The Quiche of Death

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OUTSTANDING PRAISE FOR

M. C BEATON'S MYSTERIES

THE QUICHE OF DEATH

"In Agatha/ Beaton has blended perfectly the classic ingredients of a village with secrets and stock characters* The irascible
but endearing personality of Agatha Raisin is like a heady dash of curry. May we have another serving, please."

—
Detroit Free Press

"A hilarious up-to-the-minute murder romp that s as delicious as a Christmas pudding"

—
St. Petersburg Times

"Beaton's playful depiction of village life makes it all a delicious romp"

—
Publishers Weekly

"The strong narrative drive comes from Agatha's changing personality as awkward and perilous situations shape her into a softer,
more admirable person"

—
Chicago Sun-Times

"Beaton has thus launched a new series featuring an eccentric sleuth with human foibles galore, combined with an indomitable
spirit, who will long persevere and endear herself to the village (and the reader)"

—
San Antonio Express-News

"Beaton, always deft with imperfect human beings, guides Agatha through her travails until she becomes almost likeable. You
will want to see her again"

—
Houston Post

THE DEADLY DANCE

"It's been 40 years since Dame Agatha Christie's death, and in that time, reviewers have often bestowed her mantle on new
authors. M. C. Beaton is one of those so honored, and she deserves it. When it comes to artfully constructed puzzle plots
and charming settings, Beaton serves it up . . . This is a classic British cozy plot, and a setting done with panache. Maybe
M. C. Beaton really is the new 'Queen of Crime.'"

—
The Globe & Mail

"It is always fun to read an Agatha Raisin mystery, but the latest installment freshens up a delightful series by converting
the heroine from amateur sleuth to professional without changing her caustic wit. Agatha remains crude and rude even to clients,
but also retains that vulnerability that endears her to readers."

—
The Midwest Book Review

"A very satisfying change for the smart woman of mystery with a new cast of colorfully realized characters blending with a
few old favorites."

—
Mystery Lovers Bookshop

"The story was first-rate and moved along with many twists and turns that kept me always guessing . . . I read this book in
one sitting, which I think speaks for itself."

—/
Love a Mystery

"Fans of Agatha Raisin will be absolutely delighted at this latest addition to the series. Ms. Beaton has surpassed herself
in
The Deadly Dance!'

—
Reviewing the Evidence

Agatha Raisin

The Perfect Paragon: An Agatha Raisin Mystery

The Deadly Dance: An Agatha Raisin Mystery

Agatha Raisin and the Haunted House

Agatha Raisin and the Case of the Curious Curate

Agatha Raisin and the Day the Floods Came

Agatha Raisin and the Love from Hell

Agatha Raisin and the Fairies of Fryfam

Agatha Raisin and the Witch of Wyckhaddm

Agatha Raisin and the Wizard of Evesham

Agatha Raisin and the Wellspring of Death

Agatha Raisin and the Terrible Tourist

Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage

Agatha Raisin and the Walkers of Dembley

Agatha Raisin and the Potted Gardener

Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet

Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death

Love, Lies, and Liquor

The Skeleton in the Closet

Hamish Macbeth

Death of a Bore

Death of a Poison Pen

Death of a Village

Death of a Celebrity

A Highland Christmas

Writing as Marion Chesney

Our Lady of Pain

Sick of Shadows

Hasty Death

Snobbery with Violence

THE QUICHE

OF DEATH

St. Martin's Paperbacks

NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as
"unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped
book."

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

The Perfect Paragon

ONE

For Agatha was taking early retirement. She had built 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,
divorced and battered in spirit, but determined to succeed in life. All her business efforts were to one end, the realization
of a dream—a cottage in the Cotswolds.

The Cotswolds in the Midlands are surely 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, tranquillity 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 smells of the city.

During all her time in London, she had, until just recently, never gone back to the Cotswolds, preferring to keep the dream
intact. Now she had purchased that dream cottage in the village of Carsely. It was a pity, thought Agatha, that the village
was called plain Carsely and not Chipping Campden or Aston Magna or Lower Slaughter or one of those intriguing Cotswold names,
but the cottage was perfect and the village not on the tourist route, which meant freedom from craft shops, tea-rooms and
daily bus parties.

Agatha was aged fifty-three, with plain brown hair and a plain square face and a stocky figure. Her accent was as Mayfair
as could be except in moments of distress or excitement, when the old nasal Birmingham voice of her youth crept through. It
helps in public relations to have a certain amount of charm and Agatha had none. She got results by being a sort of one-woman
soft-cop/hard-cop combination; alternately bullying and wheedling on behalf of her clients. Journalists often gave space to
her clients just to get rid of her. She was also an expert at emotional blackmail and anyone unwise enough to accept a present
or a free lunch from Agatha was pursued shamelessly until they paid back in kind.

She was popular with her staff because they were a rather weak, frivolous lot, the kind of people who build up legends about
anyone of whom they are frightened. Agatha was described as "a real charac­ter," and like all real characters who speak their
mind, she did not have any real friends. Her work had been her social life as well.

