The Christie Affair(7)

‘I’m only telling you what you must already know. I love Nan O’Dea and I’m going to marry her.’

‘No. I won’t have that. It can’t be. You love me.’ The memories of last night hovered so clear, so close, it might still have been happening. Unlike Archie she hadn’t bathed. His scent clung to her, drowning out the lavender perfume. ‘I’m your wife.’

‘A divorce,’ Archie said. It was easier to just burst out with the word as a simple statement of fact. An end goal so obvious it needed no context, not even a complete sentence. What a triumph over emotion. Archie felt nothing, not even worry about his wife collapsing in front of him, only a commitment to the word. Divorce.

Agatha sat, silent. Her hand ran faster and faster over the terrier’s soft fur, her expression unchanging. Archie, unwisely emboldened, began to talk. He admitted our relationship had been going on for nearly two years.

‘You needn’t have told her that,’ I said later, though I knew he hated to be chastised.

‘You’re right,’ he admitted. ‘I was fooled by her silence. It was the last thing I expected. It was almost as if she couldn’t hear me.’

Turning too quickly to detail, he instructed Agatha to file for the divorce. ‘It will have to be adultery,’ he said. In those days that was the principle claim the courts allowed. ‘I’ve spoken to Brunskill . . .’

‘Brunskill!’ Mr Brunskill was Archie’s solicitor, an addled, moustached man. A new outrage, that he should know this assault lay in wait for her.

‘Yes. Brunskill says you can just say, unnamed third party. The important thing is to keep Nan’s name out of all this.’

Agatha’s fervent petting of Peter halted abruptly. ‘That is the important thing?’

Archie should have realized his mistake but instead he pressed on. ‘This might be in the papers,’ he said, ‘because of your books. Your name. A bit known, these days.’

She stood up, Peter falling to the floor with a reproachful yelp. Usually solicitous of the dog, she barely seemed to notice.

Archie remained seated. As he told me later, ‘There’s never any point trying to reason with a woman once she’s become unhinged.’

Agatha’s husband was in love with someone else. A life-changing transgression stated simply as the time of day. Now she was meant to receive this information with calm and dignity. Archie had broken rules with passion as his excuse and she was asked to rationally pick up the pieces. She was to take measures to protect her rival’s reputation. It was more than she could bear. She clenched her fists and let out a scream, loud and full of rage.

‘Agatha,’ said Archie. ‘Please. The servants will hear you, and the child.’

‘The child. The child! Don’t you talk to me about the child.’ Because he refused to stand, she had to bend from the waist to pummel him, fists balled up, raining down upon his suited chest. The blows caused Archie no pain. He told me he had to watch himself to keep from laughing.

‘How cruel you are,’ I said, but let the words fall lightly, as if cruelty bothered me not one whit.

Poor Agatha. She had woken from her fondest dream into her worst nightmare. And nothing she said or did could wrest any emotion from her husband.

Finally, Archie stood. He grabbed her wrists to stop the blows. ‘Enough of this,’ he said. ‘I’m leaving. After work, I’ll be going to the Owens’ for the weekend. We can sort the rest next week.’

‘I suppose she’ll be there too?’

‘No,’ Archie said, because it was the reply he thought would cause the least reaction, and lying had become second nature to him since he first got tangled up with me.

‘She will be there,’ Agatha said. ‘I know she will. A house party, a couples’ weekend. Only you won’t be with your wife, you’ll be with her, that harlot. That nasty little harlot.’

A common mistake wives make as they watch their husbands go. The road back to Archie’s affections was not paved with insults to me. He was that most impenetrable of creatures, an infatuated man. The darkest scowl crossed his face and he tightened his grip.

‘You mustn’t talk about Nan that way.’

‘You,’ she said. ‘Telling me what I shouldn’t do. You shouldn’t go away with a woman who’s not your wife. You shouldn’t be leaving me now, when I need you most. I will talk about Nan any way I like.’

‘Calm down, Agatha.’

She kicked him in the shins. As she only wore slippers it barely made him flinch. How maddening her own ineffectual strength must have been. She twisted her wrists out of his grasp so furiously that when he let go she fell backwards. Archie noted welts already beginning to form as Agatha stroked each wrist in turn, but he wasn’t able to regret it, so firm was his conviction that she had brought this on herself. He had one goal and one goal only and that was to be rid of her.

The night before, Archie had succumbed to nostalgia and carnal longing. But today he returned to his mission. Like any good zealot he would not allow himself to be dissuaded. With long-legged strides he crossed the study to return to the front hallway. He picked up his valise and walked out to his car, the second-hand Delage Agatha had bought for him with money from her new contract. It was rather a grand car and Archie preened in its presence, as if its ownership were something he’d achieved entirely on his own. It had an electric starter motor, no cranking was necessary, and he could just hop in and escape. How galling it must have been, as she flung herself through the doorway, seeing him drive away in that extravagant gift.