Agatha’s wails recommenced. Honoria, the cook, the butler and Anna, the new parlourmaid – all of them lived at Styles with the Christies but not one reported hearing these wails. Still, I know they occurred. She must have stifled them somehow. Her sleeve. A pillow from one of the chairs.
This was not a bad knock. This was a demolition. Agatha’s pretty face grew puffy, her blue eyes narrowed to slits. Peter covered her face with kisses in an attempt to console her. She pushed him away then grabbed him tightly to her chest. Tears wet his wiry fur. The sobs that could be contained but not halted ravaged her throat. No, no, no, no. This mustn’t be her life. This mustn’t be how events unfolded.
She tried to muster up the resolve her mother would have demanded, but it was not to be achieved, any more than Archie’s return. The night stood stubborn and dark outside the windows. Agatha gave herself over to utter collapse – falling into red-faced, sobbing, wounded pieces.
By now Archie and I were fully ensconced in our weekend away with Noel and Ursula Owen at their cottage in Godalming. After a lovely dinner we’d adjourned to the drawing room for brandy. Earlier, upon his arrival, Archie had taken me aside to announce he’d ended his marriage.
‘We’d best lie low for a bit,’ I said. ‘After this weekend. We should stay out of each other’s way, to give you a chance to sort out the details, let the dust settle.’ If Archie hadn’t left Agatha as promised, I would have fabricated a trip to my sister Megs so he wouldn’t question my upcoming absence.
‘Don’t you know I’ll go mad without you?’ The kiss that followed was furtive and triumphant, but I could tell he accepted my reasoning. I’d have the next week, at least, to myself.
Noel Owen was a ruddy-faced man who’d inherited a good-sized fortune from a titled relative. He had the air of someone who’d rather be outdoors shooting doves, and he always spoke loudly, as if his voice had to carry a great distance over the sound of popping rifles. He and Ursula claimed to be fond of Agatha but this did not intrude upon their willingness to accept me as a fourth in golf and as a guest at weekend house parties.
Ursula and I sat together on a lilac settee, talking about an article she’d read recently about a new term in psychology called Lucid Dreaming.
‘The idea,’ she said, ‘is that in a dream a person might be able to control events. And I thought how much better I’d like it if there were such a thing as Lucid Living. Much better to control what happens in life than what happens in your dreams.’
She laughed and so did I, though it brought me back to summers in Ireland, which always hit me with a kick in the gut. Those days when the whole world had seemed like lucid living, and I could summon a boy cresting the hill to visit me as if out of thin air.
Noel poured me another brandy, then grabbed my hand and bellowed to Archie, ‘Can’t you give her any better jewellery than that, Mr Christie?’
I wanted to snatch my hand away but instead I smiled, letting him examine the ring. From this company’s point of view it must have looked inexpensive and insignificant, like something a child might wear, turning the skin beneath it faintly green.
‘It’s sentimental,’ I said.
Noel did not let go. Ursula’s smile looked waxen. She was bespectacled and too thin but, as far as I could tell, her husband adored her almost as heartily as he seemed to adore Archie.
‘She’ll have something better than that soon enough,’ Archie said. He stood smartly, holding his snifter, elbow resting on the mantle. He had the something better in his suitcase, and planned to present it to me before the weekend was out. He smiled at me over the rim of his glass. He wasn’t one to worry over past romance and had never asked me a word about the Claddagh. In his presence I always wore it with the crown pointed away from me.
A little while later, Archie and I stood upstairs in the hallway between our rooms. If he fretted at all about his wife’s wellbeing, his countenance did not betray it. He kissed me, fierce and anticipatory, before the brief subterfuge of retiring to his own room. It would not do for the Owens’ servants to find his bed undisturbed in the morning.
At the bookshop the day before, along with Winnie the Pooh, I had bought a copy of a new novel by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby. I read a chapter while waiting for Archie to sneak back across the hall. I’ve said already, haven’t I, that at the time I didn’t think much of Agatha’s novels, though, unlike Archie, I had at least read them. I fancied myself more high minded. E. M. Forster and John Galsworthy were my favourites, though lately I’d also taken a liking to American writers like Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. And Fitzgerald. As I turned the pages of his novel, I thought he was on to something very fine indeed.
When Archie crept into my room – stealthy, as if the household didn’t know full well what we were up to – I put aside my book to do what he liked best, taking off my clothes while he lay on the bed, still in his suit and even his shoes, watching me.
‘Take your hair down,’ he said, his voice hoarse.
I did as I was told, wondering if we’d continue like this – the commands, the straddling, his thrusts through unzipped trousers – once we were married. If a part of me hated him – despised him, even – that only abetted the performance he most enjoyed. His smooth hands ran down my sides and I closed my eyes, shutting out the consequences, the devastated wife, and even my own motives, to enjoy what pleasure there was, in completing the task at hand.
The Disappearance
Last Day Seen
Friday, 3 December 1926
AT HER NEW home in Ascot, not far from Sunningdale, Miss Annabelle Oliver – aged seventy-seven – was experiencing lady troubles.
It had been going on for some days. It was what her mother used to call heat from the bladder. Not the sort of thing one likes to talk about, even to a doctor. Doctors were men, after all. It would be better if she took care of it on her own. Drinking lots of water was the thing to cure it. That had always worked in the past. There was no telephone at the house she’d inherited when her brother died. He hadn’t believed in them and neither did she.
It was a clock that woke her up with unfamiliar chimes. Gongs, ten of them, sounding through the house that was much too big for just one person. Miss Oliver’s eyes flickered open. Her face felt rather hot but she had the distinct feeling she ought to be somewhere. A party, that was it. She got out of bed and dressed, disappointed with the clothes she found. High of neck and dark of colour. Why, you would think they belonged to an old lady.