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

cities, some drunken lout of a husband bashing his wife to death. Don’t you see, I would like it to be murder.’
    ‘Yes, I can see that,’ said Steve, ‘because you have been exposed as a cheat.’
    ‘Here, wait a minute –’
    ‘But it all looks very odd.’
    Agatha fell silent. If only she had never tried to win that stupid competition.
    Again a feeling of loneliness assailed her as she paid the bill and ushered her guests out into the night. She had a whole weekend in front of her entertaining this precious pair, and yet their very presence emphasized her loneliness. Roy had no real affection for her of any kind. His friend had wanted to see rural England and so he was using her.
    Roy pranced around the cottage, looking at everything. ‘Very cute, Aggie,’ was his verdict. ‘Fake horse brasses! Tch! Tch! And all that farm machinery.’
    ‘Well, what would you have?’ said Agatha crossly.
    ‘I dunno, sweetie. Looks like a stage set. Nothing of Aggie here.’
    ‘Perhaps that’s understandable,’ said Steve. ‘There are people who do not have personalities that transfer to interior decorating. You need to be a homebody.’
    ‘You can go off people, you know,’ commented Agatha waspishly. ‘Off to bed with both of you. I’m tired. The village festivities don’t begin until noon, so you can have a long lie-in.’
    The next morning Roy took over the cooking when he found Agatha was about to microwave the sausages for breakfast. He whistled happily as he went about the preparations and Agatha told him he would make someone a good wife. ‘More than you would, Aggie,’ he said cheerfully. ‘It’s a wonder your health hasn’t crumbled under a weight of microwaved curries.’
    Steve came down wrapped in a dressing-gown, gold and blue stripes and with the badge of a cricket club on the pocket. ‘He got it at a stall in one of the markets,’ said Roy. ‘Don’t bother talking to him, Aggie. He doesn’t really wake up until he’s had a jug of coffee.’
    Agatha read through the morning papers, turning the pages rapidly to see if there was anything further about the quiche poisoning, but there wasn’t a word.
    The morning passed amicably if silently and then they went out to the main street, Roy doing cartwheels down the lane past Mrs Barr’s cottage. Agatha saw the lace curtains twitch.
    Steve took out a large notebook and began to write down all about the festivities, which started off with the crowning of the May Queen, a small pretty schoolgirl with a slimly old-fashioned figure. In fact all the schoolchildren looked like illustrations in some long-forgotten book with their innocent faces and underdeveloped figures. Agatha was used to seeing schoolgirls with busts and backsides. The Queen was drawn by the morris men in their flowered top hats, the bells at their knees jingling. Roy was disappointed in the morris dancers, possibly because, despite the flowered hats, they looked like a boozy rugby team and were led by a white-haired man who struck various members of the audience with a pig’s bladder. ‘Supposed to make you fertile,’ said Steve ponderously and Roy shrieked with laughter and Agatha felt thoroughly ashamed of him.
    They wandered around the stalls set up in the main street. Every one seemed to be selling wares in support of some charity or other. Agatha winced away from the home-baking stand. Roy won a tin of sardines at the tombola and got so carried away, he bought ticket after ticket until he managed to win a bottle of Scotch. There was a game of skittles which they all tried, a rendering of numbers from musicals by the village band, and then the morris dancers again, leaping up into the sunny air, accompanied by fiddle and accordion. ‘Don’t you know you are living in an anachronism?’ said Steve ponderously, scribbling away in his notebook.
    Roy wanted to try his luck at the tombola again and he and Steve went off. Agatha flicked through a pile of second-hand books on a