The Mystery of Mrs. Christie

by Marie Benedict

  Breathless from my proximity to him and my heart pounding in my chest, I gave him the explanation we gave everyone else. “We thought it best to wait until he returned, when our situations would be more stable.”

  “I wouldn’t have waited, Agatha. I feel too strongly to wait for you.” His voice sounded thick with longing. To be wanted so desperately made me want him even more. Was this that passionate love for which I’d been waiting? Was this the surge of desire I’d only read about in books?

  Archie’s words struck a chord in me. Had I ever had these feelings for Reggie? I recalled one spring evening when he and I broke away from the group to stroll on the lawn after a large dinner party of neighborhood friends. We’d been chatting about the boats being readied for the upcoming sailing regatta—nothing really, just the stuff of usual Torquay life—when a shiver overtook me, even though the night wasn’t particularly cold. Without missing a step or a beat in our conversation, Reggie removed his jacket and placed it upon my shoulders with a touch surprisingly gentle for his large hands. For a long moment, our gazes met, and I experienced a sensation of complete comfort, as if I knew I’d be safe and well cared for in his arms. But I felt nothing more.

  In truth, I had known for some time that I didn’t care for Reggie with the proper emotion a wife should have for her husband. Instead, I felt a contentment and peacefulness with Reggie that one feels with another very like oneself. It was almost as if, together, Reggie and I were too alike, too right, and honestly, too boring. I felt none of the things with Reggie that I felt with Archie. Archie felt like the one. He must be my Fate. The one we girls were meant to be waiting for.

  I laughed. “You’re mad.”

  He smiled for the first time that evening. “I am mad. For you.”

  Even though it went against ballroom protocol, he pulled me even closer to him. I could feel his warm breath on my cheek and on my lips as he asked, “Agatha Miller, will you marry me? Right away?”

  Without warning, Madge’s cautionary face flashed into my mind alongside Reggie’s kindly smile, but I dismissed it. Then, in spite of Madge’s admonition—or perhaps because of it—I answered him from the core of my longing and my feelings.

  “Yes, Archibald Christie. I will marry you.”

  Chapter Ten

  Day One after the Disappearance

  Saturday, December 4, 1926

  Styles, Sunningdale, England

  What the devil is that noise? Archie wonders. It’s one thing to have the constant murmur of police officers and the slam of doors as they trudge in and out of the house, but this booming voice, tinged with authority, echoing through the hallways of Styles is an entirely different matter. He covers his ears with his hands, and yet the voice worms its way down the corridor to his study, where a constant stream of police have been overwhelming him with questions all day. It’s too much. He can’t think.

  Even though Archie knows his decision carries some risk, he must shush this unnerving voice. He’s the distressed husband of a missing wife, isn’t he? Doesn’t that warrant a bit of peace? he nearly says aloud and then catches himself. He rises, thinking that he’ll approach whoever is speaking so bloody loudly to request a modicum of quiet, when the door to his study opens without the courtesy of a knock.

  It is Detective Chief Constable Kenward, and Archie realizes that it is the detective’s voice he heard reverberating down the hallways of Styles. This knowledge silences Archie’s ability to complain; he must suffer the noise.

  “I know you were barraged with questions earlier, but I have a few more if you can tolerate it?” Kenward asks, though it’s not really a question. He pulls out a small tablet and a pencil from his voluminous trench coat.

  “Anything if it will help find my wife,” Archie says but does not mean.

  The men settle into the armchairs facing one another across the hearth, and Kenward asks, “Do you mind running through the details of yesterday morning again, Mr. Christie?”

  This again, Archie thinks but doesn’t dare say. Instead, he says, “Of course. Happy to do so. As I told you and the other officers before, I awoke, readied for work, and had my breakfast, all at the usual time—”

  “What would that be, sir?”

  “Nine o’clock in the morning.”

  “You are certain?”

  “Oh yes, I always follow the same routine each morning at the same time.”

  “Man of habit, are you?”

  “Oh yes,” Archie answers, squaring his shoulders. He’s quite proud of the regularity of his schedule, but then he stops short, wondering whether this is the correct response. Might his orderly ways have some downside in the deputy chief constable’s view?

  “After you engaged in your usual morning routine, did you see Mrs. Christie?”

  “Yes, she came down to breakfast right as I was finishing up.”

  “What did you two discuss?” he asks, scribbling notes on his pad.

  Kenward’s lack of eye contact makes it easier for Archie to answer with the pat response he’s been giving all day. “The usual morning chatter about work, schedules, and our daughter, Rosalind.”

  “Did you see your wife after this usual morning chatter?”

  Did he hear skepticism in Kenward’s voice when he repeated the phrase “usual morning chatter,” Archie wonders. Or had he imagined it?

  “No, I did not see her after I left for work that day,” Archie answers.

  “You had no contact with her throughout that day.”

  “No.”

  “Do you have any sense of her whereabouts during the day?”

  “No.”

  “But you talked about schedules in the morning, didn’t you say that?”

  “Just schedules in general.”

  “Did that general conversation include upcoming plans for the weekend?”

  “I suppose, in part.” Archie tries to adopt an offhand air.

