Free Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death by MC Beaton Page A

family parties, sticky crying children, busloads of pensioners from Wales, muscle-bound men with tattoos from Birmingham, young Lolitas in white slit skirts and white high-heeled shoes, tottering along, eating ice cream and giggling at everything in sight. Steve wanted to see all that was on offer, from the art galleries to the museums, which depressed Agatha, because a lot of the village museum displays were items from her youth and she felt only really old things should go into museums. Then there was the motor museum, also jammed with tourists, and then, unfortunately, someone had told Steve about Birdland at the end of the village and so they had to go there, and stare at the birds and admire the penguins. Agatha had often wondered what it would be like to live in Hong Kong or Tokyo. Now she knew. People everywhere. People eating everywhere: ice cream, chocolate bars, hamburgers, chips, munch, munch, munch went all those jaws. They seemed to enjoy being in such a crowd, except the many small children who were getting tired and bawled lustily, dragged along by indifferent parents.
    The air was turning chilly when Steve with a sigh of pleasure at last closed his notebook. He looked at his watch. ‘It’s only half-past three,’ he said. ‘We can make it to Stratford-on-Avon. I must see Shakespeare’s birthplace.’
    Agatha groaned inwardly. Not so long ago Agatha Raisin would have told him to forget it, that she was bored and tired, but the thought of Carsely and Mrs Barr made her meekly walk with them to the car-park and set out for Stratford.
    She parked in the multi-storey Birthplace Car-Park and plunged into the crowds of Stratford with Roy and Steve. So many, many people, all nationalities this time. They shuffled along with the crowds through Shakespeare’s home, a strangely soulless place, thought Agatha again. It had been so restored, so sanitized that she could not help feeling that some of the old pubs in the Cotswolds had more of an air of antiquity.
    Then down to look at the River Avon. Then a search by Steve for tickets to the evening’s showing of King Lear by the Royal Shakespeare Company which, to Agatha’s dismay, he managed to get.
    In the darkness of the theatre with her stomach rumbling, for she had had nothing to eat since breakfast, Agatha’s mind turned back to the . . . murder? It would surely do no harm to find out a little more about Mr Cummings-Browne. Then Mrs Simpson had found the body. How had Mrs Cummings-Browne reacted? The first act passed unheeded before Agatha’s eyes. Two large gins at the interval made her feel quite tipsy. Once more, she imagined solving the case and earning the respect of the villagers. By the last act, she was fast asleep and all the glory of Shakespeare fell on her deaf ears.
    It was only as they were walking out – crowds, more crowds – that Agatha realized she had nothing at home for them to eat and it was too late to find a restaurant. But Steve, who had, at one point of the day, been lugging a carrier bag, said he planned to cook them dinner and had bought fresh trout at Birdland.
    ‘You really ought to dig in your heels and stay here,’ said Roy, as he got out of the car in front of Agatha’s cottage. ‘No people. Quiet. Calm. You’re lucky you don’t live in a tourist village. Do any tourists come at all?’
    ‘The Red Lion’s got rooms, I believe,’ said Agatha. ‘A few let out their cottages. But not many come.’
    ‘Let’s have a drink while Steve does the cooking,’ said Roy. He looked around Agatha’s living-room. ‘If I were you, I would junk all those cutesy mugs and fake horse brasses and farm machinery, and get some paintings and bowls of flowers. It’s not the thing to have a fire-basket, particularly a fake medieval one. You’re supposed to burn the logs on the stone hearth.’
    ‘I dig my heels in over the fire-basket,’ said Agatha, ‘but I might get rid of the other stuff.’ She thought, They collect a lot for