I could not say which part of his remark astonished me more: the fact that I shared an acquaintance with this unusual man or that he had the audacity to call me “pretty” when we hadn’t even been formally introduced. My set had firm rules governing our behavior, and although those unspoken guidelines had relaxed in recent years, commenting on my appearance right out of the gate broke even the loosest conventions. If I were honest with myself, I found his candor refreshing, but girls like me weren’t supposed to like directness. He’d left me with two choices—either to stomp away at his effrontery or to ignore it entirely. Given that this man intrigued me despite his gaffes, I chose the latter and benignly asked, “You know Arthur Griffiths?” The local vicar’s son was a friend.
“Yes, we are both with the Royal Field Artillery, and I’m stationed with him at the garrison at Exeter. When he found out that he couldn’t attend tonight because of his official duties, he asked me to come in his stead and look out for you.”
Ah, well, that explained something, I thought. I met his gaze and discovered that his eyes were a remarkable bright-blue shade. “Why didn’t you mention him straight off?”
“I didn’t know I needed to.”
I did not state the obvious, that any young man from a good family knows how to make proper introductions, including a reference to your acquaintances in common. Instead, I fished around for a bland response and said, “He’s a fine fellow.”
“Do you know Arthur well?”
“Not very well, but he is a lovely friend. We met when I was staying with the Mathews at Thorp Arch Hall in Yorkshire, and we got on.”
My dance partner—who still had not introduced himself by name—didn’t respond. The silence bothered me, so I got chatty. “He’s a good dancer.”
“You sound as though you’re disappointed I’m here instead of him.”
I decided to see if this young man’s mood could be lightened. “Well, sir, this is our first dance. And since you’ve liberated me from my dance card, you may yet have the chance for another to prove your dancing skills.”
He laughed, a deep, rich sound. As he spun me around the floor, past the familiar faces of the Wilfreds and the Sinclairs, I laughed along with him, feeling quite different from those around me. Freer somehow. More alive.
“I intend to do precisely that,” he said.
Emboldened, I asked him, “What is it that you do as an officer at Exeter?”
“I fly.”
I froze for a moment. Everyone was mad for the notion of flying, and here I was dancing with a pilot. It was too thrilling. “You fly?”
His cheeks turned a fiery red, visible even in the low ballroom light. “Well, I’m actually a gunner at the moment, even though I’m the 245th qualified aviator in Britain. Soon enough, though, I’ll be entering the newly formed Royal Flying Corps.” His chest, already quite broad, puffed up a bit at this statement.
“What’s it like up there? In the sky?”
For the first time, he unlocked his eyes from mine and glanced up at the frescoed ceiling, as if there, among the artfully depicted faux skyscape with its abundance of cherubs, he might relive the real thing. “Exhilarating and strange to be so near the clouds and to see the world below so small. But quite terrifying too.”
I giggled a little. “I cannot even imagine, though I’d like to try it.”
His blue eyes clouded over, and his tone grew more serious. “I haven’t chosen flying for the thrill of it, Miss Miller. If there’s a war—and I do think there will be one—planes will be vital. I intend to be integral to the war effort, a critical cog in the massive military machine. To help England, of course, but also so I can reap the benefits afterward in my career. When aeroplanes will be an important part of our economy.”
His intensity moved me, as did the boldness of his approach. He was quite different from all the men I’d encountered before, whether at home in Devon or abroad in Egypt. I felt quite breathless, and not just from the quick pace of the one-step.
The last notes of “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” sounded, and I stopped dancing. I began to untwine myself from him when he reached for my hand. “Stay on the dance floor with me. As you yourself said, you no longer have a dance card. You are free.”
I hesitated. More than anything, I wanted to dance with him again, to start to solve the mystery of this unusual man. But I could hear Mummy railing in my head, reprimanding me for the untoward message a girl sent if she danced with a gentleman twice in a row, particularly a girl who was already spoken for. I wanted something in exchange for my trouble.
