“Is everything all right, Rosalind?” he calls out. They turn toward him in unison, startled at his appearance. Rosalind’s cheeks are wet with tears, and he asks, “What is it, darling?”
Charlotte usually allows the articulate Rosalind to answer his questions, unlike many nannies who shush their charges in the presence of parents. But not today. Today, Charlotte answers for Rosalind. “It’s nothing, sir. Just a bit of childish nonsense at school.” Her Scottish accent is thick, which happens in moments of high stress.
What is she hiding? What does she know?
“They said Mama was dead,” Rosalind blurts out.
“Dead?” He feels like screaming at the thought that even schoolchildren are speculating about the fate of his wife, but instead he shakes his head as if the very notion is ridiculous. “Well, you and I know that’s simply preposterous, don’t we?”
She sniffles again and stares into his eyes, seeking the truth. “Do we?”
Rosalind’s eyes unsettle him, and he wonders if Charlotte has told her something. He’s been relying on Charlotte’s discretion in the face of relentless police inquiry until now, but can her circumspection continue to hold, particularly given that she knows Agatha left him a letter? This is a question he cannot ask. Certainly the presence of her sister Mary has served as a support and a distraction for her and Rosalind, as he has hoped, but how long can that last?
He turns his attention back to Rosalind’s question. “Of course, darling. Mama has gone away to work on one of her books. She’s just forgotten to tell us where that is. That’s why all these police are about. They’re trying to help us find her.”
With her bare hand, she wipes under her eyes and under her nose, and Archie recoils. Why isn’t Charlotte ready with a handkerchief? And more instructive with the manners? Isn’t that her job? He opens his mouth to offer a critique but shuts it. He needs Charlotte’s allegiance.
“So you didn’t kill Mama?” she asks him, her blue eyes boring into his.
Charlotte’s hand flies to her mouth, and Archie reels at Rosalind’s words. Before he can stop himself, he screams, “Where did you hear that?” His tone is irate, and he chastises himself for his lack of control. How will Charlotte react to his fury? Hasn’t his daughter suffered enough without being spoken to in that manner? Won’t she be enduring even more in the days to come? In most ways, it really doesn’t matter where she heard this awful information; it could have come from anywhere.
Rosalind runs behind Charlotte’s legs, cowering in fright. “The children at school were chanting it, Papa. Over and over and over,” she squeaks, burying her face in the nanny’s back. Charlotte’s expression is part apology and part horror.
No one speaks. Not even Rosalind, who is too terrified to cry. Archie knows he should embrace and comfort his daughter, but he can’t. It seems as though some invisible breach has been crossed, and they now tread on unfamiliar ground.
Archie feels unbalanced, as though he’s stepped off a ship after a long, rocky sea voyage. Steadying himself with the wall, he walks back into his study, his only place of refuge. Or so he thought until now. Styles is no longer his home—an orderly place where he can retire in peace after the onslaught of the unpredictable world of business—but a prison from which he cannot escape.
Chapter Thirty-One
The Manuscript
April 5, 1926
Styles, Sunningdale, England
“Carlo!” I called out to Charlotte Fisher, whom we’d employed to look after Rosalind and also to serve as my secretary. The arrangement worked out well, as Rosalind attended the Oakfield school in Sunningdale, leaving Carlo, as Rosalind had taken to calling Charlotte, largely free during the day to assist me. When Rosalind returned from school, Carlo tended to her so I could finish my work and focus on Archie. Her no-nonsense Scottish demeanor and fierce intellect combined with her patience and humor to make her excellent in both roles, a far cry from the irritating Cuckoo, whom I couldn’t wait to let go.
While I waited, I returned to my typewriter. Deep in the final proofread of my latest book, slated for a May publication, I was pleased with the device I’d chosen for The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. In this story, I’d taken the challenge Madge gave me all those years ago—to construct a mystery that no reader could solve—to the next level. The entire premise of the book rested on an unexpected twist, that the unassuming doctor who narrated the book was actually the murderer. Once I decided upon this quintessential yet unique unreliable narrator, I found it easy to write with the simple language that allowed the reader to focus on the labyrinthine puzzle of a plot. It was the first book under my new Collins contract, and I wanted it to dazzle. As I reread it for a final time, it occurred to me that we are all unreliable narrators of our own lives, crafting stories about ourselves that omit unsavory truths and highlight our invented identities.
