‘A photograph,’ she said, waving her hand in front of her face as if moving smoke out of the way. ‘One face in a photograph looks very much like another, doesn’t it?’
Had they really sent police all the way to Yorkshire to search for her? What a needless fuss. She felt a terrible flurry in her stomach. If they were looking for her here – where no one had any reason to imagine she’d go – where else would they search? Who else would know she’d run off, and why? Oh, she hated to think of her stalwart new benefactors – her new agent and publisher – learning of this whole humiliating mess.
‘Mrs Christie,’ the man said gently, ‘my name’s Inspector Frank Chilton. I’m representing the police department in Leeds. I’ve been charged with looking for you, though I daresay I never thought I’d find you.’
He had a pleasant face and manner. Mild and kind. Agatha saw at once he’d be easy to dismiss. ‘I beg your pardon, Inspector Chilton. But I expect you didn’t hear me. My name is not Agatha Christie.’
She saw Chilton look past her, to where she’d stationed herself at the long farm table, notebooks piled on it, and her typewriter. She closed the door against herself, blocking his view.
‘And your name, then?’ He kept his tone kindly, but firm enough to remind her he was a police inspector.
‘I don’t suppose that’s any of your business. My husband will be along shortly. Ah. There he is now.’
She felt herself smile as Finbarr came up the walk, hands in his pockets and colour in his cheeks. An entirely involuntary reaction. They’d been apart very little these last four days. She found herself wanting Chilton to believe she could be married to someone so young and handsome.
‘What’s this?’ Finbarr said, reaching the front stoop. The burlap bag over his shoulder bulged with what she felt sure were apples. Only this morning she’d said how she loved apples, and now here they were. Orange Pippin, she supposed, from the time of year. How she looked forward to biting into the crisp fruit.
‘Darling,’ she said. It wasn’t the first time she’d called him that. He had nightmares. When she was wakened by his cries, she would go to him and calm him. There, there, darling, she would say, you’re perfectly safe.
Finbarr started a little, to hear her use the endearment in daylight, and in front of a stranger. Agatha said, ‘This is Inspector Chilton. He seems to have mistaken me for a lady who’s gone missing. What did you say her name was? This poor lost lady?’
‘Mrs Agatha Christie.’
‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Poor thing. I do hope she’ll be all right. And I do wish you luck in finding her.’ Good manners may have forced her to open the door, but they also made it frightfully easy to manage prying strangers. Follow the script, that was all she had to do.
‘So that’ll be all, then,’ Finbarr said, with a brusque nod at the inspector. He slipped by the man, nodding to Agatha in a polite, deferential manner that no man on earth would use with his wife. He started to close the door but Chilton raised his hand and stopped it.
Finbarr draped an arm around Agatha’s shoulder. She smiled again. In the course of a few days they’d discovered a surprising amount in common. Their love of dogs, for instance. I much prefer them to people, don’t you? And he had agreed before adding, Most people, anyway. Last night when she’d woken him from one of his terrible dreams, to comfort him, she’d thought about kissing him. That would serve Nan right, wouldn’t it?
Now, looking at Chilton, she was shocked to find herself thinking about kissing him as well. Despite what threat he posed to her continued hideout, he had such a nice, kind way about him. He reminded her of Tommy, the fiancé she’d thrown over for Archie’s sake. She refused to blush. Perhaps that was what women did, when they found themselves abandoned by their husbands. Perhaps they thought about kissing new men. She wondered how this impulse jibed with her assurances to Finbarr that they had the same mission, convincing Nan to release Archie from her clutches. Part of her felt nothing would assuage the pain of Archie being with another woman as effectively as being with another man.
‘I beg your pardon,’ Chilton said. ‘But considering the resemblance, I’m afraid I have to insist you tell me your name.’
‘Her name’s Nan Mahoney,’ Finbarr said. How annoying and predictable, for him to supply that name. Agatha’s smile disappeared.
‘So if I go to the town registry,’ Chilton said, ‘I’ll see this house belongs to the Mahoneys.’
‘Of course you will,’ Agatha said. At the same time Finbarr said, ‘We’re renting it.’
They looked at each other. Caught. But what did it matter? She hadn’t committed any crime, other than squatting in someone else’s house, which didn’t seem so very grave.
‘Listen,’ Chilton said. ‘Mrs Christie, I know it’s you. But I can give you another day to think things over and prepare yourself. I’ll come back in the morning and we can decide together what you’d like to tell your husband. He’s very worried, you know.’
Agatha laughed, so harshly she worried she’d erased any doubt he might still have as to her identity.
Finbarr said, ‘Good day, inspector.’ And he closed the door. Before he took his arm off her shoulders he gave her a little squeeze of comfort. Her protector.
‘Not to worry,’ he said.
Chilton walked back to the car, his head fairly swimming, trying to sort out what he’d just witnessed. If all of England was a haystack, with hundreds of police officers combing through the stalks, how extraordinary that he should be the one to find the needle. He picked up the photograph and studied it again. It was her, the same lady, he was certain of it. She was alive and would not be discovered at the bottom of any lake. What a happy thing, despite the myriad questions her discovery created, principal among them the identity of the young Irishman, whom so far today Chilton had witnessed with his hands on two unlikely but unprotesting women.
And what should Chilton have done? Marched her at gunpoint back to his car? And should he now go directly to Leeds and inform his friend Sam Lippincott that he’d found her?
No. Better to keep his promise. Give her another day to collect herself. Give himself another day to return to the Bellefort Hotel and soak in the hot pools. Eat Yorkshire pudding and sleep in the bed that was twice as wide and soft as any he’d ever owned. If Mrs Christie were in danger, that would be one thing. But it seemed she was only in a rugged love nest with a handsome Irish bloke.
No. He would not expose Agatha Christie today. He wasn’t sure exactly why he’d come to this decision. Perhaps he would change his mind tomorrow. But not today.
The Disappearance
Day Five
Wednesday, 8 December 1926