Agatha Raisin and the Curious Curate Read Online Free

know.’
    Somehow, she expected him to offer to walk her home, but he led the way downstairs and then stood facing her at the bottom. ‘My turn next time,’ said Agatha.
    ‘I’ll keep you to that.’ He bent and kissed her gently on the mouth. She stared up at him, dazed. He opened the door. ‘Goodnight, Agatha.’
    ‘Goodnight, Tristan,’ she said faintly.
    The door shut behind her. Over at the vicarage, Mrs Bloxby’s face appeared briefly at an upstairs window and then disappeared.
    Agatha walked home sedately although she felt like running and jumping and cheering.
    It was only when she reached her cottage that she realized she had not set a date for another dinner. She did not even know his phone number. She searched the phone book until she found a listing for Mrs Feathers. He would not be asleep already. She dialled. Mrs Feathers answered the phone. Agatha asked to speak to Tristan and waited anxiously.
    Then she heard his voice. ‘Yes?’
    ‘This is Agatha. We forgot to set a date for dinner.’
    There was a silence. Then he gave a mocking little laugh and said, ‘Keen, aren’t you? I’ll let you know.’
    ‘Goodnight,’ said Agatha quickly and dropped the receiver like a hot potato.
    She walked slowly into her kitchen and sat down at the table, her face flaming with mortification.
    ‘You silly old fool,’ said the voice in her head, and for once Agatha sadly agreed.
    Her first feeling when she awoke the next day was that she never wanted to see the curate again. She felt he had led her on to make a fool of herself. A wind had got up and rattled through the dry thatch on the roof overhead and sent small dust devils dancing down Lilac Lane outside. She forced herself to get out of bed and face the day ahead. What if Tristan was joking with Mrs Bloxby about her? She made herself her customary breakfast of black coffee and decided to fill up the watering can and water the garden as the radio had announced a hose-pipe ban. She was half-way down the garden when she heard sirens rending the quiet of the village. She slowly put down the watering can and stood listening. The sirens swept past the end of Lilac Lane and up in the direction of the church and stopped.
    Agatha abandoned the watering can and fled through the house and out into the lane. Her flat sandals sending up spirals of dust, she ran on in the direction of the vicarage. Please God, she prayed, let it not be Mrs Bloxby.
    There were three police cars and an ambulance. A crowd was gathering. Agatha saw John Fletcher, the landlord from the Red Lion, and asked him, ‘Is someone hurt? What’s happened?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ he said.
    They waited a long time. Hazy clouds covered the hot sun overhead. The wind had died and all was still. Rumour buzzed through the crowd. It was the vicar, it was Mrs Bloxby, it was the curate.
    A stone-faced policeman was on duty outside the vicarage. He refused to answer questions, simply saying, ‘Move along there. Nothing to see.’
    A white-coated forensic unit arrived. People began to drift off. ‘I’d better open up,’ said the publican. ‘We’ll find out sooner or later.’
    Agatha was joined by John Armitage. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
    ‘I don’t know,’ said Agatha. ‘I’m terrified something’s happened to Mrs Bloxby.’
    Then Agatha’s friend, Detective Sergeant Bill Wong, came out of the vicarage accompanied by a policewoman.
    ‘Bill!’ called Agatha.
    ‘Later,’ he said. He and the policewoman went to Mrs Feathers’s small cottage and knocked at the door. The old lady opened the door to them. They said something. She put a trembling hand up to her mouth and they disappeared inside and shut the door.
    ‘There’s your answer,’ said John Armitage.
    ‘It’s the curate and he’s dead because that ambulance hasn’t moved!’
     
Chapter Two
    John and Agatha decided to go back to Agatha’s cottage and then return to the vicarage later.
    ‘Who would want to kill the curate