Agatha Christie Investigates Omnibus

by Alison Joseph

  ‘How’s the restoration going?’ She followed him along the hallway, and he showed her into a wide, light, high-ceilinged room.

  ‘Slowly,’ he said. ‘The vicar keeps coming to see if we’re any further on, but I try to tell him, it’s a long haul, restoration. Can’t risk spoiling it.’

  The room was well-furnished, with chintz armchairs, and occasional tables. And here, too, the family portraits still hung on the walls.

  ‘You’ve done very little here,’ she said. ‘It must be as it was left by the previous owner.’

  He smiled. ‘You mean, I’m living in an old lady’s house.’ He threw a glance around the room. ‘It’ll take time to make it my own,’ he said.

  She paused in front of a portrait. It showed a man in military uniform, a line of medals gleaming on his chest.

  ‘He looks rather appealing,’ she said. ‘Nice smile.’

  ‘Some of the portraits are good. That one feels like a real likeness,’ he said. ‘Not that I’d know. It’s of Sir Wyndham Tapton, the last in the line.’

  ‘Is his grave up on the moor?’

  ‘Oh no. He died out in India, I gather. He had a grand burial out there.’

  There were other portraits, and Agatha was aware of shadowy faces peering down on them her she settled on an armchair.

  ‘Families,’ he said, as if reading her thoughts. ‘Sometimes I think I got off lightly. There was just me. And my dear mother.’

  ‘No father?’

  He shook his head. ‘He died when I was young. I never knew him. My mother moved to London to get work. We managed. Everything I am I owe to her hard work.’ He sat down opposite her. ‘It’s good enough for me.’ He looked around the room. ‘All this history,’ he said. ‘I can carry it lightly, you see. Because it isn’t mine.’

  She smiled, but he looked suddenly, terribly sad. ‘I was so sure Phoebe would join me here,’ he said. ‘We would have transformed this place. New life, a new future …’ He smoothed his hand across his forehead.

  ‘I have been wondering about the cause of her death,’ Agatha said.

  He gave a brief, sad, smile. ‘Ah. The teller of stories. However … there is no mystery, unfortunately, about poor Phoebe. It seems quite clear that she got the wrong side of the younger Miss Wilkins, and that through some terrible chain of events involving access to poison, she took her revenge.’

  ‘It was atropine,’ Agatha said. ‘Whooping cough medicine, they say.’

  He nodded. ‘Mr. Coates brought it himself from London, I gather. Phoebe was so grateful to him, they were all so worried about that little boy. Heaven knows how Miss Wilkins got hold of it. I just wish I’d realized what danger Phoebe was in …’ His voice shook with feeling.

  Agatha hesitated, then said, ‘Mr. Fullerton is convinced she’s innocent.’

  ‘Oh, Mrs. Christie, he’s bound to say that.’ Arthur’s voice was thick with emotion. ‘I would do exactly the same. The man loves her.’ A shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds, catching the edges of the paintings on the walls, glinting against the glass of the cabinets. ‘And, as with all men, he probably never told her how much. Until it was too late.’ He touched his fingers against his eyes. ‘At least Phoebe knew. I console myself with that. That I did at least have the chance to declare my feelings …’

  There was a silence. Agatha was aware of pity for this young man, his hopes and dreams cut short. She wondered what it was like to love like that, with such intensity and passion.

  He had gathered himself. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I should get on. The vicar will want to see progress.’ He got to his feet. ‘Now, that – that’s the real mystery in all this,’ he said. ‘Reverend Collins’s need for money. I’m not convinced it’s all about the church bell. And between you and me, I fear that Mr. Fullerton has something to do with it all as well.’

  She glanced at him. ‘You do?’

  He gave a brief nod. ‘Mr. Fullerton’s mother was in service in this house,’ he said. ‘I’m sure he’s told you, it’s a fact he’s rather keen on. But there’s something odd about it all. His mother was very connected to Sir Wyndham, through the charitable trust he founded in his first wife’s name. He employed Mrs. Fullerton to work with him. And there seems to have been a dispute, a question of inheritance, to do with the adjoining land, you see. The graveyard is across the way there, and then the Wilkins summerhouse, and I gather that there’s some conflict there, some old dispute about boundaries, and promises made and broken …’ He sighed. ‘As I say, Mrs. Christie, I’m just glad that for me it’s all a fresh start.’

