Agatha Raisin Companion (16 page)
Read Agatha Raisin Companion Online
Authors: M.C. Beaton
In the neighbouring village of Downboys, the bride’s family owns a huge estate which backs on to the water. The village is built around a crossroads and has a pub, a church and a grocery
store. ‘It seemed a very gloomy sort of place.’
Kyrenia
Following their ruined wedding day, James flees to Kyrenia, in Northern Cyprus, where they were due to have spent their honeymoon. Agatha, of course, flies out in pursuit
and books into the resort’s real Dome Hotel.
‘The Dome Hotel is a large building on the waterfront at Kyrenia, Turkish name Girne, which has seen better days and has a certain battered colonial grandeur. There is something endearing
about the Dome.’ Agatha’s room has a balcony overlooking the Mediterranean and a seawater pool carved out of rock.
Later she moves to the villa that James is borrowing from a friend for an extended stay, which is near the Onar Village Hotel.
While there, she visits Famagusta (Gazimagusa), the second largest city in Northern Cyprus and described as ‘one of the most remarkable ruins in the world’. Shakespeare’s
Othello
was possibly set here and Agatha visits the local landmark known as Othello’s Tower, a Lusignan citadel built to protect the harbour and reconstructed by the Venetians in
1492.
After meeting a group of holiday-makers, she dines with them at a restaurant called the Grapevine, which is a favourite with British tourists. Later they eat at the Ottoman House restaurant in
Zeytinlik and also at the fish restaurant, the Altinkaya, which backs on to their villa. All three are actual eateries in the area.
Together they also travel to Nicosia (Leftkosa to the Turkish population) and visit the covered market. ‘The centre of Nicosia was a pleasant, friendly place with a lot of interesting old
buildings and shops.’
Robinson Crusoe Island
After James flees to a monastery in France, Agatha decides to get away from it all and to lick her wounds in
Day the Floods Came.
She chooses the remote South
American island where Alexander
Selkirk was stranded for four years from 1704, inspiring the Daniel Defoe classic,
Robinson Crusoe.
The island, just off the coast
of Chile, is in the Juan Fernandez Archipelago and reachable by a small plane from Tobalaba Airport in Santiago. This terrifying flight, and the bumpy Jeep ride to the resort, is not Agatha’s
cup of tea, but the hotel, the Panglas, turns out to be stunning, and she meets a friendly group of fellow travellers. However, the tropical paradise she imagined turns out to be a rocky, barren
land and she learns that Defoe set his own tale in the Caribbean instead of Selkirk’s true location.
Istanbul
A favourite city of author M.C. Beaton. Agatha travels there, in
There Goes the Bride,
on her way to visit the site of the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimea.
She is hoping to impress the recently engaged James, who accused her of never listening to him, with her knowledge of military history.
She has previously stayed in the Pera Palace Hotel, made famous by Agatha Christie’s
Murder on the Orient Express,
but this time she opts for a hotel on the other side of the Golden
Horn in the Sultan Ahmet district ‘under the shadow of the Blue Mosque’. The real Artifes, in the heart of the Old City, boasts a rooftop restaurant and views over the Marmara Sea.
On her return she visits the tourist sites, including
the splendid domed sixth-century basilica, the Ayasofya, which is now a museum, and the Spice Market, where James
Bond was blown up in
From Russia with Love.
On finding out her James is off to Gallipoli, the site of the disastrous Allied landings in the First World War, Agatha changes her plans.
Unfortunately, James spots her there and thinks he is being stalked.
The Crimea
From Istanbul, Agatha catches a ‘Russian rust bucket’ to Balaclava in the Crimea, the only autonomous state in the Ukraine. The boat is full of Ukrainian women
and manned by a Russian crew who speak no English, and the only food she can face is soup. Two days of sailing across the Black Sea take her to the Dakkar Resort hotel which offers ‘the
blessings of a civilized hotel with a smiling, beautiful receptionist and a well-appointed room’. Instead of showing her the site of the Charge of the Light Brigade, the famous Crimean War
battle, her guide drags her round one Soviet Second World War memorial after another. Finally Agatha gets to the battlefield, but she is sadly disappointed as it is now merely a plain full of
vineyards. When James and his fiancée arrive, Agatha flees the hotel and catches a plane back to Istanbul.
