Agatha Raisin and the Wizard of Evesham

Thomas Oliver down the street.’
    ‘Got a good reputation, have they?’
    ‘Never been in there.’
    Agatha waited until her hair was washed and she was led through into the salon. Eve was heading out of the door. ‘Won’t be long, Garry,’ she said curtly. ‘Mind the store.’
    ‘There she goes,’ he said. ‘You’d think she might wait around a bit. Sometimes customers walk in off the street.’
    ‘You don’t seem to be enjoying yourself much here,’ said Agatha sympathetically.
    ‘It’s dead boring. Too quiet.’ He raised the blow-drier.
    ‘Mr John’s always seemed to be full of people and gossip,’ Agatha said. ‘And the things they said! I remember hearing a woman talking about her husband, Jim, and her daughter Betty. She even said that she thought her daughter might be pushing drugs.’
    ‘Oh, that’d be Mavis Burke. You have to take everything she says with a pinch of salt.’
    ‘Local woman?’
    ‘Yes, lives in one of those new houses on the Four Pools Estate.’ He switched on the drier and began to work busily.
    I can’t ask him if he knows the address, thought Agatha. That would be pushing it. I’ll go to the post office and check the phone book for Burkes.
    She suffered dismally under the ministrations of the energetic Garry. He had been bad enough before, but now he was worse. She looked sadly at her bouffant hair-style.
    ‘Very nice,’ she said bleakly. She tipped him again, paid Josie and went out into the High Street.
    She went into a phone-box at the post office and checked her Call Minder. ‘No messages,’ said the tinny, elocuted voice, with what Agatha felt was smug satisfaction. So face up to it. Charles had laid her and now he was gone and she was on her own.
    She asked at the counter for the Worcestershire phone book and ran her finger down the Burkes. There was one Burke on the Four Pools Estate, and J. Burke at that.
    I’ll show Charles, I’ll show the police, I’ll show everybody I can do it on my own. Agatha strode along the High Street to the car park. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in a shop window and shuddered. The things I suffer in the name of detection!
    She drove to the Four Pools Estate. How quickly Evesham was spreading out. A new McDonald’s had been built in about two weeks earlier in the year and a large new pub in about two months. Soon the countryside would be swallowed up. Agatha realized that she was in danger of becoming one of those people she had hitherto despised – the I-know-they’ve-got-to-live-somewhere,but-why-can’t-it-be-somewhere-else? type of person.
    Before she got out of the car, she took a comb out of her handbag and wrenched it down through her lacquered hair until she felt she had flattened it a bit.
    As she braced herself to walk up a neat garden path, she was engulfed in a sudden wave of depression. Charles’s cavalier treatment of her brought back all her fierce longing for James and her mind began to credit him with warmth and affections that he did not have.
    She rang the doorbell.
    The door was opened. She recognized Mavis immediately, but Mavis did not recognize her.
    ‘I would like you to know, we go to mass every Sunday,’ said Mavis crossly, ‘and we don’t want anything to do with the likes of you!’
    The door began to close.
    ‘I’m not a Jehovah,’ said Agatha quickly. ‘I was a client of Mr John’s.’
    The door opened again. ‘The one that died?’
    ‘Was murdered, yes. May we talk?’
    ‘Yes, come in.’ Mavis had an ordinary sort of face without any particular distinguishing features, pale blue eyes and a surprisingly smooth and shining stylish head of hair.
    Mavis, as she led the way into a cosy living-room, did not evince any signs of fear or nervousness. ‘Sit down, Mrs . . .?’
    ‘Raisin. Call me Agatha.’
    ‘Right Agatha. I’ll get us some tea. I’d just put the kettle on and I’m dying for a cuppa.’
    When Mavis left the room, Agatha looked about her. She had somehow expected the mother of a drug addict and pusher would live in squalor. But the living-room was furnished with a three-piece suite in shades of gold and brown. An electric fire with mock coals glowed cheerfully. There were framed family photographs on the walls and a crucifix over the fireplace. Women’s magazines and television guides lay on the coffee-table.
    After a short time Mavis entered carrying a tray on which was a fat teapot and china mugs decorated with roses and a plate of cakes, bright with