“Archie, have you seen the headlines?” she asks by way of greeting. He’d spoken to his mother extensively over the weekend about the disappearance and subsequent search. His mother, no great admirer of his wife, had her own theories about the matter, but Archie refused to engage with her on the subject.
“Yes, Mother, I read the Times every morning.” She has an unnerving way of making him feel ten years old again. When she uses a particular tone of voice, he’s transported back to his first day at Hillside Preparatory School in Godalming, arriving in the very strange world of England after spending his whole childhood in India. When his father died during his service as a barrister in the Indian Civil Service, Archie, his brother Campbell, and his mother had been forced to return to England and begin anew, after a stint in his mother’s native Ireland. And he never felt like he belonged. Until recently.
“I don’t just mean the Times. I mean the Gazette and the Telegraph and the Post. Honestly, Archie, I could go on and on, but I won’t. The articles are small in some papers and front and center in others, but every newspaper is reporting your wife’s disappearance.”
“How do you know?”
“When we received our regular paper this morning with that dreadful headline, I sent your stepfather out to the newsstand. He picked up an edition of the other papers, and they all had some version of that same headline about your wife.”
“My god.” He now understands that Deputy Chief Constable Kenward sent the reporters more than just a photograph of his missing wife. In order to garner this sort of coverage, Kenward must have insinuated that an unseemly act lurks at the center of this. And that Archie sits at that center. The damn man is responsible for the story of Agatha’s disappearance blanketing the newspapers.
“It’s terrible, Archie. All this public airing of your private life.” She pauses and then whispers, “Who knows what might be revealed?”
“Yes, Mother, I understand that better than anyone,” Archie says, desperately wishing that today’s newspaper coverage was the end while at the same time fully understanding that it is only the beginning. He cannot afford having these awful rags prying more deeply into his and Agatha’s private life; they could find out about his relationship with Nancy. This cannot happen.
After he replaces the phone in its cradle, he passes through the entryway, nearly knocking into Charlotte and Rosalind. They’d left while he was on the phone with his mother, hurrying Rosalind off to her day school. Why were they back? He had far too much on his mind to worry about his daughter’s attendance record. That was Charlotte’s province and, to a lesser extent, his wife’s.
He tries to scurry across the entryway without encountering Charlotte and Rosalind, without success. “Colonel Christie, Colonel Christie,” Charlotte calls out to him, although he’s only a few yards away.
“I’m right here, Charlotte.” He tries not to sound irritated. Much relies on Charlotte’s discretion, and it seems his hosting of her sister Mary at Styles will only go so far.
“Sir, it’s a circus out there. It’s not safe to take Rosalind to school.”
As Charlotte helps his daughter out of her coat, he notices for the first time that her hair is disheveled under her cloche hat. And the secretary governess is always impeccable. “Whatever do you mean?”
“Colonel, there must be fifteen or—”
“Twenty, Papa,” Rosalind interjects. “I counted twenty reporters on the front lawn. Some with notepads, many with cameras. The flashing was so bright it hurt my eyes.”
He squats down next to his daughter, who is more composed than Charlotte. Incredible, given the circumstances. Pushing aside a delicate brown curl that’s fallen into her eyes, he stifles the brewing fury that his daughter should have to deal with this onslaught. She cannot witness his upset; he must remain the essence of calm in her presence. “Are you all right, darling?”
“Yes, Papa. They were very silly men. Quite stupid, actually. They kept asking where Mama was. But don’t they know she’s at Ashfield writing?”
“I guess they don’t, darling.”
“I almost told them, but Charlotte said I shouldn’t speak to the men.”
“She’s quite right, darling. The men are strangers, and as you said yourself, they’re silly.” He stands up. “In any event, I’m about to tell them to push off, so you won’t have to trouble yourself about them anymore.”
“Papa!” Rosalind squeals at Archie’s rough language. “Push off” is a definite no-no for his daughter.
He squeezes her small hand, then passes her into Charlotte’s care. Squaring his shoulders, he opens the front door, ready to order the press from his land with an authoritative roar. He will drive them from his home, no matter the impossible position in which he has found himself, hamstrung between the implicit accusations from the police as they investigate a disappearance that increasingly points toward him and the explicit instructions left to him in the letter upon which his future depends. But when he swings the door open wide and squints into the flashing lights, Archie comprehends the magnitude of the public eye and realizes nothing will ever be the same.
Chapter Nineteen
The Manuscript
February 2, 1919
London, England
I’d expected that the Archie who returned from the war would be the same Archie who had left for it. Or at the very least the same Archie as in his magical last leave over two years ago. But the Archie who came back to me was a very different man.
The dashing, enigmatic figure became simultaneously restless and sedentary, unreadable in his unhappiness but not romantically intriguing as he’d once been. Each one of life’s daily stresses seemed to further darken his mood, and sometimes, the slightest noise set off his headaches and his rage. Nothing seemed to satisfy him, certainly not the endless stream of cigarettes he smoked when his mood turned black and certainly not his job. On his return from the war, he took a position with the Royal Air Force but maintained that there was no long-term future for him there, although I questioned the truth in this statement. In the privacy of my own thoughts, I believed that from the moment his sinuses robbed him of the ability to pilot, Archie had been robbed of his zest for flight, and it pained him to be around pilots and planes. I didn’t like to think that he might be suffering from one of the depressive states I occasionally saw when I nursed wounded soldiers in the Great War. But I could not fathom what passion might substitute for his previous love of flying. It certainly didn’t seem to be me.
