The Christie Affair (18 page)

‘Might I say goodbye to him?’ I said, before we left.

‘You must think of what’s best for the baby, dear,’ his mother admonished.

I nodded, not yet realizing that as far as the world was concerned, what was best for the baby could mean something entirely different from what was best for me.

The Disappearance

Day Three
Monday, 6 December 1926

P
ERHAPS IT’S ONLY
hindsight, rearranging memory. But it seems to me that evening at the Bellefort Hotel, when I first saw Inspector Frank Chilton, I knew he was searching for Agatha. Not that I knew his name yet – that discovery was moments away. He stood at the front desk, talking to Mrs Isabelle Leech, our Caribbean proprietress. My senses were heightened from being held in Finbarr’s arms. I might have turned and headed back to my room to avoid Chilton, if he hadn’t glanced my way. Once he spotted me, a retreat would only garner suspicion. I kept my eyes down and tried to head past him to the dining room.

‘Pardon me,’ Chilton said. ‘Miss.’

‘Mrs,’ I corrected him, then smiled too stiffly. I could feel the edge of my lips stretch unnaturally. ‘Mrs O’Dea.’ After escaping the baths I had walked to another hotel to clear my head, and bought a new shawl at their gift shop, as well as some paper and a fountain pen. Perhaps I’d write a story while I was here, or a poem. I pulled the shawl close around me, and its price tag tumbled from the dark threads.

Chilton reached out and touched it. ‘Is that what you’re worth, then?’

It was the sort of jest I loathed, but something in his face made me relax. He looked embarrassed at making such an easy joke. He looked mild, even kind. It was bad luck to have a police inspector at the hotel, but I saw at once it was good luck that it happened to be this one.

‘Here you go,’ said Mrs Leech, passing me a pair of shears. ‘Inspector Chilton’s here looking for a lady gone missing from Berkshire.’

‘Goodness,’ I said. ‘Missing from Berkshire and you’re searching for her in Yorkshire?’

‘All of England’s in on this hunt,’ he explained. ‘Inspectors and police officers dispatched to every county.’

This news set my teeth on edge. I smiled to conceal it and said, ‘My, my. She must be ever so important.’

Chilton intercepted the shears and cut the tag off for me. ‘If I could trouble you just a moment, Mrs O’Dea.’ He placed the snipped price tag in my hand. His fingers were chapped and tobacco stained, his clothing rumpled. He held out a photograph with his right hand. His left dangled at his side. ‘This is the lady. Have you seen her?’

‘May I?’

He nodded and I eased the photograph out of his hand. Agatha stared back at me, hair swept off her face, head tilted, wearing pearls and a suit jacket. I thought of my mother, wresting herself out of her grief over Colleen to help me have the little picture made for Finbarr, to send to him at the front. I had worn my best dress, no jewellery at all, nowhere near so glamorous.

‘Pretty,’ I said. ‘But no, I haven’t seen her in Yorkshire.’ Hopefully he’d remember my precise words, if any connection between the two of us were drawn later. ‘I do hope she’ll be all right.’ I handed the photograph back to him.

‘Ah well,’ Chilton said, as if he hadn’t expected any other reply. ‘Thank you for looking.’

As I entered the dining room, I saw that Mrs Race – the beautiful blonde bride – was now joined by her handsome, scowling husband. The two of them sat by a window, too absorbed in their silent unhappiness to notice my probably obtrusive stare.

My new friend Lizzie Clarke waved me to her table, and her husband stood to offer me a chair. He was a lanky fellow, charmingly inelegant, in the way Americans can be, with dark eyes and a sweet, earnest expression.

‘Donny Clarke,’ he introduced himself.

‘Hello, Mr Clarke.’

‘Please,’ he said. ‘Call me Donny. Thanks so much for entertaining Lizzie this morning. Fun to make a fast friend on vacation.’

I’d scarcely unfolded my napkin before I heard merry, unmistakable laughter as Mrs Marston entered the room with her husband. She looked quite a bit different to how she’d looked when I’d last seen her at the baths. Her hair was curled, and she wore a smart jacket and faux pearls.

‘Well, look who it is,’ Mrs Marston said, stopping by our table. ‘The chummy young ladies.’

Her husband, Mr Marston, stood by her side. He was decades older than she, a weathered, ruddy-faced man in his sixties. He placed a hand at the back of Donny’s chair, his smile the indulgent sort a certain kind of man likes to bestow upon young ladies. I turned my eyes back to our table. Lizzie stared back at him more frankly.

