Agatha Christie Investigates Omnibus

by Alison Joseph

  ‘So Alexei and Cosmina were married,’ Agatha said.

  Mrs Parry nodded.

  ‘It’s strange, given that everyone said they didn’t get on,’ Agatha said. She hesitated, then went on, ‘And from what you’re saying, he needed citizenship here.’

  Janet Parry looked up. ‘Do you know, I hadn’t thought about that.’ She stirred her tea. ‘But – but Cosmina was foreign too.’ She shook her head. ‘It wouldn’t have got him anywhere, would it? No,’ she said. ‘What I think, for all that they seemed so ill-suited – I think it was for love. Who are we to say what makes two people fall in love? No, dear, I think the thing about marriage, is that it gives us safety. In this unsafe world.’

  Agatha was gazing at the daffodils. ‘Although… marriage can’t be trusted to be safe,’ she said.

  Mrs Parry looked at her, and there was a warm sympathy in her brown eyes. ‘That’s true too,’ she said. ‘I’ve always been grateful that my Bryn doesn’t ask too much of things.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ The voice from the next room was deep and loud. ‘My wife is a rare woman,’ he boomed. ‘Precious as rubies. And every day I give thanks to the Lord that I had the sense to marry her.’

  *

  The clock on the pier tower struck four. Agatha walked along the wooden boards, watching the waves beyond the curly wrought iron. The brisk wind had blown away the clouds, and fragments of blue sky appeared. She’d taken her leave of Mrs Parry, with a warm handshake, refusing offers of lunch, agreeing to visit again, ‘any time you’re in Penarth, Mrs Christie…’

  There had been no mention of her career as a writer. She wondered whether Mrs Parry had never heard of her, or whether she was so used to celebrity visitors, what with Doone’s Bioscope, or the Bentley Boys, that one writer of crime novels was neither here nor there. In any case, it had been a relief to be unknown. Mrs Parry had answered her questions, chatted about the troupe, reminisced about her life in Pontypridd, blushed at her husband’s occasional comments, all with great good nature.

  The pier was showing posters for the summer season in the Pavilion.

  ‘Kranko and Kat, illusionists,’ she read. ‘Come and see their famous act as Connie the Connemara pony disappears.’

  ‘People want to be fooled,’ Luca had said. ‘It’s all in the mechanics. It’s just a question of how you hide it.’

  The mechanics, she thought.

  In my work, the murderer is hidden from view and revealed at the end. Is that better or worse than sawing a woman in half, or catching a bullet in your teeth…

  Now there’s a plot, she found herself thinking, as she walked along the pier, watching the scudding clouds. There was that magician, a few years ago, she remembered the news story, he’d died in some outpost of north London, when the bullet-catching trick had gone wrong and he’d been shot by his assistant…

  Too obvious, perhaps, to situate a murder mystery in the realm of illusions.

  The clock tower chimed the half hour. It was time to get back to Cardiff and dress for her literary dinner.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘And all I can really say, to finish…’ Agatha stood on the stage, by the lectern, ‘is that I still continue to have ideas for my stories, and for that I am grateful.’

  She was aware of applause, of the chairman, Dr Michael Lewis getting to his feet, announcing that she would now be taking questions from the floor. Hands were raised, and she answered as best as she could, about where her inspiration came from, did she have a daily routine for writing, ‘You seem to know a lot about poisons, Mrs Christie…’

  She spoke about the time she’d spent in the pharmacy during the war, how she tended to write anywhere, as long as she had a notebook and a pencil, how she’d always made up stories, even from childhood…

  Finally dinner was announced, and Mrs Rees led the way into the banqueting room next door. She found herself seated on the right of Dr Lewis, who refused to believe that she didn’t want a glass of wine and placed one firmly down on the table for her. ‘Between you and me, Mrs Christie,’ he began, as plates of smoked fish were placed before them, ‘I’m writing a book.’ He poked at the dish in front of him. ‘What the devil is this? Mackerel again? I’m sure we ordered salmon…’ He looked around for a member of the waiting staff.

  ‘Your book,’ Agatha prompted.

