Agatha Raisin and the Walkers of Dembley (2 page)

As Ross raised his arm to order another drink, she forestalled him by suggesting firmly that they should eat.

They walked into the dining-room. ‘Your usual table, Mrs Raisin,’ said the maître d’, showing them to a table at the window.

There had been a time, reflected Agatha, when being known and recognized by maître d’s was gratifying, underlying how far she had come from the Birmingham slum in which she had grown
up. No one said ‘slum’ these days, of course. It was Inner City, as if the euphemism could take away the grime, violence and despair. The do-gooders chattered on about poverty but no
one was starving, apart from old age pensioners who were not tough enough to demand benefits owing to them. It was a poverty of the very soul, where imagination was fed by violent videos, drink and
drugs.

‘And old Chalmers said to me when I came back from Beirut, “You’re too wily and tough a bird, Ross, to get kidnapped.”’

‘Absolutely,’ said Agatha. ‘What would you like to drink?’

‘Mind if I choose? I find the ladies know nothing about wine,’ which Agatha translated into meaning that the ladies might order inexpensive wine, or half a bottle, or something
unacceptable. She thought, he will choose the second most expensive wine, being greedy but not wanting to appear so, and he did. Like some of his ilk, he ordered in the way of food what he thought
was due to his position rather than because he enjoyed the taste of it. He did not eat much of it, obviously longing for the brandy at the end of the meal and for someone to take all the expensive
muck away. So he barely ate snails, followed by rack of lamb, followed by profiteroles.

Over the brandies, Agatha wearily got down to business. She described Jeff Loon as a nice boy, ‘too nice for the pop world’, who was devoted to his mother and two brothers. She
described his forthcoming release. She handed over photographs and press handouts.

‘This is a load of shit, you know,’ said Ross, smiling at her blearily. ‘I mean, I checked up on this Jeff Loon and he’s got a record, and I mean
criminal
record.
He’s been found guilty on two counts of actual bodily harm and he’s also been done for taking drugs, so why are you peddling this crap about him being a mother’s boy?’

The pleasant middle-aged woman that had been his impression of Agatha Raisin disappeared and a hard-featured woman with eyes like gimlets faced him.

‘And you cut the crap, sweetie,’ growled Agatha. ‘You know damn well why you were invited here. If you had no intention of writing anything even half decent, then you
shouldn’t have come, you greedy pig. I’ll tell you something else: I don’t give a sod what you write. I just never want to see your like again. You chomp and swig like the failed
journalist you are, boring the knickers off me with apocryphal stories of your greatness, and then you have the cheek to say that Jeff is a phony. What about you?

‘Oh, it’s not on for PRs to complain, but hear this! I’m going to break the mould. Your editor is going to hear all your stories, verbatim, and get it along with the price of
this evening.’

‘He’ll never listen to you!’ said Ross.

She fished under the napkin on her lap and held up a small but serviceable tape recorder. ‘Smile,’ said Agatha. ‘You’re on
Candid Camera.’

He gave a weak laugh. ‘Aggie,
Aggie.’
He covered her hand with his own. ‘Can’t you take a joke? Of course I’m going to write a nice piece on Jeff.’

Agatha signalled for the bill. ‘I couldn’t care less what you write,’ she said.

Ross Andrews had sobered rapidly. ‘Look, Aggie . . .’

‘Agatha to you, but Mrs Raisin will do now that we’ve got to know each other so well.’

‘Look, I promise you a good piece.’

Agatha signed the credit card slip. ‘You’ll get the tape when I read it,’ she said. She got to her feet. ‘Goodnight, Mr Andrews.’

Ross Andrews swore under his breath. Public relations! He hoped never to meet anyone like Agatha Raisin again. He felt quite tearful. Oh, for the days when women were women!

Far away in the heart of Gloucestershire in the market town of Dembley, Jeffrey Benson, seated in the back of a schoolroom which was used for the weekly meeting of the rambling
association, the Dembley Walkers, was thinking pretty much the same thing as he watched his lover, Jessica Tartinck, address the group. This feminist business was all very well, and God knew he was
all for the equality of women, but why did they have to dress and go on like men?

Jessica was wearing jeans and a workman’s shirt hanging loose. She had a pale scholarly face – she held a first in English from Oxford – and thick black hair worn long and
straight. She had superb breasts, large and firm. She was rather thick about the thighs and did not have very good legs, but then the legs were always in trousers. Like Jeff, she was a
schoolteacher at the local comprehensive. Before she had somehow declared herself leader of the Dembley Walkers, they had been a chatty, inoffensive group of people who enjoyed their weekend
rambles.

