Agatha Raisin Companion (10 page)

Bert Trymp: local mechanic who also owns a boat in the marina. He telephones Agatha and invites her round because he had information relating to Sean’s murder. Charles
and Agatha later find his body floating in the river at the bottom of Bross-Tilkington’s estate.

George Bross-Tilkington: Felicity’s father, a rich businessman who made his money in foreign property. He is blown up in a boat in Spain.

Agatha’s line of work inevitably puts her in a dangerous position and she has survived numerous attempts on her life. She has been drugged, hit over the head and held at
gunpoint but, through a combination of chutzpah, sheer bloody-mindedness and the ‘luck of the devil’, she has so far lived to fight on.

Quiche of Death

After receiving a misspelt death threat, Agatha is brought off her bicycle by a wire stretched across the road on the steep hill into Carsely. Bill Wong pulls up as her
attacker is about to finish the job with a large rock. Later, she is drugged with sleeping pills and left in a burning house. She is once again saved by Bill, who manages to push her out of a
broken window.

Vicious Vet

The murderer attempts to kill Agatha with a shotgun, but is foiled when her beloved cat, Hodge, jumps on his face. She
hears another gunshot and
waits for the worst, but when she opens her eyes, it is the killer who has shot himself.

Murderous Marriage

Petrol is poured through the letterbox of James’s cottage where Agatha is staying. The couple throw water at the flames and Mrs Hardy, who has bought Agatha’s
house, comes to the rescue with buckets of earth. Later, Agatha, James and Mrs Hardy are accosted by a masked gunman while walking home from the village dance and the sour-faced neighbour comes to
the rescue once more, kicking the gun from his hand. Finally the real murderer, who Agatha has uncovered, smacks her over the head with a brass poker and attempts to bury her alive in her own
garden, but she is rescued by Fred Griggs and Bill Wong.

Terrible Tourist

During the Cyprus murder mystery, there are three attempts on Agatha’s life. First, she is almost pushed from the window of the monument at Saint Hilarion, in North
Cyprus. Secondly, a rock is thrown at her head as she gets in a car, and finally the perpetrator attempts to smother her in a room at the Dome Hotel. Agatha fights her attacker off, but is left
shaken and sick by the ordeal.

Wellspring of Death

The murderer holds Agatha and Mrs Bloxby at gunpoint and forces them to drive away from Carsely towards Stratford. After they stop in a field, Agatha sprays hairspray into
the villain’s eyes and brave Mrs Bloxby shoots him in the chest.

Wizard of Evesham

Agatha is attacked by the murderer, who repeatedly bangs her head against the wash basin as she is having her hair done. She is saved by Charles, who calls the police.

Fairies of Fryfam

Agatha is threatened with a shotgun in her rented cottage and is saved when Charles spots the open door and the frightened cats and calls the police.

Day the Floods Came

A hit and run attempt is foiled when Agatha spots the car approaching and throws herself over a garden hedge. Later, however, Mrs Anstruther-Jones is killed by the same
method, while wearing Agatha’s disguise. Agatha also finds herself locked in a freezer storage room behind a nightclub, and is rescued by John Armitage, Mrs Bloxby and her surly husband,
Alf.

Curious Curate

After meeting the person she suspected to be the killer at home, Agatha is asked to look at the wine cellar. As she peers down the stone steps, she is hit on the back of
the head with a heavy object and tumbles down. Tied up at the bottom of the stairs, Agatha hears policemen come to the door and take the killer away for questioning, but is sure he or she will
return to finish her off. Alerted by John, however, Bill Wong sounds the alarm and the police rescue Agatha.

Haunted House

The killer confronts Agatha and Charles in the living room of her cottage and threatens them with a gun. He promises to start at the kneecaps and keep shooting until they
tell him what he wants to know but, alerted to his presence in the next-door cottage, she has already phoned Bill Wong. The police arrive just in time.

Deadly Dance

Used to being the target of murderers, in this complicated case
Agatha finds herself in the sights of two potential killers. A jealous
neighbour’s attempts to finish her off only serve to thwart a professional assassin who has been hired by someone else. When he is found dead in the kitchen, the real killer comes to the
cottage, armed and dangerous, and instead murders the psychopathic neighbour.

Love, Lies and Liquor

Charmed by a mysterious stranger called Terry Armstrong, Agatha agrees to a date. Her suitor offers to drive her out of the oppressive surrounds of Snoth-on-Sea to a nice
restaurant, but stops en route at an abandoned building where he forces her in at gunpoint. She is saved after Patrick calls the police, suspecting the man’s motives. He turns out to be drug
baron Brian McNally, who is after the missing jewels from a bank robbery involving the ex of murder victim Geraldine Jankers.

Carsely woman Deborah Fanshawe is later shot while waiting in Agatha’s hotel room, in a clear case of mistaken identity, and Agatha is almost killed again when Brian McNally cons his way
into the Grand by pretending to be a CID officer. As he points his gun at her, a wave crashes through the lounge window and saves her.

Kissing Christmas Goodbye

The murderer attempts to poison Agatha’s toothpaste by injecting
hemlock into the tube. Warned by a concerned Mrs Bloxby, Agatha spies on
her in the bathroom and sees her doctoring the tube. After she confronts her, the murderer attacks, but is pulled off by Bill Wong, who has been alerted by the vicar’s wife.

Spoonful of Poison

Punched in the face by the very man she had almost fallen for, Agatha is saved by Mrs Bloxby, who attacks him with a jar of chutney. She is then targeted by the killer, who
poisons the milk on her doorstep. Agatha realizes what has happened when she sees a dead bird, which has pecked off the lid, thereby saving her cats from certain death. At the same time, her young
detective Toni is confronted by the murderer, wielding a knife, but manages to fight her off with a chair.

There Goes the Bride

The murder of Felicity Bross-Tilkington, James’s young fiancée,
proves to be one of Agatha’s most perilous cases, with three
attempts on her life.

While looking for clues in Barcelona, she is grabbed from behind and knocked out with chloroform. When she awakes, she is on a boat and a woman is about to inject her with a drug. She begs her
not to and the lady concedes, telling Agatha to play dead. She is then bundled on to another boat and escapes into the water, shortly before the boat explodes. Back home, she joins a dating agency
and arranges to meet a respectable lord at London’s St Katharine’s Dock, but is once more drugged and escapes death by stabbing her captor in the neck with his own hypodermic needle. A
third attempt is made by a woman who befriends Agatha after bumping into her in a market. She then suggests an outing to Warwick Castle, but Agatha foils her plan to inject her by stealing her
handbag.