Agatha Raisin and the Busy Body by MC Beaton

to Amy and me. Quite a lot. She was a bit of a miser. Not on the big things like expensive schools for us and so on but on niggling things
like cheap meals or eating at other people’s expense as much as possible, things like that. But I really want to know who killed her and then I can get on with my life. I heard that she had
hired you to find out who murdered John Sunday. I would like to hire you to find out who killed my mother.’
    ‘I’ll do my best,’ said Agatha. ‘I feel if I could find out who murdered John Sunday, then I would find out who murdered your mother. She said to a friend of mine the
night she was murdered that she knew something.’
    He smiled at her, a charming smile that lit up his handsome face. Agatha was even more painfully aware of the fact that not only did she have no make-up on but that she was wearing a tent-like
blouse, a cotton skirt and slippers.
    ‘Would you excuse me a moment?’ she said hurriedly. She eased herself to her feet, always dimly afraid that the terrible hip pain would come back.
    ‘Hip replacement?’ he asked sympathetically.
    ‘No!’ lied Agatha. ‘Just took a tumble.’ Hip replacement, indeed. So aging.
    Upstairs, she carefully made up her face and brushed her hair until it shone. She was just struggling into a trouser suit when her doorbell rang. Tom shouted from downstairs, ‘Don’t
worry. I’ll get it.’
    As she finally made her way downstairs, she could hear laughter from the kitchen. She opened the kitchen door and went in. Toni was sitting at the table facing Tom. Her blonde hair had been
newly cut in a short elfin style, making her eyes look large. She was wearing jeans and half boots with a black sweater. A scarlet Puffa jacket hung over the back of her chair.
    ‘Can I help you?’ Toni jumped to her feet. ‘How’s the hip replacement? Healing up okay?’
    ‘What hip replacement?’ said Agatha repressively ‘Let’s talk about something else. I gather you’ve introduced yourselves.’
    ‘Indeed,’ said Tom in his almost accentless English. ‘I didn’t know detectives were that pretty off the television screen.’
    ‘You don’t have an American accent,’ said Toni.
    ‘As I was explaining to Mrs Raisin here, I was schooled in Switzerland so I missed out on the American accent.’
    ‘Mr Courtney,’ began Agatha.
    Tom, please.’
    ‘Right. I’m Agatha. Here’s my card. If you call at the office on Monday morning, we’ll draw up a contract for you. I’ll tell you how far we’d got.’
    Agatha succinctly outlined all the interviews. When she had finished, Toni said, ‘You’ve forgotten the Beagles and the Summers. You sent me to interview them.’
    ‘Right. But as I remember you didn’t get much.’
    ‘They were all so old and creaky.’
    Tom smiled. ‘Are you very sure? I remember at your age that people like me and Agatha here would seem creaky.’
    I’d like to throw something, thought Agatha savagely.
    ‘Oh, no,’ said Toni, charmingly flustered. ‘I mean, neither you nor Agatha are old.’
    ‘Bless the girl,’ laughed Tom.
    ‘Had they put the Christmas lights up?’ asked Agatha. She turned to Tom. ‘You see, each Christmas their cottages were blazing with Christmas lights and John Sunday stopped them
last Christmas. They were furious. Did they put the lights up after he was murdered, Toni?’
    ‘They hadn’t done when I called on them and then I never went back to Odley Cruesis.’
    ‘Will you rebuild the manor?’ Agatha asked Tom.
    ‘No, I’m selling the wreck to a builder. He’s going to bulldoze the ruin and then build houses on the land.’
    ‘Was the place insured?’
    ‘Yes, heavily.’
    Agatha asked, ‘Have the police inquired where you were the night your mother was murdered?’
    ‘Of course. I was in the Cayman Islands on holiday. Plenty of witnesses.’
    The doorbell rang again. ‘You’re a busy lady,’ commented Tom.
    ‘I’ll get it,’ said Toni. She came back followed by Roy