She’ll never speak to me again, thought Agatha sadly as she realized she would have to tell the truth.
‘It’s like this, Alf . . . may I call you Alf?’
‘No.’
‘Okay, what happened, I met your wife in the pub last night and she had been crying. She thinks you’re having an affair.’
‘How ridiculous . . . although come to think of it, I have had to ward off a few amorous parishioners over the years.’
‘I promised not to snoop,’ said Agatha.
‘Which in your case is like promising not to breathe.’
‘Right! I’m fed up feeling guilty,’ said Agatha. ‘What the hell were you doing in the confessional box of a Catholic church?’
‘I needed spiritual guidance.’
‘Don’t tell me you’ve lost your faith?’ demanded Agatha.
‘Nothing like that. You know that we use the old Book of Common Prayer and the King James Bible?’
Agatha hadn’t noticed, but she said, ‘Yes.’
‘It is the most beautiful writing, on a par with Shakespeare. The bishop has ordered me to change to modern translations of both. I can’t, I just can’t. I felt I had to unburden myself to a priest of a different faith.’
‘Why on earth didn’t you tell your wife?’
‘I had to wrestle with my conscience. I even thought of entering the Catholic Church.’
‘And taking a vow of celibacy?’
‘The Vatican is proposing making provisions for people like myself.’
‘Don’t you talk to your wife?’
‘I prefer to wrestle with spiritual matters on my own.’
Agatha saw a way out of her predicament. She threw him a cunning look out of her small, bearlike eyes. ‘I could fix it for you.’
‘You! Do me a favour.’
‘I will, if you’ll shut up and listen. The bishop will not go against the wishes of the parishioners. The whole village will sign a petition to keep things as they are and send it to the bishop. Easy. I’ll fix it for you if you promise not to tell Mrs Bloxby I had anything to do with it. I’ll fix it up with the local shop. Everyone shops there in the bad weather. I’ll get Mrs Tutchell, the new owner, to say it’s her idea. You start talking about it now, all round the village, starting with your wife. Of course, if I find you have breathed a word about my involvement in this, you’re on your own, mate. Of all the silly vicars . . .’
‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’ asked Mrs Bloxby plaintively half an hour later, after having heard her husband’s explanation.
‘At first, I wanted to wrestle with the problem on my own, but I called in at the village store and happened to mention it on my way home. The villagers have been very supportive and are sending a petition to the bishop.’
‘Did Mrs Raisin have anything to do with this?’
‘Of course not,’ said the vicar, addressing the sitting-room fire. Just a white lie, God, he assured his Maker. ‘Can you imagine me asking her for help?’
Agatha busied herself for most of the rest of the day by going door-to-door in the village, raising support for the vicar and urging everyone to sign the petition at the village store. A good proportion of the villagers were incomers who only went to church at Easter and Christmas but were anxious to do the right ‘village thingie’, as one overweight matron put it. Agatha headed to the office in the late afternoon to find Toni just leaving on the arm of a tall, tweedy man who sported a beard.
‘This is Paul Finlay,’ said Toni.
‘Ah, the great detective,’ said Paul. He was in his late thirties, Agatha guessed, with an infuriatingly patronizing air. He had a craggy face and the sort of twinkling humorous eyes that belie the fact that the owner has no sense of humour whatsoever.
‘We’re off out for the evening,’ said Toni quickly. ‘Bye.’
‘Wait a bit,’ said Agatha. ‘Roy’s coming on Friday night, and on Saturday we’re going to a pig roast in Winter Parva. Why don’t you and Paul come along? Come to my cottage and I’ll take you over because the parking’s going to be awful.’
‘A pig roast?’ cackled Paul. ‘How quaint. Of course we’ll come.’
‘Good. The pig roast starts at six, but I’d like to get there a bit earlier,’ said Agatha. ‘See you around four o’clock for drinks and then we’ll all go.’
Agatha stood and watched them as they walked away. Toni’s slim young figure looked dwarfed and vulnerable beside the tall figure of Paul.
‘Not suitable at all. What a prick,’ said Agatha, and a passing woman gave her a nervous look.
Agatha checked business in the office before heading home again. She was just approaching Lilac Lane when a police car swung in front of her, blocking her.
Agatha jammed on the brakes and looked in her rearview mirror. She saw the lumbering figure of the policeman who had ticketed her for blowing her nose. She rolled down the window as he approached. ‘Now what?’ she demanded.
‘I had a speed camera in me ’and up in that there road,’ he said, ‘and you was doing thirty-two miles an hour. So that’s three points off your licence and a speeding fine.’
Agatha opened her mouth to blast him but quickly realized he would probably fine her for abusing a police officer. He proceeded to give her a lecture on the dangers of speeding, and Agatha knew he was trying to get her to lose her temper, so she listened quietly until he gave up.
When he had finally gone, she swung the car round and went into the village store, where she informed an interested audience about the iniquities of the police in general and one policeman in particular. ‘I’d like to kill him,’ she shouted. ‘May he roast slowly over a spit in hell.’
It was a frosty Friday evening when Agatha met Roy Silver at Moreton-in-Marsh station. He was dressed in black trousers and a black sweater, over which he was wearing a scarlet jacket with little flecks of gold in the weave. He had shaved his head bald, and Agatha thought dismally that her friend looked like a cross between a plucked chicken and someone auditioning for a job as a Red Coat entertainer at a Butlin’s holiday camp.
‘Turn on the heater,’ said Roy as he got in the car. ‘I’m freezing.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ said Agatha. ‘What’s with the bald head?’
‘It’s fashionable,’ said Roy petulantly, ‘and it strengthens the hair. It’s only temporary.’
‘I’ll lend you some warm clothes,’ said Agatha.
‘Your clothes on me, babes?’ said Roy waspishly. ‘I’d look as if I were wearing a tent. I mean, you could put two of me inside one of you.’
‘I’m not fat,’ snarled Agatha. ‘You’re unhealthily thin. Charles has left some of his clothes in the spare room.’ Sir Charles Fraith, a friend of Agatha’s, often used her cottage as a hotel.
Roy said mutinously that his clothes were perfectly adequate, but when they got to Agatha’s cottage, they found there had been another power cut and the house was cold.
While Agatha lit the fire in her living room, Roy hung away his precious jacket in the wardrobe in the spare room, wondering how anyone could not love such a creation. He found one of Charles’s cashmere sweaters and put it on.
When he joined Agatha, the fire was blazing. ‘How long do these power cuts last?’ he asked.
‘Not long, usually,’ said Agatha. ‘There’s something up with the power station that serves this end of the village.’
‘Anything planned for the weekend?’
‘We’re going to a pig roast at Winter Parva tomorrow.’
‘No use. I’m vegetarian.’
‘Since when?’
Roy looked shifty. ‘A month ago.’
‘You haven’t been dieting. You’ve been starving yourself,’ accused Agatha. ‘I got steaks for dinner.’