IN THE HISTORY of the world there’s been one story a man tells his mistress: he doesn’t love his wife, perhaps never loved her at all; there’s been no sex for years, not a whisper of it; his marriage is absent passion, absent affection, absent joy – a barren and miserable place; he stays for the children, or for money, or for propriety; it’s a matter of convenience; the new lover is his only respite.
How many times has this story been true? Not many, is my guess. I know it wasn’t true of the Christies.
That evening Archie made his usual commute from London to Sunningdale. The couple had named their home Styles after the manor in Agatha’s first novel. It was a lovely Victorian house with substantial gardens. When Archie came through the front door Agatha was waiting for him, dressed for dinner. He never told me what she was wearing but I know it was a chiffon dress the shade of seafoam. I imagine the cut emphasized the swell of her bosom, but Archie only said she seemed so distracted he decided to wait till morning to tell her he was leaving. ‘Emotions do run higher at night, don’t they?’ he said.
Agatha, who knew the news was coming, resolved to do silent battle. Usually her little terrier Peter never left her side but tonight she had sent the dog to bed with Teddy so he wouldn’t be an annoyance. She tried to exude the cheerful countenance her husband required.
I’ve sometimes thought Agatha invented Hercule Poirot as an antidote to Archie. There was never an emotional cue Poirot missed, nor a wayward emotion for which he didn’t feel sympathy. Poirot could absorb and assess a person’s sadness, then forgive it. Whereas Archie simply wanted to say Cheer up and have the order followed.
Having decided to postpone the inevitable scene, Archie sat down to a quiet dinner with his wife, the two of them seated at opposite ends of the long dining table. When I asked what they’d discussed, he said, ‘Just small talk.’
‘How did she seem?’
‘Sullen.’ Archie spoke the word as if it were a great personal affront. ‘She seemed self-indulgently morose.’
After dinner Agatha asked him to adjourn to the sitting room for a glass of brandy. He declined and went upstairs to see Teddy. Honoria, who doubled as Agatha’s personal secretary and Teddy’s nanny, was in the middle of putting her to bed.
The little dog dashed out the door as soon as Archie stepped inside and Teddy let out a wail of protest. ‘Mother promised Peter would stay with me tonight!’
Luckily Archie had my gift, Winnie the Pooh, to offer as consolation. Once Teddy had torn away the wrapping excitedly, he told me, he read her the first chapter. She begged him to go on reading, so that by the time he retired, Agatha – never knowing this was her last chance to recover him – was already asleep. ‘Like the dead,’ Archie added.
But the following Saturday, when I arrived at Styles to return Archie’s car from Godalming, I saw Winnie the Pooh on a table in the vestibule, still in its brown paper wrapping. And at Simpson’s, Agatha had had the vague and scarcely animated look of an insomniac, feeling her way through the day after too many sleepless nights. She loved her husband. After twelve years of marriage, she loved him blindly and hopefully, as if in her thirty-six years of life she’d learned nothing about the world.
I know she wouldn’t have gone to sleep before Archie came to bed. Here’s what I think really happened:
Agatha was there to greet Archie when he arrived home. That much would have been true. The colour in her cheeks was high and determined. She’d resolved to win him back not with anger and threats but with the sheer force of her adoration, and so had dressed carefully. I know exactly what she wore because on Saturday morning it still lay crumpled in a heap on their bedroom floor, the maid having been too upset to collect and launder it. When I saw it there I kneeled and picked it up, holding it against me as if trying it on. It was much too long, seafoam chiffon flowing past my feet. It smelled of Yardley perfume, Old English Lavender, light and pretty.
A silly garment to wear in the middle of winter but still. How lovely she would have looked, there to greet him. Freckles sprinkled across her nose and across her breasts, high and visible. Perhaps she had a drink in her hand, not for herself (she almost never drank) but to hand to him; his favourite Scotch.
‘A.C.,’ she said, stepping close to him, placing one hand on his chest, letting him trade his winter coat for the drink. Since their wedding night they’d called each other that, A.C.
‘Here.’ Archie did not return the endearment. Along with his coat he handed her the wrapped children’s book. ‘It’s for Teddy.’ He didn’t tell her I was the one who’d bought it, but she likely suspected. Archie wasn’t one for books – he hadn’t even read the novels she’d written, not since the first was published. Agatha slid the package unopened onto the table.
In the sitting room she poured water for herself. She was good at waiting things out. She’d waited years to marry Archie, then she waited out the war for them to live together. She sent her first book to a publisher and waited two years before they accepted it – so that by the time she received word that it would be published, she’d almost forgotten she’d written a book. She signed a miserable contract with Bodley Head for her first five novels, realized her mistake almost immediately, then waited it out instead of accepting their many offers to renegotiate. Now she was free and had moved on to a far superior publisher. A person had to put her mind to something and hope for the best. A person had to be willing to bide her time.
The house was too cold. Goosebumps rose on her bare arms, propelling her to stand closer to Archie. He had a hale and impenetrable mien, radiating warmth, not of the personal kind, but actual heat.
‘Where’s Teddy?’ he asked.