Agatha Raisin and the Terrible Tourist

month.’
    ‘Why has Mr Lacey gone? I thought none of you was supposed to leave.’
    ‘He just took off,’ said Agatha. Her eyes suddenly filled with tears. Oh, James, how could you? Where are you?
    Bilal handed her a clean handkerchief and looked at her sympathetically while she blew her nose, so sympathetically that Agatha found herself telling him everything.
    ‘The police here are very good,’ said Bilal. ‘Just like British police, Mrs Raisin.’
    ‘Agatha.’
    ‘Agatha, then, why don’t you just take a holiday? I mean swim and see the sights and forget about trying to find out who did it. Your own life seems to be in danger. Just keep away from them all.’
    Agatha gave him a watery smile, warmed and comforted by his concern.
    ‘I think I might just take your advice, Bilal.’
    ‘And come to our place one evening for dinner. Jackie’s a good cook.’
    ‘Thank you. And now I really must go.’ They both rose.
    ‘It will be all right. It may seem like a nightmare now, but it will be all right, you’ll see.’
    Bilal smiled warmly at her, and moved by his friendship, Agatha put her arms round him and hugged him and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
    And then, as Agatha turned to walk away, she saw Jackie standing a little further down the street, staring at her, and behind her stood Pamir.
    And Agatha blushed, suddenly aware of how that affectionate embrace must look to Pamir, let alone Bilal’s wife. She walked towards them.
    ‘I was just talking to your husband,’ she said to Jackie.
    ‘So I saw,’ said Jackie drily.
    ‘Looking for me?’ Agatha asked Pamir with what she felt was an awful, false, guilty brightness.
    ‘No, I was on my way to speak to your landlords. I will call on you later, perhaps.’
    Agatha trailed off. Pamir would be confirmed in his suspicions that she was some sort of sex-mad, peculiar female.
    Her mind was just beginning to accept Bilal’s advice as she walked up to the Grapevine, deciding to have a drink at the bar. The bar was empty, the lunchtime rush being over. Agatha realized she was hungry and ordered a chicken sandwich and a glass of wine and sat down at one of the tables.
    And then Trevor came in. At first he did not see Agatha. He asked for a whisky in a hoarse voice and then, turning from the bar with his glass in his hand, he spotted her.
    He walked forwards and demanded, ‘Are you following me?’
    ‘How can I be following you when I was here first?’ demanded Agatha.
    Now that she had decided to forget about the case, she was dismayed when he sat down next to her. The tables were out in the restaurant garden among the flowers. Sun slanted down through the leaves of a jasmine bush, casting fluttering shadows over Trevor’s pink, bloated face.
    ‘This is a bad business,’ he said.
    ‘Yes,’ said Agatha, wishing he would go away.
    ‘I mean, why Harry?’ he went on.
    Agatha’s good resolutions disappeared as she asked, ‘You tried to punch Harry, didn’t you, because he called Rose a slut?’
    ‘I don’t remember,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I drink so much, get these big blanks.’
    ‘Why would Harry call her a slut?’
    Agatha held on to the table-top, prepared to flee if Trevor lost his temper, but all his usual truculence was absent.
    ‘He probably felt for Olivia.’
    ‘Did Olivia think her husband was after Rose? I mean, was there any reason for her to think so?’
    ‘Could’ve been. Rose liked to flirt a bit. That was all.’
    ‘How did you meet Rose?’
    ‘I was with my wife at this roadhouse outside Cambridge – that’s my first wife, Maggie. It was our wedding anniversary. Maggie and I had been married for twenty-five years. Got married when I was eighteen. Well, we was sort of Darby and Joan, set in our ways. Got one boy, left home to work abroad, just me and Maggie left. Good housekeeper. Very quiet. Bit fat. Grey hair. Never went out winter or summer without gloves on. We was in the dining-room, but there was this long bar running along the edge of it and Rose was sitting up on a bar-stool.
    ‘I can ’member that evening as if it was yesterday. She was wearing a short dress and she had all these diamonds on.
    ‘“Look at all those rocks on that woman,” I says to Maggie. And Maggie says they’re bound to be paste. Rose saw us looking at her and she asks the barman something. I had told the restaurant to give us a good table because it was our wedding anniversary and the barman must have known, for next thing is