As the Pig Turns - By M.C. Beaton Page 0,5

again, Roy decided that anything would be better than being left behind. Bill Wong had phoned to say he could not make it.

Just as they were having drinks, Charles Fraith arrived. He was as expensively dressed as usual in smart casual clothes. He had small, neat features and well-barbered hair. Agatha never really knew what he thought of her. He helped himself to a whisky and then proceeded to put his foot in it. He asked Roy sympathetically if he had cancer. When Roy denied it, Charles said, ‘I was about to forgive you for wearing one of my sweaters, but as you aren’t suffering, I do feel you might have asked me first.’

‘I told him he could borrow something,’ said Agatha. ‘I haven’t introduced you to Paul Finlay.’

‘Toni’s uncle?’

‘No, just a friend,’ said Agatha.

Paul bristled. Charles’s upper-class accent brought out the worst in him. His light Birmingham accent grew stronger as he suddenly treated them all to a rant about the unfairness of the British class system and about an aristocracy who lived on the backs of the poor.

Thank goodness for Charles, thought Agatha. Toni must see what a horror this man is.

But Toni was listening to Paul with shining eyes.

Charles waited until Paul had dried up, said calmly, ‘What a lot of old-fashioned bollocks. When are we going?’

‘Finish your drinks,’ said Agatha. ‘I want to be sure of getting a parking place. It’ll be a bit of a crush in my car.’

‘I’ll take Roy,’ said Charles.

‘You’ll need a coat,’ said Agatha to Roy. ‘You’ll find my Barbour hanging in the hall. Use that.’

‘I could wear my jacket,’ said Roy.

‘You’ll freeze. Come along, everyone.’

Thin trails of fog wound their way through the trees as they drove to Winter Parva. They had to park outside the village because all the parking places in the village had been taken. Paul, anxious to get Toni to himself, said they would look at the shops and meet the others on the village green in time for the pig roast.

Agatha, Charles and Roy walked to the nearest pub and into the grateful warmth of the bar.

‘Something will need to be done about Paul,’ said Charles. ‘I think Toni’s still a virgin, and the thought of her losing it under the hairy thighs of that bore is horrible.’

‘He might propose marriage,’ said Roy.

‘I think I’ll do a bit of detective work,’ said Agatha. ‘I bet he’s either married or been married. Why can’t Toni see what a bore he is? How can she listen to that class nonsense?’

‘Maybe it strikes a chord,’ said Charles. ‘You forget, she was brought up rough. Maybe she doesn’t know where she belongs in the scheme of things. There can be something very seductive about that sort of propaganda. Where the hell did she meet him?’

‘At evening classes in French,’ said Agatha gloomily. ‘He’s the lecturer.’

Roy was looking round the bar at people dressed in mediaeval costume. ‘We could have dressed up, Aggie,’ he said plaintively.

Agatha looked at her watch. ‘I think we’d better make our way to the village green. I want to see how they prepare this pig.’

The fog had thickened. If it hadn’t been for the parked cars, you might have thought the village had reverted to the Middle Ages as the costumed villagers appeared and then disappeared in the fog.

Two men were bathing a huge pig in oil as it hung on a spit over a bed of blazing charcoal.

Some villagers were carrying flaming torches. As the fog lifted slightly, Agatha saw clearly on the haunch of the pig a tattoo of a heart with an arrow through it and the curly lettering ‘Amy’. Her eyes flew down the length of the carcass to the chubby legs cut off above the knees.

‘Stop!’ she screamed at the top of her lungs.

The two men stopped turning the spit and stared at her. ‘Pigs don’t have tattoos,’ said Agatha.

They peered at it. ‘Reckon someone’s been ’aving a bit o’ a joke,’ said one.

But Agatha had taken a powerful little torch out of her handbag and was examining the head.

‘The head’s been stitched on,’ she said. ‘Oh, God, I think this is the carcass of a man. Get the police.’

Chapter Two

Toni was cold and worried. She had wanted to join the others, but Paul had said he had something important to ask her. They had survived their first quarrel. They had argued because Toni refused to hear any criticism of Charles. Charles had been kind to her, she had protested.