The Agatha Christie Book Club

by Larmer, C. A.

  Like you, thought Anders who was fast wearing thin of the chatty librarian. Aloud he said, “We all need to remember that at this stage we don’t even know if Barbara has been killed.”

  A few of them groaned.

  “If only they could find the body,” said Perry and then, catching Claire’s horrified expression, added, “Sorry, Claire, I know it sounds morbid, but let’s face facts here. What are the chances she’s alive? Really?”

  No one had the energy, or naivety, to suggest otherwise. It had been more than four days after all.

  “That doesn’t mean we can’t try and find her... no matter what’s happened. She still deserves to be found,” said Alicia and they agreed with that.

  The problem was, they had no idea where to take the investigation next.

  Claire, a stickler for the rules, said, “Personally, I think we need to talk to the police.”

  “Actually, I’m surprised they haven’t called me yet,” said Alicia. “I told them about the club, gave them my number.”

  “Maybe you need to go and see them,” suggested Anders.

  “And say what, exactly? It’s not like we have anything groundbreaking to reveal.”

  “Au contraire!” said Perry. “We know a lot more than they probably do.” He produced a stubby hand and began counting down on his fingers. “For starters, do they even realise that Barbara has the phone number of a battered women’s shelter in her house? Maybe there’s a history of domestic violence we don’t know about?” Another stubby finger went into the air. “Second, do they know that young Holly has obviously been shagging the tennis coach senseless and, from what you tell me, it looks like he’s covering something up?”

  Now it was Anders’ turn to look horrified. “Hang on a minute. That’s really personal stuff, Perry. We don’t know if it’s got anything to do with Barbara’s disappearance.”

  “Exactly,” said Perry. “Which is why we need to mention it. It could be a factor.”

  “He’s right,” Alicia told Anders. “It’s not our job to decide what is and is not relevant to the investigation. But listen, there’s one other thing the police should definitely know.” She produced a third finger and waved it in the air. “Are they aware that Barbara Parlour was a very miserable woman before she disappeared? I mean, sure, we hardly knew her but contrary to what Arthur is saying, I have written proof that she was not a happy camper.”

  Alicia flipped to the back of her journal where a small envelope had been wedged and pulled it out to reveal Barbara’s handwritten reply to her classifieds advertisement dated several weeks earlier. She read it aloud:

  Dear Alicia. I would dearly love to join your club. I’m just a boring, middle-aged housewife but Agatha Christie’s work—all of it, I really can’t pick the best—has kept me sane during life’s many sad and tragic moments. I really don’t know how I would survive without her. She is light when things get dark, a happy ending when I find I have none. She rescues me daily and I do not know how I would get through tomorrow without her. Warm regards, Barbara Parlour

  The group all stared at the letter, speechless.

  “I’d forgotten how depressing it was,” she said eventually.

  “Oh it’s tragic,” moaned Perry. “Dear God, the woman was crying out for help. If only we’d seen that.”

  “Hey, Perry,” said Lynette. “We can’t be blamed for any of this, we’d only met the woman twice. It’s her brother who should be beating himself up. Squandered her money on a hopeless café for years and now that she’s missing, seems more concerned with saving his own skin, and his sorry excuse for a caf’.”

  “Not to mention the rest of her family and friends,” added Claire. “Why weren’t they looking out for her? I don’t mean to sound awful but her daughter’s an utter nightmare, doesn’t seem to care one iota. As for her so-called friend Wanda—she couldn’t have distanced herself faster if she’d tried.”

  “Yeah, they all seem to have such little empathy for Barbara,” agreed Alicia.

  At that moment they could hear a light tapping coming from inside the shop. Claire jumped up with a radiant smile.

  “That’ll be Charlie,” she announced, sweeping the velvet curtain aside and heading inside the shop to unlock the front door.

  “Oh shit,” gasped Perry, a bright blush sweeping across his cheeks.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Alicia.

  “Nothing, shhh!” He hunched over and covered his face with one hand.

  Anders stared at him and then to the others. “Who’s Charlie?”

