Agatha Raisin and the Fairies of Fryfam (6 page)

‘I need proof. I need good, solid proof that he’s been messing about and then I can take him to the cleaner’s.’

‘Don’t you have any money of your own?’

‘No.’ A bitter little no.

‘What did you do before you were married?’

‘I modelled. Not top-flight or even the second landing. Catalogue stuff, TV ads for sanitary towels, that sort of thing.’

‘How did you meet Tolly?’ Agatha lifted down two mugs and took out the milk and sugar.

‘At an Ideal Home Exhibition. Me and another model were hired to wear bath towels and decorate his stand. He took me out for dinner, and that was that.’

Agatha poured two cups of coffee. ‘Help yourself to milk and sugar.’ She lit a cigarette.

‘Mind if I have one of those?’ asked Lucy.

‘Sure.’ Agatha pushed the packet forward. ‘I thought you didn’t smoke. Couldn’t see any ashtrays in that house of yours.’

‘Tolly won’t let me. He used to smoke sixty a day.’

‘Oh, one of those. How long have you been married?’

‘Five years.’

‘Five years? Were you married before?’

‘Not me.’ Lucy shrugged. ‘Always waiting for Mr Right. Anyway, the reason I called is this. I want you to get proof for me of his philandering. You said you were a detective. I’ve got some money squirrelled away. I’ll pay you.’

‘It’s not the sort of thing I like to do,’ said Agatha slowly. ‘Messy and dirty business.’

Lucy surveyed her impatiently. ‘What else have you got to do in this God-alive place where they believe in fairies?’

‘I’m writing a book.’ Agatha had forgotten until then about her book. She was suddenly eager to get back to it.

‘Think about it,’ urged Lucy. ‘I’m desperate.’

‘I tell you what, I’ll ask around,’ said Agatha. ‘A few of the women here seem bitter about Rosie.’

If I did a bit more investigating, thought Agatha, it would be good for the book. It’s based on this unlovely couple anyway.

Her mind returned to the fairies. ‘Any children in this village?’ she asked.

‘A few. Not many young couples, so the others have children who are grown up and married and living elsewhere. There isn’t a council house estate here, so no young mothers. Betty Jackson, over in the cottage beyond the estate agent’s, has four, but like all kids these days, after they get bussed back from school, they’re usually stuck in front of the television set.’

‘I wonder how whoever it is gets in houses so easily to take stuff?’

‘A lot of people don’t lock their doors, or they leave the key under the doormat or on a string hanging through the letterbox. Forget about fairies, Agatha. Try to get something on Tolly.’

After she had left, Agatha decided to go back to writing her book. Determined not to read a word of it until she had completed one chapter, she ploughed on. It was only when the light started fading outside that she realized she was ferociously hungry and that she had promised to meet the women at the pub.

She put a frozen curry in the microwave, and when it was ready, ate it quickly and went up to change her clothes.

The pub was relatively empty. Harriet, Amy and Polly were there with their husbands. When Agatha showed signs of joining them, Henry Freemantle gave her a venomous glare. No one offered to buy her a drink.

Agatha was suddenly fed up with the lot of them. ‘What can I get you, Mrs Raisin?’ asked Rosie Wilden. Her blond hair was piled up on her head, apart from one errant curl straying down to a creamy bosom, almost down to the nipple exposed by another plunging blouse, black this time.

‘A bottle of arsenic,’ said Agatha sourly.

Rosie let out a peal of laughter. ‘You are a one.’

‘Aren’t I?’ said Agatha. ‘Are you having an affair with Tolly Trumpington-James?’

Rosie’s good humour was undented. ‘Mrs Raisin, dear, according to the local gossip, I’m having an affair with every man in this village. Tolly don’t even come in here. Too common for him.’

‘I think I’ll change my mind about ordering a drink,’ said Agatha. ‘I don’t want to go and sit with that lot.’

‘Suit yourself. Sit somewhere else?’

‘No, tell them I’ve left something in the oven.’

Agatha made her escape, walking straight past the table where her new friends and their husbands were sitting.

This time, she remembered to pick up her car. She drove home. Her cats were in the garden. They came in on stiff legs, backs arched, fur standing out. Agatha looked down at them. Then she looked down the garden. Those lights were dancing around again.

With a roar of rage, she ran down the garden. The lights flickered and disappeared.

She ran back into the house and through it and out to her car, where she got a torch.

