“All right, let’s go back over some points. Which restaurant were you in, Mrs. Raisin, when you saw this frightened woman?”

“The bistro that’s attached to the Crown Inn in Blockley.”

“You said that the night before he died you shared a Chinese meal with him. Which restaurant?”

“He sent out for it. I can’t remember which one.”

“This business he meant to start in London. According to that assistant Garry, John Shawpart seemed under the impression that you were so besotted with him that you were prepared to pay for the whole thing.”

Agatha turned dark red with mortification.

“Good act you put on, Aggie,” said Charles. “He must have believed you were really smitten.”

“Ah, yes, you said it was an act,” said Bill. “That will be all for the moment. You will both be expected to make statements.”

“When will Worcester CID be calling?” asked Agatha.

“Quite soon.”

“Then I’d better stay,” said Charles cheerfully, “and let them deal with both of us at once.”

Agatha stood up to show Bill and the policewoman out, her legs stiff with tension.

“We’ll be in touch, Mrs. Raisin,” said Bill, avoiding the hurt and rejected look in Agatha’s eyes.

She nodded to him, shut the door on them both, joined Charles in the living-room and burst into tears.

Bill got into the police car and took the wheel. The policewoman got in on the passenger side. The reason that Bill had been so cold and formal with Agatha was that he was accompanied by Snoopy Christine, the bane of Mircester police headquarters. She delighted in finding out weaknesses in her fellow officers and gossiping about them to anyone who would listen.

Her first words when they had set out from Mircester earlier had been, “Rumour has it that you’re a friend of this Agatha Raisin’s.”

And Bill, who knew Agatha was in trouble over pretending to be dead man’s sister and was well aware that any sign of warmth towards Agatha on his part would be reported by the beady-eyed Christine, had said casually, “Just some woman I met on some cases.”

“Her husband was murdered, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, I was on that case.”

On the road back after interviewing Agatha and Charles, Christine said nastily, “They’re nothing more than a couple of rich layabouts, amusing themselves by playing at detectives.”

“Exactly,” said Bill casually. With any luck, all Agatha would get would be a rap over the knuckles for having pretended to be Shawpart’s sister. Any sign of favouritism on his part, and Christine would put it about and it might get to Worcester and they might feel compelled to punish Agatha to show the police did not have favourites.

“Come on now, Aggie,” Charles was saying in a soothing voice, “it looks as if you’re off the hook. No one saw you going to his house after he was murdered.”

Agatha dried her eyes and blew her nose. “It’s Bill,” she said. “He was my very first friend and now he’s gone off me.”

She cleaned the burnt mess out of the fireplace, put it in a garbage bag, ran out and slung the bag into James’s garden. She returned to Charles.

“Probably had to be formal in front of that cow of a policewoman. Brace yourself. I think the heavy mob’s arrived.”

Detective Inspector John Brudge was an intelligent-looking man with dark hair and a thin, clever face. He not only brought a detective sergeant and a detective constable with him, but two policemen and a search warrant.

While he took Agatha and Charles carefully through their stories again, Agatha could hear the forces of law and order moving through the cottage, searching every drawer, cupboard and nook and cranny.

It was annoying rather than worrying, for she had nothing to hide. She had even wiped her conversation with the hairdresser from her tape recorder.

The one main thing that was making her begin to relax was that no one had seen her at the villa on the Cheltenham Road on the day it was burnt down.

Just as the long interrogation was coming to an end, the detective constable entered and quietly handed Brudge a receipt. Agatha stiffened and looked wildly at Charles. It was an Asprey’s receipt for those cuff-links. Then she began to relax again. She could say she had bought them for Charles and Charles would be quick enough, she was sure, to agree.

Brudge moved out into the hall with the receipt. She then heard him talking into his phone but could not make out the words.

He came back in holding the receipt and sat down.

“This is a receipt for a pair of very expensive cuff-links, Mrs. Raisin, gold cuff-links.”

“Yes,” said Agatha easily. “I bought them as a present for Charles here.”

He looked at her steadily for a few moments and then he said, “In the part of the living-room of Shawpart’s house which survived, we found a box containing a pair of gold cufflinks from Asprey’s. I think you bought them for Shawpart, Mrs. Raisin, and it is no use denying it because we can easily check.”

“I bought those for Charles,” protested Agatha.

“Who can no doubt produce them?”

“It’s no use, Aggie,” said Charles. “Why lie when we have no reason to? I urged her to buy Shawpart some expensive present to get close to him.”

“Why?”

“I told you. It was a game. We were sure he was up to something fishy.”

“An expensive game. You have both gone on about finding out about this hairdresser for fun, because you were bored. I find that hard to believe. You initially lied, Mrs. Raisin, although Sir Charles here says you have nothing to hide. I find that very suspicious. You will call at Mircester tomorrow and sign your statements. You are not to travel abroad until this investigation is completed.”

“I’m sorry I lied,” said Agatha, “but I feel embarrassed about wasting so much money on him. And I wasn’t to know he would be murdered.”

“So you say. I have yet to read the Gloucester report. I hope you have not been lying to them as well.”

Agatha thought about her saying that someone had told her the villa had burnt down and then found out Charles’s car had been spotted. She groaned inwardly.

“We are taking some things,” said Brudge. A policeman held out a box containing a few bottles of vitamin pills and aspirin. “We will give you a receipt for them.”

When they had all left, she said to Charles, “What a mess.”

“Are you hungry?”

“Not very.”

“Let’s go along to the Red Lion and get a sandwich.”

“All right. Give me a moment while I change. I feel all sweaty.”

She went up to her bathroom and stripped and had a quick shower and put on a clean blouse and skirt.

She looked out of the window. Charles was playing with her cats in the garden. He had made a ball out of kitchen foil and was throwing it in the air while the cats leaped up to catch it.

Did he ever worry about anything? Probably just as well if he did not. She herself was worrying enough for the whole of the Cotswolds.

The lounge bar of the Red Lion was smoky and dim. A fire had been lit and little puffs of grey smoke escaped from it and lay in bands across the low-beamed room.

They collected gin and tonics and ham sandwiches and retreated to a far corner.

“So what do we do now?” asked Agatha.

“We go on. For a start we’ve got to try to get the Friendly woman on her own.”

“How do we do that?”

“You’re all kerfuffled and discombobulated these days, Aggie. You put me up for the night and then we watch her house and see if Mr. Friendly leaves.”

“How can we do that without being too obvious?”

“The cottage is opposite the churchyard. You take me on a tour of the graves. I’m a historian. I make notes. Even if he doesn’t leave, surely she goes out shopping. Then we should get to a library and read up on ricin. Are there any castor-oil plants outside Kew Gardens in this country, for example? If not, which of our suspects has been abroad lately?”