  “Remind me. What were your respective weekend plans, Mr. Christie?”

  “My wife was planning on going to Beverly in Yorkshire. And I had committed to stay with the Jameses at Hurtmore Cottage, closer by. As you know.” This is old ground, he thinks. He’d even gone over this with Kenward before, not to mention the other officers. There must be some other purpose, some trap being laid.

  “Did you often spend your weekends apart?”

  “When the occasion demanded,” Archie answers with a deliberately vague response. He knows that it isn’t commonly done for couples to make separate weekend plans.

  “And the occasion demanded here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was that because your wife was not invited to the Jameses’?” Kenward asks, his voice all innocence and his gaze averted. This is what Kenward has been building toward, Archie thinks, and the rage begins to mount within him. It is no bloody business of the police who the Jameses invite to their home.

  With this sudden understanding, Archie scrambles to recover, trying hard to keep the anger from his voice, trying to make it seem perfectly plausible and normal that his wife wouldn’t be included at the Jameses’. “Of course she was invited. But the Jameses are golfing friends, and my wife didn’t—doesn’t—golf. So when she had the opportunity to go to Yorkshire, she chose that instead.”

  “It wasn’t the other way around, sir?”

  What in the devil has this man heard? And from whom? Treading cautiously, Archie says, “I don’t quite catch your meaning, Deputy Chief Constable Kenward.” He is irritated at having to say “deputy chief constable” each time he refers to the policeman. Why doesn’t Kenward offer a shortened form of his title?

  “I mean, weren’t you invited to Yorkshire with your wife but chose Hurtmore Cottage instead?”

  Archie freezes. To whom has Kenward been speaking? Where in the bloody hell is he hearing things? “I don’t know what you’re on
about. We made separate plans according to our separate interests this particular weekend.” He maintains his position, running through the dictates of the letter in his mind and assuring himself that he is following its instructions as he answers—while at the same time protecting his other interests.

  Paper and pencil in hand, Kenward plows forward as though they hadn’t just waded through some murky waters. “Who was in attendance at the Jameses’ residence at Hurtmore Cottage this weekend?”

  “Ah, let’s see, Mr. and Mrs. James, of course,” Archie answers, hoping to leave it at that.

  “Of course. Anyone else?” Kenward asks, although Archie suspects that he already knows the answer.

  “A Miss Neele.” At the mention of Nancy’s name, Kenward arches his eyebrow. Panic takes hold of Archie, and he blurts out, “She was to serve as the fourth.”

  Kenward’s expression changes from curious to confused. “The fourth?”

  “For our golf foursome. It was a golfing weekend. We needed four to play.”

  “Ah. Miss Neele was a friend of Mrs. James, I take it?”

  Archie seizes the opportunity Kenward inadvertently provides with his question. “Yes, yes indeed. She is a friend of Mrs. James. They used to work together in the city from what I understand. Thick as thieves then and now.”

  Opening his mouth as he forms another inquiry, Kenward clamps it shut when a policeman barges into his study. Anger surges within Archie at this second unbidden entry into his sanctum, but before he can protest, the policeman leans down to whisper into Kenward’s ear.

  Turning his attention back to Archie, Kenward says, “Remember when you offered to help with anything if it will help find your wife?”

  “Of course,” Archie answers irritably. “That was only moments ago.”

  “Well, sir, it looks like you might just get your chance to do anything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “An abandoned car of your wife’s make—a Morris Cowley—has been discovered near Newlands Corner. We will need your help.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The Manuscript

  January 1913 to November 1914

  Torquay, England

  Marriage did not come with the speed or welcome that Archie wished. Mummy first expressed her displeasure privately on the morning of New Year’s Day, when I shared my news. She lamented the loss of Reggie as a husband and son-in-law, and she despaired at the unknowability of this stranger I’d chosen. Her dismay didn’t soften by afternoon when Archie arrived to ask Mummy for my hand in marriage. With an unusually frank approach, she laid bare some of her concerns about Archie as a husband—to him.

  “What money do you have to get married on?” she asked straightaway as he twisted his hat in his hand so forcefully I felt certain he’d ruin it.

  “My subaltern’s salary,” he said, his eyes not meeting Mummy’s. For once, she had laid aside her needlework to focus on the conversation. “And a small allowance that my mother sends.”

  “I hope you are not operating under the illusion that Agatha comes with a dowry or significant income,” she said bluntly, and it took all my willpower not to screech aloud. Such matters were meant to be discussed obliquely, over tea. Surely, she will stop at that, I thought. But to my dismay, she went on. “She has only one hundred pounds a year under her grandfather’s will. And that’s all she’ll ever have.”

  His eyebrows lifted in surprise, but he did not waver. “We will find a way to make ends meet,” he said, to which Mummy only shook her head. She knew all too well how debilitating the struggle over finances could be; it had killed my father. When Papa’s inheritance began to ebb away due to poor investments and economic trends outside his control, his joie de vivre ebbed away as well. And when he was forced to try to find work—for the first time, as a man well into his fifties—not only did his zest for life disappear but illness took its place, filling the void. Bit by bit, sickness took him over, body and spirit, until he gave in.

