M Beaton: Agatha Raisin and the Wizard of Evesham

Then Agatha heard a woman whisper urgently, “I can’t go on. You’ve got to let me off the hook.”

There was the answering mumble of a man’s voice.

“I’ll kill you!” shouted the woman, suddenly and violently.

Agatha poked her head out of the window, but she could not make out where the voices had come from.

She went back into the salon, had her hair washed and then braced herself to tell Mr. John that she wanted her hair cut short. She found herself wrapped into that anxiety of writing scripts of “I’ll say and then he’ll say.” It was the lawn-mower syndrome.

Mr. Jones goes out to mow the lawn but finds his lawn-mower has broken down. “Why don’t you ask that nice Mr. Smith next door if you can borrow his?” suggests his wife.

“I can’t do that,” protests Mr. Jones. “Bit of an imposition.”

“Don’t be silly,” says his wife. “You’re being childish. Mr. Smith is a very nice man.”

All afternoon Mr. Jones frets. He will ask Mr. Smith for the loan of his lawn-mower and Mr. Smith will say, “Sorry, old chap, I’m using it myself.” Mr. Smith will say, “I don’t like lending out things.” Mr. Smith will lie. Mr. Smith will look shifty and Mr. Smith will say, “Actually, mine’s broken as well.”

At last, nagged by his wife, Mr. Jones goes and knocks on Mr. Smith’s door.

When Mr. Smith answers the door, Mr. Jones shouts, “Fuck you and your lawn-mower,” and walks away.

So when Agatha barked at Mr. John that she wanted her hair cut, she blushed and felt ridiculous when he said mildly, “There’s no need to shout, Agatha.”

He set about snipping busily. Agatha glanced about the busy salon. It was done in American in Paris Brothel. Gilt mirrors, curtains with bobbles separating the rooms, ToulouseLautrec posters. Mr. John wore a white coat like an American dentist. His assistants wore pink smocks.

“I heard a funny thing when I was in the toilet,” Agatha began.

“That sounds like the beginning of a dirty joke.”

“No, really. I heard a woman say something like, ‘I can’t go on. You’ve got to let me off the hook.’ She was answered by some man. Then she said, ‘I’ll kill you.’ ”

“It’s probably the couple who run the shop next door,” he said. “They’re always quarrelling. Their back shop is on the other side of our backyard and voices carry.”

“Oh,” said Agatha, a little disappointed that what had sounded like an intriguing mystery was only a marital quarrel. “Are you married yourself?”

“I was once,” said Mr. John. Those incredibly blue eyes of his glittered with humour. “Didn’t last long. Now I am free to enjoy the company of beautiful women. Speaking of which, when are you going to have dinner with me?”

“Tonight,” said Agatha, confident that he would not be free to make it.

“Tonight’s fine,” he said. “Give me your address and I’ll pick you up at eight.”

He put down his scissors and reached for a notepad. Agatha told him where she lived and he wrote it down. Agatha began to feel as nervous as a teenager. Would he expect her to have sex with him? She surreptitiously glanced at her wrist-watch. She would be home before the salon closed. She could always phone and say something had come up.

But when her hair was blow-dried into a simple shorter style she felt a wave of gratitude for this magician.

And when she got home and felt the silence, the loneliness of the cottage settling round her, as suffocating as the humid heat, she decided that she would be mad to throw away the chance of dinner with a handsome man.

If the climate had changed, thought Agatha, and hot summers were going to become the norm, she would need to think about getting air-conditioning. She had read that to install air-conditioning cost twenty thousand pounds. It was two thousand for a portable unit. The last time she had visited America, she had noticed air-conditioners sticking out of windows of ordinary houses. Surely the average American family could not afford, say, thirty thousand dollars for air-conditioning or even three thousand for a portable unit.

Her cats lay stretched out on the kitchen floor, lethargic in the heat. She sat down on the floor next to them and stroked their warm fur. Where was James Lacey, and would he ever come back again?

She was flooded with such yearning that she let out a small moan. Depression settled down on her once more.

She sat there miserably until a glance at the clock showed her that she would need to hurry if she was to be ready on time.

Mr. John took her to a French restaurant in the village of Blockley, which was only a few miles from Carsely.

“I still can’t understand why an expert like you should settle for Evesham of all places,” said Agatha. “You are good enough to compete with the best in London.”

“What’s up with Evesham?” he teased. “Evesham is the cradle of democracy.”

“How come?”

“Well, Simon de Montfort.”

Agatha looked blank.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never hear of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester!”

“No,” said Agatha with all the irritation one feels on being made to feel ignorant of historical facts, or any facts, for that matter.

“You’ve heard of King John and the Magna Carta?”

“Yes, got that at school.”

“It was to curb the power of the king. It didn’t really work. Both John and his son, Henry the Third broke the charter whenever they could and only adhered to it when the barons threatened and complained. So they had to find a better way of making the king keep his word. In 1258, King Henry agreed to the Provisions of Oxford, which set up a permanent council to supervise his actions.

“Anyway, Henry paid as little attention to the Provisions of Oxford as John had paid to the Magna Carta. Simon, with the barons, decided to impose control. In 1264 there was a civil war. The king’s army was beaten at Lewes in Sussex. Henry was taken prisoner along with his son, Edward.

“Simon called an emergency parliament of not only barons, but bishops and abbots, two knights from each shire and burgesses from a number of towns. He hoped to make it a lasting establishment.”

He paused to eat a piece of sea bass.

“What happened then?” asked Agatha. The story was keeping her mind off thoughts of James Lacey.

“Simon’s support began to crumble. The Marcher lords from the borders of Wales rose against him and were joined by Gilbert de Clare, the young and powerful Earl of Gloucester. Simon led an army to the Severn, taking the king and Prince Edward with him as hostages, but the prince escaped at Hereford to lead the royalist uprising.

“Both forces converged on Evesham as Simon was preparing to enter the town. Simon’s troops were massacred. Simon was beheaded and the head sent to his widow. His arms and legs and, erm, private parts, were cut off. All that remained was the torso, which was buried at Evesham Abbey.”

“That’s interesting,” said Agatha. “Is his grave in the churchyard?”

“There’s a memorial stone, but that’s all. No one knows what happened to his remains. You see, people began to make pilgrimages to his grave to pay their respects to the ‘good Earl Simon.’ Rumour has it that the remains were dug up, burnt, and the ashes scattered to prevent worship of this dangerous democrat. The curator at the Almonry-the Evesham museum-he thinks Henry the Eighth was responsible, because a lot of the relics at Evesham Abbey were destroyed during the dissolution of the monasteries. Am I boring you?”

“No, I didn’t know all this. I’d better take a closer look at Evesham.”

“So tell me all about yourself and your love life.”

They had drunk one bottle of wine and he had ordered another. Agatha, now slightly tipsy, found herself telling him all about James and about her brief fling with Charles. But she did not tell him that James knew all about Charles.