Agatha Christie

by Laura Thompson

  She turned the car round and drove the other way, back towards Newlands Corner. Nothing on the road as she slipped the car on to the grass. Careful now. Concentration. This had to be done right.

  Pink streaks across the sky. Do it, now.

  She let out the clutch and bumped along slowly, slowly, down she goes, easy does it, on to the rutted lane and – a moment of lost control, something in the path? No, it was all right. Slow, slow, nearly there, it was only a couple of hundred yards after all, nothing really, yet it had seemed so far in the middle of the night. Down she goes and round to the right. Careful, very careful. Straighten up.

  The bush she had grabbed, the one that overlooked the quarry, there it was again, a few yards down the hill. Gear in neutral, brakes off. She got out of the car, taking her big black handbag with her. She had removed all the money from her dressing-case. Also a sheet or two of writing paper. Everything else she left. She no longer felt tired, or even cold without her coat. She pushed hard and the car rolled smack into the bush, obediently, just as she had planned.

  The sky was lifting into lightness as she walked past the quarry and looked up to where the car perched over the edge without her. Its lights stared at nothing. You clever girl, she said. She almost ran as the lane sloped downhill. Houses at last. People inside them drinking tea and reading the newspaper, but today she preferred to do what she was doing. ‘Water Lane’, she read, on a sign at the end of the road.

  She turned right into Albury and walked at a clip past the fishing waters, past the mill pond, on for another mile or so, on towards Chilworth station. She had noticed it on her drive to Godalming. The seven-thirty London train was just arriving. Well, that was luck. She sat in a corner seat with her hat pulled down, writing another letter. She watched Surrey fly past and felt a little sleepy.

  The train reached Waterloo at nine o’clock. She bought a stamp and a Daily Mail. She could see that she needed a coat because it looked odd not to have one. She took a taxi to the Army and Navy Stores. Before going in she posted her letter. It was addressed from Styles to her brother-in-law, Campbell Christie, at the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich. Campbell was someone she liked and trusted. He was the only person to whom she could write what she wanted to say. He alone took no sides in this matter. So she explained to him something of what she was doing, and why she was doing it. She was going away to Yorkshire, as planned, although not to Beverley. She was going on her own to a spa. She was in need of respite, her health was not good. In fact she was very distressed, and he would understand why. She was pleased with the letter. It was less excitable than the ones she had left for Carlo and Archie, but she had been in a different state of mind then. When Campbell arrived at work on Monday he would read it.

  In the ladies’ room at the Army and Navy she washed her cut hand and tidied herself. She looked respectable again, not a fugitive at all as she clinked a shilling into the attendant’s plate. She trod the thick carpets of the store as she bought a small case, a nightdress, a hot-water bottle and a coat. She drank a cup of coffee.

  London was bustling with pre-Christmas shoppers as, in her new coat, she took a taxi to Harrods. In the ground-floor jewellery department she left a ring to be repaired, giving a name and address for it. Mrs Neele, the Harrogate Hydro. It felt good to say it. Then she took the Piccadilly line to King’s Cross. In the station buffet she drank another cup of coffee and read her newspaper. Nobody noticed her. Everything was going right. At one forty she caught the train, which was due to arrive at Harrogate at six thirty-eight. On the long peaceful journey, in her warm first-class carriage, she slept again.

  Thorp Arch, she remembered, as the train drew close to Harrogate. The house near Wetherby, owned by the Matthewses, where she had stayed for a house-party. They had gone to the St Leger. She liked the St Leger, a crisp English sporting occasion. Who had won it that year? Someone had put five shillings for her on Lord Derby’s horse, which came in third. Such an enjoyable visit it had been. The train journey had been amusing because she had been wearing a wonderful new tweed coat-and-skirt, so smart that the station master had assumed her to have a maid and a jewel-case, although she could not even afford to travel first class. Archie had admired that coat and skirt but, really, it had belonged to the life before him. It was at Thorp Arch that she had met Arthur Griffiths, the man who had told her to look out for his friend Christie when she went to the dance at Ugbrooke House.

