Agatha Raisin and the Terrible Tourist

the staff.’
    Agatha clutched her hair. ‘I know James was not responsible. The whole idea is mad.’
    Pamir questioned her further and then said she was free to leave. Agatha miserably washed and dressed. She bundled up Charles’s pyjamas and put the toothbrush in her handbag and then made her way downstairs and out of the hotel.
    She drove back to the villa and let herself in. She felt she should really go to police headquarters and see if she could help James, but she felt too tired and shaken. She went up to her room and lay on the bed. Now every sound seemed sinister. Voices carried up from the beach. People chatting on the road outside sounded as if they were downstairs in the house.
    She awoke two hours later with a start. Someone was inside the house. Someone was coming up the stairs.
    Agatha was just looking wildly around for a weapon when her bedroom door opened and James came in.
    ‘Oh, James,’ said Agatha, flooded with gladness. ‘They let you go!’
    He stood in the doorway. ‘They had no real excuse to keep me. The neighbours were questioned and two of them, returning from a casino at the time I was supposed to be trying to murder you, said they had seen my rented car parked outside the house and had seen me walking in the garden, which is fortunately what I was doing since I could not sleep.’
    ‘James, who do you think tried to murder me?’
    ‘Right at this moment, I feel too tired to care. It came out during the interviewing that you had sex with Charles.’
    Agatha turned dark red. ‘That man is no gentleman.’
    ‘On the contrary. He lied gallantly, but unfortunately for you, the proof of your love-making was there on the sheets and the hotel staff bore witness to that. They had hitherto kept this interesting fact from me, because I think they were sorry for me. No, Agatha, don’t say anything more. You lied to me, as you lied to me about the existence of your husband.’
    He went out and closed the door.

Chapter Six

    Agatha went for a long walk along the beach. There were fewer tourists, and flocks of migrating birds sailed over the cloudless sky overhead.
    She was beginning to become angry over her own fear of James and his recriminations. How had it happened that she, Agatha Raisin, once the terror of the public relations world, should dread another confrontation? Being in love seemed to have sapped her strength. How strange that few people actually talked about love any more. They were obsessed, taken hostage, or co-dependent – anything rather than admit they were not in control, for the very word ‘love’ now meant weakness.
    But he was at fault. He was no saint either. He had had affairs even with a woman in the village.
    She would need to have it out with him and though she quailed from the idea, she knew she could not go on living under the same roof with him in a hostile atmosphere. As she walked back, the thought that someone was actually trying to kill her made her keep stopping and look warily around. She climbed up the steep hill from the beach to the villa. She felt breathless from the walk and threw away the cigarette she had been smoking. Before smoking had become such a sin, Agatha had thought the whole time about giving up. Now that it was, somehow she could not seem to summon up the will to stop.
    She went into the villa. She could hear from the clatter of dishes that James was in the kitchen. She walked in and said to his back, ‘Come and sit down, James. We can’t go on like this. We have to talk.’
    He turned round, his face hard and closed. But he went and sat at the kitchen table. Agatha pulled out a seat opposite him and sat down.
    ‘I want you to listen to me carefully,’ began Agatha in an even voice. ‘You have shown me no love or affection since I came here. I got drunk with Charles and ended up in bed with him. It just happened. I had no reason not to tell you the truth, but I did not want to lose you. But in this loveless whatever-it-is we have between us, you have no right to be angry with me or possessive or jealous. You have hurt me badly. We both want to find out who murdered Rose. But we cannot go on living together like this. What do you suggest?’
    He stared at the table in silence.
    ‘James,’ Agatha pleaded, ‘I know that any intimate conversation makes you want to shrivel up, but you are going to have to say something.’
    He looked at her bleakly. ‘You’ll need to give me a little more time, Agatha. I have been behaving