Agatha Raisin Companion (14 page)

Freddy Champion

Introduced to Agatha by their mutual friend, Sir Charles, Freddy is a handsome landowner who has recently been thrown out of Zimbabwe. Visiting from South Africa, he woos
Agatha behind Charles’s back and neglects to tell her he is married with children.
After Freddy first asks her to dinner, Agatha allows herself to be ‘wrapped
in rosy dreams’, but the date ends in disaster when the police arrive to quiz her about a murder, and he scuttles off in a most unchivalrous manner. He later returns for another date, but Sir
Charles spots the pair in a restaurant and puts Agatha straight about Freddy’s marital status before she gets in too deep.

Sylvan Dubois

A suave Frenchman with grey hair and hooded eyes who Agatha meets at James’s engagement party and enjoys flirting with. When she later turns up in Paris, and calls
him, he is with another woman, and she returns home, feeling silly. They meet again on the eve of James’s wedding in Sussex and see more of each other after the murder of the bride. Sylvan
takes Agatha out for dinner and kisses her, but his habit of showing up at every crime scene begins to look a little suspicious.

Bob Jenkins

The briefest of relationships almost ends in marriage when a bruised and battered Agatha, fresh from several attempts on her life and a self-imposed retirement, meets new
local Bob. He seems a nice, normal widower, and good company. Within two months, the couple are engaged and head off for a holiday in Normandy. Alarm bells start to ring when he insists she should
cook the meals and clean the house they have rented. He also
suffers from mood swings. She rings Charles and asks him to rescue her and they drive off to the south of
France.

Agatha has many rivals in love, and some of them come to a sticky end.

Freda Huntingdon

An attractive newcomer referred to as ‘the Merry Widow’ by the jealous Agatha in
Vicious Vet,
Freda has a small, pretty face, like that of an enamelled
doll, large hazel eyes with (false?) eyelashes and a ‘pink, painted mouth’.

Left a great deal of money by her late husband, she moves to Carsely and soon sets her sights on James. After a couple of ill-advised affairs, including vet Paul Bladen, and finding no joy with
James, she decides to sell up and move away.

Mary Fortune

The Potted Gardener of the book title, Mary moves into Mrs Josephs’ house after the murder in the previous book. She is a keen gardener who raises tropical plants in
her conservatory and is also a superb baker, according to Mrs Bloxby. Agatha returns from a holiday to find Mary has become close to James. ‘She’s a remarkably good-looking lady and a
great help at our horticultural society meetings,’ Mrs Bloxby tells her.

‘She and Mr Lacey are both such keen gardeners.’ When Agatha first calls on her, ‘the woman who answered the door made Agatha’s heart sink. She
was undoubtedly attractive, with a smooth, unlined face, blonde hair and bright-blue eyes.’ Her house is decorated with green, which is also the only colour she wears.

Mary is murdered and left with her head stuck in the earth like a potted plant (hence,
Potted Gardener).
After the pair discover her body in the conservatory, Agatha is devastated when
James reveals that he slept with Mary. Having assumed James led the life of a monk, she is crushed to find out he has ‘lain in Mary’s bed in Mary’s arms. Her mind writhed under
the weight of her miserable thoughts’.

Melissa Sheppard

In
Fairies of Fryfam,
while Agatha is away in Norfolk, this attractive divorcée moves to Carsely and is an instant hit with the Ladies’ Society. Mrs
Bloxby describes her as ‘in her forties, blonde, very smart. Great sense of humour’, causing an instant flash of jealousy in Agatha. Melissa pursues James and becomes his lover, but he
is soon bored with her. On Agatha’s return, James immediately proposes and Melissa is furious. However, James apparently sleeps with her again after the wedding.

In
Love from Hell,
Melissa becomes the next murder victim and James, who has disappeared, is suspected of the crime.

Deborah Fanshaw

Attractive divorcée who moves to the village in
Love, Lies and Liquor
and immediately begins to pursue ‘Carsely’s most wanted single man, James
Lacey.

In her forties, rich and attractive and intent on marrying again, she is described as ‘a tall, leggy woman with masses of brown curly hair and a great deal of energy’. Mrs Bloxby
however, finds her rather tiresome and, after Deborah vows to snare her man, she comments, ‘I think she has too many hormones.’

