The Christie Affair(22)
‘Oh, Nan. Why did I have to be so callous with her? You were right. I should have waited.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘There never would have been a right time.’ It was disconcerting to hear him so distraught, his voice strangled by what seemed to be real grief. ‘She’ll turn up. She’s just upset. The moment she realizes what a fuss has started she’ll run right home.’
But cheering up didn’t seem to be what Archie wanted. I could hear someone come into the room and he told me he needed to ring off. Quickly, I asked what he’d told Teddy about Agatha’s whereabouts.
‘I said she went to Ashfield to see after her mother’s things.’
‘Might she really be there?’
‘The Torquay police have already looked into it. She’s not there. She’s not anywhere.’
I didn’t know how to reply.
‘Look,’ he said, his voice hardening. ‘Better if we don’t communicate till this is all sorted out. We don’t want your name in all this.’
‘No,’ I agreed, ‘we don’t.’
He rang off without saying goodbye.
I placed the earpiece back on its rung and opened the door to the box, stepping out onto the street. The sky had gone dark, streaked with the last colours of a sunset I’d managed to miss. My breath tumbled out, visible in the frigid air, and I didn’t realize until I’d walked halfway home that I’d been examining the face of every woman, to see if it was Agatha.
She would be all right. I felt sure of it. She was far more practical than I. And it wasn’t as though she were a desperate young girl, with no resources or place to go. The whole world stood with its arms out, holding a net to catch her once she fell. She might be distraught but I knew she would never commit suicide. Nor would she endure discomfort, the way I did, walking a while instead of returning straight home, past the point of shivering, without gloves, teeth beginning to chatter.
When you don’t see someone, standing right before your eyes, when you don’t know where she is, you imagine all manner of horror befalling her. By now the number of people were increasing – their minds picturing Agatha struggling through the brush. Running off into the wood, stumbling into a freezing cold lake.
I shook my head. She had taken my chin in her hand. She had chastened me. You don’t love him. As her Inspector Poirot liked to say, ‘One must respect the psychology.’
Agatha was a rational, practical, contained Englishwoman. How fond her novels were of categorizing people. A woman does this, an American does that, Italians are just like this. Perhaps she felt comfortable with these generalities because she fit her own so splendidly. Stiff upper lip, a fine English lady.
Now she had abandoned her natural character, thanks to me. At the same time, what she did best was spin stories. Plot. And all of this had the air of a plot, a way to remind Archie how much she meant to him. Indeed how much he loved her. Worry tends to give way to such emotion, doesn’t it?
I gave into the cold and went home. My flat was tidy, like a barracks. No decorations, no photographs, no mementos. My quilt was the same colour as the walls, not quite white, not quite ivory. The landlord had rented it to me on the condition that I entertain no men. My neighbour, Mrs Kettering, an ancient widow, was supposed to keep an eye out for misbehaviour, but she liked me, and hadn’t revealed the rare occasions Archie had come to my door. You’d think he might have noticed, even from standing on the threshold: this was no home, but a station, for someone on a quest, who doesn’t have time to adorn the present day, only to plan for the future.
I packed for my trip to Harrogate, my mind unwelcomely focused on Agatha. I folded a pair of knickers and thought: she’s gone off to a posh hotel to nurse her wounds, not even realizing anybody’s worried. But that didn’t explain the abandoned car. So I thought: she left the car so we would worry, which would serve us right, and then she’d gone off to a posh hotel to laugh at us, or to wait for Archie to find her, his worry rekindling his love. But what were the chances she’d pull something like that off without help? Honoria – the most likely accomplice – seemed as worried as the rest of us.
‘Agatha’s an emotional sort,’ Archie once said to me. ‘Don’t let the manners fool you.’
An emotional sort. As if there’s any other kind of human. Show me an unemotional sort and I’ll show you someone dangerous. How can emotion be avoided, when life careens in its unexpected directions? During the war Agatha had written to her new husband, exhortations for his safety like incantations upon the page, fountain pen flying over paper. Now, in Sunningdale, it wasn’t Archie in danger but Agatha. Archie realizing he was rather an emotional sort himself – not allowed to join the search. He paced the floors of the house, fit to climb the walls. He regretted tossing her letter upon the fire so hastily. What clues might she have hidden in those words that could have been useful to the search? How dear the evidence of her being alive and vital and forming sentences, so recently, heat and heart upon the page.
I took the Claddagh off my finger and put it back on, crown pointing towards me. The last time I saw Finbarr, years ago by now, was when he came to find me in London, after our child was lost to us. He’d gathered me up in his arms and cried, soaking the hair at the crown of my head.
‘Was she beautiful?’ he asked, when I told him I’d had his baby.