Free Agatha Raisin and the Curious Curate by MC Beaton

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    As Agatha turned the pages, John said, ‘I remember. Shangri-la. That was the name of her place.’
    ‘That’s right. Gnomes in the garden. I remember. Here it is. Doesn’t give a street, just the name of the bloody house, as if the snobby cow lived in a manor. Well, Ancombe’s a small place. Should be easy to find.’
    They turned over various bits and pieces of what they knew until Agatha noticed it was almost three o’clock. ‘Let’s look at the television news now.’
    They went into Agatha’s sitting-room and she switched on the television set and selected the twenty-four-hour news programme.
    The announcer said, ‘The Liberal Democrats, the Scottish Nationalists, and the Unionists have combined to table a motion of no confidence in the government following the revelations that the defence minister, Joseph Demerall, had been accepting large sums of money from Colonel Gaddafi.’
    ‘So that’s it,’ said Agatha. ‘The press won’t be interested in a village murder, or murders. At least we should get some peace.’
    ‘I think I’ll go and get on with my writing,’ said John, rising to his feet. ‘I’ll call for you in the morning, say around ten.’
    ‘All right,’ said Agatha, although she suddenly did not want to be left alone.
    ‘See you.’
    Agatha wondered what to do. A pile of shiny new paperbacks she had bought in Evesham lay on the coffee-table. She picked up the first one. Jerry’s Mistake , it was called. Agatha sighed as she skimmed the pages. She shouldn’t have wasted her money. It was a Chick Lit book, which meant it would be about thirty-something women in London. There would be one Cinderella character who would have a gay best friend and the best friend would die from AIDS in the penultimate chapter. The hero would have muscled legs and be bad-tempered. She tossed it aside. The next was the first Harry Potter book. Agatha had bought it out of curiosity. She settled down to read and became dimly aware an hour later that the doorbell was ringing. She looked through the spy-hole and saw Bill Wong. With feelings of guilt and reluctance she opened the door. He was alone.
    ‘I think it’s time you and I had a chat, Agatha.’
    ‘Come in and bring the thumbscrews with you. We’ll sit in the garden. It doesn’t look too cold.’
    ‘No, it’s nice and fresh after that storm.’
    Agatha collected two mugs of coffee and carried them out into the garden. Hodge and Boswell climbed up on Bill. Hodge settled on his lap and Boswell draped himself around Bill’s neck.
    ‘Amazing how those cats like you,’ said Agatha.
    ‘I’d like to concentrate on the matter in hand, however.’ Bill gently removed both cats and put them down on the grass. ‘Now, Agatha, I see you already have the ring. But why do I get the impression that the pair of you were lying to me?’
    ‘Because you’ve got a nasty, suspicious policeman’s mind. We are very much in love. No, I’ll be honest with you. We get along together very well and neither of us wants to go into old age alone. So we decided to get hitched.’
    ‘If you say so. No word of James?’
    ‘I may as well tell you. That lying bastard never returned to that monastery.’
    ‘He’ll turn up again. With your luck, probably on your wedding day.’
    ‘Forget about him. Any ideas why Miss Jellop was murdered?’
    ‘I think she might have found out something. I think that was why she phoned Mrs Bloxby. And yet Mrs Bloxby said Miss Jellop was always summoning her to make some complaint or another.’
    ‘Was she rich?’
    ‘Very comfortably off.’
    ‘Anyone inherit?’
    ‘She hadn’t left a will. Her nearest relative was a sister who lives in Stoke-on-Trent.’
    ‘Tell me, Bill – anything funny in Tristan’s bank account?’
    ‘Large sums of money, not great – five hundred here, six hundred there, all deposited in cash. Total around fifteen thousand. Seems he invented that family trust. He was born Terence Biles. Father was