‘How do you do, Mr Marston,’ Lizzie said. ‘I trust married life is treating you well?’

‘Sure it is,’ he said, thickly Irish. A change came over his face
and he seemed suddenly eager to return to his table. ‘Are you ready to eat now, Mrs Marston?’

She trilled with delight at the sound of her married name. Mr Marston put his wide, meaty hand at the small of her back and guided her hastily to an empty table.

‘You all right, Lizzie?’ I asked. She nodded emphatically.

The waitress came to take our order. We had a choice of fish pie, roast beef, or chicken stew and we all chose the roast beef. The room had great, tall windows and I found myself staring through them, one at a time, expecting Finbarr to be standing on the other side, watching me. The sun had long since set; even if he’d been there, he wouldn’t be visible. Where was he spending the night? Would he have a hot meal, or any meal at all? Just this morning it had been years since he’d last held me. Now it was merely hours.

I glanced over at the Marstons, busily unfolding their napkins. Mrs Marston appeared as cheerful as ever. Her husband was harder to read.

‘Don’t bother yourself with those two,’ Lizzie said. ‘There’s much better people-watching over there.’ She jutted her chin at the beautiful young couple. Mr Race looked peeved and arrogant, Mrs Race stubbornly tearful.

Almost as if Lizzie had known exactly what was about to happen, a commotion erupted.

‘I don’t care,’ Mrs Race cried, loud enough for every diner to not only hear but also fall silent. She jumped to her feet nimbly, throwing down her napkin. ‘I don’t care how much the wedding cost or what people will say. I can’t go on. I simply can’t!’

‘See here,’ her husband said, in a whisper that was no less audible but far more chilling than his wife’s outburst. ‘Sit down and stop making a scene.’

The young bride turned as though to storm out of the room. Her husband reached out to grab her wrist. Before I had a chance to worry about damage to those slim, delicate bones, she picked up her foot and stomped on his foot, hard enough to make him let go.

‘What will you do?’ she asked. ‘Hit me? In front of all these people?’

There was a scuffle as most of the men in the room – including Donny and Inspector Chilton – rose to their feet and approached their table, ready to intervene. Lizzie stood, too, and stepped towards the scuffle for a better look. Her bravery impressed me but I remained seated, my view of the scene obscured by the crowd of concerned onlookers.

The door to the dining room flew open and in marched the owner of the hotel. ‘Look here,’ Simon Leech said. ‘That’s quite enough of that.’

‘This is nobody’s business but our own,’ Mr Race announced to the room at large.

‘In that case, best not to have rows in public.’ The last thing Mr Leech needed was trouble at his struggling hotel. He kept his voice stern but kind. ‘Let me buy you a bottle of champagne. You’re newlyweds, after all. It’s a time for celebration, not arguing.’

I looked over at Mrs Marston, who was still twisted round in her chair, away from her husband, so as to watch the spectacle. A look of consternation crossed her face, as if she – also newly wedded – deserved a bottle of champagne, too. Mr Marston rose to his feet, but his purpose was not to request equal treatment. He had his hands to his throat, and he sputtered wildly as if he wanted to gasp but couldn’t.

‘Darling,’ his wife cried, turning back towards him. ‘Oh, my darling. Help him, please, somebody help him!’

Mr Marston fell to the floor. His eyes bulged, his hands clasped his throat and his feet kicked like a freshly landed fish. Almost everyone – the hotel staff as well as the guests – headed over to the scene of distress.

It was young Mrs Race who reached him first. ‘Stand back,’ she commanded, seeming a different person to the one who’d just done battle with her husband. ‘I’m a nurse.’ She loosened Mr Marston’s tie and shirt collar, then took his pulse. She had his head pulled into her lap and I thought there was something grotesque about that pretty young girl balancing his wide, red, froggish face so close to her body.

By now Lizzie had returned to her seat. She and I did not move from our table. We sat, quietly watching everything unfold. Lizzie took a sip of wine and said, ‘Too many cooks.’

‘If you ask me, it’s too late,’ I said. The violence in Mr Marston’s body had come to rest. His eyes stared glassily at the ceiling.

The doctor who performed massages had gone for the day, but there was another one, a guest staying in room 403. Someone ran to fetch him. All poor Mrs Marston could do was crouch beside her husband, staring in shock at the scene before her. The doctor arrived in a state of half-dress. He was a youngish but prematurely white-haired man who looked elegant and purposeful despite his indecent state.

