Agatha Christie Investigates Omnibus

by Alison Joseph

Georgie made his little dance. ‘I have a plan,’ he said, and now there was a sparkle in his eyes. ‘It has just occurred to me, but it’s a very good plan. She should do her act.’ He flung his arms wide. ‘For one night only. The Queen of the Trapeze. I’ll get it on the billing. Tomorrow night. Friday night.’

  Sian blinked, looked at Stefan. ‘She’ll be exhausted.’

  ‘It would be wonderful,’ Stefan said, looking at her. ‘Wouldn’t it? You two together. On stage again.’

  Sian laughed. ‘Typical of you, Mr Carmichael. Thinking only of the show.’

  ‘She’ll love it,’ Georgie said. ‘Won’t she?’

  Stefan gave a nod. Sian smiled up at him. ‘I bet she’ll do it,’ she said.

  They left the doorway, wandered off into the bar. Georgie went to the box office, still talking about trapezes.

  Agatha slipped away, back into the theatre.

  Luca was alone, standing centre stage.

  His body was contorted with grief. He was holding the dummy in his arms. Paco lay limp as a lifeless thing, and Luca was bending over him, his face cracked with pain.

  It took a moment for Agatha to realize this was a rehearsal.

  Luca stepped this way and that, his body creating a dance of suffering.

  He stopped. He straightened up, put down the dummy and walked in a normal, jaunty way over to the wings, where there was a gramophone. He wound it up, placed the needle on the record, returned to his place onstage, picked up the dummy.

  A voice began to sing, a male voice.

  ‘There is a garden that I dream of…’

  Luca was bending over Paco. He was still, poised on tiptoe. He began to dance, cradling his dummy. The song too, seemed to be expressing all the grief of the world.

  ‘…There love divine, and heaven shall be mine,

  In the garden of your heart.’

  The music ended. Luca stayed, motionless, a silhouette of sorrow.

  Agatha, standing in the shadows, found she had tears in her eyes.

  She crept away, back into the wings, pushed the stage door open, found herself on the back stairs.

  She stood, breathing.

  A song from the war. Words of loss, of love, of grief.

  Luca’s sorrow had seemed true.

  And if that’s what acting is – is that what writing is?

  To be more true than truth itself.

  Patrick is insisting that he is responsible for the death of Alexei. If he was a character of mine, then I could own him. I would be master of his thoughts, his words, his desires.

  But he’s real. And in that sense, he’s nothing to do with me. I can’t know what he thinks. I have no idea what he did last Friday, alone onstage, when only Alexei was there.

  I have no idea what Isabella is thinking, what she wants, what she believes.

  I only know my story. And my own story, my own work in progress, is the one promised to my publishers. It is simple, a murder mystery, in which someone has felt compelled to kill another person.

  If I was to write something more true? Something more real? A story of love, and loss. A universal story.

  If I were to tell that story, it would start with an Englishman. A man who, in the war, was a soldier, brave and true. A man who, after the war, tried to love a woman.

  Tried, and failed.

  What was it Isabella had said, about yearning, and art. And husbands.

  Agatha leaned her head against the damp brick wall of the backstage stairs.

  Archie, she thought. So heroic in war. His restraint, his Britishness, his courage. And yet, in peace, incapable of managing the everyday small challenges of a marriage.

  We were both to blame. That’s what I tell myself now. Because it makes it easier.

  She straightened up, one hand on the old iron hand rail.

  But – to be so angry that you want your loved one dead… the way Alexei wanted Cosmina dead.

  Perhaps it’s different if you’re dance partners. One leads, one follows. Total trust in each other.

  She sat on the old brick stairs, got out her notebook, found a pencil in her handbag, scribbled a few lines.

  A character caught off guard, she thought.

  Like the way everyone looked at the very odd news that Alexei had married Alicia.

  Clearly no one expected it. They’d expected him to have married Cosmina. Everyone did.

  The way Stefan looked at Sian. The way Sian giggled, as if to make light of it.

  She put her pencil down. Now, that was very odd. It was almost as if it wasn’t a surprise after all—

  Of course, she thought.

