The Christie Affair (14 page)

The Disappearance

Day Three
Monday, 6 December 1926

S
PECIAL CABLE TO
the
New York Times
:

Mrs Agatha Christie, Novelist, Disappears
in Strange Way from Her Home in England

LONDON, 5 Dec. – Mrs Agatha Clarissa Christie, the novelist, daughter of the late Frederick Miller of New York and wife of Colonel Archibald Christie, has vanished from her home at Sunningdale, in Berkshire, under mysterious circumstances, and a hundred policemen have searched for her in vain during the weekend.

Late on Friday night Agatha packed an attaché case with clothing and went out alone in a two-seater automobile, leaving a note for her secretary saying she would not return that night.

At eight o’clock yesterday morning the novelist’s car was found abandoned near Guildford on the edge of a chalk pit, the front wheels actually overhanging the edge. The car evidently had run away and only a thick hedge growth prevented it from plunging into the pit. In the car were found articles of clothing and an attaché case containing papers.

All available policemen were mobilized and have conducted an exhaustive search for miles around but no trace of Agatha has been found.

Colonel Christie states that his wife has been suffering from a nervous breakdown. A friend describes Agatha as particularly happy in her home life and devoted to her only child.

The grounds of Styles had been bustling with police officers throughout the weekend. Now the reporters arrived. Fleeing from their persistent questions, Anna, the new parlourmaid, broke down and told one of the handsomer policemen that Archie and Agatha had had a terrible row on the morning of the day she’d disappeared.

‘She didn’t seem herself after,’ Anna said, tearfully. ‘And what woman would? He spoke so cruelly to her.’

The officer patted her shoulder clumsily. She stepped closer to him and he put his arm around her. ‘There, there,’ he said. ‘Men are dogs, aren’t they?’

She lifted her fetching, tear-stained face. ‘You seem nice.’

‘I think I am,’ he said, as if deciding just in that moment.

After a rather pleasant interlude (they would be married the following February) Anna and the officer headed back to Berkshire Police Headquarters to deliver the new information to Deputy Chief Constable Thompson. He frowned that such news would only come to light after a full weekend of intensive searching. Bad enough the press had to get hold of the disappearance. Now this.

‘You think the colonel killed the old girl?’ asked the young officer.

Thompson snorted. Young people think anyone a minute older than them is old, don’t they? This poor fellow didn’t know;
thirty-six would be upon him before he could blink. Thompson had a daughter Agatha’s age, born the same year and month. How he hated the thought of anything happening to her.

‘Can’t know yet, can we?’ Thompson said.

‘But constable—’ Anna, flush with the situation’s drama, spoke in almost a whisper.

‘If you’ve got something to say, might as well be loud enough to hear.’ Thompson didn’t mean to snap but he did hate a mutterer.

‘I think there might be a lady involved. A different lady.’

She hadn’t raised her voice one whit but Thompson heard her loud and clear. His face darkened. If his daughter’s husband were ever to do anything of the kind, Thompson would wring his neck. He got to his feet. ‘I’d better get back to Styles and have a chat with Colonel Christie.’

‘Oh,’ Anna said, ‘he’s left. Gone off to London. Says he’s going to get the Scotland Yard involved.’

‘The Scotland Yard!’ As if they were for hire at the snap of a rich man’s fingers. Worse, as if the Berkshire Police couldn’t handle it themselves. Thompson had already known Archie Christie was arrogant. Now he knew he was an arrogant cad. Nothing put a cloud of suspicion over a man like a strumpet on the side. Thompson feared more than ever for Agatha Christie’s life.

Archie was as yet unaware that his dalliance had been revealed. All he knew was the Berkshire and Surrey police were useless, not turning up so much as a strand of Agatha’s hair. He was glad enough they didn’t seem to know about his extramarital relations but then what did that say about their investigative
prowess? Archie had his solicitor arrange a meeting with the Scotland Yard, but that proved another dead end.

‘Sorry, colonel.’ The young inspector – so thin he looked as if taking nourishment would be an exhausting business – gave a shake of his head. He might not have been on the job long but marital spats and women who stormed off because of them were beneath his purview. ‘If the local police ask for our help, then we’re all hands on deck. Until then?’ He raised his hands in the air, indicating that they were not on deck in the slightest.

Archie hated to betray emotion but he was afraid he did. A hand, raised to his brow, shading his eyes. He pulled it away at once, horrified the inspector might think he was crying. Archie thought – the way he wouldn’t have otherwise – of his last night with his wife. Why had he indulged himself so? Mightn’t she have taken it better if he’d left well enough alone? Or what if he’d never been enticed by Nan in the first place, when he saw her from a distance on the golf course, best swing he’d ever seen from a woman? That same afternoon there she was again, drinking a gin and tonic on the patio. He had strode over as if he had every right to her, and she had blinked through the sunlight as she offered her hand, looking both demure and knowing, a smile twitching the corner of her lips. As if she knew everything that was about to happen.
How do you do, Colonel Christie.
Her voice was so low, so beautifully modulated, he couldn’t believe when she said she was Stan’s secretary.

What a mistake. What a bleeding, terrible mistake. Nan had used her acquired manners to befriend her employer’s daughter and gain entry to the country club. He ought to have let her remain their guest, never becoming his own. Agatha didn’t need to acquire manners, she was born with them. She was from Archie’s world. A.C. and A.C. They fit. In the midst of this
family emergency, Nan seemed a foreigner, someone who’d elbowed her way in. Troublesome at worst, irrelevant at best.

