Agatha Raisin and the Terrible Tourist

for the business plan, those against, and those like Agatha who were heartily bored with the whole thing.
    Mrs Bloxby took Agatha aside as she was leaving, her gentle face concerned.
    ‘You are looking a bit down in the dumps, Agatha,’ she said. ‘Is it James?’
    ‘No,’ lied Agatha defensively. ‘It’s the time of year. It always gets me down.’
    ‘“April is the cruellest month.”’
    Agatha blinked rapidly. She suspected a literary quotation and she hated quotations, damning them as belonging to some arty-farty world.
    ‘Just so,’ she grumped and made her way out into the sweet evening air.
    A magnolia tree glistened waxily in the silence of the vicarage garden. Over in the churchyard daffodils, bleached white by moonlight, nestled up to old leaning tombstones.
    I must buy a plot in the churchyard, thought Agatha. How comforting to rest one’s last under that blanket of shaggy grass and flowers. She sighed. Life at that moment was just a bowl of withered fruit, with a stone in every one.
    She had almost forgotten about the water company. But a week later Roy Silver phoned her. Roy had been her employee when she had run her own business and now worked for the company which had bought her out. He was in a high state of excitement.
    ‘Listen to this, Aggie,’ he chirped. ‘That Ancombe Water Company – heard of it?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘They’re our new clients and as their office is in Mircester, the boss wondered if you would like to handle the account on a freelance basis.’
    Agatha looked steelily at the phone. Roy Silver was the one who had found her husband so that he had turned up just as she was about to get married to James.
    ‘No,’ she said curtly and replaced the phone.
    She sat looking at it for a few minutes and then, plucking up courage, picked up the receiver and dialled James’s number.
    He answered after the first ring. ‘James,’ said Agatha with an awful false brightness. ‘What about dinner tonight?’
    ‘I am very sorry,’ he said crisply. ‘I am busy. And,’ he went on quickly, as if to forestall any further invitation, ‘I shall be busy for the next few weeks.’
    Agatha very gently replaced the receiver. Her stomach hurt. People always talked about hearts breaking but the pain was always right in the gut.
    A blackbird sang happily somewhere in the garden, the sweetness of the song intensifying the pain inside Agatha.
    She picked up the phone again and dialled the number of Mircester police headquarters and asked to speak to her friend, Detective Sergeant Bill Wong, and, having been told it was his day off, phoned him at home.
    ‘Agatha,’ said Bill, pleased. ‘I’m not doing anything today. Why don’t you come over?’
    Agatha hesitated. She found Bill’s parents rather grim. ‘I’m afraid it will just be me,’ went on Bill. ‘Ma and Pa have gone to Southend to see some relatives.’
    ‘I’ll be over,’ said Agatha.
    She drove off, eyes averted from James’s cottage.
    Bill was delighted to see her. He was in his twenties, with a round face and a figure newly trimmed down.
    ‘You’re looking fit, Bill,’ said Agatha. ‘New girlfriend?’ Bill’s love life could be assessed from his figure, which quickly became plump the minute there was no romance in the offing.
    ‘Yes. Her name is Sharon. She’s a typist at the station. Very pretty.’
    ‘Introduced her yet to your mother and father?’
    ‘Not yet.’
    So he would be all right for a while, thought Agatha cynically. Bill adored his parents and could never understand why the minute he introduced one of his lady-loves to them, the romance was immediately over.
    ‘I was just about to have lunch,’ said Bill.
    ‘I’ll take you somewhere. My treat,’ said Agatha quickly. Bill’s cooking was as awful as that of his mother.
    ‘All right. There’s quite a good pub at the end of the road.’
    The pub, called the Jolly Red Cow, was a dismal place, dominated by a pool table where the unemployed, white-faced youth of Mircester passed their daylight hours.
    Agatha ordered chicken salad. The lettuce was limp and the chicken stringy. Bill tucked into a greasy egg, sausage and chips with every appearance of enjoyment.
    ‘So what’s new, Bill? Anything exciting?’
    ‘Nothing much. Things have been quite quiet, thank goodness. What about you? Seen much of James?’
    Agatha’s face went stiff. ‘No, I haven’t seen much of him. That’s over. I don’t want to talk about it.’
    Bill said