Agatha Raisin and the Wellspring of Death (3 page)

As she walked along to the pub, she was assailed with a feeling of loneliness, of isolation, and wondered, not for the first time, if the city was so deep in her bones that she could never put
down roots in country soil. And yet it was all so beautiful and calm as she walked under arches of blossom. Far above her, the Cotswold sky was pale blue and cloudless. Going to be another
hose-pipe ban soon, thought the practical side of Agatha.

She was nearly at the pub when she realized she had forgotten to feed her two cats, Hodge and Boswell. She groaned. They would be all right until she got back. She was not going to turn into one
of those drivelling women who were sentimental about animals.

Nevertheless, she walked back to her cottage, fed her cats, let them out in the garden, and feeling she had endured enough exercise and fresh air for one day, got into her car and drove the
short distance to the pub, plunging happily into its beer-smelling, smoky gloom.

The barman, John Fletcher, gave her a gin and tonic and then the locals clustered around, anxious for news. Always happy to be the centre of attention, Agatha described in gruesome detail the
finding of the body. ‘It may not be murder,’ she finished. ‘He could just have fallen.’

‘Bound to be murder,’ said Miss Simms, secretary of the Carsely Ladies’ Society and the village’s best-known unmarried mother. ‘And I know who done it!’

‘Who?’ asked Agatha.

Miss Simms cradled her half-pint of beer against her chest. ‘It was that Mary Owen.’

‘Go on with you,’ said Fred Griggs, the local policeman, lumbering up to join the group. ‘Mary Owen is a nice old lady who wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

‘How old?’ asked Agatha.

‘Sixty-five.’

Agatha winced. She was in her middle fifties and did not like to think of anyone in their sixties being considered old.

‘She may have been nice one time,’ said Miss Simms defiantly, ‘but ever since this water company’s come on the scene, she’s been hollering and yelling about it.
People can go batty when they get as old as that.’

‘We don’t know yet it was murder,’ said Fred. ‘Is anyone going to buy me a drink?’

‘I will,’ said Agatha. ‘Drinking on duty?’

‘Day off. I’ll have a pint of Hook Norton.’

‘I didn’t think you could get a day off with there being this death.’

‘The detectives are handling it.’

Mrs Darry came up and joined them. Agatha turned her back on her, trying to exclude her from the group, but Mrs Darry pushed past her.

‘Are you talking about the murder?’ she asked eagerly.

‘We have other things to talk about,’ said Agatha huffily as she paid for the policeman’s drink.

‘I was saying as how Mary Owen did it,’ said Miss Simms.

‘I’m surprised to find you here, Mrs Raisin,’ said Mrs Darry. ‘I’ll have a Dubonnet, John.’ She looked at Agatha. ‘I mean, I thought they would have
been grilling you at police headquarters.’

‘Why?’ Agatha stared at her belligerently.

Mrs Darry gave a malicious little titter. ‘Surely the person who is found with the body is always chief suspect?’

‘That’s rubbish,’ said Fred. ‘Mrs Raisin just happened to come across the body.’

‘It’s amazing how many bodies Mrs Raisin seems to have come across.’ Mrs Darry took a birdlike sip of her drink. ‘And gained a certain notoriety for it, too. Life has
been quite quiet for you recently, has it not?’

Agatha’s face flamed red with anger. ‘Are you saying I go around murdering people so as to get in the newspapers?’

Mrs Darry gave a shrill laugh. ‘Just my little joke.’

‘Then you can take your joke and shove it up your scrawny arse,’ raged Agatha, as the whole full force of the shock of finding the body hit her. Her eyes filled with tears.

‘Come on, now,’ said Miss Simms, unhitching herself from the bar-stool. ‘We’ll find a quiet corner away from this bitch.’

Agatha sat down with her, her knees trembling.

‘Sorry about the scene,’ she mumbled. ‘I did get a bit of a fright.’

‘Have the press been bothering you?’

‘No,’ said Agatha, surprised. ‘I wonder why.’

‘All it said in the
Gloucester Echo
was that the body had been found by a local woman.’

Despite her distress, Agatha felt peeved. The police could have said something like, ‘The body was found by Mrs Agatha Raisin, who has been of great help to us in solving murders in the
past.’

‘That Mrs Darry is an awful cat,’ said Miss Simms.

‘There’s one in every village,’ said Agatha gloomily. ‘I shouldn’t have risen to her remarks.’

