Agatha Raisin and the Busy Body Read Free

the chatter of voices. She sighed. Cakes and boredom. Why had she come?
    The vicarage drawing room was large. There seemed to be around twenty-five people there. But apart from Miss Simms, Agatha could not recognize anyone else from Carsely. Mrs
Bloxby whispered in a disappointed voice that they must have decided not to attend. Agatha waved to Miss Simms, Carsely’s unmarried mother, who was wearing a very short skirt, pixie boots,
one of those fake French fisherman’s jerseys, and long dangling earrings. There was a log fire on the hearth giving out a dim glow and occasionally sending puffs of smoke into the room.
    Agatha refused tea and cakes. She could not be bothered to balance a teacup and plate. All the comfortable chairs had been taken up. Extra hard chairs had been brought in. Agatha sat down in a
hard chair and wondered how long this wretched evening was going to last. The room was cold. Long French windows had been let into one wall of the old building and she could see steam from the
breaths of all the cold visitors beginning to form on the glass.
    A new arrival was being greeted with great enthusiasm. Agatha judged her to be in her seventies. She had leathery brown skin criss-crossed with wrinkles, thick black hair streaked with grey, and
sparkling blue-grey eyes. ‘Freezing out there,’ she said, divesting herself of her coat and pashmina. ‘They say we’re going to have a blizzard tonight.’
    ‘Who is she and what’s that accent?’ asked Agatha.
    ‘She’s Mrs Miriam Courtney, widow, South African, millionairess,’ whispered Mrs Bloxby. ‘She bought the manor house here about two years ago.’
    Miriam looked brightly around the room. ‘Am I expected to sit on one of those bum-numbing seats?’
    ‘Have my chair,’ said Miss Simms eagerly, surrendering her armchair.
    Agatha felt a twinge of jealousy.
    ‘Goodness, it’s cold,’ said Miriam. ‘You’ve got coal in the scuttle over there. Why not throw some of that on the fire and get up a blaze?’
    ‘It’s not smokeless,’ protested Penelope Timson, a tall thin woman with very large hands and feet and stooped shoulders, as if she had become bent after years of bending down
to speak to smaller parishioners. She was wearing two cardigans over a sweater, a baggy tweed skirt, and woollen stockings which ended surprisingly in a pair of fluffy pink slippers in the shape of
two large pink mice. ‘You know what Mr Sunday is like. He tours around looking for smoke. We’re supposed to burn smokeless.’
    ‘Oh, never mind him. Courage. Chuck on a few lumps,’ urged Miriam.
    Bowing to a stronger will, Penelope picked up the tongs and deposited a few lumps. A blaze sprang up but the fire smoked even more.
    ‘Damn, I brought brandy and I’ve left it in the car. I’ll go and get it,’ said Miriam. ‘Don’t wait for me. Get started.’
    ‘I thought we weren’t supposed to drink and drive,’ muttered Agatha.
    ‘She’s probably thinking of herself,’ said Mrs Bloxby. ‘She can walk home. I wonder she bothered to drive.’
    ‘I wonder anyone local bothered to drive,’ said Agatha. ‘Couldn’t they just walk?’
    ‘It’s only in cities that people walk, I think,’ said Mrs Bloxby. ‘These days, in the country, people seem to drive even a few yards.’
    Penelope called the meeting to order. Agatha’s thoughts drifted off. Perhaps she could rescue the little that was left of her holiday and go somewhere warm. But she didn’t like beach
holidays any more and Miriam’s skin was surely an example of what happened to women who baked in the sun. It was all so stupid, reflected Agatha, this obsession with tanning. Understandable
in the old days when only the rich went abroad in the winter and people wanted to appear jet-setters, but now the British from every walk of life flew out to exotic destinations, visiting a tanning
parlour before they left. I mean, thought Agatha, you wouldn’t leave a fine piece of leather out in the sun to