  She followed him out to the hall. It was dark, after the spaciousness drawing room, but the sun’s rays fell from the narrow window above the door. They illumined a painting by the stairwell, a portrait in a thick gold frame. It showed a woman, with a mass of pinned-up hair, dark expressive eyes, a pale, floaty dress, a vase of yellow tulips.

  ‘This one is rather good, isn’t it?’ Agatha said.

  He nodded. ‘I think so, yes. The family did know some good painters, clearly.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  His face shadowed. ‘The wife of Sir Wyndham. His first wife.’

  ‘Lady Tapton? But – she’s the one buried up the hill? With her two babies?’

  He nodded, visibly moved.

  ‘A sad story,’ she said.

  He reached up and touched the frame. ‘As I say … families.’

  ‘And that painting?’ She pointed at the one on the opposite wall. It showed a man and a woman, seated on a sunny lawn, next to a stone statue. They were gazing at each other with an air of devotion.

  ‘The same painter, I think. I don’t even know who the couple are, but I like it very much. I like the ironwork of the bench they’re on, look …’ He touched the edge of the frame.

  ‘Are these valuable, these paintings?’ Agatha asked.

  He turned back to her. ‘I can’t trace the painter. If he was known, then maybe. But for all I know, they’re worthless.’

  ‘Unlike the Holbein,’ Agatha said.

  He threw her a look. He hesitated, then said, ‘Between you and me … I think it’s fake.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘It can take a while, with a good fake,’ he said. ‘But there’s something about the inner layers of paint, the brush strokes are too broad for the time, they just don’t feel right. And there’s an over-paint on the background. It just seems too … recent. I’m doing more tests on it.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Agatha said. ‘There goes the new church bell.’

  He gave a thin smile. ‘I haven’t yet mentioned it to him,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to tell him, to be honest. His heart rather set on it, y’know.’

  ‘You can trust me,’ she said.

  His gaze was direct. ‘I know,’ he said.

  She glanced back at the portrait of the couple. It was so romantic, and she wondered how people did that in painting. It was difficult enough in writing, she thought.

  As if to echo her thoughts he said, ‘It’s the problem of the officer class, you see. Trained to keep our feelings in check. And then, when it really matters, when there’s the woman with whom we want to share our life, standing there, so beautiful … and we’re tongue-tied. So much human suffering could be avoided, it seems to me, if only we men could express what we feel.’

  Now if only Inspector Jerome could find it within himself to say something like that, Agatha thought. Instead of pulling up his shabby collar and being tongue-tied. Officer class, she thought, that’s the trouble.

  ‘You put it very well,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you. At least in my work …’ His gaze drifted to the glass doors that led to the studio. ‘At least there I can be honest. It’s all that is left to me now.’

  ‘I should let you get on,’ she said.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Thank you for coming.’

  Agatha walked back down the track. She thought about the painting hanging on the wall, the woman in the pale dre
ss with the vase of flowers. She remembered, suddenly, the words of Mme. Litvinoff: ‘Yellow flowers,’ she’d said. ‘Daffodils … a grave, overgrown with long grass …’

  But then Agatha remembered that in the medium’s vision, the woman had been dressed in black, not a cream silk evening gown.

  The image of Bertha, in her long black dress, stepping through the daffodils, came to Agatha’s mind.

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘I blame the war,’ Mary said, pouring tea into two large pottery cups. ‘It’s made these young people much too romantic.’

  Agatha smiled. ‘Do you think so?’

  Mary passed her one of the cups. It was roughly glazed and very heavy. ‘Cicely insisted I have these. She fired them herself in her new kiln. Terribly proud of them, she is. Not sure I like them, but I didn’t want to be rude. Still, the tea tastes the same. You don’t take sugar, do you?’

  They sat in the sunlight on Mary’s veranda. The rain of the morning had given way to a bright afternoon. Rosalind played on Mary’s lawn with a large box of brightly coloured bricks.

