I’m not sure if that makes for a good death or a bad death, as the saying goes, but it’s not one that the locals of princely Cooch Behar will forget in a hurry. The English and their deaths, you can almost hear them saying. Like their lives, inexplicable.

I should say immediately that it was not Agatha who was found.

It is however still Agatha who got me here – for said Agatha is missing - and I have been sent either to find her or to at least to find her out.

I am not alas a detective although right now I’m not certain that would make my job any easier. I am a solicitor by trade - 32a Villiers Street, Clapham, close by the Belvedere Arms public house, just off from the square with old-fashioned lampposts - and it is the executers of Agatha’s estate who have sent me out here to look. You see, there’s a considerable amount of money at stake, if they don’t find her, and even – if she is dead – if they do.

Very unfortunately for me - because I promise you, I would rather not be here – I have an outstanding reputation in the office for finishing swiftly, neatly and with my reputation intact. In fact, I was an obvious

choice for them - I do not have a family or a wife - no children and no woman – and no active war role having been signed off for asthma. Left to my own devices I would not have come out – I am an unmarried man come to examine a marriage – a bachelor among couples - and I am not an adventurer per se or I would have made a stab at Empire long ago, as I am already twenty-five, nearly twenty-five. I am slim, tall, cautious and practical. People are always surprised I haven’t married and carelessly presume I am not interested. That’s not the case at all; the woman I wanted to marry wouldn’t marry me, that’s all. I have lived my life thus far not to attract attention but to deflect it, rather like Agatha, as I so far understand her, although my sense of privacy comes from caution not distrust as I sense hers does (did?). There is a difference. I like sponge puddings and Pickwick Papers and Doctor Watson.

In short I am a quiet easy-going young man of mild complexity, and almost no ambition. I am glad my mother is dead because my failure to marry, like my other failures, doesn’t stir me in the least. But still a son always wants to please.

My mother would not have liked Agatha.