Agatha Raisin and the Wellspring of Death

Agatha.’
    ‘I’ll think about it,’ said James curtly.
    But he took several days to think about it and by that time Guy Freemont had phoned up Agatha and invited her out for dinner.
    ‘I’m afraid I’m busy tonight, James,’ said Agatha, noticing with irritation that her hand holding the telephone receiver was trembling. ‘Got a dinner date.’
    ‘Oh, well, what about if I pop round this afternoon?’
    ‘Got an engagement for this afternoon,’ said Agatha. ‘Look, I’ll call you. Bye.’
    She sat down on the stairs. Why, oh, why had James decided to contact her just when she was booked to have dinner with Guy and had made an appointment with a beautician in Evesham for that afternoon?
    James was the same age as she, and if she had been going out with him, then she would not be rushing off to the beautician to have electrodes put on her face and neck to try to reduce the wrinkles.
    This was what came of dating a much younger man and a handsome man at that. Somehow, with the work for the water company, and then the prospect of going out with Guy, she had not thought much about the murder, nor had she investigated it further.
    But the gloss of that date with Guy had been definitely tarnished and it was a gloomy Agatha who drove into Evesham. She had picked out a beautician from the Yellow Pages.
    Evesham was an odd town, reflected Agatha, as she made her way up a narrow staircase to the beautician’s. All over the town, shops had closed down and the boarded-up fronts had been decorated with paintings of old Evesham shops by a local artist. If this goes on, thought Agatha, Evesham will soon be a town of paintings. No shops. And yet, here was this beautician who appeared to have the latest in beauty treatments, and along the road, a drugstore was doing a brisk trade in cut-price French perfume. It should have been a bustling, prosperous town. So much traffic, so many houses being built. But quite a lot of people were on the dole and didn’t seem much interested in getting off it. A local fruit-packing company was bussing in workers from Wales because the locals wouldn’t take up the jobs.
    Agatha opened the door of the beautician’s and went in.
    The beautician, called Rosemary, was refreshingly maternal and non-threatening. Agatha, who had been expecting some anorectic creature who would make her feel frumpy, began to relax.
    That was until the electrodes were attached to her face and neck and switched on. ‘It’s a good thing I know this is a beauty treatment,’ muttered Agatha. ‘If I was in a police station in a totalitarian state, I would think it was torture and tell them everything.’ But she booked up a further nine appointments.
    For good measure, she had her eyebrows shaped and her eyelashes dyed. She walked down the stairs and along the High Street, squinting sideways at her reflection in shop windows to see if she looked any younger.
    It seemed to take ages to get home, because she had forgotten about the building of the Broadway bypass and the traffic lights on Fish Hill. The bypass would surely benefit Broadway by taking away all the huge rumbling trucks that daily shook the old buildings of the village, and yet it was very sad to see the trees on Fish Hill cut down for the new road and the scarred earth on either side where sheep so lately had peacefully grazed.
    Once home, she began the long preparation necessary to any middle-aged woman who is dating a younger man, although she kept reminding herself fiercely that it was only a business partnership.
    By the time, she had applied the last of her make-up and stood before the mirror wondering if the low-cut fine wool red dress was too gaudy, she felt a wrench of real pain. Instead of going through all this, she could have been talking to James about the case, building bridges, getting back to the old warmth and closeness.
    When Guy called to pick her up, she had lost all interest in him.
    Guy drove her to Oxford, parked in the underground car park in Gloucester Green and then escorted her to a French restaurant. It turned out to be one of those ones with a delicious menu and lousy food. A good way of dieting, thought Agatha, would be just to enjoy the prose on the menu and then not order anything.
    Agatha had ordered breast of duck stuffed with spinach on a bed of warm rocket which translated itself into a piece of rubber stuffed with decaying vegetable matter, and rocket must be surely the most overrated vegetable in the world. It