Agatha Christie Investigates Omnibus

by Alison Joseph

The cottage was made of neat red bricks, the white door framed by a newly painted porch, to which clung a straggly clematis.

  Clifford opened the door almost as soon as she knocked on it.

  ‘I thought it would be you,’ he said.

  ‘Bertha asked me to –’

  ‘I heard.’ He gave a heavy sigh. ‘The whole village knows by now. Carted away by Constable Camphor and his merry men. She needs medical care, not that.’

  He looked fatigued, and drawn, his eyes shadowed, his clothes awry.

  ‘You’d better come in,’ he said.

  He led her into a small, bright sitting room. They both sat down.

  ‘I’ve hardly slept,’ he said, as if in answer. ‘I keep thinking I should have stopped her, I should have realized how near the edge she was …’ His long fingers fidgeted on his lap. ‘I’ve seen it in men, in the chaps, the trenches, you know … I’d have recognized it … but a woman …’ He was talking almost to himself.

  ‘The thing is,’ Agatha said, and at her tone he looked up, as if surprised she was there. ‘The thing is, it makes no sense.’

  ‘Oh, but I’m afraid it does,’ he said. ‘And it’s my fault. I should have been more honest. I care about that woman very deeply. But I have always felt that I’m in no position to offer someone a future. Some weeks ago, we had a heart-to-heart, Bertha and me, and I said as much to her. And she said something to the effect that a woman in her position was very vulnerable, and that it was for her to decide what counted as a future.

  ‘I don’t think I really understood at the time. I knew that she had set her cap at Cecil, she was very keen on him, very keen. And I knew that I wasn’t in the frame when it came to her thoughts of the future. But you see…’ He leaned forward, and his eyes had a nervous brilliance. ‘What I think now, is that she chose someone who would never choose her. She chose to fall in love with the unattainable because she didn’t believe herself worthy of being loved. I think she believed that perhaps Cecil was a way out for her, because in some odd way she knew he was in love with Phoebe all along.’

  His manner was calm, she realized, and there was something rather studied in his account. In the silence that followed she could hear the grandfather clock in the hall, the clunk of the cogs as the pendulum swung.

  ‘Bertha lost a baby.’ Clifford seemed to blurt the words out. ‘She’d hate me to tell you, but it is the truth. She was due to marry the man, and he didn’t want to marry her. And she was in anguish about what to do, and then the baby died, and so here she is, no husband, no baby. Lost in grief …’ He put his hand to his forehead.

  Again, Agatha could not shake off the sense of a performance.

  ‘My mother used to talk about that,’ he went on, ‘when she was in service at the vicarage. This was under the old vicar, of course. The new one doesn’t have that kind of money. My mother would talk about the burdens of women’s lives, the hasty marriages, the terror of the shame …’ He raised his dark eyes to hers. ‘If this war has given anyone any kind of hope, surely, it is for a new order, to throw off the shackles that so bind up women’s lives …’

  He fell silent again.

  Another clunk from the clock in the hall.

  ‘Atropine,’ Agatha said.

  He looked up. His expression was veiled.

  ‘That was the poison,’ she went on. ‘Whoever administered it had to get it to the vicarage on Monday night.’

  He sighed. ‘She’d often go to the vicarage. The vicar would chat to her about Our Lady and the Saints, and all that nonsense, he knew she needed help and for some reason all those fairy tales comforted her. She was there that evening.’

  ‘Oh. Are you sure?’

  He breathed out wearily. He nodded. ‘I drove her there myself.’ He raised his eyes to hers. ‘And if she wasn’t at the vicarage, she’d be at the summerhouse. She told me she’d been there that last evening, when Miss Banks and Miss Holgate had been there, laughing together. She said they’d let her join them. Well, they had to, I suppose, it was hers, after all. But she told me, how lovely it was, she said, to feel normal. To feel like a woman who has friends she can laugh with. That’s how she described it.’ He fell silent, and Agatha was silent too, each reflecting on their own thoughts.

  The rain had stopped. Agatha gathered her coat around her. She got to her feet. He stood too and followed her out to the hall.

  ‘Well,’ Agatha said, ‘it’s all in the hands of the Inspector now. Let’s hope that justice is done.’

  He reached out and shook her hand in a formal way. ‘Thank you for coming to see me, Mrs. Christie,’ he said.

