Agatha Raisin and the Wellspring of Death

‘Doesn’t that chap look like James?’
    ‘You poor thing.’ Roy shook his head. ‘You’re beginning to see Lacey everywhere. Let’s go. At least the Coventry sunshine has reached us.’
    ‘Isn’t this beautiful?’ said Roy as he trotted along by Agatha’s side on the road to Ancombe.
    Agatha grunted by way of reply, but wondering again why the sheer beauty of the spring countryside did not seem to get inside her. She remembered passing some Saturdays of her underprivileged childhood at the art gallery in Birmingham studying English landscapes, enjoying the painted scenery which had become part of that early dream of living in the countryside one day. And so she saw the present passing landscape like a painting. That bright green of the new leaves, she’d had that colour in her art class at school. And the curved furrows of a ploughed field, with the trees at the edge raising their branches to the blue sky, looked like one of those paintings. Perhaps one had to be brought up in the country to really appreciate it.
    ‘Do you believe in God?’ asked Roy suddenly.
    ‘Don’t know,’ said Agatha, wondering if the person in the sky with whom she frequently made bargains – get me out of this one and I’ll give up smoking – really did exist.
    ‘I believe in Nature,’ said Roy, spreading his arms wide. ‘That’s what it’s all about.’
    ‘You’re not going to start hugging trees?’ said Agatha suspiciously. ‘I’ve got to live here.’
    ‘I’m trying to explain I’m a pagan,’ said Roy. ‘I am as one with all this.’
    Agatha was about to say something waspish, but Roy’s thin, weak face was turned up to the sun and he looked supremely happy. ‘Glad you’re enjoying yourself,’ she said gruffly.
    ‘Funny,’ said Roy, taking her arm, ‘I always thought anyone who moved out of the city was mad, but maybe if I lowered my sights, it would be better. You and me, Aggie, we could team up and start a new agency in Mircester. Do local accounts. Maybe get married.’
    ‘And spend my declining years with people mistaking you for my son?’
    ‘Think about it. We get on all right.’
    Agatha privately thought that a very little of Roy went a long way, but she gently detached her arm and said, ‘Okay, I’ll think about it.’ Then she said, ‘Do we really have to go on with this? It’s funny how people in villages so close by can be so different. Apart from the dreadful Mrs Darry and a few others, the people in Carsely are wonderful. But the ones we’ve met in Ancombe seem to be really nasty, and Mary Owen is surely going to be the nastiest of all.’
    ‘You’ve dealt with nasty people all your life, Aggie.’
    True, thought Agatha, and it used to be all the same to me, nice or nasty, just a job, but now I’ve learned to like people.
    ‘Where does Mary Owen live?’ she realized Roy was asking.
    ‘I looked her up. She lives in Ancombe Manor, far end of the village. We’ll pick up the car and drive.’
    Soon they were turning in at the entrance to the manor. Thick yew hedges lined either side of the narrow drive, giving Agatha the impression of driving through a maze. Suddenly they were in front of the house. It was old, very old, made of Cotswold stone, rambling and covered in ivy. It looked as if it had been there so long that it had become part of the surrounding countryside.
    Agatha’s sharp eyes noticed that there were weeds sprouting in the gravel-covered circle outside the manor-house. She began to think the report that Mary Owen had fallen on hard times might be true. Such a house would have housed an army of indoor and outdoor servants in the old days.
    ‘Well, here goes for another barrage of insults,’ said Agatha, pushing an anachronistic bell-push by the side of the iron-studded door.
    At first they thought there was no one at home, but then they heard footsteps approaching.
    The door opened. Mary Owen stood there. She was wearing a shabby sweater and stained riding-breeches and boots. Her head was tied up in a scarf and she held a duster in one hand.
    Her contemptuous eyes raked them.
    ‘What do you want?’
    ‘I am Agatha Raisin –’
    ‘I know that. And who’s your creature?’
    ‘This is Mr Roy Silver,’ said Agatha firmly, thinking if one was prepared for insult, it certainly helped one not to lose one’s temper.
    ‘Out with it, then. Haven’t you done enough damage, whoring for that damned water company?’
    Roy timidly tugged at Agatha’s arm, but