Agatha Christie Investigates Omnibus

by Alison Joseph

  She placed the tray of tea things on the table, next to a copy of the Times. When she had gone, Agatha turned to Mr. Farrar. ‘Are you saying to me that you really were standing by the dying man at the moment when the staff ran out?’

  He stirred two large lumps of sugar into his tea.

  ‘I can tell you what I know,’ he went on. ‘That I heard the gunshot. That for some reason, I ran towards it, rather than away. That I saw the body of Mr. Collyer, and, and …’ His face clouded. ‘Mrs. Christie – I distinctly remember staring at my hand, and seeing the pistol grasped between my fingers.’

  She looked at him. ‘Mr. Farrar …’

  He waved away her words. ‘In truth, Mrs. Christie, that is what I remember. More than that, I can’t say. I remember knowing that I needed a drink.’

  The files were piled on a chair beside him. He patted them with one hand. ‘And the insane thing is, Mrs. Christie, for what? For what was the man killed? Have you read these things?’

  He reached for the first file, opened it, pulled out an untidy sheaf of papers. He began to read. ‘… this century has already seen great progress made in the variegation of zinc sulfide seals … With his subsequent work on cobalt salt stabilisation, Dr. Ernst Adler made many advances in the field of pigment chemistry …’ He flicked over a few pages. ‘… in this way, the neutral anionic clusters formed are resistant to oxidation…’ He flung the paper down. ‘How will that lead anyone to a murderer?’

  ‘Mr. Farrar – Mr. Collyer was a chemist. He’s bound to write chemistry.’

  He allowed himself a small smile. ‘But Dr. Adler … Oh, Mrs. Christie, if you only knew.’ He took a sip of tea, put down his cup. ‘Have you ever looked into the eyes of a moth, Mrs. Christie? The eye of a moth reflects back hardly any of the light that it encounters. It’s all to do with the wavelength of visible light. That’s what they were working on. Paint that would absorb light rather than reflect it.’

  ‘For the war effort?’ she asked.

  He nodded.

  ‘At Ince Hall?’ she prompted.

  Again a nod. He spoke again. ‘The eye of a moth is a thing of extraordinary beauty. It may be that to a mere chemist, it shows only the chemical composition of compounds capable of light absorption. But an artist sees light, colour, structure, meaning, feeling. From what I know of Dr. Adler, he was capable of both. An extraordinary man, by all accounts. And not just him, all of them. Oh, if you knew what those chaps actually did …’

  ‘And what did they do, Mr. Farrar?’

  She noticed, once again, the far-away expression in his eyes.

  He sipped his tea, seemed to focus once again. ‘Mrs. Christie,’ he began. ‘There is the truth of war. And then there are the stories we tell ourselves afterwards. Heroism. Winners. Victors. The Happy Ever After. The men who gathered at Ince Hall had only one aim in mind, to serve their country. Half of those chaps are no longer with us. Shot down, two of them, flying over enemy lines. Your husband will know about that. Another two lie cold and still in the fields of Flanders. There is no justice. When we talk of the soldier’s death, the honourable death, we’re lying to ourselves. That’s all. It’s no more than one of your thin fictions, Mrs. Christie.’

  She found herself gathering words in defence of her own work, but he was speaking again. ‘There is no sense. No resolution.’ He had snatched up the copy of the Times. ‘This is your reality.’ He waved the newspaper at her. ‘That girl they’re looking for in Dorset, trawling the rivers, doing witchcraft with bits of bread to find her. Nursery maid they say she was. They’ll find her body. Or they won’t. Whatever happens, there will be no sense, no justice. Just some poor mother weeping quietly for her daughter. That’s your reality. Rough edges, Mrs. Christie. No happy ever afters.’ He flopped the paper back on to the table, picked up his cup and slurped at it roughly. ‘They’ll ask me about the tennis game, of course. About why I’d invited Mr. Collyer to meet me early on Tuesday to play a few sets.’

  ‘And why did you, Mr. Farrar?’

  He flashed her a sharp glance. ‘Oh, Mrs. Christie. Do you think I don’t see through you? Another layer for your story-telling? It’s not a game, Mrs. Christie.’

  She was aware of a wave of a rage. ‘I have never for one moment asserted that it was a game,’ she said, trying to keep her voice calm.

  He seemed not to hear. ‘Your stories with your neat rows of suspects,’ he went on. ‘It’s just divertissement,’ he said.

