‘Your Butler story,’ she corrected him.
‘I sneaked into Finch’s office, trawled through his papers. All very disappointing. He really is just a butler. He’s worked here for years, apart from war service. A brave soldier, mentioned in dispatches. Before that he was in a hotel in Fowey. Not a Bolshevik hair on his head.’ He sighed. ‘And, in any case, he was nowhere near the tennis courts at the moment of the murder. He is entirely accounted for, so the police say, tucked away in the kitchen, firing up the ovens, young Hughes at his side. So, Mrs. Christie. Here we are. Not a game at all. Just ordinary life. Just messy, disordered, meaningless …’
He was shadowed, edgy. She could see Mrs. Winters and the others leaving the dining room, but he showed no sign of joining them.
‘Mr. Farrar,’ she began.
‘Quentin Fitzwilliam,’ he said. He met her eyes. ‘Is that what you wanted to ask me?’
‘If you want to tell me,’ she said.
He was drumming his long thin fingers on the table top. ‘I thought perhaps you’d worked it out,’ he said. ‘A woman like you.’
‘And what does that mean?’ she asked him.
He gave an empty smile.
She looked at him. ‘Mr. Fitzwilliam is a witness to your tragedy,’ she said.
His gaze was level, but he said nothing.
‘Someone you loved, who died in battle … and Mr. Fitzwilliam was there.’
A barely perceptible nod.
‘And you feel responsible, somehow. Like Antigone, you feel that the right actions weren’t carried out. A kind of guilt.’
His lips were working. His fingers still tapped against the table.
‘But this was war, Mr. Farrar. The rules were different –’
‘Guilt!’ The word burst from him. ‘Antigone broke the rules.’ His voice cracked with anguish. ‘The rules were unjust. I should have gone back. I should have buried him …’ He covered his face with his hands.
Quietness settled around them. The dining room was empty, the tables cleared.
Agatha spoke again. ‘Mr. Farrar – how did Quentin Fitzwilliam end up at Langlands?’
He lowered his hands and faced her. ‘Art,’ he said. ‘Ince Hall was our studio. We lived together, we worked together. We grew to love each other …’
‘When you say “we” – Quentin was one of these men?’
He nodded.
‘And the other, was the owner of Ince Hall, Theodore Munro.’
He gave a flinch at the name. ‘Yes,’ he murmured.
‘Was it he who gathered you all?’
Another nod.
‘And then war came, and you were called up to serve. And Dr. Adler became part of the work at Ince Hall, as all that artistic skill was deployed in camouflage?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘And some of these camoufleurs went to France?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
She took a breath, then went on. ‘You joined them, at Amiens, perhaps? And Theodore, and Quentin, and you, served together? Until Theodore was killed –’
‘Theodore,’ he said. His voice was a monotone. ‘I’d been telling him to hurry, we both had, Quentin and me.’ He was staring straight ahead, as if she wasn’t there. ‘We were hungry, soaking wet, cold to the bone. We thought we were behind the lines. You could hear shelling. He was weak by then, Theo was, we were shouting, “come on, man, come on…”’ His words tumbled from his lips. ‘Quentin was ahead of me. Then a blast, God knows where from – you never get used to it, the smell, the ringing in your ears, just smoke, rain, head spinning, fear twisting your guts. I couldn’t see him. Theo … I didn’t know what I was doing, but I ran back, Quentin was shouting at me to get the hell out, but something made me …’ He raised his head, but his eyes were empty, his sight elsewhere. ‘He was dying. No leg … no … anything.’ He took a breath, a shudder. ‘Don’t know how long I was there. Quentin dragged me away. “We must bury him,” I was saying. “We must bury him.” I kept saying it. Quentin said I was saying it all night, over and over again. I wake up saying it, even now …’ He threw her a thin smile, as if unsure who she was.
‘You loved him?’
‘We loved each other. Like brothers. Theo, Quentin and me. Inseparable.’
The distant sea murmured in the silence. On the terraces the seagulls swooped and chirped.
‘You are not guilty,’ Agatha said to him.
