Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell by MC Beaton Read Free Book Online

cloistered peace, the sun slanting through the cloisters. He suddenly felt if he could get there, he would be safe.
    ‘Can you take me to France?’
    ‘I think you should go to a doctor and get that head examined.’
    ‘It’s just a bit of blood. Worse than it looks. I’d really like to get away, Harriet.’
    ‘Got your passport?’
    James searched in the inside pocket of his jacket. ‘Yes, I have,’ he said with something like surprise. He tried to remember why he had his passport but could not.
    ‘Luggage?’
    ‘No luggage. I sent it on ahead,’ said James, improvising.
    ‘You look as if you’ve been sleeping in those clothes. It’s a good thing I know you to be a respectable gentleman or I would start to think you were on the run from the police.’
    ‘Not from them,’ said James. Harriet looked up at him curiously and then gave a little shrug.
    ‘Come along, then. We’re nearly ready to set sail.’
     
Chapter Three
    Three weeks had passed since the disappearance of James. Agatha had railed at the police. In these days of modern communications, someone must have seen him somewhere. He had not packed any clothes, although his passport was missing. He would have to buy clothes somewhere, draw money. There must be a trace of him.
    But there was nothing.
    It had been established that the blood in the cottage and in the car belonged to James. Bill told her they were still waiting for the results of further tests on hairs and threads and other bits and pieces carefully scooped up by the forensic team, but these days, he said, the lab was overloaded.
    It is not only the police who suspect the nearest and dearest of murder. When Agatha went to the local pub or shopped in the village store, she could sense an atmosphere when she walked in.
    She sank even deeper every day into depression. She had barely the energy to get out of bed, and when she did, she wandered around in a shapeless house-dress. From time to time, she would feel with a stab of deeper pain that she should be out roaming the countryside, looking for James. Then she would remember that the police were looking for him with all their resources, and sink back down into helpless misery again.
    James’s relatives had given up phoning. His sister and his aunts all seemed to imply that such a worrying, disgraceful thing would not have happened if he had refrained from marrying Agatha. She had finally unplugged the phone from the wall.
    At the end of the third week, Agatha reluctantly answered the summons of her doorbell. ‘I’ve been trying to ring you,’ said the vicar’s wife, pushing a strand of grey hair away from her mild face. ‘No reply. I thought you’d gone away.’
    ‘Come in. Like coffee?’
    ‘Tea, please.’
    In the kitchen, Mrs Bloxby looked anxiously at Agatha. ‘I just wondered if you had had time to clean up James’s cottage.’
    ‘I haven’t had the heart,’ said Agatha dully.
    She placed a mug of tea in front of Mrs Bloxby, who picked it up, and then put it down, untasted, and said, ‘I really think, my dear Mrs Raisin, that you should take some sort of action or you are going to make yourself ill.’
    ‘What can I do that the police can’t?’
    ‘You’ve never let that stop you before. You see, I could help you tidy up the cottage next door. You could go through James’s papers – oh, I know the police have been through them – but there might be something there that they have missed.’
    ‘Still can’t see much point in it,’ said Agatha, lighting a cigarette.
    ‘I cannot see much point in you letting yourself go to seed. One would think James was dead.’
    ‘How do you mean, go to seed?’ demanded Agatha.
    ‘I shall put it bluntly. There are bags under your eyes, you have a moustache and hairy legs.’
    A small spark of humour gleamed in Agatha’s bearlike eyes. ‘It’s women’s lib,’ she said. ‘We only shave ourselves because of men.’
    ‘I shave my legs because they get scratchy and itchy when