‘She’s coming back,’ Stefan said, turning to the others.
‘She is?’ Alicia looked surprised. ‘I thought it was all going so well there.’
‘Just for a visit,’ Sian said. ‘All that way on the boat. We might even take some time to visit Penarth again.’
Agatha was holding the card. ‘Mrs Janet Parry. The Plymouth Arms Guest House,’ she read.
Alicia tapped the card. ‘She made the best tea in Britain, proper strong, it was, nice and dark – and only fifteen minutes to Cardiff on the train…’
Hywel stroked Alicia’s hair. ‘When we go back to Wales, we won’t go there. We’ll go to Nant Francon where my people are from. The slate quarries, where my father worked. That’s the true Wales.’ He led her away, into the London night. Sian and Stefan too drifted back into the theatre.
Isabella had been sitting on the wall, and now she got up, stretching theatrically. ‘I shall be there for him,’ she said. ‘Someone must give him hope.’ She gathered her fur around her shoulders, went back into the theatre.
*
Agatha sat in a taxi. The London night unfurled past the windows, the bright lights of theatreland, the dark sky beyond, the blackness of the Thames as she crossed the river.
Patrick would be in a police cell by now, she thought. She felt a pang of concern, at the thought of that vulnerable, shambling man having to manage accusations of murder. Isabella was so certain of his innocence, she thought, and it was a certainty she herself was inclined to share. And yet…
The rail, the rope, the timing. And more than that, the expression on his face at the arrival of the police.
He had looked like a guilty man.
She thought about Isabella, the glimpses of urgent conversations with Georgie, with Patrick. What else does she know, Agatha wondered.
Alexei killed Cosmina. And Patrick killed Alexei. However unlikely, however much it was like ‘something from one of your murder stories, Mrs Christie…’
In her mind, the red-nosed clown, the painted backdrop of the New York skyline, stylized into angular black and white.
In her mind, her notebooks waiting on her desk, for the story she would tell.
*
Sunday morning in Chelsea was alive with church bells and the scent of fresh bread.
Agatha was writing. A woman, alone in an unnamed city. Towering skyscrapers, the alienation that Patrick had described, the individual in the industrial world. There would be heartbreak. There would be a dancer, an attempt to write into words an art form that has its heart in silence.
She put down her pen. She saw in her mind the red-nosed clown, alone in an urban setting of black and white; she heard the discordant music of his syncopated dance.
She thought of Patrick, alone in a cell, resigned; relieved, almost.
It made no sense.
On her desk was the card. ‘Plymouth Arms Guest House’. For some reason she’d ended up with it, after Alicia had taken it from her bag and shown it to her.
Next to it lay the invitation speak at the Driscoll Institute; the note she’d written to Carlo. ‘Tell them I shall be delighted to accept.’
It was in two days’ time. On Tuesday, she thought, I shall get the train to Cardiff.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The thundering blackness of the railway tunnel gave way to smoky white as the train steamed westwards.
Agatha looked out of the window, at the rolling green fields of the English countryside.
Carlo had telephoned Mrs Rees to accept the invitation. ‘I apologized for the short notice,’ Carlo said to Agatha.
‘Did she mind?’ Agatha asked.
‘To be honest,’ Carlo said, with a tone of disapproval, ‘she seemed to have assumed you were coming. She’d already printed the programmes, she said.’
The train rattled, whistled.
Agatha felt her spirits lift. Once again, she thought about her need to escape.
Isabella’s wrong, she thought. It’s not that I should meet another man. It’s that I should learn to be alone.
‘The love of your life,’ Isabella had said.
And what if that person is someone you’ve had to leave behind?
‘They’ll meet you at Cardiff station,’ Carlo had said. ‘They’ve booked you a hotel. Let’s hope it’s a nice one.’
Agatha leaned her head against the window. She thought about what Isabella had said, about yearning for a lost love being good for one’s art.
I could write the story. The lone woman in the cityscape. The modernist tale of alienation.