As she rose to go through and join the party, a small cloud crossed the horizon of Agatha's usually uncomplicated mind. Before
her lay days of nothing: no work from morning till night, no bustle or noise. How would she cope?

She shrugged the thought away and crossed the Rubicon into the outer office to say her farewells.

"Here she comes!" screeched Roy, one of her assistants. "Made some special champagne punch, Aggie. Real knicker-rotter."

Agatha accepted a glass of punch. Her secretary, Lulu, approached and handed her a gift-wrapped parcel and then the others
crowded around with their offerings. Agatha felt a lump rising in her throat. A little insistent voice was chattering in her
head, "What have you done? What have you
done?"
There was a bottle of scent from Lulu and, predictably, a pair of crotchless panties from Roy; there was a book on gardening
from one, a vase from another, and so it went on. "Speech!" cried Roy.

"Thank you all," said Agatha gruffly. "I'm not going to China, you know. You'll all be able to come and see me. Your new bosses,
Pedmans, have promised not to change anything, so I suppose life will go on for all of you much the same. Thank you for my
presents. I will treasure them, except for yours, Roy. I doubt if at my age I'll find any use for them."

"You never know your luck," said Roy. "Some horny farmer'll probably be chasing you through the shrubbery."

Agatha drank more punch and ate smoked-salmon sandwiches and then, with her presents packed by Lulu into two carrier bags,
she made her way down the stairs of Raisin Promotions for the last time.

In Bond Street, she elbowed a thin, nervous business man aside who had just flagged down a cab, said unrepentantly, "I saw
it first,"and ordered the driver to take her to Paddington Station.

She caught the 15:20 train to Oxford and sank back into the corner seat of a first-class carriage. Everything was ready and
waiting for her in the Cotswolds. An interior decorator had "done over" the cottage, her car was waiting for her at Moreton-in-Marsh
station for the short drive to Carsely, a removal firm had taken all her belongings from her London flat, now sold. She was
free. She could relax. No temperamental pop stars to handle, no prima-donnaish couture firms to launch. All she had to do
from now on was to please herself.

Agatha drifted off to sleep and awoke with a start at the guard's cry of "Oxford. This is Oxford. The train terminates here."

Not for the first time, Agatha wondered about British Rail's use of the word "terminate." One expected the train to blow apart.
Why not just say "stops here"? She looked up at the screen, like a dingy television set, which hung over Platform 2. It informed
her that the train to Charlbury, Kingham, Moreton-in-Marsh and all further points to Hereford was on Platform 3, and lugging
her carrier bags, she walked over the bridge. The day was cold and grey. The euphoria produced by freedom from work and Roy's
punch was slowly beginning to evaporate.

The train moved slowly out of the station. Glimpses of barges on one side and straggly allotments on the other and then flat
fields flooded from the recent rain lay gloomily in front of her increasingly jaundiced view.

This is ridiculous, thought Agatha. I've got what I always wanted. I'm tired, that's all.

The train stopped somewhere outside Charlbury, gliding to a stop and sitting there placidly in the inexplicable way that British
Rail trains often do. The passengers sat stoically, listening to the rising wind whining over the bleak fields. Why are we
like sheep that have gone astray? wondered Agatha. Why are the British so cowed and placid? Why does no one shout for the
guard and demand to know the reason? Other, more voluble, races would not stand for it. She debated whether to go and see
the guard herself. Then she remembered she was no longer in a hurry to get anywhere. She took out a copy of the
Evening Standard,
which she had bought at the station, and settled down to read it.

After twenty minutes the train creaked slowly into life. Another twenty minutes after Charlbury and it slid into the Little
station of Moreton-in-Marsh. Agaha climbed out. Her car was still where she had left it. During the last few minutes of the
journey she had begun to worry that it might have been stolen.

It was market day in Moreton-in-Marsh and Agatha's spirits began to revive as she drove slowly past stalls selling everything
from fish to underwear. Tuesday. Market day was Tuesday. She must remember that. Her new Saab purred out of Moreton and then
up through Bourton-on-the-Hill. Nearly home. Home! Home at last.

She turned off the A-44 and then began the slow descent to the village of Carsely, which nestled in a fold of the Cotswold
Hills.

It was a very pretty village, even by Cotswold standards. There were two long lines of houses interspersed with shops, some
low and thatched, some warm gold brick with slate roofs. There was a pub called the Red Lion at one end and a church at the
other. A few straggling streets ran off this one main road where cottages leaned together as if for support in their old age.
The gardens were bright with cherry blossom, forsythia and daffodils. There was an old-fashioned haberdasher's, a post office
and general store, and a butcher's, and a shop that seemed to sell nothing other than dried flowers and to be hardly ever
open. Outside the village and tucked away from view by a rise was a council estate and between the council estate and the
village proper was the police station, an elementary school, and a library.

