The Christie Affair (32 page)

Dorothy Sayers, who fancied herself a medium as well as a novelist, had come to the Silent Pool and claimed to sense Agatha’s absence from the region. Now
that
was a publicity stunt, atrocious woman, hopping on the coat tails of the sort of infamy tailor made to sell detective novels by the bushel. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had phoned to deliver the sad news that he’d consulted a psychic who’d assured him Agatha no longer inhabited our mortal realm. ‘We’re working on direct word from her,’ Conan Doyle had said, and Archie rang off without a word, Order of the British Empire be damned. Oh, it was all nonsense, this idea that spirits could communicate what hundreds of living men could not find with their own hands and eyes.

Still, when Archie reached his mother’s house, he switched
off the ignition and leaned his cheek against the glass of the driver’s side window. He closed his eyes and tried to sense whether or not Agatha was gone from this world. Can a man live with a woman for so many years, sleep beside her so many nights, without the molecules in his body palpably rearranging themselves in the event of her death? He forgot they had ever separated, in body or affection. He forgot
divorce
was a word that existed in the English language.

She’s alive, he thought. I know she is.

Agatha was shy and lovely and thoughtful and proper. Agatha was considerate. Agatha would be horrified, knowing what a fuss had risen, all in her name. She couldn’t possibly be alive and avoid seeing a newspaper. And she couldn’t possibly see a newspaper and not come rushing home.

Yet she
was
alive. She had to be.

‘I
never
wanted you to marry that woman, did I?’

Peg Helmsley, as she made this grand understatement, held out her silver-handled cane and thrust it in the air towards him, like a sword. Years ago, when Archie had first given his mother the news of his engagement, Peg had forbid it absolutely. He was nothing but a young subaltern and couldn’t expect a penny from her. What’s more, she’d disapproved of Agatha’s Peter Pan collars. Showing off her neck! Peg was from a strict Irish Catholic family, one of twelve children. The bare-necked Agatha, who’d already been engaged once before, might as well have been a chorus girl. When they’d gone ahead and married, despite her objections, Peg had burst into tears and had taken to her bed for days.

‘You can hardly blame this on Agatha,’ Archie said. Part of
him did blame Agatha. If only she’d handled his affair with a stiff upper lip, like she was raised to do. Then all he’d be contending with, as far as his mother was concerned, was the unavoidably violent reaction she’d have upon discovering Nan.

Peg lowered her cane. Her second husband, William, was off on a walk. It was just the two of them, Archie and her, the perfect time for a confession. She stepped close to her son and closed her hand in his lapel.

‘You haven’t done something dreadful, have you, Archie?’

‘Good God, Mother. Of course I haven’t.’ He stepped back so sharply the old woman lurched forward unsteadily. Archie took his mother by the elbows and helped her into a chair.

‘I’ve had to stop William bringing in the papers,’ Peg said, with an indignant thump of her cane. ‘A person could have a stroke, couldn’t she, reading about her own family in the papers. It’s a humiliation, is what it is. Oh, if Agatha isn’t dead, I will be so cross with her.’

Archie sank onto the settee across from her. He would have nodded in agreement if it hadn’t hit him so hard, his own mother believing he could kill his wife. But then his answer,
Of course I haven’t
, wasn’t precisely true. He
had
done something dreadful to Agatha, and that had spurred her going missing. He remembered the marks on her wrists and his callousness towards them. The one and only thing he hadn’t done to his wife, at this point, was murder.

At home in the evening, Archie smoked his pipe and poured whisky after whisky until sentimentality overtook him. He climbed the stairs to Teddy’s room, where she lay sleeping with deep, untroubled breath. It was the first he’d seen of her all day
– perhaps several days – the two of them rattling in different corners of the house, her caretaking not Archie’s duty. He sat down on the bed. Peter lay beside her. Archie would have stroked Teddy’s brow but he didn’t want to wake her, so instead he picked up the stuffed rabbit Agatha had given her and sobbed into the velvety fur.

Teddy lay there, eyes closed shut so he wouldn’t know she was awake. It made her uncomfortable, having Archie there. Hearing him cry, for goodness’ sake; fathers weren’t meant to cry.

Not that she felt afraid of him. She didn’t feel afraid of anyone. Thanks to the life Agatha and Archie gave her, Teddy never did find out what men can be.

Back to morning:

It rained in Harrogate, too, pelting the windows of the Timeless Manor. After breakfast, Finbarr, Agatha and I walked upstairs, Agatha continuing on to the top floor to write. I wanted to return to the bedroom but Finbarr shook his head. ‘They’ll worry about you at the hotel. Best not to draw too much attention. Unless you’d rather leave England with me today?’

‘Of course that’s what I’d rather do,’ I said in a tone that indicated clearly it’s not what I
would
do.