  “The fiancé,” Missy whispered. “You know, the one who won’t marry her.”

  “Missy! You don’t know that,” said Alicia.

  She held her hands up. “Four years is four years. My cousin Linda was engaged for four years and it all ended disastrously—”

  Before she could finish, Claire reappeared with a tall, thin man in a dapper three-piece, pin-stripe suit complete with waistcoat and silk hanky tucked into the jacket pocket. He, too, looked part Asian and was a walking commercial for the vintage clothing biz, and Alicia could see their attraction. At the very least they clearly had a penchant for retro fashion. He smiled politely at the group and ran a hand across the top of his hair which had been styled in a 1950s, Elvis-type quiff.

  “Everyone, this is Charlie Szeto, my fiancé,” said Claire a little breathlessly. “That’s Alicia, the woman who started the club, her sister Lynette, Anders to her right, Perry next to him, oh and Missy at the back.”

  The group all said hello as Charlie glanced and smiled at each one in turn. When he got to Perry his smile faltered just slightly, or at least that’s what Alicia thought, but he recovered so quickly she wondered if she had imagined it. The growing blush on Perry’s face, however, gave her pause for thought.

  “Sorry to interrupt your little soiree,” Charlie said, his eyes firmly back on his fiancé and she shook her head.

  “Honestly, it’s fine, isn’t it guys?” She looked at them imploringly.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Alicia. “In fact, why don’t you join us? We could always do with a fresh perspective.”

  She felt a swift kick under the table and glanced up to see Perry, fingers splayed across his eyes, giving her a dark stare. His head was shaking very slightly.

  “Oh, no, no, I couldn’t,” Charlie was saying, drawing Claire a little away from the table and lowering his voice. “Darling I have to cancel on tonight anyway, something’s come up.”

  “Really? Again?” She looked bitterly disappointed. “We’re almost finished up here.”

  “Sorry, no choice, I’m afraid. Miller has some last-minute changes to the Grayson manuscript, so I need to get stuck into that.” His tone hushed even more so that Alicia had to strain to hear him. “I’m meeting Grayson for dinner to thrash it all out. He can only do tonight, he’s heading off to London tomorrow.”

  She put her head to one side with a puppy dog look in her eyes. “Maybe I could join you for dinner, we won’t be long here—”

  “No, no,” he said again. “It’ll be deadly dull. You stay here and do what you need to do.” He gave the group another smile. “Nice to meet you all.”

  There was a fleeting glimpse at Perry again, and this one Alicia knew she had not made up. There was definitely some connection there but when she looked at Perry he was no longer meeting her eyes.

  As Claire walked Charlie back through the café, Lynette jumped up to make more coffee and Anders joined her at the espresso machine. Missy, too, jumped up, keen to explore the collection of magazines on the side, so Alicia took the opportunity and leaned in towards Perry.

  “You want to tell me about it?” she whispered.

  He smiled innocently enough. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  She shook her head at him. “Give me a break, Perry. I’m not the founder of the Agatha Christie Book Club for nothing. You know Charlie, don’t you?”

  Perry’s smile turned sly. “I guess that’s one way of putt
ing it.”

  Alicia groaned. Oh God, this was worse than she thought. “No way, Perry. I can not believe this.”

  “Believe what?” asked Claire, returning through the curtains and causing both Alicia and Perry to jump.

  “Oh, um, er...” stammered Alicia.

  “We were just saying, we can’t believe how much the police don’t know,” said Perry, recovering impressively quickly. “What do you think, Missy?”

  Missy looked up from a 1953 edition of the Australian Women’s Weekly she’d been reading, stared at him blankly then continued to read. She was too engrossed in the coronation of the young Queen Elizabeth to register anything.

  “Well I definitely agree they ought to know,” said Claire, turning to Anders who was just sitting back down, frothy cup of coffee in hand. “I hear your concerns, Anders, and I agree it’s poor form gossiping about Barbara’s family, but we just don’t know how relevant it all is. It’s up to the police to determine that. Not us.”

