Agatha Christie

by Laura Thompson

  Archie had agreed to try a three-month reconciliation period. He went away with his wife to the Pyrenees and, although this was even less successful than their last holiday together, Agatha saw it as a sign of his willingness to stay. In fact, being alone with her in France merely underlined for Archie how little suited they were. ‘Slowly things went worse and worse,’ she wrote in Unfinished Portrait. ‘If Celia came into a room, Dermot went out of it.’ She began to be scared of her husband’s hatred. She feared he wanted her dead. This, after all, was what happened in her books: men killed their wives. ‘He must wish her dead; otherwise she wouldn’t be afraid.’ Peter at her heels was like a little woolly lion. Agatha took him everywhere. One day he was knocked down by a car and left stunned and immobile; after a few minutes he came round but Agatha, gibbering with grief, was unable to take in the fact that he was alive.

  Archie was theoretically living at home between August and December 1926, but in reality he was of no fixed abode. He stayed at Styles, he stayed at his club, he visited the Jameses at Hurtmore Cottage. Madge James had recently had a baby, so the weekend parties were less social than usual, but if Archie saw Nancy it would be there, although ostensibly she was simply one of a party. This was important to Archie. He wanted to marry this woman – more than ever now – and he wanted no scandal attached to her name. To this end he intended that she should not be named in a divorce: a piece of middle-class propriety that Agatha despised. She held out. She would not agree to divorce Archie, would not accept that her marriage was over. There was Rosalind to consider, after all. The bond between father and daughter was so strong.

  ‘Daddy doesn’t like you much,’ says Judy in Unfinished Portrait. ‘But he likes me.’

  Yet he was prepared to leave his daughter as well as his wife. How could it be possible? Agatha clung to the thought that it was not possible. But she was losing her grip upon that belief, upon everything in fact. She had not written since her mother died. This worried her. She needed to write, needed to finish The Mystery of the Blue Train, especially if she no longer had a husband. Although it was impossible that she should have no husband, that Archie should leave her. Not Archie. ‘You are much much too good for me,’ he had written to her during the war, ‘but I will do anything to try and keep your love.’ So everything would be all right. If only she had Clara to talk to. What would Clara have said? That she had warned her about Archie’s ruthlessness, his attractiveness to women? That she had told her not to leave him alone? No, she would not have said those things. She would have looked at Agatha in her luminous way and held her hand as she fell asleep.

  If only Mummy were there. If only she were at home at Ashfield, with Mummy and Peter, lying on the grass beneath the beech tree, dreaming stories into life.

  It was the night of 3 December 1926. Agatha sat inside Styles as the house grew dark. She was waiting for Archie to come home. They were going to spend a weekend away together in Yorkshire.

  (‘We shall meet again soon but till then we will be happy, eat, smile and grow very fat. I have your photograph to look at, letters to read. I know that you love me almost as much as I love you and nothing else matters.’)38

  Rosalind was in bed, Carlo in London. Peter slept calmly. The servants whispered in the shadows. If he did not come home tonight, if instead he went to Godalming, he was never coming home again.

  The words of Elaine.

  Sweet is true love though given in vain, in vain;

  And sweet is death who puts an end to pain:

  I know not which is sweeter, no, not I.

  The Quarry

  ‘Up to this moment I was Mrs Christie’

  (from an interview given by Agatha Christie to the Daily Mail in 1928)

  ‘Of the 36 ways of avoiding disaster, running away is the best’

  (Old Chinese proverb, written down and kept by Agatha Christie)

  Time for a new story.

  On the evening of Friday, 3 December, Agatha had dinner in big dark house with the yew trees outside. As she ate she waited for the sound of Archie’s car. She had made a chink in the curtains and every so often she saw lights approach. Not this time. She smiled at the maid, Lilly, who cleared the plates and looked concerned at how much was left on them. Silly to sit down to dinner when you had no desire to eat. The clock ticked heavily. Peter sighed at her feet, and as the shadows grew round her she continued to wait.

