Agatha Raisin and the Wellspring of Death

always tasted to Agatha like weeds.
    They talked about various journalists and which would be more inclined to give them a good show. Agatha had already arranged various lunches in London with journalists. Guy said the new colour brochures advertising the water would be ready in a couple of days’ time and that he would save Agatha a trip to Mircester and run over with them.
    They drank a bottle of highly priced indifferent wine, but there was enough alcohol in it to mellow Agatha. After coffees and two brandies, she felt happy to be in the company of this well-tailored and handsome man.
    When the bill was presented, Guy began patting his pockets. Then he gave Agatha a rueful boyish smile. ‘Damn, I’ve left my wallet at home.’
    ‘It’s all right, I’ll pay,’ said Agatha, thinking not for the first time that the majority of Englishmen were as tight as the bark on the tree.
    He drove her back home. James heard the car arrive and leaped for the side window of his cottage. Guy, his black hair gleaming in the light over Agatha’s door, took her keys from her and unlocked the door for her. James held his breath. Then Guy followed Agatha in. James waited and waited. He drew a chair up to the window and waited. Lights from the downstairs window shone out into Agatha’s small square of front garden. At last they went off and the hall light went on. Then the hall light was switched off and the light on the stairs switched on. Then the light from behind the drawn curtains of Agatha’s bedroom lit up the garden.
    ‘Silly woman,’ he muttered, but still he waited. When the light in Agatha’s bedroom was switched off and no Guy could be seen leaving the house, James went to bed.
    Agatha came awake suddenly the next morning. She couldn’t believe she had actually had sex with Guy. What on earth was up with her? Was she trying to prove that at her age she could still do it without a map?
    She lay and listened to the silence of the house. Please let him be gone! That was the hell about being middle-aged. There was all the fear of trying to get to the bathroom to slap on make-up before he caught a glimpse of her unadorned face. But there was no sound but the wind blowing through the heavy purple lilac blossoms outside the window.
    She got out of bed, feeling stiff and sore. After a deep bath, she felt better. She made up carefully and dressed, and then ripped the sheets off the bed and carried them down to the washing machine in the kitchen. She fed her cats and let them out into the sunshine of the garden.
    There was a knock at the door. Perhaps it was James! But it was only Mrs Bloxby, the vicar’s wife.
    ‘I’ve brought you some home-made marmalade,’ she said. ‘You are looking very well this morning.’
    ‘Thanks,’ said Agatha, leading the way into the kitchen and nervously eyeing the laundry basket of sheets she had left on the kitchen floor. ‘I’ll just pop these in the machine and then we’ll have coffee.’
    ‘So you’ve been out with that young man from the water company?’ said Mrs Bloxby. One is never too old to blush. Agatha bent over the washing machine and loaded it. ‘How did you know?’ she asked over her shoulder.
    ‘Mrs Darry was round at the vicarage first thing this morning to tell me that he had gone in with you after driving you home and hadn’t come out again. You know what villages are like.’
    ‘That cow lives at the other end of the village!’
    ‘But she has a nasty little yapping dog and dogs are very useful for walking about the streets at night by someone who is more interested in other people’s lives than they are in their own.’
    Agatha plugged in the coffee percolator. ‘So I went to bed with him. Does that shock you?’
    ‘No dear, but it probably shocks you. Women of our generation never got used to casual sex. Now young people these days just seem to go and do it without feeling any loss of dignity at all. And yet it is a most undignified performance, unless one is in love, of course.’
    ‘I suppose that Darry woman will spread it all round the village and James will get to hear of it.’
    ‘Is that so very bad? He has been neglecting you. He cannot expect you to carry a torch for him forever.’
    Agatha poured two cups of coffee and sat down wearily at the kitchen table. ‘I feel a fool. I think Guy Freemont is a taker. He took me to a quite dreadful French restaurant in Oxford, very expensive, and then said he had forgotten his