Agatha Raisin Companion (11 page)

Agatha arrives in the Cotswolds without a friend in the world and finds it hard to get close to anyone, used as she is to bullying and cajoling her way through life as a PR
person. Her new life brings fringe benefits as she becomes part of the village and forms some real friendships, as well as making a few acquaintances, and even a couple of enemies.

Below are the regular characters that pop up in Agatha’s busy life.

Bill Wong

Agatha’s very first friend in the Cotswolds, Bill is an amiable, likeable and often shrewd policeman from nearby Mircester. Agatha meets him when he comes to
investigate the poisoned quiche in the first book and, from the pristine cookery books and the new cooking utensils in her kitchen, he quickly deduces that she has not baked it herself. He calls
back later, unofficially, and advises her sagely that if she
wants to make her mark on the village she should ‘try becoming popular’. The pair become firm
friends and she is grateful for his company as she settles into her new home. Her first cat, Hodge, is an early gift from him.

Bill is twenty-three when they meet. He is small and chubby, with oriental looks which come from a father who is Hong Kong Chinese. His parents, with whom he still lives, are a particularly rude
pair, with excruciatingly bad taste and little to say, but Bill adores them. His mother is also a terrible cook and Agatha dreads the invitations to dinner which her young friend often issues.
Bill, who frequently falls in love, also fails to notice that it is his offensive parents that put off his potential partners. Agatha ‘did not like to point out to Bill that his formidable
parents could probably see off any prospect, for Bill adored his parents.’

The one girl who seems to get on with the family is Toni Gilmour, whose home life had been much worse. Unfortunately, there was no spark between the pair and they ended as friends.

Mrs Bloxby

Mrs Bloxby, the wife of Carsely vicar Alf, is a kind, generous soul and a good listener. After she invites Agatha to join the Ladies’ Society, the pair become firm
friends and Agatha often runs to Mrs Bloxby when she is troubled,
to pour her heart out and to be soothed by this wise woman while being indulged with some home-baked
scones or teacakes.

As strident and stubborn as Agatha can be, she soon discovers that the vicar’s wife is the one person that she can’t say no to. Her ‘simple, uncomplicated goodness’ often
makes the sensitive sleuth feel ashamed of her less charitable thoughts and deeds, and fills her with a ‘desire to please’.

A petite, delicate woman, with brown hair and the ‘sort of hands that portrait painters used to love to give their subjects’, she is also the possessor of ‘mild eyes’ and
boundless tolerance, even to those she secretly dislikes or distrusts.

As well as offering sage words of advice on Agatha’s love life and perceptive views on the latest cases, Mrs Bloxby occasionally helps out in investigations. In
Love, Lies and
Liquor,
for example, she drives to the Sussex coast to support her friend and ends up calling on suspect Archie Swale in an attempt to gain an insight into his character.

Although she is happy to listen to Agatha’s troubles, she doesn’t approve of her friend’s obsession with James, who she believes is too cold to ever truly reciprocate.

Alf Bloxby

Mrs Bloxby’s husband and Carsely’s vicar. A small, thin man with a ‘compelling presence’, he is no fan of the village sleuth and calls her
‘that dreadful woman. He resents her frequent trips to the
vicarage to see his wife, but Mrs Bloxby handles his rude objections with tolerant good nature.

Doris Simpson

Kind, shrewd and efficient, cleaner Mrs Simpson is an invaluable help to the housework-phobic detective. She is also a great source of information, picked up through
village gossip, and a shrewd judge of character.

Doris has white hair, worn in a bun, and pale grey eyes, and looks ‘more like a schoolteacher than a charwoman. Happily married to Bert, and living on the council estate in Carsely she
takes in Scrabble the cat when Agatha rescues him from Wyckhadden.

Agatha meets Doris shortly after moving to Carsely, having been told by her acerbic neighbour Mrs Barr that good cleaners are like gold dust, and Doris is too busy to help. Characteristically,
Agatha sets out to steal her services by offering Doris a pound an hour more and including lunch. Of course, she succeeds.

As well as cleaning the cottage, Doris also looks after Agatha’s cats on the frequent occasions that she is away.

