Agatha Raisin and the Fairies of Fryfam (3 page)

After she had finished ticking off everything on the inventory, she scraped out the contents of Genuine Bengali Curry into a pot. She would need to buy a microwave. She ate the hot mess and then decided to get down to writing that book.

She set up the computer on the kitchen table, typed in ‘Chapter One’, and then stared at the screen. She found that instead of writing that book, she was beginning to write down excuses to get out of quilting. ‘I suffer from migraine.’ No good. They’d all call around with pills. ‘Something urgent has come up.’ What? And how on earth could she get in touch with them? Mrs Wilden at the pub would know.

She decided to walk down to the pub.

Agatha, as she trudged down Pucks Lane, decided she had better start observing everything about the countryside. Writers did that. The red berries of hips and haws could be seen in the hedgerow to her right. Okay. ‘The red berries of hips and haws shone like jewelled lamps . . .’ No, scrub that. ‘The scarlet berries of hips and haws hung like lamps over the . . .’

Nope, try again. ‘Hawthorn berries starred the hedgerow.’ No, berries can’t star. Flowers can. Who the hell wants to be a writer anyway?

The pub was closed. Agatha stood irresolute. In the middle of the village green was a duck pond, minus ducks. There was a bench overlooking it. She crossed over and sat down and stared at the water.

‘Afternoon.’

Agatha jumped nervously. A gnarled old man had sat quietly down beside her.

‘Afternoon,’ said Agatha.

He shuffled along the bench until he was sitting close to her. He smelt of ham soup and cigarette smoke. He was obviously in his Sunday best, to judge from the old hairy suit, the white shirt and striped tie. His large boots were highly polished.

Then Agatha felt something on her knee, and looking down, saw that he had placed one old hand on it.

Agatha lifted up his hand and placed it on his own knee. ‘Behave yourself,’ she said sharply.

‘Don’t you go worriting about that fellow back home who done you wrong. Us’ll look after you.’

Agatha rose and strode off, her face flaming. Had the whole village decided she had a broken heart? Damn them all. She would see the estate agent first thing on Monday morning and say she wanted to cancel.

She found a street leading off the far end of the village green which had a small selection of shops. There was a post office-cum-general store like the one in Carsely, an electrical-goods shop, one selling Laura Ashley-type clothes, an antique shop, and at the end, Bryman’s, the estate agent. She studied the cards in the window. House prices were less than in the Cotswolds, but not much less.

She wandered back to the village green, as lonely as a cloud, and decided to go back home and spend a useful day unpacking the rest of her stuff.

The gardener called during the afternoon and asked her if there was anything in particular she would like to have done. Agatha said she would like him to sweep the leaves, mow the lawn and keep the flower-beds tidy. He was a young man, muscled and tattooed, with a thick thatch of nut-brown hair. He said his name was Barry Jones and he would call round on the next day. Agatha thanked him and as he turned to go, she said, ‘Do you know anything about odd lights? I saw odd little lights dancing around at the bottom of the garden last night.’

He did not even turn around. ‘Reckon I don’t know nothing about that,’ he said and walked away with a rapid pace.

There’s something odd about those lights, thought Agatha. Maybe it’s some wretched poisonous insect and the locals don’t want to put off visitors to the village by telling them about it.

She went back to her housekeeping duties, wondering as she hung away clothes whether the log fires would be enough to keep the house warm in a cold spell. The estate agent should have warned her.

When she realized it was nearly six o’clock, she began to wonder whether she should get out of going to church and then quilting. She checked the TV guide she had brought with her. There was nothing much on. And, she realized, she was lonely.

She locked up and walked round to the church in time for Evensong. To her amazement, in these godless days, the church was full. The vicar’s sermon dealt with faith as opposed to superstition, and Agatha’s mind drifted back to those lights. There was a closed, inbred, anachronistic feel to this village. All across the world raged fire and floods and famine. Yet here in Fryfam, hatted ladies and suited gents raised their voices in ‘Abide With Me’ as if nothing existed outside their safe English world governed by the changing seasons and the church calendar: Michaelmas, Candlemas, Harvest Festival, Advent, Christmas.

She waited in the churchyard. Harriet approached her surrounded by the three others she had met earlier. They were wearing the same clothes but had put on hats – Harriet a felt pudding basin, Amy a straw, Polly Dart a tweed fishing hat and Carrie sporting a baseball cap.