After marking up the last page, I glanced around my study, a wood-lined room that, like the rest of Styles, didn’t have enough sunlight, but at least it had abundant bookshelves. How pleasant our lives were, I thought. Archie’s work at Austral Limited, with a boss who was his friend, was remunerative and satisfying, and my writing was an unexpected success, providing not only financial support for our family but creative contentment. Rosalind was an even-tempered, energetic little girl, if a little serious and stubborn. It was true that our weekends had been overtaken by golf; he played two rounds of eighteen holes both Saturday and Sunday, admittedly accompanied by a group of club friends instead of me, except when I invited my old friend Nan Watts and her husband to make a foursome. But Archie seemed happy, and wasn’t that the point of living in Sunningdale? Perhaps that frisson we shared in our early days was missing, but wasn’t that only natural? For the first time in the course of our marriage, I wasn’t plagued by doubts and worries.
I suddenly remembered Charlotte, and I wondered how long ago I’d called for her. Fifteen minutes? An hour? It seemed an age, but I lost track of time while writing. Glancing up at the clock, I guessed that I’d summoned her three-quarters of an hour ago.
“Charlotte!” I called out again. She might be in Rosalind’s bedroom, as she tidied my daughter’s belongings and did her laundry when she wasn’t undertaking projects for me. Charlotte didn’t trust Lilly, our housemaid, with Rosalind’s delicate things.
The staccato step of my secretary’s shoes on Styles’s wooden floors echoed down the hallway to my study. She must have finally heard my call. The door creaked open, and I reminded myself to have Lilly oil its hinges.
“Yes, Mrs. Christie?” Charlotte asked.
Holding up the manuscript like a trophy, I said, “I’m ready to have you post the very final version of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.”
Charlotte’s face broke out in a wide grin. She knew how I’d labored on this particular mystery, not because it was unusually challenging but because I wanted it to be unusually perfect. “Congratulations, ma’am. What a relief it must be to complete it.”
“It is, Carlo.” My secretary winced a bit at the nickname, but I couldn’t seem to stop using it. Rosalind had dubbed her “Carlo” on her very first day, and somehow, it stuck. “Shall we have a small sherry and toast to its completion?” I asked.
I wanted to celebrate this small victory, and I knew Archie would not be the appropriate partner for the occasion, even if he hadn’t been traveling for work in Spain. More and more, he found my writing a nuisance, which I attributed to his success at Austral and his increased salary. What seemed acceptable to him when we needed money was becoming a bother when we had more cushion. So I tried not to discuss it too much.
Charlotte hesitated. “I do have to pick up Miss Rosalind in an hour, Mrs. Christie. I wouldn’t want to appear out of sorts to her schoolteacher.”
“I hardly think one small sherry will cause you to appear out of sorts, Charlotte.” I forced myself to use her proper name. It would ha
rdly be a celebration if I drank my sherry alone.
She nodded, and I poured sherry into two small crystal glasses. We clinked them together and sipped.
“Ah, I almost forgot. A letter came for you,” Charlotte said.
“Is it from my mother?” After I received a troubling letter in shaky handwriting from Mummy in February, I traveled home to Ashfield, where I discovered that she’d been laid low with a virulent bronchitis that taxed her already straining heart. She was living in only two of the many rooms at Ashfield, as she’d become fairly immobile, with her belongings heaped high along the walls so she could access her clothes and books. Only one elderly maid, one of the two Marys, remained to help her keep house. I spent two weeks feeding her nourishing soups and ensuring that she rested to regain her strength while I cleaned the spare rooms, trimmed the border in the brisk sea air, stocked the larder, and arranged for a gardener to undertake the heavier yard work when the weather turned from winter. I only left because Mummy insisted, but I’d wept on the train because I longed to stay and care for my lovely, fading mother.
