Free Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage by MC Beaton

bullied by anyone.’
    ‘I am beginning to find you a trifle impertinent, Mr Adder.’
    ‘Forgive me. I was only trying to help.’
    James rose and escaped upstairs, where he told Agatha, with a certain amount of relish, that he was now regarded as a sponger of the first order who was bullied by his wife.
    To Agatha’s high irritation, the blonde beauty who led the aerobics class came out to say goodbye to James. Agatha waited angrily in the car, wondering what they were talking about. She
saw James take out his notebook and write something down. Her phone number? Agatha’s jealousy flared up. James was no longer hers and therefore prey to every blonde harpy who wanted to get
her painted claws into him. By the time James finished his conversation, Agatha was feeling quite weepy.
    At last James climbed into the driving seat. ‘What was that all about?’ asked Agatha, trying to keep her voice light.
    ‘Oh, chit-chat,’ he said. ‘I think we should head straight for London to that address in Charles Street.’
    The journey was completed in almost total silence, Agatha wrestling with a jumble of unwanted emotions and James immersed in his own thoughts.
    At Charles Street, off Berkeley Square, they drew a blank. No Mrs Gore-Appleton had ever lived there.
    ‘Didn’t she pay by cheque or credit card?’ asked Agatha.
    ‘No, cash. It was on the records.’
    ‘Damn. Now what?’
    ‘Back to Carsely for the night. Then we’ll try Sir Desmond Derrington tomorrow.’
    Agatha could not sleep that night. She was determined to find out what James had written down in his notebook while he had been talking to the aerobics woman.
    She waited until she was sure that James was asleep and then crept along to his room. It was brightly lit by moonlight and she could see his trousers hanging over the back of a chair, with the
edge of the notebook sticking out of the back pocket.
    Keeping a cautious eye on the sleeping figure on the bed, Agatha gently eased the notebook out and carried it back through to her room. She flicked it open and turned to the last entry. In
James’s cramped handwriting, which the eyes of love had taught her to decipher, ‘Co-Dependency Anonymous’, Agatha read with amazement. There followed a London address and a
‘contact’ number.
    The bitch, thought Agatha, forgetting for the moment that she was supposed to be a fickle and domineering woman whose husband was dependent on her cash.
    ‘So now you’ve satisfied your curiosity, madam, do you think I could have my notebook back?’ James’s voice rang from the doorway.
    Agatha flushed guiltily. ‘I was only looking at those names you found in the office.’
    ‘Wrong page,’ he said. ‘You’re supposed to be a bullying rich woman and I’m supposed to be a wimp of a leech, remember? Hence the therapy suggestion.’
    ‘I thought you were asleep,’ was all Agatha could think of saying.
    ‘I wake easily, as you should know.’
    ‘Sorry, James,’ mumbled Agatha. ‘Go back to bed.’
     
Chapter Four
    Sir Desmond Derrington lived in a pleasant Cotswold mansion a few miles outside Mircester on the Oxford road. As they approached it, Agatha saw a poster stuck on a tree-trunk
beside the road which advertised the fact that Sir Desmond’s gardens were open that day to the public.
    ‘I hope he’s there,’ said James when it was pointed out to him. ‘I hope he hasn’t gone off and left the local village ladies to show people around.’
    Agatha, desperate for anyone who looked like a murderer, felt disappointed when she first saw Sir Desmond. He was bending over an ornamental shrub and explaining its history and planting to a
fat woman who was shifting her bulk uneasily and looking as if she wished she had never asked about it. Sir Desmond looked like a pillar of the community, middle-aged, greying, long-nosed, and
married to a rangy loud-voiced wife who was holding forth in another part of the garden. Lady Derrington was wearing a short-sleeved