But how to inhabit that character? How to find the truth of her? A strong, solitary woman who doesn’t mind being on her own, who can make travelling plans as a single person, who doesn’t fear the looks of strangers, who doesn’t feel a tightening anxiety at the anticipation of having to say that word. Divorce.
How to write a woman who once was married and now is not. And is happy with things as they are.
She pictured Isabella in her loose tailored silks and her floating auburn hair. She imagined her staring at glass cases, her gaze fixed on the fluttering rainbow beauty of her moths. There is no doubt, for her, a kind of joy in her unrequited love, in her embracing of her essential solitude. She had spoken of her yearning, of how her work is expressing something unresolved, something aspiring to completion. ‘Perhaps that’s true of all work,’ she’d said.
But is it true of a story told as clockwork, with a plot, a mystery, a twist?
Agatha leaned back in her seat. She surveyed the passing scenery, thinking about the gap between the freeform heartfelt self-expression of an Isabella and the carefully ordered storytelling of a detective novelist.
What would it be like, to be like Isabella?
On the seat next to her was a discarded local newspaper. She flicked through it.
‘The Problem of Distressed Areas,’ she read. She turned the pages of the thin paper. There was a photograph of a line of women, all in a queue, having heard that there was a job going at the local library in Cardiff. One job. About fifty women, all in their Sunday best.
She turned the page.
Another photograph. The majesty of Dowlais steelworks, now closed. ‘Something will be done,’ the King had said. The King himself, she thought. The report was written in hushed tones of respect.
It was a beautiful photograph. The dark solitary curves of the factory buildings, against the Welsh mist.
She flicked through the advertisements. ‘Variety.’ The heading caught her eye.
‘The Alhambra,’ she read. ‘The Caliph of Baghdad, Illusionist. The Bentley Boys. Billy the Bicycling Cockatoo.’
Agatha smiled to herself, wondering how long it would be before Georgie booked Billy the Bicycling Cockatoo.
The sun had gone in. The countryside looked greyer, leaner. She thought about people queueing for work, a lowering mist of poverty in black and white.
Perhaps, rather than thinking about Isabella and her yearning for elusive love, I should think about Mr Belotti and his solitary clown. And yet his clown is not alone, as his time onstage is shared directly with his laughing, wondering audience, a moment of joy in their difficult lives. Joy, and hope and wonder.
And therein, she thought, are the beginnings of my novel. The city skyscrapers, the spotlights holding in their beams, the lone clown who tells his story to his audience; a beginning, a middle and an end all conveyed in the gaps and in the silences.
The train rumbled through the countryside, leaving its trail of steam against the damp green backdrop.
Patrick had allowed a rope to come undone, and a rail to crash to earth in such a way as to kill his rival in love, and avenge the death of the woman he adored. More than that, Patrick seemed to be accepting that this was what had happened.
She had a sense of something beyond her reach.
*
‘Ah, Mrs Christie, there you are.’
The woman approaching her was large and round, in a pale green hat and a
shapeless raincoat, which given the threatening clouds was probably sensible.
She held out her hand. ‘Mrs Rees,’ she said. ‘Mrs Olwen Rees.’
‘Pleased to meet you.’ Agatha took in the neat grey curls, the button-blue eyes.
‘We’re so pleased you’re coming to talk to us this evening,’ Mrs Rees went on. ‘I told the committee, she’s the one that writes those books, you know, where there’s a vicar and then the colonel or someone is found dead, in the library or somewhere, poisoned usually, isn’t it? And it’s always a surprise – ah, there he is, my husband is driving us.’
Agatha was led to a waiting car. In the driver’s seat she could see broad shoulders and a thatch of black hair.
‘Here she is, Robert,’ her new acquaintance announced. ‘Mrs Agatha Christie.’
The broad shoulders part-turned towards her, waved a hand in greeting. ‘Pleased to meet you, Mrs Christie,’ he said. ‘Our chairman took some persuading, didn’t he, dear?’
Mrs Rees flicked back her hair. ‘I wouldn’t say that. Although, our chairman is rather keen on his own subject. We did nearly get an expert in French cavalry training—’
‘Prussian, dear,’ her husband corrected her. ‘Eighteenth century equestrian battle formation. That chap from that society that old Lewis always tries to invite.’
