Towards Zero (24 page)

“That's a curious thing for him to say,” said MacWhirter dryly.

“So you see,” said Audrey, “you are a miracle. My special miracle.”

MacWhirter said earnestly:

“I'd not like you to feel you're under an obligation to me. I'm going right out of your life—”

“Must you?” said Audrey.

He stared at her. The colour came up, flooding her ears and temples.

She said:

“Won't you take me with you?”

“You don't know what you're saying!”

“Yes, I do. I'm doing something very difficult—but that matters to me more than life or death. I know the time is very short. By the way, I'm conventional, I should like to be married before we go!”

“Naturally,” said MacWhirter, deeply shocked. “You don't imagine I'd suggest anything else.”

“I'm sure you wouldn't,” said Audrey.

MacWhirter said:

“I'm not your kind. I thought you'd marry that quiet fellow who's cared for you so long.”

“Thomas? Dear True Thomas. He's too true. He's faithful to the image of a girl he loved years ago. But the person he really cares for is Mary Aldin, though he doesn't know it yet himself.”

MacWhirter took a step towards her. He spoke sternly.

“Do you mean what you're saying?”

“Yes…I want to be with you always, never to leave you. If you go I shall never find anybody like you, and I shall go lonely all my days.”

MacWhirter sighed. He took out his wallet and carefully examined its contents.

He murmured:

“A special licence comes expensive. I'll need to go to the Bank first thing tomorrow.”

“I could lend you some money,” murmured Audrey.

“You'll do nothing of the kind. If I marry a woman, I pay for the licence. You understand?”

“You needn't,” said Audrey softly, “look so stern.”

He said gently as he came towards her:

“Last time I had my hands on you, you felt like a bird—struggling to escape. You'll never escape now….”

She said:

“I shall never want to escape.”

Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than a billion copies in English and another billion in 100 foreign languages. She is the author of eighty crime novels and short-story collections, nineteen plays, two memoirs, and six novels written under the name Mary Westmacott.

She first tried her hand at detective fiction while working in a hospital dispensary during World War I, creating the now legendary Hercule Poirot with her debut novel
The Mysterious Affair at Styles.
With
The Murder in the Vicarage,
published in 1930, she introduced another beloved sleuth, Miss Jane Marple. Additional series characters include the husband-and-wife crime-fighting team of Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, private investigator Parker Pyne, and Scotland Yard detectives Superintendent Battle and Inspector Japp.

Many of Christie's novels and short stories were adapted into plays, films, and television series.
The Mousetrap,
her most famous play of all, opened in 1952 and is the longest-running play in history. Among her best-known film adaptations are
Murder on the Orient Express
(1974) and
Death on the Nile
(1978), with Albert Finney and Peter Ustinov playing Hercule Poirot, respectively. On the small screen Poirot has been most memorably portrayed by David Suchet, and Miss Marple by Joan Hickson and subsequently Geraldine McEwan and Julia McKenzie.

Christie was first married to Archibald Christie and then to archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan, whom she accompanied on expeditions to countries that would also serve as the settings for many of her novels. In 1971 she achieved one of Britain's highest honors when she was made a Dame of the British Empire. She died in 1976 at the age of eighty-five. Her one hundred and twentieth anniversary was celebrated around the world in 2010.

 

www.AgathaChristie.com

 

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