Agatha Raisin and the Wellspring of Death

the boatman told them the charge was eight pounds for an hour, twenty-five pounds deposit and to leave identification.
    ‘I’m a bit short,’ said Roy. ‘Could you . . .?’
    ‘Oh, all right.’ Agatha paid the money and left her driving licence.
    ‘I feel this is a mistake.’ Agatha scrambled on to the seat of the punt. Roy seized the long pole. ‘There are paddles,’ said Agatha. ‘Wouldn’t it be a good idea to paddle to a quiet bit?’ There were not only punts but rowing boats.
    The boatman pushed them out. Roy dug the pole in and pushed. The punt swung in a wide circle and bumped into a puntload of students.
    ‘Steady on,’ called one.
    Roy was pink with embarrassment. ‘I’ll use the paddle.’ He shipped the pole and crouched down in the bow and paddled. After a few false starts and a few more bumps, they headed up the river.
    Then he stood up and took up the pole again. Agatha lay back in the punt and decided to ignore Roy’s amateurish efforts. The sun was filtering down through the trees. Conservatories were glittering on one side, a cricket pavilion on the other, willow trees trailing in the water, dappled light and peace. But not a typically English scene, thought Agatha, looking at the students. I always imagined everyone in white and ladies with parasols. The students all looked terribly young and undernourished and seemed to favour black shirts, tatty jeans and pony-tails – the men, that is. They came from a mixture of nationalities. She was roused from her reverie as a branch banged against her head.
    ‘Look where you’re going!’
    ‘Sorry, just getting the hang of this.’
    James. Would she and James ever get together again? Would she ever stop thinking about him? Why was it Guy meant so little? Perhaps because sex did not mean intimacy. Talk was intimacy. Friendship was intimacy. Perhaps if she had practised friendship a bit more in earlier life, she would know better how to handle him. Or just leave him alone, said a cynical voice in her brain. It’s sick. You need an exorcist.
    ‘I’m really getting good at this.’
    ‘Can’t you steer a straight course?’ asked Agatha. ‘You nearly banged into that rowing-boat.’
    ‘We’re doing fine,’ said Roy ‘You just dig the pole in, Aggie, and thrust –’
    To Agatha’s horror, he pole-vaulted and landed face-down on the grassy bank while Agatha and the punt went shooting off in the other direction. The punt hit the opposite bank with force as she instinctively rose to her feet, and Agatha was catapulted into the river.
    Roy jumped in to save her, swam towards her and made ineffectual grabs at her hair.
    ‘Leave me alone!’ shouted Agatha. ‘My handbag’s in the punt. Get it. I mean, get the punt.’
    Under the delighted gaze of a boatload of Japanese, Roy seized the rope at the front of the punt and towed it to the bank on which he had first landed. Agatha swam after him.
    He helped her out.
    ‘All right?’ called a Japanese student. ‘Very funny. You in a film?’
    ‘No,’ said Agatha curtly. She rounded on Roy. ‘Let’s just get back in that damned instrument of torture and get back.’
    As the amused Japanese looked on, they got back on board. ‘We’ll pull you back,’ shouted one.
    ‘No, we’ll manage,’ said Roy.
    ‘No, we won’t. That would be great,’ said Agatha.
    They sat in the punt dripping wet, faces red with mortification as the Japanese towed them back to the landing-stage. A group of English students were waiting to greet these Japanese friends and they laughed and clapped as Roy and Agatha, bedraggled and miserable, were helped from the punt.
    They walked together up the High, a yard apart, and people turned to stare at them.
    ‘I am taking you straight to the station,’ said Agatha when they got in the car. ‘You’ve got your luggage. You can change in the station loo.’
    ‘I’m really, really sorry,’ said Roy meekly. ‘It was something I’d always wanted to do.’
    Agatha drove in grim silence.
    ‘Look, Aggie. I left school at fifteen, never went to university. We all have dreams. Punting at Oxford was one of mine.’
    Agatha slowed down.
    ‘I tell you what we’ll do,’ she said. ‘Dry yourself and change at the station. Then take a cab up to Marks and Spencer and buy me some dry clothes and then I’ll change. I’ll take you for tea at the Randolph.’
    Three hours later, Agatha made her way back to Carsely wearing a new outfit of blouse and skirt, along with the