asked Agatha.
    Mrs Cartwright lit a cigarette and studied Agatha through the smoke. ‘A bit,’ she said.
    ‘Did you like him?’
    ‘Some. Can’t think straight at the moment.’
    ‘Because of the death?’
    ‘Because of the bingo over at Evesham. John, that’s my husband, he’s cut off my money on account he doesn’t want me to go there. Men are right bastards. I brought up four kids and now they’ve left home and I want a bit o’ fun, all he does is grumble. Yes, give me a bit o’ money for the bingo and I can ’member most things.’
    Agatha fished in her handbag. ‘Would twenty pounds help?’
    ‘Would it ever!’
    Agatha passed the money over. Then there came the sound of the front door being opened. Mrs Cartwright thrust the note down into her bosom, grabbed Agatha’s glass and ran with that and her own to the kitchen.
    ‘Ella?’ called a man’s voice.
    The door opened and a strongly built ape-like man walked in just as his wife came back from the kitchen. ‘Who’s she?’ he demanded, jerking a thumb at Agatha. ‘I told you not to let them Jehovahs in.’
    ‘This is Mrs Raisin from down Lilac Lane, called social-like.’
    ‘What do you want?’ he