‘Look, Mrs Raisin . . .’

‘Call me Agatha. Why is it we always seem to call each other by our second names?’

‘I like that,’ said Miss Simms. ‘More genteel, like. Are you going to investigate? Will Mr Lacey be helping you?’

‘I don’t know what James is doing these days and I don’t care,’ said Agatha. ‘But I will probably find out more about the whole set-up because I will be doing
public relations for the new water company on a freelance basis.’

‘Pity it’s water,’ said Miss Simms. ‘Now if it was gin or whisky, you could get us all some free samples. My current boyfriend is in bathroom equipment. I can get you a
toilet seat.’

‘That’s kind of you, but my toilet seats are all right. Do you know any of the members of the parish council?’

‘Ancombe, you mean. The ladies’ society did a concert over in Ancombe when you was away abroad. Old fuddy-duddies. Wouldn’t hurt a fly. Probably it’ll turn out the old
geezer just fell over.’

The conversation moved to village gossip and Agatha finally left, feeling better. There was a message on her answering machine from Roy. She was to meet the two directors of the Ancombe Water
Company the following day at three in the afternoon.

Comforted by the thought of work, and by a long walk in the afternoon, Agatha managed at last to get a good night’s sleep.

Misery had its compensations. Agatha found she could get into a tailored skirt which had been too tight at the waist when she had last tried it on a few months ago. She also
put on a shirt blouse and tailored jacket, packed a writing-pad and pens into a Gucci briefcase, and decided she was ready for her new job.

One of the pleasures of being independently wealthy, she thought, was she did not care very much whether she got the job or not.

She stopped on her way out of the village at the general store and bought the newspapers. Nothing much yet. Only small paragraphs in each to say the police were continuing their investigations
into the death of Mr Struthers.

She drove to Mircester and then through the main town and out to an industrial estate on the fringe where the new water company was situated.

Her practised eye took in the sparse furnishings of the entrance hall. Low sofa, table, glossy magazines, green plants in pots. Good appearance but not that much money spent.

The receptionist with a smooth brown skin and large doe-like eyes had a Jamaican accent and shoulder-pads like an American football player. She took Agatha’s name, rang someone and then
said, ‘The secretary will be with you presently.’

Now let’s see how long they keep me waiting, thought Agatha. Successful company directors did not play at being important.

After two minutes a tall, willowy Princess Di look-alike swanned in. ‘Mrs Raisin? Follow me, if you please.’ Following a waft of Givenchy’s Amarige, Agatha trailed behind the
vision along a corridor of offices. There didn’t seem to be much sound coming from behind those office doors. Agatha wondered if they were empty.

The secretary opened a door at the end of the corridor marked ‘Boardroom’ and stood aside to let Agatha enter.

Agatha cast a quick eye around the boardroom. Long oak table, six chairs, venetian blinds at the two windows, table in the corner with coffee machine, cups, milk, sugar and biscuits.

‘If you will sit here, Mrs Raisin.’ The secretary drew out a chair at the end of the table. ‘Coffee?’

‘Black, please, and an ashtray.’

‘I don’t think we have an ashtray.’

‘If I am going to work for you, you’d better find one,’ said Agatha, made tetchy with all the guilt the smoker feels these days.

The secretary had wide blue eyes fringed with black lashes. A little flicker of dislike flashed in the blue shallows of her eyes and then was immediately gone.

‘What’s your name?’ asked Agatha.

‘Portia Salmond.’

‘Well, Portia, are we going to get down to business this day?’

‘Mr Peter and Mr Guy will be with you directly.’ Portia went to the coffee machine and poured a cup of coffee for Agatha. She returned and put it down in front of her, along with an
extra saucer. ‘You can use that until I manage to find an ashtray.’

The door at the far end of the room opened and a man entered, hand outstretched.

‘I am Peter Freemont,’ he said. ‘Guy will be along in a minute.’

Peter Freemont was about forty years old, powerful and swarthy with black hair already greying at the temples. He had a large fleshy nose and a small mouth, thick bushy eyebrows and a very large
head. His broad figure was encased in a pin-striped suit and his feet, which were tiny, in black lace-up shoes, like children’s shoes. He looked like the figure of a man painted on the side
of a balloon. Agatha wondered madly whether, if she tied string around his ankles and held him out of the window, he would float up to the sky.

