Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death

most writers spent his days looking for excuses not to work.
    He knew Bill Wong and nodded a greeting. James settled down over a cup of coffee, relieved that Agatha was not staring at him in the intense way she usually did.
    ‘We’ve just been talking about Paul Bladen’s death,’ said Agatha. She described what had happened.
    The retired colonel despised what he called ‘women’s gossip’ and would have been amazed had anyone pointed out to him that he was just like the rest of the human race, a gossip himself.
    ‘I’m not surprised,’ he said cheerfully, ‘that a man so generally loathed should be bumped off.’
    ‘But he wasn’t bumped off,’ protested Agatha.
    The people who claim not to be gossips are usually the worst kind, and James Lacey weighed in. ‘How can you be sure?’ he demanded. ‘For a start, did you hear about poor Mrs Josephs? You know she was devoted to that old cat of hers, Tewks. Well, she kept going to Bladen with one excuse or another. One day he asked her to leave the cat with him for a full examination. When she went back to collect her beloved pet, he had put it to death. He said the cat was too old and needed to be put out of its misery. Mrs Josephs was distraught.
    ‘Then there was Miss Simms. She kept going along on one pretext or another. The last time she went, she said, and I believe her, it was because the cat had a genuine complaint. It was scratching and scratching. Bladen told her coldly the cat had fleas, and not to waste his time and be more thorough with her housekeeping. She took her cat back to her former vet, who told her the animal had an allergy. Miss Simms returned to Bladen and ripped him up and down. You could hear it all over the village. But then Bladen had told Jack Page, the farmer, that he was sick of those women and their dreary pets. He only had time for working animals.’
    ‘This must have all happened when I was in London,’ said Agatha. ‘I mean, they all went to him when he first came.’
    ‘They were all in love with him,’ said James. ‘Then for some reason he started to get nasty to a few of them. There are still some who think he’s the best vet ever . . . or was.’
    ‘Who are they?’ asked Bill.
    ‘Mrs Huntingdon, the pretty newcomer with the Jack Russell; Mrs Mason, the chairwoman of the Carsely Ladies’ Society; Mrs Harriet Parr from the lower village; and Miss Josephine Webster, who runs that shop which seems to sell nothing other than dried flowers.’
    ‘How did you learn all this?’ exclaimed Agatha, and then turned pink, for she realized in that moment that he was every bit as much pursued by the village women as Paul Bladen had been.
    ‘Oh, people talk to me,’ he said vaguely.
    ‘You had a dinner date with Bladen,’ said Bill Wong, looking at Agatha. ‘The night before his death, in fact, for I asked you out for dinner and you told me you couldn’t go because you had a date with him.’
    ‘So what?’ demanded Agatha.
    James Lacey looked at her curiously. She was quite attractive, he supposed, in a pugnacious sort of way. In fact, now that she was not oiling all over him, he could see that she did have certain good points. She had a trim, if rather stocky figure, excellent legs, rather small, intelligent brown eyes, and shiny healthy brown hair, worn straight but cut by some no doubt expensive hairdressing master.
    ‘So I’m interested,’ Bill was saying. ‘Where did you go for dinner?’
    ‘That new Greek place in Mircester.’
    ‘Horrible dump,’ said James. ‘Took someone there for dinner myself. Never again.’
    Agatha wondered immediately whom he had taken for dinner, but she said, ‘I didn’t find out all that much about him. Oh, he said his dream was to open a veterinary hospital.’
    ‘Aha,’ said Bill maliciously. ‘Tried to get money out of you, did he?’
    ‘ No, he did not! ’ yelled Agatha, and added in a quieter voice. ‘It may come as a surprise to you, but he fancied me.’
    ‘I’m glad about that. I mean, you’d suffered enough already with that chap in London trying to cheat you,’ said Bill.
    ‘More coffee?’ said Agatha, glaring at him.
    ‘Yes, please,’ said James Lacey.
    ‘Not for me,’ said Bill. ‘Back to work.’ And he left the kitchen too quickly for James to change his mind and escape.
    Determined to be as remote and cool as possible, Agatha served James with another cup of coffee and then sat at the far end of the table from him. More for something to