The Christie Affair(62)
Fraser did not have confidence Conan Doyle could discover what every police officer in England had not. The man was an author, not a detective. What’s easier than solving a puzzle of your own invention? Authors created problems, they didn’t solve them. Another mystery writer of the day, Dorothy Sayers, had already invited herself to Sunningdale to search for clues and test the energy. Agatha Christie was not the sort to meddle in such nonsense. She wouldn’t want charlatans involved, Fraser felt sure.
Conan Doyle at sixty-seven (a mere four years from joining the spiritual realm himself) cut a handsome and confident figure. It was almost endearing, that someone so stalwart could believe in messages from the beyond. Once it became clear there would be no wooing him away from his current representation, Fraser resolved to get the meeting done with. The whole business made him sad. He wanted Agatha Christie found as much as anyone and couldn’t bear wasting time about it.
‘Have you got anything of hers?’ Conan Doyle’s moustache sat wonderfully still on his face, no matter how animated he became. ‘Personal possessions she might have left behind? Clothing is best. A handwritten note might do.’
Fraser opened his desk drawer, where a lovely pair of leather gloves had lain going on nine months, waiting for their owner’s return. He hesitated before handing them over.
‘And may I enquire after your plans?’ said Fraser. ‘The hounds have already got her scent, you know. There’s a veritable army in Berkshire, searching for her.’ He mentioned Dorothy Sayers’ involvement and Conan Doyle waved it away as ridiculous.
‘She has no idea what to look for.’ He snatched at the gloves as Fraser tentatively withdrew them. ‘A spiritual fingerprint is what’s needed. I’ve been in touch with Horace Leaf.’
Fraser blinked, indicating the name meant nothing to him.
‘My good man, he’s only the most powerful clairvoyant in Europe.’ How interesting that Conan Doyle of all people employed spiritualism – mediums and divinations – rather than deductive reasoning. ‘And to our great good fortune he happens to reside in London. Have these gloves been worn recently?’
‘Oh, very recently,’ Fraser said. ‘Mrs Christie was here just a day before she went missing. Sitting in that very chair.’
Conan Doyle nodded, stroking the armrests as though collecting molecules Agatha had left behind. He held the gloves up as if he’d found them himself, a most important clue. ‘These will do nicely,’ he said. ‘Horace Leaf will solve this. We’ll find Agatha Christie, alive or dead. By morning, we’ll know her whereabouts. You can be certain of that.’
Fraser felt no guilt whatsoever. If Mr Leaf had any powers at all, the first thing he ought to divine was that the gloves belonged to Mrs Fraser, who’d belonged to Mr Fraser, until she’d absconded to Devonshire and broken her devoted husband’s heart.
The heavy door shut. Fraser stared at it, full of melancholy. Perhaps he’d go by Harrods and buy Mrs Fraser a new pair, send them to her in Devonshire. As a present. Her hands might be cold.
It surprised Fraser that he hadn’t felt star struck meeting Sherlock Holmes’s creator, only moved by the impermanence of life here on earth. Agatha Christie had a new novel, The Big Four, coming out this January. Perhaps she’d be courteous enough to return to her husband by then. Or perhaps the more macabre imaginings would prove correct, and a corpse, rather than the woman, would turn up. Either way – whether or not anyone saw her again – by January she would be a household name in England, indeed if not the whole world. Which couldn’t hurt book sales.
Fraser sighed, made melancholy by his avarice. Nothing in life unfolds the way you think it will, does it?
In bed at the Timeless Manor, I propped myself up on my elbow, eyes trained on Finbarr’s sleeping form, so I would see his face in the first light. The brick we’d heated in the fire to keep us warm had gone cold at our feet. The heavy curtains were drawn and the room stood black with the late morning darkness of winter. By the time sunlight speckled into the room, his eyes were open, staring back at me. I thought of the night in Ireland I lay beside him, the only other time we’d slept all night in the same bed.
‘Last time we slept together,’ I said, ‘you never opened your eyes in the morning.’
He collected my hands and held them on top of his heart. ‘If I had, I would’ve married you that day.’
Tears filled my eyes. ‘We’d be together now.’
‘We are together now.’
‘Not for long,’ I said. ‘And not all of us.’
He sat up. I noticed for the first time something I’d missed the night before. His thick black hair was tamed and cropped. The back of his neck shaved. It gave him the unaccustomed and misleading look of order. It gave me proof of what seemed an impossibility: Agatha Christie was here, truly here. In this very house. With us. Living – as I’d never had the chance to do – with Finbarr Mahoney.
‘Did she cut your hair?’ I pictured Agatha’s hands blowing the stubborn wisps off the back of his neck. Running her fingers through the thick silk strands to hold, snip and release. Her hands, brushing the last of it off his shoulders.
‘She did,’ he said, running his hand over his scalp as if just remembering. ‘Do you like it?’
‘I like it long.’ My head dropped back to the stale, bare pillow. The house was outfitted so meanly it was as if we were camping. Outlaws and borrowers. Finbarr got up to put another log on the fire. I stared at the ceiling, which had medallions carved into it, unnecessarily ornate. I had never once thought of Archie’s hands on his wife with any kind of jealousy. But how I hated the thought of Agatha’s hands on Finbarr. It gave me a clearer glimpse of how it must feel for her, Archie’s hands on me, doing far more than cutting my hair.