Mummy’s marital advice ran through my thoughts day and night: a husband required attention and management. I began to think that if only I tended to Archie in precisely the right way, I might return him to his earlier state. If only I could serve him the perfect meals, clean the flat until it shone, provide the most interesting dinner conversation, become the ideal lover, then he’d be content. It was my duty, I believed, to restore him to that state, and that goal became the focus of my postwar days. It was the least I could do for my husband, one of the few who’d returned home at all.
I marched up the stairs to our flat in Northwick Terrace, the shopping basket draped over my forearm. I tried to keep my step light as I climbed the three flights, as I did not want to attract the attention of Mrs. Woods. While I generally appreciated the domestic advice and kindnesses of our building’s caretaker, she was strangely critical of my skills at selecting produce and meats at the local market. Never did she find the postwar scarcity of many foods to be an excuse for my choices. Apparently, though, my footsteps hadn’t been light enough.
“Mrs. Christie.” Her voice rang out up the two flights of stairs I’d already climbed. It would be rude to ignore her, so I walked down the steps I’d already mounted.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Woods,” I greeted her, trying to mask my annoyance.
“I’m so glad I caught you, Mrs. Christie. When I was at the market earlier today,
there was a veritable abundance of new carrots, and I took the liberty of picking up a bunch for you and your husband.”
“How kind.” I reached in my purse. “Let me repay you.”
She wagged her finger at me. “No, no, not at all. It’s my treat.” Peering into my basket, she added, “And it’s a good thing too, as your vegetables have seen better days.”
I thanked her again as I trudged back up the stairs to our two-room flat. Initially, I’d been grateful for her instruction in all arts domestic; Mummy never thought to guide me in anything but the management of staff, which I no longer had. As of late, however, Mrs. Woods’s counsel had become unbearably intrusive.
I placed the pork, vegetables, and potatoes in the sink, rinsed them, and began preparing them for our dinner, following the recipe to the letter. Once I slid the dish into the oven, I looked around the flat for another chore. Mummy’s primary domestic lesson about the care of one’s husband was at the forefront of my mind, but I wondered how I was meant to tend to my husband if he was at work and all the household duties were completed. For hours, I was left to my own devices, with the understanding that all my efforts should be directed to his care. It was a conundrum.
When I stumbled upon an ad for cookery classes, I thought I’d found my focus. The lessons gave me something to do after the tidying and shopping had been finished for the day, and Archie wasn’t due home until evening. But they didn’t completely fill the time, and without a social calendar, as all my friends lived in Devon save Nan Watts, and she hailed from such a different economic class, I couldn’t possibly entertain her, I had hours free. Even a course in bookkeeping and shorthand that I’d stumbled upon and decided to pursue filled only a fraction of my spare hours. Although I was supposed to be grateful for my husband and his safety, I couldn’t help but miss the camaraderie of the hospital and dispensary, the familiar community of Torquay, and especially the companionship of Mummy and even Auntie-Grannie, who remained on at Ashfield with additional staff.
From time to time, when I’d finished making dinner and I waited for Archie’s return, my thoughts would turn to The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Archie had declared the novel “quite good” upon reading it, even “unsolvable,” much to my delight, with its ingenious use of poisons to stump the readers, and suggested I submit it for publication.
“Does it not seem a bit frivolous in wartime?” I’d asked him.
He’d squeezed my hand for support. “Agatha, people need distraction—even frivolity—in wartime. Your puzzle should keep people distracted for quite a while.”
At his prompting, I’d sent the manuscript out to several publishers, including Methuen and Hodder & Stoughton, and they all sent me rejection letters. I hadn’t expected success; after all, I was just a housewife, without any formal training in writing. But the rebuffs had smarted, and I hadn’t attempted another novel even when ideas preoccupied me, leaving me with too many unoccupied hours with which to ponder my husband.
Consequently, when I wasn’t cleaning for Archie or shopping for him or sewing for him or cooking for him, I was thinking about him. My thoughts swirled around one central core: he had changed. In my darker moments, I wondered whether this was always the real Archie, that I’d only grown to actually know him.
I banished any troublesome thought from my mind, because tonight, everything would change. His mood, our marriage, our future.
“How’s the pork?” I asked, painting a bright smile on my face. A grimace had briefly passed across Archie’s face after he’d taken the first few bites, and I could never be certain if it was my cooking or my husband’s surprisingly sensitive stomach. The Millers of Torquay were known for their hearty appetites and steel stomachs, so this delicacy was a new experience for me.
“Surprisingly, it tastes quite good, but we will see how it settles in,” he said with a rub of his belly.
The dinner table became quiet again. Archie seemed comfortable with silence, even over evening meals, which had always been a source of connection and laughter at Ashfield. I shouldn’t have been surprised; tea at Archie’s mother’s home was always a stilted affair.