He drove me back to the hotel in Miss Oliver’s Bentley. When I walked into the lobby, Mrs Leech proved him right by saying, ‘There you are, Mrs O’Dea. We were almost ready to set the hounds out after you.’

‘So sorry,’ I said. ‘I do love walking in your beautiful countryside.’

‘In this weather? That’ll be the death of you. Why don’t you book a treatment, Mrs O’Dea?’

I promised I might later and she sent me into the dining room. Breakfast had passed but there were tea and scones on the sideboard. I wasn’t particularly hungry but I sat myself down, staring out of the long windows. My whole body thrummed with Finbarr. I sipped my tea, gone a little cold.

‘Mrs O’Dea. May I join you?’

It was Chilton, rumpled and handsome and blurred about the edges. I hadn’t heard him come in – more like a ghost than a man.

‘You’re something of a prowler, aren’t you?’ I said.

‘Not at all.’ He sat down, though I hadn’t said yes. ‘Mrs Leech tells me you extended your stay.’

‘Did she? How indiscreet of her.’

‘She was worried about you. And apparently I’m the expert on missing women.’

Chilton had this way about him that made everything he said sound like a musing rather than a pronouncement. An interior loveliness, a willingness to question himself, apparent on his exterior. I expected I would feel fond of him right up to the moment he clapped my wrists in handcuffs. Perhaps even afterwards. Mr Chilton was not the sort of man one blamed. He was swept up by the world like the rest of us, doing his best to muddle through it. He was so entirely unthreatening to me that I couldn’t have been taken more off guard when he said, ‘I’ve been to the coroner.’

‘Have you?’

‘Yes. Poor Mr and Mrs Marston. I never got the chance to meet them properly. Did you?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Frightful business. You hear of it often, don’t you? One half of a married couple dies, and the other follows for grief. Would you excuse me, Mr Chilton? I think I’d like to lie down a while.’

I stood and pushed back my chair, too abruptly. It scraped horribly. Behind my throbbing temple, the beginnings of a headache. One couldn’t function on so little sleep.

‘Goodnight, Mr Chilton,’ I said, and then amended it to, ‘Good morning.’

Chilton watched me leave, thoughtful. He lit a cigarette. He picked up the uneaten scone I’d abandoned and took a bite. Disappointed, somehow, that I didn’t seem to know he’d been at the manor last night. Did he imagine Agatha and me, gossiping about their kiss like schoolgirls?

The rain let up. He touched his lips and stood to leave the dining room. He thought to get some sleep but changed his mind and walked to the Harrogate library. It was a small and cosy building, overseen by a white-haired librarian who greeted Chilton as he entered. He asked her if she knew offhand whether they had any books by Agatha Christie.

‘All checked out,’ the librarian said. Her name was Miss Barnard. She held up the daily paper and showed him a picture of Agatha, with a wide-eyed little girl sitting in her lap. ‘Quite an interest in that lady these days. What with her tragic disappearance.’

Miss Barnard pointed him towards a table stacked with an array of new novels. Chilton looked through them, thinking he’d try to find something more to my liking than the Willy novel he’d seen me take from the shelves at the Bellefort. He could tell I’d chosen the book without enthusiasm, and believed it would behove him to make friends with me despite my resistance. After some perusal he landed upon
The Silver Spoon
, John Galsworthy’s latest instalment of
The Forsyte Saga
. As he tucked
the novel under his good arm, his eyes landed upon a woman, sitting at a table in the next room, a stack of books in front of her, studying the open one intently: Mrs Agatha Christie. For the outing she had changed into her own clothes, skirt and stockings. They were much the worse for wear, wrinkled and muddied about the hem, making her appearance almost as conspicuous as if she’d been wearing her man’s clothes.

Chilton crossed into the alcove on swift feet. She was so engrossed that it took her a moment to look up at him.

‘Why, Mr Chilton,’ she said, and turned wonderfully, beautifully red. As if surprised by the way her face warmed, she touched her cheek, then removed her hand quickly, further embarrassed at being so transparent.

‘Please,’ he said. ‘Call me Frank.’

With no spoken agreement, the two stood. Agatha put on a long woollen coat, rather the wrong size for her, too wide and too short. Chilton helped her to gather up her stack of books and they went together to the desk. Chilton started with surprise to hear Agatha give her name as Mrs O’Dea.

Miss Barnard looked up with a smile. Then something in her face changed. ‘My goodness,’ she said. ‘You look just like the missing authoress. The one he was asking after.’ She pointed to Chilton, then turned the newspaper towards them, again showing the picture.

This was Chilton’s fault. He should have warned her, kept her from showing herself to the librarian. He watched as Agatha brought her hands to her pearl necklace, paling almost as dramatically as she had coloured earlier. By way of coming to her rescue, he put his arm around her shoulders. ‘Darling, there is a bit of a resemblance, isn’t there?’ To the librarian he said, ‘My wife hates being told she looks like anyone else. Wants to be an original.’