Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death

She sat by the fire, clutching the poker, too frightened to go to bed.
    And then she thought of Mrs Bloxby, the vicar’s wife. She rang up the vicarage. The vicar answered. ‘Could I speak to your wife? It’s Agatha Raisin.’
    ‘It’s a bit late,’ said the vicar, ‘and I don’t know . . . oh, here she is.’
    ‘Mrs Bloxby,’ said Agatha in a timid voice, ‘I wonder if you can help me.’
    ‘I hope so,’ said the vicar’s wife in her gentle voice.
    So Agatha told her of the assault and ended up bursting into tears.
    ‘There, there,’ said Mrs Bloxby. ‘You must not be alone. I will be along in a minute.’
    Agatha put down the phone and dried her eyes. She felt suddenly silly. What had come over her, crying like a child for help, she who had never asked anyone for help before?
    But soon she heard a car drawing up outside and immediately all her fears left her. She knew it was Mrs Bloxby.
    The vicar’s wife came in carrying a small case. ‘I’ll just stay the night,’ she said placidly. ‘You must be very shaken. Why don’t you go to bed and I’ll bring you up a drink of hot milk and sit with you until you go to sleep?’
    Gratefully Agatha agreed. Soon she lay upstairs until Mrs Bloxby came into the bedroom carrying a hot-water bottle in one hand and a glass of hot milk in the other. ‘I brought along the hot-water bottle,’ she said, ‘because when you have had a fright, no amount of central heating seems to warm you up.’
    Agatha, with the hot-water bottle on her stomach and the hot milk inside her, and Mrs Bloxby sitting on the end of her bed, felt soothed and secure. She told the vicar’s wife all about John Cartwright and how they had found the money from the robbery in his house. ‘Poor Mrs Cartwright,’ said Mrs Bloxby. ‘We will all need to call on her tomorrow to see what we can do. She will need to get a job now. He did not allow her very much money but it would be very good for her to have something to do, other than playing bingo. We will all rally round. Try to sleep now, Mrs Raisin. The weather forecast is good and things look so much simpler when the sun is shining. We have a meeting of the Carsely Ladies’ Society at the vicarage tomorrow night. You must come. Mr Jones – you do not know him, such a charming man and a gifted photographer – is going to give us a slide show of the village past and present. We are all looking forward to it.’
    Agatha’s eyelids begin to droop and with the sound of Mrs Bloxby’s gentle voice in her ears, she fell fast asleep.
    She awoke once during the night, immediately gripped with terror. Then she remembered the vicar’s wife was in the spare bedroom across the landing and felt the fear and tension leaving her body. Mrs Bloxby’s goodness was a bright shining weapon against the dark things of the night.
    The next day, Agatha went along to Mrs Cartwright’s, mindful of her promise to Mrs Bloxby that morning to help out. But in the clear light of a sunny day, she felt sure Ella Cartwright would be more interested in money than sympathy.
    ‘Come in,’ said Ella Cartwright wearily. ‘Coppers are crawling around upstairs. Have a gin.’
    ‘This must have been a sad blow,’ said Agatha, finding it hard to find the right words after a lifetime of not bothering.
    ‘It’s a bloody relief.’ Mrs Cartwright lit a cigarette and then rolled up the sleeve of her cotton dress. ‘See these bruises? That was him, that was. Never marked my face, the cunning sod. I hope the p’lice catch him before he comes snooping back round here. I told him you only wanted to know about Reg, but he thought you’d got wind of the robbery. Fair paranoid, he was.’
    Agatha accepted a pink gin. ‘I felt guilty about Mr Cummings-Browne’s death, that was all,’ she said. ‘And there was a rumour that you and he were . . . friends.’
    Mrs Cartwright grinned. ‘Oh, Reg liked his bit o’ slap and tickle. No harm in it, is there? Took me out to a few posh restaurants. Said he’d marry me. I laughed like a drain. He wanted women to be crazy about him, so he usually made a pass at spinsters and widows. Didn’t quite know what to make of me at first. We was good pals, for he knew I didn’t believe a word he said.’
    ‘Weren’t you worried about his wife finding out?’
    ‘Nah. I s’pose her knew. Didn’t bother her, none of it, I reckon.’
    ‘But you said they hated each other.’
    ‘I was trying to give you your money’s worth. Tell you