Charlotte’s dark eyes grew darker. “I would have brought it to you immediately if it had been, Mrs. Christie. Surely you know that?”
“Of course, Charlotte. My apologies.” How could I doubt that Charlotte would have delivered Mummy’s letter posthaste? She knew how I fretted over her and her condition. If Mummy herself hadn’t admonished me to stay by Archie’s side and banished me to return home to Styles during my last visit, I’d be in Ashfield now. Instead, Madge shipped Mummy for a stay at Abney Hall, under her care.
Examining the envelope, I saw it bore the return address of Abney Hall. I should have instructed Charlotte to bring these letters to me with the same urgency as those penned by Mummy, especially since our phone service had been erratic as of late. A delay in reading Madge’s letters could be catastrophic, but Charlotte wouldn’t necessarily have associated a letter from Abney Hall with my mother, even though Charlotte should have noticed that this letter was delivered by special courier.
Slicing it open, I saw a single page with only two sentences in Madge’s hand spilled out. Come at once, Agatha. Mummy is failing.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Day Six after the Disappearance
Thursday, December 9, 1926
Styles, Sunningdale, England
“Why did you do it, Archie?” his mother asks when he picks up the telephone after dinner. Her voice is tight and small, almost unrecognizable from the demanding, certain tone that echoes throughout his memories of his childhood and early adult years.
It isn’t the question he expected. Not from her at least. From the police perhaps, but not his own mother. And he is unprepared to answer.
“Are you there, Archie? I heard you pick up the phone.”
“Yes, Mother, I’m here.”
“Then why don’t you answer me? Why did you agree to this terrible interview with the Daily Mail?”
His body, which had been frozen into place by her query, relaxes. She’s only referencing the article, he thinks. Nothing more, certainly not Nancy. At the thought of her name, he wonders how his beloved is bearing up. “I wanted to give my side of the story, Mother. The press had been painting me in an unfavorable light, and I hoped to correct that depiction.”
“Oh really? That was your goal? Well, you certainly went about it in a very peculiar way.” His mother’s familiar tone returns.
“What do you mean?” Why is his mother talking in circles? His head is already spinning from his exchange with Rosalind, and he’s not certain he can take much more today.
“Did you think that telling people that you and your wife routinely spend the weekend apart would paint a pretty picture of your marriage, Archie?” She doesn’t wait for him to answer before continuing. “And did you think that announcing you didn’t want to bother with the press and all the—I quote—‘relentless’ phone calls you receive would endear you to readers?”
“Yes?” he answers quizzically. Hopefully.
“Can’t you see that makes you sound heartless and unfeeling? A man who cares about the whereabouts of his missing wife would take every phone call and every tip and be grateful for it. Don’t you understand?” He hears his mother inhale deeply, as if forestalling tears. “And to raise the newspaper gossip about possible arguments between you and Agatha is damnably foolish. It gives credence to the rumors about the state of your marriage where no credence should be due. If you weren’t worried about that gossip, you wouldn’t have mentioned it.”
Has he ever heard his mother swear before? He doesn’t know what to do—apologize, rationalize his behavior, yell—so he says, “That wasn’t what I intended.”
She is quiet, an unnatural state for a woman brimming with opinions. After a long, silent pause, she says, “If anyone was considering whether or not you were guilty of your wife’s disappearance and unsure, Archie, you went and convinced them in the Daily Mail.”
Those scathing words are the last thing he remembers. He must have signed off on his conversation with his mother at some point, because when Kenward and Goddard seek him out, he’s sitting at the telephone table with the receiver in his hand and the line is dead. But when he checks the clock, an hour has passed, and he has no recollection of what he did with that time.
“Colonel Christie?” Goddard says with a note of concern in his voice.
“Yes?”
Kenward answers; no such worry is evident in his tone. “We have some questions for you.”
“We can retire to my study,” Archie offers, rising from the chair. He is weary.
“No, I think we will have this discussion in the kitchen,” Kenward says.
