The Christie Affair (15 page)

‘Yes, Mrs Marston.’

The woman, Mrs Marston, turned to me. She was about Agatha’s age – perhaps a year or two older – with a round, jolly face. Roses in her cheeks. ‘We’re on our honeymoon, Mr Marston and I,’ she told me, looking right into my face without – I suspected – really registering me. ‘Have to keep our energy up, you know!’

Mrs Leech and I exchanged a quick glance to share our aversion to thinking further on that matter.

Morning came quickly and I knew I couldn’t stay in my room forever, so I headed down to breakfast. The Bellefort was a comfortable establishment but not a particularly posh one. It wouldn’t have done for a setting in one of Agatha’s novels. But
E. M. Forster would have liked it – the chairs comfortable to sink into but worn about the arms. I made my way to the dining room, took a seat and asked the grandmotherly waitress for extra cream.

‘Mind if I join you?’ an American girl asked.

I looked up. She was my age or thereabouts, with bobbed blonde hair and an intent, intelligent face. There were other seats available at empty tables but instead of pointing this out I nodded. She sat across from me and smiled.

‘My name’s Lizzie Clarke,’ she said, louder than was necessary, typical American. ‘I’m here with my husband. He’s still asleep, the slugabed. The hot waters are knocking it right out of him.’ She laughed, again too loudly.

I glanced around the room to see if the other diners seemed bothered. Lizzie took this as a request to fill me in on our fellow guests. She pointed out a fantastically pretty woman, young enough to have been a child during the war, with hair so blonde it was nearly white.

‘Her name’s Mrs Race,’ Lizzie said.

Mrs Race sat alone, staring out the window forlornly.

‘How pretty she is,’ I said, warmly enough for Lizzie herself to take it as a compliment. ‘She can’t be here on her own. Can she?’

‘Oh no. She’s got a husband with her. They’re on honeymoon.’

‘I met another woman here on honeymoon.’

‘Yes,’ Lizzie said. ‘I’ve met that one too. Much more pleased about it than the one over there.’

I glanced again at the young bride. The poor thing’s lower lip trembled.

Lizzie said, ‘She and her new husband seem to do nothing but
argue. So the old honeymooners are jolly, and the young ones are not. Pity anyone shouldn’t be jolly on their honeymoon. Isn’t it?’

I smiled. ‘You like people-watching, do you?’

‘It’s my favourite hobby,’ Lizzie admitted, with a self-deprecating laugh that made me feel fond of her.

Who should enter just then but the older honeymooners, Mr and Mrs Marston. They sat on the far side of the dining room and I indulged in a bit of people-watching myself. Mrs Marston had dark hair, just a few strands of grey and a broad, ample back. I stared over her shoulder, directly at her husband. Mr Marston was a jowly, red-faced fellow who didn’t seem to notice me, he had eyes only for his new wife. How sweet.

‘Say,’ Lizzie said, when we’d finished eating, ‘are you heading to the baths? Would you like a walk before? We could get good and chilly so the hot water will feel that much better.’

Lizzie was already on her feet. I pushed my chair back. We left the dining room together, then went to our rooms to collect warm clothes before meeting outside to venture down the frigid road, cold grey skies settling in around us. It was a good idea to get ourselves nice and cold before a soak back at the Bellefort Hotel, and cold we would get, despite our coats, hat and gloves.

‘What’s your husband like?’ I asked as we walked. If she could be direct, so could I.

‘He’s lovely,’ she said. ‘I recommend American men. They’re different from British. More emotional and expressive.’ Away from the gaze of our fellow guests she slipped her arm through mine as if we were old friends.

‘It’s nice,’ I said, ‘that you speak so kindly of him. Not all women do, of their husbands. They complain about them and
malign them, and then they’re surprised when they run off with someone else.’

Lizzie laughed. She stopped and lit a cigarette, shading the flame of her match with gloved hands. ‘If the husband deserves his wife’s complaints, the person he runs off with will complain about him one day. Probably about the very same things. True?’

I patted my hat back into place. I’d taken pains to look respectable and put together. A proper married lady on holiday. Composed, running away from nothing, simply taking a little time for myself.

Lizzie’s gaze turned away from me, focused down the road. A young man came into view, walking towards us. He was tall, with a graceful step. Even at this distance, more than a hundred feet, he was clearly fixated, coming directly towards us as if he had something urgent to relay.

‘He doesn’t look quite right,’ Lizzie murmured.

I didn’t look at her, but remained focused on the man. My impression was precisely the opposite to Lizzie’s. He looked quite right to me. Almost nothing in my life required the sudden control and presence of mind to keep my voice neutral when I spoke. ‘Funnily enough, I happen to know him. Would you mind excusing us a moment?’

‘Not at all.’ She gave a pretty little shiver. ‘I’m about ready for some hot water. Perhaps I’ll see you in the baths?’

‘Perhaps.’ But I had already started moving in the opposite direction.

‘Remember not to trust strangers too quickly.’

‘Thank you.’ I spoke without looking back at her. ‘Thank you for the reminder.’

My feet moved swiftly, like they used to when I was young.
Carrying me towards the man. It was like hurrying towards the best part of the past. A shift had occurred in the atmosphere. Skies opening up to bestow a gift when I least deserved one.

