The Christie Affair (26 page)

Before long a young dark-haired woman entered the library, with a cosy pink shawl over her shoulders. Miss Armstrong, Chilton reminded himself, the girl he’d dined with the other evening. She smiled at him perfunctorily and went straight to the bookshelves.

‘Not much contemporary fodder,’ he said, as she examined the spines. ‘You won’t find the new Dorothy Sayers, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I’m not much for detective novels. I like a love story.’ She pulled out a dusty copy of
Jane Eyre
, brushed off the cover and sat down, as he’d hoped, in the seat opposite him.

Mrs Leech poked her head into the library. ‘Do you two have everything you need?’ she asked brightly, anxious to retain the guests she had left. ‘Would you like some tea?’

‘Tea would be lovely,’ Miss Armstrong said. After Mrs Leech’s retreat she said to Chilton, ‘I love seeing that. Mr and Mrs Leech, I mean. Together, and nobody seeming to mind.’

Chilton nodded, not wanting to tell her there were plenty who minded. Instead, he said, ‘People can certainly be beastly about the things that affect them least, can’t they?’

‘They certainly can. But Mr and Mrs Leech never let that stop them. It’s just too romantic, isn’t it?’

Mrs Leech returned with the tea tray, all business, not a hint of romance about her. Once she had gone, and their cups were full and steaming, Chilton said, ‘Terrible business about the Marstons.’

‘Oh,’ Miss Armstrong said, closing her book with a snap, as if she’d been dying to talk about it. ‘Isn’t it awful? And beautiful, in its way? They were star-crossed, Mrs Marston told me. Longing to be together for ever so long. And then just when they finally were . . .’ Tears welled up in her dark eyes.

It wasn’t that Chilton had lost his powers of observation. He
could see things and even assess them. The loveliness of this girl before him, her impeccable manners, the way her eyes were so dark one could barely make out the pupils. He could also note the particular sweetness of a young woman very much wishing for love to enter her life, even as she bravely asserted her own independence. Chilton knew he himself was not the sort of man occupying her daydreams; he also knew he should at least be moved to some sort of emotion. There should be desire lurching forward, to be suppressed, with perhaps a sigh of sadness at what could never be. But regarding Miss Armstrong felt no more personal or emotional than reading a newspaper. He saw everything but felt nothing.

‘Did you meet Mrs Marston?’ said Miss Armstrong. ‘She was chatty and friendly, wasn’t she? Oh, I liked her, Mr Chilton. And I feel sure she died of a broken heart.’ At this she set down her teacup and brought her hands to cover her face.

Mrs Marston had certainly gone out of her way to make her love story known. Might there have been a method to her garrulousness? Chilton fished the handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to Miss Armstrong.

This is how I found them when I entered the library. Chilton had appraised me correctly. Having finished
Gatsby
, I longed for something, anything, to distract me from the maelstrom of circumstances at the Bellefort Hotel. If I’d been smart, I would have gone home, as the Clarkes had done. Instead, I’d extended my stay, telling Mrs Leech I’d be keeping the room indefinitely. How could I do anything different, with Finbarr haunting the vicinity?

Miss Armstrong turned to look at me, her eyes widening in
embarrassment, then correcting with that lift of her chin, daring me to judge her. I might almost have thought I’d walked in on a moment of romance if Chilton himself hadn’t looked so detached. In fact, he looked more interested in my sudden appearance than the lovely weeping girl before him. This put me immediately on my guard.

‘Mrs O’Dea,’ he said, and gestured towards his tearful companion.

I sat down next to her and placed my hand on her shoulder. ‘Are you all right, Miss Armstrong?’

‘You’re very kind,’ she said, dabbing at her eyes with a shabby handkerchief that couldn’t have been her own. ‘It’s silly. I didn’t know them until a few days ago. But talking to Mrs Marston, hearing her story . . . she was already a friend. And they were destined to be together, those two. There’s a Chinese legend called Yue Lao, have you heard it? When we’re born, the gods tie an invisible thread around our little finger, which connects us to our one true love, no matter what forces try to keep us apart.’

‘That’s lovely.’ To my own ears I sounded insincere. I wasn’t immune to that sort of romance. I could believe in a thousand red threads connecting Finbarr and me. I just had a hard time applying this legend to the Marstons.

‘It’s so sad and awful,’ wept Miss Armstrong, ‘that they would die like that, right under our noses, right when their threads finally found each other. Just when they were on the brink of happiness.’

‘Not on the brink.’ I eased the handkerchief out of her grasp and handed it back to Mr Chilton, then gave her my own, which was silk and monogrammed, and far better suited to her delicate skin. A gift from Archie, specially ordered from Harrods. ‘They had some days of happiness. Perhaps more than they deserved.’

Miss Armstrong stopped crying abruptly and stared at me, eyes full of rebuke. ‘Whatever do you mean by that?’

‘You said yourself you hardly knew them,’ I pointed out. ‘They might have been wretched people.’

Chilton let out a caustic little laugh.

‘Why, Mrs Marston seemed the nicest lady in the world,’ said Miss Armstrong reproachfully.

