Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death

wife, a sort of orangey tan that led Agatha to think it probably came out of a bottle. He had a balding pointed head with sparse grey hairs carefully combed over the top and odd juglike ears. Mr Cummings-Browne had been in the British Army in Aden, he volunteered. That, Agatha reflected, must have been quite some time ago. Then it transpired he had done a ‘little chicken farming’, but he preferred to talk about his army days, a barely comprehensible saga of servants he had had, and ‘chappies’ in the regiment. He was wearing a sports jacket with leather patches at the elbow over an olive-green shirt with a cravat at the neck. His wife was wearing a Laura Ashley gown that reminded Agatha of the bedspreads in her cottage.
    Agatha thought grimly that her quiche had better win, for she knew when she was being ripped off and the Feathers was doing just that. A landlord who stood on the wrong side of the bar which ran along the end of the dining-room drinking with his cronies, a pretentious and dreadfully expensive menu, and sullen waitresses roused Agatha’s anger. The Cummings-Brownes had, predictably, chosen the second-most-expensive wine on the menu, two bottles of it. Agatha let them do most of the talking until the coffee arrived and then she got down to business. She asked what kind of quiche usually won the prize. Mr Cummings-Browne said it was usually quiche lorraine or mushroom quiche. Agatha said firmly that she would contribute her favourite – spinach quiche.
    Mrs Cummings-Browne laughed. If she laughs like that again, I really will slap her, thought Agatha, particularly as Mrs Cummings-Browne followed up the laugh by saying that Mrs Cartwright always won. Agatha was to remember later that there had been a certain stillness about Mr Cummings-Browne when Mrs Cartwright’s name was mentioned, but for the present, she had the bit between her teeth. Her own quiche, said Agatha, was famous for its delicacy of taste and lightness of pastry. Besides, a spirit of competition was what was needed in the village. Very bad for morale to have the same woman winning year in and year out. Agatha was good at emanating emotional blackmail without precisely saying anything direct. She made jokes about how dreadfully expensive the meal was while all the time her bearlike brown eyes hammered home the message: ‘You owe me for this dinner.’
    But journalists as a rule belong to the kind of people who are born feeling guilty. Obviously the Cummings-Brownes were made of sterner stuff. As Agatha was preparing to pay the bill – notes slowly counted out instead of credit card to emphasize the price – her guests stayed her hand by ordering large brandies for themselves.
    Despite all they had drunk, they remained as sober-looking as they had been when the meal started. Agatha asked about the villagers. Mrs Cummings-Browne said they were pleasant enough and they did what they could for them, all delivered in a lady-of-the-manor tone. They asked Agatha about herself and she replied briefly. Agatha had never trained herself to make social chit-chat. She was only used to selling a product or asking people all about themselves to soften them up so that she could eventually sell that product.
    They finally went out into the soft dark night. The wind had died and the air held a promise of summer to come. Mr Cummings-Browne drove his Range Rover slowly through the green lanes leading back to Carsely. A fox slid across the road in front of the lights, rabbits skittered for safety, and bird cherry, just beginning to blossom, starred the hedgerows. Loneliness again gripped Agatha. It was a night for friends, for pleasant company, not a night to be with such as the Cummings-Brownes. He parked outside his own front door and said to Agatha, ‘Find your way all right from here?’
    ‘No,’ said Agatha crossly. ‘The least you could do is to run me home.’
    ‘Lose the use of your legs if you go on like this,’ he said nastily, but after giving an impatient little sigh, he drove her to her cottage.
    I must leave a light on in future, thought Agatha as she looked at her dark cottage. A light would be welcoming. Before getting out of the car, she asked him exactly how to go about entering the competition, and after he had told her she climbed down and, without saying good night, went into her lonely cottage.
    The next day, as instructed, she entered her name in the quiche-competition book in the school hall. The voices of the