"I didn't know you had a car," said Agatha.
"My gentleman friend bought me one. Hardly the wages o' sin. Not a Porsche but a rusty old Renault five."
Agatha turned to Mrs. Bloxby. "Has that woman who's bought my cottage joined the Ladies' Society?"
"I did ask her," said the vicar's wife, "but she said she couldn't be bothered and shut the door in my face."
"Nasty cow," said Agatha. "Oh, if only I hadn't sold my cottage! I'd better look for somewhere else. I can't live out of a suitcase at James's forever." She walked off into the hall.
"Now there's a thing," said Miss Simms, picking a piece of tobacco offher teeth. "I thought the wedding would happen sooner or later."
Doris Simpson, Agatha's cleaner, joined them. "Poor Agatha," she said. "She do miss her home and I miss the cleaning."
"Don't you do for Mr. Lacey, then?" asked Miss Simms.
"No, he does his own cleaning, and that's unnatural in a man, if you ask me."
"I had a fellow like that once. Went off and left me for another fellow," said Miss Simms. "It all goes to show."
"I do not think our Mr. Lacey is that way inclined," said Mrs. Bloxby.
"Never can tell. Some of 'em don't come out o' the closet till they're quite old and then they run around saying, "This is the life," and bugger the wife and kids," Mrs. Simpson said.
"'Bugger' being the word," said Doris Simms and gave a cackle of laughter.
"Shall we go in, ladies?" suggested the vicar's wife.
The revue consisted of songs and sketches. In the way of amateur productions, the singer most on stage was the one with the weakest voice and had chosen to sing a selection from the musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber, petering out in the high notes and dying in the low notes and shrill in the middle. The rendering of 'Don't Cry for Me, Argentina' was, Agatha reflected sourly, music to stun pigs by.
Usually when she was out at some event that bored her, she looked forward to returning home to her cottage and cats. But there was only James's cottage to return to, where she seemed to exist by sufferance on the periphery of his well-ordered life.
Damn that Hardy woman, she thought. And then she stifled a little gasp. Mrs. Hardy, that could be it! Come from God knows where. Who knew anything about her? And her arrival in the village had been coincidental with the death of Jimmy Raisin. Agatha barely heard the rest of the concert. She wanted to rush home and tell James about her suspicions, but there was tea to take afterwards and the grumbling Boggles to run home.
By the time she was free, her splendid idea had been replaced by doubts. But none the less she told James of her suspicions. To her relief, he listened to her seriously and said, "I've been wondering about that woman myself. There doesn't seem much point in trying to talk to her, she doesn't seem the chatty sort, to say the least."
There was a ring at the doorbell and Agatha went to answer it. Mrs. Bloxby stood there. "Come in," said Agatha.
"I can't. I brought your scarf. You left it at the hall. I'm just going to pick up the keys from Mrs. Hardy. For some reason she wants me to keep the spares while she's in London. I told her to leave them with our policeman, Fred Griggs, but she said she didn't want to."
"When does she leave?" asked Agatha. "About now, I think. I had better go." Agatha thanked her for the scarf and went thoughtfully back indoors.
"There's a thing," she said, sitting down opposite James. "The Hardy woman's off to London. Left her spare keys with Mrs. Bloxby. Wouldn't it be interesting to get a look in there?"
"Can't very well ask Mrs. Bloxby for the keys. And I wouldn't like to try lock-picking in broad daylight."
"But I've got another set to the cottage. I found them in my case."
"Won't she have changed the locks?"
"I've a feeling that one would not go to any expense if she could do otherwise. Oh, just think, James, what if she proves to be Mrs.- Gore-Appleton?"
"Too much to hope for. But I'd like to find out more about her. How do we get in there without anyone seeing us? There always seems to be someone about in this village when you don't want them to be, and we can't wait until the middle of the night. Did Mrs. Bloxby say anything about when she planned to return?"
"No. But I have the key to the back door. All we need to do is to go out and over the fence of your garden and then over the fence and into mine - I mean hers."
"Okay. I'll go outside and weed the front garden so I can see her leaving."
James, bent double over a flower-bed, thought after half an hour that Mrs. Hardy might have changed her mind, but then, as he straightened up, he was rewarded by the sight of her truculent face behind the wheel of her car, heading off down Lilac Lane. He stood and craned his neck, hearing the sound of the car retreating through the village, and then seeing it climbing up the hill out of Carsely.
He went back indoors. "Right, Agatha," he said. "Let's go."
Agatha shinned over James's garden fence, thinking that detective work might prove too energetic a business for a middle-aged woman. James had gone over lightly and had crossed the narrow alley between his garden and that of Mrs. Hardy and was already climbing over her fence.
That James should expect her to scramble after him with-out an offer of help riled Agatha. She felt she was being treated like a man. She suddenly wanted James to notice her again, really look at her as a man ought to look at a woman. She thought that when she reached the top of Mrs. Hardy's fence, she would call to him for help. He would stretch his arms up to her and she would drop down into them, her eyes closed, and she would whisper, "James, oh James."
"Help!" she called softly. She dropped down the other side of the fence, stumbled and landed face-down in a flowerbed. She got to her feet and glared. James, totally oblivious to the romantic script she had written for him, was unlocking the kitchen door. Agatha gave herself a mental shaking. She did not love him any more, she told herself. It was just that she had become so used to being in love, to having her brain filled with bright dreams that without them she was left with herself. Agatha did not find herself very good company.
She looked around her garden as she headed for the back door. It had a weedy, neglected air.
Inside the house, she looked around the kitchen. It was gleaming and sterile. She opened the fridge. Nothing but a bottle of milk and some butter. She was about to open the freezer compartment when James said angrily from behind her, "We're not here to find out what she eats but who she is."
She followed him through to the living-room. Agatha had never credited herself with having much taste, but looking around what had once been her cosy, chintzy living-room, she felt her cottage had undergone a species of rape. There was a mushroom-coloured fitted carpet on the floor. A three-piece suite in mushroom velvet was ornamented with gold tassels on the arms and gold fringe above the squat legs. A low glass coffee-table glittered coldly. No pictures or books. Her lovely open hearth had been blocked up and an electric fire with fake legs stood in front of it.
"Absolutely nothing here," said James. "Let's try upstairs. You'd best stay down here in case you hear her coming back." And Agatha was glad to agree, not wanting to see what Mrs. Hardy had done to the rest of the cottage. She went to the window and peered out. Autumn had come. A thin mist was curling around the branches of the lilac bush at the gate. Water dripped from the thatch with a mournful sound.
Agatha suddenly wondered what on earth she was doing living in the country, a feeling that only assailed her during the autumn. It was the Cotswold fogs that were the problem. Last winter hadn't been too bad, but the winter before had been awful, crawling into Moreton-in-Marsh or Evesham to do the shopping with the fog-lights on, sometimes not knowing whether she was still on the road or not, driving home at night where the fog seemed to rear up and take on tall pillared, shifting shapes, eyes aching, longing for the wind to blow and lift it.