He wore an Aran jumper and a pea coat, open and unbuttoned, despite the cold. Black hair fell across his brow. The smile had been stamped out of his eyes, but they were still the loveliest layered blue. My heels were chunky, fine for walking, but ill-suited to the run I couldn’t help but break into. I couldn’t get to him fast enough. My coat blew open, too. If I ran into his arms, I knew he would pick me up and spin me around, but for some reason I stopped just short of them. Looking at him, making sure this was real, felt more important than embracing him.

‘Finbarr,’ I said. ‘Upon my word.’

‘Hello, Nan.’ He reached out and took my hand. Brought my palm to his lips, three beats of a kiss. ‘I’ve missed you.’

In Berkshire and Surrey, they searched as though for a dead woman. The Silent Pool, the brush, ditches. Hounds bayed, noses to the ground. If Agatha Christie were found near her home, it would be because she’d died there, by her own hand or someone else’s.

Elsewhere in England authorities searched for a live person in hiding. There were police officers from Land’s End to Cold Stream, showing Agatha’s photograph to hotel guests and proprietors.
Have you seen this lady?
Chilton was one of many going through these motions. He’d been charged to search for her, so searching was how he planned to conduct himself. On his arrival the day before, he’d acted an ordinary guest, checking in and eating dinner in the dining room with the sparse assortment of guests. Simon Leech’s wife had ushered him to a table and sat
him opposite a pretty young lady with abundant dark hair whom Mrs Leech introduced as Miss Cornelia Armstrong.

‘Surely you’re not here all on your own,’ Chilton said to Miss Armstrong, before he could stop himself.

Miss Armstrong smiled as if she found his incredulousness a compliment. ‘Why, surely I
am
,’ she said, with no small note of good-natured reproach. ‘It’s 1926, or haven’t you heard? Men went to war at my age. Surely I can manage a spa.’

Chilton smiled, and the proprietor patted the table as if pleased the conversation was off to a rousing start. ‘Be sure to tell all your friends which is the best hotel in Harrogate,’ Mrs Leech trilled, before bustling off with an industrious smile. The rest of Chilton’s evening passed agreeably, as he learned more about suffrage from Miss Armstrong than he had ever known before.

On Monday morning, first thing after breakfast, Chilton caught a ride into town with Mr Leech. Leeds Police Headquarters was much as he’d left it. Lippincott always kept his door open. He waved Chilton into his office.

‘Quite a time to take your retirement, just as the crime of the century’s been committed.’

They laughed, having agreed this was no crime at all. Just a lady with a tiny bit of renown, missing when nothing else was occurring in the world, creating a Silly Season in winter. The papers were going wild. Lippincott gave Chilton some police bulletins and a photograph of Agatha from her publisher, the same one being placed in countless hands across England.

‘If she’s not dead, she’ll be frightfully embarrassed at all this fuss,’ Chilton said. Looking at Agatha’s photograph – wistful and
lovely – he regretted his laughter. It was a stark business, suicide, but he understood that when you had to go, you had to go. Surely she’d had her reasons.

Lippincott revealed his more-cynical-but-less-tragic theory. ‘What she’ll do is sell a lot of books,’ he said. ‘A handful of English readers knew her name on Friday. If she doesn’t turn up by the end of the week, she’ll be a global sensation.’

‘Publicity stunt, you think?’

‘Some sort of stunt. But that’s why I wanted you back, Chilton. I knew you’d treat it like it was real, either way. And we must take it seriously. No one yet knows where this woman’s gone. She might as well be here as anywhere.’

Chilton saluted in agreement, half in jest, but it made them both grim for an instant. They’d seen a lot together, the two of them, when saluting was an everyday business.

‘Look here, though, Chilton,’ Lippincott said. ‘Thanks to my cousin I can put you up at no expense. And I’ve got a police auto for you to use to conduct your searching. You retired too early for us to give you a fancy watch, or anything of that sort. So take this as a bit of a holiday, won’t you? Search for Agatha Christie but take the waters too. Enjoy the hotel. Eat well. Have a massage, for goodness’ sake.’

Chilton could not begin to imagine submitting himself to a massage. ‘Do you know I lived in Yorkshire for seven years and never put so much as a toe in the baths?’

‘Well, then,’ Lippincott said, even though Chilton was sure the same was true for him. Lippincott might wish his dear cousin’s establishment well but was unlikely to ever frequent it. ‘High time.’

For me the cold of the day had disappeared, along with the clear blue sky. All I could see was Finbarr. He put a gentle hand on my elbow and steered me away, looking over his shoulder to see if Lizzie Clarke was still there.

‘You needn’t worry about her,’ I said, but he didn’t seem to hear me. He led me off the road, through a hedgerow, into a stand of silver birch trees.

‘Finbarr,’ I said. When we were young in Ireland this sort of detour might have been playful, testing how game I could be. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I might ask the same of you.’ His raspy, post-war voice sobered me.

‘I’m on holiday. How on earth did you find me?’

‘Never mind that. The important thing is what happens next. You and me, leaving this plot of yours behind, and going home to Ballycotton.’