  Of course.

  It wasn’t the fact he was married. It was who he’d married. It was the name Alicia that was the shock.

  She could hear voices coming from the stage. She got to her feet, gently pushed open the door to the stage.

  Alicia was standing in the wings. She had armfuls of costumes, and was hanging them on her rail. Then Hywel approached her, and they embraced.

  Agatha, still hidden from view, imagined that day in Cardiff. Alexei and Alicia escaping from the company, running to the registry office, saying those marriage vows…

  What had Alicia been doing it for? Clearly, not for love. For money? That seemed the most likely. She’d talked of poverty, of how you end up doing anything for money, ‘Anything…’ she’d said, with feeling.

  And now, watching Hywel taking her hand, gazing into her eyes for a moment – now, she was free. And he, too, was free to make her his own.

  The light touch of feet across the stage. Sian ran over to Alicia, embraced her. ‘It’s all sorted out—’

  ‘She’s coming?’ Alicia held her hands.

  A nod from Sian. ‘Tomorrow. My sister.’

  Alicia smiled. ‘I’ll get out her costume. How wonderful,’ she said. ‘She’s really going to do it?’

  Sian nodded again. ‘We wired to her. She says she can’t wait.’

  And now Stefan was with them. ‘Georgie’s over the moon,’ he said. ‘He’s getting the posters printed, “For one night only…”’

  They laughed, embraced, Stefan and Sian dancing and twirling away across the stage.

  Alicia stood, alone now. Over her arm, a Harlequin dance suit in red and black, the long legs brushing the floor. She smoothed it, lovingly.

  Agatha, still hiding, had a sense of an approaching finale. She felt a nervous anxiety, a sense of dread.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Mrs Burdett’s ranunculuses drooped in the chill of the damp morning.

  Agatha stared at the piece of cold toast on her breakfast plate. She picked up a notebook. She flicked through the pages, put it down again.

  She stared into space.

  This evening, she thought.

  What is going to happen?

  In her mind, it had all become entwined. Patrick, trapped in a police cell awaiting a court appearance, with his miserable acquiescence in his own guilt. Georgie dancing around the box office, determined to have a full house whatever the circumstances. Sian and her nervous giggle in the face of all this tragedy, awaiting the arrival of her talented sister. Alicia and her secret marriage. Isabella with her moths and her cocktail glass. And Luca, lurking, hostile to Georgie, distant from the company, carrying cups of tea at curtain up; Luca, with his tragic clown, his comedy sawing machine, and now his alienated cityscape, weeping for his dummy who never lived.

  And at the heart of it, two deaths. Poor Cosmina, loved by two men, it seems. And Alexei, battered and bruised, crushed, so implausibly, by a falling curtain rail.

  And the police so sure they have their man.

  It’s still so unlikely, Agatha thought.

  She got to her feet, picked up her notebook, headed for her study. She settled at the polished table, looked out at her geraniums, a display of red and white, a spark of brightness against the grey of the morning. Carlo must have watered them, she thought.

  She opened her notebook, glanced through her w
ritings. ‘Marriage and revenge. A legacy,’ she’d written. ‘A drowning. A marshland village…’

  Now she picked up her pen and wrote the word ‘believable’.

  She stared at the page for a while. Then she wrote ‘motivation’. She closed the notebook.

  At her feet lay the bulging file that Carlo had left her. ‘Letters from your readers. Awaiting reply,’ the label said. She took the first few letters from the file, settled to a stack of fresh notepaper and began to write. ‘Yes, my detective will certainly be returning in a new novel shortly’… ‘No, I hadn’t considered writing a novel where the detective is a cat. Such things might be left to someone more able than me’… ‘Thank you for your helpful notes concerning the omnibus routes of London. I thought I had got the numbers right, but I shall certainly check in future’…

  *

  At lunchtime, a messenger boy delivered an envelope. ‘From Miss Maynard,’ he said, waiting. Agatha went to get a few pennies for him. He tipped his hat and ran away down the mews.

