In bed at the Timeless Manor, I propped myself up on my elbow, eyes trained on Finbarr’s sleeping form, so I would see his face in the first light. The brick we’d heated in the fire to keep us warm had gone cold at our feet. The heavy curtains were drawn and the room stood black with the late morning darkness of winter. By the time sunlight speckled into the room, his eyes were open, staring back at me. I thought of the night in Ireland I lay beside him, the only other time we’d slept all night in the same bed.
‘Last time we slept together,’ I said, ‘you never opened your eyes in the morning.’
He collected my hands and held them on top of his heart. ‘If I had, I would’ve married you that day.’
Tears filled my eyes. ‘We’d be together now.’
‘We are together now.’
‘Not for long,’ I said. ‘And not all of us.’
He sat up. I noticed for the first time something I’d missed the night before. His thick black hair was tamed and cropped. The back of his neck shaved. It gave him the unaccustomed and misleading look of order. It gave me proof of what seemed an impossibility: Agatha Christie was here, truly here. In this very house. With us. Living – as I’d never had the chance to do – with Finbarr Mahoney.
‘Did she cut your hair?’ I pictured Agatha’s hands blowing the stubborn wisps off the back of his neck. Running her fingers through the thick silk strands to hold, snip and release. Her hands, brushing the last of it off his shoulders.
‘She did,’ he said, running his hand over his scalp as if just remembering. ‘Do you like it?’
‘I like it long.’ My head dropped back to the stale, bare pillow. The house was outfitted so meanly it was as if we were camping. Outlaws and borrowers. Finbarr got up to put another log on the fire. I stared at the ceiling, which had medallions carved into it, unnecessarily ornate. I had never once thought of Archie’s hands on his wife with any kind of jealousy. But how I hated the thought of Agatha’s hands on Finbarr. It gave me a clearer glimpse of how it must feel for her, Archie’s hands on me, doing far more than cutting my hair.
‘And she’s here in this house, right now?’
‘Of course. I’ve already said so. Where else would she be?’
‘Her own fine house in Torquay. Or a fine hotel. She’s got plenty of money, you know, she can well afford it.’
‘Like you’re affording it?’
I didn’t answer. Finbarr got back into bed. ‘She loves her husband, Nan. She wants him back. Give him back to her and come away with me. We can do what we should have done directly after the war.’
‘Oh, Finbarr.’
‘We can go back to Ballycotton.’
‘You’re daft if you think I’m ever setting foot in Ireland.’
‘You can hate Ireland for what it did to you,’ Finbarr said. ‘But I’m Ireland too. Do you hate me, Nan?’
‘Never. You know that.’
‘And Ireland’s not the only country where these things happen.’
‘But it’s where it happened to me.’
He closed his eyes. I stroked the cropped hair off his forehead, fingernails grazing his scalp, willing it to grow into its usual floppy disarray. And I felt what I always did. That he was my favourite person on earth, the one in whose presence I most belonged. At the same time, I loved Genevieve more.
‘Finbarr,’ I whispered, to erase the hardness of what I’d just said. ‘You’re my favourite. You’re still my favourite.’
He opened his eyes. Although his interior weather had gone cloudy, I could see it like a memory, the old insistence on sunlight. Perhaps I could bring it back to him. And so we returned to lips and hands and furtive sentiments.
We couldn’t hear Agatha, upstairs, clacking away on her typewriter. She knew it was mad to stay here, to not reveal her whereabouts. She ought to get in Miss Oliver’s car and drive straight to the police station and turn herself in.
Turn herself in! She baulked with indignation at her own interior words. What crime had she committed? None at all. She had every right to storm out of the world.
And still. With so many people searching and worrying, she knew she should return home immediately. For the same reason, she knew she could never return at all. Face all those people? Provide an explanation? Look again into Archie’s face and see it entirely devoid of love? Impossible.
She hoped she could trust Chilton to keep his word. Last night his body had thrummed with respectful restraint. His lips were softer than Archie’s. He didn’t smell like any kind of soap or fancy emollients, just himself, a good grassy smell, a touch of salt water. She herself had traded her scent in these last few days, the last of the lavender fading in favour of woodsmoke and good old-fashioned sweat.
No matter that Mr Chilton was a police inspector. She could trust him to keep her secret. She knew she could.
Chilton was also awake at first light, not having changed his clothes or slept a wink. He could hardly remember the last time he’d kissed a woman. Ridiculous to feel happy. This was a conundrum. The whole world looking for a woman he’d found, and what had he done but kiss her and promise to keep her whereabouts a secret? However the years may have changed him, they certainly hadn’t made him any smarter.
From overhead he heard an unexpected thump that put him on immediate alert. One doesn’t wake to screaming one day without expecting more of the same. But after a few moments passed with only quiet, he allowed himself to breathe again. Today he would focus on the Marstons, so he could confirm Lippincott’s theory and make sure there wasn’t a murderer on the loose. Harm could be wrought by inaction as much as action. And since the war, Chilton had made an oath to himself to do no more harm in the world.