Pushing Up Daisies Read Online Free PDF Page A

she watched Gerald walk quickly away.
    â€œSo another murder,” said a familiar voice behind Agatha. She swung round to find Charles. “Who’s been bumped off?”
    â€œPeta Currie,” said Agatha. “Remember, we met her? Found in a grave on the allotments.”
    Charles studied the allotment holders. “Now there’s a cross-section of village society,” he remarked. “There are the old guard. Some of them look as if they’ve come out of Planet of the Apes . You see those sort of faces in old Victorian photographs. Those big simian mouths. Right into the twentieth century, it was so unfashionable to have a large mouth that women cursed with one would paint little rosebud mouths in the middle of it. Some middle-class women who look like militant vegetarians. Some genuine gardeners. And look! Over there. There’s even a vineyard belonging to two attractive ladies. Do you know who they are?”
    â€œOne’s a terribly good photographer,” said Phil Marshall, who had walked up to join them. “And her friend is a tennis coach.”
    â€œHow fascinating they all are,” said Charles. “What did Peta do, I wonder, to cause her death? Step on someone’s prize leeks?”
    â€œI checked up on her last night,” said Mrs. Bloxby. “I couldn’t sleep. I wondered if there was anything on Google. In her early twenties, she was a famous model. She’s been married and divorced three times.”
    â€œOne up on you, Aggie,” said Charles. “You’ve only managed two husbands.”
    â€œAny connection to Lord Bellington?” asked Agatha.
    â€œHer first marriage was to a cousin of Lord Bellington’s, a member of Parliament, Mr. Nigel Farraday.”
    â€œWe’d better tell Bill,” said Agatha. She walked to the policeman at the gate. “Tell Detective Sergeant Wong that Agatha Raisin has important information concerning the murder,” she said. He turned away and spoke rapidly into a gadget on his lapel.
    Agatha waited impatiently. At last, Bill came hurrying up and listened while she told him what Mrs. Bloxby had found out. “It’s a tenuous connection,” he said. “Come with me, Mrs. Bloxby, and we’ll take a statement. Stay where you are, Agatha, and I’ll call on you later.”
    Pink in the face with embarrassment, Mrs. Bloxby followed Bill into the allotments. I wonder how she’s going to explain her interest in Peta, thought Agatha.
    She turned to Charles. “Let’s go home and wait for Bill. What about you and Phil, Toni?”
    Toni said she would like to get back to Mircester, and Phil pointed to his camera with the zoom lens and said he would wait and get as many photos of the allotment holders as he could.
    Agatha and Charles sat in the kitchen and waited for Bill. They had meant to sit in the garden, but the wind had become blustery and cold with dark little clouds scurrying over the sun. “Look at all the autumn leaves blowing all over the place,” said Agatha. “Such a shame. It all seems to pass so quickly. I feel like getting a can of lacquer and sticking them on.”
    Agatha put her laptop on the kitchen table and switched it on. “Looking up Peta?” asked Charles.
    â€œNo, I’m looking up Bellington’s mistress, Jenny Coulter. Let’s see. Damn. Nothing at all. I’d better get her address from Damian. Are they still called mistresses these days?”
    Charles shrugged. “Partners or significant others. There was an amusing letter in the Times from a man who said that in Australia, partners were referred to as ‘de facto.’ It was only after a while that he realised he wasn’t being introduced to deaf actors.”
    Agatha phoned Damian and asked for Jenny Coulter’s whereabouts and then scribbled down an address. Then she told him about the death of Peta Currie.
    â€œWho’s she?” asked