The Mystery of Mrs. Christie

by Marie Benedict

  Initially, I’d interpreted Archie’s willingness to take this Pyrenees trip as an indicator of his commitment to leave behind his mad idea of abandoning us for Nancy. But since we’d arrived in this picturesque mountain range in the Iberian Peninsula between Biarritz and the border of Spain, he’d grown more recalcitrant by the day. The first few afternoons, he’d been willing to undertake hikes, and he’d engaged in conversations over our meals, desultory exchanges though they were. But by the fifth day, his voice had seemingly disappeared, and aside from a series of terse yeses and nos, he stopped engaging in any communication or undertaking any activity with me other than meals.

  I glanced around the hotel suite, with its connected bedroom and sitting room. Where was Archie? As the holiday had progressed, he’d taken to quietly leaving our suite and settling into the public areas of the hotel with a book. Reading alone had become his refuge and his rebellion.

  Opening our door, I peeked out and down to the lobby below, but Archie wasn’t there. As I glanced back around the two-room suite, I wondered where on earth he could have retreated to in the short span of time since dinner. Was I so repulsive that he would have left the hotel altogether and fled to the town pub? I then realized I hadn’t checked the balcony, largely because I couldn’t imagine that my company was so abhorrent that he’d brave the frigid night air.

  Pulling open the heavy oak and glass door, I stepped onto the balcony. Archie’s back faced me, and I called out in what I thought was a bright voice, “Archie?”

  My handsome husband, a hat pulled low on his forehead and a plaid scarf wrapped around his neck and chin to ward off the chill, turned around. He dropped the pipe he’d been smoking and yelled, “Can’t a man be left alone for one second? I just wanted a bit of peace and quiet away from your endless chatter.” His face twisted and became ugly.

  I felt as though he’d slapped me. Walking sideways away from him, I hit the wooden slats of the balcony balustrade. “I’m—I’m sorry.”

  Archie approached me at a steady clip until his face loomed over me. “Do you think I like being here with you? Listening to you drone on about culture, music, silly book ideas, your mother, and your…your desperation.”

  Was this really Archie talking to me in this awful way? I’d grown used to his coldness, but he’d usually wounded me with silence, not words. This was a new weapon, and it stung.

  His face mutated again, forming a sick, self-satisfied smile. “Finally rendered speechless, are you? Well, I’ll answer the question for you. I don’t want to be here with you. I don’t want to be anywhere with you.” He was so close to my face I could feel his spittle freeze upon my cheeks. He raised his hand, and for a moment, I thought he’d strike me or push me. But then he abruptly dropped it.

  A rogue thought passed through my mind, and I suddenly felt very afraid. What if he’d agreed to the three-month reconciliation with no intention of actually reuniting? He’d hardly been back to Styles except for the odd family dinner and a few golf club events. What if he’d agreed to the reconciliation for the sole purpose of bringing me to this isolated mountain town where he could get rid of me once and for all so he could marry Nancy Neele? I glanced down, realizing that with one shove, Archie could push me off this balcony forty feet to the icy, rocky ground below.

  After all, that sort of thing didn’t happen only in my books. It could very well happen in real life.

  Chapter Forty

  Days Eight and Nine after the Disappearance

  Saturday, December 11, through Sunday, December 12, 1926

  Styles, Sunningdale, England

  The press wants to hang me on innuendo and inference alone. A burned letter, a weekend away from one’s wife, a maid’s gossip about an affair. The reporters and readers of daily rags and esteemed newspapers alike seize upon these unverified facts and stitch them together to conjure up a philandering husband turned murderer.

  But they don’t have a body, not yet anyway, and they don’t have any proof of infidelity, he tells himself. So, like a pitchforked mob, they clamor for a definitive end to the search for his wife and the justice they’re certain it will yield. Lambasting both the Berkshire and Surrey police, they cry for Scotland Yard to enter the fray. Woman Novelist’s Disappearance Goes Unsolved, Local Police Need Yard’s Expertise, the headlines demand.

