Agatha Raisin and the Fairies of Fryham

that?’
    ‘James and I are getting married.’
    ‘Oh, Agatha Raisin, you fool .’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘It’ll end in disaster. Oh, he’s nice enough, I grant you, but when it comes to women, he’s cold and selfish. He had a fling with Mrs Sheppard and then decided she bored him to death. I beg you, don’t accept him.’
    ‘I thought you were my friend,’ shrieked Agatha. ‘Damn the lot of you. I’m marrying James Lacey and no one is going to stop me.’
    And no one did. Agatha Raisin and James Lacey were married on a cold January day in Mircester Registry Office. The bride wore a smart honey-coloured wool suit and a dashing hat. There was to be no reception. She and James were leaving immediately to honeymoon in Vienna.
    The ‘funeral’, as Sir Charles Fraith called it, was held at the vicarage, Mrs Bloxby having invited several of Agatha’s friends back for a buffet lunch.
    ‘Poor Mrs Raisin,’ sighed Mrs Bloxby. ‘I’m surprised she even invited any of us harbingers of doom.’
    ‘She didn’t look at all happy,’ said Roy Silver, a public relations man who had once worked for Agatha.
    ‘I think he’s a bit of a bully. Agatha’s kept her cottage, you know,’ said Doris Simpson, ‘and she was doing his washing and he came in and started raging because she hadn’t separated his whites from his coloureds.’
    ‘If anyone can cut him down to size, it’ll be our Aggie,’ said Roy.
    Charles helped himself to a piece of cake. ‘I think she’ll murder him.’
    There was a shocked silence.
    ‘Just joking,’ said Charles. ‘This cake is jolly good.’