But then brother Guy walked in and Agatha promptly forgot about Peter. Guy Freemont was beautiful. He was tall and slim, with jet-black hair and very blue eyes, a tanned skin and an
athlete’s body. Agatha judged him to be in his middle thirties. He gave Agatha such a blinding smile that she searched in her briefcase for her notebook to cover her confusion.

They both sat down at the table. ‘Now, to business. You come highly recommended,’ said Peter.

‘I would like to know first,’ said Agatha, ‘if this meeting to be held by Mary Owen in the village hall is going to pose problems. What if the villagers all decide they
don’t want the water company?’

‘There’s nothing they can do,’ said Peter, clasping his plump hands covered in black hairs on the table in front of him. ‘The spring rises in Mrs Toynbee’s garden.
Mrs Toynbee is a direct descendant of Miss Jakes, who first channelled the spring out to the road, and Mrs Toynbee has given us her permission.’

Guy opened a folder and slid a piece of artwork in front of Agatha. ‘This is what the bottle will look like.’ Agatha was surprised to see that the label showed a photograph of the
skull with the water gushing out of it. ‘Isn’t that a bit grim,’ she asked, ‘particularly in view of the murder?’

‘They’re not sure it is murder yet,’ said Guy. ‘Anyway, death’s heads and skulls always promote a product. There was a cigarette company that always had something
like the shape of a skull in their ads and a brand of gin used to have an ad with the ice cubes in a glass in the shape of a skull.’

‘It could be argued,’ said Agatha, lighting a cigarette, ‘that people who drink and smoke have a death wish. But people who go around drinking gnat’s piss like mineral
water are usually the healthy type.’

‘Not any more,’ said Peter. ‘They can be reformed alcoholics who still have the death wish. They can be business people at the new fashionable “dry” lunches, or
they can be people who just can’t stand the taste of the drinking water from the tap, which often smells like swimming pools. But everyone is fascinated by death. Now there needs to be some
big event to launch the water. What about taking over some stately home like Blenheim Palace . . .?’

‘They’d hardly agree to that, seeing as how they are producing their own water,’ Agatha pointed out.

‘Perhaps hire a boat and go down the Thames, lots of celebs, lots of booze for the press?’ suggested Guy.

‘Old hat,’ said Agatha. ‘I have it, and it’d be a way to get the goodwill of the village. A village fête.’

‘Oh, come on,’ protested Peter. ‘Tacky cakes and home-made jam and women in 1970s Laura Ashley dresses.’

‘No, no, listen to me,’ said Agatha eagerly. ‘Why do you think tourists come to the Cotswolds?’

‘Beauty spot?’ suggested Peter.

‘No, apart from that. The British are as bad as the Americans. The Americans want to believe in the good old days of June Allyson standing at the white picket fence with an apple pie. The
British want the rural dream of croquet and skittles and my lord dishing out the prizes. Now usually these village affairs are tacky, I grant you that. But this one could be groomed to look like
something out of a Merchant-Ivory film. And I’ll get that American film star, Jane Harris, to open it.’

‘The Commie?’

‘Doesn’t matter. Her health and beauty videos sell by the ton. And I’ll get some local doddering aristo as well.’

‘It could work,’ said Guy slowly. ‘But we can’t control the weather. Crowds aren’t going to come to an idyllic English fête if it’s pissing down with
rain.’

‘July’s usually a lousy month,’ said Agatha. ‘Make it for the end of August, before the kids go back to school.’

They discussed the pros and cons of the village fête. Agatha clinched it by pointing out the obvious. It was being marketed as Ancombe water, so where better to have the launch than in
Ancombe itself?

‘There’s one last thing,’ said Agatha. ‘This meeting in the village hall makes me uneasy. I think we should be there to represent the company. It will be very bad
publicity if we end up with the villagers against us. I’ll let you know when the meeting is to be held.’

‘Guy will go along with you,’ said Peter.

Portia entered. ‘What is it?’ asked Peter.

‘That dead man,’ said Portia. ‘He was murdered.’

‘Thank you for telling us.’

Both men waited until the secretary had left. ‘Not bad, not bad,’ said Peter.

‘I can’t see how a murder is going to help us.’ Agatha looked at them. Then she said slowly, ‘Of course, it means there will be a lot of the press at that meeting at the
village hall.’

‘Exactly,’ said Peter. ‘And good PR woman that you are, you’d better find a way to swing everyone one hundred per cent behind us. God knows, you’re being paid
enough.’