“Well, he knows you were in publicity. Lots of people carry those little tape recorders around. I sometimes carry one myself to remind me of appointments and things to do.”

“A blackmailer is not going to think that,” jeered Agatha.

“We don’t know he’s a blackmailer. Make me a coffee while I think. Give me a cigarette.”

“You don’t smoke.”

“I only smoke other people’s. It’s a charitable gesture. It reduces their intake.”

“And stops you spending the money yourself. Cheapskate! Oh, help yourself. There’s a packet in my handbag.”

Agatha made two cups of instant coffee. She had given up making fresh coffee and was back to microwaving most of her meals. Old habits refused to die. She was weary of trying to be “a village person.”

“What can we possibly do now?” she asked, sitting down at the table.

“I’m thinking. Let’s assume he is a blackmailer. Why does one become a blackmailer?”

“Power?”

“But money must be a strong motive. Money and greed. Think about this one. If you were to give him an expensive present. Drop the James business. Glow at him. Let him think he’s the one.”

“What present?” asked Agatha suspiciously.

“Little something from Asprey’s. Does he smoke?”

“No, not even mine.”

“What about a tasteful pair of solid-gold cuff-links in a dinky little Asprey box?”

“What about spending a thousand pounds? Are you going to contribute?”

He looked shifty and his hand instinctively clasped protectively over the breast of his jacket. The foreigner presses his heart, thought Agatha cynically, but your true blue-blooded Englishman presses his wallet to make sure it’s safe.

“Why should I waste a lot of money on a provincial hairdresser?” Agatha demanded.

“Because,” said Charles patiently, “it would keep the game going, and the reason for keeping the game going is you’re bored.”

“And so are you,” said Agatha shrewdly.

“But not as bored and depressed and lovelorn as you, light of my life.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“Do. You’ll find he’ll melt like butter and only think the best of you.”

“If you’ve finished your coffee, I’ll show you out.” “I’m tired. Can’t I stay here?” “No. Out.”

“Okay.” He got to his feet. “Let me know how you get on.”

“I haven’t said I’ll do it.”

“Think about it, Aggie. Think about it.”

Charles was right. Agatha could not bear to drop what she was beginning to consider ‘her case.’

She drove to Moreton-in-Marsh station early the next morning and joined the commuters on the platform. Then the woman who manned the ticket office came out and shouted, “There will be no trains due to a shortage of engine drivers.”

Cursing, Agatha walked back over the iron bridge to the car-park. She got in her car and drove to Oxford and took a train from there to Paddington. From Paddington, she took a taxi to Asprey’s in Bond Street. In the almost religious hush of the great jeweller’s, she examined trays of cuff-links, finally selecting a heavy, solid-gold pair and paying a price for them which left her feeling breathless.

She then travelled to the City to see her stockbroker and be reassured that her stocks and shares were prospering. As she was in the City, she called at Pedmans to see Roy Silver, a public relations officer who had originally worked for her before she had sold out to Pedmans.

“I haven’t heard from you for a while,” said Agatha, reflecting that Roy looked as weedy and unhealthy as ever. But obviously he was doing well. Her practised eye noticed that his suit was Armani.

“I’ve been very busy, sweetie. How’s life in Boresville?”

“I thought you liked the country. You’re always saying how lucky I am.”

“A passing aberration. Sophisticates like me would wilt in the country.”

“You’re joking, of course.”

“Not really. What are you doing anyway? Village fetes?”

“No, much more exciting than that,” said Agatha, but remembered that she had to arrange the teas for Ancombe and had better get back and call a catering company.

“Murder?”

Agatha wanted to brag. “I’m chasing a blackmailer.”

“Tell me about it.”

So Agatha did.

Roy was intrigued. “Tell you what, I’ll come down this weekend and help you.”

He hadn’t bothered phoning her for a long time, so Agatha said huffily, “Can’t. I’m busy this weekend.”

When she got home, she phoned the hairdresser’s and made an appointment for the day after the next. The following day was the concert at Ancombe. Then she phoned a top catering firm in Mircester and ordered sandwiches, cakes and hot savouries to be delivered to her early the following morning. Agatha meant to convey the goodies to the concert herself and produce them as her own.

On the following morning, she transferred all the catering firm’s supplies into her own boxes and put them in the boot of her car and drove to Ancombe.

With the good excuse that she could not watch the concert because she would be too busy preparing the teas, she escaped into an adjoining hall where three schoolgirls had been drafted to help her put out the tables and chairs. The hall smelt like all church halls, dusty and redolent of dry rot and sweat. The church hall was not only used by the Scouts but by an aerobics class as well.

She could hear Miss Simms’s voice raised in shrill song. If it was meant to be Cher, then it was a Cher in the process of getting liposuction.

Agatha heated trays of savouries in the oven and spread cakes and sandwiches on plates. It looked a magnificent feast.

Finally she heard the strains of “God Save the Queen”-the Ancombe ladies were traditionalists-raised in song. Then there was the scraping back of chairs and they all came filing in, exclaiming in delight at the spread laid out for them.

But Mrs. Dairy was not amongst them. What a lot of money I do waste on pettiness, thought Agatha with a rare pang of remorse.

There was no Mrs. Friendly either, so she could not even continue her investigation.

By the end of the event, she felt tired and sticky. Mrs. Bloxby stayed behind to help Agatha load and stack empty foil trays in her car.

“You did us proud, Mrs. Raisin,” said Mrs. Bloxby. “If you ever feel like going into business again, you could be a professional caterer.”

Agatha looked at her sharply and the vicar’s wife gave her an innocent look. But Agatha knew she had been rumbled and felt silly.

For the first time in her life, she began to feel that living alone was an effort. Not that she had ever lived with anyone else, apart from a brief sojourn with James. If she lived with someone, then that someone would be there to chatter to her as she contemplated washing out the foil trays. After the catering company had called to pick up theirs, she reminded herself that the main purpose of foil trays was that they were disposable and put the whole lot in a garbage bag.

The heat was suffocating. She wandered out into her garden. She had lost interest in gardening and hired a local man to do that. Mrs. Simpson did her cleaning for her. Pity she couldn’t hire someone to do the living for her. The gardener was not due to call for another two days, and despite the recent rain the flowers were beginning to wilt in the heat.

She got out the hose and went to fix it to the tap in the garden but sat down in a garden chair instead. The depression she had been fighting off all day engulfed her and immobilized her.

She sat there while the sun slowly sank in the sky and the trees at the end of the garden cast long shadows over the grass. The pursuit of money and success had been everything in her life. Money meant the best restaurants, security, the best medical attention if she fell ill, and, at the end of her days, a good old folks’ home where they actually looked after the patients. She felt as if the tide of life had receded, leaving her stranded on a sandbank of money.