Agatha Raisin: As The Pig Turns (3 page)

‘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.

‘I’ll join you there,’ she said. ‘Tell Paul I’ve gone home.’

‘Great! I mean, all right,’ said Agatha hurriedly.

Toni, familiar with the layout of police headquarters, left by the back door. She made her way slowly around to the front of the police station. There was no sign of Paul. She had left her car
at Agatha’s cottage, having driven Paul to Carsely. She assumed he had either got a lift in a police car or had taken a taxi to get to Mircester.

She saw a passing taxi and hailed it.

Agatha’s cottage was besieged by press and television, Roy having phoned every branch of the media he could think of. Roy stood, grinning, next to Agatha, occasionally
forgetting he was bald and tossing his head like someone in a shampoo advertisement. When he later saw himself on television, he howled in dismay. He had a fatuous grin on his face, and his tossing
head looked like a nervous twitch.

Agatha made a brief statement. Toni shoved her way through the reporters. ‘Toni, Toni!’ called several reporters, recognizing the girl. ‘Give us a statement.’ Swinging
round, Agatha fixed Toni with a baleful stare. Her beautiful detective hadn’t even been there when the body was found, and she wasn’t going to let her steal the limelight.

Toni nipped into the cottage, Agatha followed her and slammed the door. Roy and Charles were already in the living room. Charles had switched on the television.

‘Turn that off!’ ordered Agatha.

‘But it’s a rerun of
CSI Miami
on Sky,’ protested Charles. ‘Oh, suit yourself.’

‘Right,’ said Agatha. ‘We’ve got to solve this one.’

‘Can’t do much until we know who the pig was,’ said Charles, stifling a yawn. ‘Bill interviewed you, Agatha. Did he tell you anything about what happened before we
arrived on the scene?’

‘No, but I overheard Wilkes interviewing the two men who operated the spit. They said two men dressed as knights carried the pig to the spit in a canvas sack. One of the spit operators,
forget his name, he said the local butcher was supposed to bring it along in his van, but the knights said the butcher had thought if they dressed up and took the pig along, it would be more
colourful. Police were ordered to search for these knights, but I don’t know if they found anything.’

‘Whoever it was on that spit,’ said Toni, ‘it must be someone really deeply hated. To go to such trouble and risk being found out! If you hadn’t recognized it
wasn’t a pig, Agatha, there would have been a lot of cannibals at Winter Parva.’

‘I’m tired,’ said Roy. ‘I bet I’m going to have nightmares. I’m off to bed.’

‘I think I’ll go home,’ said Charles. ‘Toni can sleep on the sofa.’

Toni smiled at him gratefully. She had switched off her mobile phone. She had mixed feelings. She felt she was being disloyal to Paul, and yet detective work was her life, and uneasily she
remembered the times when Paul had laughed indulgently about her job.

Agatha’s phone rang. She answered it. ‘Oh, Paul, it’s you,’ Toni heard her say. ‘No, not here. She said something about going down to Southampton to see her mother
. . . What? . . . Yes, I’ll tell her.’ She rang off. ‘I didn’t think you wanted to see him tonight.’

‘Not tonight,’ agreed Toni. ‘I’ll talk to him tomorrow.’

The next morning, after breakfast, they all waited eagerly for the news on television. The report was disappointingly short. Roy shrieked again with dismay over his appearance.
‘I’m starting growing my hair today,’ he said.

There came a ring at the doorbell. When Agatha answered it, she found Inspector Wilkes, Bill Wong, another detective she did not know and a policewoman standing on the doorstep.

‘Come in,’ said Agatha. ‘Toni, Charles and Roy are all in the living room. Do you want to interview us all together?’

‘We’ll start with you, Mrs Raisin,’ said Wilkes.

‘Then come through to the kitchen,’ said Agatha.

When they were all seated around the kitchen table, Agatha was taken over her statement again. When the questioning was over, she asked eagerly, ‘What’s the latest?’

Bill said, ‘The butcher who was supposed to deliver the pig to the roast was found drugged and bound up in his shop. We still have not established the identity of the dead man. Now, we
would like to speak to your assistant, Toni Gilmour.’

By the time the police left, they all felt shaky and very tired. Delayed shock was settling in. Roy said weakly that he would like to go back to bed, and Toni said she would go home. Charles
decided to leave as well.

Agatha poured herself a hot-water bottle for comfort and retreated with her cats to her bed. As she drifted off into sleep, she remembered shouting about that awful policeman and wishing he
would roast in hell on a spit. Her eyes flew open. Someone or some people had viciously hated whoever it was they had killed. People still shouted the epithet of ‘pig’ at policemen. Too
farfetched, she told herself, go back to sleep. But sleep would not come.

She flicked open the address book she kept beside the bed and found Bill Wong’s mobile number.

When he answered, Agatha asked, ‘Any policemen missing?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The dead man,’ said Agatha. ‘People call the police pigs. Just a thought.’

Bill laughed. ‘You should write fiction, Agatha. Forget it. Leave it to the police. I don’t want you meddling in this one. These killers will be highly dangerous.’

Feeling rather silly, Agatha said goodbye and fell into a deep sleep.

‘What did the Raisin woman want?’ asked Wilkes the following morning. He had overheard Bill’s end of the conversation during the previous night.

Bill gave a reluctant laugh. ‘Mrs Raisin has just suggested that the dead man might be a policeman.’

‘And where did that flight of fancy come from?’

‘Policemen are often called pigs, and so she has leapt to that conclusion.’

‘Ridiculous. Now, pass me that roster. I want every man out on this case. Get Police Sergeant Tulloch in here.’

When Tulloch entered the room, Wilkes said, ‘Are they all in the briefing room? I’ll be along in a few moments.’

‘All there,’ said Tulloch, a burly Scot with a shock of fair hair. ‘Oh, except Beech. I’ve phoned his home, but there’s no reply.’

Wilkes and Bill looked at each other in sudden consternation. ‘You don’t think . . .’ began Wilkes.

‘He’s never missed a day before,’ said Bill uneasily.

‘Get round there,’ said Wilkes, ‘and take Detective Peterson with you.’

Bill brightened. Alice Peterson had recently joined them from Gloucester CID to replace Detective Collins, an acidulous woman, who, to Bill’s relief, had finally secured a transfer to
London – not to Scotland Yard, her ambition, but to Brixton.

Alice was clever and almost pretty with her neat dark curls and blue eyes.

On the road to Beech’s home, Bill told her about Agatha Raisin’s odd idea. ‘I’ve heard about Mrs Raisin,’ said Alice. ‘She has had a lot of successes in the
past. Everyone says she just blunders into things and gets lucky, but I think she must be clever.’

‘In this case, I hope not. Here we are.’

Bill parked in front of a trim little cottage on the outskirts of Winter Parva.

‘Why doesn’t he live in Mircester?’ asked Alice.

‘It’s cheaper here, he says. Let’s go.’

There was no doorbell, but there was a large brass door-knocker in the shape of a lion’s head. Bill performed an energetic rat-a-tat on it.