Agatha, who had changed into a tailored trouser suit and silk blouse, felt almost overdressed.

‘Right,’ said Harriet. ‘Off we go!’

A couple passed their group, arguing acrimoniously. ‘Don’t be such a
bore
, Tolly,’ said the woman. A waft of Gucci’s Envy reached Agatha’s nostrils. She paused, looking after the couple. The woman had what Agatha thought of as the ‘new’ beauty, meaning others admired it. She had blond hair worn down to her shoulders. She was wearing a well-tailored tweed suit, the skirt of which had a slit up one side, revealing a well-shaped leg clothed in a ten-denier stocking – stockings, not tights, for the slit was long enough to show a flash of stocking top. Her eyes were pale blue and well set apart. She had high cheek-bones, but her nose was set too close to her mouth and her long mouth too close to her square chin. He was older, small, plump and choleric, with thinning hair and a high colour.

‘Come on, Agatha,’ ordered Harriet.

‘Who are they? That couple?’

‘Oh, that’s our squire, self-appointed, made his money out of bathroom showers, and his wife, Lucy. The Trumpington-Jameses. Funny, isn’t it,’ said Harriet, her voice carrying across the churchyard. ‘Not so long ago a double-barrelled name denoted a lady or gentleman. Now it means it’s some lower-middle-class parvenu.’

‘Aren’t you being a bit snobby?’ asked Agatha.

‘No,’ said Harriet. ‘They’re quite awful, as you’ll find out.’

‘How will I find out?’

‘They’ll think it their squire-archical duty to welcome the newcomer. You’ll see.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘My place.’

Harriet’s place was on the far side of the green, a square, early Victorian house.

Leading the way into a large, if gloomy, sitting-room, Harriet switched on the lamps and said, ‘Anyone for a drink first?’ And before a grateful Agatha could ask for a gin and tonic, Harriet said, ‘I know, we’ll have some of Carrie’s elderberry wine.’

Agatha looked about her. The room had long windows and a high ceiling but was crowded with heavy pieces of furniture. The walls were painted a dull green and hung with dingy paintings of horses and dead game.

Amy was getting blankets and boxes of cloth and sewing implements out of a large chest in the corner.

‘I think you should share a quilt with Carrie,’ said Amy. ‘You work on the one end and she’ll work on the other. If you sit side by side, you can spread the blanket out between you.’

Harriet returned with a tray of glasses full of elderberry wine. Agatha sipped hers cautiously. It was very sweet and tasted slightly medicinal.

‘Are we all widows here?’ asked Agatha, looking around. ‘No husbands?’

‘My husband’s in the pub with Amy’s and Polly’s,’ said Harriet. ‘Carrie’s divorced.’

‘I thought the pub was closed on Sundays. I went round at lunch-time and it was closed.’

‘Opens Sunday evenings.’ Harriet drained her glass and put it back on the tray. ‘We’d best get started.’

It should be simple, thought Agatha, as Carrie handed her a little pile of squares of cloth. Just stitch them on.

‘Not like that,’ said Carrie, as Agatha stabbed a needle into the edge of one. ‘You hem it first and then stitch it on and unpick the hem.’ Agatha scowled horribly and proceeded to try to hem a slippery little square of silk. Just as soon as it got a stitch in it, the silk frayed at the edges. She surreptitiously dropped it on the floor and picked out a piece of coloured wool. She glanced sideways at Carrie, who was placing neat little, almost invisible, stitches, rapidly in squares of material.

She decided to start up a conversation to try to distract the others from her amateur sewing. ‘Mrs Wilden at the pub treated me to an excellent meal last night. She’s quite stunningly beautiful.’

‘Pity she’s got the morals of a tom-cat,’ snapped Polly, biting a thread with strong yellow teeth.

‘Oh, really?’ said Agatha, looking around curiously at the set faces. ‘I found her rather sweet.’

‘Good thing you’re not married.’ Amy, sounding almost tearful.

‘When did your husband die, Agatha?’ asked Carrie.

‘A while back,’ said Agatha. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ She did not want to tell them her husband had been murdered right after he had surfaced from the past to stop her marrying James Lacey. ‘I’m still wondering about those lights,’ she went on. She noticed with surprise that because of the distraction of talking she had actually managed to hem a square of cloth.