“On one condition,” I said.
“Anything, Miss Miller. Anything at all.”
“You tell me your name.”
Blushing again, he realized that, for all his valiant gestures with me, he had forgotten the most basic protocol. He bowed deeply and then said, “I am most pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Miller. My name is Lieutenant Archibald Christie.”
Chapter Four
Day One after the Disappearance
Saturday, December 4, 1926
Hurtmore Cottage, Godalming, England, and Styles, Sunningdale, England
“Everything all right?” Sam asks him upon his return to the dining room.
Although he’s already crafted an answer to the inevitable question, Archie stammers when called upon to say the actual words. Lying has never come easily to him, even when circumstances as of late have presented him with abundant opportunities to practice. “Oh, it’s, um, my mother. She’s taken ill, I’m afraid.” Before he can explain further, Madge gasps. He holds up his hand and assures her, “Nothing serious, the doctor promises. But she’s asked for me, and needs must.”
Sam nods his head. “Duty and all that.”
“Well, if it’s not terribly serious, can you spare Nancy through luncheon?” Madge, recovered from her concern over Archie’s mother, asks with a coy glance at her friend. “Sam and I would love to keep her captive for a few hands of whist.”
“I don’t see why not,” Archie says, giving Madge and then Nancy his best approximation of a smile. Nancy, sweet and unchallenging and lovely in her pale-blue frock, deserves a happy, carefree afternoon with her friend.
“Will you be able to return for dinner?” Sam asks, and Archie feels the weight of the Jameses’ disappointment. They’ve been so kind to plan this weekend, and now he’s undermined their gesture. One he doubts anyone else would have made.
“I’ll ring to let you know whether that will be possible. If not—” Archie breaks off, unsure what to say. He doesn’t know what he’ll be facing at Styles, doesn’t know what the police know, and he cannot plan for the different eventualities. In truth, he hasn’t even allowed himself to consider those eventualities.
Sam rescues him. “No need to worry, old chap. We will take Nancy to her home if the evening plans prove impossible.”
Gratitude surges through him, and he rounds the table to shake his friend’s hand. Just as their fingers touch, a knock sounds at the door.
“Again? That damned maid.” Sam grunts in irritation, then yells out, “What is it now?”
“Sir, there is a policeman at the door,” the maid says through the crack.
Archie feels sick. He knows, or thinks he knows, why the police wait at the Jameses’ front door.
“What?” Sam couldn’t have looked more astonished if his maid had informed him that his beloved foxhound had spontaneously turned into a poodle. Police officers were for dealing with scrapes among petty laborers, not for knocking on the front door of country houses.
“Yes, sir, a police officer, sir. He’s asking for the colonel.”
“Whatever for?”
“He won’t say. Just keeps asking for the colonel.”
The humiliation of being summoned by a police officer—giving the lie to his concoction about his mother’s cond
ition—almost overshadows his concern about the summoning itself. What must Madge and Sam think of him? How will he explain this to them? To Nancy?
As he proceeds down the road, a rock causes his Delage to spin out, and he nearly loses sight of the police car he’s meant to be following. The momentary separation from the vehicle plants a seed of recklessness in him. What if he just drove off, evading the situation at Styles? Would the police car be able to catch him?
No, he will face his comeuppance like a man. No matter how his actions will be judged, he never wants it said that he’s a man who shirks his duties, who runs from his mistakes.
Following the police car, he turns down the familiar lane leading to his home. The dust from the official vehicle blinds his vision for a second, and when his sight clears, the Tudor peaks of Styles materialize, nearly as impressive as the first time he saw them. How much has changed since that day, he thinks, forcing that memory from his mind.
Archie knows that he must somehow grasp the upper hand of this situation. Perhaps it will help if he sets the tone by assuming his rightful role as master of Styles? Accordingly, he does not wait for the policeman to alight from his car. Instead, he marches past the other police cars parked in Styles’s governor’s drive and heads directly to the slightly ajar front door. When he pushes it wide open, he is surprised to note that not one of the black-uniformed officers gathered in the kitchen like a swarm of deadly bees gathered around their queen takes notice of him. Archie realizes that he has been given a singular chance to assess the situation before he speaks.