‘Well, Mrs Christie won,’ his wife said.
‘Until the next time.’ Mr Rees turned back to the steering wheel. The engine revved, and he started out of the railway car park.
Mrs Rees turned to her again. ‘We’ve booked you into the Royal Crown, it’s the best there is, well of course, there’s the Majestic, but ever since they found mice no one goes there, not now… We’ll get you settled in and then pick you up in time for dinner.’
*
There was a bustle of importance at the hotel reception, which was full of elaborate red carpet and carved oak, the polish long since dulled. Now, Agatha found herself in her room.
Her window looked out over a wide street. Through the net curtains she could see municipal buildings, their tall white stone and towering pillars proudly asserting the city’s importance.
She remembered Alicia’s affection for Wales, her talk of the sea. The street outside seemed solid and dutiful, standing firmly under the heavy sky, its citizens living their everyday working life.
She longed for a sense of being on holiday.
Alicia’s card was still in her handbag. She took it out and gazed at it. ‘Plymouth Arms Guest House, Penarth.’
Fifteen minutes on the train from Cardiff, Alicia had said.
She looked out at the threatening clouds. She was glad she’d packed a raincoat.
CHAPTER NINE
‘You know the Carmichael Varieties?’ The woman on the doorstep clapped her hands. ‘Here that, Bryn? This lady knows Sian and Madlen and their friends. How wonderful. Come in, come in…’
Janet Parry was smartly dressed, in black court shoes and a well-cut black dress. Her hair was pinned back, and her dark eyes sparkled as she led the way into an airy drawing room.
‘Mind you,’ she was saying. ‘The time they’ve had. Awful, awful. Two killings, it’s been in all the papers here, although at least it’s all solved now. Do sit down, Mrs Christie, I’ll put the kettle on. She’s come from London, Bryn, all the way to Cardiff, imagine, though she’s booked into the Royal Crown. Not my choice, I have to say, although perhaps it’s improved with the new management…’
There were noises from the next room, a creak of furniture, a heavy step, and then a man appeared in the doorway. He was grey haired, strongly built, in a navy jacket that gave him a military air.
‘Here he is, my Bryn.’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said, with a click of his heels, then turned to go.
‘Won’t you have a cup of tea, dear?’
‘Already had a lot of tea,’ he said, and ambled away out of the room. There were further scrapings of chairs.
‘Poor Cosmina, though I hardly knew her. She was new to the company here. And her partner, I knew him a bit better. Terrible tragedy. Though I do think the newspapers ought to call them man and wife, give them the dignity due to them. Dance partners they’re saying, it makes her out to be no better than she ought to be.’
Agatha allowed Mrs Parry to take her coat, and pull out a chair for her at the dining table. ‘So they were married,’ she said.
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘They slipped away one day. That company manager, he was very cross about it. Over in Cardiff they did it, I caught Alexei laying out papers for the register office. “Getting married?” I said, as a joke, but he swore me to secrecy. Said they wanted it kept quiet. Then off they went. Rather a whirlwind arrangement, I thought, but then thinking about it, the company was so unhappy, so many of them had left, and this new manager of theirs, no one trusted him…’
‘Georgie Carmichael?’
‘Yes, that’s the one. So I’m not surprised if Alexei just wanted it all done and dusted, a bit of security in an uncertain world. And he and Georgie nearly came to blows – do you take sugar?’
‘No, thank you.’ Agatha took the cup of tea she handed her. She turned back to Mrs Parry. ‘I heard there was a fight.’
‘Sian’s partner, Stefan, he’s a nice boy, he had to step in. It was something about the bill matter, who was the chaser, I never got to the end of it. But it’s like that with trying to make a new company out of an old one, it never works. So many of the old ones had gone, Madlen had gone off to New York, her poor sister left behind and missing her terribly, lovely girls both of them.’
‘You’ve known them for years?’