He pitched himself towards her, grabbed her wrists in a tight grip. ‘Mrs. Christie – I have no memory of it. Early Monday morning. I know nothing … I remember being on the tennis court. I remember seeing him lying there, the blood … I looked at my hand and there it was, the pistol, clutched between fingers which I knew to be mine but which I couldn’t feel. I dropped the gun. I believe I shouted, called out. The staff found me there. Young Hughes, I remember … he took my arm, he led me away. I think it was him. Then I came to my senses. After that, I kept out of the way. Saw the police arrive, kept my distance.’ Again, the mirthless smile.
‘Mr. Farrar –’
‘What? You think I should confess? You think I should just come clean?’
‘Mr. Farrar – what is there to confess?’
His gaze now was clear. ‘You and I, Mrs. Christie – we both have a fair idea who killed Mr. Collyer.’ He got to his feet and stumbled from the room.
Chapter Twelve
Agatha sat, yawning, at her breakfast table. Saturday morning, she thought. She imagined Archie, too, sitting alone over breakfast, pouring his own tea, stirring in sugar, two spoons rather than the one she would allow him.
She found her attention drawn once more to the tennis party. She watched Blanche’s edginess, the fretful way she made sure Kurt had bread rolls, butter, marmalade … She thought about Blanche’s words, about having to keep an eye on Mr. Farrar. It was perfectly clear, now, that Kurt himself must have initiated the whole trip, and that Blanche had been prevailed upon to look after him. She wondered what her husband made of these events, that an attempt to protect his dear friend had unexpectedly landed him at the centre of a murder scene.
‘Oh dear, the staff do so insist I shouldn’t sit alone …’ Nora was standing by her table. ‘Even though I’m really quite happy with my own company. It turns out.’
Agatha smiled up at her, indicated the second chair, and Nora sat down.
‘I mean,’ Nora went on, ‘who’d have thought that it would take these terrible events to show me that, actually, I’m not the shy, mousy girl I thought I was.’
Agatha poured her some tea. She noticed how the pinched, pale look had gone. The woman who sat opposite her was fresh-faced and smiling, her hair neatly pinned up, a simple silver string at her neck.
‘Last night,’ Nora went on, ‘I stayed up late. I was reading a novel. Somerset Maugham, do you know him? I had no idea –’ Her eyes were shining, her face animated. ‘I had no idea,’ she continued, ‘that it could be like that, that you could open the pages of a book and be transported into a completely different world. China,’ she exclaimed. ‘And that poor woman, and the man she marries, and it’s so sad, so terribly, terribly sad …’ She looked across at Agatha. ‘But it’s not only sad. There’s hope,’ she said. ‘You know at the end that things might be all right after all. I closed the book, and I looked out across the bay, with the moon across the sea, it was so late, the middle of the night, everything was quiet … and I thought, things might be all right after all.’
She took a sip of tea.
They do that, books, Agatha wanted to say. Restore order. Put things right. But the appropriate phrase wouldn’t come, and she said nothing. After a moment, Nora spoke again.
‘My mother, you see,’ she said. ‘In the novel, Kitty has to learn that she’s not the shallow, silly girl that she’s been brought up to be. And I looked at the moonlight on the still calm sea and I thought about my mother. And how her constant disapproval really didn’t fit me for life at all. Just like Kitty. And the funny thing is –�
�� Her eyes were bright as they fixed on Agatha – ‘the funny thing is, Frederick didn’t approve of novels. He wouldn’t let me read them. This one happened to be on the shelves in my room here. If Frederick had been there, I’d never have dreamt of picking it up. And yet …’ She gave a sigh of happiness. ‘Who’d have thought?’ she said.
Nora reached for a slice of toast, then went on. ‘Gossip, that’s what Frederick called it. Pointless gossip, he’d say, when people talked about fiction. Last week, when Mr. Tyndall was telling me all about these papers of Dr. Adler’s, and how worried he was about them coming to light, and asking me what Frederick was going to do with all that information, I really couldn’t help him. I had no idea. So I just told him, that Frederick wasn’t interested in gossip, and if there were secrets up at Langlands, which clearly, it turns out, there were, Frederick probably wouldn’t even know about them. Chemistry, that’s what he was writing about. That’s what he’d say. “The work done by chemists is of the utmost importance,” he’d always say. “If the general public comes to understand something of the contribution made by chemists, then my job will be done.” I can’t help thinking that Mr. Tyndall was worrying unnecessarily, going on about the artworks being shipped over from Moscow …’
‘Artworks from Russia?’ Agatha tried not to stare at her.
