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going to row?’
    ‘Too hot. One of those pleasure boats.’
    They walked back out into Bridge Street, past the multi-storey car park and so down to the landing stage, where a boat was just about to leave.
    The boat went under the Workman Bridge and circled back when it came to a weir, then went back under the bridge and slowly along beside the Abbey Gardens, as they are called.
    ‘Do you know that Evesham Abbey was larger than Gloucester Cathedral?’ said Charles.
    ‘Um,’ said Agatha absently.
    ‘And do you know that – What?’ For Agatha had suddenly clutched his arm.
    ‘Over there. Mr John,’ hissed Agatha.
    The open pleasure boat was sliding slowly past a tea garden. Charles looked. ‘Blond chap? Who’s that with him?’
    Agatha twisted her head backwards as the boat moved on. ‘Don’t know. Oh, yes. I think it’s a customer of his called Maggie. We’re all first names at the
hairdresser’s.’
    ‘She didn’t look all that happy.’
    ‘We go back this way again, don’t we?’
    ‘Shortly, I should think. The trips are only half an hour long, so we should be turning back any moment now.’
    Sure enough, the boat soon made a circle.
    ‘Get ready,’ said Agatha. ‘Be prepared for a good look at them this time.’
    But as the boat passed the tea garden, the table at which Mr John had been sitting with Maggie was empty.
    ‘Pity,’ said Agatha. ‘She was bitching to him about how her husband didn’t appreciate her. Do you think it really is blackmail? He might just be a philanderer.’
    ‘So why was Mrs Friendly so frightened?’
    ‘I’d forgotten about Mrs Friendly. I’ll ask Mrs Bloxby, the vicar’s wife. She might know something. Want to come with me?’
    He looked at his watch. ‘Can’t. Got to get home soon. Going out tonight.’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘Taking this girl to see Macbeth at Stratford.’
    ‘Oh,’ said Agatha in a small voice. She felt disappointed but reminded herself that Charles was a bachelor with his own life to lead.
    When they left the boat and walked back towards the car park, the heat was suffocating.
    ‘Thunder tonight,’ said Charles as they drove out of Evesham. Agatha looked ahead. There were purple clouds building up over Fish Hill.
    ‘There’s a thunderstorm almost every night,’ she said, ‘and yet the next day is always as hot and humid as ever.’
    Charles grunted by way of reply. He seemed immersed in his own thoughts. Agatha could feel the edges of that depression in her brain. She would go and see Mrs Bloxby. Perhaps that would take up
some of the lonely evening ahead.
    When Charles dropped her off, he did not say anything about seeing her again. Agatha had a feeling that the mystery of the hairdresser had become a bore. She said goodbye to him in a subdued
voice and let herself into her cottage just as the first fat raindrops struck the thatch on the roof.
    She hurried to let her cats in and then opened a can of cat food for them. Her cats, Hodge and Boswell, although they purred around her ankles, seemed so self-sufficient, so little in need of
the company of Agatha Raisin.
    A blinding flash of lightning lit up the kitchen. Then came a crack of thunder which seemed to rock the old cottage to its very foundations. Agatha switched on the kitchen light only to find out
that Carsely was suffering from one of the village’s many power cuts.
    She crept up to her bedroom and into bed without undressing, pulled the sheet over her and lay listening to the fury of the storm. She fell into an uneasy sleep, waking at seven in the evening
feeling hot and gritty. Late sunlight streamed in at the windows.
    She climbed out of bed and looked out of the window. Everything in the garden glittered in the sunlight. She leaned out. The air was as warm and sticky as ever.
    Agatha showered and changed and then made her way along to the vicarage.
    She hesitated on the doorstep as she heard the vicar’s angry voice, ‘Does that woman never think to phone