The Christie Curse

by Victoria Abbott

  I managed to stammer, “No, no, please don’t put yourselves out. I should never have bothered you.” I considered sprinting for the door but realized that would just make things worse.

  Mr. Fine got to his feet and said, “You’d be doing us a favor, and you are right, Alex would want his work finished.”

  Mrs. Fine handed me the plate of cookies. “You may want to take these too.”

  There was no backing out now.

  * * *

  ALEXANDER FINE’S ROOM, spotless and minimalist, was sparsely decorated in IKEA furniture. The walls still held every merit badge and honor roll certificate, as well as a chess trophy and a fine selection of summer camp photos featuring the solemn olive-skinned boy. To make things worse, he was smaller than the other boys around him. I sure hoped these early years hadn’t been hellish.

  I spent an hour sifting through what was left of Alexander Fine’s life. Much of it was research for his dissertation. There was no mention of Vera, nothing about the play or even Christie. No books by or about Agatha Christie. No files. That seemed strange to me. It was such a compelling project that I found it hard to believe he hadn’t written a single word about it anywhere. Where was his notebook? Had it been stolen with his laptop bag? Or did he even use a paper notebook? I have always kept a dedicated paper notebook, quite aside from any computer files. Life is safer that way. Electronics get fried, lost and upgraded, or like Alex’s laptop, stolen. But maybe Alex didn’t think that way. Maybe he had everything on a desktop computer. If so, where was that? I checked the box. Sure enough, a printer, and a small webcam, but no other computer, iPad or mini.

  I turned back to the room. The saddest thing was a strip of photo-booth pictures of Alex and his fiancée, Ashley. They were the happy kind where everyone clowns around. Ashley was as tall as he was. She had her face turned toward him. Alex was smiling. Alive. Almost carefree, but not quite.

  The Fines were waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. I said, “I didn’t find any notebooks here. Is there anyplace else they might be?”

  Neither one said anything, but I could tell that the question had upset them. I waited for a few more seconds and said, “Would they be with his fiancée?”

  Both parents looked like they might have just smelled something very bad. It crossed my mind that with all the photos of Alex in the living room, there wasn’t a single one of him with Ashley. Maybe they had had trouble letting their only son leave the nest. Perhaps his fiancée deserved even more sympathy if Alex had been still tied to his parents.

  Silence.

  “So no chance there’s anything with Ashley?”

  Mr. Fine said, “She wasn’t interested in Alex’s work.”

  His wife said gently, “But she loved our boy.”

  Mr. Fine nodded. “For anything else, you should ask your employer. After Alex died, we brought his things back here from the apartment at the Van Alst house. We wanted everything that was connected to him. We were…”

  “Of course, you were.”

  Mrs. Fine blurted out, “And then Miss Van Alst called and was very unpleasant. She asked us to send everything about the project to her. Books, notes, everything. She said that she’d paid for them and therefore they were her property and if we didn’t cooperate, she would take legal action.”

  He added, “We were so shocked that we didn’t seek legal advice ourselves. We just packed them up for her. I’m surprised she sent you here, after that.”

  Well, this was embarrassing. “She didn’t send me. Actually, she doesn’t even know that I am here. I took the initiative. Alex was doing the same job as I am, and I’m sure he really cared about the project. I thought I might learn from his work. I didn’t ask Miss Van Alst about his materials. And I didn’t mean to upset you. I am so sorry.”

  Mrs. Fine patted my arm. “It’s not you, dear.”

  I was going to burn forever for bothering these people.

  But Vera was definitely going to a deeper, hotter level.

  * * *

  ON THE SCENIC drive back to Harrison Falls, I asked myself what Vera could possibly have gained from not telling me about Alex Fine’s research materials. Was there information she didn’t want me to have? Either Alex hadn’t found anything useful, in which case I could save time by not following the same leads, or he had found something and Vera had chosen not to share it with me. What would be the point of that? What game was Vera playing? Why would she have been so cruel to the Fines? Obviously, things weren’t as they seemed. I had to find out what was really going on.

