Agatha Raisin and the Curious Curate (2 page)

The curate
was
beautiful. He stood there, at the altar, with a shaft of sunlight lighting up the gold curls of his hair, his pale white skin, his large blue eyes, and his perfect mouth. Agatha stood there in a daze. Mechanically, she sang the opening hymn and listened to the readings from the Bible. Then the curate mounted the pulpit and began a sermon about loving thy neighbour. He had a well-modulated voice. Agatha listened to every word of a sermon she would normally have damned as mawkish and boring.

At the end of the service, it took ages to get out of the church. So many wanted to chat to the curate, now stationed on the porch. At last, it was Agatha’s turn. Tristan gazed into her eyes and held her hand firmly.

‘Beautiful sermon,’ gushed Agatha.

He smiled warmly at her. ‘I am glad you could come to church,’ he said. ‘Do you live far away or are you from the village?’

‘I live here. In Lilac Lane,’ gabbled Agatha. ‘Last cottage.’

John coughed impatiently behind her and Agatha reluctantly moved on.

‘Isn’t he incredible?’ exclaimed Agatha as they walked to the local pub, the Red Lion, where they had agreed earlier to have lunch.

‘Humph,’ was John’s only reply.

So when they were seated in the pub over lunch, Agatha went on, ‘I don’t think I have ever seen such a beautiful man. And he’s tall, too! About six feet, would you say?’

‘There’s something not quite right about him,’ said John. ‘It wasn’t a sparkling sermon, either.’

‘Oh, you’re just jealous.’

‘Believe it or not, Agatha, I am not in the slightest jealous. I would have thought that you, of all people, would not fall for a young man simply because of his looks like all those other silly women.’

‘Oh, let’s talk about something else,’ said Agatha sulkily. ‘How’s the new book going?’

John began to talk and Agatha let his words drift in and out of her brain while she plotted about ways and means to see the curate alone. Could she ask for spiritual guidance? No, he might tell Mrs Bloxby and Mrs Bloxby would see through that ruse. Maybe dinner? But she was sure he would be entertained and fêted by every woman not only in Carsely, but in the villages around.

‘Don’t you think so?’ she realized John was asking.

‘Think what?’

‘Agatha, you haven’t been listening to a word I’ve said. I think I’ll write a book and call it
Death of a Curate
.’

‘I’ve got a headache,’ lied Agatha. ‘That’s why I wasn’t concentrating on what you were saying.’

After lunch, Agatha was glad to get rid of John so that she could wrap herself in brightly coloured dreams of the curate. She longed to call on Mrs Bloxby, but Sundays were busy days for the vicar’s wife and so she had to bide her time with impatience until Monday morning. She hurried along to the vicarage but only Alf, the vicar, was there and he told her curtly that his wife was out on her rounds.

‘I went to church on Sunday,’ said Agatha. ‘I’ve never seen such a large congregation.’

‘Oh, really,’ he said coldly. ‘Let’s hope it is still large when I resume my duties next Sunday. Now if you will excuse me . . .’

He gently closed the door.

Agatha stood there seething with frustration. Across the road from the church stood the house where Tristan had a room. But she could not possibly call on him. She had no excuse.

She was just walking away when she saw Mrs Bloxby coming towards her. Agatha hailed her with delight. ‘Want to see me?’ asked Mrs Bloxby. ‘Come inside and I’ll put the kettle on.’

Mrs Bloxby opened the vicarage door. The vicar’s voice sounded from his study with dreadful clarity. ‘Is that you, dear? That awful woman’s just called.’

‘Excuse me,’ said Mrs Bloxby and darted into the study and shut the door behind her.

She emerged a few moments later, rather pink in the face. ‘Poor Alf, some gypsy woman’s been round pestering him to buy white heather. He’s rather tetchy with the heat. I’ll make tea.’

‘Coffee, please.’ Agatha followed her into the kitchen.

‘We’ll go into the garden and you can have a cigarette.’

‘You forget. I’ve given up smoking. That trip to the hypnotist worked. Cigarettes still taste like burning rubber, the way he said they would.’

Mrs Bloxby made coffee, put two mugs of it on a tray and carried the tray out into the garden. ‘This dreadful heat,’ she said, putting the tray down on the garden table. ‘It does make everyone so crotchety.’

‘I was at church on Sunday,’ began Agatha.

‘So many people. Did you enjoy it?’

‘Very much. Very impressed with the curate.’

‘Ah, our Mr Delon. Did you see anything past his extraordinary good looks?’

