“Is it, Archie? As you changed, you wanted someone who suited the newly confident and successful you. When it became clear that I couldn’t be that person—I was too familiar with your failings, your dark disappointments, and your history—you were drawn to Nancy. You wanted to become your own unreliable narrator, rewriting your past and your present history to suit the story you told yourself and Nancy. But I couldn’t let you do that.”
Archie doesn’t move, doesn’t argue, barely even blinks. Are my words resonating with him in a way that my manuscript didn’t? “Why?” he suddenly blurts out. “Why did you have to do this? Why couldn’t you just let me quietly divorce you?”
Anger begins to replace my calm resignation. “Have you been listening to me at all, Archie? Did you listen that Friday morning you announced you were leaving? Didn’t you read about this in the pages of my manuscript? If I let you do what you wanted—write me out of your story altogether after altering me and my relationships to such a vast extent, without any accountability to the truth about your actions and your affair with Nancy—I never could have arisen from my deathbed into the new, stronger person I’ve become these past months. You would have taken not only my truest self, but you would have taken my reputation and, most importantly, my daughter from me.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Agatha? I never insisted on taking Rosalind from you in the divorce, and anyway, the tender years doctrine favors maternal custody until a child is sixteen. I don’t think I could get custody if I tried.” He sounds exasperated and confused.
It is my turn to laugh. Is he being intentionally obtuse to thwart me, or is he really this thick? How had I ever thought the world of this selfish, literal-minded man? Without him weighing me down like an anchor, my mind and my pen will be free to soar. But first, I must slice the anchor rope, and there is only one way to do it.
“You don’t understand anything, Archie, no matter my efforts at illumination. I’m not talking about the legal loss of my daughter. I’m talking about the emotional loss, beyond the estrangement you’ve already wreaked by insisting that she come second in my life and by my idiocy in listening. If I had allowed you to divorce me without naming Nancy as your adulteress—and we both know that the Matrimonial Causes Act requires some form of adultery to be cited—then Rosalind, and the world, would have forever thought I was to blame. And given how she currently favors you, I would lose her forever. I’ve already lost so much to you; I will not lose Rosalind. In order to avoid that, I needed everyone to know that you are the cause of our problems and that I did everything I could to save our marriage and our family.”
“That’s why you staged this charade of a disappearance?”
“If you’d been listening to me, you would see that’s only part of the reason. But yes, I had to very carefully arrange my disappearance so that my whereabouts would be mysterious and the reason behind my departure ominous, but also so that you would eventually be implicated and your affair revealed as part of the investigation. Because you wouldn’t come clean on your own. In the months before I vanished, I made certain our estrangement wasn’t a secret; friends, family, and staff all knew you’d been staying in the city, away from Styles, because of a rift between us. The few times we reconnected at Styles were awkward at best. I went missing the evening after our biggest fight—one in which you refused to go away with me for the weekend, opting instead for a house party at the Jameses with Nancy—an argument witnessed by several people. My car was found in the early hours of the dawn, the morning after that terrible fight; the headlights shone out of an otherwise desolate area onto passersby as they went to work. When the police located my Morris Cowley, it rested on the edge of a precipice, stopped from crashing to the ground below by a fortuitous tangle of bushes. My car, which was packed with items for the Yorkshire trip I’d hoped to take with you, had been abandoned there, near the Silent Pool, a notorious place for suicides. But I was nowhere to be found, and the clues I left behind for you and the police—my heavy coat in the Morris Cowley’s back seat despite the coldness of the night, my weekend bag despite the cancelled plans, the car teetering on the edge of a cliff but no body to be found, the strange letter to your brother that raised the specter of some nebulous illness, the late-night call that seemingly precipitated my departure although it was only a check-in call from Charlotte—were open to multiple interpretations, all of them ominous and most of them pointing to you. How long did you think it would take for the police to connect the dots that led to you? And from you to Nancy? And from that time forward, how long did you think it would take for the authorities to shade in the blank areas of that image with my murder or suicide, prompted by you in either case?”
He crosses his arms and leans back in his chair, a self-satisfied smile spreading across his face. “You think you’re so smart, Agatha, but you’ve forgotten something important. You’ve lost your leverage against me. You’ve reappeared.”
For a brief, inexplicable moment, the image of Reggie Lucy flashes through my mind. How different my life would have been had I married that kindly man instead of Archie. Never would my life have devolved in this way. But I may never have transformed into the strong, talented woman I’ve had to become.
I can’t afford any weakness, so I banish the thought of Reggie from my mind. Instead, I harden myself and smile right back at Archie. “You’ve forgotten that I am gifted in the complex plotting of mysteries. Did you think that the little manuscript I sent you was simply for your edification? To elicit some sympathy for me? No, Archie, that’s not its primary purpose at all. It’s a copy of a document that will be sent to Kenward and Goddard if you do not follow my instructions to the letter. In that case, it will become evidence in a different crime.”
“You’re bluffing, Agatha. The only crime at issue here was your suspected murder, and that’s been solved by your very alive presence here at the Harrogate Hydro. So if you’ll excuse me—” He pushes himself up as if to leave.
