As the Pig Turns - By M.C. Beaton Page 0,10

he must have infuriated an awful lot of people apart from me,’ said Agatha. ‘You see, I rely a lot on intuition, as I don’t have the resources of the police. Was he married?’

‘Divorced. The ex-wife is on holiday in Florida.’

‘Really? Does she have a lot of money of her own?’

‘Not unless she met a rich man we don’t know about. Before her marriage, she worked as a checkout girl at a supermarket. But Gary must have had some money because I spotted some good antiques in his living room. The place had been ransacked.’

When they arrived at Agatha’s cottage, Alice said hurriedly, ‘Please don’t tell anyone I discussed the case with you. I could get into the most awful trouble.’

‘Not a word,’ promised Agatha. ‘Thank goodness the snow’s stopped and they’ve gritted the road.’

Agatha tried to find out more about Gary Beech but was held back by having to attend to the cases where she was being paid for her detective work.

Some of the work involved a lot of standing around in the cold and watching houses for signs of erring spouses. Agatha hated divorce cases, but the country was in a deep recession and she just had to be grateful for any work.

The weather continued to be bitterly cold. People were beginning to wonder if all this global warming was some trick of the nanny state to bully them into fines for not separating their rubbish, for having to employ a chimney sweep every three months, and wondering how soon it would be before spy planes flew over their houses to check their carbon footprints.

The villagers of Carsely, united in misery, had marched on the Town Hall in Mircester to protest against the frequent power cuts.

Agatha decided to buy a generator, thinking it would be simple to install. The contractor was a lugubrious man who seemed to see fire and disaster all about.

Agatha’s suggestion that he put the generator in the kitchen caused him to raise his red mottled hands in horror. ‘Can’t do that, love,’ he said. ‘The gases that come out o’ that there petrol machine are lethal. Needs to be outside the house. But ’er can’t be getting wet. You’ll need a liddle hut for ’er.’

But at last a carpenter had finished building a little shed outside the kitchen door and the contractor had departed, after leaving Agatha with a handbook in six languages, the size of a Bible.

Returning home after a cold day’s work two weeks after the murder of Gary Beech, Agatha found the electricity was off again. She carefully followed the instructions, the generator roared into life and the electricity came on.

She was relaxing in front of the television set with a large gin and tonic in one hand and a cigarette in the other when her doorbell rang.

When Agatha opened the door, she found the vicar’s wife there, and behind her, two elderly couples.

‘May we come in, Mrs Raisin?’

‘Of course,’ said Agatha. ‘What’s up?’

‘This is Mr and Mrs Friend and Mr and Mrs Terence. They do not have money for fuel, and they are too old to cope with this biting cold. Could you possibly give them shelter until the power comes on?’

Agatha wanted to scream, ‘No!’ But the calm eyes of the vicar’s wife were fastened on her face.

‘All right,’ she said reluctantly.

‘I’ll phone you as soon as the power comes on,’ said Mrs Bloxby, ‘and then I’ll come and pick them up.’

When she had left, Agatha helped the elderly people out of their coats and wraps and settled them in the living room. She asked them if they had eaten, and they said yes, they had. She then asked them if they would like something to drink, and they all murmured in agreement. Being old, they all needed frequent trips upstairs to the bathroom. The Terences were all right, but the Friends needed assistance up the stairs. To exhausted Agatha, it seemed as if she had just got one of them settled when the other would pipe up that he or she had to go to the ‘you-know-what’.

And as the hours passed, the generator continued to chug away. Agatha kept opening the front door and gazing anxiously down the street to see if the lights had come on again in the village. The contractor had warned her that the wiring could not take the load of both generator and restored power or ‘the house will burn to ashes’.

Mrs Bloxby phoned. ‘This is terrible,’ she said. ‘I keep phoning the