But follow us he did, undetected, even when Finbarr turned to point the dog towards home. Chilton froze then, arms by his side, as if he could make himself invisible even to an animal. When Finbarr turned, and we resumed our walk, Chilton didn’t hesitate before resuming his stride. A sad pair, weren’t we? Chilton could tell, he knew, we’d been separated by the war, only now coming back together. What he couldn’t figure out was our connection to Agatha Christie. He just knew we’d lead him directly to her. And so we did.
Once we’d turned up the drive of the house Chilton had secured our destination, so he began to take greater heed lest we discover him. He waited by the gate that Finbarr – country boy, mindful of fences – had closed and latched behind us. When we were far enough in the distance for him to be sure we wouldn’t hear it creak, Chilton opened the gate and walked down the road, noting, as I had, the bare branch canopy, and thinking how lovely it must be in spring and summer, when everything was in bloom. He breathed in the night air to calm himself – anxiety taking him unawares as it so often did; the feeling that someone might be watching him, might be lurking, behind any shadow. Yorkshire was fine but Chilton had grown up by the sea. That was the thing, the only thing: to hear the waves upon the shore. To walk upon the rocks at Churston Cove and see the seals sunning there. To thrust your head into the salt water, even in the coldest months, and let its chilling shock clear your mind.
He stood before the house, a lovely old building, a great stone box, shimmering with windows under the low light of stars. From behind one upstairs window a flicker of light grew; that would be the Irish fellow, stoking the fire for an evening with Mrs O’Dea, if that were indeed her name. Whatever had separated us, Chilton hoped it could be sorted out, that we could be together. He had lost his own sweetheart because of the war. Katherine had waited for him patiently, praying for his return, but her prayers hadn’t been complete enough, because a different man had returned in his place from the one she loved. I scarcely recognize you, Frank, she’d wept. Not long after she broke things off, she married the florist’s son, who was set to inherit the business and hadn’t been to war on account of blindness in one eye. It was one of the reasons Chilton had left Brixham for Leeds, years ago. One day he’d walked by the flower shop and had seen Katherine arranging a vase full of peonies, round with expecting a child. He’d decided to take himself away as if not seeing something spared you from its sorrow.
Torquay was close enough to Brixham for Agatha Christie to have bought flowers from that shop, even from Katherine herself. Or likely not. Likely it was a servant’s job – to buy flowers.
Once over the threshold of the manor, the door shut quietly behind him. Inside it was draughty and cold. There were so few furnishings – there was so little sign of life – Chilton thought it might be waiting for sale, or to be leased. It didn’t have any air of waiting for its own family to return. He adjusted his scarf, then set about searching. It was a large house but not prohibitively so. He could make a quick turn downstairs to the kitchen, wine cellar (amply stocked for a house that seemed so deserted) and housekeeper’s office. Then through the main floor into the parlour and library. He peered into every room except for the one the couple occupied, marked by the flicker from underneath the doorway. Light voices carried into the hall, including a soft laugh that gladdened him. It was difficult to imagine either of those two laughing, both so haunted and earnest.
In the attic there was a modest servants’ quarters, with a row of closed doors. Beneath one of them, some movement, faint light, as though from a single candle. He knocked quietly, using only two of his knuckles.
‘Yes, darling,’ came the voice, weary and slightly worried, like a mother addressing a child out of bed in the middle of the night. In his own family it had not been he but his youngest brother who woke their mother after dark. She was always sweet about it. How she loved all three of her boys.
Chilton knew Agatha’s endearment, and its implied invitation to enter wasn’t for him. Still, he pushed the door open. And there she sat, in a hard wooden chair – wearing a man’s pyjamas, hair loose and curling, lovely in the poorly lit room. There were two single beds, only one of them made up. On the dressing table, which she was using as a desk, sat a typewriter and two lit, dripping candlesticks in tarnished silver holders. Stacks of paper were piled on a chest of drawers. More stacks of paper sat on the bare bed. Agatha stared at Chilton, fountain pen in hand, poised as if in mid-sentence.
‘Oh drat,’ she said. She did not put down her pen.
He walked into the room and sat down at the foot of the bare bed, careful not to disturb her papers. He did not remove his coat. There was a small stove in the corner, alight with coal, but he suspected it would be out by morning. He imagined her waking with a shiver, breath visible. Would she rekindle the fire herself or call for the Irishman, the geography of the house revised but not their roles?
‘Mrs Mahoney,’ Chilton said, with no faint measure of sarcasm. She had to strain backwards in her chair to face him.
‘Is this how the Yorkshire police conduct themselves?’ There was a practised tone of upper-crust umbrage in her voice but he could tell her heart wasn’t in it. ‘Marching into a lady’s bedroom in the middle of the night?’
‘I did knock,’ he said. ‘You were expecting your husband?’
A sad look crossed her face. Chilton did not mean to make her cry. At least, as a man, he did not. As an inspector, he recognized emotional frailty might lead to an outpouring of information.
‘I’m afraid,’ he pressed on, ‘your husband is downstairs in one of the bedrooms with another lady. I do hate to be the bearer of such unfortunate news.’
Finally, she released her pen, placing it on the bedside table with the exhalation of someone whose concentration has been truly and unwelcomely wrecked.
‘Let’s not play games,’ she said. ‘You know very well he’s not my husband.’
‘But wasn’t it he you meant when you said darling? He’s not—’
‘Don’t you dare say it. I’m not nearly old enough to be Finbarr’s mother.’
‘I was going to say, your brother.’
‘He has become very like a brother to me, and is indeed very darling. Though I don’t see what business it is of yours.’
‘What business it is of mine, Mrs Christie,’ Chilton switched to her true name, though she had not yet confirmed her identity, ‘is that I am employed by the Yorkshire police. There are a good many officers searching for you.’
‘A good many? Searching for me? In Yorkshire?’
‘Yorkshire and everywhere else in England.’
Agatha frowned. She couldn’t even curse her bad luck at landing in Yorkshire. If she’d run off to Derbyshire or Cumberland or Norfolk, there would be police to come knocking on the door of her hideout.
‘Gracious,’ Agatha said, exhausted by the news. ‘What a fuss.’
‘So you admit, you’re Mrs Agatha Christie?’