M Beaton - Agatha Raisin and the Wizard of Evesham

“Well, no,” said Agatha.

Liza had remained standing. She moved towards the door. “In that case, I won’t keep you.”

There was nothing else they could do but leave. “I haven’t introduced my friend,” said Agatha. “Sir Charles Fraith.”

But Liza had reached the front door and was holding it open.

“Goodbye,” she said formally. “How kind of you to call.”

“Well, that was a wash-out,” said Charles. “Let’s go back to your place and talk.”

They returned to the kitchen of Agatha’s cottage. Agatha switched on the fan and poured two more cups of coffee.

“Now,” said Charles, “if he’s a blackmailer, there is one way to find out.”

“How?”

“You think of some truly awful secret, Aggie, and take him out for dinner and cry on his shoulder. Then we’ll wait and see.”

“I could do that,” said Agatha slowly. “You know, we could be imagining things. Maybe she’s just frightened of her hairy husband. Wait a bit. At the ladies’ society meeting, I said I was going to Mr. John in Evesham and she said something like, ‘I wouldn’t go there.’ Oh, and there’s something else. I did ask Mr. John about those voices I overheard when I was in the toilet, but he said it was a husband and wife who owned the shop next door and who were always quarelling. Should we watch Mrs. Friendly’s cottage and see if her husband goes out?”

“I think we should try my way first,” said Charles. “Let’s go somewhere for lunch and then I’ll take a look at this hairdresser’s in Evesham. You could make another appointment. Your hair looks nice like that.”

“Thank you. Where shall we have lunch?”

“Your choice.”

“I don’t lunch in Evesham, but there’s bound to be somewhere.”

They got into Charles’s car and drove up through the hot countryside to the A-44. “You’d best cut off at the top of Fish Hill and go through Willersley,” said Agatha.

“Why?”

“It’s the new Broadway by-pass they’re building. There’re traffic lights at the bottom of Fish Hill and you can get stuck there for ages.”

“Right you are.”

In Evesham and following Agatha’s directions, Charles parked at the top of the multi-storey car-park next to the river Avon. They left the car and walked to Bridge Street. “That looks all right.” Agatha pointed to a restaurant called the Lantern.

“I hope they do good chips,” said Charles, holding the door open for her. “I like chips.”

The chips turned out to be real ones and not the frozen variety. “Now what am I going to tell Mr. John?” asked Agatha.

“Don’t rush it. Wait till you get him out for dinner. I’ll bet you told him about James.”

Agatha blushed guiltily.

“Ah, I thought so. Let me see. I know, James is due back but you’ve been having an affair with me.”

Agatha stared at the table.

“Oho, you gabby thing. You told him about me, too. He does have a way of winkling out secrets.”

“I didn’t tell him that James had found out about us,” mumbled Agatha.

“There we have it. You want to marry James. He’s a violently jealous man. He’s written to say he loves you. You are terrified he finds out about me because I am violent and jealous.”

“I could do that,” said Agatha. “I’m not normally so gossipy. It’s just I seemed to have drunk quite a lot.”

“Did he try to go to bed with you?”

“He did expect to be asked in. No, Charles. I am not amoral like you. I shall tell him I am keeping myself pure for James.”

“Good girl.”

They finished their meal and walked up Bridge Street and turned into the High Street.

“Look at that beautiful house,” said Charles, pointing across the road.

“It’s a Chinese restaurant,” said Agatha. “The Evesham Diner. Pretty good.”

“I don’t care if it’s pretty good. What kind of barbarians are there in this town not to preserve that lovely building properly? Look, here’s a newsagent’s. I’m going to buy a guidebook.”

Agatha sighed. The sun was beating down and the humidity had made her make-up melt.

Charles emerged with a small guidebook. “Here we are. Dresden House. Built in 1692-see, I was right about William and Mary-by a Worcester man, Robert Cookes.”

“Why Dresden?”

“Ah, one owner of the house, Dr. William Baylies, ran into financial trouble and went to live in Dresden, becoming physician to Frederick the Great of Prussia.”

“Never mind history. Here’s the hairdresser. Oh, rats!”

“What rats?”

“I forgot, it’s Wednesday. Half day. They’re closed and I was all geared up with my story.”

“Come on, Aggie, you can’t have been. Were you meaning to go in and make an appointment and then say, ‘Oh, by the way, James is coming home and I’m having an affair with Charles here’?”

“I only meant I was all geared up to ask him out for dinner.”

“We’ll trot about. Isn’t there an abbey? What does the guidebook say? Ah, there was an abbey built in 700 A.D. but Henry the Eighth got rid of it. There’s a museum in the old Almonry.”

“You’re as bad as the hairdresser,” grumbled Agatha. “I got a whole lecture on Simon de Montfort.”

“Then seduce him with your superior knowledge.”

The Almonry, where the almoner, the medical-social worker of his day, helped the less fortunate of the town, is a rambling fourteenth-century building.

Agatha and Charles went in. Agatha paid the entrance fee, for Charles took so long finding any money-deliberately, Agatha thought. Evesham is twinned with Dreux in France, where Simon de Montfort was born. They studied the charter proclaiming that fact. “Heard about Stow-in-the Wold?” asked Charles.

“No, what?”

“Some nice little town on the Loire wanted to be twinned with Stow, so the parish council put the vote to the townspeople and got a resounding NO.”

“Why?”

“Didn’t want anything to do with the French. Can you believe it? They must still be fighting the battle of Waterloo over there.”

“So who did they decide to twin with?”

“Nobody. They’re going to have a drinking fountain instead. I say, look at this map of the world, Aggie-1392, can you believe it?”

Agatha sighed. The heat was suffocating and she longed for a cigarette.

“Evesham is also twinned with Melsungen in Germany and Evesham, New Jersey.”

“Yawn,” said Agatha. “Can’t I go and sit in the garden and wait for you?”

“No, there’s more upstairs. Come on.”

Agatha found herself becoming fascinated with two examples of Victorian dress. Usually in museums the ladies’ shoes were tiny, but these Evesham ladies had great big feet.

They moved on. Agatha became uneasy as she saw household items she remembered from her youth.

She was relieved when the tour was over. But then Charles wanted to see the two churches, St. Lawrence and All Saints. She fretted behind him wondering how such a frivolous man could become so excited over the sight of a Norman arch. Then they walked through the dark arch of the old Bell Tower, built between 1529 and 1539, chattered Charles, and so across the grass and down towards the river Avon. Just before the river was a paddling pool shrill with the cries of children. “That’s where the monks used to fish,” said Charles.

“Let’s sit down for a moment,” said Agatha wearily.

They sat down together on a bench. It was a lazy, sunny scene. A band was churning out selections from My Fair Lady. Families sprawled on the grass. It looked so safe, so English, so far from the violence of the inner cities. Agatha relaxed. Evesham had a laid-back charm.

“Let’s take a boat,” said Charles.

“Are you going to row?”