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?’
Agatha smiled. It pleased Chilton no end that she might like the sound of that: Mrs Chilton.
‘Yes,’ Agatha said. ‘He claimed this was a trip for work but to me it sounded like a holiday. So I thought I’d join in.’
Chilton said to Miss Armstrong, ‘I thought you’d gone off these hot waters.’
‘Oh, not at all, Mr Chilton. One must keep trying new things, and soldier through. And when I thought how my mother would object to this particular bath I couldn’t resist. Men and women bathing together. Quite scandalous.’ Miss Armstrong spoke the last as if it were the most delightful word in the English language. ‘I’m determined to enjoy myself despite the bad business with the Marstons.’ She turned back to Agatha. ‘Has your husband told you? About all that’s been going on at our little hotel?’
‘Yes,’ said Agatha. ‘How awfully sad.’
‘You’ve no idea. That is, I’m sure a man wouldn’t tell it right. Their love story was something special. All those years of longing to be together. And then when they finally were, when the moment they’d longed for arrived, all the years ahead of them were taken away. Just like that. There’s a lesson in that, don’t you think, Mrs Chilton? A person can’t waste time being unhappy.’
‘Quite right,’ Agatha said. ‘I far prefer to waste my time being happy.’
Chilton thought, if I can talk her into boarding a train, first thing in the morning, we could waste the rest of our lives being happy.
For the moment what seemed to make Cornelia Armstrong happy was waxing sorrowful about the Marstons’ untimely end. She moved over to sit directly beside Agatha. Chilton felt thankful none of the hotel guests were privy to the information about the poison that had been discovered in both Marstons.
‘Do you know,’ Miss Armstrong said to Agatha, ‘that before marrying Mr Marston, Mrs Marston had been a nun?’
‘You don’t say?’ Agatha looked to Mr Chilton, interest changing from polite to sincere.
‘She told me so herself. She asked me not to tell anyone. But I suppose that doesn’t matter now.’
‘I suppose not.’ Chilton poised himself, the way he did when someone was about to reveal something important, hoping the acceleration of his heartbeat wasn’t detectible.
‘She had been a nun,’ Miss Armstrong said, her voice giddy with the romance of it. ‘And Mr Marston, he had been a priest. Oh, it sounds like a novel, doesn’t it? The two of them torn and in love, all those years working side by side until they couldn’t bear it a moment longer. They’d only just renounced their vows and run off, so they could be together.’ She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘You know, I’m not sure they’d even married yet, really. But that could just be me wanting more scandal.’ She laughed, a gentle twitter that might have been delightful, this show of happiness from the lovely young woman, if only it didn’t spell possible doom for another.
‘Do you happen to know,’ Chilton said carefully, ‘what sort of order they’d come from?’
‘An orphanage.’ Miss Armstrong spoke warmly, as if this were the most philanthropic venture she could imagine. ‘She was such a loving person, Mrs Marston, you could see it plain as day. I’m sure she took wonderful care of all those children.’