Agatha Raisin and the Perfect Paragon Read Online Free Page A

concealed, but predators had been at work and most of a leg had been chewed off.
    “Phil!” screamed Agatha. She tottered right out of the woods and then sat down and put her head between her knees.
    Phil came running to join her. “She’s in there. It’s horrible, horrible,” babbled Agatha.
    “I’ll phone the police,” he said. “I’ll photograph everything while we wait. Where is she?”
    “In there,” said Agatha, pointing.
    Phil went into the woods and then, to her amazement, she could hear the busy click-click of his camera.
    He came out and said, “I’ll phone the police now.”
    Agatha felt some courage seeping back. “I’ll phone the press. Don’t want the police taking credit for this.”
    Soon they heard the wail of sirens in the distance. Police arrived first, then detectives, Agatha’s friend Bill Wong amongst them, and then a forensic team.
    Agatha and Phil told their stories over and over again and then were told to follow a police car to Mircester Police Headquarters to make their statements.
    Agatha was interviewed by Detective Inspector Wilkes and Bill Wong. “Now, let’s go over it again,” said Wilkes.
    And Agatha did, over and over.
    When she was finished, she said, “Now I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
    “Haven’t got the time,” said Wilkes. “Wong, see her out.”
    “I’ll nip over to your place sometime when I can get away,” whispered Bill as he led her out.
    “Oh, Mrs. Raisin!” Wilkes’s voice sounded behind them in the corridor.
    “Yes?”
    “No talking to the press.”
    “If they ask me questions, then I will answer them,” said Agatha.
    “Bet you’ve phoned them already,” murmured Bill.
    Agatha found Phil waiting for her in reception and they left the police station together and straight into a crowd of reporters and photographers and television crews.
    “I promised we wouldn’t say anything to the press,” whispered Phil urgently.
    “Bollocks to that,” said Agatha. “I have a business to run.”
    She faced up to the press. “I’ll make one statement and then I’m off. It was a shocking discovery.”
    She was just about to brag that the discovery had been because of her brilliant intuition when she became sharply aware of Phil standing beside her. Mrs. Bloxby’s mild face rose before her eyes.
    “It was the idea of my new photographer and, er, detective,” said Agatha. She told them about Phil’s idea but then bragged about how it was her idea to search in the woods.
    She finished by saying, “That’s all, folks.”
    As they were pushing their way through the press to get to Phil’s car, one reporter shouted, “How old are you, Mr. Witherspoon?”
    “Seventy-six,” said Phil cheerfully.
    “Oh, get in the car and drive off,” snarled Agatha.
    She had dealt with the press for a long time and knew that the innocent Phil had just stolen her moment of glory. There would be headlines in the tabloids about Grandpa Sleuth. Geriatric Sherlock. Pah.
    Sir Charles Fraith had gone back to his own home to collect a few more things. He let himself in with a set of keys Agatha had given him a few years ago. He shooed her cats out into the garden after dumping his bag in the hall. Then he went into the sitting room, fixed himself a drink and turned on the television news.
    He raised his glass to take a first sip and then froze as the announcer said, “A seventy-six-year-old grandfather, Phil Witherspoon, has discovered the body of the missing teenager, Jessica Bradley.” There was a shot of Agatha and Phil leaving police headquarters and then the scene moved to outside Phil’s cottage in Carsely. He looked flustered. “Really, it was all Mrs. Raisin’s doing. I just made a few suggestions.”
    “How long have you been employed by the detective agency?”
    “Today was my first day. I did suggest we go back and follow her route home and when we got to the dual carriageway, I did suggest she might have got into a car instead of crossing