Agatha Raisin and the Busy Body (2 page)

‘You can’t put that tree up,’ he said. ‘It’s a danger to the public. It could fall off the tower and kill someone.’

Mr Sunday was a small, barrel-chested man with a pugnacious face and thick pepper-and-salt hair. ‘I am within my rights as an officer of the Mircester Health and Safety Board,’ he
said. ‘If you persist in erecting that tree, I will have you taken to court. Furthermore I am putting red tape round the gravestones in the churchyard.’

‘Why on earth?’ exclaimed Alf.

‘Because they might fall over.’

‘Look here, you stupid man, those gravestones have been standing for hundreds of years without falling over.’

‘A gravestone fell over in a cemetery in Yorkshire and injured someone. It is my job to ensure safety.’

‘Oh, go away,’ said Alf wearily. ‘Come on, men. Let’s get this tree up.’

But two days later the vicar received an official letter from the Health and Safety Board telling him he must take down the tree or face court proceedings.

The Carsely parish council was then informed that if they wished to put up fairy lights along the main street, they were not to use ladders. A cherry picker had to be used instead by two trained
workers, which would have cost the village one thousand two hundred pounds in training fees, plus their wages and the cost of the equipment. Every light fitting must undergo a ‘pull
test’ using expensive special equipment to make sure it was strong enough. Lampposts were deemed unsafe for hanging illuminations.

John Sunday earned the nickname of ‘Grudge Sunday’ as his unpopularity grew. The village shop was told it could no longer have wooden shelves which had been there since the time of
Queen Victoria ‘in case someone ran their hands along the shelves and got a splinter’. The village school was ordered to leave lights on at night ‘in case unauthorized intruders
tripped over in the dark’.

And children were warned not to play with ‘counterfeit banknotes’ after playing with toy money that did not show a picture of the queen.

Grudge Sunday swelled in importance after each report. He thought the hatred directed towards him by the villagers of Carsely was prompted by envy.

All this Agatha learned when she called on her friend, Mrs Bloxby, the vicar’s wife, a day after she had arrived home. But to Mrs Bloxby’s surprise, Agatha did not
seem particularly interested in the iniquities of Grudge Sunday. In fact Agatha did not seem to be interested in anything. When asked when she was going back to work, Agatha said listlessly,
‘Probably some time in the New Year.’

Mrs Bloxby had often wished that her friend would grow out of her silly obsessions, but, she thought, Agatha without an obsession seemed gutted somehow.

Agatha Raisin still presented a smart appearance. She had thick glossy brown hair, good skin, excellent legs, but a rather thick waist and small brown bearlike eyes. She was wearing a tailored
dark-blue cashmere trouser suit over a gold silk blouse. But her generous mouth was turned down at the corners and her eyes were dull.

‘Our Ladies’ Society is having a meeting with the Odley Cruesis society tonight. Do come along. They come under the rule of Mr Sunday and they wish us to join forces to see if there
is something we can do. You haven’t been to the society for ages.’

‘I won’t know anyone,’ said Agatha. ‘People keep selling up and the incomers get older and older.’

‘Apart from myself and Miss Simms,’ said Mrs Bloxby, ‘you never cared much for the last lot. Oh, do come along.’ Her usually mild and pleasant voice took on an edge.
‘What else are you going to do? Sit at home and brood?’

Agatha gave her friend a startled look. In the tradition of the society they addressed each other by their second names, dating from some now long-forgotten time when the use of first names had
been considered vulgar.

‘I just can’t seem to get interested in anything or anyone,’ sighed Agatha. ‘All right, I’ll drive you over. I’ve never been to Odley Cruesis.’

‘It’s a pretty village. Nice people. The meeting is to be held in the vicarage. The vicar’s wife, Penelope Timson, is an excellent baker. Her cakes are the talk of the
neighbourhood.’

Odley Cruesis was situated ten miles from Carsely, reached along winding roads glittering with frost. With its old Tudor thatched houses, it seemed a little part of England
that time had forgotten. To Agatha’s dismay, cars were parked bumper to bumper outside the vicarage. ‘I’ll never be able to park,’ she moaned.

‘Yes, you will,’ said Mrs Bloxby. ‘There’s a space right there.’

‘I’m not driving a Mini,’ said Agatha.

‘Let me. I’ll park it for you.’

Agatha got out and Mrs Bloxby got into the driver’s seat and then parked Agatha’s Rover neatly between two cars, leaving only inches on either side.