‘I spoke to him on the porch. He seems charming.’

‘He’s all of that.’

‘You don’t like him, and I know why,’ said Agatha.

‘Why?’

‘Because he is filling up the church the way Mr Bloxby never could.’

‘Mrs Raisin, when have I ever been
petty
?’

‘Sorry, but he does seem such a wonderful preacher.’

‘Indeed! I forget what the sermon was about. Refresh my memory.’

But try as she could, Agatha could not remember what it had all been about and she reddened under Mrs Bloxby’s mild gaze.

‘You know, Mrs Raisin, beauty is such a dangerous thing. It can slow character formation because people are always willing to credit the beautiful with character attributes they do not have.’

‘You really don’t like him!’

‘I do not know him or understand him. Let’s leave it at that.’

Agatha felt restless and discontented when she returned home. She had started to make up her face again and wear her most elegant clothes. Surely her meetings with the curate were not going to be confined to one-minute talks on a Sunday on the church porch.

The doorbell rang. Ever hopeful, Agatha checked her hair and make-up in the hall mirror before opening the door. Miss Simms, the secretary of the ladies’ society, stood there.

‘Come in,’ urged Agatha, glad of any diversion.

Miss Simms teetered after Agatha on her high heels. Because of the heat of the day, she was wearing the minimum: tube top, tiny skirt and no tights. Agatha envied women who were able to go around in hot weather without stockings or tights. When she went barelegged, her shoes rubbed her heels and the top of her feet and raised blisters.

‘Isn’t he gorgeous,’ gasped Miss Simms, flopping down on a kitchen chair. ‘I saw you in church.’

‘The curate? Yes, he’s quite something to look at.’

‘He’s more than that,’ breathed Miss Simms. ‘He’s got the gift.’

‘What gift? Speaking in tongues?’

‘Nah! Healing. I had this terrible pain in me back and I met him in the village and told him about it. He took me round to his place and he laid his hands on my back and I could feel a surge of heat.’

I’ll bet you could, thought Agatha, sour with jealousy.

‘And the pain had gone, just like that!’

There was a clatter as Agatha’s cleaner, Doris Simpson, came down the stairs carrying the vacuum cleaner. ‘Just going to do the sitting-room and then I’ll be off,’ she said, putting her head round the kitchen door.

‘We was just talking about the new curate,’ said Miss Simms.

‘Oh, him,’ snorted Doris. ‘Slimy bastard.’

‘Come back here,’ shouted Agatha as Doris retreated.

‘What?’ Doris stood in the doorway, her arms folded over her apron, Agatha’s cats purring and winding their way around her legs.

‘Why did you call Tristan a slimy bastard?’ asked Agatha.

‘I dunno.’ Doris scratched her grey hair. ‘There’s something about him that gives me the creeps.’

‘But you don’t know him, surely,’ complained Agatha.

‘No, just an impression. Now I must get on.’

‘What does
she
know about anything?’ grumbled Miss Simms. ‘She’s only a cleaner,’ she added, forgetting that she herself was sometimes reduced to cleaning houses when she was between what she euphemistically called ‘gentlemen friends’.

‘Exactly,’ agreed Agatha. ‘What’s his place like?’

‘Well, Mrs Feathers’s cottage is ever so dark, but he’s brightened up the room with pictures and throw rugs and that. He doesn’t have his own kitchen, but old Mrs Feathers, she cooks for him.’

‘Lucky Mrs Feathers,’ said Agatha.

‘I was wondering if there was any chance of a date.’

Agatha stiffened. ‘He’s a man of the cloth,’ she said severely.

‘But he ain’t Catholic. He can go out with girls same as anybody.’

‘What about your gentleman friend in bathroom fittings?’

Miss Simms giggled. ‘He wouldn’t have to know. Anyway, he’s married.’

The normally pushy Agatha was beginning to feel outclassed. Besides, Tristan was young – well, maybe thirty-something, and Miss Simms was in her late twenties.

When Miss Simms had left, Agatha nervously paced up and down. She jerked open a kitchen drawer and found herself looking down at a packet of cigarettes. She took it out, opened it and lit one. Glory be! It tasted marvellous. The hypnotist’s curse had gone. She hung on to the kitchen table until the first wave of dizziness had passed. Think what you’re doing to your health, your lungs, screamed the governess in her head. ‘Shove off,’ muttered Agatha to the inner voice.

There was another ring at the doorbell. Probably some other woman come to gloat about a laying-on of hands by the curate, thought Agatha sourly.

