Agatha Raisin Companion (8 page)

Agatha Raisin and the Witch of Wyckhadden

After a run-in with a psychopathic hairdresser, who used depilatory cream on her glossy brown hair rather than conditioner, Agatha flees to the seaside town of Wyckhadden to
allow it grow back away from the gaze of the villagers and, particularly, James Lacey. There she meets local police chief Jimmy Jessop, a widower, and a romance develops.

In an effort to help her hair grow back, she visits the resident witch, who gives her a restorative lotion as well as a love potion. But after her prized fur coat is vandalized at the hotel,
Agatha suspects the witch and returns to confront her, only to find her dead in a pool of blood. Forced to stay in the town, she slips a love potion into Jimmy’s drink and ends up sleeping
with him. He asks her to marry him and she accepts, all the while imagining the effect her engagement will have on James.

She also slips some of the potion into the drink of a retired colonel, resident at the hotel, hoping he will fall for a lovesick fellow guest. When he dies from natural causes, the distraught
admirer throws herself from a window.

When Sir Charles Fraith arrives on the scene, an upset Agatha welcomes him with open arms – and ends up sleeping with him too. James Lacey also turns up at the hotel, at the same time as
Jimmy walks in on his new fiancée, still in bed with Charles.

VICTIMS

Francie Juddle, the Witch of Wyckhadden: beaten to death with a large, heavy object in her own bed. Found by Agatha after supplying her with a lotion to make her hair
grow.

Janine Juddle: Francie’s daughter who arrives in Wyckhadden with her husband and takes over her mother’s business. Drowns after arranging a seance attended by most
of the residents of the Garden Hotel, where Agatha is staying. Professes to have conjured up the ghost of Jimmy Raisin but Agatha catches her out. Found by the residents floating in the sea shortly
afterwards.

Agatha Raisin and the Fairies of Fryfam

Following the ill-advised liaison with Charles, Jimmy Jessop has found a new bride and James Lacey has once more fled Carsely, leaving Agatha alone again. Sick of the Cotswolds
and her roller coaster of emotions, she consults a fortune teller who assures her that her destiny lies in Norfolk. She immediately puts her house up for sale and rents a cottage in the Norfolk
village of Fryfam, picked by sticking a pin in a map.

After taking against a couple who come to view the house, she changes her mind about selling, but decides to spend some time in Norfolk anyway. Ensconced in Lavender Cottage with her
cats, amid a local population of rude villagers with archaic views on women, Agatha decides to try her hand at writing a detective novel.

Every evening, however, she is disturbed by tiny lights flickering at the bottom of her garden, which the more superstitious locals believe to be fairies. When objects begin to go missing from
her house, Agatha wonders if the villagers are playing tricks on her. But events take a sinister turn when a valuable Stubbs is stolen from the lord of the manor, who is later murdered. With the
help of Charles, who turns up at the cottage unannounced, Agatha uncovers a seam of blackmail, adultery and jealousy in the close-knit community.

Meanwhile, in Carsely, James is being pursued by another attractive divorcée – but is he pining for Agatha?

VICTIMS

Terence ‘Tolly’ Trumpington-James: self-styled lord of the manor who made his money from installing showers. After his priceless painting disappears, he is
found at his huge stately home, with his throat slit.

Paul Redfern: gruff, aggressive gamekeeper at the manor. His head is blown off with a shotgun in his grace-and-favour cottage. His body is discovered by Sir Charles and Agatha
when they turn up to question him about Tolly’s death.

Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell

The life that Agatha dreamed of has turned into a nightmare. Now married to the love of her life, she is trapped in a ‘fog of masculine disapproval’. James
criticizes everything she does and, as soon as the honeymoon is over, he turns into a control freak, constantly telling her what to wear and do. When she decides to take a PR job for a local shoe
firm, James is furious, but she presses ahead anyway.

Finding him in a pub with divorcée Melissa Sheppard, Agatha flies into a jealous rage, but when Sir Charles comes to visit her in her own cottage, James assumes she is the one who is
cheating. In the meantime, James has confided in Mrs Bloxby that he has a brain tumour but doesn’t want to tell his new wife. After their reconciliation, Agatha learns the truth about his
illness from Melissa but, before she can confront him, he disappears, leaving behind signs of a violent struggle in his house. Agatha is suspected of his murder until the discovery of his
lover’s body turns the suspicion on to him.

With Charles’s help, Agatha must find her missing husband and clear both their names. She soon discovers Melissa’s two ex-husbands, a love rival and a jealous sister – all with
a motive for murder.