  *

  The lanes had the scent of spring rain and the overhanging branches sparkled in the sunlight.

  Agatha wondered why Clifford Fullerton was putting on a show. She had a sense, as she walked back to the village, of a closing-in. If it was a story, she thought, there would be the various sites of places where the drama unfolded, such as the summerhouse, and the graveyard, and now they’d all begin to be brought to bear on a single centre.

  It occurred to her that she knew, suddenly, clearly, where that centre was.

  Five minutes later, she rang the bell at the vicarage. The door was opened by the maid that Mrs. Ettridge had described as ‘continental’.

  ‘I wondered if the curate was in,’ Agatha said.

  There was a nod, a scuttling away, and then Robert appeared.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Mrs. Christie.’

  ‘I thought perhaps we might have a chat,’ Agatha said.

  He led her into the library. ‘If you don’t mind,’ he said. ‘It’s quiet in here and the police say we can use it now.’

  ‘I don’t mind at all,’ she said.

  He pulled out a chair for her. It was a well-made oak chair with an upholstered crimson seat. ‘Gwendoline is in the church,’ he said, ‘working in the parish office, and the vicar is currently doing his visits.’

  ‘How is Miss Holgate?’

  Robert’s features seemed to crumple. He shook his head. ‘She barely speaks,’ he said. ‘I care for her so terribly, but she won’t look at me, she won’t say anything, if I appear in a room she immediately leaves it …’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Agatha said.

  ‘I know it’s about Cecil. Whatever he had come to speak to her about, she must have some kind of awareness of what it was. And I didn’t help,’ he went on. ‘I got upset, you see. He said he wanted to tell her something, and she was behaving so strangely, and I put two and two together … and now she won’t speak to me.’

  ‘You don’t know what he wanted to tell her?’

  Robert shook his head. ‘I’ve no idea. And before he could ... Before he could do anything, that awfulness happened.’

  Agatha waited for him to settle on his chair. ‘And do you still feel that you are likely to be blamed for these events, as you told me on Tuesday?’

  He glanced at her, then looked away. ‘I feel terribly responsible,’ he said. ‘Arthur was saying to me, last night, that I shouldn’t blame myself, even though it was me who insisted that Cecil come. But I just keep thinking, if it wasn’t for me he might still be alive …’

  ‘Arthur’s right,’ Agatha said, gently. ‘You can’t blame yourself for the way things turn out.’

  He gave a brief, sad nod. ‘I suppose so,’ he said.

  She waited a moment, then said, ‘It was atropine, the poison.’

  She was surprised by his response. He snapped to attention, staring at her intently. ‘Atropine?’ he echoed. ‘It’s a whooping cough medicine.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Cecil … Cecil said he’d brought some for Mrs. Garvey’s poor boy. He’d brought it from the clinic, as the doctor here had asked him …’ The words faded on his lips.

  There was a silence, in which each considered this. Then Agatha said, ‘Do you know when the vicar here tried to acquire the old summerhouse?’

  His gaze was distant now, as if his thou
ghts were elsewhere. ‘The summerhouse?’ He shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea. But Gwen would know, it must be in all those papers she’s sorting out.’

  ‘I could ask her –’

  Robert held up his hand. ‘She’s suffered enough.’ His voice was full of feeling. ‘This was supposed to be a new life for her. This was supposed to be the start of the life she deserves, a life of gentleness and grace, and reading, and improvement.’ He looked up at her. ‘If you only know how greatly she’s suffered. All those brothers and sisters, that terrible poverty, and then she was sent to some Poor School. She has changed so much. She smiles, she laughs … she reads. Or rather, she used to. She won’t come in here now …’ His voice cracked.

  ‘Surely …’ Agatha began. ‘She can find that happiness again?’

  Robert’s hands twisted in his lap with agitation. ‘When Cecil arrived,’ he said, ‘on Sunday, he mentioned that he’d brought the medicine for the Garveys. And Gwen said she’d take it up there herself. As she was friends with Phoebe and she was going to see her anyway.’

  ‘But –’ Agatha tried to calm him. ‘The dosage for a small boy with whooping cough – it’s not going to be enough to kill a grown man?’

  Robert looked at her. ‘Cecil said, it’s very concentrated. He said that to her. He said he’d write down instructions for how many drops to give…’

  ‘And then where did Miss Holgate go?’

