Agatha Raisin and the Curious Curate Read Online Free Page A

– if it was the curate,’ asked John.
    Me, thought Agatha. I could have killed him last night.
    Aloud, she said, ‘I hate this waiting.’ Then she thought, they’ll have questioned Mrs Feathers and she’ll tell them about that dinner last night. I don’t want John to know about it. I’ve got to get rid of him.
    ‘I’m restless,’ she said, getting to her feet. ‘I think I’ll go for a walk.’
    ‘Good idea.’
    ‘Alone.’
    ‘Oh, all right.’
    They walked together to the door. Agatha opened it. Detective Inspector Wilkes of the Mircester CID stood there, accompanied by Bill Wong and a policewoman.
    ‘May we come in?’ asked Wilkes.
    ‘Yes,’ said Agatha, flustered. ‘See you later, John.’
    He was urged on his way by a push in the back from Agatha.
    Agatha led the police into her living-room and sat down feeling, irrationally, like a guilty schoolgirl.
    ‘What’s happened?’ she asked.
    ‘Mr Delon, the curate, was found this morning in the vicar’s study. He had been stabbed.’
    Agatha felt hysterical. ‘Was he stabbed with a rare oriental dagger?’ She stifled a giggle.
    Wilkes glared at her. ‘He was stabbed with a paper-knife on the vicar’s desk.’
    Agatha fought down the hysteria. ‘You can’t kill someone with a paper-knife.’
    ‘You can with this one. It’s very sharp. Mr Bloxby said he kept it sharp. The church box, the one people put donations in for the upkeep of the church, was lying open. The money had gone.’
    ‘I know the vicar took it from the church from time to time to record what had been donated,’ said Agatha. ‘But Mr Delon couldn’t have surprised a burglar. I don’t think there were ever any donations in there worth bothering about.’
    ‘Evidently, according to the vicar, there were this time. The curate had delivered a sermon the Sunday before last about the importance of donating to the upkeep of the church. There were several hundred pounds in there. The vicar hadn’t got around to counting it. He says he just checked inside and planned to get down to counting the takings today.’
    ‘But what was Mr Delon doing in the vicar’s study?’ asked Agatha.
    ‘If we can stop the speculation and get to your movements, Mrs Raisin. You had dinner with Mr Delon in his flat last night. You left around midnight.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Were you intimate with him?’
    Agatha’s face flamed. ‘Of course not! I barely knew the man.’
    ‘And yet he asked you for dinner.’
    ‘Oh, I thought it was a parish thing. I assume it was his way of getting to know everybody.’
    ‘So what did you talk about?’
    ‘He was a good listener,’ said Agatha. ‘I’m afraid I talked mostly about myself. I asked him about himself and he said he had been at a church in New Cross in London and that he had formed a boys’ club and that one of the gang leaders had become angry, thinking he was taking the youth of the area away and had had him beaten up. He said he’d had a nervous breakdown.’
    ‘And you left at midnight and that was that?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘Do you know of any other women in the village he was particularly friendly with?’
    ‘No. I mean, I’d been away and then I was up in London, working. The first time I met him was on Sunday, outside the church. Then he turned up on my doorstep yesterday and invited me to dinner.’
    ‘Let’s go over it again,’ said Wilkes.
    Agatha went through the whole business again and then felt her face going red. They would check phone calls to Mrs Feathers’s phone and would know she had phoned him when she got home.
    ‘What is it?’ demanded Wilkes, studying her red face.
    ‘When I got home, I realized I had asked him for dinner but hadn’t fixed a date, so I phoned him and he said he would let me know.’
    ‘Those were his only words?’
    ‘Exactly,’ said Agatha with all the firmness of one used to lying.
    ‘That will be all for the moment. We would like you to come down to headquarters and sign a statement,