He scans the long mahogany table lining the foyer’s right wall to see if any calling cards lie on the silver receiving tray. The tray is bare, but he notices something unusual. Peeking out from underneath the tray is the corner of an envelope, his wife’s distinctive ivory stationary.
Glancing at the police officers absorbed in the loud yet strangely muffled voice of a man he can’t see, undoubtedly their supervisor, Archie slides the envelope out from under the silver tray. Then, keeping his footsteps light, he creeps into his study and quietly closes the door behind him.
Grabbing the ivory-handled letter opener from his desk, he slices open the envelope. The sprawling, spiky handwriting of his wife stares out at him from the notepaper within. Time presses upon him urgently, but he needs little more than several seconds to scan her words. As he finishes, he looks up, feeling as if he’s awoken from a deep slumber into a nightmare. When on earth did she have the time—nay, the prescience, the shrewdness, the patient calculation—to write these words? Had he ever really known his wife?
The narrow walls of his study seem to constrict, and he feels like he cannot breathe. But he knows he must take action. The letter has made clear that he’s no longer the executor of a plan but merely its subject—one trapped in a labyrinth at that—and he must find a way out. Tossing the letter down on the desk, he begins pacing the room, which grows gloomier by the second with an impending storm. What in the name of god should he do?
He is certain of only one thing. While he is prepared to pay his penance, he doesn’t plan on handing over the keys to the jailor. No one can be allowed to see this letter. Walking over to the hearth, he drops the letter and envelope into the flames and watches Agatha’s words burn.
Chapter Five
The Manuscript
October 19, 1912
Ashfield, Torquay, England
I raced across the lane from the Mellors’ estate back home to Ashfield. I’d been quite happily playing badminton with my friend Max Mellor when his maid summoned me to the telephone. Mummy, quite cross, was on the line, ordering me home because an unknown young man was there, “waiting endlessly” for me. She’d told him that she expected me within a quarter of an hour, and when I didn’t appear within the anticipated time—and when he didn’t leave as the minutes passed and I failed to appear—she felt compelled to phone. The poor fellow, whoever he was, obviously hadn’t registered any number of cues my mother sent his way that he should take his leave.
Other than Mummy’s pressure, I had felt no compulsion to return home, especially since Max and I were having a grand time. Life in Torquay was chock-full of these lazy days. Impromptu picnics and sailing and sports engagements and riding outings and musical afternoons by day. Carefully orchestrated garden parties and evening dances and house parties by night. Weeks and months floated by in a pleasant, carefree dream—with a girl’s only goal being the landing of a husband—and I had no wish to wake up.
I guessed that the caller was the stuffy naval officer from the previous night’s dinner party, who’d begged me to read his heavy-handed poems aloud to the other guests. Even so, while I had no desire to resume our stultifying conversation, I didn’t wish for him to irritate Mummy for too long a time. While Mummy was patient and sweet-natured, particularly with me, she could become crotchety in the presence of a bore or someone who set her off schedule. Since my father’s death nearly ten years ago, I’d become my mother’s focus and companion, particularly since my elder siblings Madge and Monty had long since moved on with their own lives, and I relished it. Mummy and I had a lovely relationship—no one in the world understood me as she did—and I felt quite protective of her, even though she was much stronger than she appeared on first glance. The shock of my father’s death and the challenge of the financial circumstances in which he left us had knitted us together tightly, the two of us against the world and all that.
