Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death

of people all chatting away.
    ‘You’ll know soon enough,’ she said at last. ‘I’m putting my cottage up for sale.’
    ‘Well, that’s a pity,’ said Mr Page. ‘You off to Lunnon again?’
    ‘Yes, going to restart in business.’
    ‘S’pose it’s different for you, Mrs Raisin,’ said his wife. ‘I once went up there and I was so lonely. Cities are lonely places. Different for you. You must have scores of friends.’
    ‘Yes,’ lied Agatha, thinking bleakly that the only friend she had was Roy and he had only become a friend since she had moved to the Cotswolds. The heat was still fierce. Agatha felt too lazy to think what to do next and somehow she found she had accepted an invitation to go back to Jimmy Page’s farm with a group of them. Once at the farm, which was up on a rise above the village, they all sat outside and drank cider and talked idly about how hot the weather was and remembered summers of long ago, until the sun began to move down the sky and someone suggested they should move to the Red Lion and so they did.
    Walking home later, slightly tipsy, Agatha shook off doubts about selling the house. Once the winter came, things in Carsely would look different, bleaker, more shut off. She had done the right thing. But Jimmy Page had said her cottage was seventeenth-century. Nothing fake about it, he had said, apart from the extension.
    She kicked off her shoes and reached out a hand to switch on the lights when the security lights came on outside the house, brilliant and dazzling. She stood frozen. There came soft furtive sounds as though someone were retreating quietly from the door. All she had to do was to fling open the door and see who it was. But she could not move. She felt sure something dark and sinister was out there. It could not be children. Young people in Carsely went to bed at good old-fashioned times of the evening, even on holiday.
    She sank down on to the floor and sat there with her back against the wall, listening hard. And then the security lights went off again, plunging the house into darkness.
    She sat there for a long time before slowly rising and switching on the house lights, moving from room to room, switching them all on as she had done before when she was frightened.
    Agatha wondered whether to call Mrs Bloxby. It was probably one of the young men of the village, or someone walking a dog. Slowly her fear left her, but when she went up to bed, she left all the lights burning.
    In the morning she was heartened to see a huge removal van outside New Delhi and the removal men hard at work. Obviously Mrs Barr did not see anything wrong in moving house on the Sabbath. Agatha was just wondering whether to go to church or not when the phone rang. It was Roy.
    ‘I’ve got a surprise for you, love.’
    Agatha felt a sudden surge of hope. ‘You’ve decided to leave Pedmans?’
    ‘No, I’ve bought a car, a Morris Minor. Got it for a song. Thought I’d drive down and bring the girlfriend to see you.
    ‘Girlfriend? You haven’t got one.’
    ‘I have now. Can we come?’
    ‘Of course. What’s her name?’
    ‘Tracy Butterworth.’
    ‘And what does she do?’
    ‘She’s one of the typists in the pool at Pedmans.’
    ‘When will you get here?’
    ‘We’re leaving now. Hour and a half if the roads aren’t bad. Maybe two.’
    Agatha looked in the fridge after she had rung off. She hadn’t even any milk. She went to a supermarket in Stow-on-the-Wold which opened on Sundays and bought milk, lettuce and tomatoes for salad, minced meat and potatoes to make shepherd’s pie, onions and carrots, peas, a frozen apple pie and some cream.
    There was no need to do any cleaning when she returned. Doris had been in while she had been in London and the place was impeccable. As she drove down into Carsely, the removal van passed her, followed by Mrs Barr in her car. They must have been at it since six in the morning, thought Agatha, making a mental note of the removal firm.
    She put away her groceries when she got home, found a pair of scissors, edged through the hedge at the back into Mrs Barr’s garden, and cut bunches of flowers to decorate her cottage.
    She prepared the shepherd’s pie after she had arranged the flowers, thinking that she really must do something about the garden. It would look lovely in the spring if she put in a lot of bulbs – but, of course, she would not be in Carsely in the spring.
    As she was still an inexperienced cook, the simple shepherd’s