Agatha Raisin and the Wizard of Evesham

you’re off the hook. No one saw you going to his house after he was murdered.’
    Agatha dried her eyes and blew her nose. ‘It’s Bill,’ she said. ‘He was my very first friend and now he’s gone off me.’
    She cleaned the burnt mess out of the fireplace, put it in a garbage bag, ran out and slung the bag into James’s garden. She returned to Charles.
    ‘Probably had to be formal in front of that cow of a policewoman. Brace yourself. I think the heavy mob’s arrived.’
    Detective Inspector John Brudge was an intelligent-looking man with dark hair and a thin, clever face. He brought not only a detective sergeant and a detective constable with him, but two uniformed officers and a search warrant.
    While he took Agatha and Charles carefully through their stories again, Agatha could hear the forces of law and order moving through the cottage, searching every drawer, cupboard and nook and cranny.
    It was annoying rather than worrying, for she had nothing to hide. She had even wiped her conversation with the hairdresser from her tape recorder.
    The one main thing that was making her begin to relax was that no one had seen her at the villa on the Cheltenham Road on the day it was burnt down.
    Just as the long interrogation was coming to an end, the detective constable entered and quietly handed Brudge a receipt. Agatha stiffened and looked wildly at Charles. It was an Asprey’s receipt for those cuff-links. Then she began to relax again. She could say she had bought them for Charles and Charles would be quick enough, she was sure, to agree.
    Brudge moved out into the hall with the receipt. She then heard him talking into his phone but could not make out the words.
    He came back in holding the receipt and sat down.
    ‘This is a receipt for a pair of very expensive cuff-links, Mrs Raisin, gold cuff-links.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Agatha easily. ‘I bought them as a present for Charles here.’
    He looked at her steadily for a few moments and then he said, ‘In the part of the living-room of Shawpart’s house which survived, we found a box containing a pair of gold cuff-links from Asprey’s. I think you bought them for Shawpart, Mrs Raisin, and it is no use denying it because we can easily check.’
    ‘I bought those for Charles,’ protested Agatha.
    ‘Who can no doubt produce them?’
    ‘It’s no use, Aggie,’ said Charles. ‘Why lie when we have no reason to? I urged her to buy Shawpart some expensive present to get close to him.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘I told you. It was a game. We were sure he was up to something fishy.’
    ‘An expensive game. You have both gone on about finding out about this hairdresser for fun, because you were bored. I find that hard to believe. You initially lied, Mrs Raisin, although Sir Charles here says you have nothing to hide. I find that very suspicious. You will call at Mircester tomorrow and sign your statements. You are not to travel abroad until this investigation is completed.’
    ‘I’m sorry I lied,’ said Agatha, ‘but I feel embarrassed about wasting so much money on him. And I wasn’t to know he would be murdered.’
    ‘So you say. I have yet to read the Gloucester report. I hope you have not been lying to them as well.’
    Agatha thought about her saying that someone had told her the villa had burnt down and then finding out Charles’s car had been spotted. She groaned inwardly.
    ‘We are taking some things,’ said Brudge. A policeman held out a box containing a few bottles of vitamin pills and aspirin. ‘We will give you a receipt for them.’
    When they had all left, she said to Charles, ‘What a mess.’
    ‘Are you hungry?’
    ‘Not very.’
    ‘Let’s go along to the Red Lion and get a sandwich.’
    ‘All right. Give me a moment while I change. I feel all sweaty.’
    She went up to her bathroom and stripped and had a quick shower and put on a clean blouse and skirt.
    She looked out of the window. Charles was playing with her cats in the garden. He had made a ball out of kitchen foil and was throwing it in the air while the cats leaped up to catch it.
    Did he ever worry about anything? Probably just as well if he did not. She herself was worrying enough for the whole of the Cotswolds.
    The lounge bar of the Red Lion was smoky and dim. A fire had been lit and little puffs of grey smoke escaped from it and lay in bands across the low-beamed room.
    They collected gin and tonics and ham sandwiches and retreated to a far corner.
    ‘So what do we do