  “Fine,” he conceded. “Hey, did you want another coffee? Lynette’s a demon on the machine.”

  Claire shook her head, a glossy strand of hair breaking loose from the chignon. She swept it back into place. “No, thank you, I’m charged up enough as it is. So, Alicia, will you do the honours and speak to the police?”

  Alicia stopped glaring at Perry and turned back to her. “Yes, I will, Claire, and soon. It’s time the cops heard the other side of the story.”

  As she said those words, though, Alicia couldn’t help feeling there was another side to Claire’s fiancé, Charlie Szeto, too, and she had a horrible hunch it had something to do with Perry Gordon.

  Chapter 16

  She had expected to be knocked back outright, to be shown the door with a patronising smile, but when Alicia announced herself at the desk of the Woollahra police station the following afternoon, she was ushered straight through to the surprisingly plush office of the detective in charge of the Parlour case. She recognised him immediately from the television news—that handlebar moustache was unmistakable—and he was stroking it firmly as she walked in.

  “Detective Inspector Ward,” he said, standing to shake her hand and offer her a seat across from his desk. He gave the mo’ one last stroke before he sat back down. “I believe you have some important information relating to the Parlours?”

  She felt suddenly foolish, wanted to back up and run. What if he laughed in her face, or worse, chastised her for wasting precious police time? Alicia swallowed hard and produced Barbara’s letter. As she handed it across to him she explained who she was and where she fit into the missing woman’s life. He listened carefully before reading the letter, then pressed a buzzer on his desk. Alicia winced when a young, shaven-haired officer with dimples appeared, expecting to be shown the door, but he simply looked at his boss, eyebrows raised.

  “Roger, make a copy of this letter for me, please, then come and sit in on this interview. Bring your notebook.”

  Alicia was pleasantly surprised. When the policeman returned he introduced himself as Assistant Detective Roger Boyd, and handed her the photocopy of Barbara’s letter.

  “We’ll need to keep the original,” Ward explained. “Right, then, let’s get your story down.”

  And so she spent the next 10 minutes telling them everything she knew, from Barbara’s first sad appearance at Book Club, to the strange gathering at her house and everything they had noticed there. She told them, too, of the reluctance of Arthur to take his wife’s disappearance seriously. All the while the older cop stroked his moustache and the younger cop scribbled notes on a thick pad on his lap.

  “I was the one who forced him to call you guys,” she said. “He just didn’t want to do it. The man was acting way too casual for my liking. I hate to say it but I think he’s hiding something.”

  “Well there was a reason for his reticence,” Detective Ward said then asked, “Mrs Parlour never mentioned any trip she was planning?”

  “No, quite the contrary. We were all expecting her for Book Club last Sunday. She had specifically asked to present the next book and was supposed to show and provide questions. Why would she do that if she was planning to be away?”

  Ward referred to his notes. “The housekeeper, Miss Rosa Lopez, tells us that Mrs Parlour left her Woollahra residence sometime around 14 hundred hours, Saturday afternoon, and her last words were, ‘I’m going to London.’ So she never mentioned an overseas trip to you?”

  “Not a word.” Alicia’s memory clicked in. “Now you mention it, though, Wanda said something to me about that, too. She’d heard through Arthur that Barbara was flying to Europe. She thought maybe Paris. In any case neither of us believed it.”

  Both officers glanced at each other and then back at Alicia. Ward said, “And Wanda would be?”

  “Oh, um, Wanda Birchin, Barbara’s friend, or at least she used to be—they had a falling out apparently, don’t ask me what that was about. Anyway, as I say, I doubt very much that Barbara was heading off anywhere. She’d just signed up for our club and seemed intent on being part of it.”

  “Yes, well in any case the housekeeper assumed she heard incorrectly because her mistress only had a large, black handbag with her, no luggage to speak of.”

  “There was the mink, sir,” said Roger and he earned a scowl from his boss for it.

  “Mink?” asked Alicia, intrigued.

  He sighed. “It appears Mrs Parlour was also carrying a fur coat when she left the premises.”