My cheeks flushed and warm from hurrying down the lane, I wiggled out of my cardigan and handed it to Jane, our housemaid. Before I walked from the entryway to the drawing room, I glanced at myself in the mirror to make certain I looked presentable. My dun-colored hair, kissed by the sun into a dark, glimmering blond, looked rather fetching despite—or maybe because of—the tendrils that had escaped my braid. I decided not to tuck the loose pieces back into my hairpins, but I did smooth my hair. Even though I didn’t care much for the opinion of the fellow I suspected sat in the parlor, I always liked to meet Mummy’s expectation that I was a “lovely girl.”
I entered the drawing room, where my mother looked over at me from her usual spot in an armchair near the fireplace. Putting aside her embroidery in order to flee the room at the first polite opportunity, she rose, as did the man sitting opposite her. I could only see the back of his head, which was a sandy blond shade quite a bit lighter than I remembered the naval officer’s hair being.
I walked toward both of them and bobbed in an abbreviated curtsy. Looking up from the floor into Mummy’s face first and then the gentleman caller’s, I realized with a start that it was not the naval officer I expected. It was the man from the Chudleigh ball—Archibald Christie.
Astonished, I didn’t speak at first. I hadn’t heard from him in the seven days since the ball, and I had begun to think I never would. Most gentlemen would have expressed their interest in a girl within one or two days of a ball—never seven.
Mummy cleared her throat and finally said, “Agatha, this young man—Lieutenant Christie, I believe—tells me that you two met at Chudleigh.”
Collecting myself, I answered, “Yes, Mummy. This is Lieutenant Christie, who is in the Royal Field Artillery. He is stationed at the garrison at Exeter, and I did indeed meet him at the ball given by the Cliffords at Chudleigh.”
She looked him up and down. “You’re quite a ways from Exeter, Lieutenant Christie.”
“Yes, ma’am. I happened to be driving my motorbike through Torquay, and I remembered that Miss Miller lived here. I inquired of a local I passed on the road, and here I am.”
“Here you are.” She sighed. “What a coincidence that you should happen to find yourself in Torquay.”
No one could miss the sarcasm and disbelief in my mother’s voice, and I found it surprising that my gentle, adoring Mummy could be so sharp with a stranger. What had he done to her in the span of a quarter of an hour alone to elicit this unusual re
action? Was it simply that he wasn’t Reggie? I glanced over at Lieutenant Christie, whose cheeks shone bright red. I felt badly for him and rushed in to save him.
“I remember you mentioned at the Cliffords’ ball that you might have an errand in Torquay, Lieutenant Christie. Of an official nature, that is.”
An expression of relief passed over his face, and he grasped at my proffered excuse. “Indeed, Miss Miller. And you had very kindly suggested that I call when in the neighborhood.”
This exchange did not fool Mummy, but it did return to Lieutenant Christie a modicum of his dignity. It also provided my mother with license to leave the drawing room. Unlike the continent, it was the custom in England for unmarried men and women to be left alone, as long as chaperones were in the vicinity or the unmarried people were busy dancing. “Well, I must see Mary about the dinner menu. It was a pleasure meeting you, Lieutenant—” She feigned forgetfulness, telegraphing her opinion of this young man.
“Christie, ma’am.”
“Lieutenant Christie,” she said as she left the room.
I fancied that we simultaneously exhaled when Mummy left the room. Determined to lighten the mood, I said, “Why don’t we take a walk in the gardens? The day is cool, but our grounds hold some interest. And I’d love to see your motorbike.”
“That would be lovely, Miss Miller.”
After the servant helped us on with our coats—a longer walk required more warmth than a cardigan could provide—we trundled outside. Passing by the kitchen garden, I explained to Lieutenant Christie that we would not be stopping behind its high walls because its sole allure was its abundance of seasonal raspberries and apples. I directed him instead to the garden proper.
Watching Lieutenant Christie squirm under my mother’s scrutinizing gaze made me bold with him. With a broad smile, I teased, “Can I trust you with the secrets of my garden?”
He did not smile back. Instead, he fixed his bright-blue eyes on mine and said, “I hope you can trust me with all your secrets.”
The Mystery of Mrs. Christie Page 2