“Think about it, Archie. Think about the story my manuscript tells. Think about the picture it paints of you.”
Reluctantly, he sits back down. He knows he must listen, but he still has a spark of defiance in his eyes. I hope to snuff out that spark forever.
I continue, “The coldness over my mother’s death. The affair and the businesslike announcement of your abandonment. The debilitating affect it had on me. The threatening behavior on the terrace in the Pyrenees. The violence over breakfast on that last day.”
“None of that’s true, Agatha,” he seethes.
“Really, Archie? I’ll admit to a certain amount of fiction in the manuscript, but only exaggeration in the area of your threatening behavior in the Pyrenees and at breakfast—and in the ongoing desire I felt to remain your wife and in the emotional demeanor with which I faced that final meal on Friday night. Otherwise, the fiction came in elsewhere, primarily in the form of omission. Obviously, I omitted all the planning I undertook in the months before my disappearance. It took patience and time to lay the groundwork—and a certain amount of dramatic skill when I was with you, admittedly—but I couldn’t share that in my manuscript, could I?” I say with a little chuckle.
“I also omitted certain feelings I had about motherhood, an ambivalence that grew from the distance you imposed between me and Rosalind and the irritation I occasionally felt when her needs overlapped with my work demands. I needed to depict myself favorably in the manuscript so I left that out, of course. The same rubric applied to my ambitions for my writing. I describe my writing as primarily undertaken for the benefit of our family, and that’s true only in part. I mostly write because I adore creating worlds and puzzles, and I want to succeed at it wildly. But ambition is a dirty word when it’s used by women; it’s decidedly unladylike, in fact. Consequently, I had to jettison that piece of information as well.”
The light of understanding begins to illuminate Archie’s eyes as the flicker of resi
stance starts to die out. Does he finally understand? I pause to give him space to comment, but he doesn’t speak. I need to ensure that he comprehends my meaning, so I must speak more plainly than I’d like.
“For all intents and purposes, the manuscript is the story of my life, and it’s one I’ll share with the police if necessary. In their hands, it will become evidence of your attempted murder that night near the Silent Pool, an attempt that I barely escaped after you called me to lure me there. An attempt that forced me into hiding at the Harrogate Hydro.”
“What? Attempted murder? Hiding? I won’t stand for this, Agatha. You’ll give me the divorce I want, and I’ll expose you to the world in the process,” Archie announces, standing up. His sudden motion causes his chair to clatter to the floor. The diners around us look over in alarm, and I see Kenward and Goddard rise from their carefully positioned seats and approach the entrance to the restaurant. Are they planning on protecting me from Archie—or vice versa?
Chapter Forty-Eight
Tuesday, December 14, 1926
Harrogate Hydro, Harrogate, England
“Sit down, Archie,” I insist with a sharp whisper as I slide my shawl down to show him the bruises on my arm, and I lift up my bangs to reveal the deep laceration and bruise on my forehead. “I don’t think you want me to show these to the police.”
After he sits, I raise my hand to Kenward and Goddard to show that all is well and tell Archie that he must do the same. Only then do I slide the shawl back over my shoulders and continue, “Taken together with my injuries—which the hotel maids, not to mention three massage therapists, have serendipitously seen on several occasions, beginning with the first night of my arrival here—the manuscript will establish a pattern of threatening behavior on your part, one that culminated on the night of my disappearance. That morning, I refused to give you the quiet divorce you sought, and as a result, that evening, you lured me to the Silent Pool where you would ensure you were free to marry Nancy by ending my life. But I escaped. Fearing for my life, I fled and went into hiding until the threat was over and your misdeeds became known.”
“You’re mad, Agatha.” He remains seated but doesn’t bother to quieten his voice. “Aside from the fiction of your manuscript and your self-inflicted injuries, it’s your word against mine. No one will believe you.”
I lean across the table, sliding a black-smeared envelope toward him. Recognizing the handwriting, he lunges for it. Opening the flap, he feels around inside. “There’s nothing in here. What the hell do you think you can do with an envelope from Nancy to me? You still have no evidence of my relationship with her, which means that there’s no hard evidence for your far-fetched allegation of assault,” he jeers.
“I have the letter that was within the envelope, of course. It’s a love note from Nancy to you.” I think about my devastation when I initially found the love letter. The details about their trysts in London and their plans for the future nearly broke me, but now, I’m happy I discovered it and two other similar ones. They gave me the strength to take this step instead of continuing to fight for a marriage and a man I’d never have. A man who never really existed. “And I’m fairly certain the letter talks about the importance of divorce so you can marry her.”
Archie blanches, all bravado draining from his face. “How did you get this? I burned all the letters.”
“Not all of them. I have a nice collection of three that will serve as corroboration for the affair and the motivation for the assault on me at the Silent Pool.”
He is very quiet and very still. “You’ve won, Agatha. I expect you’ll get what you want now. Whatever that is.”
Rage kindles within me. How could he think that I want the events that have transpired, the outcome that will surely follow? “You couldn’t be more wrong. What I want is my old life and old self back. I want to be that trusting, optimistic person I once was, who believed in the happiness of her marriage and family. But you made getting what I want impossible.”