  ‘I make no great claims for my work.’ Her voice was tight. ‘People enjoy detective fiction, that’s all.’

  ‘No grief. No loss. No rage. Nothing real. Just a parlour game, a body in the library, a murder at the vicarage. It’s all just spillikins in the parlour. Next you’ll be telling me the Butler did it. That’s what usually happens in these sort of stories.’ He clunked his cup on to the table and stumbled to his feet. ‘In fact, there we are. Finch.’

  ‘He’s not a butler,’ Agatha said.

  ‘Hotel Manager then. They had that argument the night before Frederick died, didn’t they?’

  ‘Over a steak,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t kill for that.’

  He gave an empty smile. ‘Perhaps there’s more to it. Perhaps he’s a secret enemy, spying for the Bolsheviks, disguised as a butler?’

  ‘Mr. Farrar – this is a real death. As you have so rightly pointed out, there is a widow’s grief. And you accuse me of playing games?’

  His gaze was locked with hers. His eyes blazed darkly.

  Notes of music floated across the room from the piano. Nora was sitting at the keys, her soft white fingers shaping their tune. It seemed to be a kind of folk song, and after a moment Nora began to sing gently, a sorrowful air about a young man returning from war.

  Kurt turned and watched the playing. Something about the melancholy notes, the soft singing voice, shifted his mood. He turned back to Agatha, all anger gone. He cast her a look of humility, struggled to find words. At length he said, ‘Mrs. Christie … My apologies. I am so used to people around me making allowances. It won’t happen again.’

  He bowed, clicked his heels and then left the room. Agatha listened to the lilt of the song, the final verse revealing that the soldier was a ghost, brought back by love alone. She heard the fragments of the words, the poetry of grief and loss. She thought about the shipwreck on the beach beyond.

  Chapter Ten

  Captain Wingfield considered the sundial, reflecting upon the creeping shadow that marked the passage of time itself. Despite the brightness of the day, he was haunted by a sense of heaviness…

  At the ring of the dinner bell, Agatha put down her pen. She went to the dressing table, fastened her pearls around her neck, pinned back her hair.

  There was still no reply from Archie. It occurred to her, as she stared at her reflection in the looking glass, that she could just go home. Home is where I belong, she thought, by my husband’s side, not caught up in this very odd story of war artists and ruined manor houses, of shipwrecks and papers and ghosts, of tennis games that end in tragedy.

  Perhaps my novel would be making more progress if I were back home, she thought. Back at my own study, with all my notebooks, and with dear Carlo sorting things out. Most of all, with Rosalind, she thought. I’ve been away from her too long.

  In her mind, a picture of her daughter, playing with her cousins. There’d be ball games no doubt, laughter, hide and seek in the gardens, running, jumping, her daughter dancing, her golden curls shining in the sunlight…

  I’ve been away too long.

  She got to her feet, headed for the door. Tomorrow, she thought, I will find Inspector Olds and make sure I have his permission to leave.

  *

  The calm that had descended over the hotel earlier now seemed to be fractured. The mood in the dining room was tense, not helped by the shrill voices of the two Scottish ladies. Agatha took her place, and almost at once Mr. Finch was at her side. ‘Madam,’ he said, in a low voice, ‘my thanks for your i
ntervention. The Detective Inspector has put my mind at ease.’

  She smiled, uttered a few words, ‘Really it was no trouble, least I could do …’ and then he had gone.

  The tennis party appeared rather twitchy. Blanche sat with Sebastian and Sophie. From time to time she would lean over and insist that Sebastian tell her the time from his pocket watch.

  ‘What can they want with him, all this time?’ she said to Sebastian. ‘I’ve got poor Finch keeping his dinner warm for him too.’

  ‘Perhaps Uncle Kurt did it,’ Sophie said. Her voice was tight, and she was drumming her fingers against the table.

  ‘Don’t be silly, dear,’ Blanche said.

  ‘He was awake at the same time as Mr. Collyer, wasn’t he,’ the girl went on. ‘Completely unlike him. And in tennis shoes. No one else was on the courts at the moment that Mr. Collyer was killed, that’s what the policeman said.’

  Blanche opened her mouth as if to dispute this, but the girl’s words carried an obvious, inarguable truth.

  Sebastian laughed. ‘You forget that dear Kurt has no motive. No motive at all.’

  ‘Whereas I –’ the voice was loud, as Robin Tyndall crossed the threshold into the dining room. ‘I, it seems, have every motive. According to our local police officers.’