  Alex Fine’s fiancée seemed like a logical place to start.

  * * *

  I SPOTTED OFFICER Smileypants in the distance in his squad car and managed to veer off the main road and take a diversionary back-road route to Harrison Falls. No point in asking for trouble, even if trouble was kind of cute.

  After arriving at Uncle Mick’s, I skillfully evaded my uncles’ questions about Vera’s finances and general lifestyle and scampered off to do some online research. I looked over the articles on the train accident, and it dawned on me that all the information about the project might have been in the stolen laptop. I gave a little shiver. If Ashley Snell didn’t have any information, I was going to have to discard this line of inquiry and start again. It was easy enough to get an address for Ashley Snell. You can find anything online. She might have wanted privacy, but she’d left a trail of bread crumbs right to her front door.

  I promised the uncles that I’d dish the dirt on Vera on my next visit, and I asked Uncle Lucky to figure out a way that I could have Internet at the Van Alst house. I was in the Saab and on my way before they could mount a counteroffensive. If I knew Lucky, I’d have service by nightfall and no one would have even seen him come or go.

  * * *

  OF COURSE, IT would have been wonderful if Ashley Snell had actually been at home, but she wasn’t. Ashley rented apartment A, the first floor of a small two-story house on the outskirts of Harrison Falls, not far from Grandville. I banged on the door extra long just in case. It wasn’t like I was the sleazy media. I convinced myself that Alex Fine would have wanted this. Officer Smiley, on the other hand, was right behind me, with his roof lights flashing as I walked away from Ashley’s house.

  The fact that I hadn’t done anything remotely wrong had no impact on my aversion to the law. It was automatic. I was well trained. Anyway, it wasn’t as though I liked Officer Smiley or anything, I reassured myself. Cute, yes, but too pink cheeked. Too blond. Too pretending to be nice.

  But since he was also too in my face, even if it was to smile in my face, I decided to use Uncle Mick’s “take the upper hand” method and question the cops before they could question me.

  “What can I do for you, Officer?”

  He laughed. “That’s what I was going to say. Hey, do you have a lot of experience with the police?”

  Now what did he mean by that? I didn’t want to look flustered, but a weird sound came out of my mouth. Real smooth, Bingham.

  “Is there a problem?” That came out all right, more or less like a normal person without criminal connections.

  “I just stopped to say hello. It’s a lovely afternoon.”

  “You just stopped to say hello? To me?”

  “Well, yes.” He leaned forward to sniff a cluster of low-hanging lilacs. My palms had started to sweat. Should I be flattered? Or worried? Did lilac sniffing symbolize anything? Why did I find that chipped incisor so adorable?

  He said, “So, visiting a friend?”

  “No. Yes. Well, not exactly. I’m following up on some research.”

  “Anything I can help with?”

  My car was so close. My instincts told me to push past him, jump into the Saab, gun it and be out of sight in two seconds. My rational side told me those actions wouldn’t look good or end well. Some other part of me noticed the little freckles on the bridge of his nose and wondered what it might be like to be tackled by him. I gave my head a shake. “I don’t thin
k so. Thanks.” I made a beeline for my car. I had just settled in and snapped on my retrofitted seat belt when he tapped on my car window.

  I rolled it down.

  Apparently he had never stopped smiling. “By the way, who’s your friend?”

  “What friend?”

  “The friend you were visiting here. The one who’s not at home.”

  I reminded myself once again that I had done nothing wrong. And I needed to avoid telling fibs out of habit and inclination. “Not really a friend, just someone I need to speak to.”

  “Oh sure, but anyway. It’s a small town, I might know them.”

  Fine. He might have some useful information. “Her name is Ashley Snell.”

  A small shadow clouded his sunny smile. “Right. Wasn’t her…? Oh boy. That was an awful thing. That poor girl witnessed it.”

