Read Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death for Free Online Page A

ate some breakfast and picked up an Agatha Christie mystery and tried to read, but could not focus on the words. What did fictional mysteries matter when there was a real-live one in the village? Had Mrs Cummings-Browne hit him on the top of his pointy head with the poker?
    She threw down the book and went along to the Red Lion. It was buzzing with rumour and speculation. Agatha found herself in the centre of a group of villagers eagerly discussing the death. To her disappointment, she learned that Mr Cummings-Browne had suffered from high blood pressure.
    ‘But it can’t be natural causes,’ protested Agatha. ‘All those police cars!’
    ‘Oh, we likes to do things thoroughly in Gloucestershire,’ said a large beefy man. ‘Not like Lunnon, where there’s people dropping dead like flies every minute. My shout. What you ’aving, Mrs Raisin?’
    Agatha ordered a gin and tonic. It was all very pleasurable to be in the centre of this cosy group. When the pub finally closed its doors at two in the afternoon, Agatha felt quite tipsy as she walked home. The heavy Cotswolds air, combined with the unusually large amount she had drunk, sent her to sleep. When she awoke, she thought that Cummings-Browne had probably had an accident and it was not worth finding out about anyway. Agatha Christie now seemed much more interesting than anything that could happen in Carsley, and Agatha read until bedtime.
    In the morning, she decided to go for a walk. Walks in the Cotswolds are all neatly signposted. She chose one at the end of the village beyond the council houses, opening a gate that led into some woods.
    Trees with new green leaves arched over her and primroses nestled among their roots. There was a sound of rushing water from a hidden stream over to her left. The night’s frost was slowly melting in shafts of sunlight which struck down through the trees. High above, a blackbird sang a heart-breaking melody and the air was sweet and fresh. The path led her out of the trees and along the edge of a field of new corn, bright green and shiny, turning in the breeze like the fur of some huge green cat. A lark shot up to the heavens, reminding Agatha of her youth, in the days when even the wastelands of Birmingham were full of larks and butterflies, the days before chemical spraying. She strode out, feeling healthy and well and very much alive.
    By following the signs, she walked through fields and more woods, finally emerging on to the road that led down into Carsely. As she walked down under the green tunnels formed by the branches of the high hedges which met overhead and she saw the village lying below her, all her euphoria caused by healthy walking and fresh air left, to be replaced by an inexplicable sense of dread. She felt she was walking down into a sort of grave where Agatha Raisin would lie buried alive. Again she was plagued with restlessness and loneliness.
    This could not go on. The dream of her life was not what she had expected. She could sell up, although the market was still not very good. Perhaps she could travel. She had never travelled extensively before, only venturing each year on one of the more expensive packaged holidays designed for single people who did not want to mix with the riff-raff: rambling holidays in France, painting holidays in Spain, that sort of thing.
    In the village street, a local woman gave her a broad smile and Agatha wearily waited for that usual greeting of ‘Mawning,’ wondering what the woman would do or say if she replied, ‘Get stuffed.’
    But to her surprise, the woman stopped, resting her shopping basket on one broad hip, and said, ‘Police be looking for you. Plain clothes.’
    ‘Don’t know what they want with me,’ said Agatha uneasily.
    ‘Better go and find out, m’dear.’
    Agatha hurried on, her mind in a turmoil. What could they want? Her driving licence was in order. Of course, there were those books she had never got around to returning to the Chelsea library . .