“Then what do you want? What was this all for?”
“Most of what I need, I’ve now achieved. I needed you to be seen for who and what you are so my relationship with Rosalind wouldn’t be ruined. Along with my reputation.”
“Your reputation?” he practically snorts. “If anything, you’re more famous now than ever, and that will only help your popularity as a mystery writer.”
“That wasn’t part of my original plan, Archie. I hadn’t anticipated that the public would take hold of this story the way it has. I also hadn’t planned on it lasting exactly this long. Who knows how much longer it would have gone on if I hadn’t started carrying the newspaper face out around the Harrogate Hydro so someone would finally notice the resemblance between me and the woman on the front page? It was almost a relief to finally be identified and have the police contacted. I wanted this charade to end nearly as much as you.”
Archie smiles for the first time; it seems he finds amusing the manner in which I hastened my discovery here at the hotel. The crinkling around his blue eyes and the flash of his white teeth remind me of happier times, but I steel myself against it, against him. I cannot betray myself with these residual emotions. How can I still have a shred of feeling for him after everything we’ve been through? I chastise myself for my rogue emotions.
“But if that name recognition comes in handy selling books, well then, I’ll take it. I’m going to have to support myself as a novelist going forward after all,” I say.
His eyes brighten when I say “support myself.” Because of course, the notion of divorce is implicit in the phrase.
“Please understand that I have no wish to remain your wife after all this. Not too long ago, that would have been my greatest desire in the world, but no more. But I do need you to maintain your status as my husband, in name only, for a while longer. If I’m going to succeed with my story that I suffered from amnesia as to my identity instead of claiming that you attempted murder and I disappeared to protect myself, which is the only other option, then I need your full public support. You’ll need to hire a doctor to confirm my amnesia, convey information about my condition to the press as I pretend to recover, and only then, after you’ve made clear to Rosalind what everyone else now understands—that you are to blame for our separation and my disappearance—will I agree to the divorce. Our daughter must know with utter certainty that I did everything I could to make our marriage work.”
“Why couldn’t we have come to this arrangement in the first place? When I first asked for the divorce?”
I laugh at his conveniently selective memory. “I should have thought that was abundantly clear by this point, Archie. It seems you have a case of memory loss yourself. Have you forgotten your insistence that Nancy Neele’s name remain pristine in a divorce, which would have led to unacceptable implications about me? No, Archie, there’s only ever been one way through the devastating wreckage you’ve made of our lives and my long-held myopic perspective on you, and it’s been by following the path that I mapped out for you and that you followed, the one that began with the letter I left you on the day I disappeared.”
The Ending,
or Another Beginning
Wednesday, December 15, 1926
Harrogate Hydro, Harrogate, England
I pull up the collar of my coat as if its soft wool fabric could somehow shield me from the cameras and journalists and members of the public who wait outside the heavy oak doors like a military onslaught. I reach behind me for Madge’s hand. I don’t think I could take the necessary step outside the cocoon of the Harrogate Hydro and into the real world again without my sister, who’s been both my rival—prompting me onward to better, higher versions of myself, whether or not that was her intent—and my dearest friend. Madge knows, without explanation, without discussion, what has transpired over these past eleven days, and I will have her unwavering support and counsel as I rebuild myself into the woman I
am meant to become, as I have begun to forge, in the days ahead.
I could have never become that person as Archie’s wife. The man I believed him to be, the man who could have fostered my strengths and talent into being, never existed. I wrote him into being on the first night we met, on the dance floor at Chudleigh Hall, just as I had the characters of my detective novels. But I could never get him quite right because I was an unreliable narrator of my own life, with only the vaguest sense of myself. In any event, even if he had been the man I’d hoped for, he could have never been my Fate as I understood that notion while still a girl. Because each of us, man or woman, has our own Fate, less fate than hard work and circumstance, I’ve come to believe.
I wish there could have been another way; I truly do. When it became clear that societal mores and Mummy’s advice—which I’d clung to throughout my adult life like gospel—were fatally flawed, I wish that I’d been able to rewrite my story there and then. But I wasn’t yet ready; I was still waiting for someone else to author my narrative, still hopeful that another ending was in store for me. Only when Archie killed that still-innocent woman did I finally accept that I had no other choice but to pick up the pen to save myself.
Madge’s hand squeezes mine, and I know I’m as prepared as I’ll ever be. Kenward and Goddard glance at me, and I nod. They lead our group, consisting of me, Madge, Madge’s husband, and Archie, through the Harrogate Hydro lobby, and the two policemen together fling open the hotel’s front doors. The bulbs of a hundred journalists’ cameras flash, and I am momentarily blinded. When the bright lights stop and my eyes refocus, a sea of blinking eyes stares up at me, waiting for my story.
I stare back at them, wishing that I hadn’t needed to create an unsolvable mystery in order to solve the mystery of myself. But I promise myself—and them—now that I have authored an authentic self into existence, I will write a perfect ending.
The Mystery of Mrs. Christie Page 22
