"Desmond and I joked about health farms at first. We weren't really interested in our health. We thought it might be an amusing place to get together. His wife might have found a visit to a hotel suspicious but Desmond had told her he was worried about his blood pressure. Jimmy Raisin was a wreck. We arrived on the same day. He was still stinking of booze, but after only a couple of days, he looked like a changed man. He was always oiling around us, my-ladying me to death and claiming to know all sorts of celebrities. He was the sort of man who calls celebs by their first name. He kept talking about his good friend, Tony, who had won an Oscar, and it turned out to be Anthony Hopkins. I don't suppose he even knew him. Mrs. Gore-Appleton was not much better. She was - what is it the Americans say? - in my face. She had an abrasive manner overlaid with syrup. You know, she paid me effusive compliments while all the time her sharp eyes watched me to see if I was swallowing any of it. Desmond finally told them we wanted some time to ourselves. The day after that - that would be about five days after we arrived - they began to throw us very knowing looks and then pass our table and give contemptuous laughs. I thought it was because Desmond had snubbed them. But they must have found out I wasn't Lady Derrington. What else can I tell you? I thought Jimmy Raisin was a wide boy, what they used to call a spiv. There was something seedy about him. I gathered from the newspapers that you had not seen him in a very long time, Mrs. Raisin. The Gore-Appleton woman was blonde and muscular, tried to be very pukka, but there was something all wrong about her. I tell you what. Let me get us all some coffee and I'll think some more."
Agatha and James waited until she returned with a tray. There was not only coffee but home-made toasted tea-cakes. "Did you really make these yourself?" James took another appreciative bite. "These are excellent and the coffee is divine." He stretched out his long legs. "It's very comfortable here."
Helen gave him a slow smile. "Come when you're in town and have a free hour to spare."
Agatha stiffened. This wretched woman suddenly seemed like more competition than any blonde sylph. She was suddenly anxious to get James away.
But Helen was talking again. "You say he slept with some woman?" She laughed. "I love that euphemism, "slept with." One does anything but." She gave a warm creamy laugh and Agatha's bearlike eyes fastened on her with barely concealed hate.
"That would be a Mrs. Comfort, am I right?"
"How did you know?" said James.
"Oh, he was making up to her and the Gore-Appleton woman was egging him on. I heard him say, "I'll get her tonight," and Mrs. Gore-Appleton laughed and said, "Have fun," and the next morning, well, body language and all that, you know what I mean, don't you, James?"
"Oh, absolutely."
I'll kill this bitch, thought Agatha.
"And that poor spinster lady, she was murdered," said Helen with an artistic shudder. "More coffee, James?"
Her tailored silk blouse had a deep V and she leaned forward, deliberately, Agatha thought, to reach for the coffeepot at such an angle that James could see two excellent breasts encased in a frilly brassiere.
James had another full cup of coffee and was helping himself to another tea-cake. Agatha groaned inwardly.
Helen suddenly looked at her. "I remember now. You and Mr. Lacey here were to be married but Jimmy turned up at your wedding." She laughed again. "That must have been quite a scene. You'll be able to marry now."
"Yes," said Agatha.
"We haven't made any plans," said James.
There was an awkward silence. "We should go," said Agatha harshly. "Could you just wait until I finish my coffee, dear?"
Agatha, who had half-risen, sat down again. "Lacey, Lacey," Helen was saying. "Are you any relative of Major-General Robert Lacey?"
"My father. He died some time ago'. 'Oh, then you must know..." And what followed was the sort of conversation Agatha dreaded, James and Helen animatedly talking about people she did not know.
At last, when Agatha felt she could not stand another moment without screaming, James got to his feet with obvious reluctance.
They took their leave, Agatha first, muttering a grumpy thanks, James after her, stopping to kiss Helen on the cheek and promising to see her again, giving her his card and taking one of hers.
Agatha fumed the whole way back to Carsely. She complained bitterly about harpies who sponged off men instead of going out to work. James tried to point out that as a secretary to a Member of Parliament, Helen did go out to work, but that only seemed to make Agatha worse. He left her at the cottage, saying he had to see someone, whereupon Agatha tortured herself with mad jealousy, imagining him driving back to London to spend the night with Helen. She finally went to bed and tried to read, listening all the while for the sound of his key in the door. At last, just after midnight, she heard him return, heard him come upstairs and go into the bathroom, heard him wash, heard him go to his own room without coming in to say good night to her, although he could surely see the light shining under her door.
She raised her head and banged her pillow with her fist, put out the light, and tried to compose herself for sleep. But sleep would not come as she tossed and turned, tormenting j herself with pictures of a world out there full of women all too j ready to snatch James away from her.
And then she stiffened. She heard a furtive noise from somewhere downstairs and then the clack of the letter-box, then a sound like water being poured. She pulled on her dressing-gown and ran down the stairs. She opened the door to the hall as a gloved hand threw a lighted match through the letter-box. In that instant Agatha leaped back into the living-room and screamed, "James!" just as a sheet of flame reached i out for her.
He came hurtling down the stairs. "We're on fire," j shouted Agatha. She made to open the door again but he; pulled her back.
"Go up to the bathroom and pour buckets of water on i the floor. It's over the hall. We've got to stop the fire getting to the thatch!"
James ran to the kitchen as Agatha scampered up the stairs. Swearing, he filled a bucket of water and running back with it, hurled the contents at the living-room door, which was already beginning to blister and crackle.
Upstairs, Agatha, sobbing with fright, poured water on the bathroom floor. There were shouts and yells from outside. Agatha clearly heard the voice of the landlord, John Fletcher, calling, "Keep throwing that earth. We daren't wait for the fire brigade. Oh, Mrs. Hardy. More earth. Let's be having it! That there's a petrol fire. I can smell it."
Then, just as James shouted up, "It's all right now, Agatha," she heard the sirens of police cars and the fire engine in the distance. She went slowly down the stairs and sat on the bottom steps with her head in her hands.
The living-room door now stood open to reveal the black and smouldering wreck of the little hall, piled high with a mound of earth.
"Who would do a thing like this?" demanded James. "Someone meant to roast us alive."
"Probably Helen Warwick," said Agatha, and burst into tears.
SEVEN
SUDDENLY the house seemed to be full of people.
Fred Griggs, the policeman; Mrs. Bloxby, with a sweater and trousers pulled on over her pyjamas; John Fletcher, the publican; Mrs. Hardy; and various other villagers.
"You've got Mrs. Hardy here to thank for quick action," said Fred. "She phoned the fire brigade and then ran with buckets of earth to put on the fire. Water don't do much to stop a petrol fire."
"Are you all right, Mrs. Raisin?" Mrs. Hardy's normally bad-tempered face registered concern.