Although James shows little interest in her, Deborah follows him to Snoth-on-Sea, where he is staying in a hotel with Agatha. James shows no interest and, after being washed out to sea by a
freak wave, Deborah switches her affection to Charles as she recovers in hospital. Frightened by her over-zealous pursuit, Charles tells her that
he
is the one who is set to marry Agatha
and, when Deborah goes to confront her love rival in the hotel room, she is shot through the head by a gunman.

Felicity Bross-Tilkington

Although she believes she is over James, Agatha is shocked to receive an invitation to his engagement in
Spoonful of Poison.
At the party she is introduced to his
bride-to-be and instantly feels
inadequate. ‘Felicity was exquisite. She had wide-spaced grey eyes in a tanned face. Her thick brown hair cascaded down on her
shoulders in an artful arrangement of waves and curls.’On the eve of the wedding in
There Goes the Bride,
James admits he doesn’t want to go through with it, but it is too late
to back out. When Felicity fails to turn up, and is found murdered at home, James and Agatha are both prime suspects.

In one of his more insightful moments, Charles tells Agatha that it will never work with James because he is a ‘twenty-per-cent person.

‘You are an eighty-five-per-cent person and James only gives twenty per-cent. It’s not a case of won’t, it’s a case of can’t. A lot of men are like that but women
will never understand. They go on giving. And they think if they go to bed with the twenty-percenter, and they give that last fifteen per cent, they’ll miraculously wake up next to a
hundred-per-center. Wrong. Anyway, if they wake up next to him it will be a miracle. Probably find a note on the pillow saying, ‘Gone home to feed the dog,’ or something like
that.’ (
Wizard of Evesham)

Mrs Bloxby knows Agatha’s obsessions of old. When Agatha begins to gush about the beauty of a Cotswold spring, she ‘repressed a sigh’. Agatha was heading for another obsession,
and while it lasted, the Cotswolds would be beautiful and every pop tune would have a special meaning.’
(Spoonful of Poison)

A robbery which Agatha refers to as the ‘Paris incident’ prompts her to make her detecting legitimate, by setting up an agency. She hires an office in Mircester and
advertises with the promise, All calls discreetly dealt with – video and electronic surveillance.’

Her first employees are her next-door neighbour, Mrs Emma Comfrey and Carsely’s unmarried mum, Miss Simms. She also employs a former press photographer and a surveillance expert on a
freelance basis.

The bread and butter work consists of missing pets and evidence for divorce cases, and Agatha finds that tedious. But she gets her first major case in
Deadly Dance,
when an anxious mother
employs her to protect her daughter, who has received a death threat in the run-up to her wedding.

Although business is booming, Agatha vows to retire from the firm and leave things in the charge of her colleagues after the wedding murder is solved in
There Goes the Bride.
But Agatha
can never stay away for too long.

Emma Comfrey

Agatha’s tall, thin, middle-aged neighbour, and a good detective until she develops an obsessive crush on Sir Charles Fraith. This leads to a hatred of Agatha and
psychopathic behaviour.

Miss Simms

Carsely’s unmarried mum is briefly employed by the agency until she meets Patrick Mulligan and decides to settle down.

Patrick Mulligan

A retired detective and ‘a tall, cadaverous man who rarely smiles’, he is hired by Agatha to clear up the backlog while she is embroiled in the case of the
Deadly Dance,
but he soon proves invaluable in solving bigger crimes. He is an ex-policeman with great contacts within the force, and can often find out information that Agatha is not privy
to. After falling for Miss Simms, he asks her to marry him and she accepts. When they split, Patrick returns to the agency and once more becomes an asset to Agatha.

Mrs Freedman

Agatha’s secretary from Evesham. ‘Middle-aged, competent, quite a treasure.’ She is always called by her second name, in the tradition of the
Ladies’ Society. She is plump, pleasant, with thick,
grey, curled hair, and never wears any make-up. Although efficient, she upsets Agatha by talking to the Boggles
about a case in
Perfect Paragon.

Phil Witherspoon

A Carsely villager and keen photographer who is looking to supplement his pension by working at the agency. At seventy-six, Agatha believes he is too old to be employed
but, as a favour to her friend Mrs Bloxby she employs him on a trial basis. He immediately helps Agatha find the body of a murdered teenager in
Perfect Paragon,
thereby earning the firm a
huge amount of precious publicity. Agatha keeps him on and finds he often gains the trust of elderly women because of his age and courteous nature. A slim, average-sized man who still possesses
thick grey hair, he has a face ‘not so much lined as crumpled, as if one only had to take a hot iron to it to restore it to its former youth.