Dishing the Dirt

She ran lightly up the stairs in a new pair of flat shoes. She had not promised God not to wear high heels again although she had promised to give up smoking and so far had superstitiously kept to that promise.

Agatha opened the secret drawer in the desk. There was a magpie assortment of things from lipsticks to cheap jewellery. She was about to give up when she saw a square envelope stuck against the front flap of the drawer. She pulled it out and opened it. It was a CD. She thrust it into her handbag, just as a nurse ushered Jenny into the room.

“There you are again, dear!” cried Jenny.

“I brought you something,” said Agatha, handing over a box of chocolates.

“How kind. Jenny adores chocolates. And Belgian, too!”

Her eyes fastened greedily on Agatha’s handbag. Agatha immediately zipped it up. She was anxious to escape. “I’m sorry I’ve got to rush, Jenny, but I didn’t know you would be at lunch and I’ve got another appointment.”

“No matter, dear. Bargain Hunt is about to come on the telly. Run along.”

*

Once back in her car, Agatha was overwhelmed by a craving for a cigarette. “Sorry God,” she muttered. Before driving off, she searched in the pocket of her linen skirt for her cigarette packet, which she carried around just in case she weakened. She looked back up at the building. Where she guessed Jenny’s room was, the window was open and a thin trail of blue smoke was wafting out into the air.

*

Back in her cottage, Agatha put the CD in the player and then crouched forward in excitement. It was a recording of Jill’s therapy sessions. There was Victoria confessing to drowning the dog, Doris complaining about her shoulders, Anthony Tweedy, not exactly confessing, but giving a long diatribe about how he had hated his “brother” and his fears that the fire might prove not to be accidental. Agatha only half listened to the next few sessions and then stiffened as Gwen Simple’s voice began to sound. In increasing disappointment, she heard Gwen complaining about her son and wondering how on earth he could have done something so horrible without her knowledge. Nothing incriminating at all.

“I can’t even give it to the police,” Agatha said to her cats. “I can’t have some of these poor people’s sad little secrets exposed.”

Although the Indian summer still seemed to stretch on forever, Doris Simpson had set a fire in the living room. Agatha lit it, waiting until there was a blaze and threw the disk onto it.

*

That evening, she put a cottage pie in the microwave, and then, when it was ready, picked at it, before giving up and throwing the remains on the smouldering fire.

Again, she was assailed by a terrible craving for nicotine. She hurried up to the pub. A damp breeze had sprung up. The evening sky was covered in thick black clouds. Far away came rumbles of thunder as if giants in the heavens were moving furniture.

She hurried up to the pub where she bought a packet of cigarettes, a glass of wine and a ham sandwich and walked through the pub towards the garden, getting rather sour nods by way of greeting. The villagers were beginning to think that Agatha Raisin’s dangerous presence in the village was affecting house prices.

Agatha ate her sandwich and then opened the packet of cigarettes, extracted one, lit it and gratefully inhaled. There was a great flash of forked lightning, which stabbed down, missing her by inches.

She threw her cigarette away and fled back through the pub and down to her cottage through a burst of torrential rain.

“Coincidence,” she muttered savagely, as she changed into dry clothes.

*

At the same time, Mrs. Bloxby heard the doorbell ring. “If it’s that Raisin woman again, tell her to get knotted,” shouted the vicar.

Mrs. Bloxby opened the door. A tall man stood on the doorstep, his face shaded by a large umbrella. “I’m new to the village,” he said. “My name is Gerald Devere.”

“Come in out of the rain,” urged the vicar’s wife. “Welcome to Carsely. Leave your coat on the stand there and let me have your umbrella. Come near the fire. Such a nasty evening. Sherry?”