Agatha Raisin and the Curious Curate Read Online Free PDF Page B

of them, that might have been a reason for murder.’
    ‘He didn’t have an affair with me,’ said Agatha. ‘I’d have sussed him out sooner or later. I’m not stupid , you know.’
    ‘Women can become very stupid faced with such beauty. I saw him preach. My girlfriend heard all about him and dragged me along to church.’
    ‘Girlfriend?’ Agatha was momentarily distracted.
    ‘Alice. Alice Bryan. She works as a teller in Lloyds bank in Mircester.’
    ‘Serious?’
    ‘It always is,’ said Bill sadly.
    And it’ll be over like a shot when she meets your parents, thought Agatha. Bill’s parents could repel any girlfriend.
    ‘Anyway,’ said Bill briskly, ‘what did you talk about?’
    ‘Me, mostly,’ said Agatha ruefully. ‘When I realized it was all about me and nothing about him, I asked him about himself. He told me about working in New Cross and forming a boys’ club and how the gang leaders thought they were losing members because of him. Five of them had attacked him one night and injured him and then he had a nervous breakdown.’
    ‘Which church in New Cross was it?’ asked John.
    ‘St Edmund’s. Here! I don’t want the pair of you poking your noses in and interfering with police work.’
    ‘As if we would,’ said Agatha, flashing John a warning look.
    ‘What did you think of Tristan when you heard him preach?’ John asked Bill.
    ‘I thought him stupid and vain and the sermon was a load of nothing. On the other hand, I could have been jealous. Alice was gazing at him as if an angel had come to earth. So, Agatha, he didn’t try to persuade you in any determined way to let him have money?’
    ‘No, apart from suggesting he could invest some for me, he let the subject drop.’
    ‘Strikes me as odd from the little I know of him. Any suggestion of a future dinner date?’
    ‘No!’ Agatha flushed angrily. Bill eyed her shrewdly.
    ‘He got Mrs Feathers to go to a lot of trouble producing an expensive dinner and nothing came of it. I’ll bet he thought you were a waste of space.’
    ‘If he thought so, he didn’t tell me.’
    ‘Well, we’ll learn more when we study his bank account and find out who’s been giving him money, and if he invested any of it, I’ll eat my hat.’
    ‘It still seems odd, this idea of someone watching the cottage during the night and then following Tristan to the vicarage,’ said John. ‘If he’d cheated old Mrs Feathers and she’d just found out about it, she could have heard him going out and followed him. The old sleep lightly.’
    ‘I can’t see old Mrs Feathers at her age going to tackle a young man like that.’
    ‘She could simply have meant to berate him if she found him taking the church money,’ pursued John, ‘and seized that letter opener and stabbed him. I mean, how many people would know that letter opener was so sharp? Did you, Agatha?’
    ‘I was there one day talking to Mrs Bloxby when the vicar came in carrying the post. He was slicing open the letters and I remember thinking then that the letter opener must have been sharp. It was a silver one in the shape of a dagger. Not a real dagger.’
    ‘And what about the vicar himself?’ asked John quietly. ‘I mean, he could have caught him at it. Was there any sign of a struggle?’
    ‘No, Tristan was stabbed with one blow to the back of the neck.’
    ‘Yes, that would take a lot of force,’ said Agatha.
    ‘Not necessarily,’ said Bill. ‘As the knife was sharp, once the skin was penetrated then the blade would sink in easily and it was sunk in up to the haft. Rather like stabbing a melon. But we’ll know more after the post-mortem.’
    ‘I read somewhere,’ said John, ‘that victims of stab wounds don’t often die immediately. Say the vicar did it, not in his study but at Tristan’s. Wonder if he has a key to that cottage? Anyway, some people stabbed with a sharp thin blade can walk around for a couple of hours afterwards. Say the vicar stabbed Tristan and Tristan doesn’t