MARRIAGE HAS A hold not often acknowledged on the popular imagination. I never understood it fully until I was married myself. Whether a marriage begins in duty or convenience, or whether it begins in secret, whispered words and irresistible passion. Even when it begins in resentment, or drizzles into nothing over the years, there’s a bond formed that’s not easily broken. With his wife missing, Archie buckled under the strain of a yoke he’d believed he’d escaped. Over the last two years, since I’d come along, he’d thought of his wife mostly as Agatha. Now with her missing, possibly in danger, he began thinking of her, rather fervently, as ‘my wife’.
Deputy Chief Constable Thompson stood firmly unmoved by Colonel Christie’s professions of anguish. ‘We know about the girl,’ he had announced the day before, arriving at Styles first thing in the morning.
Surely Archie had been tempted to say What girl? But he was a smart enough man to know when he was caught. ‘I know how this looks,’ he’d admitted, mistakenly taking on a tone of authority rather than contrition. ‘But I love my wife and would never harm her.’ Archie knew he had done no physical harm to Agatha but the deputy chief constable’s furious gaze made him feel as though he had. Remembering the emotional pain to which his wife had been subjected, Archie felt simultaneously indignant with innocence and abject with guilt.
‘We’ll see about that,’ Thompson had said, regarding Archie with a scarcely contained rage. If Agatha Christie were found dead, it would be a tragedy, of which the only resulting pleasure could be marching her husband off to jail. He ordered the search to be intensified.
Now Archie sat at his desk, with the copy of the story Agatha had written – typed out but for the title ‘The Edge’ written across the top in a madwoman’s print, as if the pen had nearly punctured the paper. He read it again. The husband came across all right. And the woman, vanquishing her rival, sending her rolling down the cliff to her death. Archie thought of his wife, with a frightened kind of respect: I don’t know her, he said to himself. I don’t know her at all.
They might be searching for Agatha in every corner of England but, of course, the main hub was Berkshire and Surrey. By Wednesday the counties abounded with hounds and police officers. Even aeroplanes, the first time they’d ever been used to look for a single, missing person. The staff from the Coworth House, the largest estate in Sunningdale, took a day off to employ their knowledge of the region, which was naturally far superior to any police force. Professionally tight-lipped, they did not repeat any gossip relayed by the paltry staff at Styles (unaware that Anna had already seen to the matter, just what one could expect from a second-rate housemaid). They were all sure Mrs Christie was now a corpse, and took great umbrage at the idea of anyone other than themselves discovering it.
How disappointing when two first footmen did find poor Miss Annabelle Oliver, frozen in a shallow stream, caught up in a snarl of brambles. A great cry went up at the sight of her, followed by disappointment. She was too old and too small to be Agatha Christie. One body would have been valuable. This body, belonging to someone nobody had reported missing, was not.
Archie walked down the road with Peter on a leash. He could hear the aeroplanes overhead, rotors slicing the air. Hounds bayed in the distance, a sound that had become ubiquitous since his wife had disappeared.
If Agatha had done this to drive him mad, hats off to her. Peter pulled disobediently on his leash and Archie yanked him back to his side. The dog had never liked him. But Deputy Chief Constable Thompson had asked Archie to bring her dog to the site where the Morris Cowley had been found. He could have driven but hoped the air – wind, really, cold enough to chap a man’s skin – would do something to ease the unrest swirling inside his chest. What have I done, what have I done? Blown his life to bits, that’s what. Caused this swirling mass, this appalling and unceasing to-do, all about him. The search was like Agatha’s anguish come to life. And he had caused it, for the sake of a girl who was good at golf. The newspapers were blaring the news of Agatha’s disappearance all the way to the continents. The police knew about his affair, thought they hadn’t been able to track down Nan for an interview (he felt grateful to me, for lying low as promised). Still, how much longer before everything else came out, everything he’d done? Once Agatha saw the story of Archie and Nan made public, would she change her mind about wanting him back? When the whole world knew? Or had he ruined his marriage, his whole life, for what he’d begun to think of as nothing, a madness, a dalliance?
Police waited by his wife’s car, still at Newlands Corner where they’d pulled it back from the chalk pit. The officers regarded Archie sternly, many of them certain he’d done some foul play. As if that were possible. As if he had it in him. Couldn’t they tell how desperate he was to see his wife found?
‘Here you go, Peter,’ Archie said. The dog pulled on the leash again, in the direction of home. Agatha had spoiled him, allowing him on furniture, feeding him from her plate, walking him with no leash at all. Frustrated, Archie bent over to pick him up. Peter wriggled in his arms, whining. Two of the younger policemen exchanged glances. Amused or disgusted? The dashing colonel could no more control this little dog than he could his wife.
‘Come on now, Peter.’ Archie placed the dog by the car, but Peter didn’t sniff, he didn’t do anything but turn round and round in whimpering circles.
‘Well,’ said the more disapproving of the two officers. ‘I suppose that’s enough of that.’
‘I suppose it is,’ Archie said. He unclipped Peter’s leash and the dog immediately bolted down the road towards home.
‘Hold up there,’ a voice called, as Archie started to trudge after the dog. It was Thompson, looking even sterner than usual. There were moments when Archie felt sure the man was just on the brink of throttling him.
Archie opened his mouth to speak but found no voice came out at all. Instead, it was Thompson’s voice, obscuring whatever it was he’d meant to say, with the calamitous words: ‘There’s been a development, I’m afraid. The search has turned up a body.’
A body. Agatha? Surely not. To his horror, Archie’s knees buckled, his own body, which had always been such a faithful servant to him, committing so humiliating a betrayal. He had to reach out and grab Thompson’s collar to keep himself from crumbling to the ground.