Paris
Agatha pops over to Paris in many a book, including
There Goes the Bride
when she is foolishly pursuing Frenchman Sylvan
Dubois. After
calling him, and finding he has a woman in bed with him, she leaves the city in shame.
In
Deadly Dance,
Agatha is prompted to open her own detective agency after her purse is stolen on the Metro and the police treat her with disdain. On this occasion, in a rare fit of
thrift, she has booked into a small hotel off St-Germain-des-Prés in the Latin Quarter, but soon regrets the decision as the heat rises to 105°F and her room has no air-conditioning.
Later, she and Charles fly to Paris to interview Felicity Felliat, the daughter of a friend of Charles who was supposed to be working for a couturier in the Rue St-Honoré. They stay in
the Hôtel Duval on the Boulevard St-Michel, where suspect Jeremy Laggatt-Brown claimed to have been staying when his daughter was shot at. They walk by the Seine and eat at
Maubert-Mutiliaté. While she is there, a hitman is found dead in her kitchen at home.
Later they return and find a drunk by the fountain on Place Maubert, who helps them solve the case.
A fertile mind, a belligerent soul and a propensity to argue mean there is never a dull moment when Agatha is around. Not one to take the accepted view as read, she has her own
brand of logic which can throw up pearls of wisdom, or purely perverse argument. The following are random thoughts from the mind of the great detective:
‘Not for the first time, Agatha wondered about British Rail’s use of the word “terminate”. One just expected the train to blow apart. Why not just
say “stops here”?’
Quiche of Death.
When Roy remarks, ‘Age does bring wisdom,’ Agatha replies: ‘Not really. I’ve found that stupid young people grow up to be stupid old people.’
Perfect Paragon.
‘How strange that few people talked about love any more. They were obsessed, taken hostage or co-dependent – anything rather than
admit they were not in control, for the word “love” now meant weakness.’
Terrible Tourist.
‘People always talked about hearts breaking but the pain was always right in the gut.’
Wellspring of Death.
Reasoning that the countryside is more damaging to the environment than her smoking: ‘I just read that a farting cow produces more damage to the ozone layer than a
four-wheel drive.’
Spoonful of Poison.
After spotting neighbour Paul Chatterton eyeing up a young secretary in a short skirt:
‘It just wasn’t fair on middle-aged women. If she eyed up a young man, she would be considered a harpy. But a man of the same age, provided he had kept his
figure, would never be regarded with the same contempt.’
Haunted House.
Agatha’s Niggles
Many everyday irritations make Agatha’s hackles rise, from the opening hours of British shops to the smoking ban. Here are a few of her bugbears:
After her train grinds to a halt for no apparent reason, and the passengers sit stoically waiting: ‘Why are we like sheep that have gone astray?’ wondered
Agatha. ‘Why are the British so cowed and placid? Why does no one shout for the guard and demand to know the reason? Other, more voluble, races would not stand for it.’
Quiche of
Death.
The lady whose voice is on Call Minder always seemed to Agatha to be an irritating relic of the
days when women took elocution lessons. It was a
governessy, eat-your-porridge-or-you-won’t-go-to-the-circus sort of voice. “Two messages,” said the voice. “Would you like to hear them?” Did anyone
not
want to hear messages? thought Agatha crossly.
Wellspring of Death.
Agatha is annoyed to find a garage closed on Saturday. ‘Isn’t that so bloody British? No wonder half our businesses are being outsourced abroad.’
There
Goes the Bride.
A frequent beef of Agatha’s is the closing of local police stations in rural areas. She believes the police in towns such as Mircester are overstretched. ‘Crime
has spread in the countryside in a big way,’ she grumbles. ‘Do you know, the farmers can’t even leave their combine harvesters out in the field at night? One farmer found that
they had pinched the whole thing, dismantled it and shipped it off.’
Deadly Dance.