M.C. Beaton

There is nothing more depressing for a middle-aged lovelorn woman with bald patches on her head than to find herself in an English seaside resort out of season. Wind ripped along the promenade, sending torn posters advertising summer jollities flapping, and huge waves sent spray high into the air.
Agatha had lost her hair when a vengeful hairdresser had applied depilatory to it rather than shampoo. It had grown back in tufts but leaving distressingly bare patches of scalp.

It was a glorious day. Summer was edging its way into England. Hawthorn flowers were heavy with scent pink and white along the winding road out of Carsely. On either side of the Fosse Way, obviously a Roman road, for it runs straight as an arrow up steep hills and down the other side, lay fields of oilseed rape, bright yello, Van Gogh yellow, looking too vulgary bright among the gentler colours of the English countryside.

EVERYONE in the village of Carsely was agreed on one thing - no one had ever seen such a spring before.
Mrs. Bloxby, the vicar's wife, stepped out into her garden and took a deep breath of fresh-scented air. Never had there been so much blossom. The lilac trees were bent down under the weight of purple and white blooms. White hawthorn hedges formed bridal alleys out of the country lanes. Clematis spilled over walls like flowery waterfalls, and wisteria decorated the golden stone of the cottages with showers of delicate purple blooms. All the trees were covered in bright, fresh green. It was as if the countryside were clothed like an animal in a deep, rich pelt of leaves and flowers.

So although it was only early October, she tried to fill her mind with thoughts of Christmas. Unlike quite a number of perople, Agatha had not given up on Christmas. To have the perfect Christmas had been a childhood dream whilst surviving a rough upbringing in Birmingham slum. Holly berries glistened, snow fell gently outside, and inside, all was Dickensian jollity. And in her dreams, James Lacey kissed her under the midletoe, and, like a middle-aged sleeping beauty, she would awake to passion once more.
Her friend, the vicar's wife, Mrs. Bloxby, had once pointed out that Christmas was to celebrate the birth of Christ, but Agatha's mind shied away from that. To her, Christmas was more Hollywood than church.

"What do they think about you in the village?" asked Roy, mopping his streaming eyes. "Are they calling you the Borgia of the Cotswolds ?"

There has been a sharp shower of rain. How wonderful London smelled, of wet concrete, diesel fumes, petrol fumes, litter, hot coffee, fruit and fish, all the smells that meant home to Agatha.

The plane soared above the grey, rainy skies and flat fields of Essex and all the passengers applauded wildy. Why were they applauding ? wondered Agatha. Do they know something I don't ? Is it unusual for one of their planes to take off at all ?

The Hewitts lived in a bungalow called Merrydown. As Agatha drove up the short gravelled drive, she could smell something cooking on charcoal. "It's not a barbecue ?" she asked.
"I believe it is. Here we are."
"James, if you told me it was a barbecue, I would have dressed more suitably"
"Don't nag." said James midly, getting out of teh car.
Agatha detested barbecues. Barbecues were for Americans, Australians and Polynesians, or any of those other people with a good climate. The English, from her experience, delighed in under-cooked meat served off paper plates in an insect-ridden garden.

In the winter days, when the rain dripped down and thick wet fog covered the hills, Agatha sometimes wondered what she was doing buried under the thatch of her cottage in the Cotswolds.
But as she drove off with Mrs. Bloxby the following morning, the countryside was enjoying a really warm spring. Blackthorn starred the hedgerows, wisteria and clematis hung on garden walls, bluebells shook in the lightest of breezes, and a large blue sky arched overhead.

The recession was biting deeper into private detective Agatha Raisin's finance. The bread-and-butter work of her agency, the divorces, missing teenagers, even missing dogs and cats, was drying up as people preferred to go to the police for free help, and men and women in unhappy marriages opted to wait before paying Agatha to find the proof of evidence for divorce.

Mrs Agatha Raisin sat behind her newly cleared desk at her office in South Molton Street in Mayfair. From the outer office came the hum of voices and the clink of glasses as the staff prepared to say farewell to her.
For Agatha was taking early retirement. She had build up the public relations firm over long hard years of work. She had come a long way from her working-class background in Birmingham. She had survived an unfortunate marriage and had come out of it, separated and battered in spirit , but determined to suceed in life. All her business efforts were to one end, the realization of a dream - a cottage in the Cotswolds.
The Corswolds are surrely one of the few man-made beauties in the world : quaint villages of golden stone houses, pretty gardens, winding green lanes and ancient churches. Agatha had been taken to the Cotswolds as a child for one brief magical holiday. Her parents had hated it and had said that they should have gone to Butlin's Holiday Camp as usual, but to Agatha the Cotswolds represented everything she wanted in life : beauty, tanquility and security. So even as a child, she had become determined that one day she would live in one of those pretty cottages in a quiet peaceful village, far from the noise and the smells of the city.

It was amazing, he reflected, how an ugly character destroyed even the greatest beauty.