  ‘Ah, yes.’ He turned back to her. He had a wide moustache, a bald pate, a florid complexion. ‘History of the regiment,’ he said. ‘We lost a lot chaps in the war, don’t you know. The wife doesn’t believe I’m ever going to finish it. “You and your book,” she says. “When are we ever going to have a holiday…” Horseradish,’ he said, stabbing a fork at his plate. ‘These continental ideas…’

  On her right sat another man, a quiet, upright person with greenish eyes and a diffident manner. He was in full evening dress, with a jacket frayed at the cuffs. The removal of the first plates (the chairman’s plate entirely scraped clean) gave him an opportunity to lean towards her.

  ‘I’m very pleased to meet you Mrs Christie,’ he said. His voice was soft, Welsh and pleasant. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t read any of your works but my wife greatly enjoys them.’

  ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘She’d have loved to meet you, but she’s simply not well enough. This is a rare evening out for me.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear your wife is ill.’

  He sighed. ‘It’s her lungs. She used to work in the weaving mills up in the valleys. Her sister is with her now—’

  ‘Of course,’ boomed the voice at her left, ‘it’s unusual for a lady to be interested in violent death. I mean, regimental history involves a certain amount of descriptive work about man’s inhumanity to man, but for a lady—’

  ‘I’m not interested in violence, Dr Lewis.’ She spoke firmly.

  ‘Nonsense, Mrs Christie. I’ve absolutely no doubt that you’d be first on the scene of a crime, given the chance.’

  She took a breath. ‘I think – those of us who lived through the war – I think we saw enough of all that. We don’t need to dwell on it in our imaginations.’

  ‘I expect you’re always viewing dead bodies,’ he went on, as if he hadn’t heard.

  The man on her right spoke up, suddenly bold. ‘I think for Mrs Christie’s readers, her books aren’t about death or violence, but rather the aftermath of both. Certainly as far as my wife is concerned, she finds a humanity in Mrs Christie’s stories, and perhaps even an escape from the troubles of this world.’ He stopped, as if exhausted.

  The chairman was eyeing him. ‘Well, Mr Forsyth – if that’s your view. But I can’t imagine—’

  ‘I think Mr Forsyth has put it very well,’ Agatha said.

  Dr Lewis pursed his lips, twitched at his moustache, then turned away. ‘Ah, here comes the roast beef,’ he boomed, getting to his feet to help with the carving.

  ‘I’m sure our chairman’s book of battle history will be riveting,’ Mr Forsyth said. ‘But I have no doubt at all that my wife will continue to read your books, not his.’

  He’d smiled, and for a moment she had imagined his wife, her horizons diminished by illness, finding in one of her stories an escape from the confines of her room.

  *

  And now it was the next day, and she was sitting in the neat, clean breakfast room of the Royal Crown hotel, looking out at the bright morning. Mrs Lloyd, the hotel manager appeared with a pot of tea which she placed in front of her.

  ‘I gather it went very well, your talk,’ she said.

  Agatha looked up at her and wondered how she knew.

  ‘Mrs Bowen from the Women’s Institute was there and she said everyone was very happy with how it had gone. Even Lady McPherson stayed awake, apparently, and she usually snores at the back. I’ll bring you some eggs and bacon…’ She laid a knife and fork in Agatha’s place. ‘And the morning papers to read. And after that we’ll drop you at the station for the London train.’

  Agatha watched the sunlight on the wide wind
ows, listened to the rumble of the city traffic beyond. She imagined herself on the train, heading back to London. She picked up the newspaper, turned the pages. ‘…Professor admits guilt in London dancer’s death,’ she read. ‘Lover drugged, then strangled.’

  The report told in excitable tones the story of how the post-mortem showed that the Romanian dancer had been drugged before she was strangled, and that the professor, previously of good character, had been moved to arrange the death of his rival by allowing a rail to land on him, thereby crushing his skull. ‘The accused is due to appear in court later today…’

  She put down the newspaper.

  Somewhere in a sitting room in a house in Cardiff, Mrs Forsyth is enjoying the escape afforded by one of my books.

