Agatha Raisin and the Terrible Tourist

but I can’t get him to say one word about us. Passion, thought Agatha. Was that what was behind this murder? But George Debenham, thin and sallow like his wife, seemed always cool and detached. Then there was friend Harry Tembleton, whose expression was usually hidden behind a pair of thick spectacles, and yet, in his way, Harry was almost a reflection of Angus, both being old and sagging and with white thinning hair. Perhaps there was a breed of elderly men who attached themselves to married couples.
    ‘Were you ever married, Harry?’ asked Agatha.
    He blinked at her through his glasses and said, ‘Yes, but she died twenty years ago.’
    ‘And you, Angus?’
    ‘Never found anyone to suit me,’ said Angus sadly. His Scottish accent was only slight when he forgot to thicken it. ‘If I could have met someone like Rose, it might have been a different matter.’
    Agatha glanced quickly at Trevor to see how he had taken this declaration, but Trevor appeared to be once more sunk in gloom.
    ‘And what about you, Agatha?’ asked Olivia. ‘Rose told us she remembered reading about you. Your husband was murdered just as you were about to marry James here. It’s a wonder he’s forgiven you.’
    ‘He hasn’t and won’t, ever,’ said Agatha, her eyes suddenly filling with tears. ‘Excuse me.’ She rose to her feet and went to the toilet and leaned against the wash-hand basin. What is up with me? she thought. Is this the menopause? Should I go on hormone replacement therapy? Or maybe I need a good psychiatrist to tell me that my infatuation for James is because I’m sick in the head.
    She walked wearily out of the toilet and back towards the table in the garden. Then she stopped stock-still and gazed in amazement at the entrance to the restaurant.
    A small man with fine hair and a thin, sensitive face was standing there, looking vaguely about him.
    Agatha walked towards him. ‘Charles.’
    Sir Charles Fraith, Baronet, focused on her. ‘Funny thing,’ he said, ‘I was just thinking about you, Agatha. Folks at the hotel were talking about some Englishwoman being murdered and you crossed my mind.’
    Agatha had been part of a murder investigation when a rambler had been found dead on Sir Charles’s land.
    ‘Do you want to join us?’ Agatha indicated her party, who were all staring at them.
    ‘That’s that chap Lacey,’ said Charles. ‘That’s the one you nearly married. Odd bunch of people with him. No, I don’t think I want to join them.’
    ‘What are you doing here, Charles?’
    ‘Just a little holiday. You’re here with Lacey? Honeymoon?’
    ‘No, we’re just friends.’
    ‘Oh, in that case, let’s go somewhere for a drink.’
    ‘Don’t you want to eat?’
    ‘No, I was just cruising the highways and byways, looking for a cool place to have a drink.’
    ‘You’d best come over and say hello,’ said Agatha, who was looking forward to introducing this baronet to Olivia.
    ‘I don’t think so, Agatha. You know what will happen. They’ll all come with us. Let’s just drift off.’
    Suddenly the thought of walking away with Charles and going for a quiet drink somewhere seemed wonderful.
    James had engaged Olivia in conversation, not wanting Agatha to know that they were all awaiting her return impatiently. He had not recognized Charles, who was slightly hidden by a palm; he only knew that Agatha was talking to some man. When he looked up again, Agatha and her companion had gone.
    Ten minutes later Agatha and Charles were sitting at an outdoor café near the Dome Hotel.
    Charles ordered brandy sours for both of them and leaned back in his chair and gazed vaguely out to sea.
    ‘I heard you’d got married,’ said Agatha.
    ‘Engaged. Didn’t work. No chemistry. Sarah was very attached to her parents. Very worthy people, but her father was the sort of man who puts logs on my fire. Know what I mean?’
    ‘Sort of,’ said Agatha, suddenly getting a picture of a solid middle-class family, foreign in their ways to the aristocratic Charles.
    ‘They liked giving very long dinner parties with such boring people. I used to sit there thinking, when will this evening end? Bring on the cheese. Oh, please God, bring on the cheese.’
    ‘So you broke off the engagement? How’s Gustav?’ Gustav had been Charles’s manservant.
    ‘Left me because of the engagement. Terrible snob, Gustav.’
    ‘Where is he now?’
    ‘Maître d’ in some classy hotel in Geneva.’
    ‘Did you replace