  Robert shook his head. ‘As far as I know, she went straight to the Garveys to find Phoebe and drop off the medicine.’ His gaze fixed on hers. ‘And then … on Thursday night, Gwen said she was meeting Phoebe at the summerhouse.’

  ‘And Miss Holgate found the body.’

  He fixed her with look of anguish. ‘Please don’t tell anyone, Mrs. Christie. I’m sure there’s another explanation.’

  Agatha got to her feet. ‘I’m sure there is,’ she said. ‘But I would like to have a word with Miss Holgate.’

  Robert, much subdued, led her out of the vicarage, and along to the side entrance of the church. The door was unlocked. He pushed it open, and then left her there, slipping away before anyone could see him.

  Agatha knocked loudly on the open door, then took a step inside.

  There was a damp, smoky, candle-wax smell. The lobby was built of rough grey stone. At the end of it was a heavy wooden door, which stood ajar.

  ‘Hello? Miss Holgate?’

  Gwendoline Holgate exclaimed with surprise as Agatha appeared in the doorway. The room was high-ceilinged, with a tall, arched window, through which filtered the afternoon sunlight. Miss Holgate was seated at a large mahogany desk, which was piled high with dusty files. Agatha could see other piles stacked around the desk on the worn red carpet.

  Miss Holgate looked at her through pale, nervous eyes. She was hunched at the desk, and her thin fingers rested on a pile of papers.

  ‘I’m sorry to intrude,’ Agatha began.

  The girl shook her head. ‘I don’t mind, Ma’am,’ she said, in a barely audible voice.

  ‘There are some questions to which I’d like the answers,’ Agatha said. The girl looked up in horror, but Agatha added, ‘Not from you – from all these.’ She waved her hand towards the files. The girl’s posture softened.

  Agatha gazed at her. ‘When did you last eat?’ she asked her.

  ‘Don’t much feel like eating,’ Miss Holgate said.

  ‘I’ll tell you what.’ Agatha spoke briskly. ‘I’ll go and arrange for us to have some sandwiches, and tea, and then you and I can go through these together.’

  *

  Much later, Agatha left the vicarage. She had found Gwendoline Holgate to be helpful, and very hardworking. They had pored over files of parish records, deed boxes, births, marriages and deaths. They had settled into companionable silence, with the occasional exclamation, and the passing of a paper from one to the other. They had eaten sandwiches, and drunk tea, and Gwendoline had become pink-cheeked and increasingly forthcoming. They’d chatted about the books in the library, how Gwendoline had been reading novels, ‘We’d only ever read the bible at school, I didn’t know things could have proper endings…’

  Agatha didn’t mention the summerhouse, or the atropine. Instead, she asked if she could borrow two of the files, not to mention it to anyone, she’d bring them back in the morning; and Gwendoline, clearly nonplussed, agreed.

  ‘They’re not all here,’ she said. ‘Mr. Fullerton took some of them away last week.’

  Agatha considered this. ‘You don’t know which ones, do you?’

  Gwendoline shook her head.

  Agatha gathered up the files she was taking. As she did so, Miss Holgate touched her arm. ‘I just wish I’d had the chance to talk to Cecil. I don’t know what he wanted to tell me,’ she said. ‘I’ll never know. He was a friend. Robert thinks it was more than that, but it wasn’t, it really wasn’t … And then Phoebe’s gone too, and that’s another friend.’ Her eyes welled with tears. ‘The problem is I bring bad luck on people. That’s the problem. One of my sisters said that once and I now I think she’s right –’

  They began to talk out to the main door. ‘You musn’t think that way, Miss Holgate,’ Agatha said. ‘Whatever has happened here will be solved. And you can get on with your life. And in any case,’ she added, ‘Robert cares about you very much.’

  Gwendoline looked up at her with tearful eyes.

  ‘Robert needs you as much as you need him,’ Agatha said, standing on the church doorstep in the afternoon sunlight. Then she departed, leaving the young woman standing there. The church rose up behind her, and Agatha had, once again, a sense of the history of the village, the stories in the fields beneath, ever deeper, ever more mysterious.

