Agatha Raisin and the Witch of Wyckhadden by M. C. Beaton

anything about it.
    She left the pub and bought the newspapers and then went to the café she had gone to with Jimmy for lunch, not wanting to return to the hotel for one of their mammoth meals.
    She sat and read the newspapers. On the front of two of them was a photograph of Janine Juddle. In an interview, she said she would be moving to Wyckhadden to carry on her mother’s business of helping people. She said she would ask the spirits of the dead to rise up and find the murderer of her poor mother. Janine was a hard-faced blonde. Beside her in the photograph was a surly-looking man with close-cropped hair. The husband. Now he could have done it, thought Agatha. Janine might hold the purse-strings, but ready money had been stolen and who better to know that it had been there than the son-in-law.
    Agatha wondered how long it would be before Janine started her business in Wyckhadden.
    She went for another long walk and then back to the hotel. She felt she ought to go into the lounge and see if she could grill any of the residents, but she was suddenly very tired. She would see enough of them later.
    ♦
    Agatha went down for dinner wearing a red satin blouse and a long evening skirt. She had tried on the little black dress but decided again that such glamour was definitely wasted on Wyckhadden.
    Daisy Jones was resplendent in an evening gown of pink net covered with sequins. When had she last seen a gown like that? wondered Agatha. The fifties. But it was the sight of the others that made Agatha blink. Old Mr Berry was wearing a greenish-black evening suit and the colonel was also in evening dress and black tie. Jennifer Stobbs was wearing a black velvet trouser suit and Mary Dulsey was exposing a lot of wrinkled skin in a strapless green silk gown.
    “We’re all going,” Daisy shouted over. “Isn’t this fun ?”
    Just what I need, thought Agatha bitterly. A night out with a bunch of wrinklies. That was the awful thing about socializing with the old. You could no longer keep up the pretence that you were young and dashing any more. Let me see, thought Agatha gloomily. I’m in my fifties; Daisy, about mid-sixties; Mary and Jennifer the same; the colonel, oh, about seventy-odd; and Mr Berry, definitely in the seventies. And the way time rushes by these days, it won’t be long before I’m one of them and the tragedy is that I’ll still feel about twenty-five.
    But after dinner, as they all set out together into a calm frosty night, Agatha felt her spirits rising. They were all like excited teenagers. But their spirits were dampened as they walked along the pier past the closed shops and amusement arcades to come up against a poster advertising that it was disco night. Young people were already walking along the pier in the direction of the dance hall.
    “Dear me,” said Daisy in a little voice. “I suppose we may as well all have a drink and just watch. But I did so want to dance.”
    They left their coats and, crowding together, they walked into the ballroom and garnered round a table at the dance floor. The colonel took their orders for drinks and went off to the bar.
    “They look like a lot of savages,” growled Jennifer. She really should shave that moustache, thought Agatha impatiently. No reason to let herself go like that. She did not feel exactly glamorous herself with her hair tucked up under a red scarf to match her blouse. She had arranged it in the Turkish-turban style but she still felt like an old frump. The colonel returned bearing a tray with their drinks.
    “This isn’t a good idea,” whimpered Mary. “I can hardly hear myself think.”
    A group of youths were sniggering and staring at them from the other side of the floor. Then one, a tall youth in a leather jacket and jeans, detached himself from the group. He walked over to their table and then, turning, winked at his friends, and said to Agatha, “Want to dance, sweetheart?”
    Dammit, I will not be old before my time, thought Agatha