“How was your d—” I stopped myself before I could finish the question. This was meant to be a memorable evening, full of wonder and delight. A conversation about his work at the Royal Flying Corps would deaden the mood completely. Perhaps a complete change of tactics was the thing. Instead of waiting until the end of the meal to make my announcement, I decided to plunge in even though a full hour of practice hadn’t yielded the precise wording.
I took a deep breath and blurted out the news. “Archie, I’m going to have a baby.” An irrepressible grin took over my face.
“A baby?” His tone puzzled me, and I wondered if I’d misread it. He didn’t sound excited as I fully expected. In fact, he sounded angry.
When he spoke again, I realized I hadn’t misconstrued his reaction at all. “You’re having a baby?” he asked in that same vexed tone.
I was stunned. How could he possibly be angry at the thought of having a baby? And here I thought that my husband would leap to his feet and twirl me in the air when he heard that I was expecting. For the first time, Archie had rendered me speechless.
He stood up so abruptly that his chair clattered to the floor behind him. As he paced around the dining room, my usually quiet husband spoke a steady stream of harsh sentiments, most of which I hoped to never hear again.
“You do realize that this will change everything between us, Agatha. A baby always does,” he practically seethed at me.
While I knew he didn’t mean that the changes would be positive, I tried to cast a rosy light upon his statements. “Yes, Archie. Of course, there will be changes. But they’ll be wondrous changes.”
“No, they won’t,” he yelled. “Your focus will be on the baby and not me. I will be forgotten.”
I suddenly realized that rather than uniting us and bringing my restless husband a modicum of joy, this baby could bring us to the brink. I would never, ever allow that to happen. After all, it was my job to tend to him and his happiness.
Standing, I walked to Archie’s side and placed a consoling hand on his shoulder. “I promise you that you will forever be my focus. You and no one else. Not even this baby.”
Chapter Twenty
Day Three after the Disappearance
Monday, December 6, 1926
New Scotland Yard, London, England
Archie stops midstep as he passes through the iron gate into the bowels of Scotland Yard. Is he acting the fool by placing himself directly into the hands of the reigning authorities? He didn’t think so when he left Styles in a rage over the throngs of press camped out on his front lawn. He only wanted to remove himself and this blasted investigation from the torrid glare of the public spotlight—where that damnable letter dictates how he can behave and what he can say—and have a higher authority take over the police inquiry from the clearly prejudiced Kenward, who seemed hell-bent on including the press every step of the way. At least then he could shield Nancy.
Even as he completed the hour-and-a-half drive and pulled up to the curb on the Victoria Embankment in his Delage to glance up at the Scotland Yard headquarters—a fortress-like building striped in red and white stone, not unlike a prisoner’s uniform, and bordered on one side by the River Thames—he believed in this decision. But now, standing within the penitentiary-like building amid the clusters of animated round-hatted police officers ready with wooden truncheons to subdue any suspects and handcuffs to immobilize them, he wonders if he’s made a fatal blunder.
“Is there a problem, Colonel Christie?” William Perkins, his solicitor, turns and asks. He must have heard the slowing of Archie’s footsteps.
“No, not at all. Just, just—” He bungles his words, then says, “Studying the structure.” Stupid answer, he thinks. But better than the truth.
“There’s
no mistaking the purpose of this building, is there?” the solicitor asks in the closest thing to a joke he’s ever heard the man tell. The mask of impassivity takes hold again, and Perkins says, “We best keep our pace. Don’t want to be late for our appointment with Commander Reynolds. He’s a known stickler for punctuality.”
Archie lengthens his stride, walking alongside his solicitor. Perkins hadn’t reacted at all when Archie called him this morning, demanding he arrange a meeting with Scotland Yard to take this matter away from Kenward and the press. But then Perkins is recalcitrant to a fault. Archie supposes this quality is excellent for his business; he never disappoints if he never overpromises or overreacts.
The scent in the air changes as they enter the labyrinthine building. The unpleasant stench of decaying fish and waste from the River Thames dissipates and is replaced by the expected smell of unwashed police, cigarette smoke, and something less definable. But what? Archie doesn’t want to speculate.
They pass by uniformed officers and detectives in everyday suits, all purposefully undertaking the important work of the Metropolitan Police. He spies a sign for the Fingerprint Bureau, which uses a newfangled method of identifying criminals, and when he peeks inside, he sees it is crammed with men in suits and uniforms alike. Does he imagine that the eyes of these men linger on him? Are they judging him?
Archie and his solicitor are guided to a sizable corner office on the second floor of the building. The office is dark, even though the hour hasn’t passed two o’clock. There, sitting behind his desk, in the cavernous shadows of his office, sits Commander Reynolds.
As soon as Archie looks into the commander’s eyes, he knows he has made a mistake coming here. This man will see right through him if he isn’t cautious. It’s his job to read people’s souls, isn’t it? To decide if they are guilty or innocent? Archie feels as if he can hardly breathe, and yet he must proceed.
The Mystery of Mrs. Christie Page 9