  “How odd,” said Alicia. “Summer’s about two weeks away. Although of course it’s almost winter in London. Maybe she really was heading there.”

  “With nothing but a handbag and a coat? Besides, we’ve checked all UK-bound flights for the past five days. No sign of her. Nor do London customs have a record of her arrival.”

  “So you’ve got nothing?”

  He seemed offended by this. “Well, actually, we do have several sightings of Mrs Parlour on Saturday: parking her car at The Queen Victoria Building in the city around 2:30 p.m., then she was spotted posting a letter about ten minutes later in the mailbox on Pitt Street, and soon after that she goes into a jewellery shop in the Strand Arcade. We have her again on CCTV footage returning to her car and departing the QVB, but she disappears from the radar after that.”

  “A jewellery shop?” Alicia said.

  “Yes. Did Mrs Parlour ever mention needing to get some jewellery repaired to you or any of your group?”

  Alicia shook her head. “What sort of jewellery?” she asked and now it was his turn to shake his head.

  “I can’t comment on that but it gives us further reason to believe she has not left the country or, as the press is now suggesting, harmed herself.”

  “Then, of course, there’s the dumped car,” said Alicia.

  He nodded. “Yes, located at the Hornsby train station on Monday night. Do you have any idea why she might have gone there? If she knows anyone in the vicinity? Does someone in your club come from there, perhaps?”

  Alicia’s shoulders drooped. “Sorry, no.”

  She was starting to feel quite useless and wondered how long before the police chief would realise this and send her packing. For now, she decided to keep him chatting in the hope of gleaning as much information as she could.

  “Of course Barbara could have parked at Hornsby station and taken off on a train somewhere,” she suggested.

  “That is one scenario we are currently looking into,” he said. “Unfortunately, at this stage of the investigation, nobody at the station recalls seeing Mrs Parlour arrive or depart, and the cameras do not work.”

  The look on his face told her exactly what he thought about that.

  “So you have no idea when she arrived at the station?”

  “Or even if she did at all.” He shook his head a little. “Look, that’s not what I’d like to talk to you about. You said you were in the same book club as Mrs Parlour. I need to know what book you were discussing at your club on the S
unday that she never showed.”

  “Oh, um, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. That’s right, the first-ever Poirot.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive, it’s the first time she introduces us to the funny little Belgian. Poor Agatha, she never expected him to become quite so popular—”

  He coughed discreetly. “No, I mean, are you sure that was the book your club was going to study that Sunday?”

  “Oh, sorry, yes, of course I’m sure. Why?”

  The policemen exchanged another glance. “In Mrs Parlour’s vehicle we found the missing mink coat, her driver’s license—”

  “Well she wouldn’t leave those things hanging around, surely? Doesn’t that suggest something dodgy has happened?”

  Ignoring this question he added, “And we also found this.”

  Ward reached for a box by his desk and produced a plastic evidence bag in which a book had been sealed.

  “Do you know anything about this? Were you intending to discuss it at one of your, er, club meetings?”

  He handed the bag to Alicia and she looked it over. Through the thick plastic she could see the book was titled The Mystery of The Blue Train: A Hercule Poirot Mystery. The cover illustration showed two train officers peering over the body of a woman, clearly dead and sprawled across a seat in a train compartment. It was classic Agatha Christie.

  “Well it’s one of Christie’s, sure, but it’s not on our reading list,” Alicia said. “I don’t know much about it, certainly never read it, but can only assume Barbara was going to suggest it to us all. Do you think it’s important?”

  He retrieved the bag from her and placed it back in the box. “Was there anything else, Miss Finlay?”

  Alicia hesitated. She wanted to tell Inspector Ward about Wanda’s suspicions that Arthur was playing around with the housekeeper but decided against it. She had no proof of this and had already been called a gossipmonger once this week, she didn’t need to confirm it. Besides, if the press were onto it, the cops were no doubt close behind. There were two other snippets of so-called gossip, however, that she knew for a fact were true and there was no way she was keeping these to herself. She took another deep breath.