Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death

village.’ Mrs Cartwright took a slug of her gin.
    ‘Do you bake a lot?’
    ‘Naw. Used to. Occasionally do some baking for Mrs Bloxby. Terrible woman she is. Can’t say no to her. Come in the kitchen and I’ll show you.’
    Dirty dishes were piled in the sink. A tattered calendar showing a picture of a blonde in nothing but a wisp of gauze and sandals leered down from the wall. But on a cleared corner of the kitchen table beside the half-empty milk bottle, the pat of butter smeared with marmalade, lay a tray of delicate fairy cakes. They looked exquisite. There was no doubt Mrs Cartwright could bake.
    ‘So I’d make a quiche and get a tenner for it,’ said Mrs Cartwright. ‘Silly waste of time if you ask me. My husband doesn’t like quiche. Used to make them for the Harveys and they’d sell them down at the shop for me. Went well, too. But I can’t seem to find the time these days.’ She tottered back to the living-room in her pink high-heeled mules.
    Agatha decided to get down to some hard business. ‘I paid you twenty pounds for information yesterday,’ she said bluntly, ‘information which I have not yet received.’
    ‘I spent it.’
    ‘Yes, but how you spent it or what you spent it on is not my affair,’ snapped Agatha.
    Mrs Cartwright put a finger to her brow. ‘Now what was it? Dammit, my bloody memory’s gone wandering again.’
    Her eyes gleamed darkly as Agatha fished in her capacious handbag. Agatha held up a twenty. ‘No, you don’t,’ she said as Mrs Cartwright reached for it. ‘Information first. Is your husband liable to come in?’
    ‘No, he’s up at Martin’s farm. He works there.’
    ‘So what have you got to tell me?’
    ‘I was surprised,’ said Mrs Cartwright, ‘when Mr Cummings-Browne died.’
    ‘Oh, weren’t we all,’ commented Agatha sarcastically.
    ‘I mean, I thought he would’ve murdered her .’
    ‘What, why?’
    ‘He spoke to me a bit. People are always telling me their troubles. It’s because I’m the maternal type.’ Mrs Cartwright yawned, reached inside her dressing-gown and scratched one of her generous bosoms. A smell of sour sweat came to Agatha’s nostrils and she thought inconsequently how rare it was to meet a really dirty woman in these hygienic days. ‘Couldn’t stand Vera, Reg couldn’t. She held the purse-strings and he said she made him jump through hoops or sit up and beg just to get some drinking money. The only money he had of his own was his pension and that didn’t go very far. He used to say to me, “Ella,” he’d say, “one day I’m going to wring that woman’s neck and be rid of her for once and for all.”’
    Agatha looked bewildered. ‘But he died, not her!’
    ‘Maybe she got there first. She hated him.’
    ‘But I had dinner with the pair of them and they seemed a devoted couple; in fact, quite alike.’
    ‘Naw, you could have a laugh with Reg, but Mrs Snobby was always turning her nose up at me. That was no accident. That was murder.’
    ‘But how could she do it? I mean, it was my quiche.’
    ‘Dunno, but I feel it here.’ Mrs Cartwright struck her bosom and another waft of sweat floated across to Agatha’s nostrils.
    ‘Mrs Cummings-Browne called on me this morning,’ said Agatha firmly, ‘and forgave me. But she was broken up about her husband’s death, quite genuinely so.’
    ‘She acts in the Carsely Dramatic Society,’ said Mrs Cartwright cynically, ‘and bloody good she is, too. Right little actress.’
    ‘No,’ said Agatha stubbornly. ‘I know when people are being straight with me, and you are not one of those people, Mrs Cartwright.’
    ‘Told you what I know.’ Mrs Cartwright stared at the twenty-pound note, which Agatha still held in her hand.
    The broken gate outside creaked and Agatha started nervously. She did not want another confrontation with John Cartwright. She thrust the note at Mrs Cartwright. ‘Look,’ she said urgently, ‘you know where to find me. If there’s anything at all you can tell me, let me know.’
    ‘I certainly will,’ said Mrs Cartwright, looking happy now that she had the money in her possession.
    Agatha was just leaving by stepping round the broken garden gate when she saw John Cartwright lumbering down the road. She hurried on, but he had seen her. He caught up with her and roughly seized her arm and swung her round. ‘You’ve been snooping around about Cummings-Browne,’ he snarled. ‘Ella told me. I’m telling you for the last time, you