‘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, and the erratic electricity had come on again, Roy decided that anything would be better than being left behind. Bill Wong had phoned to say he could not make it.
Just as they were having drinks, Charles Fraith arrived. He was as expensively dressed as usual in smart casual clothes. He had small, neat features and well-barbered hair. Agatha never really knew what he thought of her. He helped himself to a whisky and then proceeded to put his foot in it. He asked Roy sympathetically if he had cancer. When Roy denied it, Charles said, ‘I was about to forgive you for wearing one of my sweaters, but as you aren’t suffering, I do feel you might have asked me first.’
‘I told him he could borrow something,’ said Agatha. ‘I haven’t introduced you to Paul Finlay.’
‘Toni’s uncle?’
‘No, just a friend,’ said Agatha.
Paul bristled. Charles’s upper-class accent brought out the worst in him. His light Birmingham accent grew stronger as he suddenly treated them all to a rant about the unfairness of the British class system and about an aristocracy who lived on the backs of the poor.
Thank goodness for Charles, thought Agatha. Toni must see what a horror this man is.
But Toni was listening to Paul with shining eyes.
Charles waited until Paul had dried up, said calmly, ‘What a lot of old-fashioned bollocks. When are we going?’
‘Finish your drinks,’ said Agatha. ‘I want to be sure of getting a parking place. It’ll be a bit of a crush in my car.’
‘I’ll take Roy,’ said Charles.
‘You’ll need a coat,’ said Agatha to Roy. ‘You’ll find my Barbour hanging in the hall. Use that.’
‘I could wear my jacket,’ said Roy.
‘You’ll freeze. Come along, everyone.’
Thin trails of fog wound their way through the trees as they drove to Winter Parva. They had to park outside the village because all the parking places in the village had been taken. Paul, anxious to get Toni to himself, said they would look at the shops and meet the others on the village green in time for the pig roast.
Agatha, Charles and Roy walked to the nearest pub and into the grateful warmth of the bar.
‘Something will need to be done about Paul,’ said Charles. ‘I think Toni’s still a virgin, and the thought of her losing it under the hairy thighs of that bore is horrible.’
‘He might propose marriage,’ said Roy.
‘I think I’ll do a bit of detective work,’ said Agatha. ‘I bet he’s either married or been married. Why can’t Toni see what a bore he is? How can she listen to that class nonsense?’
‘Maybe it strikes a chord,’ said Charles. ‘You forget, she was brought up rough. Maybe she doesn’t know where she belongs in the scheme of things. There can be something very seductive about that sort of propaganda. Where the hell did she meet him?’
‘At evening classes in French,’ said Agatha gloomily. ‘He’s the lecturer.’
Roy was looking round the bar at people dressed in mediaeval costume. ‘We could have dressed up, Aggie,’ he said plaintively.
Agatha looked at her watch. ‘I think we’d better make our way to the village green. I want to see how they prepare this pig.’
The fog had thickened. If it hadn’t been for the parked cars, you might have thought the village had reverted to the Middle Ages as the costumed villagers appeared and then disappeared in the fog.
Two men were bathing a huge pig in oil as it hung on a spit over a bed of blazing charcoal.
Some villagers were carrying flaming torches. As the fog lifted slightly, Agatha saw clearly on the haunch of the pig a tattoo of a heart with an arrow through it and the curly lettering ‘Amy’. Her eyes flew down the length of the carcass to the chubby legs cut off above the knees.
‘Stop!’ she screamed at the top of her lungs.
The two men stopped turning the spit and stared at her. ‘Pigs don’t have tattoos,’ said Agatha.
They peered at it. ‘Reckon someone’s been ’aving a bit o’ a joke,’ said one.
But Agatha had taken a powerful little torch out of her handbag and was examining the head.
‘The head’s been stitched on,’ she said. ‘Oh, God, I think this is the carcass of a man. Get the police.’
Chapter Two
Toni was cold and worried. She had wanted to join the others, but Paul had said he had something important to ask her. They had survived their first quarrel. They had argued because Toni refused to hear any criticism of Charles. Charles had been kind to her, she had protested. Paul fished in his pocket for the ring he had bought.
Then through the fog came the scream of police sirens. She heard a woman sob, ‘It’s awful. Sick. Murder!’
She jumped to her feet. ‘Something’s wrong. I’ve got to get to Agatha.’ Her slim figure in her bright red coat disappeared through the fog. Cursing under his breath, Paul got up and followed her.
Toni had to fight her way through a gathering crowd. Police were cordoning off the area around the pig roast. She elbowed her way to the front of the crowd. In the light of the fire and flaming torches held by some of the villagers, she saw Agatha, Charles and Roy being interviewed by Police Inspector Wilkes. Bill Wong stood beside him. Roy was standing behind them, busily telephoning.
Toni ducked under the tape. A policeman howled at her to get back, but Bill looked up and signalled it was all right to let her come through.
Paul tried to follow her, but a burly policeman barred his way. ‘I’ve got to get through,’ said Paul. ‘That’s my fiancée over there.’
‘On the spit?’ demanded the policeman.
‘No, you idiot. The blonde girl, there!’
‘Did you call me an idiot?’
‘No, no,’ said Paul weakly, backing off.
Agatha shivered as the questioning went on and on. She felt she was living in some Gothic horror movie. Her thoughts flew to her ex-husband. She hadn’t seen him since the night he thought he had found Charles proposing to her. Actually, Charles had proposed to her until Agatha persuaded him that it wouldn’t work, but Agatha, hearing James arriving, had quickly told Charles to get down on one knee and make it look real.
The macabre scene was suddenly lit up by white light. A television crew had arrived.
‘Get a tent up round the body,’ snarled Wilkes. ‘Mrs Raisin, I want you and your friends to go to police headquarters to make official statements. And that means you, too,’ he said, grabbing hold of Roy, who was about to duck under the tape and head for a television presenter.
Agatha said she would drive everybody there. She could just make out Paul shouting something from behind the tape but did not tell Toni.
After hours of further questioning at police headquarters, they all wearily signed their statements. Bill walked out with them to the reception.
Agatha drew him aside and whispered, ‘Do something for me. Toni’s got a new squeeze called Paul Finlay, a lecturer at Mircester College, gives evening classes in French. He’s too old for her. Could you look up the police files and see if there is anything on him?’
‘I’ll have my hands full with this case. Oh, don’t glare at me. If I get a spare moment, I’ll try.’
Through the glass doors, Toni could see Paul waiting. ‘Coming back to my cottage with us?’ asked Agatha.
Toni wanted to discuss the murder – if murder it should turn out to be. Maybe someone had stolen a body from a grave or from a mortuary – and suddenly she did not want to see any more of Paul that evening.