  Upstairs on her bed was the dressing-case she had begun to pack for the weekend with Archie in Yorkshire. She did not understand the obduracy of men, their ability to make a decision and not be swayed from it. Few women do. They look for cracks. Surely he would be sorry for her. Surely he would remember how they had loved each other. Surely, surely. The room was becoming colder. The fire was dying in the grate. She had told Lilly not to bother stoking it, she would do it herself.

  She sat on and on. The road outside grew quiet. Her head opened and shut like a trapdoor. Something had always been going to happen today, that must be why she had sent Carlo to London this morning. Carlo was due back at around eleven. Now it was almost nine.

  Peter lifted a sleepy head as suddenly she stood, found her pen and some paper, sat down again with a foot against the dog. The position in which she usually wrote. She wrote a letter to Carlo, then a letter to Archie. As she did so the black windows seemed to watch her. Perhaps Archie was outside one of them. It was the long narrow one beside the front door that she had always feared. It had a sly, malevolent look, like a goat’s eye.

  She finished her letters and went into the hall to leave them. She dared herself to look through the goat’s eye window. Nothing. No, he was not coming home again. The house was silent at its centre. Beyond were the discreet sounds of the servants and the soft breaths of Peter. The stairs were striped with shadow. She climbed them. Her bedroom was chilly and flooded with moonlight. She collected her dressing-case from the bed, put on a fur coat and a hat. She slipped into Rosalind’s room, watched her daughter sleeping. Archie’s face on a porcelain doll. Rosalind’s favourite Blue Teddy was falling out of the bed so she tucked it in again. Then she went back down to the hall. Peter wagged his tail. She loved him, but the house was sending her out into the blackness, she could not stay in it. ‘I’m going to London,’ she said to Lilly, whose white face had appeared in the hall. She kissed Peter. He looked baffled that she was going out without him. His body was warm as she held him, so tight that he gave a brief whine. Then she went out of the house to her car. Her feet crunched as she pushed her way through the night, moving fast now to escape the terror.

  That morning she and Archie had stared at each other across the breakfast table, such a naked look of estrangement in their eyes that it was almost like intimacy. He had told her, before he went to catch his train to London, that he would be spending the weekend with the Jameses at Godaiming.

  If only she were a different kind of woman, if only she could raise hell rather than sit, heavy-eyed, with not a clue as to how to make her husband stay with her. When you come back I shan’t be here, she said, and in his eyes she saw a glimmer of hope.

  After he left she took off her wedding ring.

  She sent Carlo out for the day, having told her that all was well. Carlo’s cool eye had looked at her penetratingly, lovingly, but Agatha had insisted. You have a good time in London.

  A neighbour, Mrs de Silva, had telephoned at around midday. Would she like to come over for tea and bridge? No, she said, she had to visit her mother-in-law at Dorking, she was taking her little daughter. But how kind. Yes, they had had a pleasant day in London that week, hadn’t they? On Wednesday, 1 December, she had gone shopping in the West End with Mrs de Silva. Planning for Christmas. The shops were full of festivity, how Margaret Miller would have enjoyed seeing it all. Debenham & Freebody, Swan & Edgar, Harrods, Selfridges, Whiteleys, the Army and Navy, all full of women like herself, with husbands and fur coats and handbags.

  She had packed her week with activity. A normal week. Wednesday ni
ght she had spent at her club, the Forum in Grosvenor Place. The next day she had visited her literary agent. Her writing was going well enough, she told him. Yes, it had been a little difficult after her mother’s death, a great deal to sort out, yes indeed, how kind, but all was now in hand. She would not say anything to Mr Cork. She smiled and she showed good spirits.

  She was very tired when she reached Styles, late on Thursday afternoon. Every night her sleep took her to Ashfield, then woke her after two or three hours; sometimes she wandered through the house looking for Clara, or for Jane in the kitchen. Nevertheless she went out with Carlo on Thursday night, to a dancing class at Ascot they attended every week. Sunningdale–London–Sunningdale–Ascot–Dorking–Sunningdale. Chat–smile–eat–drink–two no trumps–yes perfectly well thank you–wash–teeth–face–cream–bed. Who would know, who knew what went on inside.

  It was cold in the car. But it started all right. A mild night for December.