‘Seeming is different to being,’ I said. ‘Best not to mourn people whose sins we don’t know.’

Miss Armstrong looked at me as if I were the coldest, hardest woman in the world. Which I very well may be. But I should have known better than to reveal it. Nothing is more suspicious than an unfeeling woman.

I stood and went to examine the selection of books. Miss Armstrong held my handkerchief out to me to return it, but I waved it away. ‘Keep it,’ I said, ‘I have loads.’

Chilton and Miss Armstrong busied themselves reading, though the air felt as if they absorbed nothing, just stared at the words on the page, waiting for me to leave so they could discuss my outburst. I should have been more careful but at this point I had no idea Chilton had seen me with Finbarr, let alone that he knew Agatha was hiding in the vicinity. Chilton was keen to keep it that way.

Finally, I settled on a Willy novel that had been all the rage when I was a girl, the first of the
Claudine
books. The edition was in its original French and the effort of translating it would make it all the more diverting. I said a curt goodbye to Chilton and Miss Armstrong.

When I emerged from the library, Mrs Leech looked up from her station behind the front desk. ‘Mrs O’Dea,’ she said, ‘a little boy just came by with a note.’

I snatched it from her fingers, perhaps a little too eagerly. I worried it would be addressed using my first name but the writing on the envelope – bold male handwriting – said
Miss O’Dea
. If Mrs Leech registered the ‘Miss’ instead of ‘Mrs’, her face did not betray it. I felt a flush across my neck. It was worth whatever risk I’d taken, to use my real last name, so I could open this envelope and read what it said on the coarse piece of paper, butcher’s wrapper.

Dearest Nan,

Meet me at ten tonight just outside the front door. If I am not precisely on time, trust I’ll be there and don’t go any further than just past the front door. It’s not safe for ladies after dark.

I floated upstairs and waited obediently for night to fall.

Meanwhile, inside the library, Chilton asked Miss Armstrong if he could see my handkerchief. She handed it over as if eager to be rid of it.

‘Rather a nice handkerchief,’ he mused aloud, ‘for anyone to have loads of.’

‘I don’t see how she can be so cruel,’ Miss Armstrong said fiercely. ‘I don’t know about you, Mr Chilton, but I was raised not to speak ill of the dead.’

Chilton nodded sadly, as if in agreement, though he had seen enough of the world to know some of the dead earned ill speaking of. He didn’t hold it against me. Much later he would tell me he did wonder why my handkerchief was monogrammed with a large cursive N when my name was purported to be Genevieve O’Dea.

The brave or complacent guests remaining at the Bellefort Hotel were exhausted by the hot waters, the spa treatments and the recent tragedy. By the time I came downstairs, nobody was afoot. Even Mrs Leech had left her post. The grandfather clock having finished its ten chimes, everything was quiet the way only a winter night can be, not even birds or bugs rustling. I had bundled into my lace-up boots and woollen coat, mittens and a woollen hat and scarf. I stepped outside, careful to open and close the door soundlessly. It was a well-kept hotel and the door had been recently oiled. It would remain unlocked, I knew. There was so little crime in the English countryside, back then, between the wars. No doubt that was part of the reason so many of us expected a perfectly reasonable explanation for what had happened to the Marstons. Not to mention one thousand men to spare searching for a missing lady novelist.

Not that I knew this, yet, about how large the search had grown. The Leeches didn’t keep newspapers at the hotel unless guests requested them. Time at the spa was meant to be time away from the troubles of the world, Mrs Leech said.

My breath gusted out in front of me. The air felt wonderful. It reminded me that Christmas was approaching. When my sisters and I were little we used to wait outside together, staring up at the sky for a glimpse of Father Christmas before our mother bustled us off to bed. ‘If you girls are awake, he’ll pass our house right by.’ We’d eat chestnuts roasted over the fire and go to sleep with sticky fingers, smiles on our faces. It had been the time of year I most looked forward to, more than anything in the world, before summers in Ireland began, and Finbarr.

Just as his name formed in my mind he emerged from the shadows, hands in his pockets. I stepped forward and threw my arms around his neck. He hugged me back, three beats.

‘Walk with me,’ he said, in his hoarse, whispery voice.

I put my arm through his and we walked away from the hotel, down the road, into the kind of darkness that scarcely exists anymore. Electric lights weren’t yet a matter of course out here in the country, and cars didn’t often rattle down the road after dark. We had gone a little way when a dog ran out to menace us. Finbarr kneeled and within seconds the giant beast – half collie, half something monstrous – was in his lap, getting his white mane ruffled, shaggy tail wagging joyfully. We continued walking and the dog followed us a while, until Finbarr commanded, ‘Go home.’ The dog lowered his ears, dejected but obedient, and trotted off in the direction from which he’d come.

‘Have you got a dog of your own now?’ I asked.

The question couldn’t help but burgeon with memories of Alby, so that’s how Finbarr answered it. He told me the man who’d bought Alby had joined the IRA. He used the dog to deliver explosives to an RIC barracks and Alby had been blown to bits along with his target. ‘Remember how I taught him to crouch so still and not move for anything, no matter what? That was the death of him, Nan. I swear I’ll never train another dog so well.’