Agatha walked up to the vicarage. She could faintly hear the chatter of voices. She sighed. Cakes and boredom. Why had she come?

The vicarage drawing room was large. There seemed to be around twenty-five people there. But apart from Miss Simms, Agatha could not recognize anyone else from Carsely. Mrs
Bloxby whispered in a disappointed voice that they must have decided not to attend. Agatha waved to Miss Simms, Carsely’s unmarried mother, who was wearing a very short skirt, pixie boots,
one of those fake French fisherman’s jerseys, and long dangling earrings. There was a log fire on the hearth giving out a dim glow and occasionally sending puffs of smoke into the room.

Agatha refused tea and cakes. She could not be bothered to balance a teacup and plate. All the comfortable chairs had been taken up. Extra hard chairs had been brought in. Agatha sat down in a
hard chair and wondered how long this wretched evening was going to last. The room was cold. Long French windows had been let into one wall of the old building and she could see steam from the
breaths of all the cold visitors beginning to form on the glass.

A new arrival was being greeted with great enthusiasm. Agatha judged her to be in her seventies. She had leathery brown skin criss-crossed with wrinkles, thick black hair streaked with grey, and
sparkling blue-grey eyes. ‘Freezing out there,’ she said, divesting herself of her coat and pashmina. ‘They say we’re going to have a blizzard tonight.’

‘Who is she and what’s that accent?’ asked Agatha.

‘She’s Mrs Miriam Courtney, widow, South African, millionairess,’ whispered Mrs Bloxby. ‘She bought the manor house here about two years ago.’

Miriam looked brightly around the room. ‘Am I expected to sit on one of those bum-numbing seats?’

‘Have my chair,’ said Miss Simms eagerly, surrendering her armchair.

Agatha felt a twinge of jealousy.

‘Goodness, it’s cold,’ said Miriam. ‘You’ve got coal in the scuttle over there. Why not throw some of that on the fire and get up a blaze?’

‘It’s not smokeless,’ protested Penelope Timson, a tall thin woman with very large hands and feet and stooped shoulders, as if she had become bent after years of bending down
to speak to smaller parishioners. She was wearing two cardigans over a sweater, a baggy tweed skirt, and woollen stockings which ended surprisingly in a pair of fluffy pink slippers in the shape of
two large pink mice. ‘You know what Mr Sunday is like. He tours around looking for smoke. We’re supposed to burn smokeless.’

‘Oh, never mind him. Courage. Chuck on a few lumps,’ urged Miriam.

Bowing to a stronger will, Penelope picked up the tongs and deposited a few lumps. A blaze sprang up but the fire smoked even more.

‘Damn, I brought brandy and I’ve left it in the car. I’ll go and get it,’ said Miriam. ‘Don’t wait for me. Get started.’

‘I thought we weren’t supposed to drink and drive,’ muttered Agatha.

‘She’s probably thinking of herself,’ said Mrs Bloxby. ‘She can walk home. I wonder she bothered to drive.’

‘I wonder anyone local bothered to drive,’ said Agatha. ‘Couldn’t they just walk?’

‘It’s only in cities that people walk, I think,’ said Mrs Bloxby. ‘These days, in the country, people seem to drive even a few yards.’

Penelope called the meeting to order. Agatha’s thoughts drifted off. Perhaps she could rescue the little that was left of her holiday and go somewhere warm. But she didn’t like beach
holidays any more and Miriam’s skin was surely an example of what happened to women who baked in the sun. It was all so stupid, reflected Agatha, this obsession with tanning. Understandable
in the old days when only the rich went abroad in the winter and people wanted to appear jet-setters, but now the British from every walk of life flew out to exotic destinations, visiting a tanning
parlour before they left. I mean, thought Agatha, you wouldn’t leave a fine piece of leather out in the sun to dry and crack, so why do it with your skin? She remembered the slogan,
‘Black is beautiful.’ Quite right, too. But if she invented a slogan saying, ‘White is beautiful,’ she’d probably end up before the Race Relations Board.

Then she became aware that Penelope was asking, ‘Where is Mrs Courtney? She should be back. I hope she hasn’t slipped on ice.’

‘I’ll go and look for her,’ said Miss Simms eagerly.

The meeting went on. Descriptions of the iniquities of Grudge Sunday wandered in and out of Agatha’s brain. She wondered where her ex-husband was and reflected on how glad she was that she
had got over her obsession for him, and yet, how empty life seemed without it.

