As The Pig Turns

detective,’ said Paul. He was in his late thirties, Agatha guessed, with an infuriatingly patronizing air. He had a craggy face and the sort of twinkling humorous eyes that belie the fact that the owner has no sense of humour whatsoever.
    ‘We’re off out for the evening,’ said Toni quickly. ‘Bye.’
    ‘Wait a bit,’ said Agatha. ‘Roy’s coming on Friday night, and on Saturday we’re going to a pig roast in Winter Parva. Why don’t you and Paul come along? Come to my cottage and I’ll take you over because the parking’s going to be awful.’
    ‘A pig roast?’ cackled Paul. ‘How quaint. Of course we’ll come.’
    ‘Good. The pig roast starts at six, but I’d like to get there a bit earlier,’ said Agatha. ‘See you around four o’clock for drinks and then we’ll all go.’
    Agatha stood and watched them as they walked away. Toni’s slim young figure looked dwarfed and vulnerable beside the tall figure of Paul.
    ‘Not suitable at all. What a prick,’ said Agatha, and a passing woman gave her a nervous look.
    Agatha checked business in the office before heading home again. She was just approaching Lilac Lane when a police car swung in front of her, blocking her.
    Agatha jammed on the brakes and looked in her rearview mirror. She saw the lumbering figure of the policeman who had ticketed her for blowing her nose. She rolled down the window as he approached. ‘Now what?’ she demanded.
    ‘I had a speed camera in me ’and up in that there road,’ he said, ‘and you was doing thirty-two miles an hour. So that’s three points off your licence and a speeding fine.’
    Agatha opened her mouth to blast him but quickly realized he would probably fine her for abusing a police officer. He proceeded to give her a lecture on the dangers of speeding, and Agatha knew he was trying to get her to lose her temper, so she listened quietly until he gave up.
    When he had finally gone, she swung the car round and went into the village store, where she informed an interested audience about the iniquities of the police in general and one policeman in particular. ‘I’d like to kill him,’ she shouted. ‘May he roast slowly over a spit in hell.’
    It was a frosty Friday evening when Agatha met Roy Silver at Moreton-in-Marsh station. He was dressed in black trousers and a black sweater, over which he was wearing a scarlet jacket with little flecks of gold in the weave. He had shaved his head bald, and Agatha thought dismally that her friend looked like a cross between a plucked chicken and someone auditioning for a job as a Red Coat entertainer at a Butlin’s holiday camp.
    ‘Turn on the heater,’ said Roy as he got in the car. ‘I’m freezing.’
    ‘I’m not surprised,’ said Agatha. ‘What’s with the bald head?’
    ‘It’s fashionable,’ said Roy petulantly, ‘and it strengthens the hair. It’s only temporary.’
    ‘I’ll lend you some warm clothes,’ said Agatha.
    ‘Your clothes on me, babes?’ said Roy waspishly. ‘I’d look as if I were wearing a tent. I mean, you could put two of me inside one of you.’
    ‘I’m not fat,’ snarled Agatha. ‘You’re unhealthily thin. Charles has left some of his clothes in the spare room.’ Sir Charles Fraith, a friend of Agatha’s, often used her cottage as a hotel.
    Roy said mutinously that his clothes were perfectly adequate, but when they got to Agatha’s cottage, they found there had been another power cut and the house was cold.
    While Agatha lit the fire in her living room, Roy hung away his precious jacket in the wardrobe in the spare room, wondering how anyone could not love such a creation. He found one of Charles’s cashmere sweaters and put it on.
    When he joined Agatha, the fire was blazing. ‘How long do these power cuts last?’ he asked.
    ‘Not long, usually,’ said Agatha. ‘There’s something up with the power station that serves this end of the village.’
    ‘Anything planned for the weekend?’
    ‘We’re going to a pig roast at Winter Parva tomorrow.’
    ‘No use. I’m vegetarian.’
    ‘Since when?’
    Roy looked shifty. ‘A month ago.’
    ‘You haven’t been dieting. You’ve been starving yourself,’ accused Agatha. ‘I got steaks for dinner.’
    ‘Couldn’t touch one,’ said Roy. ‘A pig roast? Do you mean turned on a spit like in those historical films?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Yuck, and double yucky, yucky yuck, Aggie. It’ll be disgusting.’
    But the next day after Toni and Paul had arrived,