‘Have you seen them again?’ asked Harriet.

‘No.’

‘Well, there you are. You were probably tired after the long drive and thought you saw them.’

Agatha gave up on the subject of the lights. She was sure these women probably gossiped easily among themselves. She was the outsider, not yet accepted, and that was putting the brakes on any conversation.

She felt she was being let out of school when Harriet said after an hour, ‘Well, that’s it for tonight.’

As Agatha was leaving, she stopped to admire an arrangement of autumn leaves in a vase in the hall. Harriet lifted out the bunch of leaves and thrust it at Agatha. ‘Take it,’ she said. ‘I dip the leaves in glycerine so they should last you the winter.’

Agatha walked homewards bearing the leaves. She remembered there was a large stone vase on the floor by the fireplace in the sitting-room. She let herself into the cottage, glad that she had brought her cats for company as Hodge and Boswell undulated about her ankles.

She walked through to the kitchen and put the bunch of leaves on the kitchen counter. She looked out of the window and the dancing lights were there again.

Agatha unlocked the door and walked down the garden. The lights had disappeared.

Muttering to herself, she walked back to the house. Something funny was going on. She had not imagined those lights and there was nothing wrong with her eyesight.

She walked through to the sitting-room to get that vase. It was no longer there. Agatha began to wonder if she had imagined it. She took the inventory out of the kitchen drawer. Yes, there it was under ‘Contents of Sitting-Room’ – one stone vase.

Agatha suddenly felt threatened. She checked the doors were locked and went up to bed. Her stomach rumbled, reminding her she had not had any dinner, but the thought of going downstairs again frightened her. She bathed and undressed and crawled under the duvet and pulled it over her head to shut out the terrors of the night.

Another sunny morning and Agatha, ashamed of her night-time fears, decided to drive into Norwich, buy a microwave, have breakfast, and then return to tackle the estate agent over the lack of central heating.

Being in Norwich brightened up the feelings of city-bred Agatha immensely. She bought a microwave and a further supply of microwavable meals in Marks and Spencer, had a large cholesterol-filled breakfast, bought a cheap glass vase, and returned to Fryfam in a confident frame of mind.

After she had unpacked her shopping and fed her cats, she walked to the estate agent’s.

She pushed open the door of Bryman’s and walked in. To her intense irritation, she saw the droopy figure of Amy Worth sitting behind a computer screen. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you worked here?’ complained Agatha.

‘There didn’t seem much point,’ said Amy defensively. ‘I’m just the typist. I don’t have anything to do with the renting of the houses.’

‘So who do I speak to?’

‘Mr Bryman. I’ll get him.’

Secretive about nothing at all, fumed Agatha. Amy re-emerged and held open the door to an inner office. ‘Mr Bryman will see you now.’

Agatha walked past her. A youngish man with a sallow face, thick lips and wet eyes stood up and extended his hand. ‘Welcome, Mrs Raisin.’

Agatha shook his hand, which was clammy. What a damp young man, she thought. He was in shirt-sleeves and there were patches of sweat under his armpits. There was also an unpleasant goaty smell emanating from him. Amy, Agatha had noticed, was wearing the same clothes she had worn the day before. Perhaps no one in Fryfam bothered about baths.

Agatha sat down. ‘You should have warned me there was no central heating,’ she began.

‘But the logs are free,’ he protested. ‘Stacks of logs.’

‘I do not want to have to set and clean all those fireplaces when the weather turns cold.’

‘We’ll let you have a couple of Calor gas heaters like the one in the kitchen. I’ll bring them round today.’

‘Don’t you have anywhere else?’

‘Not to rent. For sale only. Quite a lot of the houses in Fryfam are second homes. People leave them empty in the winter. Only come down for the summer months. There’s always a demand for second homes. You’ll find there’s few of us here in the winter.’

‘Okay, I’ll take the heaters. Now, there’s something else.’

He raised his eyebrows in query.

‘I checked the inventory yesterday. There was definitely a stone vase in the sitting-room. Well, it’s disappeared. I saw these lights at the end of the garden and went to investigate and when I came back the vase had gone.’

‘Oh, I think we can overlook that, Mrs Raisin. It’s just an old vase.’

‘I am not going to overlook it,’ said Agatha stubbornly. ‘Is there a policeman here? There must be. I phoned the police to get your name.’