I grabbed his hands and kissed them.
‘I’ll tell you something terrible,’ he went on. ‘If I had a choice, to make every man that died in war, from 1914 till now – Irishmen, Englishmen, Australians, Germans, Turks, all of them – if I had the choice to go back in time and let them live, or put our baby back in your arms, they’d all remain dead, every last one of them.’
‘If you can see that, Finbarr, can’t you see I need to continue?’
‘There’s only one road back to you, the real you. The road back to yourself, Nan. And that’s with me.’
‘But I don’t want the road back to me. I want the road to Genevieve.’
For the first time in a long while I pictured my daughter’s face not as the little girl purported to belong to the Christies, but the baby I’d last seen, seven years ago, carried away by Sister Mary Clare. I breathed in, unexpectedly harsh, like my own lungs had received a dose of mustard gas. Perhaps the kindest thing Agatha Christie could do – not only for Finbarr, but for me – was to convince me the child was indeed hers.
By the time Chilton reached the Timeless Manor’s second floor, the sound of Agatha’s typewriter was audible. A cheerful and industrious click clack click clack. He could imagine the way it would fill a house of his own. Every evening he would come home and put on a kettle, the sound of the typewriter from the other room, she so absorbed that she wouldn’t know he’d arrived, until he came into the room with a steaming mug of tea. Oh, darling, she would say, the day was lost to me. That would be fine with Chilton. He was used to doing for himself and would be glad to do for her, too. You keep writing, he’d say. I’ll take care of dinner.
Now she answered his knock, industry ceasing, her face alight with the joy of seeing him. Once he was no longer a novelty, disturbing her work would be something they’d quarrel about. It pleased Chilton to think of it, how he’d have to learn to tiptoe. He’d become adept at removing the kettle just before it whistled, slipping a mug quietly on the table beside her, and still she’d scold him for breaking her concentration. Must you always interrupt me? He’d kiss the crown of her head and steal away, leaving her to her work.
But for now she stepped aside and let him in. He flopped onto the narrow bed – their bed, he thought of it now – and reached for a piece of typewritten paper on top of a neat stack on the second bare bed. Agatha snapped it out of his hand, put it back where it belonged and returned to her seat.
‘But when can I read it?’
‘When it’s printed, bound and sewn, and not a moment sooner.’
She went back to typing, a twitching smile betraying how his interest pleased her.
While she clicked and clacked he told her about what he’d witnessed between Mr and Mrs Race.
‘Are you listening?’ he asked, after a while. ‘Or are you writing?’
‘I’m doing both.’ But she stood, and collected the missing pieces of him by falling onto the bed. It had been years since he’d felt he had two arms but Agatha wrapped them both around herself. ‘I never knew kissing could be such fun,’ she said, after much agreeable time had passed.
But she had known, hadn’t she? Agatha had learned how much fun kissing could be years ago, in her early days with Archie, when he was a different man, when his invincibility had the power to protect her rather than harm. What she hadn’t known, really, is how bereavement can shift. How it can open up the world to a place where there’s nothing to lose and you can make a grab for joy in the form of a rumpled, but really rather lovely police inspector.
Chilton went down to the larder and returned with two tins of tongue. She had already made a vow never to eat tinned tongue again but she found herself starving, so much so that even this poor, repetitive food tasted wonderful.
‘Do you know what I’d like to do?’ Agatha said. ‘Go to the baths.’
‘A long walk in the cold followed by grotesquely hot water?’
‘What could be better?’
They walked briskly, arm in arm. There were few cars on the road. A young farrier driving a horse-drawn carriage stopped and offered a ride. They said no at first but changed their minds, running after him, calling to him and climbing in the back when he drew his team of two bay mares to a halt. Agatha sat on a bale of hay amidst clanking tools, petting a panting Labrador who cuddled up beside her. She laughed when the dog licked her chin, and kissed him back for good measure. The cold made colour rise in her cheeks. Her laughter sounded like wind chimes.
‘Tell me, Mr Chilton,’ she said, raising her voice above the clatter of hooves and jingled metal. ‘How do you feel about dogs?’
‘I think they’re just fine,’ he said. As Agatha put her arms around the beast and pressed her face into its dirty fur, he decided to be more emphatic. ‘I love them.’ And then he added, ‘You look wonderful. You look like a young girl.’
It was the wrong thing to say. Her smile vanished and her colour waned. ‘But I’m not a young girl.’ As soon as she spoke the words it became so. Lines on her brow, a shadow across her jaw.
The farrier let them off at the Karnak Baths and Spa, and they parted quietly, Chilton to the dressing room and Agatha to the gift shop to buy a bathing dress. This would mean showing herself to more people, but who was observant enough to connect the proper woman in the photographs to the one before them, with her wind-mussed hair and men’s clothing? She buttoned Miss Oliver’s plain woollen coat to her chin in the hopes of not looking quite so odd. In the shop she bought the most modest bathing dress she could find, a green and blue V-neck that just skimmed her knees. She bought a matching cap, too.
Unlike the segregated caves at the Bellefort, the Karnak’s baths were open to men and women in an airy atrium, humid and dripping with ferns, the fog from hot water and human breath obscuring what should have been visible through the glass ceiling. Chilton was already soaking when Agatha returned from the dressing room, wearing a thick dressing gown issued by the establishment. Steam rose around them as she removed the dressing gown and stepped gingerly into the hot water, flinching in pain and pleasure as she lowered herself in, smiling at him once again.
Chilton felt a restriction in his throat. A catch. He regretted leaving the manor. Outside in the world time revealed itself as fleeting in a way no amount of wishing could reverse.
‘Agatha,’ he said.
She glanced with concern at the other bathers, worried they’d hear her name and connect it to the morning’s headlines. But the only person who seemed to have noticed was a young woman with kindly eyes, not bothering with a cap but with her black hair piled high on her head: Miss Cornelia Armstrong.
‘Oh, hello,’ Miss Armstrong said, ever sweet-natured. ‘You must be Mrs Chilton. Come to join your husband?’