  The tennis party looked up at him. The two Scottish ladies continued their loud conversation.

  He marched to his table, his stick tapping loudly with each step. ‘Vladimir Ilyich Lenin,’ he said, his voice still loud. ‘The man is no longer even with us, but any scrap of interest in him and you’re treated as if you’re firing up the tin-miners of Cornwall for imminent revolution. Fingerprints!’ he exclaimed, loudly. ‘They took my fingerprints! As if I’m some kind of lowly criminal …’ He flung himself into his chair, poured himself a large glass of wine and began to drink it.

  There was the clink of plates, the pouring of drinks. Tyndall said no more. Blanche continued to watch the door, barely tasting her soup, tearing her bread into pieces, leaving it untouched.

  Then, a swish as the door opened, and Kurt appeared. Blanche seemed to breathe again.

  He was pale, distracted. He lumbered to the table and sat down, without speaking. Blanche flashed him a question in her eyes, but he ignored it. He reached for a bread roll, tore off a large piece and placed it in his mouth.

  Sebastian turned to Sophie, and with great deliberation began a conversation about her opening serve.

  Blanche murmured something to Kurt.

  ‘… it’s the placing of your feet, Sophie, you need that real strength, you need to ground yourself …’ Sebastian was saying.

  Blanche spoke again. Kurt turned to her, wearily. ‘Of course I’m a suspect,’ he said, loudly. ‘I was there, wasn’t I? In tennis kit, wasn’t I? He’s like a terrier, that policeman. Won’t give up. Taking my fingerprints, as if that’s going to give him any answers.’ He swivelled round to face Mr. Tyndall. ‘So, Tyndall,’ he said. ‘Which of us is it? One of us killed the poor man.’

  Robin Tyndall faced him from his table. ‘This is no joke, Farrar,’ he said. ‘What I want to know is, why did you insist on taking Frederick’s papers?’

  ‘The papers?’ Kurt let out a bark of laughter. ‘Mr. Collyer’s tedious scrawls … as if that would tell me anything at all. The real disputed papers must be with the police by now, the ones they took from Frau Adler. All I’ve read is sleep-inducing lists of conferences attended by chemists, names of people who attended, formulae of chemical compounds …’ He gave an exaggerated yawn. ‘If anyone wanted to kill because of Mr. Collyer’s writings, it would simply be to prevent themselves dying of boredom.’

  ‘Kurt –’ Blanche’s voice was sharp. ‘That really is enough. Have some respect.’

  ‘What do you think, Tyndall?’ Kurt ignored her. ‘Where do you think the clue really lies? Up at the big house, perhaps? With Frau Adler? Or on the beach, in the middle of the night? With people waiting in the darkness for a ship to come in?’

  Mr. Tyndall’s face was ashen pale, his lips set with rage.

  ‘Or maybe not there,’ Kurt went on. ‘Maybe it’s that heap of crumbling golden stone further along the coast? You know the house, don’t you, Tyndall? Perhaps it’s there, under the old slate roof, mixed up with those broken dreams and shattered hopes. Perhaps it’s there, the clue to this death, tangled up with all those other lives cut short?’

  The air seemed to freeze. Even the two ladies had fallen silent. Blanche looked as if she was near to tears. Sebastian stared at his plate.

  Mr. Tyndall rose to his feet. He placed a hand on the table to steady himself, and his voice shook with feeling. ‘Mr. Farrar,’ he said. ‘I have had enough of this. There is one way to put a stop to these rumours, these rumours of rumours.’ He took a white handkerchief from his pocket. ‘Tomorrow –’ He paused, dabbed at his forehead with the handkerchief. ‘Tomorrow, we will go to see Frau Adler. We will take the forces of law and order with us. To Langlands,’ he said. ‘We will go together. I will put a stop to this calumny. All this talk of midnight ships, of poor Frau Adler waiting for contraband … I will not have that poor woman’s name dragged into this. Twice now, the police have questioned her. Her husband, Dr. Adler was an eminent chemist, blameless, as is his wife. I will request that the Inspector returns there with us, and I will put an end to speculation of this kind.’

  Mr. Farrar stared up at him. After a moment he gave a nod of agreement. ‘But,’ Mr. Farrar added, ‘I will take a witness. Mrs. Christie here –’ He pointed across the room – ‘I will take Mrs. Christie here as an impartial observer.’

