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

be looking. So settle down and tell us everything you know.’
    Agatha decided to tell most of the truth but to omit that she had been in his house when it was set on fire.
    ‘It’s like this,’ she said. ‘I heard a rumour that he was a blackmailer and decided to get to know him better and find out.’
    ‘And what made you think he was a blackmailer?’
    ‘Just a feeling. Women talked a lot to him at the salon about their private lives and I saw him with a couple of women and they both looked distressed and frightened.’
    ‘Names?’
    Agatha thought furiously. She could not betray Mrs Friendly after having gone to such lengths to try to protect her.
    ‘I recognized one of them from the salon. I think her first name is Maggie. It’s all first names there.’
    ‘Description?’
    ‘Well, brown hair, sort of ordinary, rather protuberant eyes. She was there the first time I went. She was complaining that her husband didn’t understand her or something and then I
went for a trip on the river with a friend and I saw her sitting in that tea garden before the bridge with John and she looked unhappy.’
    ‘This still does not explain why you thought he was a blackmailer, or, if you thought he was, why then you were prepared to go into business with him.’
    Agatha turned red. ‘How did you hear that?’
    ‘He told his assistant Garry about it.’
    ‘I was stringing him along. I wanted to see if he would betray himself.’
    ‘This still does not explain why you leaped to the conclusion he was a blackmailer.’
    ‘It was just an intuition,’ said Agatha desperately. ‘Look, I was having dinner with him one night in a restaurant, and when we were leaving, this woman was staring at him and
her face was a mask of fear.’
    ‘What woman?’
    ‘I didn’t recognize her,’ lied Agatha.
    ‘Description.’
    ‘A small sort of weasel woman, black hair, glasses,’ said Agatha desperately.
    ‘Hum. And who was this male friend who accompanied you to the hospital?’
    ‘Charles, Sir Charles Fraith.’
    Bill took out a mobile phone. ‘Phone number?’
    ‘I can’t remember offhand.’
    ‘Then go and get me the phone book.’
    Agatha wanted to speak to Charles before Bill got to him.
    She went into the hall and picked up the phone book. The door was standing open. She threw the phone book out over the hedge.
    She went back in. ‘Can’t find it.’
    He gave her a cynical look, dialled directory inquiries, got Charles’s number, dialled it while Agatha prayed that Charles would not be at home. But with a sinking heart she heard Bill
say, ‘Sir Charles, we are with Mrs Raisin. I wonder whether you could join us. There are some questions we would like to ask you. Good. See you soon.’
    There was a scrabbling of paws and Mrs Darry entered the room. In one hand she clutched a phone book. ‘Really, Mrs Raisin,’ she said, ‘if you want rid of your phone book, you
should put it in the bin.’
    ‘I don’t know what you are talking about,’ said Agatha.
    ‘You nearly hit my little poochie with it. You threw it over your hedge.’
    Agatha snatched the phone book from her. ‘Would you mind leaving? I’m busy.’
    Mrs Darry’s eyes gleamed with curiosity.
    Bill rose and said, ‘Yes, this is private business, so if you don’t mind . . .’
    Mrs Darry left, her thin shoulders seeming to radiate frustrated curiosity.
    ‘So let’s go back to the day John Shawpart was murdered,’ said Bill. ‘Tell us about it.’
    Relieved for the moment to get away from the blackmailing question, Agatha described how he had looked ill, had gone to the toilet, how she and everyone else in the salon had heard the terrible
retching, how she had got the tool-box and broken the lock of the toilet door and had found the hairdresser collapsed on the floor.
    ‘I thought it was food poisoning,’ she said. ‘How could I think anything else? We had eaten a Chinese meal at his house the evening before . . .’
    ‘So you were with him the