Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death

was dressed in a forties style, pinned back in rolls from her face. All this Agatha was able to see as the woman straightened up.
    ‘Evening,’ called Agatha.
    The woman turned on her heel and walked into her house and closed the door.
    Agatha found this rudeness a welcome change after all the friendliness of Carsely. It was more what she was used to. She walked back through her own cottage, out the front door, up to the cottage next door, which was called New Delhi, and rapped on the brass knocker.
    A curtain at a window near the door twitched but that was the only sign of life. Agatha gleefully knocked again, louder this time.
    The door opened a crack and one bulbous eye stared out at her.
    ‘Good evening,’ said Agatha, holding out her hand. ‘I’m your new neighbour.’
    The door slowly opened. The woman in the print dress reluctantly picked up Agatha’s hand, as if it were a dead fish, and shook it. ‘I am Agatha Raisin,’ said Agatha, ‘and you are . . .?’
    ‘Mrs Sheila Barr,’ said the woman. ‘You must forgive me, Mrs . . . er . . . Raisin, but I am very busy at the moment.’
    ‘I won’t take up much of your time,’ said Agatha. ‘I need a cleaning woman.’
    Mrs Barr gave that infuriating kind of laugh often described as ‘superior’. ‘You won’t get anyone in the village. It’s almost impossible to get anyone to clean. I have my Mrs Simpson, so I’m very lucky.’
    ‘Perhaps she might do a few hours for me,’ suggested Agatha. The door began to close. ‘Oh, no,’ said Mrs Barr, ‘I am sure she wouldn’t.’ And then the door was closed completely.
    We’ll see about that, thought Agatha.
    She collected her handbag and went down to the Red Lion and hitched her bottom on to a bar stool. ‘Evening, Mrs Raisin,’ said the landlord, Joe Fletcher. ‘Turned nice, hasn’t it? Maybe we’ll be getting some good weather after all.’
    Sod the weather, thought Agatha, who was tired of talking about it. Aloud she said, ‘Do you know where Mrs Simpson lives?’
    ‘Council estate, I think. Would that be Bert Simpson’s missus?’
    ‘Don’t know. She cleans.’
    ‘Oh, ah, that’ll be Doris Simpson all right. Don’t recall the number, but it’s Wakefield Terrace, second along, the one with the gnomes.’
    Agatha drank a gin and tonic and then set out for the council estate. She soon found Wakefield Terrace and the Simpsons because their garden was covered in plastic gnomes, not grouped round a pool, or placed artistically, but just spread about at random.
    Mrs Simpson answered the door herself. She looked more like an old-fashioned schoolteacher than a charwoman. She had snow-white hair scraped back in a bun, and pale-grey eyes behind spectacles.
    Agatha explained her mission. Mrs Simpson shook her head. ‘Don’t see as how I can manage any more, and that’s a fact. Do Mrs Barr next to you on Tuesdays, then there’s Mrs Chomley on Wednesdays and Mrs Cummings-Browne on Thursdays, and then the weekends I work in a supermarket at Evesham.’
    ‘How much does Mrs Barr pay you?’ asked Agatha.
    ‘Five pounds an hour.’
    ‘If you work for me instead, I’ll give you six pounds an hour.’
    ‘You’d best come in. Bert! Bert, turn that telly off. This here is Mrs Raisin what’s taken Budgen’s cottage down Lilac Lane.’
    A small, spare man with thinning hair turned off the giant television set which commanded the small neat living-room.
    ‘I didn’t know it was called Lilac Lane,’ said Agatha. ‘They don’t seem to believe in putting up names for the roads in the village.’
    ‘Reckon that’s because there’s so few of them, m’dear,’ said Bert.
    ‘I’ll get you a cup of tea, Mrs Raisin.’
    ‘Agatha. Do call me Agatha,’ said Agatha with the smile that any journalist she had dealt with would recognize. Agatha Raisin was going in for the kill.
    While Doris Simpson retreated to the kitchen, Agatha said, ‘I am trying to persuade your wife to stop working for Mrs Barr and work for me instead. I am offering six pounds an hour, a whole day’s work, and, of course, lunch supplied.’
    ‘Sounds handsome to me, but you’ll have to ask Doris,’ said Bert. ‘Not but what she would be glad to see the back of that Barr woman’s house.’
    ‘Hard work?’
    ‘It’s not the work,’ said Bert, ‘it’s the way that woman do go on. She follows Doris around, checking everything, like.’
    ‘Is she from Carsely?’
    ‘Naw, her’s an incomer. Husband died a