Agatha Raisin and the Busy Body Read Free Page B

holiday?’ asked Toni.
    ‘Foul. I’ll tell you about it later. There’s been a murder.’
    Agatha outlined what had happened, ending with, ‘John Sunday appears to have made so many enemies around the villages that it’s going to be hard to find the culprit. Maybe he made
some enemies at work. Could you check with the Mircester Health and Safety Board? And ask Patrick to find out from his old police contacts if there’s any news of exactly how he
died.’
    Patrick Mulligan, a retired policeman, had worked for Agatha for some time, along with Phil Marshall, an elderly man from Carsely, Sharon Gold, a bouncy young friend of Toni’s, and Mrs
Freedman, the agency’s secretary. Paul Kenson and Fred Auster, who had briefly worked for her, had left to work for a security firm in Iraq.
    Agatha fretted as she glared out at the still-falling snow. She made herself a cheese sandwich and another cup of coffee and switched on the television to BBC news. There was a global warming
demonstration in Trafalgar Square with protestors nearly obliterated on the screen by the driving snow. She sat patiently through the whole of the news but there was nothing on the murder of John
Sunday.
    The day dragged on in its dreary whiteness. Agatha’s two cats, Hodge and Boswell, sat patiently by the kitchen door, wondering why Agatha did not let them out.
    The phone rang at midday. It was Toni. She said that Patrick had little news other than that the police had said it looked as if Sunday had been stabbed with something like a kitchen knife. He
had tried to defend himself and there were cuts on his hands and forearms.
    Agatha relapsed into a snowbound torpor. She fell asleep on the sofa in the afternoon, only awakening an hour later at the ringing of her doorbell.
    On opening the door, she found Miriam Courtney on her doorstep, unbuckling a pair of skis. ‘The snow’s stopped and I thought I’d come and see you,’ said Miriam.
‘The gritters haven’t been out on the village roads but the farmers had snowploughed them so I put on my skis and came over. Thank goodness the snow has stopped. Aren’t you going
to ask me in?’
    ‘Sorry,’ said Agatha. ‘Come in.’
    Miriam propped her skis against the outside wall. ‘Come through to the kitchen,’ said Agatha. She had taken a dislike to Miriam but decided that any company was preferable to none.
‘Coffee?’
    ‘Sure.’ Miriam took off her padded coat and woolly hat and sat down at the kitchen table.
    ‘What brings you?’ asked Agatha, plugging in the electric coffee percolator.
    ‘I heard you have a detective agency and I want to hire you. I’m prime suspect.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because I was the one person, apart from Miss Simms, who was out of the room for any length of time. Furthermore, I am on record as having called at the offices of the Health and Safety
Board in Mircester and threatened to kill Sunday.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because in the summer I open the manor to the public twice a week. It’s an old Tudor building. I get a good number of tours. Sunday said the steps up to the front door made it
impossible for the disabled to have access. I would have to have a ramp. The ramp they suggested was a great metal thing that seemed to stretch halfway down the drive. I said in the past that the
rare visitor in a wheelchair was just wheeled backwards up the very shallow steps. Sunday said that unless I had the ramp, I could no longer open the house to the public. I said I’d kill the
stupid bureaucratic bastard. The police turned up this morning at the manor with a search warrant.’
    ‘How did they get through the snow?’ asked Agatha, putting down a cup of coffee in front of Miriam.
    ‘They got through somehow in Land Rovers. Took all my kitchen knives away. I want you to find out who really did it. I’m an outsider in that village. The trouble’s started
already. The two women who clean for me phoned up this morning to say they would no longer work for