‘Roy’s coming down for the weekend,’ said Agatha, ‘and maybe Bill will come over. Why don’t you join us and maybe I’ll find something interesting for us to do?’
‘I’ve got a date.’
‘Who is he?’
‘Paul Finlay.’
‘How did you meet him?’
Toni longed to tell the ever-curious Agatha to mind her own business, but she said reluctantly, ‘I’ve been taking French classes in the evenings, now that it’s quiet at work. He’s the lecturer.’
‘How old is he?’
‘I’ve got to go. The other phone’s ringing.’
After she had rung off, Agatha sat and worried. Toni had a weakness for older men and had run into trouble before.
Agatha’s cleaner, Doris Simpson, had left a local newspaper on the kitchen table. She began to search through it to see if there were any weekend amusements, and then her eye fell on an event in Winter Parva, a village some twenty miles away. Agatha had been to Winter Parva only once. It was a touristy Cotswold village with gift shops, a mediaeval market hall and thatched cottages. The article said that as the local shops had not fared as well as usual over the Christmas period, the parish council had planned to generate interest in the village with a special January event. There was to be a pig roast on Saturday on the village green. The villagers were urged to dress in old-fashioned costumes. The Winter Parva morris dancers would perform along with the local brass band and the village choir. Two busloads of Chinese tourists were expected to arrive for the event.
That’ll do, thought Agatha, as long as I’m not blocked in the village by the snow.
Feeling hungry, she rummaged in her deep freezer to find something to microwave. Suddenly all the lights went out. A power cut.
She remembered the pub, the Red Lion, had a generator. Agatha changed into trousers, boots and a hooded parka and set out in the hunt for dinner.
The pub was crowded with locals. Agatha went to the bar and ordered lasagne and chips and a half of lager and looked around for a vacant table. Then, to her amazement, she saw her friend the vicar’s wife, Mrs Bloxby, sitting by herself in a corner, looking down dismally at a small glass of sherry.
Agatha hurried to join her, wondering what could be wrong, because Mrs Bloxby never went to the pub unless it was some special fundraising occasion. The vicar’s wife had grey hair escaping from an old-fashioned bun. Her normally kind face looked tired. She was wearing a shabby tweed coat over a washed-out sweater, cardigan and tweed skirt. It didn’t matter what she wore, thought Agatha, not for the first time. Mrs Bloxby always had ‘lady’ stamped on her. Agatha and Mrs Bloxby always called each other by their second names, a tradition in the local Ladies’ Society, of which both were members.
‘How odd to see you here,’ said Agatha. ‘Where’s your husband?’
‘I neither know nor care,’ said Mrs Bloxby. ‘Do sit down, Mrs Raisin.’
Agatha sat down opposite her. ‘What is the matter?’
Mrs Bloxby seemed to rally. She gave a weak smile. ‘It’s nothing, really. Do you really mean to eat that?’
The waitress had placed a dish of lasagne and chips in front of Agatha. ‘Sure. What’s up with it?’ Agatha dug her fork in and took a mouthful.
Mrs Bloxby reflected that her friend had the taste buds of a vulture.
Yet Agatha sometimes managed to make her feel diminished. Although in her early fifties, Agatha glowed with health, and her glossy brown hair, although expertly dyed, gleamed like silk.
‘It can’t be nothing,’ said Agatha, reaching for the ketchup bottle, opening it and dousing her chips.
‘Probably my imagination,’ said Mrs Bloxby wearily.
‘You always did have good instincts. Out with it,’ commanded Agatha.
Mrs Bloxby gave a heart-wrenching dry sob, the kind a child gives after crying for a long time. ‘It’s just that I think Alf is having an affair. You’re dribbling ketchup.’
‘Oh, sorry.’ Agatha put a chip, overloaded with ketchup, back on her plate. ‘Your husband is having an affair? Rubbish!’
‘You’re right. I’m just being silly.’
‘No, no, I shouldn’t have said that. I mean, who would want him?’ remarked Agatha with her usual lack of tact.
Her friend bristled. ‘I will have you know that as vicar of this parish, Alf has often been the target of predatory ladies.’
‘So what makes you think he’s having an affair? Lipstick on his dog collar?’
‘Nothing like that. It’s just that he’s taken to sneaking off without his dog collar on and he won’t tell me where he’s going.’
‘Been buying any new underwear recently?’
‘No, I buy his underwear.’
‘Look, I’ll find out for you and put your mind at rest. On the house.’
‘Oh, don’t do that. If he saw you tailing him, he would be furious.’
‘He won’t see me. I happen to be a very good detective.’
‘You are to do nothing about it,’ said Mrs Bloxby seriously. ‘Promise?’
‘Promise,’ agreed Agatha, and surreptitiously and childishly crossed her fingers behind her back.
A warm wind from the west during the night melted the snow to slush, and then, when the wind changed round to the north, it froze the roads into skating rinks. Agatha awoke the next day in a bad temper. How on earth was she going to get out of the village? It seemed small consolation that the power was back on.
But as she was having her usual breakfast of black coffee and cigarettes, she faintly heard a sound from the end of the lane, a sound she had not heard for some time. She put on her boots and coat and ran to the end of the lane. A gritter was making its lumbering way down through the village, spraying the road with grit and salt.
Agatha hurried back to put on her make-up and get dressed for the office.
She was just driving out of Lilac Lane when she recognized the vicar’s car on the road ahead of her. ‘Just a little look wouldn’t hurt,’ she assured herself. She let the car behind her pass her and then followed, keeping the vicar’s car in view. He drove to the nearby village of Ancombe and parked in the courtyard of St Mary’s, a large Catholic church. The village of Ancombe had remained loyal to Charles I when, all about, the Puritans supported Cromwell.
Driven by curiosity, Agatha parked out on the road and went up the drive past the gravestones and into the church.
In the dimness of the church, she could just make out the thin figure of Mr Bloxby going into a confessional box and closing the door. She ducked down in a pew as a priest appeared and went into the confessional.
I must know what he is saying, fretted Agatha. She took off her shoes and tiptoed towards the confessional box into which the vicar had disappeared, put her ear against it and listened hard.
‘What do you think you are doing?’ roared a stentorian voice.
Agatha caught a frightened glimpse of a man who had just entered the church. She quickly closed her eyes and slumped to the floor. The confessional opened and Mr Bloxby and the priest came out.
‘What is going on?’ demanded the reedy voice of the priest.
Agatha opened her eyes. ‘What happened?’ she demanded weakly. ‘I felt dizzy and saw Mr Bloxby coming in here and wanted to ask him for help.’
‘She was listening!’ said a thin, acidulous man.
‘I know this woman,’ said Mr Bloxby. ‘Mrs Raisin, step outside the church with me.’
Agatha got to her feet. No one helped her. She put on her shoes. Mr Bloxby marched ahead, and Agatha trailed after him, miserably.
Outside the church, Mr Bloxby snapped, ‘Get in my car, Mrs Raisin. You have some explaining to do.’
Agatha got into the passenger seat of the vicar’s car. It had begun to rain: soft, weeping rain.
‘Now,’ said Mr Bloxby, ‘explain yourself, you horrible woman.’ The vicar had never liked Agatha and could not understand his wife’s affection for her.