CHEERS FOR AGATHA RAISIN!
"Anyone interested in ... intelligent, amusing reading will want to make the acquaintance of Mrs. Agatha Raisin."
--Atlanta Journal Constitution
"The Raisin series brings the cozy tradition back to life. God bless the Queen!"
--Tulsa World
"[Beaton's] imperfect heroine is an absolute gem!"
--Publishers Weekly
AGATHA RAISIN AND THE WIZARD OF EVESHAM
"Beaton masterfully describes the annoyances and ego deflations suffered by the middle-aged Agatha, as well as the summertime blues caused by unusually hot weather."
--Publishers Weekly
"Another delightful cozy featuring Cotswolds surroundings, a bit of history, and buoyant characters."
--Library Journal
"[A] smartly updated Miss Marple ... Beaton's books about this tough little Raisin cookie are well-made and smoothly oiled entertainment machines ... Trust Agatha to solve it all in style."
--Amazon.com
"The return of Agatha Raisin, amateur sleuth extraordinaire, is always a treat and M. C. Beaton does not miss a beat... Another fabulous English cozy by the great M. C. Beaton."
--Harriet Klausner, Painted Rock Reviews
AGATHA RAISIN AND THE WELLSPRING OF DEATH
"Tourists are advised to watch their back in the bucolic villages where M. C. Beaton sets her sly British mysteries ... Outsiders always spell trouble for the inbred societies Beaton observes with such cynical humor."
--The New York Times Book Review
"Outspoken, chain-smoking, aggravating Agatha roars back for a[n] ... outing that will keep fans cheering. Must be something in the water."
--The Poisoned Pen
AGATHA RAISIN AND THE TERRIBLE TOURIST
"Another refreshing and delightful series addition."
--Library Journal
AGATHA RAISIN AND THE MURDEROUS MARRIAGE
"Beaton gleefully creates one excruciating situation after another for her indomitable heroine to endure."
--Publishers Weekly
ST. MARTIN'S PAPERBACKS BY M. C. BEATON
Agatha Raisin
The Perfect Paragon: An Agatha Raisin Mystery
The Deadly Dance: An Agatha Raisin Mystery
Agatha Raisin and the Haunted House
Agatha Raisin and the Case of the Curious Curate
Agatha Raisin and the Day the Floods Came
Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell
Agatha Raisin and the Fairies of Fryfam
Agatha Raisin and the Witch of Wyckhadden
Agatha Raisin and the Wizard of Evesham
Agatha Raisin and the Wellspring of Death
Agatha Raisin and the Terrible Tourist
Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage
Agatha Raisin and the Walkers of Dembley
Agatha Raisin and the Potted Gardener
Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet
Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death
Love, Lies, and Liquor
The Skeleton in the Closet
Hamish Macbeth
Death of a Bore
Death of a Poison Pen
Death of a Village
Death of a Celebrity
A Highland Christmas
Writing as Marion Chesney
Our Lady of Pain
Sick of Shadows
Hasty Death
Snobbery with Violence
AGATHA RAISIN AND THE WITCH OF WYCKHADDEN
M. C. BEATON
Copyright (c) 1999 by M. C. Beaton.
For Gladwen Williams of Claverdon
With love
ONE
THERE is nothing more depressing for a middle-aged lovelorn woman with bald patches on her head than to find herself in an English seaside resort out of season. Wind ripped along the promenade, sending torn posters advertising summer jollities flapping, and huge waves sent spray high into the air.
Agatha had lost her hair when a vengeful hairdresser had applied depilatory to it rather than shampoo. It had grown back in tufts but leaving distressingly bare patches of scalp. Not wishing the love of her life, James Lacey, to return from his travels and find her in such a mess, Agatha had fled from Carsely to this seaside resort of Wyckhadden to wait for her hair to grow.
She had booked into the Garden Hotel, advertised as small but exclusive. She now wished she had chosen somewhere plastic and bright and modern. The Garden Hotel had not changed much since Victorian times. The ceilings were high, the carpets thick, and the walls very solid, so that it was as hushed and quiet as a tomb. The other residents were elderly, and no one feels more uncomfortable among the elderly than a middle-aged woman who is rapidly approaching that stage of life herself. Agatha could suddenly understand why middle-aged men often blossomed out in jeans, high boots and leather jackets and went looking for a young thing to wear on their arm. She walked a lot, determined to lose weight and remain supple.
One look around the dining-room of the Garden at her fellow guests made her start to ponder the sense of getting a face-lift.
The town of Wyckhadden had prospered during a boom in the late nineteenth century, and its popularity had continued well into the twentieth, but with the advent of cheap foreign travel, holiday-makers had declined. Why holiday in Britain in the rain when sunny Spain was only a hour's plane flight away?
So on this windy day, two days after her arrival, she was charging along a deserted promenade, head down against the wind, wondering how soon she could find a sheltered spot to enjoy a cigarette and get some of the excess of oxygen out of her lungs.
She turned away from the restless sound of the heaving sea and made her way up a narrow cobbled street where the original fishermen's cottages had now all been painted pastel colours like in an Italian village and had cute names like Home At Last, Dunroamin, The Refuge and so on, showing that they had been bought by retired wealthy people. Tourism might be on the wane, but property prices in seaside resorts on the south of England were high.
She came to a tea-shop and was about to go in when she saw the non-smoking sign on the door. The government was threatening to ban smoking in pubs, Agatha had read in the newspapers. Not a word about the dangers of alcohol, she thought as a particularly strong gust of wind sent her reeling. People who smoked did not drive off the road or go home and beat up their wives. Drunks did. And with the fumes from more and more cars polluting the air, she thought that smoking had become a political issue. The left were anti-smoking, the right pro-smoking, and the lot in the middle who had given up smoking wanted everyone to suffer.