Roy Silver

Although Roy is Agatha’s former assistant and the only friend she has from her London days, they really only became close
when she moved
away. Roy is slim, young, camp and often selfish, using Agatha’s home as a weekend getaway, popping down to pick her brains on a PR problem, or lure her back into work to further his own
career. Although they weren’t close when they worked together, Agatha and Roy bond when he helps her on several cases and she begins to enjoy his visits much more. His way-out clothing style
changes drastically, depending on his current client, and can go from full-out punk to respectable businessman in a flash. Roy possesses a cackling laugh and a wicked sense of humour, which often
leaves his older friend blushing with embarrassment.

PC Fred Griggs

Carsely’s local bobby is a fat, jolly man who loves to patrol the village on foot, rather than in his car, so he can chat to people. ‘He looked like a village
policeman in a children’s story, large and red-faced.’

Fred has little to do with investigating the murders in the area, other than being first on the scene when the crime is reported, and is ‘unused to dealing with much more than looking for
stolen cars in the tourist season and charging the odd drunk driver’. Nonetheless, his presence as a policeman is sorely missed after he retires and Agatha mourns the loss of the local bobby
and believes crime in the country has soared.

Detective Chief Inspector Wilkes

Bill Wong’s boss and something of a nemesis to Agatha. He refuses to admit that she has helped his inquiries in any way, and often warns her off cases and scolds her
for sticking her nose in. He is a ‘thin, cadaverous man with little sense of humour.

Carsely Ladies’ Society

Although the genteel company of the Carsely Ladies’ Society is anathema to the brash businesswoman in Agatha, she agrees to join through respect for Mrs Bloxby. An
old-fashioned group, they never call each other by their first names, preferring instead full titles, such as Mrs Raisin. They meet regularly at the vicarage and organize village fundraising events
and good works, such as taking elderly neighbours for a day out. Agatha is often roped in to run tea stalls and help out at fêtes and, on one memorable occasion, she is duped into driving the
village’s most unsavoury couple, the Boggles, over to Bath for the day. Agatha is at her best and most useful, however, when she is using her PR skills to boost the profits at the events and
gain maximum publicity.

As well as fundraising, the group often meet with Ladies’ Societies from neighbouring village and towns, particularly in Ancombe. To Agatha’s surprise, the first such outing she
attends, expecting to be fed tea and cake, turns out to be a boozy lunch, followed by a male strip show!

Mrs Mason is chairwoman of the society when Agatha first joins (chair ‘persons’ do not exist in Carsely because, as Mrs Bloxby points out, once you start
that sort of thing you don’t know where to stop, and things like manholes would become personholes) but Mrs Bloxby is elected chairwoman in
Curious Curate.

Mrs Mason

The chairwoman of the Society is a large, strident woman with a taste for nylon dresses. When Agatha first moves to Carsely and vows to learn to cook, Mrs Mason gives her a
few lessons in the basics, although Agatha soon resorts to the microwave again. In
Walkers of Dembley,
Mrs Mason asks Agatha to help her niece, Deborah, discover the real killer of a
murdered rambler and get Sir Charles off the hook.

Miss Simms

Secretary of Carsely Ladies’ Society and the village’s only unmarried mother. In her twenties when they first meet, the slim, pretty girl favours tiny
miniskirts and very high heels at all times. She entertains a string of partners, always married and usually in a lucrative business, but gets bored easily. Eventually, she falls for Agatha’s
employee, Patrick, but the union is predictably brief.

Mrs Davenport

An incomer to Carsely in
Haunted House,
Mrs Davenport is an
expat who favours print dresses and hats. She is extremely nosy and
disapproving of Agatha’s relationships. Having presented Paul Chatterton with ‘her best chocolate cake and followed it up with two jars of home-made jam’, she is miffed to
discover that Agatha has been spending time with him and spreads a rumour that they are having an affair. This sparks a feud between the two women.

Mrs Josephs

Local librarian who, in
Quiche of Death,
points Agatha in the direction of the killer by revealing the loan of a book on poisonous plants. Sadly, after her cat is
put down unnecessarily in
Vicious Vet,
she is also found dead, the victim of a murder herself.