‘The poor man was so terribly anxious about it, Mr. Tyndall was. He wanted to know if Frederick had come upon Dr. Adler’s intentions about the paintings. I had to say, I can’t imagine my husband had any interest in paintings being donated to the Bolsheviks, or indeed, shipped back to the Cornish coast in the middle of the night. If you knew Frederick, I said to him …’ She waved her hand airily.
Agatha passed her the butter, and she began to spread some on her toast. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘now I know about novels and how wonderful they are, I’m going to read and read and read. My brother’s friend James, he said I’d enjoy a writer called Edith Wharton. American, apparently. He once promised to lend me one, it won a prize, apparently, he said it was awfully good. Of course, with Frederick there, I couldn’t possibly have agreed, but now – oh good, here comes Oliver with my eggs. Mr. Finch brought him back from Langlands this morning, he said he was worried about the atmosphere there being bad for him, and I can’t help but think he’s right. Thank you dear,’ she said, as Oliver served her two perfect fried eggs. ‘Just how I like them.’
They finished their breakfast, Agatha and Mrs. Collyer, with some further discussion about novels, about whether they should always have a happy ending, about whether they should be true to real life or an escape from it.
‘Oh, no,’ Nora said, ‘not an escape. An enhancement. You should be able to close the pages of a book and be that little bit wiser about life. That’s what I think anyway. It’s been so lovely talking to you, Mrs. Christie.’ She’d gathered up her little clutch bag and glided away.
Agatha found her gaze drawn again to Kurt’s table. An idea was forming, as she watched Blanche’s nervous concern for her husband’s friend, as Sebastian tried to talk to Sophie about her back-hand, as Sophie, instead, waved at Oliver. Oliver waved back, with a large tray of empty plates wobbling on his other hand.
After breakfast, Agatha went to Mr. Finch’s little office.
‘Ah –’ Finch looked up from his desk, from what appeared to be a pile of invoices. ‘Mrs. Christie. The police appear to be making progress. I do hope you won’t be imprisoned with us for much longer.’
‘Mr. Finch.’ She smiled. ‘I’d hardly refer to your hotel as prison. I just wondered if I could enlist your help?’
‘Of course, Madam, of course.’
‘Mr. Farrar,’ she said. ‘He says he’s stayed here before?’
Finch nodded.
‘On just the one occasion?’
Finch frowned. ‘I think so, yes. Last year.’
‘Would you be able to show me when?’
‘Of course.’ He bent to a drawer, and pulled out a fat, foolscap, leather-bound book. ‘This contains all the secrets of this place,’ he smiled. ‘My ledger,’ he said. He began to leaf through it. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Mr. Farrar came this time last year. I’m not aware of having encountered him before that.’
‘Was he with Mrs. Winters?’
Finch looked thoughtful. He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘The previous time he was alone. Ah, here we are. Yes, last May he was here for three days. I’m sure that was his first visit with us. I’d have noted his preferences, had I met him previously.’
‘Do you remember much about him on this former occasion?’
Finch leaned back in his chair. He rubbed his chin. ‘I can’t say I do. I tend to leave my guests to their own devices.’
‘And was Mr. Tyndall here too?’
He gave a nod. ‘Mr. Tyndall is almost permanently a resident, and certainly, he was with us last year.’ His brows furrowed, then he looked at her. ‘I suppose it’s true, now I come to think of it …’ He met her eyes, as if an idea was dawning on him. ‘But really, they had very little to do with one another. They don’t give the impression of being closely acquainted, do they? In fact, if anything, they seem rather at daggers drawn.’ He closed the book with a thud, looked at her again. ‘What I don’t like about this terrible business, Mrs. Christie, what I don’t like at all, is how it has forced me to relinquish my professional principles. I’ve had to tell the police snippets of information about my guests. It’s a breach of all my professional codes. I take these things very seriously.’