Then she hurried back to the garden again and began to search every inch of ground where she had seen those lights. The grass was springy and uncut, being a wild area beyond the drying green which Barry had mowed.

Baffled, she returned to the house. She took out the inventory and began to check everything carefully. Nothing seemed to be missing.

But she felt frightened and uneasy.

The bad weather Agatha had seen approaching had arrived by the following morning. Agatha awoke to the sounds of howling wind and rain pattering against the windows. She dressed and went downstairs. The house was cold.

She went into the sitting-room. With sunlight streaming in the windows, it had seemed tastefully furnished, the sofa and chairs upholstered in checked tweed, the carpet a warm burnt orange. But now it appeared what it was, a room in a rented cottage with ornaments on the mantelpiece that she would never have bought and pictures that she would never have hung.

She lit the fire. Must get more fire-lighters, she thought. Agatha used half a packet to light a fire. When the logs were crackling merrily, she went into the kitchen and made herself a coffee and carried it back to the sitting-room.

Agatha felt lost and alien. She rose after a while and went to the phone in the hall. Must get an extension and put it in the sitting-room, she vowed. Silly to have to stand in a cold hall. She phoned Mrs Bloxby. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ said the vicar’s wife. ‘No, he isn’t back yet.’

‘I’m not phoning about that,’ said Agatha crossly. ‘I might come back earlier than I intended.’

‘It’ll be nice to see you. But, why? Has anything suddenly gone wrong?’

‘It’s a bit boring and it’s started to rain.’ Not for a moment would Agatha admit that the fairy lights had frightened her. Agatha Raisin was frightened of so many things – love, confrontations, ageing, living alone – that she went at life with both fists metaphorically swinging.

‘You’re near Norwich, aren’t you?’ asked Mrs Bloxby in her gentle voice.

‘Not far, no.’

‘Might be an idea to go and see a silly movie and look at the shops.’

This was an eminently sensible idea, but Agatha felt cross. She wanted Mrs Bloxby to say that everyone in Carsely missed her and beg her to come home.

‘I’ll think about it,’ she said sourly. ‘Any news your end?’

‘Miss Simms has a new boyfriend.’ Miss Simms was Carsely’s unmarried mother and secretary of the ladies’ society.

‘Really?’ Agatha was momentarily diverted. ‘Who?’

‘He’s something in carpets. She gave me one of those fake Chinese rugs. So kind.’

‘I can’t imagine you putting a fake Chinese rug in your sitting-room.’

‘It’s in Alf’s study. It’s got a stone floor and his feet get cold when he’s writing his sermons, so it’s ideal.’

‘Anything else?’

‘The Red Lion is being threatened with redecoration.’

‘Why? I like it the way it is,’ said Agatha thinking fondly of the low-beamed pub and its comfortable shabby chairs.

‘It’s not John Fletcher’s idea. It’s the brewery. I think they want it art deco.’

‘But that’s dreadful, and so old-hat,’ screeched Agatha. ‘You’ve got to get up a protest.’

‘We have.’

‘Maybe I’d better come back and really get things going.’

‘You aren’t listening. The ladies’ society has already collected signatures from everyone in the village. I don’t think the brewery will go ahead in the face of such protest.’

‘No, I don’t suppose they will,’ said Agatha in a small voice.

‘Lovely weather, isn’t it?’

‘It’s pissing down with rain here.’

Agatha coloured as a short, reproving silence greeted the profanity. Then Mrs Bloxby said, ‘Perhaps you should consider coming back. I know the winters can be bad here, but they’re truly dreadful in Norfolk.’

Agatha seized on the invitation like a lifeline. ‘I’ll probably be back next week.’

After she had said goodbye, she felt better. Now for some coffee and that book.

Unfortunately, she decided to start off by printing out what she had written and reading it. ‘What a load of waffle,’ she groaned. ‘It’s not
literary
enough.’ How the hell could you get a book on friends’ coffee tables or win the Booker Prize if you didn’t write literature?

She frowned. Of course, she could always start again and write one of those stream-of-consciousness novels with an eff as every second word. But she wasn’t from Glasgow and all the successful effers seemed to come from Glasgow. Or there was the literary trick of observing the minutiae of surroundings. Literary writers always ended up lying in the grass describing each blade and insect.

Agatha looked gloomily out of the window at the driving rain. Fat chance of lying in grass in this weather.

She switched off the computer and stood up. What to do? No use investigating the infidelity of Tolly. Agatha was sure Rosie Wilden had been telling the truth.