But Jessica seemed to delight in confrontations with landowners, whom she hated like poison. She was a frequent visitor to the Records Office in Gloucester, poring over maps, finding rights of
way which, buried in the mists of time, now had crops planted over them.

Jessica, on arriving to teach at the school a few months before, had immediately looked around for A Cause. She often thought in capital letters. She had learned of the Dembley Walkers through a
fellow teacher, a timid, fair-haired girl called Deborah Camden who taught physics. All at once Jessica had found her cause, and in no time at all, without any of the other ramblers’ knowing
quite how it had happened, she had taken over. That her zeal in finding rights of way for them across private land was fuelled by bitterness and envy and, as in the case of her previous
‘protests’ – she had been an anti-nuclear campaigner on Greenham Common – by a desire for power over people, never crossed her mind. Jessica could find no fault in Jessica,
and this was her great strength. She exuded confidence. It was politically incorrect to disagree with her. As most of the genuine ramblers who just wanted a peaceful outing had left and been
replaced by ones in Jessica’s image, she found it easy to hold sway. Among her most devout admirers, apart from Deborah, was Mary Trapp, a thin, morose girl with bad skin and very, very large
feet. Then there was Kelvin Hamilton, a professional Scot who wore a kilt at all times and made jokes about ‘saxpence’; he claimed to have come from a Highland village but actually came
from Glasgow. There was Alice Dewhurst, a large powerful woman with a large powerful backside, who had known Jessica during the Greenham Common days. Alice’s friend, Gemma Queen, a thin,
anaemic shop-girl, did not say much except to agree with everything Alice said. Lastly were two men, Peter Hatfield and Terry Brice, who worked at the Copper Kettle Restaurant in Dembley as
waiters. Both were thin and quiet, both effeminate, both given to whispering jokes to each other and sniggering.

Jessica looked particularly attractive that evening because she had found fresh prey. There was an old right of way across the land of a baronet, Sir Charles Fraith. She herself had surveyed the
territory. There were crops growing across the right of way. She had written to Sir Charles herself to say that they would be marching across his land the Saturday after next and that there was
nothing he could do about it.

Deborah suddenly found her hand shooting up. ‘Yes, Deborah?’ asked Jessica, raising thin black eyebrows.

‘C-couldn’t we j-just once,’ stammered Deborah, ‘j-just go for a walk like we used to? It was fun when old Mr Jones used to lead us. We had picnics and things and . .
.’

Her voice trailed away before the supercilious expression on Jessica’s face.

‘Come, now, Deborah, this is not like you. If it weren’t for rambling groups like ours, there wouldn’t be rights of way at all.’

One of the original pre-Jessica ramblers, Harry Southern, said suddenly, ‘She’s got a point. We’re going back to Farmer Stone’s land this Saturday. He chased us off with
a shotgun a month ago and some of the ladies were frightened.’

‘You mean
you
were frightened,’ said Jessica haughtily. ‘Very well. We will put it to a vote. Do we go to Farmer Stone’s this weekend or not?’

As her acolytes outnumbered the others, the vote was easily carried. Even Deborah no longer had the courage to protest, and after the meeting, when Jessica put an arm around her shoulders and
gave her a hug, she felt her doubts ebbing away and all her usual slavish devotion returning.

POETS day in the City, the acronym standing for Piss Off Early Tomorrow’s Saturday, had arrived at last. Agatha Raisin cleared her desk. She had an almost childish desire
to erase all the telephone numbers of contacts on the Filofax to make it harder for whoever replaced her, but managed to restrain herself. Outside her door, she could hear her secretary singing a
happy tune. Agatha had gone through three secretaries during her short stay. The present one, Bunty Dunton, was a big jolly county girl with a skin like a rhinoceros, and so Agatha’s often
virulent outbursts of temper had seemingly left her untouched. But she had never sounded so happy before.

It would be all right when she returned to Carsely, thought Agatha. She was popular there.

Her office door opened and Roy Silver edged in. His hair was slicked back with gel and now worn in a pony-tail. He had a spot on his chin and his suit was of the type where the jacket appears to
be hanging off the shoulders and the sleeves are turned back at the cuff. His silk tie was broad and a mixture of violent fluorescent colours which seemed to heighten the unhealthy pallor of his
face.

‘Off then?’ he asked, looking poised for flight.