  The north was different. She liked its clean airy skies and dark colours. The look of Harrogate reassured her as the taxi took her through the streets. Grave, stately buildings, grey stone in the moonlight. She could stay here and feel safe. How nice it was to sit back in the seat and be driven. She looked out of the windows and saw the opera house, the Crown Hotel, the White Hart Hotel, the Pump Rooms. Hills and spires and beech trees. The grand scale she had been missing.

  The taxi swept respectfully up Swan Road. Calm and wide in the darkness, edged with handsome houses. Muncaster Lodge, Britannia Lodge. Lived in by people with solid, indestructible lives. Yes, she could move among them like a shadow.

  The Hydro was spread across the end of the road, dark stone again, ivy-covered, deep windows and, behind them, warm forgiving light. She thanked the driver as she tipped him. Up the stone steps. It was just before seven o’clock when she entered, smiling.

  Mrs Teresa Neele of Cape Town took room five, on the first floor, at five guineas per week.

  She slept long and late and the next day was like a holiday. Sunday, after all. Still a special day. And she could do whatever she wanted; she would no longer worry that her soul was in danger. How she had feared for Daddy’s when he played croquet instead of praying! Silly, when she thought of his goodness.

  As a precaution she did not let the maid see too much of her face in the morning. A nice pretty girl, a maid of the old-fashioned kind, who tended the coal fire and brought breakfast. It was delicious. She enjoyed her food and her bath. Boring to have to wear the same clothes, but there was nothing to be done about it until the next day. So she again put on the grey and green outfit that she had dressed in, on Friday, before driving to see her mother-in-law.

  By the evening these clothes would form part of a police description, circulated to the fifty stations closest to Albury: ‘grey stockinette skirt, green jumper, grey and dark grey cardigan and small velour hat’. Charlotte Fisher had given the description with her usual efficiency. ‘No wedding ring,’ she had said, having found it in her employer’s bedroom. ‘Hair, red, shingled part grey.’

  Her beautiful hair, once as fair as light itself. She would go a hairdresser in Harrogate. Thirty-six was not so old.

  Late autumn sun fell through the window of her bedroom and her face shimmered in the glass. Pale skin, pale eyes.

  ‘Odd if one had got into a train with a ghost!’ She would write that soon. A fragment of a short story about a young widow with ‘haunted frozen eyes’, unable to move past the moment when she had found her husband lying dead on the study floor. ‘Of course, she hadn’t really gone on. She’d stayed there. In the study.’

  But no writing for now. Just this story of her own, whose ending she did not know.

  Harrogate pleased her. She liked the certainty of the wide streets, the strong crescents and the manly, elegant houses. They said to her: wrecked hearts and lost identities mean nothing to us. Whatever you have done, whoever you are, we stand above it. We keep life’s mysteries in their place.

  She lunched among women like herself at Betty’s tea-room. The food was wholesome and very good. Then she walked all afternoon. The light fell and the beech trees rattled their leaves as she went across West Park. More dark grey houses. Beech Grove, Stray Lodge. A tall Victorian church. Perhaps she should? No, she did not want to. She preferred to walk among these straight shapes and northern colours, with the leaves over her head and beneath her feet, the sun seeming to expand as it dropped in the sky, flooding the grey with its dying yellow, the stone translucent in the b
rief powerful glow.

  And she a striking figure, glimpsed from windows as she strode across the green, her hat down and her collar up. Something odd about her, perhaps. Illness, bereavement, loss?

  The time went slowly but she did not mind. The time was hers again.

  For how long? she wondered, as she walked up Swan Road. Tomorrow Campbell would read her letter and then something would happen. She had said a Yorkshire spa: well, he would know that Harrogate was the sort of place she would go, it was full of upper-middle-class women like herself. And he would say to Archie, look, she is distraught, she needs you, what are you doing? So that would be all right.