  When Scotland Yard refuses to get involved in the investigation on the same grounds it offered Archie nearly a week ago, newspapers offer up their own resolutions. After dredging up retired police, judges, and authors to give their interpretations of the events, the Daily News trumps the other publications by soliciting the insights of detective novelist Dorothy Sayers, a mystery writer whom Agatha has admired. While she claims that firm resolution of the disappearance—whether voluntary, suicide, spurred by memory loss, or the result of foul play—is impossible based on newspaper reports alone, she poses several questions, the answers to which, she asserts, might point to Mrs. Christie’s whereabouts. Inflamed by the possibility that the noted writer might solve this mystery, she is invited to the Great Sunday Hunt.

  Sickened by all the speculation and accusations and terrified about where they might lead, Archie throws the stack of newspapers on the study floor. Lighting a cigarette, he stands and starts pacing the small room. By God, he wishes he could speak, but he is bound by the clever, clever shackles of the letter and its author. So now he waits, but not for tomorrow’s Great Sunday Hunt.

  * * *

  “You missed a spot, Papa.” Rosalind giggles, scrubbing a tiny smudge of dirt with her damp rag. Desperate for a distraction and restless with anticipation, he’s asked his daughter if she’d like to clean the Delage with him. It is his Sunday ritual, one he prefers to undertake alone, but he needs to mend the rift between them. Anyway, Charlotte and her sister are off at church, and Rosalind is in his care.

  Rosalind adores having routines and a firm schedule, too, and even though this particular chore is a deviation from her usual quiet Sunday, it’s part of his routine, so she welcomes it. Like him, Rosalind understands the need for order. It is something Agatha never comprehended or embraced, even for him.

  He smiles at the diminutive child, grateful for the moment of peace. He made the right choice by refusing to let Madge take her to Abney Hall. The deluge will arrive soon. It is the one thing about which he’s certain. The timeline has always been clear, from the very moment he sliced open that envelope with his silver letter opener.

  The sound of gravel crunching underfoot intensifies, and Archie peeks around the bend to see who is approaching the back of Styles. Police guard the perimeter, so he doesn’t worry about a stray intruder or reporter, but he isn’t expecting a soul until Charlotte and Mary return in an hour.

  When he spies a familiar young man of about twenty with ginger hair ambling toward them, Archie sighs in relief. It is only the gardener’s son, who assists with the property upkeep from time to time. Archie raises his hand in farewell and returns to Rosalind and the car washing.

  As Robert nears the side of the garage where the garden tools are stored, he greets them. “Colonel Christie, Miss Rosalind, I must say I’m surprised to see you here. Dad and I figured you’d be off at the Great Sunday Hunt, so we thought it might be a fine time to finish up some of the work preparing for winter.”

  Archie doesn’t know what to think. Is it possible that Robert is oblivious to the suspicion cast upon Archie? Why else would he think that Archie would actually be welcome at the Great Sunday Hunt, as everyone seems to be calling it? The boy seems too earnest to be baiting him into some damning statement.

  Reading a refusal into Archie’s hesitation, Robert steps backward. “But I can come back another time, sir, if I’d be bothering you.”

  “No, no, don’t be silly, Robert. Rosalind and I are just finishing up with the Delage, aren’t we, dear?” He smiles at his daughter, who’s preoccupied with a small dent on the dr
iver’s side of the vehicle. She scrubs the dent as if her effort could somehow return the door to its original, pristine condition.

  “All right then, if you’re certain, sir?”

  Archie nods and picks up his buffing cloth again, giving the Delage a satisfying sheen. If only I could prolong this moment, he thinks. But the clang of metal startles him, interrupting his wistful thoughts until he realizes that it’s just Robert assembling his tools in the wheelbarrow.

  The wheelbarrow creaks as Robert approaches them. Why doesn’t he head out back? Archie thinks. Why won’t he leave them alone to enjoy this brief respite? Soon, too soon, all would be lost.