‘It’s no use,’ the doctor said, after a swift examination. He looked around the room, addressing all of us with an appropriately solemn expression. Then with practised fingers he pulled Mr Marston’s eyelids closed.

The sound that emanated from Mrs Marston was altogether unholy. She clutched at her throat as her husband had done earlier and, for a moment, I thought she might also fall to her death.

‘Come now,’ said Inspector Chilton, stepping forward. He put his arms around her shoulders. She accepted his embrace, her scream giving way to sobs. Chilton led her across the room to another table and seated her with her back to her deceased husband.

‘A hefty dose of brandy will do for her,’ the doctor said. ‘And perhaps a sheet for him, while we wait for the coroner to arrive. Best go ahead and call the authorities.’

‘Oh, you’ve no idea,’ Mrs Marston was sobbing. ‘How long we waited, what we’ve been through, what we’ve given up. Oh, my poor, dear darling. It can’t be. Just like that? It can’t. Where will I go? What will I do?’

She pushed herself up from the table and rushed back to her husband, throwing herself upon him and weeping. The force of her ministrations startled the body enough for his eyes to pop back open. Mrs Marston gasped, a pathetic and hopeful moment, then commenced to weep again as she realized he hadn’t come back to life, and she lost him for the second time.

‘I believe I’ll take this plate to my room,’ I said to Lizzie and Donny. I’d barely taken a bite.

‘Yes,’ Lizzie said. ‘We’ll talk later. Will you be all right?’

‘I believe I will. And you?’

She nodded but her eyes brimmed. It was a shocking thing we’d witnessed.

As I passed the grandfather clock in the front hall, I saw Mr and Mrs Race by the stairs, no longer scowling or arguing. The tragedy seemed to have subdued them. Her head was lowered and though his hand was on her arm, it did not seem to be an aggressive grip. Their foreheads pressed together. Perhaps he was apologizing, or even comforting her. I paused a moment, and when neither of them looked towards me I continued on.

My room had a wide four-poster bed and a little writing desk. I sat down at the latter and used it for my dinner table. It was in front of a window, and again I looked out into the darkness, as if for all the world I was fourteen years old and back in Ireland, knowing Finbarr might arrive any moment for lawn tennis.

The death I’d witnessed had not spoiled my appetite, not for food and not for love. I cleaned my plate, having learned during the war never to waste food. Sleep was another matter. The bed was comfortable. Eventually, the ruckus downstairs quieted. I lay very still, trying to clear my mind, unable to close my eyes, staring up at the canopy. I must have fallen asleep eventually, because by the time sunlight poured through the curtains I’d forgotten to close, I was awakened by a scream.

The Disappearance

Day Four
Tuesday, 7 December 1926

I
DONNED MY DRESSING
gown and peered into the hall. Several other faces dotted the corridor, all belonging to women. I could hear the doctor’s voice inside a room not far from mine, presumably the origin of the scream, trying to calm someone down. Mrs Leech, I surmised. The door directly across the hall from me opened with an urgent, audible whoosh, bespeaking great confidence. There stood Miss Cornelia Armstrong, the young lady travelling on her own.

‘That was Mrs Marston’s room,’ she announced, for the whole hotel to hear. Miss Armstrong was barely nineteen, with impeccable posture and thick black hair spilling down her back in astonishing quantity. She had a way of lifting her chin as she spoke, daring the listener to contradict her.

‘Oh dear,’ I said.

‘I’m going to see what’s happened.’

There was no stopping her. Miss Armstrong marched down the hall towards Mrs Marston’s room. She had her dressing gown loosely belted and showing more of her décolletage than likely she intended. When she returned, her face was pale, and her voice shook as she reported: ‘Mrs Marston is dead. I saw the doctor pull the sheet over her face.’

By now more guests had gathered in the hall, including a painfully thin spinster who covered her mouth with one slim, freckled hand and gasped, ‘How dreadful.’

‘I suspect she died of a broken heart,’ Miss Armstrong announced to the bleary-eyed gatherers with an air of diagnostic expertise. She had delicate white skin and eyes almost as black as her hair. ‘They’d been star-crossed, you know, Mrs and Mrs Marston. Before they married.’

I wanted to say I was thankful I shouldn’t have to hear that phrase –
star-crossed
– ever again in my life. I wanted to say that if it were possible for a broken heart to kill, I’d have been dead long ago. Instead, I closed my door without another word. Given the situation, the usual manners did not apply.