  Of course they would have found her car by now. The police would be rapping on that great dark door at Styles, alarming dear Carlo, and then, a bit later, on the door at Hurtmore Cottage. Poor Archie, really. He would be worrying about her dreadfully. Perhaps she had said too much in the letter she wrote to him, in fact she had hardly known what she was writing. She had wanted to die, that was certain. She had said so, she was sure of it, to Carlo. Carlo would be frantic beneath her calm quiet demeanour, which she would maintain in front of everyone and especially Rosalind. But tomorrow Carlo would know that she was not dead after all.

  Except that she had died, in a way. She had died looking down into the blank face of the quarry. It was a smiling ghost who walked up Swan Road and looked through the windows at the people in the

  Hydro lounge, real people, pouring tea from silver pots: warm, magical, configurative.

  She nodded to a couple as she went past (‘Not human – not a bit human’).1 She chatted to Mrs Taylor, the very pleasant manageress, told her that she had come back from South Africa just three weeks earlier and had stored her large luggage with friends at Torquay. Well, she smiled, she would enjoy herself buying a few new things! Quite right, Mrs Neele. Bentalls on Oxford Street is very good.

  Into her room. Out of the window she stared at the sweep of the drive, the road that led to the town, the trees, the stone houses, the fallen light.

  Dinner. She liked this big handsome room, although the night before she had been so tired she had found the ceiling somewhat disorienting. It had a big square panel that reminded her of a dungeon roof. In fact what had looked like an iron grille was dark stained glass, rather nice really. She sat in a quiet corner. A little embarrassing, to be in the same clothes again and not evening clothes either. Still, she had made her speech to Mrs Taylor. Books were what she needed. Difficult to have none. But tomorrow she might well be having dinner here with Archie, or might not be here at all, who knew.

  She stopped thinking about all that. She listened to the chat of the other guests, who were the kind of people with whom she felt at ease (people like us), she looked at the menu, she sipped the water that was supposed to be so good for you. Cleaner-tasting than Sunningdale water, that was for sure. A few people had wine, she noticed, but not many. They were here for their health, after all. Perhaps wine would have helped, back at Styles? She found it strange to think about Styles. In fact she could scarcely believe that the place existed. It lay inside her head like a distant nightmare.

  After dinner she went with the other guests into the Winter Garden Ballroom where she drank her coffee and did a crossword, having picked up a newspaper in the lounge. Then she fell into conversation with the couple she had nodded to earlier. Mr and Mrs Campbell, up from London. Ah, how nice. The theatres. Well, yes, it was rather exhausting at this time of year, she had passed through to catch her train and she could understand that they liked to get away! No, she had lived in London, but of late she had been in Cape Town. Oh yes, marvellous scenery. No, she had lost her baby, that was why . . . Yes, she found them relaxing, stimulating too; she had always enjoyed puzzles.

  Pleasant people. Easy to be with. And a pleasant room. Almost like a conservatory on the side of the hotel, looking out on to the gardens. Cloudy night sky outside the window. What was Archie doing now. He seemed very remote, somehow, as though he had been killed in the war and in her mind she was seeing the photograph of a dead man. But tomorrow she would hear from him, or perhaps the day after that. He had to find her, it was not so easy as all that. Still, he had done it before. Chugging up the hill on his motorbike to Ashfield. Mummy’s voice on the telephone, calling her home.

  She drank her coffee, smiled, and thought of all the nice things she would do tomorrow. A new dress, for a start.

  Monday, 6 December, and her own face on page nine of the Daily Mail. ‘A beautiful woman,’ they called her.

  Her car had been found at eight o’clock on the Saturday morning, she read. ‘It is believed that it was allowed deliberately to run down from Newlands Corner with its brakes off.’ All weekend they had searched for her on the North Downs. They had dredged the Silent Pool and visited cottages in Albury. There was a small picture of ‘Col. Christie’. Archie said that she was suffering from a nervous breakdown. ‘She is a very nervous person.’ He had returned to Sunningdale on Saturday. He would be at work now, perhaps. Campbell would be at work too, and he would tell Archie about her letter.

