The Mystery of Mrs. Christie

by Marie Benedict

  His wife had found the dark, unreflective pool—a small, spring-fed lake about three hundred yards from a picturesque plateau called Newlands Corner—oddly inspiring. Its gloomy aspect, ringed so thickly with trees that sunlight could scarcely penetrate, had provided fodder for her writing, she’d claimed, as had the legends surrounding the Silent Pool. Local lore had linked the site to the legendary King John, who’d allegedly abducted a beautiful woodcutter’s daughter. It was said that King John’s unwelcome amorous advances had forced the girl into the pool’s deceptively deep water, where she drowned. But the drowning hadn’t silenced the girl, local folks claimed; if one was unlucky enough to be in the pool’s vicinity at midnight, one could witness her rise from its depths. It was nonsense, of course, and he’d told Agatha so.

  In their early days living at Styles, Archie had begrudgingly accompanied her for walks around the pool. She’d wanted him to understand its allure. But in recent years, he’d refused to join her in those strolls, preferring the order, tradition, and wide spaces of the golf course and his companions there. Now, in recent months, Agatha had taken to visiting the Silent Pool alone.

  “Colonel Christie, over here,” Kenward calls to him.

  He doesn’t want to see what the police have found, but a man desperate to find his missing wife would rush toward any sign of her whereabouts. The letter has made him constantly cognizant of how he must act and in fact specifically instructed him to join in any searches that might arise. Consequently, he races to Kenward’s side.

  The uniformed men part to allow him entrance into their ghastly circle. There, at its center, is a gray, bottle-nosed Morris Cowley. The vehicle sits halfway down a grassy slope leading toward the Silent Pool. Thick bushes conceal the hood and keep it from sliding headlong down the steep hill toward the chalk pit.

  “Can you confirm that this is your wife’s car, Colonel?” Kenward asks.

  “It certainly is the make and model of her vehicle. Whether it is hers, I cannot say.” His voice quivers, and his legs feel unexpectedly spongy. He hasn’t anticipated that the sight of his wife’s car would cause him to shake. She’d purchased the Morris Cowley with the proceeds of the first of her three published novels, and she adored prowling about the countryside behind its wheel. He himself has only recently purchased a car—the sportier French Delage, albeit a secondhand one—which isn’t as well suited for rural drives. But then, he doesn’t really use the Delage for that purpose, does he? He travels back and forth to his job in London and back and forth to the golf course.

  “A pricey one, that Morris Cowley,” one of Kenward’s right-hand men remarks.

  The deputy chief constable shoots a displeased look at the man. “There seems to be very little damage to the car, Colonel. The glass windscreen is unbroken, and the folding canvas roof is unpunctured. The only part that seems to have been impacted is the hood. From the skid marks leading up to the car, it appears as though some unusual circumstance led to the car careening off the road, if you can call that dirt path back there a road. And the only thing that stopped the car from plunging into that chalk pit was those bushes.”

  Kenward calls over to his men. “Let’s have a look at the glove box to make certain about the ownership.” He directs two men to search the front seats and glove box.

  As Archie watches the police officers rummage through the car, he asks a question that had been niggling at the back of his mind. “How did you ever find her car in this remote spot, Detective Chief Constable Kenward? And so soon after we discovered her disappearance?”

  “The headlights of the car must have been left running when your wife dis—” He stutters a bit as he realizes he must choose his words carefully. “When your wife left the vehicle. They were still running at seven o’clock this morning when a local fellow on his way to work noticed them shining out from the wooded area surrounding the Silent Pool. The sighting was called in, and while we’d planned on checking on it later today, we got caught up with your wife’s disappearance, only now connecting the two events.”

  Archie nods, still watching the police search the car. At Kenward’s instruction, the officers poke about in the back seat of the car while Archie and the deputy chief constable stand by. The men find nothing of interest at first, but soon one of them calls out, “Chief, there’s a bag underneath the back seat. And a fur coat.”

