I wished suddenly with all my heart to be tucked into my bed, with Charlotte bringing me a cup of hot milk, and Tony snuffling at my feet. How would I get home? And what about Hector? Had the charitable Mrs. Teasdale even noticed that her little immigrant was not inside the vicarage?
The hoofbeats and wheel rumble of another vehicle came up the road from town, a lantern swaying wildly from the driver’s seat.
“Hello?” A woman’s voice. “Hello?”
The person holding the reins was struggling to keep the horse moving uphill in a steady line.
Good Heavens! “Mummy!”
“Darling one!”
I recognized Star Lady, the horse belonging to old Mr. Herman who lived two houses along, on Bertram Road. Next to Mummy on the wagon seat was Charlotte, holding the lantern aloft and looking positively white with fear.
“Whoa!” Mummy pulled so sharply on the reins that she and Charlotte were jolted backward with the sudden stop.
“Your mother is a new driver?” asked Hector.
“She has scarcely left our house since Papa died,” I said. “I’ve never seen her drive a horse!”
But Mummy had done it. After an evening of ever-growing anxiety, with Grannie Jane and Charlotte stoking the fire and pacing the drawing room in turns, Groveland had received a dire telephone call from Roddy Fusswell at the Royal Victoria Hotel.
“I needn’t relate all the ruckus that followed,” said Mummy. “Because all’s well that ends well. I drove the cart myself! And here you are, sweet pea, safe and sound. Come along, we’ll have you home in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”
“But Hector—?”
“Hector, too, for Heaven’s sake. He’ll stay with us. We left word at the vicarage on the way here. Up you get. Sally will have the fires blazing by the time we get home.”
Despite Mummy’s feat in driving all the way here, Inspector Locke asked for a volunteer from the constabulary to manage the return journey. Constable Beck hastily shot up his arm and had his foot on the carriage step in an instant. Another officer would follow us with Belle. I knew that Charlotte’s face was as pink as raspberry pudding, though it was too dark to see anything really.
“Oh, Charlotte,” whispered the handsome constable, pushing her hat askew with his nuzzling.
“Oh, Morris,” she murmured in return. “To think that we met because a kindly confectioner tumbled to the floor.”
“And our alliance continued because a stout lady drank mouse poison with her tea and died a horrible death.”
“So romantic,” she breathed.
“Even your Miss Aggie helped us along,” said Morris. “Her misbehavior allowed us more cause to meet.”
“Yes,” sighed Charlotte. “All is forgiven.”
Hector and I sat under a fur rug on either side of Mummy, leaning in for warmth. We both were lulled to sleep before ever arriving at Groveland, and learned at breakfast that we’d been carried inside by Constable Beck.
(cut from the Torquay Voice)
VILLAIN APPREHENDED IN MERMAID ROOM MURDER!
SECOND VICTIM THREATENED
IN BATHING COVE DRAMA
by Augustus C. Fibbley
The greatest excitement was occasioned late on Tuesday at the Ladies Bathing Cove near Torquay Harbour. From careful inquiries pursued by this reporter, we are able to present many authentic particulars for the edification of our readers. This commotion displaces the arrest yesterday of the pitiful lady who was confined in error for many hours. Miss Marianne Eversham has been released and returned to her residence on Bertram Road.
As rumors have declared throughout the town, the Mermaid Room Killer has indeed been apprehended. His name is Leonard Cable and a more heartless fiend has rarely been encountered. He is recently arrived in Torquay, employed as a gardener, and not well known in the village, though he impressed some with his comely appearance and steady work habits. But Leonard Cable was all deceit. Not content with the cunning murder-by-poison of Mrs. Irma Eversham, Cable yesterday evening abducted her daughter, Miss Rose Eversham, and removed her to the isolation of Cove Beach with harmful intent. There he revealed his purpose and the grievous error of his motive. Believing Rose Eversham to be his sister, and Irma Eversham their shared mother, Leonard Cable was driven mad by greed, expecting to inherit some portion of the late Captain Eversham’s fortune. Alas, his heinous actions were founded on a deluded relationship and caused nothing but harm and sorrow.