  Mr. Tyndall looked across at her. ‘Agreed,’ he said. ‘If you are, Mrs. Christie?’

  In her mind, her daughter, her husband, her own desk, her notebooks, the lilac tree in her garden. In her mind, her writing, the easy flow of her own story, not the jagged edges of this one.

  In the corner of the dining room stood Mrs. Collyer. She had slipped through the doorway and now stood, watching, her fingers twisting together, her wide eyes staring at Agatha with a look of pleading.

  Agatha looked at Mr. Tyndall, and then at Mr. Farrar. ‘Agreed,’ she said.

  *

  The wind was up in the morning. Agatha was glad of the roof on the Detective Inspector’s old Austin. She sat on the back seat. Mr. Farrar was sitting next to the Inspector, in the front seat, silent as a statue. She was glad of that too.

  Inspector Olds had come to collect them from the hotel. ‘Very kind of you, Mrs. Christie,’ he’d murmured, holding the car door open for her. ‘Mr. Tyndall is meeting us there with Brierley …’ He’d started the engine, climbed into the driver’s seat.

  Blanche had stood on the hotel steps, seeing them off. She’d seemed almost tearful. ‘Oh do look after him, Mrs. Christie,’ she’d said. ‘I’d come myself, but I think I’d be one person too many …’ She had waved an elegant hand, as the car had pulled away down the drive.

  Langlands was a large, imposing house set in well-tended gardens, not far from the village itself.

  Frau Adler had come to the door at the sound of the car engine, and now stood there, smart as ever, in a long tweed skirt and fine woollen shawl, with two small dogs yapping at her ankles.

  ‘Mrs. Christie … Mr. Farrar …’ She shook their hands, ushered them into the house. The dogs jumped at their legs, and she admonished them quietly. ‘Jack Russells of course, wonderful company but no manners.’ She smiled a thin smile. ‘We’re in the library. Robin’s already here.’ She seemed tense and chilled, as she gathered her shawl around her and led the way towards a double-door of heavy oak.

  Mr. Farrar seemed not to hear, standing, immobile, in the middle of the hall. His eyes were fixed on a painting which hung next to the large staircase. It showed a woman in a white robe, kneeling by the body of a young man. The man’s eyes were vacant with death, his flesh waxy. The woman’s hands were held aloft, filled with earth, and her face was ashen with grief. Behind her, at a distan
ce, a second, male figure, black-haired, dark-robed, taking a step towards her, his arm stretched out in a gesture of protest.

  Kurt Farrar raised his hand to it, traced a finger along the lines of the dead body. ‘A slain man’s blood,’ he murmured. He turned slightly towards Agatha. ‘This is the painting,’ he said. ‘Antigone …’

  Frau Adler was standing by the double doors.

  Kurt Farrar turned to her. ‘You got it back,’ he said. ‘You rescued it. How …?’

  Her gaze was level. ‘It had to be done,’ she said.

  ‘Quentin …?’ he asked.

  She gave a small nod.

  ‘Did he get them all?’

  She shook her head. ‘Ach, if only. It has been so hard, so, so hard. And with so much disagreement … but dear Quentin will not give up.’ Her voice faltered with emotion.

  ‘Brave man,’ he said. ‘Brave, brave man.’

  ‘There’s a grave now, Quentin says. Over in France. A good, proper marked grave …’

  ‘For the fallen? For all of them?’

  She nodded. Their eyes were locked for a moment, then she turned away. Mr. Farrar followed, and they all went into the library.

  *

  The party settled themselves around a long polished table. A young woman in starched white served small cups of strong black coffee. Frau Adler spoke to her in German, appeared to ask for sugar, as a few moments later she reappeared with a bowl and some spoons.

  Inspector Olds sat at the head of the table, his sergeant at his side, notebook at the ready. Frau Adler was on his right, Mr. Tyndall opposite, his stick by his seat, and then Mr. Farrar and Agatha.

  Inspector Olds took a reluctant sip of coffee. Then he spoke. ‘I don’t need to pretend to you all that things aren’t serious. Mr. Collyer seems to have had no enemies. He was an ordinary man, a chemist. He loved his subject. He admired your husband, Frau Adler, and as we know, he was writing his biography. And that’s what we’ve gathered here to discuss.’ He glanced at his coffee cup but didn’t venture another sip. ‘The feeling is, Frau Adler, that Mr. Collyer had stumbled upon an aspect of Dr. Adler’s life that, shall we say, certain parties wished to be hidden.’