‘You must know all the people involved,’ Agatha said. ‘The big house, the Adlers. Mr. Collyer’s book, all this concern about the papers …’
A shadow crossed his face. ‘That in particular. When Detective Inspector Olds was asking me about that dratted book, and I found myself describing the conversation I’d had with Mr. Tyndall …’ He looked up at her with a look of pleading in his eyes. ‘I really felt it was a breach of confidence. And what could I tell the poor man? I know nothing about Mr. Collyer’s book, nothing at all. I’m only a hotel manager. And a soldier,’ he added. ‘Really, I know so little. I can’t imagine I’ve been any help to the police at all.’ His fingers twisted together in his lap. ‘I’m only a squaddie, at heart.’
‘I must be very difficult for you,’ Agatha said. ‘But at least young Oliver Hughes is back with us.’
He gave a warm smile. ‘Frau Adler’s care for Oliver has been such a comfort to us all, but after the police were there, yesterday, we felt he’d be safer getting on with his work here with me.’
Above him hung the painting. A strip of sunlight caught the edge of it. The frame glowed gold; the mother’s face shone in the warm light.
Agatha turned once more to the manager. ‘Mr. Finch, you’ve been so helpful. I have one other question.’
He gave a flinch of weariness, waited for her to speak.
‘Do you think Mr. Farrar’s previous visit coincided with the Collyers?’ she asked.
He frowned, thought for a moment, then his expression cleared. ‘Good heavens,’ he said. He grabbed his books, flicked through the pages. ‘Why, I do believe you’re right. This time last year …’ His fingers raced through the leaves of paper. ‘Here we are …’ He jabbed his finger at a line of neat black ink handwriting. ‘You’re absolutely right, Mrs. Christie. The Collyers were here for three weeks. But Mr. Farrar’s three days coincided with the middle of their stay.’
Agatha took out her notebook, and copied down the dates. ‘You’ve been very helpful,’ she said. She stood up to go, and he got to his feet and followed her out to the corridor. His gaze went to breakfast room, where Nora was still sitting, alone.
‘Mrs. Collyer,’ he said. ‘I do wish the police would let her go. She can’t be any further use to their investigation. And – oh dear – if you’ll excuse me – they’ve served her marmalade, and I know she prefers jam.’ With a small bow, he left Agatha’s side and hurried into the breakfast room.
Agatha watched as he slip
ped to Nora’s side, as he brought her a dish of raspberry jam. She saw her quiet smile of pleasure. She reflected on the change in Nora Collyer, this new blossoming of life in the wake of tragedy. ‘Who’d have a thought a mere story could do that?’ Nora had asked at breakfast.
A mere story, Agatha thought. Captain Wingfield was waiting by the old grey sundial, she thought. It was time that Martha Hobbes joined him there, to declare their love, to embark on their new life together.
Soon, she thought, I will write those pages. But first, she said to herself, heading along the hall towards the heavy front door, there is work to be done.
*
The sea was turquoise blue, sparkling with sunlight. The coastal track was dusted with sand. The air around her chirped with birdsong and the call of crickets. Ahead of her lay the village, the Lady Leona now almost entirely stripped of everything, the villagers no doubt poring over the empty metal crate. She wondered what had happened to the promise of gold.
She descended the path towards the ship.
Ghosts, she thought. The ghostly young woman waiting for her sailor to return. “The tide flows in, the tide flows out, twice every day returning…” The notes rang faintly in her mind.
She thought about the derelict house, Ince Hall. Theodore Munro’s house, drifting with memories, echoing with the dead. She thought about the three men, all artists, all devoted to each other. And only two came back.
‘We loved each other,’ Kurt said to her.
Love, she thought.
In her mind, she saw the old stone sundial of her story. In her mind, she saw James, whoever he was, offering the newly awoken Nora Collyer novels to read. An image, too, of Robin Tyndall and Frau Adler, the glances flickering between them, heavy with feeling. An image of the golf course, back home, of Archie, standing on the green. She imagined him, gazing out towards the chestnut trees with that vacant, distracted look he’d acquired since the war. She imagined him thinking of her, looking forward to her return.
Love, she thought. Perhaps all stories are about love.
She turned and descended the last few steps towards the beach.
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