Miss Rose was insensible upon arrival at the hospital but had rallied by morning, despite a lump on her head and cruel bruising to her neck and shoulders where the villain clutched and shook her in his frenzy. She will not be disfigured by her misadventure. Also injured in the evening’s incident was Miss Agatha Morton, the twelve-year-old dance student who discovered the body of Mrs. Irma Eversham last Saturday morning. Miss Morton’s persistence in asking questions resulted in cracking open the investigation, alas, too late for Rose Eversham’s safety. The intrepid child pursued the killer and his hapless victim through the foggy night and was trapped in a sea-soaked bathing hut by the pitiless Mr. Cable. Belgian visitor Hector Perot also played a part in rallying assistance from the constabulary.
Six officers of the law, under the direction of Inspector H. Locke, were involved in the rescue of Miss Rose Eversham and in the subsequent pursuit of the crafty criminal. Receiving special commendation was Constable Morris Beck, who tackled the monster to the ground and held him until other officers could assist in the arrest.
The prisoner betrayed much agitation about his person when removed into custody. His step was unsteady as he approached the bar, his clothing disheveled and his countenance a picture of fury. Mr. Ableman, Justice of the Peace, addressed the prisoner, “You stand committed to Dartmoor Prison to take your trial for Wilful Murder.” The prisoner was then removed from the bar. In response to a question put forth by this reporter in the courthouse corridor, the suspect said, “It was all a mistake. I’m so very sorry.” Perhaps remorse is valued in the eyes of God, but it offers little comfort to Irma Eversham or her family.
CHAPTER 32
A FINAL EXPLANATION
A VERY PALE ROSE sat in Papa’s chair. An embroidered scarf around her neck covered what I imagined—even six days later—to be livid marks of a brutal attack. Violet shadows of a cruel encounter. Smears of berry juice upon an ivory tea cloth. Splashings of blood on a snowy field.
Outside the windows, a bruise-colored sky turned from twilight to autumn night. Earlier, Tony and I had rolled my hoop in the drive and felt the snap of coming winter. Here in the drawing room, the fire was roaring. Best of all, Marjorie had come home for a few days to see for herself that all of us were safe and sound. She sat beside Rose on the ottoman with me nestled under her arm and Tony splayed on the carpet before us. Mummy was here, Grannie Jane and Charlotte, and also Hector. Miss Marianne remained at home in bed with a dreadful chest cold, the result of her ordeal in the dungeon.
She may have been coughing, but I believed her malady went deeper still, that her heart had cracked right down the middle and then again cross-wise. Poor Miss Marianne had lost her sweetheart, her brother, and then her son…for the second time. She’d lost her sister-in-law, which was perhaps not the greatest sorrow, but they’d been related for half a lifetime, and that must count for something. Not least of all, Miss Marianne had nearly lost her beloved Rose! The folly of Leonard’s single error, approaching the wrong woman as his mother, had unwrapped heartache for all of us. Such weight in Miss Marianne’s chest might easily be mistaken for bronchitis.
This was my first encounter with Rose since the awful vision on the stretcher. I longed to ask a thousand questions, but knew it was kinder to let her tell the tale in her own time. Hector I’d seen every day. As soon as school was finished he came straight to Groveland and worked on his assignments while I read beside him at the library table. G
rannie Jane and Mummy agreed that he was quite the most polite boy they’d ever met, and excellent advertising for befriending a foreigner.
He hopped up now to hold open the door for Sally coming with the heavily laden tea trolley. Pea soup with buttery croutons. A giant wedge of cheddar and honey for dipping it in. Ham sandwiches with cress from the greenhouse, picked by Mummy.
“Cook says to remind you, Miss Aggie, there’s, alas, no blackberries this time of year, but she’s done an apple, since you made such a noise about pie.” Next to the pie were ramekins of chocolate pudding and a plate of bourbon biscuits. Tony went begging from one knee to the next. Though he was scolded often, I was not the only one to succumb.
Cook also knew by now that Hector preferred drinking what he called chocolat instead of tea. Shock-o-la was my name for it, really just cocoa but twice as thick.
“I suppose they never have sweets at the vicarage?” I poked Hector. “The way you’re tucking in?”