VICTIM

Melissa Sheppard, two-time divorcée and lover of James. Her head is bashed in at her kitchen table and the fly-infested body is found nearly two days later by Agatha
and Charles.

The Day the Floods Came

Agatha is once more abandoned, with James having fled to live in a monastery and Charles settling down, at last, with a French girl in Paris. She takes a break on Robinson
Crusoe Island in South America, where she meets a group of people, including a newly-wed couple who make her feel uneasy.

On her return home, she learns that the bride drowned shortly after, and she suspects the young groom of pushing her in the sea. A few months later, the Avon floods its banks and Agatha,
standing on a bridge in Evesham, spots the body of a bride-to-be floating in the swollen river. Police rule it a suicide, but convinced that it was the bridegroom, yet again, she sets about solving
the case. As the police have warned her off, she invests in a wig and poses as a TV producer researching a programme.

In Carsely, James’s cottage is sold to a crime writer named John Armitage who happens to be single and extremely attractive. He begins to help Agatha with her investigation.

VICTIMS

Concita Ramon: newlywed who was spending her honeymoon on Robinson Crusoe Island. Not being able to swim, she drowned on a boat trip and husband Pablo claimed she fell in.
He was spotted pushing his heavily insured bride into the sea.

Kylie Stokes: admin clerk and bride-to-be. Drowned in the flood water after being pumped full of drugs. Agatha suspects her fiancé, who runs a club with his dad, but
police believe it is a suicide.

Mrs Anstruther-Jones: Carsely villager and member of the Ladies’ Society. Killed by a hit and run driver in Evesham after borrowing Agatha’s wig and glasses for a
secret liaison with a married man. Mistaken for Agatha by the killer.

Joanna Field: colleague of Kylie who takes a shine to John and agrees to help them. Smacked on the back of the head as she looks through Kylie’s emails, but survives.
Later she goes missing and is found with her neck broken in an old freezer room behind the nightclub.

Agatha Raisin and the Curious Curate

Agatha discovers that ex-husband James has left the monastery without taking holy orders, leaving her feeling even more rejected. Still smarting from John Armitage’s
ungallant proposition, she falls hook, line and sinker for the beautiful young curate, Tristan. She is thrilled when he invites her for dinner in his digs, but on the same night he is stabbed at
the vicarage and dies, apparently while raiding the collection box.

Along with John Armitage, Agatha investigates at his old parish, New Cross, where they discover he was gay and that he had conned a donation of £10,000 from philanthropic tycoon Richard
Binser for a fictional boys’ club.

It seems the curate was not the quite the golden boy he appeared to be.

VICTIMS

Tristan Delon: blond-haired, blue-eyed and beautiful, he has the ladies of the parish eating out of his hand. Stabbed to death in the vicar’s study, with the
vicar’s letter-opener, in the middle of the night. Found by Mrs Bloxby in the morning.

Miss Jellop: thin, middle-aged Carsely resident and member of the Ladies’ Society who Tristan had been spending time with.
Strangled in her home
and discovered, once again, by the vicar’s wife as she called round.

Peggy Slither: another middle-aged lady who Tristan wooed with an eye to getting his hands on her money. Stabbed to death in a gory murder in her Ancombe home. This time the
body was found by Agatha.

Agatha Raisin and the Haunted House

With no murders on the horizon, Agatha gets involved in investigating a haunted house at the behest of her new neighbour, the attractive Paul Chatterton. She proves fairly
inept at dealing with the supernatural, as the sight of the old lady who lives there, wearing a facepack, sends her screaming from the house.

But old Mrs Witherspoon is murdered soon after their visit. Her son is the prime suspect and Agatha and Paul are asked to prove him innocent. They discover a secret tunnel to Mrs
Witherspoon’s house and a priceless manuscript hidden in a hole up a vent, which they decide to keep from the police.

The case is further complicated when a second victim is murdered in the dressing room of her amateur dramatic theatre.

VICTIMS

Mrs Witherspoon: crotchety, vicious old lady despised by her own children. After months of being ‘haunted’, she is whacked on the back of the head and dies as
she falls down the stairs.

Robin Barley: smart, wealthy woman in her sixties who fancies herself an artist, although she has little talent. She owns the local theatre, which ensures her a part in the
amateur plays there. Killed by cyanide in her roses, delivered by an anonymous ‘admirer’ in a gas mask, the costume from the next production of
Macbeth.

Barry Briar: landlord of the local pub in Hebberden, the village where Mrs Witherspoon was murdered. After going missing for several days, his body, with a broken neck, is
discovered at the bottom of a shaft which leads to the secret tunnel. Agatha, accompanied by Charles, finds him after a nightmare prompts her to look there.