  Of course, he would know all about Alex and his terrible death. The fiancée too. Harrison Falls was indeed a small town, and everybody knew everything about everyone’s every action. It wouldn’t have surprised me if my uncles were already aware that I was having this conversation.

  I said, “I have to go now.”

  He nodded. “I am glad that Ms. Snell has good friends like you.”

  He sounded like he really meant it. For a second I wondered if I was dreaming.

  * * *

  I SPENT THE rest of the afternoon plowing through my stack of research material on Agatha Christie, her disappearance and her plays. I worked undisturbed for hours, if you don’t count Signora Panetone arriving with an afternoon snack of prosciutto, melon and fresh Parmigiano-Reggiano. The cat, of course, came and went like magic. I quite liked it when it was in a good mood, purring and wanting to snuggle up, but when that leg-slashing business started again, I was prepared to try to chase it out, while keeping a safe distance.

  I now knew that The Mousetrap, Agatha’s most famous play, began life as a radio play, which was itself based on a short story. It seemed to me that indicated there was hope. She’d done that with The Mousetrap, so she might have done it with something else. She’d asked that the short story not be published in the UK as long as the play was running. I assumed that was not to spoil the ending. But it was an interesting approach. She could have experimented earlier and for some reason not wanted to release this other play. Perhaps she’d based a book on it. Or a short story. Or it might have been too close to her real life. She’d been going through an intense crisis. Maybe, if it existed, this play would shed light on her unexplained eleven-day disappearance. Dramatize it. What if it showed her in an unappealing light? That would make news even after nearly a century. People love a good mystery, and this one would be a spectacular story.

  Lots of sources mentioned the two unpublished Christie short stories that had shown up in her notebooks, but if the play existed and if it had been written during her disappearance, it would be in a whole different league.

  I now had three possible theories: theory one, that she’d written a play in a fugue state; theory two, that she’d reworked it into some other pieces, short stories, radio plays, even an early version of a novel; and theory three, that someone was prepared to make a fool out of a collector who would pay the big bucks for the privilege.

  Someone would pay the big bucks, no question. Would someone even be willing to kill for it?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I WAS GETTING smarter about dinners with the crabby and deceitful boss. I always brought a wrap. I wore my boots in case the cat was under my chair and in a mood. As I headed down the steep dark staircases from my garret and walked along the corridor to the dining room, I was steeling myself for battle. Not even the gorgeous room and the food could take my mind off the fact that my employer was somehow playing games.

  Vera Van Alst, a vision in frayed beige once again, raised a beige eyebrow as I arrived. It may have been the hand-tooled cowboy boots. I smiled at her, all confidence. Two can play games. Even so, I reminded myself that I had to tread carefully. I needed this job. And I loved my funky garret and cabbage rose walls. Plus there was something to be said for living in the Van Alst mansion and having platters of delicious food placed in front of you three to five times a day.

  The downside was not knowing what Vera was up to. I didn’t mind grumpy, but I wasn’t crazy about deceitful and manipulative, when I was the target.

  If she really wanted this play, why wouldn’t she want me to benefit from Alex Fine’s work? Why would she have asked his parents for his research notes and then not mentioned it? I realized that I hadn’t been bright enough to ask them if they’d read the materials that they’d turned over to Vera Van Alst. It had been an uncomfortable conversation. Knowing how distraught they must have been, I was pretty sure they hadn’t.

  As Signora Panetone burst through the swinging door from the kitchen, carrying a tray of something that smelled delicious, I tried a preemptive strike.

  “I have had a quite productive day. Finding leads, but I don’t really want to waste time going over old ground. I’m puzzled by the lack of research notes from my predecessor. How long did you say he worked on the project?”

  Signora Panetone set down a steaming soup plate (Spode, I thought) in front of Vera. How many sets of antique dishes did Vera own? Vera scowled and attempted to bat her away without success.

  “No, no, no. You eat. Must eat.”

  I didn’t plan to push the signora away. She settled a plate of delicious-smelling broth with tiny pasta stars in front of me and plunked down a small bowl of what looked like freshly grated Parmesan cheese. “Parmigiano-Reggiano,” she muttered. “Yes, yes, eat.”