  She got up and went out into the streets of Harrogate, hat down, collar up. Oxford Street, Cambridge Road, Parliament Street. She enjoyed looking at clothes, trying things on, especially now she had lost weight. A dress of pink georgette would be wonderful for the evening. Archie would surely like it. Shoes to go with it, underclothes and – why not? – a new hat as she was very bored with the one she was wearing. Yes, that was becoming, wasn’t it? No, from South Africa, actually. Yes, a very pleasant stay.

  She joined the W. H. Smith library. That was a relief. She went to Handford and Dawson the chemists, bought face cream, papier poudré, lavender water. How nice to have these things again. She bought a Sketch, a Pearson’s.

  Cold Bath Road, how amusing. Westminster Arcade, full of antiques, that would be interesting. And the Royal Baths for the therapeutic treatments. Her neuritis had come back, pushing that car would have done it no good, and she remembered how much the salt water had helped it on the Empire Tour. Perhaps she would try a treatment tomorrow. Assuming she had heard nothing by then. Of course she had not told Campbell exactly where she was going: she had not been sure, had she. So Campbell had to tell Archie and they had to work it out between them that Harrogate was the likeliest place and then Archie had to find her. He had to work out that she was Mrs Neele. It was a game, really. And think of the trouble he had gone to, finding her house in Torquay.

  She asked for everything she had bought to be sent to Mrs Neele at the Hydro. When she got there, perhaps there would be a message from Archie.

  She did not ask, they would tell her, and they said nothing as she walked in. The day suddenly yawned at her.

  Oh, Mrs Neele? Her heart leaped. Archie, thank heavens.

  A parcel for you, from London, Mrs Neele. Her ring. Well, that was good service.

  And all her Harrogate parcels would arrive later. A cheering thought. There were therapeutic treatments here as well, something to do this afternoon. Lunch and then perhaps a massage. Into the dining room she took one of her library books, a collection of mystery stories called The Double Thumb. She had taken out six books. Perhaps, as she had done this, she had known it might take him a couple of days to find her.

  She was pleased with her appearance at dinner that night, and Mrs Campbell complimented her on the georgette dress. She gave her little speech about the luggage being stored with friends. At dinner she read her book and finished it.

  After dinner a band played in the Winter Garden Ballroom. We call them ‘the Happy Hydro Boys’, one of the elderly resident guests said to her, and she smiled. It was a six-piece band. A lady called Miss Corbett sang with them, quite well. People got up and danced. As she sat there it occurred to her, quite suddenly, that she could do anything she liked. She could sleep with one of these men, if she really put her mind to it. There were two or three who were apparently unattached. One was looking at her, admiringly it seemed. Of
course she would not do it. But she sat with her coffee and meditated upon freedom, gazing through the window of the ballroom to the black grass and trees.

  Tuesday, the seventh, and having woken early she went down to breakfast. She felt well. In the mirror she looked different already. As she entered the dining room she smiled and chatted to a guest. Mrs Robson, such a nice lady. Yes, all the way from South Africa!

  Up in her room she learned that the Daily Mail was getting worried about her. The man who had started her car had come forward. He said that she was ‘moaning and holding her hands to her head’ when he had found her at Newlands Corner. Had she been doing that? Surely not. ‘As I approached the car she stumbled against me.’ No, she had not done that. She had not particularly liked that man at the time, so these exaggerations did not surprise her. Although of course she had been most grateful to him.

  The policeman in charge of her case was called Superintendent Kenward. He had theories, which he gave to the newspaper. He believed that she had driven her car inadvertently off the road at Newlands Corner, got out of it when she came off the track then watched, ‘terrified’, as it ran down the hill and crashed into the bush over the chalk pit. She had stumbled away and become lost. Although he did not say so, he believed she was dead.

  Archie, she read, was a ‘pitiful figure’ who, ‘driven to distraction by the mystery, finds comfort only in the presence of his little daughter, Rosalind’.

  Perhaps Campbell had not gone into work on Monday? Because she could not account for any of this. She was here, for heaven’s sake, waiting for them!