Within an hour of receiving Lippincott’s telegram, Chilton had bicycled over to the Cooke estate to borrow their telephone. ‘Every inch of England scoured, as if the Queen herself were missing,’ said Lippincott, his voice crackling through the wires. The words were scornful but his tone was jolly. Chilton’s old police chief was happy to have an excuse to summon his friend back to Yorkshire so soon. ‘Out of retirement with you. You can pass the lady’s photograph around and take a motor through the countryside. You’ll never have an easier job than searching for someone who’s surely someplace else.’
‘Nor a more frustrating one.’ But Chilton had already decided to join in the probably fruitless search. Busy work was better than no work at all. He’d left his position with the Leeds police three weeks earlier, to be closer to his mother. He hadn’t yet found new employment and his old outfit was short of inspectors. Now this lady author was missing – famous enough for every police force in England to be in on the hunt, spread out over the entire country – but not so famous that Chilton had ever heard of her. Yorkshire headquarters already had men searching Huddersfield and Leeds. They didn’t have a man to spare for Harrogate and Ripley. Except the one who’d only just left.
‘We’ll put you up at the Bellefort,’ Lippincott had said. ‘My cousin and his wife own the place, you know. They say they’ll be glad to give you a room free of charge.’
Chilton certainly did know about Lippincott’s cousin. Simon Leech had married a girl from Antigua. Isabelle Leech was a lovely person, possessed of the rare combination of flawless manners and her own strong mind. But the marriage had scandalized the family and also jeopardized Simon’s hotel and spa. It was one thing to have a dark-skinned woman working the front desk, another to discover she was married to the hotel’s English owner. No doubt in addition to needing an extra man searching for Mrs Christie, Lippincott’s cousin needed more guests. Empty rooms tended to breed empty rooms. The cousins were as close as brothers and this was a chance to help both the hotel and Chilton. As for the missing lady, nobody really expected her to turn up in Yorkshire. But Chilton would search all the same. He wasn’t the sort to shirk, even when assigned a hopeless task.
‘It can be a working holiday for you,’ Lippincott said, clearly pleased to be able to offer such a thing. ‘Won’t get a better offer than that any time soon, will you?’ Chilton and Lippincott had been in the same regiment during the war and fought together all the way to the end. Lippincott was one of the ones who had come out all right. Not too all right – any man with a heart would be altered by battle in some way – but fine enough to do his job, love his family, hear a door slam without jumping through the roof.
On the train north, Chilton stared out the window at the passing wych elms and hedgerows, the landscape nearly empty of people, wind whipping, everyone hunkering indoors. He was as likely to find Agatha Christie wandering beside the train tracks as anywhere.
Chilton’s left arm had gone limp since taking shrapnel in the shoulder. His good hand shook as he lit his cigarette. You might think detective work wouldn’t suit a man whose one working arm still trembled from war memories. You’d be right. Which is why Lippincott calling him out of retirement after less than a month was likely a way of giving him a parting gift, rather than expecting a crime to be solved.
‘Have a soak while you’re at it,’ Lippincott had said, once all was agreed upon, proving Chilton’s suspicions. Harrogate was famous for its natural hot baths, a luxury Chilton hadn’t even considered partaking in when he lived nearby. ‘It’ll do you good.’
Smoke from Chilton’s exhale rose to mingle with the other passengers’. If a fool’s errand was all he was good for, at least it was something more than wandering the beach by his mother’s house, an old man at forty. For much of his life Chilton had two brothers. Now he had none. The youngest, Malcolm, had died at Gallipoli. The second youngest, Michael, died in the labyrinth at the Battle of Arras, where Chilton had fought beside him. From that day forward, for the sake of their mother, Chilton had committed to staying alive, even as the stench of rotting bodies followed him from the trenches and refused to ever leave.
Once their mother was gone, though, Chilton would be free and clear. Perhaps then he’d follow the lead of this Christie woman, who from the sound of it had committed suicide. The place they’d find her was at the bottom of a lake. Chances were they’d have found her corpse closer to home by the time he arrived at the hotel. He’d spend one night there and turn around, back towards home.
Suicide. The word had a way of hounding Chilton. A hard thing for a woman to do, when she had a child. But then, from what Lippincott had said – and the fact that police all over England were being mobilized for the search – the Christies were of the breed who had enough people to look after the child so that she might not even notice her mother was gone. Chilton’s mother had been there for her sons every bedtime, every meal, every skinned knee of their childhood.
The train whistle blew for a stop. There were some pleasures left in this life, things he would miss when he left it. Chilton did like the sound of a train whistle. A time away, train travel was. A chance to gather your thoughts or have no thoughts at all. Nobody would be looking for him and nobody would find him either, here on a train. Perhaps that’s what this Agatha Christie was doing. It’s what he would do, if he wanted to get away from the world. Board a train and ride it all over England. Never get off at any stop. Everything you needed, from privies to dining cars to shelter from the rain and a place to rest your head. If he wanted to escape, to disappear, he’d simply ride on and on to nowhere. Which was, now that he thought about it, very close to what he was doing – searching for someone in a place she surely wouldn’t be found.
After a while, Chilton fell asleep with his head lolled back, mouth slightly open, cigarette still burning in his hand. The woman across the aisle, old enough to be his mother, hadn’t wanted to ride in the smoking carriage, but there were no seats left in the non-smoking one. She looked at the sleeping man kindly. He had that particular look about him, so many did nowadays. And he was a handsome fellow, if you looked beyond the edges, a little squidgy and rumpled, but a good strong chin. Nice broad hands. She reached across the aisle and took the cigarette from his fingertips, sneaking one small puff before grinding it out in the ashtray.