Free As The Pig Turns by MC Beaton Page A

getting involved in anything at all going on in Africa?’ asked Agatha.
    ‘Probably nothing,’ said Toni. ‘Maybe just a criminal payoff for something. We’d better take this lot to the police.’
    ‘Must we?’ said Amy. ‘I mean, if they’re rough, they could be polished up by a jeweller friend of mine.’
    ‘No,’ said Agatha firmly. ‘They’ve got to be examined by the police.’
    Amy’s eyes were suddenly as hard as the uncut diamonds. ‘First, it’s my property, see? I’m taking it and that’s that.’
    ‘We’ll have to report it nonetheless,’ said Toni.
    ‘Don’t rate your lives very high, do you?’ sneered Amy.
    ‘You knew what Gary was up to all along,’ said Agatha. ‘Out with it!’
    ‘Get stuffed. You’re fired.’ Amy swept everything into a capacious handbag and marched out.
    ‘Right,’ said Agatha as Amy flagged down a cab outside the bank. ‘We’d better get to police headquarters.’
    ‘I think we should follow her,’ said Toni.
    ‘Why? She’s got a cosy marriage with a rich husband.’
    ‘I think she only married him because he was rich, and it does appear he’s a bit of a bastard.’
    Agatha wanted to argue but remembered in time that Toni’s value as a detective was often her clear and practical view of things. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Let’s see what she’s going to do.’
    But when they arrived at Amy’s house, her car had gone and the house had an empty air.
    They waited an hour or so, and then Toni said, ‘I think, after all, we’d better go to the police. My bet is she’s not going near that husband of hers.’
    Agatha was sick and tired of being interrogated by the time she left the police station and dropped Toni off at her flat. The gritters had been out, as a supply of salt had arrived from abroad, so she was able to make it back to her cottage without slipping. There was a note for her on the kitchen table from Charles: ‘Can’t stand this beastly weather. Gone to the South of France. Luv, Charles.’
    Agatha, still worried about Toni, felt lonely. She called the vicarage but was told that Mrs Bloxby was visiting a relative in Bexhill in Sussex. She then phoned Roy Silver to see whether he would like to visit at the weekend, but he said he was going to a simply fabulous party and wouldn’t be free.
    Her cats were sleeping peacefully. The house seemed unnaturally quiet.
    She felt in the need of action. There was a bag of empty cans of various sorts on the kitchen floor, along with a crate of empty bottles. The council had supplied householders with black boxes for the tin cans and the bottles, but Agatha had lost both. She would take them down to Tesco’s supermarket in Stow-on-the-Wold and dump the lot in their special bins and then draw some money from the hole in the wall. The snow was light and looked as if it were about to slacken off. A thin disk of a moon was appearing behind the clouds. The village of Carsely was shrouded in snow, wrapped in snow and wrapped in silence. Agatha glanced at her watch. It was just after midnight.
    She drove down to the back of the supermarket. The bottles went into the bins with the satisfying sound of breaking glass. Must be a hooligan inside all of us, thought Agatha.
    Then she got rid of the tin cans. She drove carefully round to the cash machine, bumping over the ruts of frozen snow. Supermarket car parks were private property, and she had been told that if they cleared them themselves and someone slipped and fell, they would have to pay compensation. But if someone slipped and fell in the uncleared car park, it was their own bloody fault.
    She parked in front of the cash machine. Beside the cash machine and beyond a stack of supermarket trolleys were two rides for small children. One periodically emitted bursts of supposedly childish laughter, but Agatha thought it sounded more like malicious elves watching someone come to grief.
    She drew out a hundred pounds and was just tucking it away in her wallet