“How is the old Reverend Teabag?” said Marjorie.
Hector licked his spoon. “The minister is at all times kindly, but his wife, she thinks I am deaf. Also, she is most untidy.”
“Heavens,” said Mummy. “If tidiness is your ideal, you’ve got the wrong friend in Aggie.”
“I am not untidy,” I objected. “I merely surround myself with a plethora of possibilities.”
Grannie Jane was alone in her laughter, but that was enough for me.
“Well, Rose?” said Marjorie, when Sally had wheeled away the tea things. “Will you tell us about your darkest hour? Or is it too much to dwell on the idea that Leonard wanted you dead?”
“I do not think he wished me dead,” said Rose slowly. Her voice was weak, as if she were recovering from an ailment of the tonsils. “What he wanted was for me to be his sister, to have Mother greet him as her long-lost son. We each tried to tell him it wasn’t so, but he thought we were lying, trying to shun him.” She paused to sip her tea. “As he talked and stormed down there on the beach, the truth of the error leapt out of the dark, stopping my breath with its simplicity.” Rose wiped a tear from the corner of her eye.
“If only,” she said. “If only I’d known the secret burden that Auntie M. carried. And if only I had seen the letter addressed to me.”
“I didn’t know the letter was yours!” I said. “I was trying to find out quietly, so as not to alarm anyone.”
“Yes, I know,” said Rose. “Just that if I’d been home to collect the post, there might have been a happy ending! Instead, Leonard did terrible things, far past forgiveness. One mistake piled on the next until he could see no way out. The way he shook me when I tried to explain what I’d just guessed…” Her fingers strayed to her shoulders, where Leonard’s fury had left its mark.
“But how did it all start?” said Grannie. Her ball of wool rolled off her knee and across the floor. Hector and I both pounced but Hector won, and wound it up before handing it back.
“Leonard’s mother, Mrs. Cable, preferred him not to know that he was adopted,” said Rose. “Nor about the allowance. She was afraid he would feel unloved, knowing he’d been given away, or imagine that she cared only because she was paid to do so.”
“A shocking thing to learn when he was grown,” said Mummy. “That he was not who he’d believed himself to be.”
“When Mrs. Cable died,” said Rose, “her husband finally told the whole story. After that, Leonard could not rest. Snooping through papers, he identified my father as the source of the allowance. From that moment, he burned to meet the man he guessed to be his father.”
Rose sipped her tea. I knew it must be cold by now and poured more fresh from the pot under the crocheted cozy.
“Mr. Cable received a letter from the solicitor, announcing my father’s death and enclosing a small legacy of thirty pounds. That thirty pounds set Leonard off, a hint of what else might belong to him, and enough to pay for his travels to find out. He soon said good-bye to the Cable farm and made his way to Torquay.”
Rose closed her eyes and rested her head against the back of the chair. “I suppose it’s easier to talk about this with Auntie M. not here,” she said. “My mother never forgave my aunt for shaming the family by having a baby. Imagine her shock when that baby turned up to haunt her.”
I glanced at Grannie, who was steadily knitting, and Mummy, staring at the half-eaten biscuit in her hand. Neither of them would have chosen to discuss a baby’s origins with Hector and me in the room.
But here we were.
“After many weeks in Torquay,” said Hector, “Leonard is finding the courage. He stops Mrs. Eversham beside the post office. With much longing he tells her, I am your son. And she rebuffs him.”
“She called him filth,” said Rose, “and did not even tell him the truth, I assume because she preferred to keep hidden any hint of scandal that would tarnish the Eversham name.”
“And on Friday evening,” said Hector, very quietly, “your mother is again making the threat, is she not?”
“Leonard delivered the flowers for the concert,” I said. “He was standing right there when you and your mother came through the door.”
“She must have recognized him,” said Rose. “She said…remember? She said that any young man who dared to approach her daughter would be imprisoned on a charge of attempting to assault her.”
“I thought she was being mean to Roddy Fusswell,” I said.
“So did we all,” said Rose. “It was so embarrassing!”
“Instead she is warning Leonard,” said Hector. “Reminding him that she means to do him harm.”
