Free Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet by MC Beaton Page B

it’s births, deaths, or marriages, I do that,’ she said.
    ‘None of those.’
    ‘Complaints? Wrong name under the photo?’
    ‘No complaint.’
    ‘That makes a change.’ She got to her feet. She was wearing a long patchwork skirt and baseball boots and a T-shirt which said ‘Naff Off’. ‘Names?’
    ‘Mrs Raisin and Mr Lacey.’
    ‘Right.’
    She pushed open a scarred door and vanished inside. There was a murmur of voices and then she popped out again. ‘You’re to go in. Mr Heyford will see you now.’
    Mr Heyford rose to meet them. After the vision in the T-shirt and baseball boots he came as a conservative surprise, being a small, neat man with a smooth olive face, black eyes and thin strips of oiled black hair combed straight back from his forehead. He was dressed in a dark suit, collar and tie.
    ‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘What can I do for you? I recognize your name, Mrs Raisin. That was quite a lot of money you raised for charity last year.’ Agatha preened.
    ‘We both knew the vet, Paul Bladen,’ said James. ‘We’re having a sort of a bet. Mrs Raisin here said he was worth a lot of money, but I got the impression he didn’t have that much. Do you know how much he left?’
    ‘I can’t tell you exactly how much because I can’t quite remember,’ said Mr Heyford. ‘About eighty-five thousand, I think. Would have been a fortune once, but that sort of money won’t even buy you a decent house now. He left a house, of course, but he had taken a double mortgage out on that, and with house prices being what they are, Mr Rice, who inherited, will barely get enough to cover the mortgages. I never thought the day would come in this country when we would consider eighty-five thousand not very much money, so it looks as if you’ve won the bet, Mr Lacey.’
    ‘So he couldn’t have been killed for his money,’ said Agatha mournfully when they had said goodbye to the editor. ‘And yet . . .’
    ‘And yet what?’
    ‘If he did have eighty-five thousand pounds, why the two mortgages? I mean, the interest must have been crippling. Why not pay off some of the money owing?’
    ‘The trouble,’ said James, ‘is that we are making ourselves believe an accident to be murder.’
    Agatha thought quickly. If he gave up the idea of investigating anything at all, then she would have little excuse to spend any time in his company. ‘We could try the wife,’ she suggested. ‘I mean, as we’re here and we’ve still got time to kill before we go to Bill’s.’
    ‘Oh, very well. Where do we find her?’
    ‘We’ll try the phone book and hope she is still using her married name,’ said Agatha.
    They found a name, G. Bladen, listed. The address was given as Rose Cottage, Little Blomham. ‘Where’s Little Blomham?’ asked Agatha.
    ‘I saw a sign to it once. It’s off the Stroud road.’
    A pale mist was shrouding the landscape, turning the countryside into a Chinese painting, as they drove down into Little Blomham. It was more of a hamlet than a village, a few ancient houses of golden Cotswold stone hunched beside a stream.
    No one moved about, no smoke rose from the chimneys, no dog barked.
    Agatha switched off the engine and both listened as the eerie silence settled about them.
    James suddenly quoted:
    ‘Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.’
    Agatha looked at him crossly. She did not like people who suddenly quoted things at you, leaving you feeling unread and inadequate. In fact, she thought they only did it to show off.
    She got out of the car and slammed the door shut with unnecessary force.
    James got out of the passenger seat and wandered to a stone wall and looked down at the slowly moving stream. He seemed to have gone into some sort of dream, to have forgotten Agatha’s presence. ‘So very quiet,’ he said, half to himself. ‘So very English, the England they fought for in