‘Found her! Mrs Courtney had to go home for the hooch. It wasn’t in the car,’ cried Miss Simms from the doorway. She came into the room followed by Miriam. Both were carrying
bottles. Penelope went off to find glasses and returned with a tray full of them.

The room was soon full of genteel murmurs – ‘Oh, I am sure one wouldn’t hurt.’ ‘Such a cold night, one does need something.’ ‘Ooh, not so much!’
– as brandy was poured.

‘I think it’s going to snow,’ said Miriam. ‘The wind’s getting up.’

‘Too cold for snow,’ said Agatha, prompted by a sudden desire to contradict Miriam on any subject she cared to bring up.

The room was filling up with smoke. Penelope batted at it ineffectually with her large hands. ‘Must get the sweep in,’ she said.

She stared at the French windows and screamed. The tray she was holding, with a few remaining glasses, fell to the floor. Everyone stood up, turned and looked towards the French windows and soon
the smoky air was full of cries.

His face pressed against the glass, his bloodied hands smearing the windowpanes as he slowly sank down, was John Sunday. Seen dimly through the steamy glass, it all looked unreal, like something
out of a horror movie.

Agatha was never to forget that long night. They were trapped in the cold vicarage drawing room. The scene-of-crime operatives in their white suits worked outside the windows
while a policeman stood guard. They seemed to take forever. Then there was a long wait for the arrival of the Home Office pathologist. After he was finished, Detective Inspector Wilkes, with
Agatha’s friend Detective Sergeant Bill Wong and one of Agatha’s pet hates Detective Sergeant Collins, an acidulous woman, arrived. One by one they were interviewed. Bill went on as if
he did not know Agatha, apart from muttering to her that he would call on her sometime. Collins insisted they were all breathalyzed before they were pronounced fit to drive home. Miriam and Miss
Simms were taken off for questioning, being the only two to have left the room.

To add to all the misery, when Agatha and Mrs Bloxby left the vicarage, it had warmed up just enough for snow and it was coming down heavily. The cars which had been parked in front and behind
Agatha’s had already driven off.

Snow danced hypnotically in front of her and whitened the road in front as she drove along the narrow lanes.

Agatha dropped Mrs Bloxby at the vicarage in Carsely and then drove home, edging her way through the white wilderness.

Her sleepy cats came to meet her. Agatha glanced at her watch. Five in the morning! She was bone tired but the palms of her hands were tingling. A murder!

Her last waking thought was that she must get back to the office.

She awoke late the next day to find snow piled against the windows. The central heating did not seem to be coping very well. Huddled in a dressing gown, Agatha went down to her
living room and lit the fire that her cleaner, Doris Simpson, had laid ready in the grate. Then she went through to the kitchen to prepare her breakfast – one cup of black coffee. She
retreated to the living room and phoned Toni Gilmour, knowing that her young assistant lived around the corner from the office and would be on duty.

‘How was your holiday?’ asked Toni.

‘Foul. I’ll tell you about it later. There’s been a murder.’

Agatha outlined what had happened, ending with, ‘John Sunday appears to have made so many enemies around the villages that it’s going to be hard to find the culprit. Maybe he made
some enemies at work. Could you check with the Mircester Health and Safety Board? And ask Patrick to find out from his old police contacts if there’s any news of exactly how he
died.’

Patrick Mulligan, a retired policeman, had worked for Agatha for some time, along with Phil Marshall, an elderly man from Carsely, Sharon Gold, a bouncy young friend of Toni’s, and Mrs
Freedman, the agency’s secretary. Paul Kenson and Fred Auster, who had briefly worked for her, had left to work for a security firm in Iraq.

Agatha fretted as she glared out at the still-falling snow. She made herself a cheese sandwich and another cup of coffee and switched on the television to BBC news. There was a global warming
demonstration in Trafalgar Square with protestors nearly obliterated on the screen by the driving snow. She sat patiently through the whole of the news but there was nothing on the murder of John
Sunday.

The day dragged on in its dreary whiteness. Agatha’s two cats, Hodge and Boswell, sat patiently by the kitchen door, wondering why Agatha did not let them out.

The phone rang at midday. It was Toni. She said that Patrick had little news other than that the police had said it looked as if Sunday had been stabbed with something like a kitchen knife. He
had tried to defend himself and there were cuts on his hands and forearms.