The Mystery of Mrs. Christie

by Marie Benedict

  The elevator announces its arrival with a ding. Archie reaches out to slide open the cage to the interior when he realizes another man is behind him. Entering, he presses the sixth floor button and then moves to the back of the elevator to allow the man access. Only when the man faces him does he realize that it is Sebastian Earl, who sits in the office next to his.

  “Morning, Sebastian,” he says by way of the usual greeting.

  “Morning, Archie.” Sebastian pauses, and as he visibly hesitates, the elevator is filled with an awkward silence. “I’m so sorry about… Well, you know.”

  How should Archie respond? He hasn’t really prepared himself for dealing with Agatha at work. But it isn’t as if his wife’s death has been reported, so why is he receiving condolences already? Still, he’s sure that Sebastian means well, so he settles on a simple thanks.

  Sebastian continues, “I must say, I am surprised to see you.”

  Archie is a little taken aback. He didn’t expect anyone to directly address his wife’s disappearance and his role in the search for her. He anticipated oblique stares and some whispering, of course, but nothing quite so head-on. “I see,” he says, unsure what else to utter.

  “I mean, your wife is missing. I assumed you’d be out scouting for her alongside the police and all those volunteers I saw in the paper. That’s all.” Sebastian scrambles to avoid any offense from his statements.

  Archie stares up at the slow-moving metal hand indicating the floor reached by the elevator; the sixth floor cannot arrive quickly enough. This questioning is intolerable, and he feels he cannot get a full breath in this minuscule elevator. “I did spend my weekend doing exactly that.”

  “But she hasn’t been found yet. Surely, your Austral work can wait? No one would hold it against you.”

  Why is Sebastian continuing on with this line of questioning? All Archie wants is a normal day at the office, away from the search and speculation about Agatha’s disappearance, and the letter guiding his behavior did not prohibit it. Anger and fear surge through him in equal measure, and he blurts out, “I don’t think the police really want me at the search.”

  “Why ever not?” Sebastian asks, all innocence, although Archie suspects this entire line of questioning stems from his morning review of the very suspicious Mail and Express.

  “They think I murdered my wife.” Archie rushes to add, “Which I obviously did not.”

  “Obviously,” Sebastian is quick to reply.

  Finally, the elevator stops at the sixth floor, and Archie lunges for the door, slides it open, and steps out without another word to his coworker. Any momentary elation he’d experienced in the lobby has disappeared, and he strides down the hallway to his office, hoping that he does not encounter a single person en route. When he finally arrives at his office door, he rushes in, closing it behind him. Safe for a brief moment.

  But how long can that last?

  “Have you seen this?” asks Clive Baillieu, his friend and boss, after he’s spent three largely uninterrupted, glorious hours doing his regular work. Who would have thought paperwork could be so satisfying? Clive tosses a paper across Archie’s desk.

  “No,” Archie answers, grabbing the afternoon edition of the Daily Mail before it slides off his desk. Clive is the only person in the Austral offices with whom Archie has talked today, and sensing his need for normalcy, Clive hasn’t mentioned his wife, instead focusing on Austral business. “What is it?”

  Glancing down at the headlines, he has his answer: Missing Novelist’s Husband on Golf Weekend at Hurtmore Cottage on Fateful Night. By God, the information he has prayed would stay quiet has become public. His fears have become real. Some of them anyway.

  How much more do the reporters know? Scanning the article, he sees reference to the Jameses in the first paragraph, followed by a quote from Sam. Good chap that Sam is, he defends Archie vigorously and describes their “innocent” golf foursome. But when Archie reads the paragraph closely, he notices that the quote was given today—which means that the reporters have already descended upon Hurtmore Cottage. Thank God he didn’t stop by their house on the way to work; he could imagine the press reaction. Oh, the debt he owes the Jameses.

