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sleep.’
    Agatha’s eyes suddenly filled with weak tears. The idea that anyone could actually lose sleep over her was a novelty.
    ‘At first I thought it was a bundle of old clothes in the ditch, but then, when I took a good look, I saw him. I felt for his pulse and finding none, I ran to the nearest cottage and phoned the police.’
    ‘Was there anyone else about?’ asked Agatha.
    ‘No, and it must have happened after you reached home, Agatha, or I would have met you on the road or seen whoever killed him. Of course the murderer could have cut across the fields.’
    ‘We’ll just need to find out who did it ourselves,’ said Agatha.
    ‘Oh, you’re been through so much. Why not leave it to the police?’
    ‘Because we want to know who did it,’ said James. ‘I’ve been thinking – what is the etiquette about wedding presents? I suppose we return them.’
    ‘I would just keep them,’ said the vicar’s wife, ‘and then when you do get married, no one needs to bother giving you anything else.’
    ‘We will not be getting married,’ said James in a flat voice.
    There was a heavy silence. Then Mrs Bloxby said brightly, ‘More tea?’
    Roy Silver had had a sleepless night. Not usually plagued with an uneasy conscience, he found he was actually suffering. The story of the wedding-that-never-was, spiced up by the murder of Agatha’s husband, was all over the newspapers, and some enterprising reporter had found out that he, Roy Silver, had been the one who had alerted Jimmy Raisin to his wife’s attempt to marry someone else. The moment he got to his office he phoned Iris Harris, the detective, and asked her to call on him as soon as possible.
    He fretted and fidgeted until she arrived. Ms Harris had read the newspapers and listened calmly as Roy said she must find out more about Jimmy Raisin. If Agatha did not kill him, someone did, and that someone might have some connection with his London background. He could not have spent all those years drinking methylated spirits and stayed alive.
    Only when Iris Harris had agreed to work for him again and had left did Roy feel more comfortable with himself.
    Agatha and James stayed indoors most of the following week, only venturing out at night for dinner. The press besieged James’s cottage at all hours of the day. It would have been normal, Agatha thought, for them to have discussed their relationship, discussed what had happened, but James talked only about the murder, politics and the weather. He worked away steadily at his military history while Agatha played with her cats in the garden and read books.
    At night, she slept in the spare room, strangely undisturbed by any longing for the body asleep along the narrow corridor. The shocks of the wedding and the murder had driven passion from Agatha’s mind. She was itching to get started on the murder investigation. Bill Wong had not called and she felt desperate for news. But soon the press would give up and go away to fresh woods and murders new and leave them in peace.
    On the morning the doorbell finally stopped ringing and the telephone at last was silent, Agatha decided to go to Mircester to try to see Bill Wong. James said he would stay and work at his writing.
    On arriving at police headquarters, Agatha found out it was Bill’s day off. She wondered whether to call at his home, but decided against it. He lived with his parents and Agatha found them rather intimidating. So she shopped for a new dress, although she did not need one, and for a new lipstick to add to the twenty or so already cluttering up the shelf in James’s bathroom. The lipstick promised to make ‘lips full and luscious as never before’. Agatha, who never believed a word of most advertisements, was a sucker for any cosmetic promotion. Hope sprang eternal and she believed every word until she tried it out. She decided to treat herself to a bar lunch in the George, but she would put on that lipstick first.
    She went into the pub toilet,