Out on the street, Archie blinked into city daylight. Crowds bustling about as he stood on the pavement, undecided. Across the street, a tallish woman with a particular stride caught his eye. He knew it wasn’t his wife but all the same found himself crossing. The woman wore a dark fur coat. Surely Agatha had one just like it. She turned down one street, then another, then rounded a corner. When he turned the same direction, she was gone. As if she had melted into thin air.

Nonsense. She’d probably just gone into one of the buildings. With no one to chase, Archie reclaimed his car and navigated the streets to my flat. He sat parked on the street, staring up at my window. No sign of life. It could be I had gone to work. Work! In the midst of all this mess. What a luxury it would be, to pretend to business as usual. Perhaps he should go straight to his office. Perhaps if he behaved as though everything were normal, it would become so. Agatha would return – breeze right in without knocking, as she had last week, fashionable and cheery and trying too hard. This time she’d find him alone. He’d gather her in his arms and give her a proper kiss.
Of course I’d love to have luncheon with my beautiful wife.

How had he missed it, what she’d been on the brink of? Or was it that he’d seen it but simply hadn’t cared? Once upon a time, he’d been so protective of Agatha, so jealous, he couldn’t bear seeing even a waiter talk to her. He’d told her he never wanted to have a son, because he never wanted to see her doting on another man. Her doting belonged to him and him alone.

He got out of the car. Hands in his pockets. Staring up at my window as though waiting for a sign. If he saw any movement,
he’d run up and knock. And if I opened the door, he knew – despite all his very real feelings, and the desire to find his wife and change the course he’d so rashly set her upon – he would gather me up in his arms and lose all this terrible commotion for a while. He deserved that. No matter what, a man deserved that, to forget his troubles. Until Agatha came home nothing could change what he’d done, and if he’d known that night at the Owens’ was the last time he’d make love to me, well, then, surely he’d have savoured it a bit more. The way he had with Agatha.

A pretty young woman bustled by in a worn winter coat. She scowled at Archie as if she’d read every one of his thoughts. He looked away from her, up towards my window, watching for any passing shadow.

Nothing. Did he know I didn’t love him? No. Archie wasn’t the sort of man to know such a thing.

He turned and walked to his car, brim of his hat pointed towards the pavement. The thought of Agatha, dead somewhere, or injured and alone, was too much to bear. How lucky he’d felt, in the old days, when she turned her light on him. How long it had been since he’d felt lucky, rather than simply believing the world should belong to him, without ever requiring so much as a thank-you.

That night, home at Styles, Archie did something he had never done in all the seven years since she’d arrived. He put Teddy to bed.

‘What’s wrong, Father?’ It was more disruption than treat to have him sitting on her bed, wearing his shirtsleeves, eyes glassy with whisky and remorse. Peter nestled in beside her; the dog was always a comfort. She closed her hand into his wiry fur.

‘Nothing’s wrong, darling,’ Archie said, stroking her forehead
with the particular fervour of a distant parent who may have lost everything but his child. ‘I just want to say goodnight to my little girl. Is there anything wrong with that?’

‘No.’ Teddy had her covers pulled just under her chin, blinking through the darkness, wishing he would go away and take the strangeness with him. A child does not like to feel responsible for an adult’s emotional state. If he hadn’t been so bleary, an uncomfortable volatility brewing, she might have asked him to read more
Winnie the Pooh
. Honoria had already finished it once but she wanted to start over and reading herself was a painstaking business.

‘Is Mother coming back?’

‘Of course she is,’ he said, too sharp. ‘Mother always comes back, doesn’t she?’

‘I meant tonight.’

‘Sorry. No. No, I don’t think tonight.’ There were no machinations to keep Teddy from knowing, the fuss kicked up around her was a search for her missing mother. Only straight denials of the truth. Not a ruse that could be maintained for long, when all of England was searching.

‘Well, then.’ He kissed her forehead. ‘Sleep well, Teddy.’

She closed her eyes tightly, pretending the kiss had put her straight to sleep.

For me the same day began far away from all that clamour. The previous night I had arrived at the Bellefort Hotel and Spa, low key and cosy, the perfect place for anyone who needed to lie low for a bit. The woman at the front desk – West Indian, from the look and sound of her – greeted me warmly.

‘I am Mrs Leech,’ she said, with her lovely Caribbean lilt.
‘You just be sure to let me know if there’s anything you need. Anything at all.’

She handed me a fountain pen to sign the registry. I paused for a moment. I’d made the reservation under the name Mrs O’Dea. It wouldn’t have been proper for a young unmarried woman to stay on her own at a hotel. Now I found myself adding another name. ‘Mrs Genevieve O’Dea,’ I wrote, a painful scrape forming in my throat. Genevieve was the name I’d given my lost child. Perhaps I ought to have written Genevieve Mahoney, if only to have seen it written one time.

‘Thank you, Mrs Leech,’ I said. ‘Would it be possible to take dinner in my room?’

‘Of course it would,’ she said. ‘I’ll send up a lovely tray for you.’

A woman who’d been approaching the stairs wearing a hotel dressing gown – likely just returning from a spa treatment – bustled over to the front desk. ‘Dinner in room!’ she said to Mrs Leech. ‘Why, that’s just the thing, isn’t it? We’ll do the same, if you please.’