‘Do the murderous feelings generally begin on a honeymoon? The woman can’t have been more vocal in her adoration.’
‘All the more suspicious,’ said Lippincott. ‘Protesting too much and all that. It’s rather clear to me, but as long as you’re already there you may as well poke around a bit to confirm my theory. Discreetly. Don’t make a fuss about it. See if Mrs Marston confided anything useful to the other ladies. It’s a good way for us to get our money’s worth out of you.’
Chilton nodded, but instead of driving directly to the hotel to start conducting interviews, he drove down a back road or two, eyes on the winter landscape. The deciduous trees provided a view into the wood. No signs of the young Irishman, or Mrs O’Dea, or Agatha. When his search yielded nothing, he gave up and went to the hotel. He would have a massage, he decided, so long as he was there, and send his mother a postcard telling her he had done so. It would please her to think of him relaxed and happy.
Mrs Leech presided over the front desk, her cheerfulness seeming an effort. Chilton gathered that more guests had precipitously checked out following Mrs Marston’s death. Of course, any of those departed guests could be the killer, but now that he thought on it, Chilton tended to agree with Lippincott: the death of the couple was almost certain to have been a family affair.
‘I thought I’d book a massage,’ he told Mrs Leech.
She smiled warmly, taking up her pen, and said, ‘I’m sure you know that won’t be included in your gratis accommodation.’
Suddenly the idea of a stranger kneading his naked skin seemed less appealing. Chilton went instead to the baths. He had the place to himself, but despite the solitude and the restorative waters he did not relax a bit. His mind stayed on the roads he’d driven down, frozen and empty, no sign of the black automobile, all the houses with smoke rising from their chimneys inhabited by their rightful owners. It panicked Chilton the way a miscalculation can. He’d had her right before his eyes and had allowed her to slip away. Lippincott had tasked him with finding Agatha Christie as a lark. But what would he say if he knew that Chilton had found her, yet managed to daydream the quarry away? Could he do nothing right with the days he had left on earth?
After dinner Chilton took his pipe into the hotel’s small library so he could turn to the matter of confirming Lippincott’s theory regarding the Marstons. Ladies often complained about cigarettes but seldom pipes – a man with a pipe reminded them of their fathers – and it satisfied his craving while also making him look like he had something to do. The books on the shelves were mostly from the previous century. He perused the spines and landed on Bleak House, then settled onto the couch, where anyone who came in would have to sit beside him or across from him in one of the generous and well-worn armchairs. He’d seen Mrs O’Dea carrying a book, and a reader on holiday is soon in need of a new one. If she should venture in, he might also begin to discover her connection to Agatha Christie, killing two birds with one stone.
Before long a young dark-haired woman entered the library, with a cosy pink shawl over her shoulders. Miss Armstrong, Chilton reminded himself, the girl he’d dined with the other evening. She smiled at him perfunctorily and went straight to the bookshelves.
‘Not much contemporary fodder,’ he said, as she examined the spines. ‘You won’t find the new Dorothy Sayers, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I’m not much for detective novels. I like a love story.’ She pulled out a dusty copy of Jane Eyre, brushed off the cover and sat down, as he’d hoped, in the seat opposite him.
Mrs Leech poked her head into the library. ‘Do you two have everything you need?’ she asked brightly, anxious to retain the guests she had left. ‘Would you like some tea?’
‘Tea would be lovely,’ Miss Armstrong said. After Mrs Leech’s retreat she said to Chilton, ‘I love seeing that. Mr and Mrs Leech, I mean. Together, and nobody seeming to mind.’
Chilton nodded, not wanting to tell her there were plenty who minded. Instead, he said, ‘People can certainly be beastly about the things that affect them least, can’t they?’
‘They certainly can. But Mr and Mrs Leech never let that stop them. It’s just too romantic, isn’t it?’
Mrs Leech returned with the tea tray, all business, not a hint of romance about her. Once she had gone, and their cups were full and steaming, Chilton said, ‘Terrible business about the Marstons.’
‘Oh,’ Miss Armstrong said, closing her book with a snap, as if she’d been dying to talk about it. ‘Isn’t it awful? And beautiful, in its way? They were star-crossed, Mrs Marston told me. Longing to be together for ever so long. And then just when they finally were . . .’ Tears welled up in her dark eyes.
It wasn’t that Chilton had lost his powers of observation. He could see things and even assess them. The loveliness of this girl before him, her impeccable manners, the way her eyes were so dark one could barely make out the pupils. He could also note the particular sweetness of a young woman very much wishing for love to enter her life, even as she bravely asserted her own independence. Chilton knew he himself was not the sort of man occupying her daydreams; he also knew he should at least be moved to some sort of emotion. There should be desire lurching forward, to be suppressed, with perhaps a sigh of sadness at what could never be. But regarding Miss Armstrong felt no more personal or emotional than reading a newspaper. He saw everything but felt nothing.
‘Did you meet Mrs Marston?’ said Miss Armstrong. ‘She was chatty and friendly, wasn’t she? Oh, I liked her, Mr Chilton. And I feel sure she died of a broken heart.’ At this she set down her teacup and brought her hands to cover her face.
Mrs Marston had certainly gone out of her way to make her love story known. Might there have been a method to her garrulousness? Chilton fished the handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to Miss Armstrong.
This is how I found them when I entered the library. Chilton had appraised me correctly. Having finished Gatsby, I longed for something, anything, to distract me from the maelstrom of circumstances at the Bellefort Hotel. If I’d been smart, I would have gone home, as the Clarkes had done. Instead, I’d extended my stay, telling Mrs Leech I’d be keeping the room indefinitely. How could I do anything different, with Finbarr haunting the vicinity?
Miss Armstrong turned to look at me, her eyes widening in embarrassment, then correcting with that lift of her chin, daring me to judge her. I might almost have thought I’d walked in on a moment of romance if Chilton himself hadn’t looked so detached. In fact, he looked more interested in my sudden appearance than the lovely weeping girl before him. This put me immediately on my guard.
‘Mrs O’Dea,’ he said, and gestured towards his tearful companion.