Agatha Raisin and Kissing Christmas Goodbye Read Online Free PDF

door neighbour.
    ‘I’m cleaning, that’s what.’
    ‘Is Mrs Constable in?’
    ‘No, she’s out.’
    Toni took a deep breath. ‘Can I talk to you?’
    ‘I was just about to take a break. Come in. We’ll have a cuppa.’
    Toni followed her through to the kitchen. ‘I’ve never seen a kitchen like this outside of advertisements,’ she marvelled. ‘It’s huge.’
    ‘Fortunately for me, madam doesn’t do any cooking, or hardly ever. She eats carrot sticks at home or dines out. So what is it, Toni, love? How do you know her?’
    ‘I don’t,’ said Toni, and then she plunged in, telling Mrs Mackenzie all about the detective job and how she had to find proof that Mrs Constable was having an affair.
    ‘Oh, she’s having an affair all right, and with a right bit of rough.’
    ‘How do you know?’
    ‘I’ve got the keys, see. I’d left some shopping by mistake one day and came back. I opened the door quiet-like, and went to the kitchen. They were hard at it on the kitchen
floor.’
    ‘Do you know the chap’s name?’
    ‘No; I didn’t see his face, neither, only his great hairy bum.’
    ‘It would mean a lot if I could get a photograph,’ said Toni.
    ‘I don’t like her and that’s a fact,’ said Mrs Mackenzie. ‘Get her out of the way and I’d have peace and quiet just cleaning for Mr Constable. He’s ever
so nice.’
    ‘Maybe I could hide in the back garden and hope she and her pal choose the kitchen again,’ said Toni.
    ‘Here, have your tea and get out of here in case she comes back sudden-like. I don’t want to know any more about what you’re going to do and you never heard a word from me,
mind.’
    ‘Sure.’
    Toni drank her tea rapidly, thanked Mrs Mackenzie and left. But she wheeled her bike round to the back garden and hid it in some bushes. Then she crouched down below the kitchen window and
waited.
    Fortunately, the garden was surrounded by a high fence and bordering trees and could not be overlooked from any of the neighbouring houses.
    Toni waited. And waited. The garden grew hot. After an hour she heard the front door slam. She hoped it was Mrs Constable returning home but then she realized it was probably only Mrs Mackenzie
leaving. She opened the sandwich bag and took out a cookie. The chocolate had melted and stuck to her fingers. How odd that chocolate chip biscuits were the only ones in England called
‘cookies’.
    Then, at two in the afternoon, when she was feeling so cramped and thirsty she was about to give up, she heard voices coming from the kitchen. The kitchen window was thrust open. ‘Christ,
it’s hot in here,’ came a female voice.
    A deep man’s voice said, ‘Then take ’em off, darlin’.’
    Toni extracted the camera and slowly rose until she could peer in the window. A burly man was unbuttoning a tall blonde woman’s blouse while she fumbled at the belt of his jeans.
‘Come on. Hurry up,’ he said. They fell to the floor.
    He began soon to emit loud grunts, covering the noise of the busy click of the camera shutter. Toni took out the recorder and recorded every obscenity that was pouring out of their mouths.
    Feeling slightly sick, Toni quietly lifted her bike from the bushes and made her way silently round the side of the house. Her friends at school had watched pornography on their computers and
she had seen some of it herself. But, she reflected, it was pretty disgusting being a witness to the real thing.
    She pedalled away as fast as she could, stopping at last at a café where she ordered a sustaining meal of egg and chips and two Cokes.
    Then she went back to the office.
    Agatha was reading some correspondence. She looked up when Toni came in. ‘Too hot?’ she asked. ‘I gave up myself.’
    ‘No, I’ve got the photographs.’
    ‘Good heavens! Print them off and let’s have a look. There’s a machine over there. I don’t know how to work it. Do you?’
    ‘Yes.’ Toni printed off the photographs and handed them to Agatha. ‘I