  The little black eyes of the house watched her as she drove away. At the end of the road was a crossroads. She thought, not clearly, then turned right. The road she had taken that afternoon to visit her mother-in-law. Rosalind had chatted about Christmas while Peter sat in the back, alert as a kindly sentry.

  Bagshot, Woking, Guildford. Names so familiar in daylight. Meaningless now that the black sky dipped upon her. A funny thing. The contempt in which she held Surrey had vanished. In the dark its shapes had power, an ancient English mystery.

  An animal shot across the road in a formless streak. She braked in time. What had it been? A fox? A deer? As a girl she had gone hunting with the Ralston-Patricks. Their car, she could see it still. And the man she had met at the Barttelots near Goodwood – Mr Ankatell? – who had given her and Clara a lift to London. ‘Beastly things, trains,’ he had said, as he bundled them merrily into the vast open machine. How cold that drive had been, despite the rugs piled around them, and how exciting. She had smiled at her mother in pure happiness as they powered along. Why, they must have driven at fifty miles an hour through the Sussex countryside!

  She was a good driver, but she would not dare go fast now. It made no sense, but she was being careful. She clung to the steering-wheel and from time to time lights roared behind her as if in anger. Past Guildford, she was coming now to the Epsom road that she had taken earlier, the way to her mother-in-law. On her right, Newlands Corner. She had seen it that afternoon, people walking their dogs across the stiff green slopes: a beauty spot so-called. She passed it, went on to the turning that led to the Silent Pool. In fact there were two pools, she knew. She had never seen them but she had heard they were fearful. She turned right. Down she slipped, down to roads that were less familiar. Albury, Chilworth. Water all around, a millpond, a fishing stream. The air damp and grey.

  Now she was nearly at Godalming and she could see that it was pretty, even in the dark. Not her world, of course. Too careful, too ordinary. You are not an ordinary woman, Mrs Christie. On she drove, through Godaiming, on to the little village of Hurtmore.

  It took a long while to find Hurtmore Cottage. The lanes were winding and leafy. She went up and down them three times and then suddenly – how had she missed it? – she was opposite the house, a nice relaxed house, far more her kind of house than Styles. She sat there staring at it. Suddenly a dog barked and refused to stop. A big dog, she thought. Perhaps inside they would guess why it was making that terrific noise. But it needn’t have bothered. She did not want to look in through the windows. She did not want to see Archie’s car. She drove on through the dark. Her head had begun to open and shut again. She had to stop it. At the end of the road she seemed to see the river she had once dreamed of in the garden at Ashfield.

  Ah, now, if she were driving to Ashfield. The beech trees, the croquet lawn, the rock cakes for tea.

  She drove back along the road she had taken, the one that went past Albury Mill Pond. Then she climbed the hill to the Silent Pool. Deep, they said, as deep as death.

  That slow, sweet drag into forgetfulness.

  No. Not yet. She wanted to see the sky again. She turned left, back towards Newlands Corner. She stopped the car on the grass verge. The North Downs sloped away from her, great stretches of colourless ground, like invitations to the end of the world.

  She got out of the car. A pure vast starless black. The silence of the night, with its own sounds and magnitude.

  ‘Where am I myself, the whole man, the true man? Where am I with God’s mark upon my brow?’

  Archie. Mummy. She began to walk down the hill.

  She was nothing any more, no thoughts, no feelings. She was just a shadow moving towards the edge. She found a rutted path. It led to a quarry, a round bowl of chalk, white and faceless beneath the moon. A blank circle. She stood staring down into it, grasping a bush with one hand.

  ‘They came round the last corner – came to the deep pit and to something lying in it that had not been there before, the body of a woman lying in a wonderful pose, arms flung wide and head thrown back.’

  She would write that, quite soon, in a story called ‘Harlequin’s Lane’. In the story she was a great dancer who gave up her art for love. At the end she danced along the lane with her husband, an illusory figure who leads her to death.

  Her first thought, after an unknowable space of time, was that the lane did not end at the quarry but led beyond it, down the hill and out towards Albury. She was not, in fact, at the edge.

