Agatha Raisin and the Terrible Tourist by M C Beaton

Author:M C Beaton [Beaton, M]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: detective

SIX

AGATHA went for a long walk along the beach. There were fewer tourists, and flocks of migrating birds sailed over the cloudless sky overhead.

She was beginning to become angry over her own fear of James and his recriminations. How had it happened that she, Agatha Raisin, once the terror of the public-relations world, should dread another confrontation? Being in love seemed to have sapped her strength. How strange that few people actually talked about love any more. They were obsessed, taken hostage, or co-dependent-anything rather than admit they were not in control, for the very word “love” now meant weakness.

But he was at fault. He was no saint either. He had had affairs even with a woman in the village.

She would need to have it out with him and though she quailed from the idea, she knew she could not go on living under the same roof with him in a hostile atmosphere. As she walked back, the thought that someone was actually trying to kill her made her keep stopping and look warily around. She climbed up the steep hill from the beach to the villa. She felt breathless from the walk and threw away the cigarette she had been smoking. Before smoking had become such a sin, Agatha had thought the whole time about giving up. Now that it was, somehow she could not seem to summon up the will to stop.

She went into the villa. She could hear from the clatter of dishes that James was in the kitchen. She walked in and said to his back, “Come and sit down, James. We can’t go on like this. We have to talk.”

He turned round, his face hard and closed. But he went and sat at the kitchen table. Agatha pulled out a seat opposite him and sat down.

“I want you to listen to me carefully,” began Agatha in an even voice. “You have shown me no love or affection since I came here. I got drunk with Charles and ended up in bed with him. It just happened. I had no reason not to tell you the truth, but I did not want to lose you. But in this loveless whatever-it-is we have between us, you have no right to be angry with me or possessive or jealous. You have hurt me badly. We both want to find out who murdered Rose. But we cannot go on living together like this. What do you suggest?”

He stared at the table in silence.

“James,” Agatha pleaded, “I know that any intimate conversation makes you want to shrivel up, but you are going to have to say something.”

He looked at her bleakly. “You’ll need to give me a little more time, Agatha. I have been behaving badly. In the past I have always had light affairs, nothing very serious. I don’t know why it should have to be you. I like very gentle, feminine women. In fact, I feel at ease in the company of rather stupid women. You smoke, you swear, you are dreadfully blunt.

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