  It isn’t until two paragraphs later that he sees Nancy mentioned. He freezes at the sight of her name. He almost cannot continue but forces himself: The mysterious fourth for the golf weekend was Miss Nancy Neele. The clerk for the Imperial Continental Gas Association hails from Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire where she lives with her parents. She could not be reached for comment. Archie rereads the sentences, finding them to be less damning than he’d anticipated. But then he catches the last sentence of the article, one that references his wife’s mysterious letter to Campbell: Is Miss Neele the “illness” that caused Mrs. Christie to flee—or worse?

  Archie stands up so abruptly that his desk chair clatters to the floor. Oh my God, what is he going to do? One of his greatest dreads has come to pass.

  “Sorry, Archie, I thought you’d rather hear about it from me than some bloke on the street,” Clive says apologetically. “And I hate to add salt in the wound and all that, but I think it’s best to stay home until this all blows over. We can’t have the police and reporters gathering outside the office doors, can we?”

  Archie nods, only half hearing Clive’s instruction. The banishment from his office might have stung in another set of circumstances, but at the moment, it hardly matters. If the police and the public continue to believe that he is guilty of his wife’s disappearance, his entire reputation and livelihood are at stake. Not to mention that of Nancy.

  Wordlessly, he begins packing his bag, prompting Clive to ask, “Are you all right, old fellow? I hope you’re not sore. Duty and all that.”

  “No hard feelings. I understand,” Archie tells Clive as he walks out of his office, and he means it. He would have done the same thing.

  Now he must undertake an odious task for a private man. Archie must face the public and tell his story or forsake his reputation forever. But if he strays beyond the limitations of the letter, the same outcome awaits him. Any misstep will lead him down the same damnable path.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The Manuscript

  May 20, 1923

  London, England

  “Rosalind, come to Mama,” I called out to my daughter as I stepped out of my study and into the garden.

  The day was bright, the sky a vivid, almost unreal blue. It was as if the weather had tired of being English and was trying on Italian citizenship for size, or perhaps Australian. I squinted into the sunlight; I’d spent the past few hours much as I had the past few months, behind my typewriter, my mind slipping in and out of the world of my new book, The Man in the Brown Suit. The Empire Tour had inspired the setting and characters for this mystery, and I’d itched to write the story that had grown in my mind since we boarded the ship to South Africa. As I dove into the narrative, I’d enjoyed fashioning a puzzle that drew on many of my recent experiences—the long voyage from England to South Africa, including my seasickness and the deck games once that subsided, the landscape and culture of South Africa, the sight of Table Mountain in Cape Town once we’d made land, the personality of Major Belcher and his secretary, Mr. Bates, which I’d fictionalized in the characters of Sir Eustace Pedler and his secretary, Guy Pagett, even the name of the ship on which the characters traveled, the Kilmorden Castle, was a play on our ship, the Kildonan Castle. Most of all, perhaps, I’d adored losing myself in the main character, the intrepid Anne Beddingfeld, the sort of young woman I might have been, naturally plucky and adventuresome but who, in the end, turned out more like myself, a woman who makes sacrifices for the man she loves.

  Finally, my eyes adjusted, and I made sense of the tiny green space that constituted the garden behind our London flat. Rosalind sat on the lawn, rolling a red ball around with her new nurse, whom we called Cuckoo. M
ummy had been forced to hire this vastly inferior nurse while we were away when she had a falling out with Rosalind’s prior governess, the indomitable Jessie Swannell. Even though I’d heard Mummy’s tale a hundred times, I still couldn’t imagine what Jessie could have done to infuriate her; I chalked up the entire affair to the fraying of her nerves from Monty’s troubling behavior. On his return to England, he’d plunged right back into his old tricks of scheming and overspending.

  The sunlight caught Rosalind’s hair, and although it was usually dark and flat, the strands began to glimmer in the unexpected afternoon sunlight as she played. If only there were a photographer here, what a picture she would make, I thought to myself. I was drawn to my daughter, but instead of walking to her side, I called to her again. I needed to see what she would do.

  Rosalind didn’t move. Cuckoo looked up at me and whispered something inaudible into my daughter’s ear. As I watched the back of her small head shake from side to side, I understood that Rosalind had emphatically declined Cuckoo’s suggestion. And without being told, I knew precisely what that suggestion was: “Go to your mama.”

