Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death

beats the heart of a real chauvinist pig. He would find a young girl, meek, biddable, a bit common so as not to make him feel inferior. She would be expected to learn to host little dinner parties and not complain when her husband only came home at weekends. They would learn to play golf. Roy would gradually become plump and stuffy. She had seen it all happen before.
    ‘But as my partner, you could earn more,’ she said.
    ‘You’ve lost your clients to Pedmans. It would take ages to get them back. You know that, Aggie. You’d have to start small again and build up. Is that what you really want? Let’s go in for dinner and talk some more. I’m famished.’
    Agatha decided to leave the subject for the moment and began to tell him about the attack on her by John Cartwright and how he had turned out to be a burglar.
    ‘Honestly, Aggie, don’t you see – London would be tame by comparison. Besides, a friend tells me you’re never alone in the country. The neighbours care what happens to you.’
    ‘Unless they’re like Mrs Barr,’ said Agatha drily. ‘She’s selling up. The cow had the cheek to claim I had driven her off, but in fact she was left a bigger cottage by an aunt in Ancombe.’
    ‘I thought she was an incomer,’ said Roy. ‘Now you tell me she’s had at least one relative living close by.’
    ‘If you haven’t been born and brought up in Carsely itself, take it from me, you’re an incomer,’ reported Agatha. ‘Oh, something else about her.’
    She told Roy about the play and he shrieked with laughter. ‘Oh, it must be murder, Aggie,’ he gasped.
    ‘No, I don’t think it was any more, and I don’t care now. I visited Economides today and the reason he’s glad to let the whole business blow over is that the quiche he sold me was actually baked on his cousin’s premises down in Devon and the cousin has a new son-in-law working for him who doesn’t have a work permit.’
    ‘Ah, that explains that, and the burglaring John Cartwright explains his behaviour, but what of the women that Cummings-Browne was philandering with? What of the mad Maria?’
    ‘I think she’s just mad, and Barbara James is a toughie and Ella Cartwright is a slut and Mrs Barr has a screw loose as well, but I don’t think any of them murdered Cummings-Browne. Here I go again. Bill Wong was right.’
    ‘Which leaves Vera Cummings-Browne.’
    ‘As for her, I was suddenly sure she had done it, that it was all very simple. She thought of the murder when I left my quiche. She went home and dumped mine and baked another.’
    ‘Brilliant,’ said Roy. ‘And she wasn’t found out because Economides was so frightened about work permits and things that he didn’t look at or examine the quiche that was supposed to be his!’
    ‘That’s a good theory. But the police exploded that. They checked everything in her kitchen, her pots and pans, her dustbin and even her drains. She hadn’t been baking or cooking anything at all on the day of the murder. Let it go, Roy. You’ve got me calling it murder and I had just put it all behind me. To get back to more interesting matters . . . Are you determined to stay with Pedmans?’
    ‘I’m afraid so, Aggie. It’s all your fault in a way. If you hadn’t arranged that publicity for me, I wouldn’t have risen so fast. Tell you what I’ll do, though. You get started and I’ll drop a word in your ear when I know any client who’s looking for a change . . . not one of mine, of course. But that’s all I can do.’
    Agatha felt flat. The ambition which had fuelled her for so long seemed to be draining away. After she had said goodbye to Roy, she went out and walked restlessly about the nighttime streets of London, as if searching for her old self. In Piccadilly Circus, a couple of white-faced drug addicts gazed at her with empty eyes and a beggar threatened her. Heat still seemed to be pulsing up from the pavements and out from the buildings.
    For the rest of the week, she took walks in the parks, a boat trip down the Thames, and went to theatres and cinemas, moving through the stifling heat of London feeling like a ghost, or someone who had lost her cards of identity. For so long, her work had been her character, her personality, her identity.
    By Friday evening, the thought of the village band concert began to loom large in her mind. The women of the Carsely Ladies’ Society would be there, she could trot along to the Red Lion if she was lonely, and perhaps she could do