‘Oh, sit down, Roy,’ said Agatha. ‘I’ve been here six months and we’ve hardly seen anything of each other.’

‘Been busy, you know that, Aggie. So have you. How did you get on with the Jeff Loon account?’

‘All right,’ said Agatha uneasily. She was beginning to wonder why she had gone over the top like that. Not that she had actually taped the creep. She just happened to have had her
tape recorder in her handbag and had taken it out while he was absorbed in bragging about himself and put it on her lap under her napkin to trick him.

Roy sat down. ‘So you’re off to Carsely Look, Aggie, I think you’ve found your niche.’

‘You mean PR? Forget it.’

‘No, I meant Carsely. You’re a much easier person to know when you’re there.’

‘What d’you mean?’ demanded Agatha truculently. She held up a silver paper-knife she had been about to drop into a box on her desk along with her other belongings.

Roy cringed but said firmly, ‘Well, Aggie, I must say you’ve been a success, back on your old form, rule by fear and all that. I’d got used to Village Aggie, all tea and
crumpets and the doings of the neighbours. Funny, even murder in your parish didn’t bring out the beast in you quite the way PR has done.’

‘I don’t indulge in personality clashes,’ said Agatha, feeling a tide of red starting at her neck and moving up to her face.

‘No?’ Roy was feeling bolder now. She hadn’t thrown anything at him. ‘Well, what about your seccies, love? Darting along to Personnel in floods of tears and sobbing their
little hearts out on Mr Burnham’s thirty-four-inch chest. What about that rag-trade queen, Emma Roth?’

‘What about her? I got a spread on her in the
Telegraph.’

‘But you told the old bat she had the manners of a pig and her fashions were shoddy.’

‘So she has, and so they are. And did she cancel her account with us? No.’

Roy squirmed. ‘Don’t like to see you like this. Get back to Carsely, there’s a love, and leave all this nasty London behind. I’m only telling you for your own
good.’

‘Why is it,’ said Agatha evenly, ‘that people who say they are only telling you things for your own good come out with a piece of bitchery?’

‘Well, we
were
friends once . . .’ Roy darted for the door and made his escape.

Agatha stared at the door through which he had disappeared, her mouth a little open. His last remark had dismayed her. The new Agatha surely
made
friends, not lost them. She had blamed
London and London life for her loneliness, never stopping to think that by sinking back into her old ways, she had once more started alienating people.

There was a separate box on her desk, full of cosmetics and scent, products of her various clients. She had been going to take it home. She called out, ‘Bunty, come in here a
moment.’

Her secretary bounced in, fresh face, no make-up, ankle-length white cotton skirt and bare feet. ‘Here,’ said Agatha, pushing the box forward, ‘you can have this
stuff.’

‘Gosh, thanks awfully,’ said Bunty. ‘Too kind. Got everything packed, Mrs Raisin?’

‘Just a few more things.’

There was something lost and vulnerable in Agatha’s bearlike eyes. She was still thinking of what Roy had said.

‘Tell you what,’ said Bunty, ‘I’ve brought my little car up to town today. When you’re ready, I’ll give you a run to Paddington.’

‘Thank you,’ said Agatha humbly.

And so Agatha, unusually silent and not back-seat driving one bit, was taken to Paddington by Bunty.

‘I live in the Cotswolds,’ volunteered Bunty. ‘Of course, I only get home at weekends. Lovely place. We’re over in Bibury. You’re near Moreton-in-Marsh. If
I’m home during the week, I go with Ma to the market on Tuesday.’

And so she rattled on while Agatha kept thinking of how lonely her stay in London had been and how easy it would have been to make a friend of this secretary.

As Agatha got out of the car at Paddington, she said, ‘You have my address, Bunty. If you ever feel like dropping over for a meal, or just coffee, please do.’

‘Thanks,’ said Bunty. ‘See you.’

Agatha trudged on to the train, taking up the seat next to her with her boxes. When the train moved out, gaining speed, and London fell away behind her, Agatha took a long slow breath. She was
leaving that other Agatha behind.

Carsely again. After a long dreary winter and a cold wet spring, the sun was blazing down, and Lilac Lane, where Agatha had her cottage, was living up to its name, heavy with
blossoms of white, mauve and purple. She saw James Lacey’s car parked outside his house and her heart lifted. She admitted to herself that she had missed him – along with everyone else
in Carsely, she told herself sternly. Her cleaner, Doris Simpson, who had been caring for Agatha’s two cats while she had been away, had been looking out for her, and came out on the step
with a smile of welcome.