  ‘I have something to show you,’ Agatha said. She bent to her bags and produced the dusty files. She passed one to Mary.

  Mary read the ink writing on the label. ‘But – these are Parish papers …’

  ‘I’ve borrowed them,’ Agatha said. ‘Don’t tell a soul.’

  ‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’ Mary began to leaf through the yellowing papers.

  ‘The old summerhouse …’ Agatha began.

  ‘Here it is.’ Mary pointed at a thick, foolscap sheet of paper. She peered more closely. ‘Of course, you won’t remember, it was before your time, but there was a fuss about whether the land belonged to the Hall. It was all muddled up with the Charity that his first wife set up, and the previous vicar was involved with it too. It came to nothing, of course.’ She handed the page back to Agatha. ‘How odd. It must belong to that poor younger sister now. What else did you find?’

  ‘I found much of interest.’ Agatha placed the page carefully back in the file. ‘I found that Bertha’s sister Sarah died of a fever, two years ago, at the age of thirty-nine. Bertha herself was thirty-two at the time. I also found the baptism records for a baby, that Bertha gave birth to at the end of last year, and which died a week later. She’s buried up in the graveyard, near Bertha’s sister. They named her Emily. I also found a marriage certificate. Look.’ She opened another of the box files and pulled out a paper which she handed to Mary.

  ‘Bertha Wilkins. Married –’ Mary stared harder at the page, put her hand over her mouth. She looked up at Agatha. ‘Clifford Fullerton? Last August?’

  ‘The pregnancy wouldn’t have showed.’

  ‘His baby?’

  Agatha took the certificate back. ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘Why is it secret?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I mean,’ Mary went on, ‘why on earth didn’t he tell anyone? Is he ashamed?’

  ‘Or is she ashamed?’ Agatha said.

  ‘And if so, what of?’ Mary shook her head. ‘It’s all very exciting. It’s just like one of your books, Agatha.’

  Agatha gazed out across the lawn. She could see her daughter, her pink dress against the fresh green of the grass, her curls golden in the sunlight. ‘Oh Mary,’ she said. ‘If only it were.’

  Mary looked at her friend. After a moment, she said, quietly, ‘You mean it’s not a game.’

  Agatha nodded. ‘All this is too real. Two deaths, two tragedies, and so many other people’s lives affected too …’ The image appeared to her, of Arthur’s tearful face. ‘Real life, you see, it has no resolution.’ She gave a brief smile. ‘I rather wish I had Sylvia Ettridge’s approach. She seems to think the whole thing is a huge lark. She keeps leaving me notes offering to help with “my investigation” – as if that’s what I’m doing. What I want to do, is just go back to my study and get on with my writing.’

  ‘Quite. As you say, it’s not a game. However …’ Mary placed her cup on the tray. ‘There is one similarity between the way you are in your work, and the circumstances in which you find yourself now. Which is, that you believe Bertha did not poison those two unfortunate young people. And that you need to find out who did.’

  Agatha gazed at her friend. ‘Mary – how do I do that?’

  ‘You behave like one of your detectives.’

  ‘But Inspector Jerome is just plain hopeless –’

  ‘Well another one, then. Imagine a woman more like you. Older, perhaps. But bright as a button. A quiet intelligence – like you, in fact. What would she do?’

  Agatha considered this, her head on one side. Then she smiled. ‘Mary – you’re right. A woman detective. Certainly older than me. And as you say, sharp as anything.’

  ‘She’d stop at nothing. She’d just take action.’

  ‘She would. She’d go straight to Clifford and say, why were you lying?’

  ‘Actually,’ Mary looked at Agatha, ‘she might not. She might make sure she had all the information she needed first, before she challenged anyone at all.’

  They both looked up, as Rosalind ran towards her mother. She was clutching a bunch of daisies, crushed in her tiny fingers, and she handed them to her mother, laughing.

  Agatha held her child in her arms, her lips against the soft curls.

  ‘The vicar,’ Mary said. ‘Start with the vicar. That’s what our lady detective would do.’

  *

  It was some time later when Agatha knocked at the vicarage door. She’d toured Mary’s garden, admired the begonias, looked at the new strawberry patch – ‘I wouldn’t go too near, the whole thing is an ants nest, it turns out…’ She’d greeted Ernest, returning from his game of golf, and then taken her leave, returning Rosalind to Sefton at the house.