Why the kitchen? Archie thinks but does not ask. From Kenward’s demeanor, he knows better than to critique or argue.
As they walk toward the kitchen, they pass Charlotte and her sister Mary in the hallway. The women—so alike with their unattractive bobs but so different in the appearance of their eyes, Charlotte’s inclined toward merriment and Mary’s naturally downcast—are whispering. Although they stop talking upon spotting him, Archie catches the tail end of a phrase: “tell them.” What are they discussing?
The officers must have instructed the staff to vacate the kitchen, because it is empty when they arrive. After they settle into three of the four mismatched chairs that surround the simple wooden table where the staff eats their meals, Kenward says, “Your Daily News article was certainly a surprise.”
“So I hear,” Archie says with a sigh.
Goddard raises an eyebrow, but Kenward plows forward. “You do realize how you appear in that piece, don’t you?” He can’t resist a nasty smile.
Archie doesn’t answer. He doesn’t want to dignify Kenward’s query and certainly doesn’t want to encourage questions along those lines. He’s had quite enough on that topic from his mother and realizes now that he has made a major misstep.
“You galvanized otherwise silent players with that article, Colonel Christie. Good for us, of course, though I’m certain that wasn’t your intention,” Goddard says, much to Archie’s surprise. He’d assumed that this particular interrogation was Kenward’s idea and, as such, his to control. But Goddard seems to be in the thick of it as well.
“No, it wasn’t.”
Goddard pulls a pad of paper from his pocket and consults it for a moment. “After reading your Daily Mail interview, a maid in the employ of the James family of Hurtmore Cottage has stepped forward. She says—and I quote—she felt compelled to divulge the truth in the face of your lies.” He glances at Archie, who is stunned. What had he said or done at the Jameses’ home for which he’ll now be accountable? Rifling through his memories of the weekend, he wonders what was overheard or seen. He has no particular memory of a maid, but then, why would he? The servant’s role was to avoid notice.
Kenward leaps into the fray.
He’s almost giddy. “Do you know what she told us?”
Archie says nothing. He’s too terrified to speak.
“No? It’s a fact that we’ve long suspected but did not have any confirmation. Until now. And boy, what confirmation we received!” He exchanges a glance with Goddard, which to Archie seems to say Should you tell him or shall I?
In the end, Kenward can’t restrain himself, and he blurts out, “The maid told us your weekend at Hurtmore Cottage was no ordinary golf weekend. Its main purpose was to celebrate your engagement to your mistress, Miss Nancy Neele.”
A surge of vertigo overtakes Archie, and he feels as though he’s fallen backward from a great height, when in fact, he is still sitting on the kitchen chair. Details from his evening at Hurtmore Cottage take hold of his mind—whispered conversations between him and Nancy, the toast given by Sam James, and the late-night visit to Nancy’s room—and he knows it would be futile to deny the maid’s assertions outright. But he’ll be damned if he’ll admit anything beyond the maid’s claims. Nancy Neele is the woman he loves, the one he plans on marrying, and he will do whatever it takes to protect her good name.
Goddard takes a turn, looking at Kenward as if this exchange is rehearsed. “But what we can’t help but wonder, Colonel Christie, is this. How can you be engaged to Miss Neele when you are still very much married to Mrs. Christie?”
Kenward answers, “Unless, of course, you know that Mrs. Christie is dead.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
The Manuscript
April 18, 1926
Styles, Sunningdale, England
I would never forgive myself for failing to reach Mummy’s side in time to say goodbye. Although I raced to the train upon receiving Madge’s letter, leaving Rosalind in Charlotte’s capable care, barely even stopping to bring anything other than my large handbag, I was too late. Mummy died at Abney Hall while I was on the train to Manchester. She wasn’t Mummy by the time I reached her side; she was gone, a pale, lifeless shadow of her former self. I didn’t remember much of the days that followed—the funeral planning, the travel from Abney to Ashfield, the arrival of family members, the service. Perhaps the gaps in my recollection were a godsend, as by all accounts, I became a howling, sobbing animal.
The Mystery of Mrs. Christie Page 15