  Agatha unfurled the creamy paper with its elegant black loops of ink. ‘Good news. Patrick has been allowed bail. Bad news – he’s coming to the show tonight. Determined, for some reason. I’ve tried to persuade him to stay quietly at home, but to no avail. I shall be there to look after him. I gather from Georgie you’ll be there too. I’m so glad. I fear it will take two of us to keep Patrick from trouble.’

  Agatha gazed at the note. The idea of Patrick being there, of his returning to the scene of the crime, seemed impossible. It added to her sense of foreboding.

  She put down Isabella’s note and opened her own notebook, staring at the words ‘believable’, ‘motivation’.

  The fact is, whatever Isabella has said, she had every reason to want Cosmina dead – and she had the opportunity too.

  She thought about the moment when the cocktail glass was handed to Cosmina by a smiling Isabella. The glass was already on the table. Isabella might have just picked it up out of friendliness. But, even if the drink contained a sedative – the cause of death was strangulation. A violent, determined act of murder.

  Was Isabella capable of such a thing?

  ‘She’s a woman who will stop at nothing,’ Georgie had said.

  But to go to such lengths?

  And, if Isabella had killed Cosmina – what does she make of Patrick’s rage? Would she really allow Patrick to continue in this dangerous belief that Alexei killed the woman he loved, to the extent of now being under arrest for killing him in revenge?

  She glanced at Isabella’s note. Perhaps all this is guilt, this need to protect the man she loves.

  Agatha sighed, returned to her notebook. ‘A story of marriage and revenge…’

  She put down her pen.

  I need a new story.

  In her mind, she could see Luca, weeping over his pretend-dead dummy. She heard the song of loss, of love.

  My story will be about love, and what happens when it dies. It will be about the sliver of ice in the heart of the artist, about a writer putting his own work before the love of his life.

  She thought of Luca, his talent, his stillness, his innocence, the white-faced clown cast adrift against the skyscrapers of New York.

  New York, she thought. That brash, thrusting skyline exposed the vulnerability of Luca’s innocent clown. New York, she thought. A place of opportunity, of new starts, of Madlen’s trapeze act and people called things like Hiram J. Beckenbauer—

  She picked up the next reader’s letter in Carlo’s file. She lay it, unseeing, down on her desk again.

  Hiram J. Beckenbauer.

  Of course.

  Her breathing was quickening with the realization.

  That’s why it was all so unlikely. That’s why none of this story made sense so far.

  She got to her feet.

  And now, with Mr Beckenbauer, perhaps it will.

  She went into the study, picked up the telephone, checking the time, wondering if New York would be awake yet.

  ‘Number, please,’ said the operator.

  ‘American service,’ Agatha said. The international operator came onto the line, and Agatha explained whom she was trying to call, gave her own number, hung up.

  She paced the room, waiting. Across the road, Mrs Burdett had appeared with a small watering can and seemed to be talking to her struggling blooms, shaking an admonishing finger.

  Hiram J. Beckenbauer, Brooklyn.

  She could hardly breathe.

  Her phone rang, loud against her thoughts.

  Agatha held the telephone to her ear. There were clicks, silences, more clicks. Then a well-spoken English female voice.

  ‘Connecting you,’ the voice said. There were more clicks, and then a young female voice said, in an American accent, ‘Beckenbauer and Bosch, may I help you?’

  ‘I’d like to speak to Hiram J. Beckenbauer,’ Agatha said.

  The American voice was clear and polite. ‘Certainly madam. May I ask who’s calling?’

  ‘Agatha Christie,’ she said.

  There was a pause, a click.

  ‘Hiram J. Beckenbauer speaking. And I gather you’re Agatha Christie. Are you having me on?’ His voice was growling, expansive and American.

  ‘I am that Agatha Christie, yes. The thing is, Mr Beckenbauer, I have some questions for you…’

  ‘I’ll tell you now,’ came the reply. ‘I’ll tell you now, the butler did it…’

  The conversation was warm, brief and informative. He told her that yes, Mr Petrovich had attempted to consult him. Yes, he’d informed the poor man that he only knew about probate and nothing about citizenship. He’d referred him to a colleague. No, he’d never seen him again, he got the impression that the man had returned to England. Say, are you really Agatha Christie? The Agatha Christie?