  Archie had once teased her for her dislike of walking uphill. ‘What about Barton Road?’ he had said, as she puffed and laughed beside him. She could hear her breath now, hard and loud in the silence. She kept to the path but it was rough. Her feet were never sure where they were going. Her hand had been pierced by the bush and hurt. She cried like a child, sobbing and puffing as she stumbled upwards. It wasn’t fair. That was what she had written in the letter to Archie. Not fair, not fair. Not fair that she had to be scared like this, that she had to climb this horrid hill in the dark.

  Surely those were shadows, moving across the grass. The Gun Man was waiting for her.

  She would make for the car. The ground flattened at last and she began to run, tore at the door, flung herself into the driver’s seat and crouched in it. The keys were in the ignition. After two attempts she turned them and shunted the car a little further on. By lifting her left wrist to the sky she could see that it was ten past two. How long, she wondered, had she stood looking into the quarry?

  A sin, of course, she had always known that. But it had got to a certain point.

  ‘She was up against reality. The reality of herself and what she could bear, and what she could not bear.’

  She would write this many years later, in a book she called Destination Unknown, having forgotten nothing.

  ‘Escape, escape! That was the refrain that had hummed incessantly in her mind ever since she left England. Escape. Escape . . .’ It was from herself that she longed to escape, herself and her pointless grief. And yet the woman in the book did not kill herself. She assumed another identity, gladly, as an alternative to death.

  ‘You have had an experience. I should like the experience of having come so near to death. To have that, yet survive – do you not feel yourself different since then, Madame?’

  Wrapped in her fur coat, she felt ready for sleep. There was a hotel across the road, but time for that tomorrow. How tired she was. A light from one of the rooms burned dimly through her shut eyes, like the lamp in the nursery. She tucked the coat round her and with her good hand held the cut one tight.

  I am sure there is more to know

  Something to love

  Something to dream of

  Something to make

  And with that you can walk

  You can walk in the wood

  In the cool of the eve

  And when God walks beside you

  You are not afraid,

  It was years later that she wrote this, on a scrap of paper, as a very old woman at the end o
f her life.

  When she woke the light had changed. There was a lift within the darkness and she knew that it was morning. Around half past five. She was still very tired but it seemed a miracle to have slept. She decided to thank God for it.

  In her mind was a story. The woman who lay dead in the pit. She was an artist, whose husband had loved her for her artistry although he did not understand it. Then, because he was really very ordinary despite his air of romance, he fell in love with a pretty young girl, because it was easier for him.

  Did it have to end that way? Well, she would begin to write it, and she would leave the ending up to her husband.

  Of course, she could make up stories. Wasn’t that what she did? Better than anyone, she could write her own story.

  But she began to cry again when the car refused to start, because unless the car started she could do none of it. The engine had gone solid cold while she had slept inside her coat, dreaming of the wood at the end of the garden. Oh please, she said to it. That day at Ashfield after Mummy died when it wouldn’t start, that same obdurate sound. She took off her coat in despair and got out and cranked at it. She was so tired though. Her arms seemed full of shifting stones. A man dressed like a farm-worker came up on his bike and she smiled at him graciously, as if she were back on the Empire Tour, accepting his offer to start the car. Her voice sounded a little strange. ‘Oh do help!’ But she had not spoken to anyone for so long, for days it seemed. The thick grey air held on to her words.

  Whatever would Mummy have said? Worse yet, her grandmother? Such an odd situation. She almost laughed, thinking of it. ‘Stone cold it’s gone,’ he said to her, shaking his head, looking at her, expecting an explanation that she was not, of course, going to give. She had no doubt that he would start the car; that was what men like him did. So she just waited. But she had not wanted to see anyone so when he finally got the engine going – telling her what to do, what not to do, although it made not a stitch of difference any more – she drove back towards Guildford to throw him off the scent. She knew that he would be watching as she went. Annoying he had been, although kind. Should she have offered him some money? She drove a bit further to shake away the thought of him. Still almost nothing on the road. Imagine if she now had to drive back to Styles. That black fortress opening its door to claim her. No no no never again.