  Archie feels as though he cannot get a proper breath, watching these strangers pawing around his wife’s Morris Cowley, but he knows he must maintain his composure. The officers eventually crawl out of the car, each carrying a parcel carefully wrapped in some sort of plain, official fabric.

  “Let’s have a look.” Kenward motions for the officers to spread the objects on the ground before them.

  The officers peel back the rough fabric in which they’d wrapped the items, revealing a dressing case and a fur coat. Under Kenwood’s watchful eye and very specific directions, the men methodically open the case and discover within a few ladies’ garments and some toiletries.

  “It’s packed as if she’d planned that Yorkshire weekend after all, isn’t it, Chief?” one of the men asks Kenward. “Those plans got derailed by the look of it.”

  “Assuming it’s her car, that is. And these items, hers,” Kenward answers briskly. He clearly disapproves of his officers positing theories within earshot of Archie and redirects their focus to the coat. The men pat down the long fur, finding nothing but a plain linen handkerchief in the pocket.

  “Odd that,” Kenward mutters, almost to himself. “It was a brisk night to begin with, and then the temperature dropped from forty-one degrees at six o’clock last evening to thirty-six degrees at midnight. Wouldn’t a warm fur coat like that have been welcome if you’d had the choice to wear it? The chance to put it on?”

  Archie glances over at him. For a police officer who actively discourages his men from conjecturing in the presence of interested parties, the speculative statement is strange. Is he trying to bait Archie by suggesting that something untoward happened to Agatha because she didn’t have time to put on a warm coat before leaving the car? He will not take the bait. In fact, the letter forbids it.

  “Sir,” one of the men yells, waving a small rectangular piece of paper. “It’s the driving license. It was buried in the bottom of the dressing case.”

  “Does it bear the name—” Kenward asks.

  The excited young policeman interjects, “Yes, sir, it belongs to the wife.”

  Visibly irritated at the interruption, Kenward takes the document from the eager officer, reviews it for a moment, and then says, “Well, Colonel, I’m afraid there’s no other possible course at the moment. We must proceed with this investigation with suspicion of foul play.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Manuscript

  December 23–24, 1914

  Clifton, England

  A faint tap sounded at the bedroom door. The soft noise roused me from the light sleep into which I had just drifted. I sat up and glanced around the unfamiliar bedroom. Oh right, I realized. I was in Clifton, at Archie’s parents’ home to celebrate Christmas. When Archie suddenly got leave three days prior, we met in London, and after a few awkward days with my mother in tow as chaperone, we took the train to Clifton alone where the mood lifted considerably after we shared a bottle of wine.

  The war had altered us both, in ways we were still discovering. On his prior leave—he’d had only two since deploying—we greeted each other with a desperate, loving embrace, but within minutes, we were interacting like strangers, unsure of which topics to discuss and what tone to take. Archie had been strangely casual about the war and his experiences, almost dismissive, in a way that disturbed me. How could he be so glib about such horrific destruction? It wasn’t as if I was unaccustomed to the reality of war and he needed to protect me from it; I tended to it daily in the wards, and he knew it. I was perhaps more emotional and less caref
ree than the girl he’d known, and it took us days to connect with each other again. Even then, something had been lost in translation between us, something we hadn’t rediscovered on this leave either. Not yet, anyway.

  Reaching for my robe, I wrapped it tightly around myself before opening the door. I’d overheard Archie’s mother make another snide remark about the Peter Pan collars on my dresses, and I wanted to ensure I did nothing else to scandalize her, should she be standing behind the door. But it wasn’t Peg. It was Archie.

  Walking into the bedroom, he quietly closed the door behind him. He slipped his arms around my waist and kissed me deeply. The feel of his lips on mine and the scent of his cologne made me light-headed. We kissed and caressed each other until shivers ran through me. I felt us moving backward toward the bed, and while I longed to acquiesce, the thought of his mother—and propriety—stopped me.