“And again the next morning,” I said, remembering Miss Marianne’s description of the minutes before the murder. “When Mrs. Eversham read the letter, she wanted to go straight to the police. Her threat was her own death sentence.”
“Poor Auntie M.,” said Rose. “If only he’d said those words to her! She would have a son and I a cousin, without prison bars between us.”
“Mrs. Cable died,” I said. “He must have missed her. And he was not content on the farm. He was looking for a new family.”
But he’d ended up sleeping in a cold shed in a stranger’s garden looking up at the warm, pink lights of the window where he believed his sister to be sleeping. That might make a person lose his reason, mightn’t it?
“It is not perhaps only a matter of money,” said Hector. “Being without a home, it is very difficult, the wishing to belong somewhere.”
Tears scalded my eyes. When I blinked them away, I saw that everyone else was pink-eyed too. Tony rested his nose on Hector’s knee. My sorrow was for Rose being an orphan, for Miss Marianne losing so much, for Hector being far from his family, and for Papa, whom I would never see again.
“Hector, dear,” said Marjorie.
“Madame?”
“When does your family expect to make the journey from Belgium?”
“They hope to come in the spring, madame.”
“I wonder whether you would consider spending Christmas with all of us at Owl Park? It will be my first holiday as mistress there, and I intend to make it awfully jolly. We have a skating pond and a wonderful cook and a fireplace in every room…What do you think?”
I clapped my hands. “Oh do say yes, Hector!”
Hector appeared to be speechless. He gazed at Marjorie with something that looked like adoration.
“Yes!” he said. “I will very much like to come.”
Marjorie laughed and shook his offered hand. “Well, then. It’s settled. You shall have an old-fashioned English Yuletide with roasted chestnuts and carol singers and figgy pudding. And I promise there will be no dead bodies, unless poor old Father Christmas drinks too much eggnog and knocks himself stupid on the hearth!”
“Do not make such a promise,” I said. “Bodies can show up anywhere.”
AUTHOR’S NO
TE
ONE OF THE MOST EXCITING MOMENTS of my reading life was discovering that the author of the book I’d just finished (at the age of twelve) had written several dozen other books waiting on the library shelf! Oh, lucky me! Hours and hours more of mayhem and murder!
Agatha Christie—after William Shakespeare—is the second best-selling author in history. It would be hard to find a reading adult who has not heard of her, as more than two billion copies of her books have been sold around the world in over 100 languages. Of course there were more stories!
As an adult, I became curious…What made Agatha an expert on betrayal, suspicion and wickedness? What sort of family and community had populated her childhood? What kind of books did she like to read? And from what seeds of inspiration did she conjure up her two famous detectives, Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple? When Tara Walker at Tundra Books “casually” asked whether Agatha Christie might be a good model for a child sleuth, my heart jumped on the spot. And what if she had a best friend? I thought. A clever boy with an accent…
A single comment, after a life of being a mystery fan, led me to write this entirely fictional story, featuring the made-up character of Aggie Morton. I did lots of research about what the world was like in 1902 when Agatha Christie was twelve years old. I read her autobiography, as well as some of her favorite childhood books and a couple of biographies. I visited her hometown, spied the view from her hill, walked the streets she walked, leaned on the railing overlooking the harbor. Certain details of Aggie Morton’s nature and circumstances overlap with those of Agatha Christie’s youth, but her adventures are my own creation.
The famous crime writer grew up in Torquay, England, in a house named Ashfield, many hills up from the harbor. She lived with her parents, a series of beloved pets, and a few devoted servants. Her brother, Monty, and sister, Madge, were ten and eleven years older than she was and moved away when Agatha was still a child. Her young life was happy and secure until her father died when she was eleven. The family’s sadness was immense, but Agatha continued to be surrounded by people who cared about her. One of her grandmothers, a wise and humorous woman, came often to visit. Agatha was extremely shy and much preferred solving puzzles and reading books to interacting with real people. She ceremoniously buried her dead pets and often chose the graveyard as a destination for her walks. She played with neighbor children, and had many imaginary companions, but she never met a Belgian boy named Hector, nor did she discover a corpse or pursue a killer.
The Body under the Piano Page 21