The doorbell rang. Agatha opened it. Harriet stood on the step, sheltering under an enormous golfing umbrella.

Agatha invited her in. Harriet left her umbrella and waxed coat in the hall. ‘I came to thank you,’ she said.

‘What for?’

‘Believe it or not, Rosie came up to our table last night and went on about how nice it was to see ladies in the pub. Our husbands were so disappointed.’

‘Your husband came here and threatened me.’

‘He’s got a lousy temper and he really did have a bad crush on Rosie. But now that’s gone.’

‘Good. So he and the others will stay home in the evenings?’

‘No, they’re going to find a pub in another village.’

‘So we didn’t achieve anything.’

‘Oh, yes, we did. At least we know none of our husbands is going to have an affair with Rosie.’

Agatha thought about the husbands – Harriet’s, tall, thin and pompous; Polly’s, small round and pompous; Amy’s, small and ferrety – and opened her mouth to say it was her considered opinion that none of their husbands had the slightest chance of bedding Rosie, but uncharacteristically held her tongue. She clung on to the fact that she would soon be leaving Fryfam and its fairies.

Instead she asked, ‘What on earth do you do in Fryfam on a day like this?’

‘There’s always household chores to catch up on. Then there’s church-cleaning duty. It’s my day for the brasses.’

‘Talking about cleaning, I’d better get someone for here,’ said Agatha, thinking she’d better leave it as clean as she had found it.

‘There’s Mrs Jackson. I’ll write down her phone number for you if you’ve got a bit of paper.’

‘Thanks.’ Agatha found a piece of paper. Harriet was writing down the number when the bell rang again. When Agatha opened the door it was to find Polly there.

‘Come and join us,’ she said. ‘Harriet’s here.’

Polly took off a large yellow oilskin coat and sou’wester. ‘Gosh, what a day! Such excitement!’

She followed Agatha into the kitchen. ‘You’ll never guess. There’s been a theft up at the manor.’

‘Never!’ said Harriet. ‘Oh, I know. Is it those lights again?’

‘Yes, Tolly saw them at the back of the manor, but he was convinced it was kids playing tricks.’

‘So what’s been pinched?’ asked Agatha. ‘The usual piece of tat?’

‘No,’ said Polly. ‘You’ll never believe. . . . Any chance of coffee?’

‘Right away,’ said Agatha. ‘But go on. What was nicked?’

‘A Stubbs.’

‘Never!’ exclaimed Harriet.

Agatha did not want to ask what a Stubbs was and so betray her ignorance, but curiosity overcame her.

‘Stubbs?’ she asked.

‘George Stubbs,’ said Harriet. ‘An eighteenth-century painter, famous for his paintings of horses. Must be worth a mint.’

‘Where was it?’ asked Agatha. ‘Didn’t see anything like that in their drawing-room.’

‘It was in Tolly’s study,’ said Polly.

‘So how did they get in?’

‘That’s the mystery,’ said Polly, bobbing up and down on her chair in excitement. ‘Before Tolly does the rounds, he locks up everything and sets the burglar alarm.’

Agatha poured mugs of coffee and bent down to ferret in a cupboard for a packet of biscuits. ‘So what are the police doing?’ she asked, straightening up and crackling open a packet of chocolate digestives.

‘The CID and forensic people are all over the place. That lazy policeman, Framp, has been told to stand guard all night.’

‘Seems a bit silly now the robbery has taken place.’

‘That’s what Framp says. Oh, Agatha, if the press come round, you mustn’t say anything about fairies,’ said Polly.

‘Why not?’

‘Because we’d all be a laughing-stock.’

Agatha put the biscuits on a plate and set them down on the table. ‘So why do you believe in the things in the first place? I mean, surely you two don’t.’

‘There’s odd things in this area. It’s very old,’ said Harriet.

‘But, come on,’ protested Agatha. ‘Fairies!’

‘So if you’re so clever,’ said Polly, ‘what’s your explanation?’

‘Someone fooling about. Gets superstitious people scared, steals rubbish, then goes in for the kill. What’s a Stubbs worth?’

‘I’ve heard Tolly bragging it was insured for one million pounds,’ said Harriet.

‘Blimey!’

‘Lucy’s freaked out,’ said Polly with relish. ‘She says she’s clearing off to London to stay with a couple of friends.’

Another ring at the doorbell. ‘I suppose that’s Amy.’ Agatha went to answer it as Harriet called after her, ‘Can’t be Amy. She’s working.’