  “You shouldn’t be in here. Imagine what your mother would say,” I whispered, pushing him away gently.

  He pulled me toward him but made no motion toward the bed. “We’ve got to get married, Agatha. At once. Let’s marry tomorrow.” He was breathing heavily.

  “But you said—” Earlier, on the train, he’d declared that getting married during wartime was selfish and wrong, never mind the scores of young people hurrying to the altar and his sense of urgency about our engagement. It was greedy, he said, to rush into marriage, only to leave behind a widow and perhaps a child. Yet the conversation about marriage continued to bind us together.

  Archie interrupted me. “I was wrong. Marriage is the only sensible thing to do in the circumstances. And I simply cannot wait to make you mine.”

  “I am yours, Archie,” I reassured him.

  “Fully mine,” he whispered into my ear as he drew me even closer to him. “Just think, we have two days together before I go back. We will get married tomorrow morning, and after a Christmas lunch here with my parents, we will take the train to Torquay to share the news with your family, and we’ll still have time to honeymoon at the Grand Hotel.”

  “Can we manage it so quickly?”

  “We will check with the vicar in the morning.” Burrowing his face in the curve of my neck, he said, “Then, once we’ve done our familial duty, I have no intention of letting you out of our Grand Hotel room until I have to report for duty.”

  The morning brought neither the swift trip to the altar for which Archie had hoped nor parental blessings. Peg was beside herself at our hurry; she collapsed into hysterical tears at the very thought of our “race” to marriage, although—in the privacy of my thoughts—I thought it hardly deserved to be called a race, given its many years in the making. But I understood her point and felt hesitant myself, even though Archie and I had known each other for over two years by now. Archie’s lovely stepfather, William Hemsley, took control of the situation, calming Peg and encouraging us onward, and with his blessing, we scurried around Clifton, trying to secure the necessary paperwork, and any misgivings I had about our haste and disregard for protocol were swept away by Archie’s ebullience.

  In an effort to expedite matters, we approached an ecclesiastical headmaster at the school where Archie’s stepfather worked to see if he had the authority to marry us, to no avail. A visit to the registry office to assess whether they could perform the legal marriage ceremony yielded a demoralizing spurning, as we didn’t have the requisite fourteen days of notice. Dejected, we stood on the steps of the registry office, lamenting our luck, when a registrar stepped out and saw us, all desperation and melancholy over our predicament.

  A spark of recognition shone in his eyes as he spotted Archie. “My dear boy, you live here in Clifton, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “With your mother and stepfather, the Hemsleys, if I’m not mistaken?”

  “Yes, that’s right, sir.”

  “Well, as long as you keep some belongings here at their house in Clifton, you can call Clifton home. In that case, you don’t need a fortnight’s notice to get married here. You can purchase what’s called an ordinary license and get married at your parish church today.”

  Archie whooped in delight, thanked the thoughtful registrar profusely, and swung me around in the air. We ran around following his instructions and borrowing the necessary eight pounds from Archie’s stepfather. License in hand, we tracked down the vicar at his friend’s home where he was enjoying tea, and he agreed to perform the ceremony that afternoon.

  Yet even as we mounted the steps to Archie’s parish church, we weren’t certain the marriage would proceed. We’d noticed that the license required a second witness to the ceremony, and Peg refused to leave her bed, where she’d collapsed in despair at our announcement. Archie’s stepfather had agreed to serve as a witness, but we still needed one more.

  Perhaps our inability to proceed with the ceremony right now is for the best, I thought to myself. After all, Mummy would be extremely disappointed to miss the event, not to mention Madge and my grandmother, who we called Auntie-Grannie. My sister’s wedding had been a grand affair with nearly a dozen in the wedding party and festivities that lasted for days with all our relatives and family friends in attendance, and while no one anticipated a similar fete during wartime, Madge, Mummy, and Auntie-Grannie, at the very least, would want to be included in whatever celebration took place for our wedding.