  That is what I offer my readers. Order, resolution. A beginning, a middle and an end. Clockwork it may be. It may rely on the mechanics. But I am a writer of fiction. A storyteller.

  This, she thought, staring at the newspaper, is nothing to do with me. This real life murder, these young people’s lives snuffed out, this tragedy…

  This is not what I do.

  How did I get so caught up in it? However much I count Patrick as a friend, however much I might suspect that there’s more to it than this newspaper would have me believe…

  It is nothing to do with me.

  She gazed out at the spring sunlight. She thought about Penarth, the gracious seaside villas, the holiday sounds of the waves against the shingle beach and the ice cream sellers on the esplanade.

  I could take a different train. Back along the coast, to walk along the pier, to stay with Mrs Parry and hear more tales of profane parrots and dancing dogs.

  And then what? For how long can I run away?

  She pushed away her plate, got to her feet, and went to pack her bag.

  *

  At the railway station, Mrs Lloyd stood, her hand outstretched, saying her goodbyes. ‘Well, do come again. Perhaps the Institute will have you back,’ she said. ‘They do sometimes allow people a second chance.’ With a wave, she got back into her Morris Seven and drove away.

  Agatha entered the station, prepared to carry her bag up the stairs towards the platforms. Again, that sense of reluctance, to go back to London, to find herself once more immersed in the drama of Georgie’s troupe, of the doubts surrounding Patrick’s acceptance of his guilt.

  Drugged, she thought. Drugged and strangled.

  Of course.

  She almost dropped her case, standing, breathless, holding the iron stair rail. An image of Isabella, the night they all first met, insisting on cocktails. Passing a martini glass to Cosmina. ‘A few sips,’ she’d said. ‘It won’t do any harm…’

  ‘You know a lot about poisons, Mrs Christie…’

  A martini glass, extended by one woman to her rival.

  Would Isabella have gone to such lengths?

  ‘…A woman who will stop at nothing,’ Georgie had said.

  Alexei was married to Cosmina.

  Georgie knew about the secret wedding of Alexei and Cosmina. But it seems no one else knew.

  And that was another question:

  Why would Alexei have married Cosmina? Why then?

  She stood by the steps of the railway station, thinking. Then, she turned round and went to the ticket office.

  ‘The London train, madam? It’ll be along in five minutes.’

  ‘No, the next one, I mean.’

  ‘Well—’ The station master looked doubtful. ‘There won’t be another for two hours. It’s a long wait. And I’m afraid I can’t recommend the refreshment room here, though don’t tell them I said so.’

  She picked up her small bag and headed out into the centre, towards the town hall.

  *

  ‘Births marriages or deaths?’ The woman at the desk had neat brown hair and a thin efficient face.

  ‘Um – marriages. I think. Although maybe…’

  ‘People usually know what they’re looking for when they come here.’ The dark eyes were piercing.

  ‘I have a question that needs an answer,’ she said.

  ‘And what is your question, madam?’

  Agatha sighed. ‘I won’t know the question until I see the answer,’ she said.

  The woman’s gaze was fixed on her, unblinking. Then she pointed at the end of the corridor. ‘All the records are through that door there. The clerk will help you.’

  *

  Agatha settled at a large desk with a big bound book. ‘This is marriages,’ the man had said. ‘All marriages registered in Cardiff since January this year.’

  She flicked through the thick pages. She counted back the weeks. Mrs Parry had said they were there two months ago, so, February, March—

  ‘Petrovich.’ The name jumped out at her. ‘Alexei Fyodor Petrovich. Of Pembroke Gardens, Penarth, Wales. And before that, East 14th Street, New York. Nationality: Russian. Place of birth: Moscow.’

  So, there it was. The two names. The groom. And the bride. ‘Occupation: Dancer.’ And there were two witnesses. One gave his name as David Caxton, Occupation: hotel porter. The other was Rhys Miller, taxi driver.

  She looked at the signatures. Bride, groom. Two witnesses. She pushed the book away. And all that hope, that sense of a future to end with a drop rail crash-landing on Alexei’s head.

  The room was high ceilinged, with a hush of leather bindings and the flick of pages.