  All she knew was that certain questions needed to be answered. And that somehow, she hoped, the answer lay in the two files now tucked under her arm: the deeds of the Wilkins house that showed all the plans of the boundaries of its land; and the register of funerals for the village going back at least fifteen years.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘Well, it’s bound to be a fake.’ Archie twitched the pages of his newspaper. The French windows were open, and cool evening air drifted in from the garden.

  Agatha looked up from her notebooks. ‘What is?’

  ‘Tutankhamun,’ he said. ‘This Egyptian king they’ve found. Everyone’s going mad about it.’

  ‘Why a fake?’ She smiled at him, but he seemed deadly serious.

  ‘You expect me to believe it’s lain there undiscovered all this time, and then this chap goes marching in and finds it all as those savages left it centuries ago?’

  ‘Archie, dear, they were hardly savages.’

  ‘Well, high priests, then. Hieroglyphics. Whatever they were. And they say it’s cursed,’ he went on. ‘Instant death to anyone who crosses the threshold.’

  ‘Now that bit, I’m quite prepared to believe is a fiction,’ Agatha said.

  He took a sip of his drink, then went back to his paper. The room fell silent again. The dog at Agatha’s feet shifted.

  Agatha returned to her notebooks. She thought about the Holbein, locked away in the old shed. She thought about Arthur’s painstaking steps to prove its veracity, to help the vicar realize its true value. She wondered, briefly, about the church bell, and whether the value of the Holbein would match the costs of the restoration.

  ‘Sunday tomorrow,’ Archie said, suddenly. ‘Thought I might pop up to London.’

  ‘London?’ She looked up. ‘But –’

  ‘Just for a couple of hours. Put my nose in at the club.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘What about you?’

  What about me? she wanted to say. She looked at him, half-hidden behind his newspaper. What about us having the kind of Sundays that other married couples have, where we take our daughter out, where we pay visits, see my mother, or my sister, or play with our daughter at home, or do the garden, walk the dogs in to the meadows …?

  ‘Any plans?’ His gaze had returned to
his paper.

  ‘I’m having tea with Mary,’ she said.

  He nodded, half-hearing. ‘The village will be a nightmare,’ he said. ‘Crawling with police, and reporters, and all sorts of hangers-on. The sooner they prove that woman did it, the better, and then we can all be left in peace.’

  Another silence. Peter the dog snuffled at her feet, and Agatha bent to pat him.

  The story is taking shape, she thought. It is centred round the summerhouse, the graveyard. The vicarage. And there is one other place. One other piece of the jigsaw.

  She got to her feet, smoothed her skirt. Alice had gone home, and there were evening tasks, tidying the kitchen, folding sheets, sorting the mending pile. Peter stretched out his front legs then got to his feet too, anticipating bed-time snacks.

  Archie turned the page of his newspaper.

  Agatha left the room, Peter trotting at her side.

  *

  My husband was right about one thing, Agatha thought, as she walked past the church on Sunday morning, watching the crowd of hangers on. Undeterred by the morning drizzle, they stood, a gaggle of men in raincoats, stopping passers-by, asking them if they knew the dead man, if they knew anything about that poor murdered girl, if they had ever met the scheming murderess … There was even a photographer, his camera all set up, trying to get an image of the village street, despite the rain and the churchgoers hurrying towards the porch as the bell tolled in its old, cracked way, inviting people to Morning Prayer.

  Agatha kept her umbrella low over her face and slipped away from the high street, away from the village and up the lane.

  The walls of Hainault Hall seemed even more dejected under the grey sky. She opened the rusty gate and went up the drive.

  She noticed the door was ajar, so she pushed at it and found herself in the hallway. She surveyed the staircase with its rough, unpolished wooden steps, the portraits on the wall showing people who once belonged, now forgotten.

  ‘I thought I heard the door.’ The voice echoed from above. Then, light feet on the bare staircase, and Arthur appeared.

  ‘I’m sorry – I did ring the bell …’

  ‘Miles away.’ He offered her his hand, which was warm and smooth. ‘I have to say, I’m glad to see you. Very few friends in this, it turns out. I mean, they do what they can, the village, but in the end I’m rather a stranger in their midst …’ He spoke lightly, but his face was drawn, shadowed with sleeplessness. ‘And of course, what can I say? I miss Phoebe terribly. All those hopes of the future … if only I’d asked her to marry me. If only I could say, my “fiancée”. Then people would understand my loss.’ His eyes were red-rimmed, as if from long hours of tearfulness.