  It had been six months since we returned from the Empire Tour, and my daughter still hadn’t forgiven me.

  Tears began to well up in my eyes, and I turned away from Rosalind and Cuckoo. As irritating as Cuckoo could be—with her infuriating habit of standing outside my study door and, in full voice, saying aloud to Rosalind things she didn’t have the nerve to say to me directly—I appreciated her efforts at reestablishing the bond between me and my daughter. But I couldn’t risk losing my authority with her by allowing her to see me cry.

  As I stepped back into the flat, I heard the clatter of footsteps in the front hall. Quickly, I wiped away the single tear that had trickled down my face, pinched my cheeks and bit my lips to give them color, and painted on a bright smile to greet Archie.

  A squeal broke out behind me, and before I could reach the front hall, Rosalind raced past me toward her father. “Papa, Papa,” she cried out.

  I froze. Why had he been forgiven our long absence but not me?

  I listened as father and daughter greeted each other, delighted with their small reunion. How strange, it struck me, that Archie hadn’t wanted this child, and yet their bond was the stronger one. So interested were they in each other that they were oblivious to my presence. I was an outsider in my own home, and no one was waiting in the wings to invite me in.

  But I couldn’t dwell upon this exclusion, and in fact, I understood that I must insert myself into their conversation, invited or not. “Darling, how was your day?” I greeted my husband with a warm embrace, as if nothing upsetting had just transpired. Today was a day to focus on Archie’s triumph—his new job.

  Rosalind wiggled her fingers away from his hand, and the beaming expression faded from Archie’s handsome face. His brows knitted together, casting a shadow over his eyes. He sighed instead of answering, and Rosalind ran away from us back toward Cuckoo in the garden.

  “Let me get you a drink,” I babbled into the silence. I practically ran into the parlor, secured a glass, and poured Archie a small whisky. Racing back to his side, I said, “Here, this should help.”

  “Is it really so dire as that?” He shook his head at my efforts. “Do I look that desperate?”

  “No, no,” I hastened to assure him, although he did look rather terrible. “That’s not what I meant at all. It’s just your first day in a new position, and, and—” I struggled to think of another reason for my reaction. “I thought we’d have a toast to your job.”

  He drank down his whisky without even touching his glass to mine. “I’m not certain that this role is worthy of a toast, Agatha,” he finally said.

  Oh no, I thought, feeling heartsick. This position was meant to solve the problems that had plagued us since our return from the Empire Tour, when Archie had learned that Goldstein’s no longer had employment for him, which was a bit of a surprise, as the tour itself had been a government project and we’d assumed that Goldstein’s would treat him kindly as a result. I’d hoped that this new job, long sought after and won only after six months of humiliating interviews, would restore my husband from his depression and his anger, which he usually exacted upon me. How many nights had I refused to leave his side as he lay despondent in our bed or on the sofa, even though he’d muttered over and over that I was of no use to him? While I wondered where the man I’d married—the man who’d resurfaced on our Empire Tour trip—had gone.

  And what had happened to his feelings for me? The more downhearted he became, the more I seemed to irritate him rather than comfort him. My voice, my words, my manner, my appearance, my weight, everything seemed designed for one purpose—to vex Archie. I wondered how the qualities that once captivated him now exasperated him, and I began to think that his feelings stemmed more from the fact that I saw him at his very lowest—both emotionally and financially—than actual dislike. No man liked to be seen at his weakest, Mummy was known to say. I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, wasn’t that what good wives did?

  “What do you mean, dearest?” I said, keeping my tone as bright as I could muster.

  “I’m not sure this concern is engaged in entirely legal work,” he answered, raking his fingers through his hair. “Strictly speaking.”

  “Are you certain?” I asked, pouring him another whisky. Anything to keep his mood from slipping further.

