Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death

pie took quite a long time and she was just putting it in the oven when she heard a car draw up.
    Tracy Butterworth was all Agatha had expected. She was thin and pallid, with limp brown hair. She was wearing a white cotton suit with a pink frilly blouse and very high-heeled white shoes. She had a limp handshake and said, ‘Please ter meet you,’ in a shy whisper and then looked at Roy with devotion.
    ‘I see a removal van outside that awful woman’s cottage,’ said Roy.
    ‘What!’ Agatha cast an anguished look at the vases of flowers. ‘I thought she’d gone.’
    ‘Relax. Someone’s moving in, not out. Say something, Tracy. She won’t eat you.’
    ‘You’ve got ever such a lovely cottage,’ volunteered Tracy. She dabbed at her forehead with a scrap of lace-edged handkerchief.
    ‘It’s too hot to be dressed up,’ said Agatha. Tracy winced and Agatha said with new kindness, ‘Not that you don’t look very smart and pretty. But make yourself at home. Kick off your shoes and take off your jacket.’
    Tracy looked nervously at Roy.
    ‘Do as she says,’ he ordered.
    Tracy had very long thin feet, which she wriggled in an embarrassed way once her shoes were off. Poor thing, thought Agatha. He’ll marry her and turn her into the complete Essex woman. Two children called Wayne and Kylie at minor public schools, house in some twee builder’s close called Loam End or something, table-mats from the Costa Brava, ruched curtains, jacuzzi, giant television set, boredom, out on Saturday night to some road-house for scampi and chips washed down with Beaujolais nouveau and followed by tiramisu. Yes, Essex it would be and not the Cotswolds. Roy would be happier with his own kind. He too would change and take up weight-lifting and squash and walk around with a mobile glued to his ear, speaking very loudly into it in restaurants.
    ‘Let’s go along to the pub for a drink,’ said Agatha, after Roy had been talking about the days when he worked for her, elaborating every small incident for Tracy’s benefit. Agatha wondered whether to offer Tracy a loose dress to wear but decided against it. The girl would take it as a criticism of what she was wearing.
    In the pub, Agatha introduced them to her new-found friends and Tracy blossomed in the undemanding company which only expected her to talk about the weather.
    The heat was certainly bad enough to be exciting. The sun beat down fiercely outside. One man volunteered that a temperature of 129 degrees Fahrenheit had been recorded at Cheltenham.
    Back at the cottage Tracy helped with the lunch, her high heels stabbing little holes into the kitchen linoleum until Agatha begged her to take them off. There was some shade in the garden after lunch and so they moved there, drinking coffee and listening idly to the sounds of the new neighbour moving in.
    ‘Don’t you even want to peek over the hedge or take a cake along or something?’ asked Roy. ‘Aren’t you curious?’
    Agatha shook her head. ‘I’ve seen the estate agent and this house goes up for sale next week.’
    ‘You’re selling?’ Tracy looked at her in amazement. ‘Why?’
    ‘I’m going back to London.’
    Tracy looked around the sunny garden and then up to the Cotswold Hills above the village, shimmering in a heat haze. She shook her head in bewilderment. ‘Leave all this? I’ve never seen anywhere more beautiful in all me life.’ She looked back at the cottage and struggled to express her thoughts. ‘It’s so old, so settled. There’s somethink peaceful about it, know what I mean? Of course, I s’pose it’s diff’rent for you, Mrs Raisin. You’ve probably travelled and seen all sorts of beautiful places.’
    Yes, Carsely was beautiful, thought Agatha reluctantly. The village was blessed with many underground springs, and so, in the middle of all the drought around, it glowed like a green emerald.
    ‘She doesn’t like it,’ crowed Roy, ‘because people keep trying to murder her.’
    Tracy begged to be told all about it and so Agatha began at the beginning, talking at first to Tracy and then to herself, for there was something nagging at the back of her mind.
    That evening, Roy took them out for dinner to a pretentious restaurant in Mircester. Tracy only drank mineral water, for she was to drive Roy home. She seemed intimidated by the restaurant but admiring of Roy, who was snapping his fingers at the waiters and, as far as Agatha was concerned, behaving like a first-class creep. Yes,