  And now it was evening, and her hand was on the vicarage door.

  The door was opened by Reverend Collins.

  ‘Oh. Mrs. Christie.’ He stood, unmoving on his doorstep.

  ‘I’m so sorry to bother you,’ she began.

  ‘Only just finished Evensong,’ he said. ‘Hardly any takers either. I blame the weather.’ He stood aside, somewhat reluctantly, she felt. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’ he added, also reluctantly.

  ‘Reverend Collins,’ she said. ‘I’d like to know what exactly connects Clifford Fullerton with Hainault Hall.’

  He studied her, standing one step above her, looking down at her. Then, as if weary of it all, he stood aside to let her in.

  *

  ‘It’s all rather a mess, between you and me.’

  Five minutes later they were sitting in his study, on crimson leather chairs. The room was rather narrow and stuffy, and lined with old books.

  ‘It’s all about Mr. Fullerton’s mother, Moira. A good woman, she was, Mrs. Christie. The ensuing misunderstanding is not to be laid at her door, oh goodness me no …’

  ‘I gather the charitable foundation is concerned with the East End of London.’

  He nodded. ‘Exactly that, Mrs. Christie. Moira Fullerton worked for Sir Wyndham in the old days of the Hall. She was there when his wife died, and they were both greatly affected by it. After that she helped him set up the Charitable Trust in his wife’s name.’

  ‘And why is Mr. Fullerton now so involved?’

  The vicar gave a heavy sigh. The light in the room was fading with the evening. ‘When Sir Wyndham married again, Mrs. Fullerton was, shall we say, no longer welcome at the Hall. She felt betrayed. There was talk of a promise having been made to her, because Sir Wyndham was extremely grateful to her.’

  ‘A promise of land?’

  He nodded. ‘It’s my belief that Sir Wyndham sincerely thought that the Wilkins land that abuts the graveyard was his to offer, and that he’d offered it to Mrs. Fullerton, who was herself widowed by then, in gratitude for all her hard work. Also, shall we say, in compensation, as his new wife was less than welcoming to Mrs. Fullerton. Now, in fact, Moira Fullerton was a good-h
earted woman, and made very little of all this, so when it turned out that the land belonged to the Misses Wilkins, she seemed unperturbed. But Mr. Fullerton has reawakened this old wound, it seems, in the light of this dreadful business here …’ His gaze travelled to the door, as if sensing the shadows of the library beyond.

  ‘He is convinced that Miss Wilkins is innocent.’

  The vicar glanced up at her. He nodded.

  ‘And I have to say,’ she went on, ‘I rather share his feelings. She doesn’t seem like a murderess to me.’

  ‘Where human nature is concerned, we can never tell, Mrs. Christie.’

  ‘And is Mr. Fullerton still involved with the charity?’ she asked.

  ‘A little, yes. I’m not quite sure what he does, but it seems he knows the women who run the clinic in the East End there.’

  ‘And it’s through him that Robert came here?’

  Again, a nod. ‘I gather so. Certainly, his godmother, Mrs. Ettridge, put in a word for him, once it was being discussed. But I gather the initial suggestion came from Mr. Fullerton. Robert was working in the Chaplaincy at the hospital there. I have to say, I’m warming to him. He’s quiet, Robert, but very hard-working, and sincere in his faith, which is rather rare in the young these days.’

  ‘And he found you Miss Holgate too?’

  ‘The same way, yes. Through the school there, the Providence Chapel school. And again, another very good appointment. Although …’ he hesitated. ‘It’s a question of Parish Funds,’ he said.

  ‘Dwindling attendance,’ Agatha agreed, feeling slightly awkward.

  ‘I mean, my staff costs are mostly covered. But the fabric of the buildings all need work. And that bell of ours is not going to last much longer. I’d hate it to be silenced. Dear Mr. Sutton has been so very helpful, when he came to me about the Holbein, so very persuasive about it being genuine, it would really solve all our problems if he turned out to be right.’ He got to his feet. ‘And now, I really must get on.’