How many cameras can you count in your street, or in the area where you live? You can spot them on buildings, on masts, attached to streetlights, mounted on traffic lights or on the lights at pedestrian crossings. Maybe you can hazard a guess at how many there are near where you live, but what about across the whole country? In the UK, including the relatively new “doorbell cams” that have become ever more widespread over the past few years, there are around six million cameras keeping an eye on us. There are even more in the United States and plenty all over Europe, not to mention China.
For some people here in the UK, six million cameras is a disturbing figure, conjuring up old Orwellian paranoias that “Big Brother is watching you.” The truth is that the vast majority of the footage captured on camera in the UK is never watched at all. Unless an incident has occurred that might warrant a householder, a business owner or a police officer trawling through hours of recordings, most camera footage is simply stored for a while and then deleted.
If officers can get their hands on them before they’re wiped, video recordings can be incredibly useful to the police in establishing exactly what happened at a crime scene or tracking suspects and their vehicles. Police officers use camera images on a daily basis. Not everyone, however, is keen to share their video with the authorities and, in many cases, those running businesses with security cameras don’t even know how to retrieve the footage. If you own a shoe shop, after all, you can be expected to know all about shoes, but maybe not so much about video technology. You can be fairly sure, therefore, that, most of the time, absolutely no brother, big or little, is watching you. On the other hand, if you were to get yourself caught up in any dodgy dealings in Carsely, Mircester or any other part of Agatha Raisin’s stomping ground in the Cotswolds, you can bet your burglar’s balaclava that Agatha will be watching.
For a private detective like Agatha, a strong grasp of how useful tech works is a necessity. When M. C. Beaton—Marion—first sat me down to talk to me about Agatha and the other characters in her books, she was able to describe Agatha’s approach to gadgets in no uncertain terms, mainly because, as in so many things, Agatha’s attitude was very similar to her own. She explained that Agatha might, at first, be suspicious of something new but, whether it be a new TV remote, a new phone, a new computer, a new iPad or a new camera, Agatha would doggedly stick at it until she had mastered the thing. She would never allow the youngsters on her staff to think that she couldn’t keep up, even if it practically drove her doolally trying to do so.
Cameras, of course, in all their forms, are an essential tool of the investigator’s trade. Agatha almost came a cropper once while up a ladder at a bedroom window trying to take a picture of a philandering husband with his mistress, so she’s well aware of how vital photographic evidence can be. In Killing Time, it’s fair to say, she and her team make good use of security cameras at home in Carsely, in Mircester and even in London, just as any investigator in the real world would want to do. Photographs and video images can provide cast-iron evidence and make or break an alibi, but, for Agatha, things that remain unseen on the video screen become paramount. Her understanding of the tech helps to keep her ahead of the game.
Real-world places often sneak into Agatha’s world and that was always an entirely deliberate ploy on Marion’s part. She was happy to send Agatha off to distant lands, generally to some of Marion’s own favourite places—France, Cyprus, Turkey or even South America—but always stressed that Agatha had to come home to the Cotswolds because the area is one of the book’s main characters, and the most important elements of the story should unfold there. Some rules, as Agatha points out towards the end of Killing Time, are there to be broken and Marion certainly wasn’t averse to doing so. In this book Agatha’s foreign jaunt gives her a major headache but also a little respite just when she looks like she might be overwhelmed by events. Where better to recharge your batteries than in the loveliest area of a beautiful Mediterranean island? Agatha ends up in Pollensa in Mallorca (yes, it is one of my favourite places) but, don’t worry, she’s back home in the thick of things before long.
The real world and real places may always have a part to play, but in Killing Time, Agatha also delves into a real-life mystery. The Campden Wonder is the story of the strange disappearance of William Harrison in 1660. For those of you who may be reading this before having read the book, I won’t go into Harrison’s tale here save to say that people have been puzzling over it for the best part of four centuries. The version outlined here is really just the bare bones of the story. If you want to find out more about it, the Campden & District Historical & Archaeological Society published a very informative booklet written by Jill Wilson, Mr. Harrison Is Missing, which is well worth a read. There are also masses about the whole mystery online, as you would expect. One thing I wasn’t able to find was a theory anything like Agatha’s, although that doesn’t mean it’s not already out there somewhere!
I hope you enjoy Agatha’s latest adventure and meeting up with all our old Cotswold friends for another bout of murder and mayhem!
R.W. Green, 2024