  “You should see the scene down by Newlands Corner, sir. They say that there are fifty-three search parties, with thirty to forty people each! Can you imagine it, upward of two thousand people looking for Mrs. Christie all at the same time? With all those folks hunting, I’m sure they’ll find her, sir.”

  Archie wants nothing more than to silence this young man but knows that any commentary on his part will either encourage the lad or be reported to others or both. Anyway, the young man is only trying to give him comfort. So he nods in Robert’s direction to signal the end of the conversation and then returns to his project.

  But the gardener’s son misses the hint entirely and blathers on. “I mean, more folks keep coming, even though some are only spectating or eating, what with Alfred Luland setting up a makeshift refreshment kiosk to serve the volunteers. A woman who breeds award-winning bloodhounds brought her dogs on the hunt, and they’re sure to sniff Mrs. Christie out if she’s there. Oh, and that writer woman Mrs. Sayers came to the site too. Took one look at the Silent Pool and announced your wife wasn’t there. Not a lot of help she offered, huh?”

  “Why don’t the people know that Mama is away writing, Papa?” Rosalind pipes in with her small, high-pitched voice. When had she started listening to this conversation? Archie hadn’t heard her approach. He thought she was still engrossed in that dent. “Didn’t you tell them?”

  Robert stares at the child, agog at her ignorance of her mother’s disappearance. Or perhaps agog at Archie’s fostering of that ignorance. Either way, the gardener’s son finally takes his leave and pushes his wheelbarrow to the farthest reaching corner of the property.

  “Papa, you didn’t answer my question,” Rosalind notes. Then, in case he’s forgotten her query, she repeats it. “Why didn’t you tell everyone that Mama is just away writing a book and that she’ll be back when she’s done?”

  Archie turns toward Rosalind, kneeling down and gazing directly into her dark eyes. “Darling, please don’t worry. The resolution of this terrible situation is very nearly at hand.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  The Manuscript

  December 3, 1926

  Styles, Sunningdale, England

  Three months. Ninety days. Two thousand, one hundred and sixty hours. This was what Archie had allotted me to save our marriage, and when I returned to Styles after the debacle of the Pyrenees, I realized that I had only forty-five days left to convince Archie to stay. Only one thousand and eighty of those original hours remained, and the mere thought of the dwindling minutes was enough to start my heart racing. But how could I win my husband back when he was rarely to be seen?

  Over the preceding forty-five of those ninety days, there had been times when I felt like giving up. There had been entire days when I felt like relinquishing him to Nancy and losing myself in my writing, my family, and my daughter. Would it really be so terrible? I asked myself. After all, if I were honest with myself, our marriage had been empty for some time; golf seemed to play a more robust role in Archie’s life than I did. Yet when I thought about Rosalind, I knew I had to stay the course. I couldn’t let the stain of divorce taint my beautiful daughter and strain our relationship.

  I resolved to wait for him to return. This waiting was different from all the waiting I’d undertaken before. Somehow, waiting for him for leaves during his military training, waiting for him to come home from the Great War, even waiting for him to appear on our London doorstep from Spain after Mummy died did not compare to waiting for him to return my love.

  I felt the clock ticking constantly, and more and more, I took walks around the Silent Pool to calm my nerves. Despite the macabre history of the place—legends about dead maidens and rumors about the odd suicide—I found the still body of emerald water and the quiet woods surrounding it strangely soothing. Not to mention that it was the one place where I could indulge in my sobs without a witness.

  By the time December arrived, the days left to attempt reconciliation were numbered, and I was in a frenzied state. When Archie was absent—he frequently stayed at his London club on weekdays—I would worry about whether Nancy was with him despite his promise, and Charlotte would have to urge me to stay at Ashfield and not drive into the city to surprise him. When he made his brief, unannounced visits to Styles on weekends and rare weekday evenings, primarily to see Rosalind, my nerves would shred even further as the pressure mounted to be charming and lighthearted in an effort to make Styles—and me—appealing to him.

