agreed. She felt it was wrong, but on the other hand, to notify the police meant explaining that they had broken into Gary Beech’s house.
James was wearing a dark leather jerkin and had the ledger zipped up inside it. ‘Don’t you think,’ whispered Agatha plaintively, ‘that there might be a back gate to this garden?’
‘I suppose there might be,’ said James, wondering why on earth he hadn’t thought of it before.
They made their way quietly out of the house. James risked flashing his torch around the garden. ‘There’s a gate at the end over there, but it’s going to be the same problem. It’s solid and it’s as high as the fence. It’s padlocked.’
‘Can’t you pick the lock?’
‘It’ll take a few moments. It’s a pity you’re not more agile. We could just have shinned over it. You should get that hip replacement.’
Agatha remained mulishly quiet while he got to work picking the lock. She did not like anyone, particularly James, knowing that she had been operated on for a hip replacement. Also, she was stiff and sore from getting over the fence. At last the padlock clicked open. James let Agatha out into the lane at the back, relocked the padlock and climbed nimbly over the fence.
‘Now, if we go quietly along this lane at the backs of the houses, we should reach my car. That way there’s no fear of someone in the houses seeing us.’
‘Someone could be looking out of a back window.’
‘Too many trees and bushes at the back, and I can’t see a light in a window anywhere. Come on.’
Agatha was so grateful to be finally back in her cottage kitchen. ‘Coffee would be nice,’ said James.
‘A stiff gin and tonic would be nicer,’ said Agatha.
‘Well, make a strong coffee for me. I’ll nip next door and get my camera. Don’t touch that ledger with your bare hands!’ James was Agatha’s nearest neighbour.
When James returned, Agatha had moved to her living room and was stretched out on the sofa asleep, a glass of gin and tonic perilously balanced on her chest and a smouldering cigarette in one hand.
He gently removed her drink and stubbed out her cigarette. He decided to leave her to sleep while he had a look in the ledger himself.
The entries in the ledger were baffling. There were long lines of columns with cryptic entries such a c.h. b. P.L., t. r. P.L. and so on in the same style. He woke Agatha, who blinked up at him and then came fully awake, crying, ‘What did you find?’
‘Nothing but a lot of gobbledygook. Come and have a look before I photograph the pages. There are only about five pages of entries. If this is what the killers were looking for, then I wonder why they wasted their time.’
Agatha followed him into the kitchen and stared in bafflement at the entries.
‘Now what do we do?’ she asked.
‘I photograph all the entries and then, so help me, I’ve got to take the book back, make sure the place is swept clean so there’s no trace of our visit and then drop an anonymous line to the police.’
Agatha awoke the next morning with the feel of James’s lips burning into her memory. In his way, he had been passionate in bed when they were married, but somehow only during the sex act itself. When it was over, he had rolled over to his side of the bed and gone to sleep as if she didn’t exist. Agatha tried to erase her feelings over the kiss by remembering how awful the marriage had been: all his infuriating pernickety bachelor ways such as complaining about the laundry, trying to forbid her to work. She gave herself a mental shake. She did not want to end up in the miserable depths of an obsession for James again.
But in its way, obsession was as necessary to Agatha Raisin as drink to an alcoholic. In the way that an alcoholic will endlessly chase the dream of when drink brought pleasure and escape, Agatha usually remembered only the beginning of obsessions, when the days were brighter and she felt young again.
She wondered whether to call on James before she went to the office but steeled herself against the urge.
Agatha was just about to leave her cottage after letting her cats out into the back garden for the day when the postman arrived with a large parcel. ‘Grand day,’ said the postman.
Agatha could almost smell the countryside coming to life after the bitter