‘Their mother Lynne and I…’ her face shadowed. ‘Back in Pontypridd. Best friends since school. Always thought the girls were destined for the theatre, I remember them dancing around their mother’s kitchen table. But then, you see, she died, poor Lynne…’ She gave a heavy sigh. ‘Their father did his best, but he barely lasted another year, his lungs it was, everyone blames the steelworks but you can never tell, my uncle Evan worked there man and boy and he’s still going strong… now where was I? Oh, yes, and then they were taken in by their mother’s sister. Well, she was a difficult woman, Merwen. Tried to put a stop to their ambitions, all the dancing stopped, all the singing too, it was sad to see. A mean-minded woman, even her parrot was spiteful. Dead now. Not the parrot, her. There was another sister, but she emigrated. It was a shame, they’d have been happier with her. Anyway, where was I? Well, then they ran away. As soon as they could, only fifteen or sixteen the two of them, joined Tommy’s Twinkletoes at Porthcawl. The family were horrified, but I was delighted. And look how well they’ve done, to think of Madlen on Broadway itself… Now where was I?’
‘Georgie,’ Agatha said. ‘The fight with Alexei.’
‘Ah yes.’ She frowned, remembering. ‘Well, Georgie was trying to control him, that’s what it was, trying to put him in his place. They do that managers, but what did Georgie know? He’d come from running a shadow puppet show. Cardboard cut-outs are easier than real people, that’s the problem. And Alexei wasn’t having any of it. Stood up to him, see. No wonder Madlen left… I hope she’s all right out there. You see, the other aunt, Cicely, the one who emigrated, she ended up in America too. She’s dead now too, she died two – no – three years ago, it must be now, we had Doone’s Bioscope staying with us, a very learned gentleman, it turned out, knew everything about lizards… where was I? Oh, yes, Cicely, she married a minister from Louisiana, lived very happily from what I gathered…’ She picked up the milk jug, peered into it.
‘And the argument—’
‘What? Oh, Georgie and Alexei, yes. I do remember an odd moment, not long after the fight, they’d all come back here, and Georgie cornered Alexei, in the kitchen here, just the two of them – and he said something about Alexei being stateless, and how he could have him sent back to Russia if he chose. Georgie said he knew all about it, how he’d fled America because he was illegal t
here, and how he didn’t have the right to live in this country either, and Alexei had better remember that it was all thanks to Georgie’s tolerance that he was here at all…’ She put down the jug.
‘And what did Alexei say?’
‘Nothing. That’s what was so odd. I remember noticing it, as I came into the kitchen, Alexei just standing there, proud as anything, like no one could touch him… More tea? I’ll just get some more hot water…’
She bustled into the kitchen, then reappeared. ‘It’s a long way away, America,’ she said. ‘That’s my worry with Madlen being there. Merwen, her aunt, she lost touch with her sister once she’d gone. Mind you, that was Merwen for you, she invented yet another feud, about money, of all things, Merwen always said that Cicely owed her money, but that was typical of her, inventing grudges. As if a baptist minister’s wife is going to have anything to leave to her estranged sister. But that was what she was like, Merwen, choosing to be the injured party. Even the parrot took on the atmosphere of martyrdom… “It’s always me, isn’t it?” That was one of his sayings. He’d shout it out, “It’s always me, isn’t it?”’ She laughed merrily and Agatha laughed too.
‘And then when poor Madlen went off to America, she got caught up in the drama too; Merwen made her promise to track down this money, of course it didn’t exist but everything had to be about her, didn’t it. Madlen promised her that she’d stay in the States until she’d found out about the money. But of course, her career is going so well there, why would she come back anyway? Anyway, it’s over now. No one left to bear grudges. Even the parrot’s happier – he was taken in by Teddy at the Pavilion bar, and now they both sing songs from the trenches. Belgium put the Kibosh on the Kaiser… you know it? Teddy claims to sing the polite version, but there’s another version with some terrible bad language in it, that’s the one the parrot sings and he must have got those words from somewhere. More tea?’
Agatha watched as Mrs Parry refilled her cup. The table was laid with a blue cloth, and a vase of daffodils caught the sunlight, flickering with gold.
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