Agatha Raisin and the Wellspring of Death

from the plight of foxes to the sacrilege of taking water out of the spring. Usual lot. Nice people really interested in a batty way in protecting village life followed by the usual trouble-making skinheads. There was a bit of a dust-up. James nearly got hurt protecting me.’
    ‘So is he doing anything about finding out about anything?’
    ‘I don’t think he’s interested in anything other than insulting me.’
    ‘Shows he’s still interested, Aggie. Wouldn’t insult you otherwise. Why don’t you ask me down for the weekend? We could ferret around together.’
    Agatha opened her mouth to refuse and then closed it again. She did not know if Guy meant to have an affair with her, or whether it was to be regarded as a one-night stand. Suddenly the idea of going back on her own made her feel vulnerable. Roy could be tiresome and malicious, but they had known each other since he had started work for her as an office boy.
    ‘Yes, all right,’ she said. ‘I suppose it might be interesting to trot around and ask a few questions.’
    ‘You’d better eat that stodgy pudding. It’s getting cold.’
    Agatha regretted her invitation when she met Roy at Paddington Station on Saturday morning. He was dressed in skin-tight jeans and a black leather jacket and talking into a mobile phone, looking around all the while to see if people noticed he was talking on a mobile phone, just as if millions of people hadn’t got the damn things, which Agatha thought had been expressly designed to irritate the travelling public.
    ‘If you use that on the train,’ snarled Agatha when he had rung off, ‘I’ll throw it out of the window. And you’re only in your twenties. I thought men only went in for jeans and black leather when they hit the male menopause.’
    ‘And I thought middle-aged women only took to eating roast beef and fattening pudding when they thought they were past attracting anyone .’
    ‘Oh, stop bitching,’ snapped Agatha.
    She passed the journey to Moreton-in-Marsh by ignoring Roy and reading a novel set in the Cotswolds about middle-class, middle-aged infidelity, marvelling as she did so at her own attitude that the well-off middle classes should not have any passions and remembering the days of her youth when it was the lower classes who were supposed to be immune to the sensitivities of soul suffered by their betters. At one point in the journey, Roy’s phone rang but he retreated with it down the carriage before Agatha’s basilisk glare.
    Bright yellow fields of oil seed rape slid past the carriage windows, and lilac trees heavy with blossom leaned down over railway embankments. With that now familiar feeling of coming home, Agatha gathered up her belongings as the train finally slid into Moreton-in-Marsh Station.
    With Roy carrying his own weekend bag and Agatha’s suitcase, they made their way to Agatha’s car. The sky was blue and birds sang in the trees bordering the station car park. Flower baskets moved in the light breeze.
    ‘When I’m as old as you,’ said Roy, ‘I’ll move down here.’
    Feeling ancient, Agatha drove off, negotiating the heavy traffic in Moreton and then swinging out along the A44 and up the long steep slope through Bourton-on-the-Hill and so down the winding road under tunnels of arched trees to Carsely.
    James’s cottage had an empty look, she noticed, and Roy suddenly said, ‘Going to call on Lacey?’
    ‘No. If you get the cases, I’ll open the door.’
    While Roy carried the bags in, Agatha petted her cats, who had been looked after in her absence by her cleaner, fed them and then let them out into the garden.
    After they had unpacked, they settled down over coffee in the kitchen and Roy said, ‘Well, let’s begin. Who have we on this council?’
    ‘For the water company, we’ve got Mrs Jane Cutler, Angela Buckley and Fred Shaw. Against, we’ve got Mr Bill Allen, Andy Stiggs, and the most vehement protester, Mary Owen. The woman whose garden the spring rises in is Robina Toynbee. We might try her first. She might have had threats. She might even know which way the late Mr Struthers was going to vote.’
    ‘Aren’t we going to eat first?’
    ‘I’ll take you to the pub.’
    ‘None of your microwave specials?’
    ‘I can cook now,’ said Agatha defensively. ‘I didn’t know you were coming, so I didn’t get anything in.’
    When they entered the Red Lion, her eyes flew around the pub looking for James, but he was not there. ‘Our Mr Lacey’s