Agatha Raisin and the Wizard of Evesham (3 page)

‘Well, he builds his time machine and becomes a billionaire and runs off with a little bit of fluff in the office who is the only woman who really understands him and has supported him,
which of course she has, not knowing one word he’s been talking about, but likes the excitement of being involved with a married man. He divorces his wife and marries the office girl and the
money goes to her head and she joins the Euro-trash and runs off with a racing driver and they all live unhappily ever after. And the moral of that is, men and women are different and should start
to accept the differences.’

Agatha laughed. ‘Couldn’t he have escaped in his time machine?’

‘Of course not. He got billions to destroy it. Can’t have people zipping around the centuries and messing up history.’

‘I never know if you’re a male chauvinist oink or just being funny.’

‘I’m never funny. Look at the wrinkles on my forehead, Aggie. Product of deep thought. So what about you? No nice juicy murders?’

‘Nothing at all. I am yesterday’s sleuth.’

‘I should have thought your experiences in Cyprus would have given you enough death and mayhem for life.’

Cyprus. Where she had passed a night with Charles and James had found out about it and things had never been the same again. Agatha would not admit to herself that her relationship with James
had been on the rocks for a long time before that.

Charles watched the shadow fall across her eyes and said gently. ‘It wouldn’t have worked, you know. James is a twenty-per-cent person.’

‘I don’t understand you.’

‘It’s like this. You are an eighty-five-per-cent person and James only gives twenty per cent. It’s not a case of won’t, it’s a case of can’t. A lot of men are
like that but women will never understand. They go on giving. And they think if they go to bed with the twenty-per-center, and they give that last fifteen per cent, they’ll miraculously wake
up next to a hundred-per-center. Wrong. If they wake up next to him anyway, it’ll be a miracle. Probably find a note on the pillow saying, “Gone home to feed the dog,” or
something like that.’

Agatha remembered nights with James and mornings when he was always up first, when he never referred to the night before or hugged her or kissed her.

‘Maybe I was just the wrong woman,’ she conceded.

‘Trust me, dearest. Any woman is the wrong woman for James.’

‘Perhaps I would have been happy to settle for twenty per cent.’

‘Liar. Here’s our food.’

To Agatha’s surprise, the ham was delicious and the salad fresh and crisp.

‘So we’re never to go detecting again?’ Charles asked, pouring ketchup on his chips.

‘I can’t go around finding bodies to brighten up my life.’

‘No more public relations work?’

‘None. All my efforts are going towards providing tea and cakes for the ladies of Ancombe.’

‘You’ll stir something up, Aggie. No new men on the horizon?’

‘One very gorgeous man.’

‘Who?’

‘My hairdresser.’

‘Ah, the one that’s responsible for the new elegance.’

‘Him.’

‘Hairdressers are fickle. I remember . . . Never mind.’

‘What about
your
love life, Charles?’

‘Nothing at the moment.’

They passed the meal reminiscing about their adventures in Cyprus and then he drove her home.

‘Am I going to stay the night?’ asked Charles as they stood together on Agatha’s doorstep.

‘No, Charles, I’m not into casual sex.’

‘Who says it would be casual?’

‘Charles, you demonstrated in Cyprus that I am nothing more than a temporary amusement to you. Has it ever dawned on you that you might be a twenty-per-center yourself?’

‘Ouch! But think on this, Aggie. Any eighty-five-per-center who hangs around with twenty-per-centers is just as afraid of commitment.’

He waved to her and went off to his car.

Agatha let herself in, feeling flat. No messages on the phone for her. And what had Bill Wong been thinking of not to phone her?

The sensible thing would be to phone him, and yet Agatha dreaded the idea of finding out she had lost the affection of her first friend.

Life went on. She had to keep moving. Perhaps she would accept Mr John’s invitation after all.

The heat mounted. Ninety-nine degrees Fahrenheit was recorded at Pershore in Worcester. Incidents of road rage mounted, tar melted on the roads, and Agatha Raisin longed for
her old shorter haircut.

She realized that the reason she had not the courage to ask for it to be cut was in case she was accused of having low self-worth. Having come to this conclusion, Agatha decided it was all too
ridiculous and made another appointment with Mr John. Back to Evesham, where the women had swapped their leggings for shorts. Acres of white, mottled flesh gleamed in the sunlight.

The hairdresser’s was as busy as ever. Mr John had two male assistants, one female, and two juniors. Agatha asked if she could use the toilet. The window at the back of the toilet was open
to a little weedy yard.

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, Toulouse-Lautrec 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 liked 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 wristwatch. 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 wrong 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 heard 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.

‘So where is James now?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Agatha sadly. ‘Abroad somewhere.’

‘You’re an attractive woman.’ He reached across the table and took her hand in his.

Agatha laughed and disengaged her hand. ‘You make women feel attractive.’

‘Tell me more about yourself.’

Agatha talked on but mostly about her days in public relations. Somehow the fact that Bill Wong hadn’t phoned her hurt and so she did not brag about her detective abilities or mention his
name.

And while she talked she began to wonder whether he would want to stay the night and whether she would let him. By the end of the meal she was languorously tipsy and was planning to invite him
in when they got home.

As they left the restaurant, which was attached to the Crown Inn, Agatha saw Mrs Friendly emerging from the adjoining bar. ‘Mrs Friendly,’ called Agatha.

Mrs Friendly stood stock-still. Her eyes were wide with fright and her face paper-white as she looked at Mr John. She made an inarticulate sound and turned and went hurriedly back into the bar,
pushing her way through people until she was lost to view.

Outside, Agatha said, ‘You frightened her.’

‘Who?’

‘Mrs Friendly.’

‘Who’s she? Sounds like Happy Families. Miss Bun, the Baker’s Daughter, Mrs Friendly, the –’