Agatha Raisin and the Wellspring of Death

complaining I come home smelling of beer.’
    ‘Let’s have vodka,’ said James. ‘That doesn’t smell.’
    And may God forgive me, he thought. I didn’t think any of this useless lot were married. Billy already smelt like a brewery, but James was only interested in getting him drunk enough to loosen up.
    He didn’t, however, want Billy to get so drunk that he couldn’t think or speak.
    ‘Have you been married long?’ he asked.
    ‘Ten years.’
    ‘Kids?’
    ‘Four.’
    ‘You haven’t got a job, have you? What do you live on?’
    ‘Missus goes out cleaning and the mother-in-law takes care of the kids.’
    So much for women’s liberation, thought James bleakly.
    Billy went into a long rambling monologue about the unfairness of life.
    At last James asked, ‘How did you get into this Save Our Foxes business?’
    ‘Get a bit o’ drink money.’
    ‘Do you care about saving foxes?’
    Billy gave him a sly grin. ‘O’ course. Got to save the little bleeders.’
    ‘What I can’t understand,’ said James, ‘is why you’re all so interested in this spring? Who’s paying you?’
    ‘You know, Jim. We go along. Have a bit of a punch-up. Get forty quid. Not bad.’
    ‘But, I mean, where does the money come from to pay us?’
    ‘We’re not supposed to know, Jim. But I heard . . .’
    Billy looked thoughtfully down at his empty glass.
    ‘I’ll get us another,’ said James quickly.
    He returned with two vodkas. Billy was never quite drunk, never quite sober. He seemed to be able to sink an enormous capacity without falling over. James was beginning to feel pretty drunk himself, and he was anxious to get some facts out of Billy while he was still able to.
    ‘You were saying about who was paying us?’ asked James.
    ‘Was I?’ Billy looked suddenly truculent and suspicious. ‘What’s a posh fellow like you doing with us lot?’ James had given up trying to hide his accent.
    ‘Because a bit of a punch-up is fun,’ he said.
    ‘That’s what I thought.’ Billy raised his glass. ‘Here’s to you.’
    ‘So I mean, who’s paying? Not to mention paying fines for disturbance of the peace?’
    Billy leaned forward. ‘Sybil and Trevor like to keep us in the dark about that. Playing at spies, like. But I heard Sybil say something like, I got the money from that Owen woman.’
    Mary Owen. I’ll be damned, thought James, masking his excitement.
    To his relief he heard the barman call, ‘Time, gennelmun, pullease.’ Got the information just in the nick of time.
    He said goodbye to Billy outside the pub and hurried back to his temporary room. He would hang around a few days to allay suspicion and then he would head back to Carsely and call Bill Wong to tell him he had solved the murder. For if Mary Owen felt so passionately about the spring, then it followed that she must have committed the murder. And James wanted Agatha to be there when he told Bill.
    He thought briefly of Zak. Perhaps he should tell Zak – but then James wanted all the glory for himself.
    James returned to Carsely early in the morning on the day before the attack on the spring was due to take place.
    He phoned Bill Wong and asked him to call at ten in the morning. No, he couldn’t tell him over the phone. It was only fair that Agatha should hear his news at the same time.
    He decided to walk next door to Agatha’s cottage and give her the invitation. He felt quite like Poirot and only wished he had a library so that he could stand on the hearthrug in front of the marble fireplace and tell them how it had all been done.
    But as soon as he stepped outside his own front door he saw a car parked behind Agatha’s, outside her front door.
    That chap from the water company. And James was willing to bet he hadn’t been making an early-morning call but had stayed the night.
    Muzzy with sex and sleep, Agatha awoke to the shrill sound of the telephone ringing.
    She grabbed the receiver.
    ‘Agatha!’ It was James.
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘I have something to tell you and Bill Wong about the murder. Can you be at my cottage at ten this morning?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Goodbye.’
    ‘Who was that?’ demanded Guy, stretching and yawning.
    ‘Just a neighbour,’ said Agatha. ‘Got to get dressed.’
    She went through to the bathroom and leaned on the wash-hand basin and stared at her puffy face and tousled hair in the mirror. When she was young, a night of love-making would leave her looking radiant. Now that she was old, it seemed to do nothing