The Christie Affair (19 page)

Chilton was downstairs using the telephone to call Lippincott. He heard the scream but, muffled as it was, did not pay it particular notice. Perhaps one of the ladies had come upon a spider.

‘Will you be sparing a man to investigate?’ he asked Lippincott, referring to Mr Marston’s death.

‘There’s no man to spare, that’s why you’re here in the first place. Probably nothing to it. A heart attack, is my guess.’

Of course, this was likely right. Why would anyone want to harm the old Irishman?

Just as Chilton rang off, Mrs Leech came rushing down the stairs, looking most discombobulated.

‘Mrs Leech?’

She held up her hand, too weepy to answer, and rushed to the kitchen where her husband was overseeing breakfast preparations. After a moment, the doctor came downstairs, no more fully dressed than he’d been the previous night, sweat gathered
on his brow despite the season. Chilton gave him a handkerchief. The two had chatted last night while they shared a cigarette and waited for the coroner to collect poor Mr Marston, and had already established battles in common.

The doctor mopped his brow. ‘Damn it all,’ he said. ‘I’m supposed to be on holiday.’

‘What’s happened now?’ Chilton asked.

‘Another death. The wife. Mrs Marston. What a honeymoon they’re having, eh?’

‘Gads. Well. Perhaps now they’re having the ultimate honeymoon. Reunited in the hereafter.’ Chilton didn’t believe this for a moment but he had an inkling the Marstons would have liked the idea. They had that look about them, a smug religiosity, like happiness was owed, in this life and whatever followed. He hadn’t had a chance to chat with Marston before the old man keeled over, but even though plenty of older men had signed up to do their bit, Chilton could tell Marston hadn’t been one of them.

Because jocularity could be soothing under the most dire circumstances, Chilton thought about saying something such as,
Who’d you think would want to off that pair?
Certainly the odds of the first death being suspicious was elevated now the man’s wife was dead.

‘Any ideas about the cause?’

‘Not a mark on her, at least at a glance, nor anything else disturbed. Young for it to be heart failure, though she’d certainly had a shock.’

‘Did she take anything? Last night?’

The doctor bristled. ‘I gave her a simple sleeping draught. Perfectly harmless.’

‘Of course,’ Chilton said. ‘Damn shame.’

‘Indeed. I might be cutting this holiday short. Hardly seems right. Or restful, for that matter.’

Chilton nodded and took his leave. He felt a little guilty for having disliked the Marstons at first sight. For now he’d take care of his primary order of business, searching for Agatha Christie. He’d canvas the hotels, keep an eye out on the roads. Carefully doing his duty.

After the unfortunate ruckus I skipped breakfast, instead bundling up in my warmest clothes. As I passed the front desk, Mrs Leech greeted me with frantic cheer. ‘Off for a walk, are you? Lovely day for it, cold air will do you good. Terrible about the Marstons, him dying of a heart attack and her of a broken heart.’

‘Has the coroner made his conclusions already?’

‘Well, then, what else could it be? So sad, so sad, but could have happened anywhere! Nothing to do with us!’

I gathered more than one guest had already checked out, the hot baths not seeming much of a cure in the wake of two sudden deaths: the last thing their hotel needed.

Walking down the dusty road, I thought of my conversation with Ursula Owen at Godalming on the night of Agatha’s disappearance, about Lucid Dreaming. And how Lucid Living would be a lovely corollary. As a girl, I’d had that very ability – to think of Finbarr and suddenly he’d appear. On this day in Harrogate, for the first time since the Armistice celebration, I knew I’d regained the power. Nothing else supernatural was afoot. I felt confident the ghosts of the Marstons were well and truly departed. But I knew that if I walked in the same direction Lizzie and I had done yesterday, Finbarr would appear.

Sure enough, when I rounded the corner I’d envisioned, there
he was: hands in his pockets, breath gusting out before him, cheeks rosy. This time I didn’t run to him but walked, and kept walking, as he held out his arms, straight into them.

‘Are you all right?’ I asked. ‘Are you eating? Sleeping?’

‘Yes,’ he said into my ear. His hand at my back was steady, no tremor. ‘Are you?’

‘Me?’ I pulled away from him. ‘I’m staying in a hotel. Luxury. Food. Roof and hearth fires. Where are you staying?’

‘Where there’s a roof and a hearth. You’re not to worry about us, Nan.’

‘Us?’

Someone walked over my grave.
I had the most illogical, most glorious vision: Finbarr beside a wide hearth with a crackling fire, holding our child in his lap.

Chilton drove over rutted roads in the car Lippincott had provided. He slowed down as he passed a couple – young, if not tenderly so, the man old enough to have been in the war and with the look of someone who had been (Chilton could tell at a glance from almost any distance). Sometimes, it seemed he himself still lived in the tunnels at Arras, under the shaking ceilings; with the rubble falling and the claustrophobia – and the knowledge that if you followed your instinct and broke free, you’d find yourself in an onslaught of enemy fire. Then you’d find yourself dead, riddled with machine-gun bullets. If only Chilton had known at the time how he’d come to long for that outcome.