  I couldn’t wait to eat. But instead I gazed at Vera expectantly. “I wondered if they might be tucked away somewhere.”

  She shot me a look that might have turned me to a block of ice, but, of course, I had that wonderful soup to keep me warm. I took the first spoonful while I waited for her.

  Nothing.

  I said, “Perhaps they were packed up when Alexander’s things were cleared out of his rooms here.”

  Signora Panetone, who had been attempting to pile some cheese onto Vera’s soup plate, stopped and glanced from Vera to me and back again.

  Vera said nothing.

  Signora Panetone threatened, “Eat cheese,” before she vanished through the swinging kitchen door.

  Perhaps the look had nothing to do with Alex or papers.

  I said, “Or if not, they could be with his family. I may drop over and express my condolences. I can ask them while I’m there. I’ll find a nice way to do it.”

  I left that hanging in the air and got busy with the soup. It was fabulous.

  Vera glowered. “That won’t be necessary. I’ll have a look and see what there is left here. Probably a box somewhere.”

  “Excellent.”

  As I waited for Signora Panetone to come bursting through the door again with yet another taste sensation, I had to wonder what Vera was hiding. And why.

  In the meantime, I said, “I look forward to that.”

  As the main course arrived (turkey cutlets with lemon and wine sauce, orzo and fresh beans), I felt my iPhone vibrate. I’d made sure it was on vibrate as I knew instinctively that there would be a Van Alst aversion to the technology and an unspoken rule against having one on your person in the dining room. But who would be calling me? My uncles were much too savvy. They knew where I was and with whom. Tiffany might text, but we kept our talks for later in the evening. Who then?

  Signora Panetone staggered around with the giant platter, managing to get the bare minimum onto Vera’s plate and a man-sized portion onto mine. I got to my feet and said, “Please, let me help you with that. It looks very heavy and…” I fully expected Vera to order me to sit down again, but I moved fast.

  “You eat!” Signora protested, but I had wrestled the plate from her in a preemptive strike and hustled through the door of the kitchen, leaving them both with astonished expressions. As the door swung closed behind me, I put the pla
tter on the counter and whipped out the phone.

  The Cozy Corpse showed up in my call history. That was good news, but most likely not an emergency at eight thirty on a Sunday night. I figured Karen Smith must have finished packing up after the Antiquarian Book and Paper Fair closed and decided to call me with a bit of news. It could wait until after I finished dinner and tried to pump Vera. I slipped the phone back into my pocket just as Signora Panetone had puffed through the door after me. “Go eat. No one in the kitchen!”

  That wasn’t entirely true, I knew, as I clearly remembered Eddie being there the night before.

  I raised my hands in surrender and returned to my cutlets.

  Vera said as I settled in, “Signora Panetone doesn’t care for anyone in her kitchen. I thought I made that clear before.”

  “My apologies. I thought she looked like she was struggling. Some of those old ironstone platters weigh a ton. She’s not a young woman.”

  “She’s strong as an ox and twice as stubborn. You’d do well not to get on her bad side.”

  I knew that my healthy appetite meant that wouldn’t happen. But I said, “I’ll be careful.

  Vera grunted.

  I tried something different. “And I’ll be really glad if you find any of Alex’s papers around. That would certainly save you time and money. If I don’t have to follow any false leads, that would be great. And maybe he’d actually uncovered a line on the play. I do have to ask myself why he would scamper off to the city with his fiancée when he was in the middle of this project, unless he was on to something.”

  I ate the rest of my dinner in the shadow of her long glower. Didn’t bother me. I paused every now and then to make a comment about the food, the weather and the china. There were many more challenges at dinner when I was growing up with my uncles, including the police at the door every so often.

  As soon as dessert was finished (an excellent cheese plate), I dashed to my garret to see what message Karen Smith had left. I reminded myself to keep an eye on what was happening at foot level on the steep stairs.