  And now Patrick is due to appear in court. She thought about his admission of guilt, or at least his acceptance of his fate. His belief that the woman he loved was married to a man he hated who had brought about her death.

  She stared at the names on the page. The two signatures.

  She recalled his look of resignation, as he was led away by the police.

  She wondered where he was now. Whether Isabella had stood him bail. Whether she was able to visit him, to give him hope.

  She wondered what Isabella really knew.

  A flash of memory – the crushed skull, the empty eyes of Alexei as he lay on the stage, a trickle of red his pillow.

  Yesterday evening, she had stood onstage, smoothing her grey silk robe, as she talked of plot, of mystery, of hiding the truth until the reveal of the story, the whole evening carried on a platter of polite chatter and bourgeois interest.

  What am I doing here? She asked herself. What am I doing here with the clues of a real killing, two real deaths, the work that even now is being pursued perfectly well by the Metropolitan Police?

  She closed the marriage register. The heavy noise reverberated around her, and heads were briefly raised from their researches.

  I have a novel to write. A murder mystery. A clockwork, unlikely plot about a will. That’s what I’m being paid for, and that’s what I shall do. Probate, that’s what I need to research. Ordinary deaths, people who’d reached the end of their lives, everyday stories of family connections. Like those two cousins, those Irish horse breeders in the newspapers with their disputed inheritance.

  Probate.

  She went to the clerk, and a few moments later returned to her desk with another large leather-bound register. She began to flick through it. ‘The Last Will and Testament of…’

  She idly turned the pages. Those aunts, she thought, the two sisters from Pontypridd, what did Mrs Parry say they were called, Merwen and Cicely. One was a difficult maiden aunt, the other married and emigrated, and the third sister died too young, leaving two girls, Madlen and Sian…

  Jenkins.

  Here it was. ‘Merwen Jenkins. Place of Death, Pontypridd.

  ‘I leave my estate to be divided between my nieces, Madlen and Sian Harries.’

  There they were. In black and white, before her eyes. ‘I also leave the sum of fifteen shillings to the Hope Endowment for the Study of the True Gospel.’

  Written out in lawyers’ ink. A total of a few hundred pounds. A modest legacy. A quiet death.

  That’s what I need for my story, she thought. An ordinary life. A woman who liv
es until the age of eighty-one and then dies, leaving her few possessions shared between two nieces and a forgotten gathering of dusty clerics.

  She scanned the innocuous wording. An unassuming life which leaves no trace, apart from a few hundred pounds, some memories, and a much happier parrot.

  So different from a young woman drugged, then strangled. Or the crushed body of a young male dancer, that fiery, talented young man, felled in his prime by a falling rail, apparently deliberately placed.

  And yet, how different death can be.

  ‘You must be interested in violent death, Mrs Christie,’ Dr Lewis had said.

  ‘I’m not interested in violence,’ she’d replied.

  Here is the trace of an elderly lady, a peaceful death, her few possessions parcelled out between her two nieces. Her eye was caught by the last paragraph: ‘…my sister, though deceased, owed me the sum of two thousand pounds, and I write here in my Last Will and Testament that this debt must not go unpaid, even after our deaths…’ A last outpouring of rage. There was even an address of a solicitor in Brooklyn whom she’d appointed to be the guardian of the money should it ever be paid. Hiram J. Beckenbauer, it said.

  She leaned back in her chair. Another story, she thought. Another glimpse of character, of family, of narrative. Not violence; just everyday life.

  Though I don’t suppose I would ever call a character Hiram J. Beckenbauer.

  She smiled to herself, closed the probate books. She went back to the marriage section, found the marriage, wrote down the date in her notebook.

  What was it Patrick had said to Isabella, about dance being like archaeology? Digging downwards, stumbling upon a treasure, dusting it off…

  A different archaeology.

  She looked at her watch. She would have to move fast if she was going to catch that train.

  *

  Half an hour later, she sat on the bench of platform two, waiting for the London train. In her handbag was a copy of the marriage certificate, copied out for her by an expressionless clerk in a measured calligraphy. She’d fled from there, rushed into the post office next door and asked to send a telegram to Inspector Joyce, Scotland Yard.