She jerked open the door.

Tristan stood there, smiling at her.

Agatha blinked at the vision in blue shirt and blue chinos. ‘Oh, Mr Delon,’ she said weakly. ‘How nice.’

‘Call me Tristan,’ he said. ‘I noticed you at church on Sunday. And I heard that you used to live in London. I’m still a city boy and still out of my depth in the country. This is very last minute, but I wondered whether you would be free to have dinner with me tonight?’

‘Yes, that would be lovely,’ said Agatha, wishing she had put on a thicker layer of make-up. ‘Where?’

‘Oh, just at my place, if that’s all right.’

‘Lovely. What time?’

‘Eight o’clock.’

‘Fine. Won’t you come in?’

‘Not now. On my rounds. See you this evening.’

He gave her a sunny smile and waved and walked off down the lane.

Agatha retreated to the kitchen. Her knees were trembling. Remember your age, snarled the voice in her head. Agatha ignored it and lit another cigarette while she planned what to wear. No more sensible clothes. She did not stop to consider what gossip the curate had heard that had prompted him to ask her to dinner. Agatha considered herself a very important person, which was her way of lacquering over her feelings of inferiority.

By the time she stepped out into the balmy summer evening some hours later in a gold silk dress, the bedroom behind her in the cottage was a wreck of discarded clothes. The dress was a plain shirtwaister, Agatha having decided that full evening rig would not be suitable for dinner in a village cottage.

She kept her face averted as she passed the vicarage and knocked at Mrs Feathers’s door. She had not told Mrs Bloxby about the invitation, feeling that that lady would not approve.

Old Mrs Feathers answered the door. She was grey-haired and stooped and had a mild, innocent face. ‘Just go on upstairs,’ she said.

Agatha mounted the narrow cottage stairs. Tristan opened a door at the top. ‘Welcome,’ he said. ‘How nice and cool you look.’

He ushered Agatha into a small room where a table had been laid with a white cloth for dinner.

‘We’ll start right away,’ he said. He opened the door and shouted down the stairs, ‘You can start serving now, Mrs Feathers.’

‘Doesn’t she need some help?’ asked Agatha anxiously.

‘Oh, no. Don’t spoil her fun. She likes looking after me.’ But Agatha felt awkward as Mrs Feathers subsequently appeared carrying a heavy tray. She laid out two plates of pâté de foie gras, toast melba, a chilled bottle of wine and two glasses. ‘Just call when you’re ready for your next course,’ she said.

Agatha sat down. Mrs Feathers spread a large white napkin on Agatha’s lap before creaking off.

Tristan poured wine and sat down opposite her. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘tell me what brings a sophisticated lady like yourself to a Cotswold village?’

Agatha told him that she had always had a dream of living in a Cotswold village. She left out the bit about taking early retirement because she did not want to refer to her age. And all the time she talked and ate, she admired the beauty of the curate opposite. He had the face of an angel come to earth with his cherubic, almost androgynous features framed by his gold curls, but his athletic, well-formed body was all masculine.

Tristan rose and called for the second course. Mrs Feathers appeared bearing tournedos Rossini, new potatoes and salad.

‘Isn’t Mrs Feathers an excellent cook?’ said Tristan when they were alone again.

‘Very,’ said Agatha. ‘This steak is excellent. Where did you buy it?’

‘I leave all the shopping to Mrs Feathers. I told her to make a special effort.’

‘She didn’t pay for all this, I hope?’

‘Mrs Feathers insists on paying for my food.’

Agatha looked at him uneasily. Surely an old widow like Mrs Feathers could not afford all this expensive food and wine. But Tristan seemed to take it as his due and he continued to question her about her life until the steak was finished and Mrs Feathers brought in baked Alaska.

‘I’ve talked about nothing but myself,’ said Agatha ruefully. ‘I don’t know a thing about you.’

‘Nothing much to know,’ said Tristan.

‘Where were you before you came down here?’

‘At a church in New Cross in London. I ran a boys’ club there, you know, to get them off the streets. It was going well until I was attacked.’

‘What on earth happened?’

‘One of the gang leaders felt I was taking his members away. Five of them jumped me one night when I was walking home. I was badly beaten up, cracked ribs, all that. To tell the truth, I had a minor nervous breakdown and I felt a spell in the country would be just what I needed.’

‘How awful for you,’ said Agatha.

‘I’m over it now. These things happen.’

‘What made you want to join the church?’