Agatha's cottage stood alone at the end of one of the straggling side streets. It looked like a cottage in one of the calendars
she used to treasure as a girl. It was low and thatched, new thatch, Norfolk reed, and with casement windows and built of
the golden Cotswold stone. There was a small garden at the front and a long narrow one at the back. Unlike practically everyone
else in the Cotswolds, the previous owner had not been a gardener. There was little else but grass and depressing bushes of
the hard-wearing kind found in public parks.

Inside there was a small dark cubby-hole of a hall. To the right was the living-room; to the left, the dining-room, and the
kitchen at the back was part of a recent extension and was large and square. Upstairs were two low-ceilinged bedrooms and
a bathroom. All the ceilings were beamed.

Agatha had given the interior decorator a free hand. It was all as it should be and yet... Agatha paused at the door of the
living-room. Three-piece suite covered in Sanderson's linen, lamps, coffee-table with glass top, fake medieval fire-basket
in the hearth, horse brasses nailed to the fireplace,pewter tankards and toby jugs hanging from the beams and bits of polished
farm machinery decorating the walls, and yet it looked like a stage set. She went into the kitchen and switched on the central
heating. The super-duper removal company had even put her clothes in the bedroom and her books on the shelves, so there was
not much for her to do. She went through to the dining-room. Long table, shining under its heat-resistant surface, Victorian
dining chairs, Edwardian painting of a small child in a frock in a bright garden, Welsh dresser with blue-and-white plates,
another fireplace with a fake-log electric fire, and a drinks trolley. Upstairs, the bedrooms were pure Laura Ashley. It felt
like someone else's house, the home of some characterless stranger, or an expensive holiday cottage.

Well, she had nothing for dinner and after a life of restaurants and take-aways, Agatha had planned to learn how to cook,
and there were all her new cookery books in a gleaming row on a shelf in the kitchen.

She collected her handbag and made her way out. Time to investigate what few village shops there were. Many of the shops,
the real estate agent had told her, had closed down and had been transformed into "des rezzes," or desirable residences. The
villagers blamed the incomers, but it was the motor car which had caused the damage, the villagers themselves preferring to
go to the supermarkets of Stratford or Evesham for their goods rather than buy them at a higher price in the village. Most
people in the village owned some sort of car.

As Agatha approached the main street, an old man was coming the other way. He touched his cap and gave her a cheerful "arternoon."
Then in the main street, everyone she passed greeted her with a few words, a casual "afternoon" or "nasty weather." Agatha
brightened. After London, where she had not even known her neighbours, all this friendliness was a refreshing change.

She studied the butcher's window and then decided that cookery could wait for a few days and so passed on to the general store
and bought a "very hot" Vin-daloo curry to microwave and a can of rice. Again, in the store, she was met with friendliness
all round. At the door of the shop was a box of second-hand books. Agatha had always read "improving" books, mostly non-fiction.
There was a battered copy of
Gone With
the Wind
and she bought it on impulse.

Back in her cottage, she found a basket of pseudo-logs by the fire, little round things made out of pressed sawdust. She piled
some up in the grate and set fire to them and soon had a blaze roaring up the chimney. She removed the lace antimacassar which
the decorator had cutely draped over the television screen and switched it on. There was some war going on, as there usually
was, and it was getting the usual coverage; that is, the anchorman and the reporter were having a cosy talk. "Over to you,
John. What is the situation now? Well, Peter..." By the time they moved on to the inevitable "expert" in the studio, Agatha
wondered why they bothered to send any reporter out to the war at all. It was like the Gulf War all over again, where most
of the coverage seemed to consist of a reporter standing in front of a palm tree outside some hotel in Riyadh. What a waste
of money. He never had much information and it would surely have been cheaper to place him in front of a palm tree in a studio
in London.

She switched it off and picked up
Gone With the
Wind.
She had been looking forward to a piece of intellectual slumming to celebrate her release from work, but she was amazed at
how very good it was, almost
indecently
readable, thought Agatha, who had only read before the sort of books you read to impress people. The fire crackled and Agatha
read until her rumbling stomach prompted her to put the curry in the microwave. Life was good.

But a week passed, a week in which Agatha, in her usual headlong style, had set out to see the sights. She had been to Warwick
Castle, Shakespeare's birthplace, Blenheim Palace, and had toured through the villages of the Cotswolds while the wind blew
and the rain fell steadily from grey skies, returning every evening to her silent cottage with only a new-found discovery
of Agatha Christie to help her through the evenings. She had tried visiting the pub, the Red Lion, a jolly low-raftered chintzy
sort of place with a cheerful landlord. And the locals had talked to her as they always did with a peculiar sort of open friendliness
that never went any further. Agatha could have coped with a suspicious animosity but not this cheerful welcome which somehow
still held her at bay. Not that Agatha had ever known how to make friends, but there was something about the villagers, she
discovered, which repelled incomers. They did not reject them. On the surface they welcomed them. But Agatha knew that her
presence made not a ripple on the calm pond of village life. No one asked her to tea. No one showed any curiosity about her
whatsoever. The vicar did not even call. In an Agatha Christie book the vicar would have called, not to mention some retired
colonel and his wife. All conversation seemed limited to "Mawnin'," "Afternoon," or talk about the weather.