Agatha Raisin and the Wizard of Evesham by M.C. Beaton Page A

that for?’ hissed Charles as they walked away.
    ‘I can’t leave here without knowing what’s up with him.’
    A nurse was sitting at a desk outside the intensive care unit.
    ‘We’ve come to ask about Mr Shawpart,’ said Agatha.
    ‘Are you family?’
    ‘His sister.’
    ‘But surely the police told you . . . I am so sorry. Mr Shawpart died two hours ago.’
    ‘What of?’
    ‘Some sort of poisoning, but we will know definitely after the autopsy.’
    ‘Thanks,’ said Agatha, seizing hold of Charles’s arm and turning to walk away.
    ‘Wait a minute,’ said the nurse sharply. ‘I’ll need your names.’
    ‘In shock,’ babbled Agatha and scurried off with Charles.
    When they were outside, Charles said severely, ‘You seem hell-bent on getting yourself into deeper water. The police will be given a description of you.’
    ‘Never mind that. Someone must have poisoned him.’
    ‘It could still be food poisoning. People do die of food poisoning. He might have had a dicky heart. We’ll need to wait and see.’
    ‘Let’s drive past his house and see how much of it is left.’
    ‘This is getting tiresome,’ grumbled Charles. ‘Oh, very well.’
    Agatha sat as he drove, her mind racing. She remembered James saying in Cyprus that she solved cases only by blundering about until the murderer betrayed himself, and that had hurt. Now it
looked as if it were true. But it could not be murder, must not be murder.
    When they reached the Cheltenham Road in Evesham and approached the house, they could see the police tape that cordoned off the blackened shell. They slowed down as they went past. A policeman
on duty stared at the car suspiciously and Charles sped off.
    ‘There wasn’t much of that left,’ he said. ‘That noise you heard, that gurgling sound, must have been petrol.’
    ‘Looks like it,’ said Agatha wearily.
    ‘Cheer up. There won’t be much trace of anything left.’
    ‘Including who he was blackmailing, if he was blackmailing.’
    ‘All we can do is wait and see.’
    Agatha waited all the next day but no policeman came. By the end of the second day, she was beginning to relax, beginning to think it might have been a simple case of food
poisoning, when a ring at the doorbell made her jump.
    She opened the door. Detective Sergeant Bill Wong stood there, his round face stern. He was flanked by a policewoman. ‘Mind if we come in, Mrs Raisin?’
    Mrs Raisin. Not Agatha.
    Agatha stepped back and let them in. ‘How nice to see you, Bill,’ she chattered. ‘I’ll just make us some coffee.’
    ‘No coffee. This is business.’
    She led them into the living-room. They sat down on a sofa, side by side. Agatha quickly put a fire-guard in front of the blackened mess in the grate, which she had forgotten to clear out.
    She sat down nervously on a chair facing them.
    ‘You knew Mr John Shawpart?’ began Bill.
    ‘Yes, he was my hairdresser.’
    ‘Anything closer?’
    ‘Yes, we were friends. We had a couple of meals.’
    His eyes were hard. ‘Let’s begin at the beginning. I see from the list of customers that you were present when he fell sick.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And a woman answering to your description called at the intensive ward at Mircester Hospital, claiming to be his sister.’
    Agatha briefly considered lying and then decided against it.
    ‘Well, yes. I wanted to find out what had happened. Why are you handling this case, Bill? Surely Worcester CID is in charge.’
    ‘They’ve asked for our help, and as you live in Gloucestershire, I have the job of interviewing you. You could be in bad trouble for claiming to be a family member.’
    ‘What is this?’ demanded Agatha, her face becoming flushed with anger. ‘What happened to him? I thought it was food poisoning.’
    ‘Ricin.’
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘It’s a poison made from castor-oil beans. John Shawpart was murdered. And if we hadn’t got a damned clever pathologist who had made a study of ricin poisoning, we’d
still