  She reassured him that yes, she was.

  ‘Calling me from London town. Well, whaddya know? And here’s me having been no help to you at all.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ she said. ‘You’ve been enormously helpful.’

  ‘Well, it’s been swell talking to you. I guess whatever reason you had to call me, it must have been important.’

  She thanked him, promised him that she would indeed look him up whenever she next came to town, rang off.

  She stood in her study, staring at her telephone. She thought about their words flying to and fro across the Atlantic at the speed of light, carrying her thoughts, allowing the truth to begin to settle into place.

  *

  At five she was to be found, standing in front of her wardrobe, gazing at gowns. She flicked through them, shades of silk, taupe, a pale rose, a pastel blue…

  In her mind, she could see Alicia, holding the costume for Madlen’s daring act, a slash of red and black against the white-painted backstage wall.

  She remembered Alicia’s care as she smoothed out the clothes, the wistful, affectionate look on her face.

  She thought of Patrick’s determination to be there.

  She remembered Luca’s act, the heartbroken clown alone on the empty stage.

  She gathered up her blue dress with a tightening sense of fear.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Backstage there was laughter, busy-ness, chatter. Agatha had arrived early at the theatre, had found Sian in the foyer talking to Marie at the box office.

  ‘It’s so exciting—’ Sian turned to Agatha, grabbed her by the hand, hurried with her through the heavy brown stage door. ‘Everyone’s talking about it. Madlen will be fifth act, and me and Stef are doing our tango.’

  Agatha could see Stefan, in a corner of the stage, practising a turn, a jump, a neat twist of his body as he landed on one foot.

  ‘…we’re one act down—’ Georgie bustled by. ‘Saffra throwing another tantrum, just because I’ve put Madlen top of the bill, what does she expect, that trapeze act will get them in more than any levitating kid from Margate…’

  ‘Top of the bill,’ Sian laughed. ‘And billed as star of Broadway
too. Saffra will have to put up with it. Stef and I have been put into the first half as it is, and you don’t see us throwing a fit of temperament.’

  ‘Troupers, you two. That’s the difference. Pure professionals.’ Georgie swished past them all, patting Sian on the arm as he went. A moment later he was in the pit, standing with Joe the conductor, pointing at a page of the score. Beyond them the empty stalls, the rows sitting stiffly, awaiting their occupants.

  Sian had gone to join Stefan, both now sitting on the floor, stretching their long, dancers’ legs.

  Agatha walked down the side steps. She could hear Georgie talking to Joe, ‘The change to three-four timing there, if we could have it just a bit slower, old son, so when it goes to D sharp…’

  She walked along the aisle, out to the foyer.

  And there they were, Isabella in a sweeping full-length robe in black and white, Patrick at her side, in bow tie and evening jacket.

  ‘Agatha—’ He took her hand. He looked crisp and smart, with a new brightness about him.

  ‘Have they treated you well?’ Agatha asked him.

  ‘Given that it seems I have brought about the death of a man, then yes.’ He seemed serious, steady and resolved.

  Isabella leaned her head against him, with an affectionate smile.

  ‘He can’t go far, can you darling?’

  ‘I have to report back to the police station this evening before midnight. And again, tomorrow. Morning and evening, daily. For ever. Or until they get to the bottom of Alexei’s death. Which is why I’m here,’ he added. He wandered towards the bar, surveying the crowd.

  ‘Oh Agatha.’ Isabella took Agatha’s arm, gave a despairing sigh. ‘He seems to think the clue is in the show. He was determined to come this evening. It’s so terribly bad for him…’

  ‘How can the clue be in the show?’ Agatha could see Patrick, as he leaned against the bar, scanning the crowd.

  ‘I don’t know. He was so sure. “They’ve got that trapeze act back,” he’s been saying. Going on about it. “the Welsh girl” he calls her. He says she was there when it all went wrong, when Cosmina met Alexei. He seems to think she’ll have the answers.’ A flutter of her hands as she watched Patrick, her face etched with concern.