  In the days that followed, we sifted through the possibilities, trying desperately to overcome the Flying Corps’ overt discouragement of its young pilots to marry, and of course, we informed Archie’s family. I was nervous when he told me he would be sharing the news, even when he chose to make his announcement to them privately, because I understood his mother to be old-fashioned in her stolid Irish ways. It seemed that her years in India with Archie’s father hadn’t mellowed her in her second life as wife to an English head of school but in fact had made her cling all the more to her Victorian ways. So when Archie updated me on Peg Hemsley’s reaction, I wasn’t surprised that she made clear, undoubtedly in her thick Irish lilt, that her precious son needn’t race into marriage with a girl who wore the Peter Pan collar. This newly fashionable feature on dresses, adopted by all my friends, allowed us to abandon the old high collars with their uncomfortable boning for a turned-down collar inspired by the main character in Barrie’s play. How I loved Peter Pan, but I supposed that the old-fashioned Peg found the practice of showing four inches of neck below the chin to be unimaginably racy for a prospective daughter-in-law. While she was always lovely to me in person, I knew she sang a very different sort of Irish ballad behind the scenes.

  While our families provided the brakes upon our haste, we busied ourselves preparing for a war I felt sure would never come: Archie with training with the Flying Corps on Salisbury Plain, and me with first aid and home nursing classes. When we managed to cobble breaks from Archie’s training, we huddled together, plotting a pathway to marriage. This heightened the drama and romance of our fleeting time together and made me ever more certain that I must marry this enigmatic, passionate man. Only the sad reply letter I received from Reggie when I broke off our engagement gave me any pause.

  After all the waiting and preparing, the war came in a rush, just as Archie had predicted. For the many months of our engagement, I had maintained that the assassination of some archduke in Serbia had nothing to do with us, that surely, such a faraway incident could not pull England into war. But on August 4, Great Britain could no longer forestall its entrance into the melee.

  The Royal Flying Corps was immediately mobilized, and Archie’s unit was among the first to go active. Since the German Air Force had a fearsome reputation, the early Flying Corps boys were certain they would be killed. I tried to stay stoic when Archie made such pronouncements in a shockingly calm manner, but privately, even thinking of them set me off on a crying jag once he left. Soon, however, I had no time to harbor such maudlin thoughts.

  Women were called upon to help in the war effort alongside the men, although the work itself was, of course, different. I opted to pursue service as a wartime nurse, feeling that I might make the most impact tending to the injured soldiers than in knitting scarves and mittens for them on the front. I was assigned to a detachment near Torquay, and at first, we passed the time furiously making bandages and swabs and setting up the wards in the makeshift hospital we’d converted from the town hall. Once the wounded soldiers began pouring through the doors, thinking itself became a luxury. As I wheeled the bloodied boys through the halls, I heard mention of their battles—Marne, Antwerp, among others—but my days passed by in a blur of cleaning bedpans and urinals, scrubbing vomit, preparing hygienic towels for doctors as they passed from patient to patient, and changing dressings on suppurating wounds—the mainstay of most informally trained wartime nurse aides.

  I surprised myself with my stoicism over the blood and guts and gore that routinely appeared in the ward. The other nurse aides, mostly well-bred girls like myself, couldn’t tolerate the state of the wounded, and more often than not, I had to assist them when they’d become nauseated from the sight of the soldiers’ injuries. The experienced, professionally trained nurses who actually ran the hospital took note of me, and I soon became a regular in the surgeries and amputations and the requested caretaker of the more seriously injured.
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br />   Mummy, to my astonishment, did not object to this unsavory work, although she found curious the stride in which I took this nursing. “For goodness’ sake, Agatha,” she exclaimed with a shudder one evening over tea. “You treat these horrors matter-of-factly.” I guessed that she tolerated my work because she hoped I’d stumble across a more suitable young man in the hospital who would distract me from Archie. But she had no understanding of the reality of the wards and the state of the soldiers—the unlikelihood that the boys I tended could think about anything but survival—or the omnipresence of death.

  In fact, spending my days in the presence of injured soldiers and watching the more seriously harmed only knitted me more tightly to Archie. The boys reminded me how tenuous one’s thread to life really was. For each wound I cleaned and each amputated limb I dressed, I said a silent prayer that Archie stayed safe as he soared and swooped in the European skies.

  Days turned into weeks, and those weeks built into three months before Archie had a leave. As I packed for our chaperoned meeting, I thought about how those three months might as well have been three years for all that I’d experienced. I felt utterly changed by what I’d seen and done. But if the war had altered me from the sidelines, I could not imagine how it had transformed Archie, who lived amid terror, bloodshed, combat, and death every day. Would I recognize the man with whom I’d fallen in love?

  Chapter Twelve

  Day One after the Disappearance

  Saturday, December 4, 1926

  The Silent Pool, Surrey, England

  The cluster of police blocks the view of the Silent Pool. But Archie doesn’t need to see the stagnant body of brackish water to know that it lies down the hill just beyond the men, past where he’s been told the Morris Cowley sits near the rim of a chalk pit next to Water Lane. Archie has been there often enough to know its precise location.