‘If she’s not dead, she’ll be frightfully embarrassed at all this fuss,’ Chilton said. Looking at Agatha’s photograph – wistful and lovely – he regretted his laughter. It was a stark business, suicide, but he understood that when you had to go, you had to go. Surely she’d had her reasons.
Lippincott revealed his more-cynical-but-less-tragic theory. ‘What she’ll do is sell a lot of books,’ he said. ‘A handful of English readers knew her name on Friday. If she doesn’t turn up by the end of the week, she’ll be a global sensation.’
‘Publicity stunt, you think?’
‘Some sort of stunt. But that’s why I wanted you back, Chilton. I knew you’d treat it like it was real, either way. And we must take it seriously. No one yet knows where this woman’s gone. She might as well be here as anywhere.’
Chilton saluted in agreement, half in jest, but it made them both grim for an instant. They’d seen a lot together, the two of them, when saluting was an everyday business.
‘Look here, though, Chilton,’ Lippincott said. ‘Thanks to my cousin I can put you up at no expense. And I’ve got a police auto for you to use to conduct your searching. You retired too early for us to give you a fancy watch, or anything of that sort. So take this as a bit of a holiday, won’t you? Search for Agatha Christie but take the waters too. Enjoy the hotel. Eat well. Have a massage, for goodness’ sake.’
Chilton could not begin to imagine submitting himself to a massage. ‘Do you know I lived in Yorkshire for seven years and never put so much as a toe in the baths?’
‘Well, then,’ Lippincott said, even though Chilton was sure the same was true for him. Lippincott might wish his dear cousin’s establishment well but was unlikely to ever frequent it. ‘High time.’
For me the cold of the day had disappeared, along with the clear blue sky. All I could see was Finbarr. He put a gentle hand on my elbow and steered me away, looking over his shoulder to see if Lizzie Clarke was still there.
‘You needn’t worry about her,’ I said, but he didn’t seem to hear me. He led me off the road, through a hedgerow, into a stand of silver birch trees.
‘Finbarr,’ I said. When we were young in Ireland this sort of detour might have been playful, testing how game I could be. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I might ask the same of you.’ His raspy, post-war voice sobered me.
‘I’m on holiday. How on earth did you find me?’
‘Never mind that. The important thing is what happens next. You and me, leaving this plot of yours behind, and going home to Ballycotton.’
‘Ballycotton is not my home.’ I pulled my arm out of his grip. At first sight of him my brain had gone to atoms. Now those atoms started to swirl and sharpen, forming a clearer picture. ‘It never was and it never will be.’
‘It was and it will be again. My father died, Nan.’ From the way he said it I gathered that his mother had died too, perhaps a good while ago. ‘I’ve saved enough money to buy a small place, where I can raise and train dogs. We can go home. You and me.’
I pictured the home he meant, and the road to Sunday’s Corner. I knew I should say I was sorry for his parents’ death. But I wasn’t sorry and never would be.
‘Nan,’ Finbarr said. ‘You can’t go through with this. It’s wrongheaded, and wrong, besides. You belong with me, not with a man already married.’
So he had received the letter I’d sent him. And this was his answer. It had been a mistake to write to him, a moment of weakness.
‘It’s too late,’ I said, hoping my voice sounded more sad than reproachful. ‘You’re too late.’
He put his hand around my wrist, firm but gentle, and pulled me further into the wood. My hat had started to fall and he pulled it back onto my head, down over my ears, which must have been burning red from high dudgeon, and the chill. Finbarr didn’t want me to be cold. After the Armistice celebrations, when we had lain together in London, in the midst of a passion that had been building for years, he’d paused to adjust the pillow beneath my head.
This was the third time I’d seen him since that day. The first was in Ballycotton, when he lay delirious with influenza. The second was nearly a year later, after I had left Ireland forever, and finally he came to find me in London. He had pleaded with me to go away with him to Australia. But I didn’t.
The Finbarr who’d made love to me on the day of the Armistice celebration had seemed his old self. Or it could be that was just what I’d wanted to see – a blissful, fleeting illusion. By the time he came back for me, neither of us were ourselves. I was wrecked by loss. And he was just wrecked. Twenty pounds lighter. No trace of the joyful air that had been his salient trait. His voice, ruined by the mustard gas, didn’t sound a bit like the boy I remembered.
(‘Sometimes,’ Agatha Christie wrote, years later, ‘one cannot help a tide of rage coming over one when one thinks of war.’)
‘No,’ I’d told him then. ‘I can’t go away with you. I can’t go anywhere.’
Now, six years later, in Harrogate, Finbarr and I might not have returned to our original selves. But we could at least face each other calmly. I could look at him and feel no recrimination. None of this had ever been his fault.
‘What we need,’ he said, gathering my hands up in his, ‘is to get away from here. We can start over. You and me.’
‘Oh, Finbarr,’ I said. ‘That’s not what I need. Not at all.’
I pulled away from him. There was a considerable amount of brush to crash through, to get back to the road. The winter sky opened wide above me and I hugged myself tightly. Breathe in, breathe out. That’s how I’d get through these next days. One breath followed by another.
Finbarr was just behind me. He put his hand on my shoulder and I shrugged it off. The last time I’d seen him, my insides were melted to grey. There was still so much to be reckoned with. And then there was the change in him. A few days from this moment Inspector Chilton would say something to me about going to war. How the world seemed one way beforehand. Then, afterwards, you had seen the Big Sadness and you couldn’t ever unsee it. Finbarr had not a single line on his face. He owned the same tall, spare and agile form. But the sun had left him. Like the rasp in his voice had replaced the old clarity, the Big Sadness had replaced his joy. If it hadn’t made him seem like a ship that had lost its anchor, it might have made me love him even more. I had seen a measure of that sadness myself.
He reached out and pulled me back into his arms. Three beats. Then he let me go, turned and trudged off down the road, the same way he’d come. Perhaps he thought I’d follow him but I didn’t. I just stood watching him go. He knew I was still there because while I was still in earshot he raised one arm, without looking back, and called, ‘You’ll see me again soon, Nan. Very soon.’
More than an hour later, just before entering the baths with Lizzie Clarke, I asked myself the logical question Finbarr hadn’t answered: how had he known to find me in Harrogate?