Agatha Raisin and the Witch of Wyckhadden Read Online Free PDF Page A

Francie must be dead, thought Agatha. There was no rush to bring her out to the ambulance. More police arrived to cordon off the outside of the cottage.
    Agatha began to wonder whether she should slip off back to the hotel. After all, they would know where to find her. But she stayed where she was. The trembling had stopped and now she felt exhausted.
    Inspector Jimmy Jessop came down the stairs. “I’d better ask you to accompany us back to the station,” he said. “Constable Trul will take you there.” His eyes were flat and expressionless.
    The policewoman came down the stairs. Lights were on in all the neighbouring cottages. As she was led out, a flashlight went off in Agatha’s face. The local press had arrived. Agatha cringed and tried to hide her face. She got in the car. Another flashlight went off.
    Numb now with shock and exhaustion, Agatha was borne off to the police station and put in an interviewing room. Constable Trul brought her a cup of milky tea and a digestive biscuit and then sat in the corner, her hands folded in her lap.
    Agatha sipped the tea and wrinkled her nose in disgust. It was the sort of stuff in a thin paper cup that came out of a machine. She pushed it away and laid her head on the desk and immediately fell asleep. She was awakened three quarters of an hour later by someone shaking her shoulder. It was Jimmy Jessop. She looked up at him blearily.
    “Now, Mrs Raisin,” he said, “let’s get this over with. We all need our sleep.”
    Agatha sat up, blinked and looked around. Jimmy sat down opposite her along with Detective Constable Tarret.
    “Is the tape in?” asked Jimmy over her shoulder and Trul gave a sleepy “Yes.”
    To her amazement, Agatha heard herself being cautioned and then Jimmy’s flat emotionless voice asking her if she wanted a lawyer.
    “No,” said Agatha. “I haven’t done anything.”
    “I have a report here that your fur coat was vandalized. In your preliminary statement, you said nothing about Mrs Juddle. So why did you go to see her in the middle of the night?”
    Agatha’s mind went this way and that. Then she decided that the truth was the only thing that would serve.
    “I didn’t tell the police I had been to Francie because I was ashamed to say I had been consulting the local witch.” Agatha unwound the scarf from her head and bent it forward. “Some hairdresser shampooed my head with depilatory instead of shampoo and my hair didn’t seem to be growing back properly. Mrs Daisy Jones at the hotel recommended Francie. I went along to her and bought a bottle of hair tonic. While I was there, she made several remarks about my coat.”
    “Exactly what did she say?”
    “I can’t remember exactly. She said something about all the little animals that had been killed to make it and that I shouldn’t be wearing it. I was upset after the coat had been vandalized. I thought I would go and wake her up and see if she had any red paint marks on her hands or under her nails. I knocked at the cottage door, hard. The door swung open. I went upstairs to look for the bedroom. I wanted to surprise her asleep. I wanted to look at her hands. But when I pushed open the bedroom door and turned on the light, I saw her the way you found her. I should have checked to see if she was still alive, but I couldn’t bring myself to do that. I phoned for the police and ambulance and then went downstairs to wait. Look here,” said Agatha with some of her usual energy, “if I’d bumped her off, I would simply have run away. My fingerprints are over everything.”
    “So Mrs Juddle gave you hair restorer. Anything else?”
    “No,” lied Agatha, thinking of that bottle of love potion which was still in her handbag, glad she had not left it in the hotel room for the police to find.
    “So let’s go back to the beginning again…”
    Jimmy carefully took her through her story several times, obviously hoping she would slip up or come out with another bit of information.
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