Read Online Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death by MC Beaton - Free Book Online Page A

rot?’
    ‘No, cowbane is a plant. It must have got mixed up in the spinach that Mr Economides of the deli used.’
    Steve put down his fork and looked gravely at Agatha. ‘So you murdered him.’
    Roy screeched with laughter. He kicked his heels in the air, fell off the chair and rolled around the dining-room carpet, holding his stomach. The other diners studied him with the polite frozen smiles the English use for threatening behaviour.
    ‘Oh, Aggie,’ wheezed Roy when his friend had picked up his chair and thrust him back into it, ‘you are a one.’
    Patiently Agatha explained the whole sorry business. It had been a sad accident.
    ‘What do they think about you in the village?’ asked Roy, mopping his streaming eyes. ‘Are they calling you the Borgia of the Cotswolds?’
    ‘It’s hard to know what they think,’ said Agatha. ‘But I had better sell up. The whole move to Carsely was a terrible mistake.’
    ‘Wait a minute,’ said Steve. He carefully extracted a piece of lobster and popped it in his mouth. ‘Where does this cowbane grow?’
    ‘In the West Midlands, and this, as the police pointed out, is the West Midlands.’
    Steve frowned. ‘Does it grow in farms among the regular vegetables?’
    Agatha searched her memory for what she had read about cowbane in the book in Foyle’s. ‘It grows in marshy places.’
    ‘I’ve heard the Cotswolds are famous for asparagus and strawberries . . . oh, and plums and things like that,’ said Steve. ‘I read up on it. But not spinach. And how could a marshy plant get in among a field of spinach?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ said Agatha, ‘but as I recall, it grows in other parts of the British Isles as well. I mean, the stuff at Nine Elms comes from abroad and all over the place in Britain.’
    Steve shook his head slowly, his mouth open as he contemplated another piece of lobster. ‘Are you wondering if there’s an aargh in the month?’ demanded Roy. ‘You look like one of those faces at the fairground where you’ve to try and toss a ball into the mouth.’
    ‘It just doesn’t happen,’ said Steve.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Well, look here. A field of spinach is harvested. For some reason a marshy plant gets caught up with the spinach. Right? So how come no one else dropped dead? How come it all got into one spinach quiche? Just the one. Surely a bit of it would have got into another quiche. Surely another one of this Economides’s customers would bite the dust.’
    ‘Oh, the police will have looked into all that,’ said Roy a trifle testily. He felt Steve was taking up too much of the conversation.
    Steve shook his head slowly from side to side.
    ‘Look,’ said Agatha. ‘Be sensible. Who was to know I would walk off in a huff and leave that quiche? Who would even know that the Cummings-Brownes would take it home? The vicar could have taken it and given it to some old-age pensioner. Lord Pendlebury could have taken it.’
    ‘When did you take your quiche to the competition?’ asked Steve.
    ‘The night before,’ said Agatha.
    ‘So it was just lying there all night, unattended, in this hall? Someone could have baked another quiche with cowbane in it and substituted it for Agatha’s quiche.’
    ‘We’re back to motive,’ said Agatha. ‘So say someone substituted a poisoned quiche for mine. Who was to know Cummings-Browne would take it? I didn’t even know I was going to walk off and leave it until the last minute.’
    ‘But it could have been meant for you,’ said Steve. ‘Don’t you see? Even if you had won that competition, only a little slice was taken out for the judging, and then you would have taken the rest home.’ He leaned forward. ‘Who hates you enough?’
    Agatha thought uneasily of Mrs Barr and then shrugged. ‘This is ridiculous. Do you read Agatha Christie?’
    ‘All the time,’ said Steve.
    ‘Well, so do I, but delightful as those detective stories are, believe me, murders are usually sudden and violent and take place in