Agatha Raisin 31 - Hot to Trot by M. C. Beaton

Author:M. C. Beaton [Beaton, M. C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

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Roy babbled with excitement all the way back to Mircester. He was going to learn to ride, he was investigating a murder and he was to be working on a covert operation. He was practically a secret agent! Agatha was relieved to be able to drop him off in Mircester at an upmarket department store where she knew they would be delighted to sell him the finest equestrian clothing at eye-watering prices. She realised that she would have to suffer a mini fashion parade when she got home later, but it would be worth it to have some peace and quiet while she found her way to the Colonel’s house. She put in a quick call to Toni to ask her to dig up some background on Deborah Lexington, then set off.

Colonel Steven Warbler-Dow lived in Maugersbury, just outside Stow-on-the-Wold. Agatha had been given specific directions about how to reach the house, but more than once had the feeling that she must have gone wrong. The roads were so narrow and flanked so tightly in places by enviably opulent family homes that she felt as if she must be on a driveway, passing through the carefully tended gardens. Where houses gave way to hedgerows, she caught glimpses of glorious countryside, folds of green rolling into distant hills bathed in sunshine.

Before long, she identified a turning that took her to the short stone-chip driveway of the Colonel’s house. To the right was a lawn, separated from the drive by a flower bed bursting with spring colour. Ahead was the house itself, a large two-storey L-shaped villa with an elaborate thatched roof that made Agatha’s own look positively primitive. Along the ridge line the thatch was doubly thick, the edges cut in a traditional skirt of curves and points, before it swooped down, curving gracefully around upstairs windows that peeked out from beneath the grey reeds. Where part of the ground floor extended out beyond the upper wall line, the thatch cascaded lower still, the angle of the roof allowing it to cover the extension. It was a delightful house, large enough, Agatha guessed, to swallow both her cottage and James’s, but small enough still to be a very comfortable home.

She parked close to the house, beside a wooden garage that she estimated could house at least three cars, and stepped out to be greeted by a loud “Hello, there!” from an elderly man striding confidently towards her. He was tall, with a grey beard and a balding head, a combination that Agatha had never found particularly attractive, although his beaming smile and twinkling blue eyes more than compensated for him having hair growing in the wrong places. You must have been a handsome devil in your youth, she thought, and you haven’t lost it entirely.

“You must be Agatha,” he said.

“And you are the Colonel?” she responded, shaking his hand.

“Steven, please,” he said. “Come inside. Can’t talk in this scorching sun.”

They walked towards the house, past a tangled heap of rusting metal that Agatha had first taken to be a sculpture but now realised was an old lawnmower.

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