Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage Read Online Free PDF Page B

sore at you, Agatha, to ever want to marry you. But the hard fact is that we have worked well together in the past and together we might clear this up.’
    Agatha looked at him in wonder. ‘I don’t think I ever really knew you.’ She thought that if he had entertained any feelings for her at all, he would not ask her now to move in on such a businesslike basis. It would have been more human to have been totally spurned and totally rejected.
    But she felt she no longer loved him and what he was offering was a very practical solution.
    ‘Okay. Thanks,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll call on Mrs Bloxby. She must be feeling awful.’
    ‘Good idea. Wait a minute until I put these bags inside and I’ll come with you.’
    When they walked along together in the twilight, Agatha thought that the women’s magazines who wrote all that crap about low self-esteem might have something after all. She was walking along beside a man with whom she had shared passion and listening to him complain about the potholes in the road and suggest that they both attend the next parish council meeting to protest about them. Women of low self-esteem, she had read recently, often loved men who were incapable of returning love and affection.
    ‘Do you think I suffer from low self-esteem?’ she asked James abruptly, interrupting his discourse on potholes.
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘Feeling lower than whale shit.’
    ‘I think you’re miserable because you tried to commit bigamy and got found out and then found yourself accused of your husband’s murder. There’s too much psychobabble these days. It leads to self-dramatization.’
    ‘Any woman ever struck you, James?’
    ‘Don’t even think about it, Agatha.’
    Mrs Bloxby blinked at them in surprise when she opened the vicarage door. ‘Both of you? That’s nice. Come in. What a terrible thing.’
    They followed her into the vicarage living-room, which as usual enfolded them in its atmosphere of peace. The vicar, on seeing Agatha, hurriedly put down the newspaper he had been reading, mumbled something about a sermon to write, and fled to his study.
    ‘Sit down,’ said Mrs Bloxby. ‘I’ll get some tea.’
    She always looks like a lady, thought Agatha wistfully. Even in that old Liberty dress and with not a scrap of make-up on, she looks like a lady.
    James leaned back in a comfortable leather armchair and closed his eyes. Agatha realized as she looked at him that she had not stopped to think for a minute how he had felt over the aborted marriage and the wretched murder. He looked tired and older, the lines running down either side of his mouth more prominent.
    Mrs Bloxby came back in carrying the tea-tray. ‘I have some excellent fruit cake, a present from the Mircester Ladies’ Society. And some ham sandwiches. I suppose neither of you has had much time to eat.’
    James opened his eyes and said wearily, ‘We have both been suspected of this murder, it’s been a long day, and yes, I would love some sandwiches. According to Agatha, we are regarded by the village as murder suspects.’
    ‘Are you sure, Agatha?’ asked Mrs Bloxby.
    Agatha told her story of trying to find a room at the Red Lion.
    ‘Oh, how sad. We could put you up here. We could . . .’
    There was a warning cough from the doorway. The vicar stood there with a distinctly unChristian light in his eyes.
    ‘That won’t be necessary,’ said James quickly. ‘Agatha’s moving in with me.’
    ‘What did you want to say, Alf?’ Mrs Bloxby asked her husband.
    ‘Er . . . nothing,’ he said and disappeared again.
    ‘You found the body, didn’t you?’ said James. ‘Tell us about it, if it isn’t too painful.’
    ‘It was a shock at the time. I did not recognize him,’ said Mrs Bloxby, pouring tea into thin china cups. ‘Dead people look quite different when the spirit has left. Then he had been strangled, so his face was not pretty. I had gone out for a walk. I was worried about you, Agatha, and I could not