  I worked on my new book, The Mystery of the Blue Train, at a feverish pace. My publisher, Collins, was desperate for a new Hercule Poirot book and wielded my contract as the means to insist. The recently released The Murder of Roger Ackroyd had not only been critically well received but had sold well, and they hoped to ride that success with an immediate follow-up publication, along with the release of a collection of short Hercule Poirot stories that I’d serialized in magazine and newspaper publications. But every time I sat down at my typewriter, my mind clouded with emotion, and even the internal pressure to produce out of financial necessity should my marriage implode didn’t clear my thoughts. More than anything, more even than Mummy’s comforting and sage presence, I wished for more time.

  Archie and I stared at each other across the breakfast table. How ordinary the room looked, I thought for an unreal second, for such an extraordinary morning. The sunlight filtered through the curtain, dappling the tablecloth with an attractive pattern. The table gleamed with Mummy’s sweet rosebud china, and a perfect semicircle of toasted bread spread across the silver serving tray. Tiny puffs of steam rose from our teacups, and a jar of ruby-red jam sat at the center of it all. It could be any regular morning in any regular home of any regular family. But it wasn’t.

  “Please,” I begged, “please don’t do this. Let’s talk about it this weekend, after dinner tonight. I made a reservation for us at a lovely inn in Yorkshire where we can discuss the future in privacy.”

  “There is no sense begging, Agatha. It only makes you appear less attractive than you already are, and that doesn’t help your cause. I will not be joining you in Yorkshire this weekend. I will be spending the weekend with the Jameses,” Archie answered, his tone firm and his posture erect such that his suit had not a single crease. He spoke as dismissively as he did when responding to Rosalind’s endless requests for a pony.

  “And Nancy will be there as well, I’m guessing? She’s good friends with Madge James, isn’t she?” I asked, and although it was certainly true, I immediately regretted my words. Archie’s face darkened with anger, and I knew I wouldn’t win him back like that. “Please listen, Archie.” I reached for his hand, but he pulled it away and stepped backward. I proceeded with my case, although I could hear Charlotte’s voice in my head, cautioning me against pleading. She believed it only brought out a cruel streak in him, and she’d implored me not to beg him after she witnessed an unpleasant altercation. “You promised me three months. Three months of reconciliation before deciding. But we barely saw you. You just need more time, that’s all—Christmas at Abney Hall, a New Year’s trip to Portugal with our neighborhood friends, the full three months that we discussed.”

  “I don’t need any more time to make my decision, and I do not want to keep up this charade any longer. I am finis
hed.” His voice didn’t waver, and neither did his gaze. Had he practiced this composure in the mirror? I wondered.

  “How can you say you’re finished with our family when you haven’t even tried?” I asked, my voice cracking.

  He didn’t bother to answer my question. Instead, he repeated the hateful words he had first uttered back in Ashfield. “I want a divorce.”

  “I don’t want a divorce, Archie. I want our family and our marriage back.” The tears came, and I began to sob. “Rosalind loves you. I still love you. When you were fighting in the Great War, you used to write that you’d do anything to keep me. How has it come to this?”

  “Agatha, I will be meeting with a lawyer to begin the divorce proceedings. My marriage to Nancy will happen as soon as the divorce is finalized.” He sounded as if he were conducting a business meeting for Austral Limited, not ending his marriage and ruining his family.

  For the very first time, rage instead of desperation took hold of me. How dare he? How could he talk of marriage to Nancy in the same breath as he spoke of our divorce? By God, I thought, if he wants this shameful divorce, I will get what I want as well. I will make him give me the very thing he wants to protect. Otherwise, it will be the undoing of me.

  Pulling a handkerchief from the pocket of my silk dressing gown, I dabbed at my eyes and nose in an effort to compose myself. “I will only agree to a divorce if you name Nancy Neele as your adulteress and the reason for the dissolution of our marriage.” I kept my tone as unruffled and businesslike as he’d been all morning, repressing the fury kindling within me.

  With this statement, his carefully assembled countenance of calm and determination cracked. His eyes widened in disbelief at my request, and in that moment, I knew that I had struck him in his very core, a heart that I thought he no longer had. “I will not name Nancy in the divorce. Under no circumstances.”