This young man must still want to be alive, judging by the way he held the girl by the elbows – with such fervour Chilton slowed down to make sure the embrace was a willing one. Both
were so caught up in each other’s faces that they didn’t seem to notice the car, or Chilton’s scrutiny. The girl was small and dark haired, her face so full of emotion that she might not be British. French, perhaps. Whatever her nationality, it was clear she wasn’t in peril – at least from the fellow who held on to her. From her own emotions, well, that was another matter.

Chilton changed gears and motored on, the girl’s face still in his mind. He had met her. Yes, she was staying at the Bellefort Hotel; he’d shown her the picture of Agatha Christie and she’d examined it dutifully. No wonder he hadn’t immediately recognized her. She had seemed perfectly contained in that moment – a good English lady after all.
Mrs
O’Dea, she’d said. The young man wasn’t her husband, and he wasn’t a guest at the hotel, he was sure of both. What secret lives people did lead.

Chilton’s reveries took him on one wrong turn, then another, down a particularly dim country road. He pulled over to take out the map Mrs Leech had given him. As he turned off the motor, he noticed a house, shut up for winter, the windows boarded, but with smoke rising from the chimney in a steady swirl. He stepped out of the car. The air smelled like firewood and mulched leaves. As he got closer to the house he saw there was an automobile parked beside it. Somebody had meant to hide it, from the looks of the way it was left towards the back, with low elm branches obscuring it from the road. Dragged there, not grown. The car was large and black. Chilton couldn’t tell the make of it, he wasn’t much for cars. The front stoop of the house was caked with frozen dust. No footprints. Chilton put his ear to the door, which was made of thick wood – a modest but well-built country house, sturdy and generous with space and materials. Lovely gables. From inside he heard a clattering. It took a moment to identify it as typewriter keys. A cheerful, industrious sound,
clackety clack clack clack. He used the heavy brass knocker and felt almost sorry when the noise abruptly stopped, followed by irritated footsteps. He stepped back as the door flung open.

The woman was on the tall side, with red hair and lively eyes. Her face rearranged itself the moment she saw him, from expectation to dismay to the kind of courteous mask people use to protect themselves from the truth. She wore a man’s clothes: trousers and a thick jumper over a collared shirt. Then, just barely visible, pearls.

‘How do you do,’ she said, in smooth, posh tones. Her hair fell to her shoulders in loose waves. She brushed both sides self-consciously behind her ears, then held out a hand as if he’d been invited for tea.

Chilton took her hand. She was prettier than the picture he’d left on the passenger seat of the automobile. Fairer and more youthful, with the kind of movement in her face – even as she tried to appear unmovable – that no picture can properly capture. Eyes not dark, as they’d seemed, but bright blue, flecked with green. At the same time, unmistakably the same woman.

‘Mrs Agatha Christie,’ Chilton said. ‘My goodness. We’ve been looking for you.’

Part Two

The Disappearance

Day One
Saturday, 4 December 1926

A
GATHA DROVE AWAY
from Styles just past midnight, hardly caring if she ever saw it again. The house was unlucky, she’d felt it from the first day she’d set foot inside. Archie had been the one who’d wanted to buy it, so he could be nearer to his golf club. Damn golf. Damn Archie. Clearly there was no reasoning with him. Perhaps she’d have better luck with me.

She had left the house earlier at 9.45 p.m. for a short while. The reports were correct on that account. Agatha headed out, driving for a while to clear her mind, then she turned round and came home, letting herself inside while the household slept. The house felt dark and quiet and empty. Bad luck clung to the ceilings like billows of smoke. Her skin was too small to contain the rage and sorrow and anxiety, she wanted to claw at herself to escape it. She wanted to burst, splattering herself and all her misery over the walls. She yanked off her wedding ring and threw it as hard as she could at the wall, so that it dinged the paint and then fell to the floor, spinning several times before wobbling to rest. Let it be swept up with the dust tomorrow.

It wouldn’t do. It couldn’t be borne. If she were a drinker, she would have polished off a bottle of something, but she wasn’t, so
she gathered up her typewriter and some things to carry her over for a few days. She would go to Ashfield to get her mind straight. But once she had loaded her things into the car and climbed behind the wheel, she changed her mind. She would not politely allow that monstrous little hussy to upend her life entirely. Not without a fight. Instead of slinking away to her childhood home to brood she would drive directly to Godalming and march into the Owens’ cottage and cause an unbearable scene. So what if it was past midnight? So what if she woke every last person in the house? It wouldn’t endear her to Archie but what did that matter? She’d already thrown herself on his mercy and found he had none. But his mistress might be a different story.

Agatha regretted the genteel approach she’d taken with me on the pavement in front of Simpson’s. Now she imagined grabbing me by the shoulders, perhaps with a measured shake, and demanding I give up her husband. If that didn’t work, she’d fall to her knees and beg. She’d let all the anguish pour out, visible and audible. ‘
Angoisse
,’ her mother would have said; she’d liked to use French when discussing emotion, on the rare occasions she determined emotion must be discussed. But Agatha would not allow any mollifying translation. Imagining it, she thought, Nan might take pity. The girl was a slut, not a monster.