  Knocking back the drink, he walked away from me toward the window, leaving my question unanswered. How had things come to this point? I wondered. Had Archie and I really stood on those surfing boards atop the Pacific Ocean and rode the turquoise waves all the way to the sandy Hawaiian shore? Had we really embraced, euphoric over our triumph, as water dripped from our bathing costumes and the hot sun beat down on our burnt faces? I might not be able to reclaim those precious moments, but I had to do whatever I could to stave off further disaster.

  “Perhaps, in time, you will learn that the work is more legitimate than it seems on your first day,” I said into the void left by his veritable absence. He did not reply, and I knew better than to expect one.

  I left him to his thoughts and another whisky and hurried to the kitchen to finish the preparations for supper. We could no longer afford help, aside from Cuckoo, whom I could not dismiss without abandoning all hope of an income from my writing, so I cleaned, cooked, shopped, and undertook the washing. Ashfield and Mummy had done little in the way of preparing me for these tasks, and each night, I prayed for no catastrophe. Order and order alone might restore Archie’s spirits, and that order was my job.

  China laid out on linen, silver gleaming in the low candlelight, a presentable roast chicken at the table’s center, I sat across from Archie, momentarily pleased with my handiwork. Would tonight’s dinner offering suffice? It was the question I had asked myself every night since we returned to London. I watched expectantly as he cut into a serving of the chicken and placed a bite in his mouth. While he chewed the meat, his mouth slowed, and I realized that I’d failed at yet another meal.

  “How did you find the people at work?” I asked, hoping to prompt him to speak. If I couldn’t mention the work, maybe I could talk about his colleagues. Perhaps they were a shade better than the work itself.

  “Not much improvement there,” he answered briskly, making clear that additional questions on the topic of his employment would be unwelcome. And then he settled into a silence, interrupted only by the sound of his silverware scraping the china and his chewing.

  I didn’t think I could face another meal in silence; we’d had so many since we settled into the London flat we’d found after returning from the Empire Tour. Short of dancing on the dining room table, I’d run out of ways to fill the quiet, so I decided to take a risk and broach a topic Archie typically didn’t welcome—my writing. On occasion, when it appeared as though Archie might be receptive, I raised my
latest book and the attendant business matters over our evening dinner, although I was never entirely certain he listened or remembered.

  “Well, I received some good news today,” I announced, making certain to keep my voice low at first. Archie loathed jarring sounds.

  Archie glanced up from his plate, but that was the extent of it. Pretending that he’d inquired after my news, I continued, “Well, after an exchange of letters and two meetings, Mr. Edmund Cork of the Hughes Massie literary agency officially agreed to take me on as a client earlier this week.” When he didn’t respond, I prompted him to answer. I wanted to make certain he understood the magnitude of my news. “Do you remember me mentioning Mr. Cork a few weeks ago?”

  Archie half nodded, which was more than the usual encouragement, and I chose to interpret it as a sign that he recalled the earlier conversation. I continued, “Having Mr. Cork as an agent means that he’s helped extricate me from that onerous contract with my publisher, the Bodley Head. In the week since he’s taken me on as a client, his letters to the Bodley Head have led to an understanding that the contract will end once I deliver one final book—instead of the three they were pushing for. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  I didn’t wait for Archie to respond; I knew the most I could expect was a grunt of acknowledgment. I hoped for more reaction with my big development. “That isn’t even the best news, Archie. Given that Mr. Cork secured a clear end date for the termination of my contract with the Bodley Head, he was able to informally shop my recent project, The Man in the Brown Suit. You know, the one that’s based on our trip?”

  I received another half nod. I’d certainly described the setting and the plot of the mystery enough. “Well,” I said, pausing for effect, “the Evening News has made a sizable offer for the serialization of The Man in the Brown Suit today. Five hundred pounds, if you can believe it. I’m hoping the money will come in handy.” I couldn’t contain my excitement over this potential contribution to our dwindling resources and our mounting household expenses. The development had temporarily released me from the worry that we’d end up near penniless like my own mother after my father squandered the once-plentiful Miller fortune, and I assumed Archie would feel the same relief. I hoped to lift the burden he shouldered, if only a little.