  But when I broached this idea, Archie disagreed and insisted on proceeding. “The decision has been made,” he pronounced, “and how would it look if we changed our plans at the eleventh hour?” He pulled me onto the street outside the church to see if we might approach a complete stranger and request their service as a second witness. It was then that I heard my name being called. Turning around, I was astonished to see Yvonne Bush, an old friend with whom I’d stayed in Clifton several years earlier, before I’d even met Archie.

  Archie grasped my hand and exclaimed, “We’ve been saved!” Turning toward me, he added, “I told you our marriage was meant to be. Go ask your friend if she’ll serve as our marriage witness.”

  I raced to her side, and before I even greeted her properly, I made the request. Yvonne gamely stepped into the impromptu bridesmaid role, and with her by my side and William Hemsley standing for Archie, the vicar performed the marriage ceremony. Surrendering to the inevitably of this hurried affair, I almost laughed at the bride I made in my everyday dress and coat, my only adornment a small purple hat. But I knew it didn’t matter.

  Because I was no longer Agatha Miller. I was Agatha Christie.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Day Two after the Disappearance

  Sunday, December 5, 1926

  The Silent Pool, Surrey, England

  Although Archie knows how quickly news spreads in the Surrey countryside, he’s astonished at how rapidly word of his wife’s disappearance overtakes Shere, Guildford, and Newlands Corner. By Sunday morning, not only does the entire population of these villages know that his wife is missing but many have volunteered their services to search for her. Confronted with their expectant faces—not to mention the police officers’ assumptions and the letter’s strictures—Archie has no choice but to mobilize alongside them.

  The volunteers march out into the thicket and the tangle of the woods and brush surrounding the Silent Pool like a ragtag army unit. Under the supervision of the police, they are fanned out in every direction around him, linking hands in organized lines to thoroughly comb through the high grass and brush. After all, the undergrowth is nearly waist-high in places, deep enough for a woman to lie hidden. They blanket the southeast, including Newlands Corner, Shere, and the wilderness encompassing the Silent Pool, and the northwest, including an area known as the Roughs. Archie walks alone, of course. It wouldn’t be seemly for him to link hands with these regular folks, not in his current predicament.

  Even though the Morris Cowley is some distance from the Silent Pool, the searchers are dra
wn to the environs around the dank body of water almost as though it has a macabre, magnetic lure. Archie considers what attracts the locals to the stagnant pool. The old violent legends? Are they hoping to find his wife’s body floating in its murky depths? He assumes that’s the explanation, as no evidence has emerged linking the car to the waters.

  Yesterday afternoon, after they discovered the car, Archie followed along with the preliminary search undertaken by the police and the special constables, Surrey men who are registered with the constabulary to assist in the event of an emergency. Kenward thought it advisable to pursue the possibility that his wife was flung from the vehicle into the thick underbrush and is either wandering around, lost and possibly injured, or is unconscious within the thicket. But that initial inspection hasn’t unearthed a single clue, and they are back at the hunt today, casting a wider net with the motley crew of volunteers. Although, as the hours pass, Kenward’s theory is becoming less and less likely.

  Archie hasn’t wanted to rejoin the investigation. He would have preferred to stay behind at Styles, but Kenward’s reaction to that suggestion has made clear the manner in which this decision might be perceived. Not to mention the words from that damn letter his wife has left behind are haunting him: Follow my instructions closely if you wish the safety of the first path.

  So he’s back at it today, listlessly poking his walking stick into bushes and peering underneath them, while terrifying thoughts plague him. What will happen if Charlotte lets the proverbial cat out of the bag? He knows the police questioned her and the rest of the staff yesterday, but she’s held up so far. Perhaps he should invite that blasted sister of hers—Mary, the one she’s always going on about and hinting at permission to host as a houseguest—to keep her occupied and out of the police’s hair. That’s the ticket, he thinks. And it will have the added advantage of keeping poor Rosalind distracted.