Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death

important day of your life. But watch your temper’ – the receptionist came tottering back on her very high heels and whispered, ‘Mr Wilson will see you now. If you will come this way . . .’
    ‘I know the way,’ snarled Agatha. Her stocky figure marched up the stairs, her sensible low-heeled shoes thumping on the treads.
    Mr Wilson rose to meet her. He was a small, very clean man with thinning hair, gold-rimmed glasses, soft hands and an unctuous smile, more like a Harley Street doctor than the head of a public relations firm.
    ‘Why have you put my office up for sale?’ demanded Agatha.
    He smoothed the top of his head. ‘Mrs Raisin, not your office; you sold the business to us.’
    ‘But you gave me your word you would keep on my staff.’
    ‘And so we did. Most of them preferred the redundancy pay. We do not need an extra office. All the business can be done from here.’
    ‘Let me tell you, you can’t do this.’
    ‘And let me tell you, Mrs Raisin, I can do what I like. You sold us the concern, lock, stock and barrel. Now, if you don’t mind, I am very busy.’
    Then he shrank back in his chair as Agatha Raisin told him at the top of her voice exactly what he could do to himself in graphic detail before slamming out.
    Agatha stood in Cheapside, tears starting to her eyes. ‘Mrs Raisin . . . Aggie?’
    She swung round. Roy was standing there. Instead of his usual jeans and psychedelic shirt and gold earrings, he was wearing a sober business suit.
    ‘I’ll kill that bastard Wilson,’ said Agatha. ‘I’ve just told him what he can do to himself.’
    Roy squeaked and backed off. ‘I shouldn’t be seen talking to you, sweetie, if you’re not the flavour of the month. Besides, you sold him the outfit.’
    ‘Where’s Lulu?’
    ‘She took the redundancy money and is sunning her little body on the Costa Brava.’
    ‘And Jane?’
    ‘Working as PR for Friends Scotch. Can you imagine? Giving an alcoholic like her a job in a whisky company? She’ll sink their profits down her gullet in a year.’
    Agatha inquired after the rest. Only Roy had been employed by Pedmans. ‘It’s because of the Trendies,’ he explained, naming a pop group, one of Agatha’s former clients. ‘Josh, the leader, has always been ever so fond of me, as you know. So Pedmans had to take me on to keep the group. Like my new image?’ He pirouetted round.
    ‘No,’ said Agatha gruffly. ‘Doesn’t suit you. Anyway, why don’t you come down and visit me this weekend?’
    Roy looked shifty. ‘Love to, darling, but got lots and lots to do. Wilson is a slave-driver. Must go.’
    He darted off into the building, leaving Agatha standing alone on the pavement.
    She tried to hail a cab but they were all full. She walked along to Bank station but the Tube wasn’t running and someone told her there was a strike. ‘How am I going to get across town?’ grumbled Agatha.
    ‘You could try a river boat,’ he suggested. ‘Pier at London Bridge.’
    Agatha stumped along to London Bridge, her anger fading away to be replaced with a miserable feeling of loss. At the pier at London Bridge, she came across a sort of yuppies’ Dunkirk. The pier was crammed with anxious young men and women clutching briefcases while a small flotilla of pleasure boats took them off.
    She joined the end of the queue, inching forward on the floating pier, feeling slightly seasick by the time she was able to board a large old pleasure steamer that had been pressed into action for the day. The bar was open. She clutched a large gin and tonic and took it up to the stern and sat down in the sunshine on one of those little gold-and-red plush ballroom chairs one finds on Thames pleasure boats.
    The boat moved out and slid down the river in the sunshine, seeming to Agatha to be moving past all she had thrown away – life and London. Under the bridges cruised the boat, along past the traffic jams on the Embankment and then to Charing Cross Pier, where Agatha got off. She no longer felt like lunch or shopping or anything else but just wanted to get back to her cottage and lick her wounds and think of what to do.
    She walked up to Trafalgar Square and then along the Mall, past Buckingham Palace, up Constitution Hill, down the underpass and up into Hyde Park by Decimus Burton’s Gate and the Duke of Wellington’s house. She cut across the Park in the direction of Bayswater and Paddington.
    Before this one day, she thought, she had always forged ahead, always